Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:00a.m.
Sala Flutey boarded with the couple who lived at the Wainoni house
By Michael Morrah
Police have had to dismantle part of the house where two bodies were buried in shallow graves beneath its floorboards.
It is thought one of them is Tisha Lowry, who disappeared almost a year ago.
The other body is the wife of the man who owned the house – and who is now facing a charge of murder.
From July 2007, Sala Flutey boarded with the couple who lived at the Wainoni house where police say they have found the bodies of two women.
She left after eight months when she had trouble paying her rent, but says she regularly went around for coffee.
Ms Flutey says she was invited to dinner as recently as two weeks ago.
“They told me to go around whenever I liked,” she says.
Police have now confirmed one of the bodies is that of Tisha Lowry, who went missing just a few months after Ms Flutey moved out.
The man who lived at the address has now been charged with both the murder of Lowry and his wife.
“I thought it was sick. They were inviting me around for coffee and there was a body under the house.”
Ms Flutey says the pair sometimes had arguments but it never got violent.
She did not think anything was unusual when she visited recently to find the accused man replacing floorboards in the house.
The accused asked Ms Flutey only twice if she had seen his wife, but Ms Flutey says she grew suspicious when he visited her last week.
“He left with this real clear glimpse on his face like he was relaxed or something,” she says.
“It wasn’t like the grief you might get from someone who was missing someone.”
Neighbours say in the days before his arrest, the homeowner had been arriving at the address with piles of wood.
“I actually thought it was my kids, but the noise was coming from next door,” says neighbour Helen. “A lot of banging by the shed.”
“He was just renovating – putting in new floorboards and stuff like that. He said, ‘yeah, it just gives me something to do’,” Ms Flutey says.
The house was split into two levels. The new floor boards were installed in the living room.
It is believed the accused went under the house to dig trenches for the bodies through a man hole which is inside a cupboard under the stairs.
Police are not saying whether the bodies found are intact.
“It’s very early stages,” says Detective Inspector Tom Fitzgerald.
“But as you all know, one has been there for quite some time.”
Police say the bodies were close together, and one is buried just one metre below the surface.
“At about a foot of the surface, going down about two to three feet,” says Mr Fitzgerald.
Police are still working to extract the bodies of two women from under the house – just a few blocks from where Ms Flutey lives.
They have spent part of the day dismantling the house to reach the bodies and painstakingly sieving through the dirt and sand beneath for clues.
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