By Jenny Suo
Investigators may be closer to solving a decades old mystery surrounding the disappearance of a two-year-old boy.
Jefferie Hill was presumed drowned in a Tokoroa creek in 1968 but his body was never found. Today though, in a neighbour's back yard, investigators found a potential clue as scanning equipment found abnormalities in the soil nearby.
The property where the anomaly was found lay across the street from the house where Jo Reynolds lived with her two-year-old son Jefferie.
Jefferie was presumed drowned in nearby Matarawa creek in September 1968 but his body was never found and his mother and sister still grieve for him today.
“It’s just wanting to know. I can’t say the worst of it is over because it’s not. It’s been there for 43 years and it just eats at you,” says his mother, Ms Reynolds. Who says she has always had a hard time believing her son drowned in a creek.
The creek had been used as a dumping ground and was full of rubbish, meaning a body could not have washed away.
“To my way of thinking, my son, if he did go there, couldn’t have even got down there – there was just too much rubbish,” says Ms Reynolds.
Former resident Raymond Bartlett identified the area where today's anomaly was found and said it was here that he saw the resident of the house, who died in the 80's, digging a hole.
“I saw a certain person carrying a bundle towards a hole he had already dug. When he spotted me he just froze,” says Mr Bartlett.
Investigators also scanned Matarawa creek, which had been drained at the time,.but their search came to nothing.
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