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Jayne Furlong, also referred to as Jane Furlong, was a New Zealand teenager from Auckland who disappeared from a street in Auckland on 26 May 1993 while working in the sex trade. She had been abducted and murdered.[1]
Her remains were found south west of Auckland at Sunset Beach, Port Waikato, on 19 May 2012 after being exposed by erosion of a sandbank.[2] They were positively identified by DNA. At the time of her disappearance, Furlong was due to testify as a witness for the prosecution in two separate legal cases – one involving gang members accused of an assault, and the other relating to a businessman charged with brutal attacks on sex workers. A year after the remains were found, Detective Inspector Mark Benefield said that Furlong's ex-partner, who reported her missing on 28 May 1993, some of her former associates and some of those involved in the court cases, had declined to speak to police.[3]
In 2012, after the remains were found, police released a film made in 1993 for the Crimewatch TV-program. The film shows a re-enactment of street scenes at the time Furlong went missing, with her boyfriend playing himself[4] and narrated by the show's host, broadcaster Ian Johnstone.[5]
Her murder investigation is ongoing and police are still probing old information. A Facebook page was set up in 2012 to help with inquiries.[6]
Two witnesses claim to have overheard a confession to the killing of Furlong by a career criminal during 2003; the police said their information contained factually incorrect information (namely her place of burial. He said he’d buried her by a bridge in Te Atatu) – so their potential leads were not further investigated.[7]
In 2007 her case was featured on the television series Sensing Murder.[8]
Following discovery of Furlong's remains, her mother urged anyone who knew what happened to her daughter to come forward.[9] A funeral service was held at St George's Anglican Church in Epsom, Auckland in July 2012.[10]
On 9 June 2019, the case was featured on the New Zealand television show Cold Case. Police said they had a person of interest, who had sold Furlong and her partner drugs and had been owed money by them. This person had a connection to Sunset Beach.[11]
In August 2019, a parole board hearing was held for Wayne Michael McGrath, who is nearing the end of a 5-year, 4-month prison sentence for raping Furlong's friend Amanda Wolfe. At his trial, McGrath had publicly identified himself as a suspect in the Furlong murder, but police have never confirmed whether he is or was a suspect. Before her disappearance, Furlong and her boyfriend were in a dispute with McGrath over a vehicle which ended in a violent confrontation in west Auckland. McGrath's brother said that McGrath had spent time at a family-owned bach at Sunset Beach. McGrath was not granted parole; further parole board hearings will take place before his sentence ends in May 2020.[12]
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