[ad_1]
Between 1:30 p.m. and 5:49 p.m. on Wednesday, January 9, 2008, Bevan Wright disappeared.
Although the body of the 43-year-old shearer has never been found, police believe he was the victim of a dirty act, hence Tuesday Cold case episode.
It was not unusual for Wright, Feilding’s father of two, to go missing.
TVNZ
ManawatÅ «shearer and father of two children Bevan Wright has been missing since January 2008.
He often left without notifying family or friends. Her aunt, Gaylene Hart, says she had a habit of showing up unannounced at her home.
READ MORE:
* The couple claimed they were selling possessions to pay for their son’s cancer treatment. But it was all a lie.
* Hundreds on missing persons list
Wright’s penchant for taking off alone is perhaps why it took his family nearly a month to report him missing.
Wright’s last known sighting was at 1.30 p.m., when the band of shearers he worked with dropped him off at a gas station near his home. For the past two months he had been living with his sister Janelle and their daughters at their home on Beattie Street, Feilding.
At 5:49, Wright’s cell phone rang in the Beattie Street living room. Wright and his phone were practically inseparable and he didn’t like other people answering his calls. Knowing this, Janelle went looking for him.
After knocking on Wright’s bedroom door and going through the dirty laundry, he couldn’t find it, so he answered the phone. It was his supervisor who confirmed that he was out of work the next day.
Police are confident that Wright arrived home shortly after 1:30 p.m., as his shearing equipment was found there. It seems to have left the address at 5.49. So what happened in the four hours in between?
TVNZ
For this episode of Cold Case, Inspector Jeanette Park, Detective Sergeant Grayson Joines, and Senior Detective Sergeant Craig Sheridan put their heads together to try to solve the mystery of what happened to Bevan Wright.
For this episode of Cold case, Inspector Jeanette Park, Detective Sergeant Grayson Joines, and Detective Sergeant Major Craig Sheridan put their heads together to try to find an answer.
This is not a case with detailed forensic evidence rules to analyze, so most of the episode is devoted to recounting the various leads that the police investigation has followed over the years.
The nephew
Janelle’s teenage son, Jesse, was frequently in conflict with his uncle and reportedly told a friend that Wright would kill him one day. Wright reportedly told a family member that he would send his nephew to the hospital if he didn’t start treating his mother better.
After a fight with Janelle on New Years Eve 2007, Jesse had been trespassed on the Beattie Street property, but around 11 a.m. on the day Wright disappeared, he returned to pick up some clothes.
There was an altercation with Janelle and Jesse threw a shoe out a window.
TVNZ
Wright and his nephew Jesse, played here by an actor in a reenactment of Cold Case, had a strained relationship.
He turned himself in at the Feilding police station and was detained at the address of an aunt around 1:00 p.m.
Home
Wright was reported missing by his mother on February 7, 2008.
At this stage, almost a month had passed, and another had passed while the police treated the case as a typical missing person. The investigation was escalated to a homicide investigation on March 10.
Now, suspecting a crime, the police rushed to search the home on Beattie Street. A couple of puzzling details emerged from her search.
The first was that Wright’s phone, which he had left when he disappeared, was missing, as were his car keys and wallet. One of Wright’s nieces also mentioned that her uncle’s sleeping bag, green with a yellow lining, was missing.
In Wright’s bedroom, police found a small leather bag with syringes and a small bag of white powder inside. Wright’s DNA was on three of the syringes and five syringes contained traces of methamphetamine.
There was also a new tobacco bag. Detective Sergeant Joines wonders: why did Wright leave him behind if he was headed on a road trip?
The Red car
TVNZ
A red car, shown here in the yard of a wrecker, may have been linked to Wright’s disappearance.
At one point in the investigation, a red Toyota Corolla belonging to Janelle was thought to be the key to Wright’s disappearance. Police received a signed statement from someone who heard pounding from inside the car, which was parked near her as she sat on her front porch smoking.
When he asked his companion about the car, he admitted that he used it to transport a body, saying: “He was a guy who died in a house, blood came out of his mouth and nose, we wrapped him in a white sheet, put his body in the car and transported him to a place where he will never be found ”.
When police asked Jesse, Wright’s nephew, about the car, he said it crashed and subsequently set it on fire on a street in Feilding.
After consulting with the fire service, investigators concluded that at least part of this story was false, as there had been no car fires on that street in the time period Jesse was talking about.
Police found the red car in the yard of a wrecker in Feilding. The wrecker revealed that someone had tried to sell the vehicle to them just seven days after Wright disappeared.
He had rejected the sale, but later discovered that the car had dumped out of his yard without the wheels and battery.
Cemeteries
Finding Wright’s body is likely key to the police having any chance of catching his killer, and they have investigated a number of clues.
A claim that Wright was buried in the concrete foundations of the Aorangi Bridge, which was being repaired, sparked initial interest. However, the foundation work was complete when Wright disappeared.
Three years after Wright’s disappearance, police received two calls from a phone booth in Dannevirke in which the caller claimed the body was buried near the Mount Bruce Bridge.
TVNZ
Detective Sergeant Grayson Joines oversaw an investigation into a possible burial site for Bevan Wright’s body. The bones the team found turned out to belong to an animal.
Hopes were raised when investigators discovered what appeared to be a burial site – a blue tarp that covered some bones. Analysis quickly showed that the bones had belonged to an animal.
In Cold case, Police first reveal that in June 2018 they received a notice alleging that Wright was executed after failing to pay a drug debt.
After failing to withdraw cash from an ATM in Woodville, Wright was driven to Ballance Reserve in Manawatu Gorge and executed with a shotgun.
The next day his body was placed in a green sleeping bag, stuffed into the back of a red motor vehicle and taken to an address in Pahiatua, where he was buried under a kennel and a concrete slab.
Police have investigated these claims and are confident that Wright was not buried at the rumored location, but would like to hear from someone with more information.
In Cold caseDetective Sergeant Grayson Joines investigates another rumored burial site, this time in a reservation at the Ashhurst end of the Manawatu Gorge. Police dogs show interest in two depressions in the forest floor, so a specialized search party is called in to comb the dirt. Joines is deluded when he finds buried bones, but it is revealed that they are those of an animal.
‘Help me’
In January 2008, a family friend spotted Wright at a farm supply store in Feilding. As the friend was driving home through Manawatu Gorge, a red car, driving fast, stopped behind him and finally passed. Wright was in the passenger seat and was muttering “Help me” as they passed.
The vehicle disappeared towards Woodville.
The dates of this event do not align with when Wright disappeared, but police say they have never ruled it out.
Altogether, Bevan Wright’s disappearance is an unsolved and puzzling case that has plagued Inspector Park and Detective Sergeant Joines in particular for years.
But both officers make it clear that police have not given up on finding out what happened to Wright in January 2008. In investigating the latest clue to the burial site, Joines says it is encouraging that the public is still releasing new information.
He will be waiting Cold case ask someone to provide the crucial information that unlocks the case.
