Police have formally identified a former Dunedin resident whose remains were found near a Waikato highway earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Colin, known as Col, Heath went missing when living in Te Kuiti. Heath was 46 and last seen by a flatmate in the North Island town on March 19 in 2022.<\/p>\n
Heath identified as non-binary and went by the pronouns they\/them.<\/p>\n
In a brief statement today, police confirmed that Heath’s skeletal remains were discovered off State Highway 3 in\u00a0\u014ctorohanga on March 6 this year.<\/p>\n
“Police extend sympathies to Col\u2019s family, who have asked for privacy at this difficult time.”<\/p>\n
The death has been referred to the Coroner.<\/p>\n
Heath had only moved to the North Island from Dunedin months before their disappearance.<\/p>\n
In 2022, police issued an appeal for information the following month on the Waikato police Facebook page, followed by media reports in August, a fresh police appeal in September and a televised plea for information by family on\u00a0Police Ten 7\u00a0in December.<\/p>\n
Friends told the\u00a0Otago Daily Times last week they were\u00a0 feeling both relief and devastation – but also directed sharp criticism at the investigation into Heath\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n
The friends claimed the case did not receive the urgency it deserved, and that if Heath had not been who they were, there would have been a lot more media attention and resources allocated to try to find them.<\/p>\n
Some of the police were brilliant, others “not so much”, a friend said.<\/p>\n
A group of about half a dozen people remained in touch over Heath\u2019s fate and never gave up trying to find them, one friend said.<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t think any of us really thought that they were coming home alive, especially after such a long time. But we always wanted to find them.”<\/p>\n
Heath was described as “a beautiful oddball” and a loving person.\u00a0“Quiet but fierce. Very, very passionate about the things that they cared about. Loved a good protest.”<\/p>\n
They were a gentle person with a lot of love to give, but the world did not always love them the way it should have and as a result they had a harder life than most, the friend said.<\/p>\n
– Allied Media, previous reporting by Steve Hepburn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have formally identified a former Dunedin resident whose remains were found near a Waikato highway earlier this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-327891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}