Jamie Kaiwai's family have raised more than $100,000 to investigate her disappearance. Photo: Supplied
The family of a Gisborne woman who went missing four years ago is hopeful a review of the case will lead to answers.
Jamie Kaiwai was last seen on 10 October 2019 and her car was found with the keys in the ignition at Tolaga Bay wharf.
At the time she was 27.
Police did not treat her disappearance as suspicious, but her family firmly believe she was murdered.
Her cousin, Jonique Oli-Alainu'uese, said she believed the initial police investigation had been skewed by Kaiwai's struggles with mental health.
"Just because people have mental illnesses, it doesn't mean that they've killed themselves."
Now, with a new detective heading the review, and new evidence garnered from a private investigator, they were hoping for closure.
"If we truly believed that she did commit suicide, then that may be something we could accept, but we don't," Oli-Alainu'uese said.
In a statement, Detective Inspector Martin James confirmed the police had recently commenced a routine periodic review of her missing person's file.
"This is standard for long-term missing persons cases and can involve a range of options, including an officer re-examining evidence or conducting further enquiries," he said.
Oli-Alainu'uese said the four years since Kaiwai's disappearance had felt like an uphill battle.
She said police had stopped communicating with the family - "I think it's because I was pressuring" - and her complaints to the Independent Police Conduct Authority were getting nowhere.
Hiring a private investigator felt like their last hope.
They fundraised more than $100,000 dollars through a Give-a-little page, and Hamish Kerr and his team took on the job.
Over the next two years they uncovered new evidence, such as the fact that Kaiwai's car had in fact been moved between parking spots in the wharf-side carpark in the days after her disappearance.
Now, four years on, the police had put a new detective in charge of the case.
Oli-Alainu'uese said the detective, John Love, had recently visited her grandparents and introduced himself. "Even that there has been a great start."
The private investigators would now hand their findings over to the police.
"This is what I wanted. I wanted them to look at it again and acknowledge the mistakes that were made," Oli-Alainu'uese said.
Appeal for information from public
She said she was sure there were people out there with information.
To those people, she would say: "What if it was you? What if it was your family member, what if it was your sister, your granddaughter, your cousin? What would you hope people would do if you were in our shoes?"
The family still missed Kaiwai every day.
"I love talking about her," Oli-Alainu'uese said. "People on the East Coast will know what this means, but she was a real coastie... really laid-back, she really enjoyed the simplicity of life, really down to earth - nothing really phased her."
She was an amazing artist and a great mum, and the family wanted closure.
"Being Māori, it's really important to us when there's a death that we are able to bury, to have a tangi for our loved ones, and we haven't been able to have that."
She knew there was a chance they would never find her remains, never get that opportunity, but they hadn't given up on finding answers.
"I feel like she deserved more than what they gave her," Oli-Alainu'uese said.
"We're not going to go anywhere until we know for sure. It doesn't matter how many years it takes."
