Five years after a Wellington taxi driver went missing, police have re-opened the case and are treating it as murder.
Vietnamese national Do Trieu's family are desperate for closure and have their own theories about what went tragically wrong.
Mr Trieu hasn't been seen alive for five years. The retired taxi driver was well known among neighbours at a Mt Cook block of flats.
But one day he left on a road trip to Taupo and never came home.
“I was waiting the police a long, long time,” says his daughter, Hanh Trieu. “[It has been] very hard for my family. Every day I have been waiting for police and my mum from Vietnam too has been waiting every day.”
His family says he's been visiting them in spirit.
“His soul comes over and tells her he's been missing,” says granddaughter Hamy Trieu. “She said that his face is all bloody and that someone dug up a grave and put him quite deep into the earth.”
New leads have triggered a fresh investigation, an upgrade from missing person to murder.
“We've gleaned new information from the public and I can't go into that information in any detail,” says Detective Senior Sergeant Warwick McKee.
Mr Trieu's family believes those he was travelling with, his wife and two friends, know what happened and should speak up. But geography, at least for one, makes that tricky.
Two months after Mr Trieu's disappearance, his young, second wife went back to Vietnam, and soon after that his daughter got a call from his bank to say she'd been accessing his accounts, drawing money with his bankcards that he always kept in his pocket.
New Zealand doesn't have an extradition treaty with Vietnam and police say if need be, they'll go there. A mutual assistance agreement means they can ask Vietnamese authorities for help.
Meanwhile the family just want to bring him home.
“We have a temple back in Vietnam where all our ancestors are buried, so we want to bury him with them.”
Police say people need to speak up to help that happen.
3 News
source: newshub archive
