Aisling search jogs memories of Kirsa Jensen 

Source: ONE NewsAisling Symes

The search for missing Auckland toddler Aisling Symes has sparked fresh calls for information on the disappearance of Napier schoolgirl Kirsa Jensen, missing now for 26 years.

Last month the body of two-year-old Aisling was found in a drain following a frantic week of searching for her.

The search prompted Michael Jensen, brother of Kirsa, to write to police commending them for dedication and effort in the search for his sister, who went missing in 1983.

He wrote of the sacrifices, the empathy and the frustrations of officers involved in searches for missing children.

"Many officers...dedicated so much time to the effort to find my sister, to the extent of using what little leave they had during that time to search areas not covered by official searches," he wrote, in an excerpt of the letter reprinted in the Police Ten-One magazine.

"With little Aisling's case I have felt a strong degree of empathy with both the family and the officers involved, perhaps because I am a father now."

On September 1, 1983, 14-year-old Kirsa disappeared while riding her horse along a busy highway.

She was last seen by an old gun emplacement near the mouth of the Tutaekuri River at Awatoto, just south of Napier.

No trace of her has ever been found and she has long been assumed to have been abducted and murdered.

Napier CIB Detective Sergeant Brian Schaab did not work on the case originally but the file was handed to him at least 10 years ago.

Such support from the families was always appreciated in such frustrating cases, which so far had yielded a lot of dead ends, he says.

"I have got two of the folders sitting on my desk and they sit there and I stare at them probably every day."

Schaab says Kirsa's case is starting to fade a bit but every now and then a bit of publicity saw an influx of more information.

It is a case police would love to put to rest for the sake of the family, he says.

"We can only do as good as we can, but I would love to be able to do a hell of a lot better on this one because losing a daughter like that can be horrendous."

One of the witnesses to last see Kirsa, William John Russell, later became a main suspect and during the investigation made confessions, but later retracted them.

He committed suicide nine years after Kirsa went missing.

Schaab says a lot of the officers involved with the case believed Russell was the offender

"I have got my doubts," he says.

"There's more information, in my mind, to suggest that he is not the offender than to suggest he is."

He believes someone out there still knows something about the case.

Kirsa was last seen with a man in his 50s, which could mean he would now be in his 70s and a death-bed confession might come out.

"I am just counting that one day I will get the right piece of information that will clear up the whole thing and point us in the right direction and that could come at any time and from any person."