Without a trace

Piha is world renowned for its wild surf but it has another claim to fame - six people have disappeared. Are they the victims of a serial killer and is it time for an inquiry?

- SARAH CATHERALL

Candida Beveridge remembers the night Iraena Asher went missing at Piha. She had been up all night dealing with the death of her father, who like her, was a resident of the beach community.

On October 10, 2004, Asher, a 25-year-old part-time model and student teacher, disappeared from the blacksand wild-surf town, and Beveridge witnessed the shock and impact of the woman's disappearance on the 1000strong community.

Years later, the Auckland director of shows like The Bachelor and Down for Love has co-directed a true-crime series, Black Coast Vanishings, about the six people who have gone missing from Piha since 1992.

Co-director Megan Jones also lived in Piha for a time. Her involvement in the show comes after directing and producing the acclaimed Six Angry Women and No Māori Allowed. Jones was aware of how Asher's disappearance haunted the community - and that few people were satisfied by the police investigation or the coroner's findings.

When two further women went missing from the Mercer Bay Loop Track in 2012 and 2017 respectively, Sir Bob Harvey, the former mayor of Waitakere, went public about his conviction that the disappearances were connected - raising questions about whether more of them might be as well. Harvey's 2018 Metro magazine article about the three missing women sparked interest in a screen production. Since then, he tells the Listener, he has felt like a local Sherlock Holmes as he tried to find answers, especially for the grieving families. "I still live at Karekare. I'm [neighbouring] still a lifeguard and I still feel that everyone who comes to Piha beach should go home. I can't believe that people vanish without trace. Not one or two, but six... We're talking a lot of people."

In the first episode, Harvey declares: "I don't believe it's anything but a horrendous crime scene." He speculates that a serial killer is on the loose, but other locals are more sceptical. "Bob loves a good story," says one.