Father of two Jim Donnelly, who went missing after a weekend of personal stress and turmoil in June 2004. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
More than 450 people are listed as missing in New Zealand every year - and while most are found within hours or days, some have simply vanished.<\/p>\n
Their families beg, plead, appeal for information.<\/p>\n
\"Someone must know something,\" they usually tell reporters, the details of their story differing but their desperation for answers sadly not unique.<\/p>\n
Tracey Donnelly finds herself talking to reporters every few years. She's used to the calls now, used to the questions and running through the answers.<\/p>\n
But what she will never get used to is not having her husband Jim by her side, and not knowing - or even being close to knowing - what happened to him.<\/p>\n
Jim Donnelly was a scientist working at the Glenbrook steel mill, southwest of Auckland.<\/p>\n
On June 21, 2004, Jim left the home he shared with Tracey and their children Liam and Siobhan and went to work.<\/p>\n
He parked his car, walked into the mill, went into his office and then - nothing.<\/p>\n
Jim hasn't been seen since.<\/p>\n
At least, not by his family or anyone outside the mill.<\/p>\n
23 Jun, 2019 05:11 AMQuick Read<\/p>\n
14 Mar, 2017 04:00 PMQuick Read<\/p>\n
His wife spoke about his disappearance for Herald podcast A Moment In Crime. She firmly believes there are people who not only know what happened to Jim that day - but are responsible for it too.<\/p>\n
\"We were a normal, everyday family - two parents working to pay the mortgage and childcare,\" she said.<\/p>\n
\"We had two children we were raising, they were going to school and we were just going about our lives in a normal way.<\/p>\n
\"I don't know what it was that destroyed that.<\/p>\n
\"My opinion is that it does revolve around the mill, something was happening inside the mill and I think he saw something he shouldn't have - and it's gone from there.<\/p>\n
\"If you had told me at the beginning I would think that, I would have told myself that I was incredibly silly, that this could not possibly happen to Jim.<\/p>\n
\"But as time has gone on, we have got no answer and it's more and more clear that he has been removed by other people rather than himself.<\/p>\n
\"Because if he had committed suicide, there would have been a body - so, my thing is my husband went to work, he was last seen at work and he's never come home.\"<\/p>\n
In the weeks before Jim disappeared things were strained at home.<\/p>\n
Something was troubling the 43-year-old but he wouldn't - or possibly couldn't - tell his wife what it was.<\/p>\n
He was stressed, anxious and not himself at all.<\/p>\n
\"He was very preoccupied with something,\" Tracey recalled.<\/p>\n
\"There wasn't a normal atmosphere in our home there was something on his mind. And I really don't know what it was.<\/p>\n
\"From what I can see now, he thought he was handling it and sorting it out. But I think that it was bigger than he imagined.\"<\/p>\n
The weekend before Jim vanished was strange, to say the least.<\/p>\n
He told Tracey he had to go to a meeting, went and hired a suit to wear and explained he might be \"a little fragile\" when he came back. But he wouldn't disclose any more.<\/p>\n
\"That really concerned me a lot,\" said Tracey.<\/p>\n
\"I came back to him about five or 10 minutes later, after thinking about that, and said to him, do you mean fragile physically or mentally?<\/p>\n
\"He said physically and I thought, what have you got yourself into?, and I really didn't know what to do.\"<\/p>\n
Jim went to the meeting and when he returned less than two hours later he was fine. Not a scratch.<\/p>\n
Tracey was relieved but still worried and in the dark about her husband's stressors.<\/p>\n
Over the next day he paced, he was preoccupied.<\/p>\n
He took his son to the driving range to hit some golf balls and when he came back he was very agitated, telling Tracey he had to \"go and avert a crisis\".<\/p>\n
\"I didn't know what to think ... the whole weekend was a bit surreal,\" she said.<\/p>\n
\"He eventually came home that night and he still wasn't relaxed I didn't get much further with him, I just thought, he obviously has a lot going on and he's not about to tell me, so there's not a lot I can do at this stage.\"<\/p>\n
On Monday Jim got up for work as normal. He woke his wife, they chatted and he headed off.<\/p>\n
When Tracey got to work she confided in her boss about the \"weird\" weekend and her frustration and worry.<\/p>\n
She also spoke to Jim's best friend Stephen - who he'd known since age 5 - and his wife.<\/p>\n
They planned to get the men together that night for a talk, to see if Jim would open up to his mate.<\/p>\n
Stephen called Tracey back soon after - he'd just heard that a man had been trespassed from his workplace the day before by security.<\/p>\n
The number plate matched Jim's car.<\/p>\n
\"That's when Stephen said, 'I don't like the sound of this, this is sounding very odd',\" Tracey explained.<\/p>\n
\"He went down to the steel mill, to see if he could get hold of Jim. Then he rang me back and said, 'they're saying he's not at work'.\"<\/p>\n
Stephen and his wife raced to the Donnelly home to see if Jim was there.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Tracey's world started to spin, she left work and went to her parents' house.<\/p>\n
Steven returned to the mill and asked the staff to look for Jim again.<\/p>\n
\"Eventually they located his car in the car park but it wasn't in the normal space, he'd parked it somewhere else.<\/p>\n
\"That's why they'd initially thought he'd left and wasn't on site.<\/p>\n
\"At that stage, they started looking for him and then they asked me to go down to the police station and report him missing, just to set things in motion.\"<\/p>\n
Talking about Jim is hard for Tracey, even after all this time.<\/p>\n
He was a private man and she dreads to think how he would react knowing their personal story is now so public.<\/p>\n
But she will never sit back, never rest until there is an answer.<\/p>\n
\"We have to do this to try and find out what happened,\" she said.<\/p>\n
\"Where the hell is my husband? He went to work and where is he? What's happened to him?\"<\/p>\n
After the alarm was raised with police an extensive search kicked off.<\/p>\n
The investigation found that Jim stopped for petrol on his way to work and bought a muffin with his fuel.<\/p>\n
At work, he parked, signed in and went to his office, placing the muffin on his desk.<\/p>\n
He changed into his work uniform.<\/p>\n
And that's when the trail stops.<\/p>\n
He was due at a shift handover meeting but never showed up.<\/p>\n
His computer was not switched on.<\/p>\n
\"My initial thoughts were that he'd fallen over or had a breakdown, that it was just a matter of time till they found him,\" Tracey said.<\/p>\n
\"That was very logical, that we would just find him somewhere and he wouldn't be conscious.\"<\/p>\n
The search covered the mill, its grounds, the surroundings - paddocks, beaches, waterways and bush.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Jim's colleagues were spoken to.<\/p>\n
Sightings near and far from the mill were followed up.<\/p>\n
Footprints on a beach, a man bolting across the motorway.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
His mates went out at night to recheck areas already searched, thinking maybe he would come out for them, maybe he was afraid of the authorities for some reason.<\/p>\n
They left food in case he was watching from somewhere, hungry.<\/p>\n
Still nothing.<\/p>\n
\"It was like walking through mud,\" said Tracey.<\/p>\n
\"I was just barely functioning it's indescribable - unless you've gone through it - it's just this void that you're living in.<\/p>\n
\"It was just this waiting - waiting to find out what had happened, waiting for some news, just constant waiting.\"<\/p>\n
Five days later Jim's hard hat was found beside an acid vat inside the mill.<\/p>\n
After draining the acid bath, they found his work ID card, PalmPilot, safety glasses, credit card, cash and a single key - his work key.<\/p>\n
The keyring with all his other keys was never found.<\/p>\n
\"I remember my stomach nearly falling out to my knees,\" said Tracey of the moment she heard Jim's hard hat had been found.<\/p>\n
\"That was a horrible 24 hours while they drained the acid bath.\"<\/p>\n
There were no human remains in the bath and soon after the search had to come to an end - clues were like hen's teeth.<\/p>\n
Mill management were convinced Jim had left the site.<\/p>\n
But Tracey wasn't and still isn't convinced.<\/p>\n
One thing that has always bothered her is an unidentified car that pulled into the mill car park the night Jim disappeared.<\/p>\n
It pulled up near where Jim's car was parked, far from his usual space.<\/p>\n
Police were already on the scene by that stage and when the driver spotted the uniforms, the patrol cars, they turned off their lights and drove away.<\/p>\n
\"The car was never identified, it was never seen again,' said Tracey.<\/p>\n
\"So my thoughts were that because Jim's car key had never been found, that someone was going to move the car and make it look like he'd left the site.<\/p>\n
\"But because we raised the alarm earlier than expected, that was unable to be done.\"<\/p>\n
It's been 17 years since Jim was last seen and his family have had to learn how to navigate life without him.<\/p>\n
\"It's been really hard from that day the search was called off,\" said Tracey.<\/p>\n
\"What do you do as a family? You can't just turn around and carry on.<\/p>\n
\"I had to let the children know that Dad was missing and I had no idea where he was, or how he was, whether he was alive or dead.<\/p>\n
\"I was just trying to make sense of it. I couldn't work, I was off on sick leave, I actually couldn't deal with life at that stage, it was hard enough just getting out of bed and putting one foot in front of the other.<\/p>\n
\"The trauma that a person goes through with something like this it pretty much pulls you apart and it's very hard to put yourself back together.<\/p>\n
\"I was really not in a good space I didn't know whether I was grieving for someone that had died, waiting for someone to come back, or waiting for a body to be recovered, if he committed suicide.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Read the original: <\/p>\n
Mystery at the mill: the strange and unsolved disappearance of scientist Jim Donnelly - New Zealand Herald<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Father of two Jim Donnelly, who went missing after a weekend of personal stress and turmoil in June 2004. Photo \/ Supplied More than 450 people are listed as missing in New Zealand every year - and while most are found within hours or days, some have simply vanished. Continue reading