Kidnappers may have left area
PA Dunedin The police believe that the kidnappers of the Oamaru schoolgirl, Gloria Kong, may have left the area. “It may well be that this group or part of the group left the area on Friday,” Detective Inspector Neville Stokes, officer in charge of the inquiry said yesterday. The police are satisfied that at least one or more of the kidnappers of the girl is a member of the Oamaru community. A local knowledge was needed to find a suitable house and barn for their purposes, and the use of intermediaries (acquaintances of the Kongs) to convey ransom demands indicated that either a local person was involved or gave information to the offenders, Mr Stokes said. Gloria Kong, aged 14, was still being interviewed at her home yesterday by a detective as the police
searched for the three men and a women responsible for the kidnapping last Wednesday. The detective is living at the Kong home as part of an all-out police bid to gather every crumb of evidence which could lead to the arrest of the girl’s kidnappers who left her trussed up inside a sack in a barn. Had she not escaped, the police believe she would have died there.
Mr Stokes said the detective was living with the Kongs so that Gloria could be interviewed gradually in a relaxed atmosphere. The police statement that Gloria Kong faced certain death has provoked public outrage at the kidnappers’ callousness. Former Oamaru people have telephoned from as far as Wellington, and the Oamaru Police Station has been inundated with information. Mr Stokes said the news that the girl could have died
because of the way she was tied up had made people very angry. “By now we have had several hundred telephone calls and information of all sorts,” he said yesterday. The police have appealed for residents to report any sign of neighbours leaving their homes in a hurry. Mr Stokes said the police were concerned that people may be too rigid about the features described by the kidnap victim. “Experience has shown us that when such a place is found many of the features decribed are missing.” Police are not assuming that the place where the girl was kept was necessarily in the country. “Although Gloria was insistent that it was a rural scene we must expand our search area to include the borough. “We are seeking the same information from people there as well,” he said.
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Press, 5 July 1983, Page 8
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413Kidnappers may have left area Press, 5 July 1983, Page 8
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