Gulf Harbour body in bag: Police search Ōrewa home, arrest two months after mystery woman found floating in water

This resulted in Justice Ajit Swaran Singh issuing takedown orders, forcing media outlets to remove stories already published online about the progress of the investigation, and readers who saw the articles were surprised when they disappeared.

Today the secrecy order came to an end after police withdrew an application to extend a wide-ranging non-disclosure order after a prosecutor in court described it as a “misunderstanding” within the force.

Early Monday afternoon, they issued a press release to all media saying they had arrested a man and a woman in connection with the Gulf Harbor case. They were caught trying to leave the country Sunday evening.

They were charged with indignity to a corpse and appeared in North Shore District Court on Monday, where they pleaded not guilty and chose a jury trial.

Court documents say the body was tampered with on March 8 in Ōrewa, four days before the woman was found in Gulf Harbour, a 20-minute drive away.

The charge they jointly pleaded guilty to carries a penalty of up to two years in prison.

Police say they are not ruling out further arrests or charges. No one has yet been charged with the woman’s murder.

The couple were granted temporary name stripping and were provided with a Mandarin interpreter in court.

Their lawyer Michael Kan said at least one of the couple has parents still in China who need to be notified.

When police and crime scene technicians appeared in court Monday, they were searching a home on Harvest Ave. in Ōrewa.

The neighbor said Herald on Monday they saw people matching the description of the couple who appeared in court and were led from the house in handcuffs.

Court documents give the address of the arrested couple as a house in Royal Oak, south of the central business district, not a property in Ōrewa, on the city’s northern border, owned by an Auckland real estate agent.

Throughout the week, officers and forensic specialists were at the Ōrewa estate, searching the house and the surrounding area.

Neighbors said the home’s residents were keeping their distance from others, but they were seen in the garden and on the lawn wearing face masks. They appeared to be avid gardeners, one neighbor said.

In court on Monday, prosecutor Henry Steele told Judge Swaran Singh he had been instructed to seek redaction of the details disclosed by police.

The prosecutor said a misunderstanding within the police led to a press release detailing the arrests.

On Wednesday, Steele filed a motion in North Shore District Court saying police do not intend to extend the non-disclosure order beyond the couple’s names because he believes it makes little sense to extend the order.

It details the circumstances in which the pair were stopped at the border as they tried to leave the country, then questioned and arrested, and how their arrests were linked to an investigation known as Operation Parada, into an unidentified woman found at the port in March.

Police have apologised to the court and media for the confusion that was caused by the failed announcement and the unusual ban order that was later issued.

At the hearing on Thursday, attorney Daniel Nilsson, representing HeraldStuff and Newshub have opposed the continuation of the injunction against their publication, which also includes a ban on the publication of the couple’s names.

Judge Anna Fitzgibbon did not extend the order and again allowed the media to release details of the couple’s arrest and charging.

Judge Fitzgibbon also rejected a request by their lawyer Angela Roebeck to continue to suppress the couple’s names. Roebeck said she had been given instructions to appeal, so they still could not be named.

The pair were remanded in custody on bail until their next appearance at the same court on September 17. The restrictions included a curfew and a ban on contacting witnesses in the case.

Since being found and pulled from the water, the woman’s remains have been resting at Auckland City Mortuary in Grafton under the care of the coroner.

On the morning of March 12, fisherman Paul Middleton was fishing in Gulf Harbor and caught a large plastic bag drifting just offshore.

After tearing through several layers of plastic, he initially thought there was meat in the bag, but then he saw a human hand sticking out of it and called the police, he told media on shore.

Despite dozens of calls to a special hotline set up by the investigation team, police say the woman has not been found or identified.

Police are treating this case as a murder.

Acting Inspector Tim Williams of the Waitematā CIB said earlier that police were working with overseas counterparts and Interpol, and his investigative team was continuing their extensive investigation.

Williams did not name his foreign counterparts but thanked everyone who has shared information so far.

In April Herald it was revealed that the police had completed and issued an Interpol “black notice”, i.e. a special appeal to their international partners for information about the unidentified bodies.

Williams said that after performing an autopsy, police determined the remains were those of a woman who was of slight build and of Asian descent, possibly Chinese.

Police did not disclose whether the autopsy results showed any signs of foul play that could indicate the cause of her death.

Despite her stature, autopsy results showed she was neither a child nor a teenager and was likely middle-aged.

Investigators did not release the woman’s name; it is understood they referred to her simply as “the victim.”

She was found wearing blue pajama pants with a distinctive heart pattern and a T-shirt with the brand’s logo written in Chinese characters.

Google Translate’s image-detection software reported that the text read “80 cm Juanyan Knitted Garment Factory.”

Several weeks after the autopsy, police announced they had obtained a DNA profile of the victim.

However, this profile did not match anyone in police records.

Williams said his team had been in contact with detectives in Canterbury and had ruled out the possibility that the victim was a missing person from Christchurch Real.STate Yanfei Bao’s agent.

While the Gulf Harbour case is unusual, it is not the first time human remains have been discovered in Auckland and have remained unidentified for an extended period.

In February 2008, hunters found a badly decomposed body in the Waitakere Mountains.

The remains spent more than a year in the same morgue as the Gulf Harbour victim before they were identified as those of former Mt Roskill resident Lino Leger, who disappeared in 1987.

Police do not believe his disappearance and death are suspicious.

When the remains were identified in October 2009, Detective Sergeant Roger Small said the identification was the result of facial reconstruction by Auckland cardiologist Dr Jonathan Christiansen, extensive media interest, the work of a forensic dentist and pathologist, DNA evidence and a “process of elimination and patience”.