Disappearance of Amber-Lee

"Have a heart. I just want my baby girl back" The words of distraught mother Nicola Cruickshank, almost three decades after her daughter Amber-Lee disappeared without any trace from a property on the shores of Lake Wakatipu.

She's speaking out all these years on because the police have announced a 100000 dollar reward for information that leads to the conviction of anybody responsible for the two year old's disappearance. Amber Lee went missing from a house in Kingston on the evening of October 17th, 1992.

The police believe she may be the victim of foul play, but no one has ever been held accountable. In May this year, Amber-Lee would turn 31. Her mother, Nicola, just wants to know what happened to her baby girl and hopes the reward will flush out vital information.

 

"I think it's absolutely awesome. It's long overdue. We've waited a long time for this to happen and just hope that we get some answers from it."

 

"What do you hope it will achieve by offering that reward?"

"Well, I'm kind of hoping that whoever holds the key to this mystery, so to speak, this night that we're living in, can come forward and actually put an end to it. You know, or if anyone has any information about it, they come forward and that we can get some closure. You know, we've lived 29 years and pain and suffering and torment and, you know, endless searching and endless scenarios and stories."

"And we just praying for this nightmare to end. And this 100 thousand dollar reward is going to be enough to prompt someone to come forward."

 

"How have you dealt with all of that over those years?"

 

"With a lot of support from my family and friends and with the support from my sons. I don't think I would have made it this far or gone as far as I have ..without the support. They have been my absolute rocks through this. They have stuck by me through thick and thin. They have never given up hope, just like I have never given up hope. And without them, I don't think I would have got this far at all."

 

"Nicola, I want to go back to the day. Right. So it was on Canal Street and Kingston. And you were there because I understand you are waiting on some repairs to a house track. Can you just give us a bit of a sense about what everyone was doing? How many people were there at the property are leading up to the disappearance of your daughter?"

 

"Well, that day when we arrived in Kingston, the window in the back of the bus broke on the way here and when we arrived here, we decided to stay the night to get it fixed. And my partner at the time had friends in Kingston who were interacting with other friends. And it was decided that would have a barbecue because was saying that they get to steer the boat out and get all the years and we had a barbecue and then clean up a recall, probably around eight to 10 of us I twenty nine years ago."

 

"I cannot remember everybody. I just remember six of us especially, and maybe a couple of others."

And Amber-Lee, had she been sort of motoring around before she disappeared? Do you remember the last time you laid eyes on her?"

"Yeah, they're just gone and taken the boat out and they'd come back in and my partner's friend went to lift her out and she refused to go to him because she didn't know him. So my partner at the time, he lifted her out and I got her a glass of coke."

 

"And she was at the front of the house, and it was the last time I saw her."

I imagine that you have gone over every detail of that evening in your head, what, thousands of times, countless, countless, countless times, you know, wondering how, why, who, what"

 

"And forever wondering this, you know, I just can't understand how this has happened or why this has happened. You know, she was only two and a half years old. She was just a little girl, you know, and to like strangers, she didn't like water. You know, I knew my daughter. I knew what she was like. So for her to go off with a stranger, unlikely for her to go near the lake, most unlikely of all, she hated water."

 

"She didn't even want to put her feet in that day to have a paddle. You know, so the only way she could be in it, like, is if someone put her the. 

"When you noticed she'd gone missing. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened?Some people will remember this and others this is new to them. So I imagine you searched extensively and looked in certain places.?

But give us a bit of a feel for for what happened on that night and then the next couple of days"

 "When I noticed she was missing, kind of all hell broke loose running around asking everybody, have you seen Amber? Do you know we're embarrassed? No, I thought she was inside. No, I thought she was there with someone. So then we all start going in different directions and looking. We started door knocking. Then the sun was going down."

 

"We knew we hit to ring the police. You know, it was going to be dark. So we made the phone call. The police arrived. A search thing was put together. We were to stay at the house I was not allowed to search for, and they searched that night in sun. Called it off Sunday night, search Monday and then called it off, presumed drowned"

"In the case naturally, they searched the lake, didn't they?"

 

"Yes, they did."

"And the rubbish tip? Oh, I can't remember."

 

"Right, but it was an extensive search. It was a very extensive search. There was helicopters all up on the hills, deploying the army, then dropping them in and coming down the hills. The railway tracks, all the nooks and crannies, the creeks, the tracks, the lake, the shores, all the way down to Ethel Garston. All well, the inside drums, the trees have been planted, you name it."

They searched it over all these years." 

"What have the police told to you about where the investigation is at and what theories are still open that they're working on?"

 

"they've always told me that the case remains open. And there any leads that come in that they follow up, but nothing has ever come to fruition. It's always come to a stalemate. And. I I don't know where it is now or what the theory is. I mean, obviously at the beginning they presumed drowned six months down the track, then became foul play. The dump was searched in, but, you know, so much amount of rubbish had been dumped."

 

"Things come out of the woodwork when Crimewatch was featured on TV, and that's when it turned into a missing person. Case simply foul play.

"And Niki, do you believe foul play too?"

"Well, how else would she disappear? There's no other way she could have disappeared, the land in Kingston has been searched from head to toe. You know, these new excavations going on here, and I'm sure as hell if she was buried somewhere there, she would have been found by now.

"So here so well, I suppose you see you've got hope, but hope has kind of a double edged sword, isn't it, because you're left waiting the whole time for something to happen, for news to come."

"I just want my baby girl back."