Clairvoyants' clues about missing man draw blank

Brad Walker - 1 August 1991

Information provided by Nelson clairvoyants about the disappearance of a 21-year-old man seven months ago in the Abel Tasman National Park has proved fruitless.

Department of Conservation officers searched most of. yesterday in the Mt Rollinson area after clairvoyants: told police where Steven Michael Baker lay dead.

However, the four searchers found no sign of the man’s body and Motueka police are now resorting to further interviews of people who were in the area last August.

“Inquiries are continuing, but we will not be conducting other searches for people in the area,” Constable Bill Lambie said today.

Changed mind

Mr Baker, from Te Puke, was last seen in Motueka on August 26 when he told friends he planned to walk the park’s inland track through to Takaka alone.

The clairvoyants told police Baker had started the inland route at Marahau but changed his mind and ‘took the coastal track through the park. He spent the night at Torrent Bay and then went on to spend a night at the Awaroa Hut.

The clairvoyants said he walked for more than an hour and then slipped off the track falling into a creek far below. He hit his head and landed face down in the water where he drowned, without regaining consciousness.

A DOC spokeswoman said the searchers spent yesterday in the Awaroa area and combed a track behind the hut referred to by the clairvoyants.

Slopes and creek heads in the area were also searched but no trace of Baker’s body was found, she said.

The missing man’s father, Russell Baker, said the account given to police by clairvoyants contained an eerie reference to a photograph of his son which nobody in Nelson would have known had been hung recently in their home.

The Christchurch Star April 9, 1991