Tania Ellwood's partner wants the truth, no matter what he finds out
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crim...r-wants-the-truth-no-matter-what-he-finds-out
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The discovery of Tania's body raised more questions than it delivered answers. And one of the main unanswered questions for Heyder is, what was she doing at Dryden Lodge?
The low-rent accommodation is a place people wash up when they're fresh out of jail, or trying to get clean, or generally down on their luck. The lodge is sandwiched between $2 million houses in gentrified Grey Lynn and you can usually find its residents out front smoking rollies. The room where Kerr Hamilton had been staying is small, with a tiled floor. After the bodies were found, it was blessed by a pastor.
Heyder said his partner had struggled with addiction in the past, but when they got together, she assured him that part of her life was over. He and Tania had been a couple for around two years, but were far from strangers, having known each other for a total of 15 years.
He says he will be able to accept his partner had fallen back into drug abuse, but only if that was the truth.
"I think in our relationship we'd got to a point where I was confident that that wasn't an issue. It's like any kind of addiction though I suppose there's always that possibility that you could be tempted again. I'm still a little bit surprised that that was part of it.
"Because we'd talk about it quite sincerely and quite openly about all of that, and she was adamant that 'No, I'm not going back down that pathway again.'"
'I NEED TO SEE EVIDENCE'
Heyder desperately wants police to share evidence with him, so he can begin to put the pieces together and understand what happened. As he wasn't next of kin and he and Ellwood weren't yet in a de facto relationship, he feels like he's been left on the "outer perimeter" of the investigation.
He was unable to view the body because police officers tried to protect him from the trauma of seeing it in a decomposed state.
One moment she was there in-front of him, hopping out of his car to go to the bank; the next she was simply gone. The grief of so sudden a loss can feel like being caught in a raging storm, with all its power and unfeeling chaos arriving at once.
He says the police have alluded to CCTV footage of Tania and Kerr Hamilton walking together on Karangahape Road on the day she went missing, but they wouldn't share this footage with him.
Heyder says he is ready for answers, no matter how brutal. Even if Tania was seeing her ex-boyfriend behind his back. Even if she wasn't truthful when she told him she was going to bed on that Wednesday evening in late February. All he wants is the truth.
"I'm prepared to accept whatever happened but I just need to be able to see that."
