Strange Sally Diamond

Dear Mr Armstrong

I apologize for bothering you again. By process of elimination, we believe you are the son of Conor Geary, also known as James Armstrong.

Some information has recently come to light which has made us focus more particularly on your father. It has not been possible to find a birth certificate for him in this country, nor is there any record of a James Armstrong studying dentistry in Ireland in the years he might have qualified. We believe the certificate he had was a forgery.

We heard from a retired cop who met James Armstrong when he accompanied a woman to the police station to report the disappearance of her teenage nephew, Rangi Parata. Parata drowned in a lake a few miles from your home in Rotorua. I believe you lived next door to Parata? The circumstances of his death were not deemed suspicious at the time, but in the light of recent events, we wonder if your father might be connected not just to the abduction of a girl in Ireland, but also to the drowning of Rangi Parata and potentially to the disappearance of Linda Weston.

There is something else. As you know, this podcast story was originally all about the disappearance of Linda Weston in 1983 and Amanda Heron’s quest to find out what happened to her mother. Just in the last few weeks, Amanda’s birth father has appeared on an ancestry website. We know nothing about him but for his initials – PG – and the fact that his DNA shows him to be 98 per cent of Irish descent.

We know that James Armstrong could not be Amanda’s father as he died eleven years before she was born. But he lived outside Rotorua at the time Linda disappeared. He lived next door to Rangi Parata. He did, as far as we know, live in Ireland for some period, and he also practised as a dentist for five years in Rotorua. The man wanted in Ireland was a practising dentist, and a father of one child, Mary Norton, born to the girl he kidnapped there.

I know that this is a lot to take in for you and I apologize for presenting you with such potentially upsetting information.

Is it possible that you were also abducted? We would really like to gain as much information about your father as possible. This may all be a misunderstanding but one we would love to be able to clear up, with your help.

I understand that you are currently on leave from the Aotearoa National Bank and, understandably, we cannot get any information as to where you live or even a mobile phone number for you. If you are monitoring your email, please get in touch at your earliest convenience. All of my contact details are at the top of this email.

Ngā mihi

Kate Ngata