June 2024 will mark the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of east Auckland man Jim Donnelly.
The Times is looking back, through a series of stories, at one of the most baffling unsolved cases in recent New Zealand history.
Jim Donnelly went missing on Monday, June 21, 2004.
He hasn’t been seen since and his whereabouts are a total mystery to his loved ones and the police.
Jim was 43-years-old and living with his wife Tracey and their two young children in Dannemora when he disappeared.
Coroner Sam Herdson held an inquest hearing on the matter in Auckland in 2007.
Her subsequent report states when Jim vanished, he’d been working at Glenbrook Steel Mill in Waiuku in a supervisory engineering role for 19 years.
The coroner found what happened to him remains unexplained but “the presumption is Jim has died”.
The evidence in the inquest report was collated and presented by the officer then in charge of the case, detective senior sergeant Neil Grimstone, who’s since retired from the police.
- Background
Herdson’s report states Jim was seen as a good family man with an interest in golf and yachting.
He was considered a moderate drinker who didn’t gamble or use illegal drugs.
Jim was described as having been depressed about 18 months to two years before he disappeared.
It was thought that may have been related to the deaths of his father and brothers.
Tracey had booked a weekend away with her husband for June 19 at a central Auckland hotel.
Her parents were to look after the couple’s two children.
- June 18, 2004
Jim and Tracey had dinner with her parents.
He was in a “strange” mood and wanted to leave early but didn’t say why.
The following day he was home and feeling tired when a friend visited.
“Jim told him [the friend] he had been pacing a lot at night and had not been getting a lot of sleep,” Herdson’s report says.
“Jim made some comments which his friend did not understand and felt were odd and out of character.”
Jim told Tracey he had to attend a meeting that evening but didn’t say what it was about.
He also said he was going to get a suit because his clothes weren’t good enough.
Tracey went out at about 5pm, returning an hour later.
Jim, dressed in a suit, got into his car and left without speaking to her.
He returned home at about 8pm and Tracey found him to be in a more positive frame of mind.
“Jim said to her that if she knew what was in his mind, she would not be worried and his family will always come first.”
The weekend Tracey had booked with Jim at the hotel didn’t go ahead.
- June 20, 2004
Jim got up between 4am-5am. At about 6am he said he needed to go for a walk, which was unusual.
He returned some time later and at 8.30am, Tracey saw him at the computer.
Jim took his son to play golf and visit his mother and a family friend in the afternoon and returned at about 5pm.
Herdson’s report says Jim told Tracey he had to go out to stop “waste”, which she took to mean he had to divert a crisis.
Jim returned at about 7pm and told her he’d been to work, “but when she challenged this Jim admitted he had lied”.
“He would not explain where he had been and appeared to her to be agitated.
“Police inquiries later showed Jim had appeared in a secure car park of a publishing company in … central Auckland.
“He’d been seen by the caretakers and appeared vague.”
Jim was issued with a trespass notice and asked to leave the car park.
Sometime later he returned home.
Tracey went to bed at about 9.30pm and said he wandered aimlessly around the house before going to bed.
- Part two of this series explores Jim’s known movements on the day he disappeared as detailed in the coroner’s report.
