Mona Blades case

Mona Elizabeth Blades was an 18-year-old New Zealand woman who disappeared in 1975 while hitchhiking. Her body and belongings have never been found and no one has been charged in connection with her disappearance and presumed murder. Disappearance Blades was hitchhiking from Hamilton to Hastings on Saturday 31 May 1975, the first day of the Queen's Birthday long weekend, and was allegedly last seen on the Napier–Taupo Road in an orange Datsun 120Y station wagon. A truck driver saw Blades getting into the Datsun and witnesses reported seeing a matching vehicle veering off the highway and stopping on rural Matea Road. Investigation There have been about five suspects in the case. Auckland police investigated John Freeman who had rented an orange Datsun the weekend that Blades disappeared. On the day two weeks later that police announced they were searching for an orange Datsun, Freeman shot and wounded a student at St Cuthbert's College in Auckland before killing himself. An elderly New Zealand man and Charlie Hughes, a Hamilton man now living in Australia, have remained "persons of interest" for police. Hughes has gone public in newspapers and on television about his frustrations at being on the suspects list and has denied he had anything to do with the alleged murder.