Police determined to bring missing Real Estate agent home to her family

As Real Estate agents made their way around a frost tinged city on Tuesday morning, a search for one that disappeared continues.

In a world away from the clean cut white home Yanfei Bao visited in Hornby before she disappeared, fluorescent clad searchers reflected the sun, their boots wet from long grass.

It’s a paddock on a dairy farm, fringed by trees on one side, and a half empty silage mound on the other.

Discarded tyres that once weighed down the plastic wrap lie in scattered heaps, half hidden in overgrown mounds, and gorse dross.

Passer-bys more used to seeing cows peacefully grazing in the field, amongst concrete troughs in the Greenpark countryside, thirty minutes south of Christchurch, peer curiously at the police vehicles and television cameras.

On the surface linking this landscape to homicide seems an implausible fit. It’s better described as a tranquil hideaway from the city, where farmers live and raise families that will become the next generation on the land.

Overlooking the searchers is Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves, present and accountable, as she has been from day one of Bao’s disappearance.

She as much as anyone wants to bring Bao back to her heartbroken husband Paul, and her nine-year-old daughter.

“We are all members of this community,” she says in answer to the personal toll cases like this take on those charged with the investigation. “Even though we are police officers we are members as well, and it’s really important for us to do this for her family.”

It’s having skin in the game, Reeves adds. “That’s what we’ve all got here.”

While three weeks of extensive searching has not resulted in finding Bao, Reeves says there isn’t a timeline to scale back the search. Instead, the investigation team is working in close “synergy” with those searching to assess the areas they should prioritise.

For now, they are committed to combing farmland in and around Hudsons Rd on Tuesday and Wednesday - following a combination of “good investigative work” and “amazing help” from the public leading police to the area.

Reeves has been in contact with Bao’s family daily, and says police are assisting “where they can” in bringing her parents and sister over from China.

While her Christchurch family are understandably distressed and upset, Reeves believed they were doing “amazingly well under the circumstances”.

As the searchers passed by in a line, she reiterated her determination to bring a resolution to the family.

“It would be great to get some answers for them and closure.”

But closure may be some time away, with more questions than answers about what happened to Bao after her car was last seen outside a house in Trevor St, Hornby on July 19.

Excited and enthusiastic about her flourishing real estate career, Bao, 44, was due to show a potential buyer through, but Stuff understands police found forensic evidence at the property suggesting Bao was killed there.

Later, police would find one of her cellphones on the Christchurch Southern Motorway, near Blakes Rd.

Police moved quickly and by Saturday, July 22, a 52-year-old man was arrested in the public area of Christchurch International Airport. He had no bags and a one-way flight to China booked.

The man’s car, a silver Mitsubishi sedan, was seized the same day.

The accused man had not been in the country long and had a job at a factory. He lived in a colleague’s Bryndwr house. He was charged with kidnapping Bao and is in custody ahead of a further court appearance on August 15.