The disappearance of Iraena Asher
At 9.30 pm on Sunday, October 10, 2004, Julia Woodhouse and her teenage son, Henry, were driving back into Piha from Auckland. As they rounded a bend, they were shocked to see a young woman on the road wearing nothing but underwear, Ugg boots, and a sweatshirt. Julia stopped the car and asked the woman if she needed help. Her name was Iraena Asher, a 25-year-old trainee teacher, and part-time model.
Iraena Asher was bipolar and affected by alcohol and drugs that night. The later police investigation claimed her behavior had become increasingly erratic over the previous days. Her family disagreed as both her father and sister had seen her just the day before she disappeared. But it seems likely she was in the grip of a manic episode. She had admitted both missing and doubling up on her mood-stabilizing lithium pills in the month prior, and a long-term relationship had ended badly only a week before. Police claimed stress could cause her to relapse into strange behavior.
On October 10, Iraena had gone to a house at Piha with her new boyfriend and another couple. They later testified that she went down to the beach alone at some point and returned soaked and cold. She refused a change of clothes and chose to go naked beneath a duvet. Her boyfriend later left without her, at her request.
Other people came and went from the house. At around 9 pm, Iraena Asher called the police, claiming she’d been drugged and was being pressured into having sex. The police called her a taxi, which never turned up. She left the house wearing just underwear, boots, and a sweatshirt.
Julia took Iraena to the Black Sands Lodge on Beach Valley Rd, which she ran with her partner, Bobbie Carroll. Iraena took a shower and they offered her a bed for the night, but she remained suspicious of the couple and declined.
They didn’t call the police, but Carroll thought she might be coming down off recreational drugs. At least one person in the house she’d left had taken ecstasy the previous night.
Asher called her ex-boyfriend’s mother instead of the police, then watched television with Henry and said she decided she would stay the night and would sleep in the lounge, with French doors that opened out onto the garden and the road leading to the Tasman Lookout.
Just after 1 pm, Bobbie and Julia went to sleep and then Iraena left through the lodge through the French door. Carroll gave chase but found only the dressing gown, which she had given to her to keep her warm.
Around 1.30 am, Iraena was seen naked beneath the street light near the Piha store by a couple out walking their dog. It was bitterly cold, windy, and stormy. The dog walkers were shocked but did nothing. They watched Iraena talking to a street light, kneeling, and kissing the ground before she walked towards the beach. She disappeared into the darkness and was never seen again.
Bobbie had returned to the lodge and called the police, but the search didn’t start until 4 am.
It was presumed that she walked out into the ocean, but the surf and sea conditions were huge. The waves were four to five meters high and the water was bitterly cold.
What happened to Iraena Asher?
It would have to be very difficult for Iraena to voluntarily enter the water as the shorebreak was significant that night. She would have been thrown back onto the beach by the crashing waves. But shoreline searchers and the rescue helicopter found nothing on the beach nor in the headlands to the north where bodies would drift in the current. When the surf had dropped during the search, a body would be easy to spot in the water. Searchers climbed Cathedral Cave and explored the coves all the way to Bethells. The search was called off after five days with no sign.
Veteran Surf Lifesaver Duncan Clarke has patrolled the Piha coast for more than 30 years and dragged many bodies out of the water in the area, including partially decomposed bodies, scratched or maimed from the rocks, or partially devoured by sharks or other marine life.
Clarke recalls the days and weeks that followed Iraena’s disappearance as “miserable”, and explains how the conditions that night simply did not lend themselves to her being swept away. “The conditions that night were atrocious.
Onshore, 20-knot winds, possibly some of the worst conditions you could have out here. At least 3-4m swells all breaking right on the shore, south-west winds. It was cold—bitterly cold. In my experience, immediately, I felt it was more likely that if someone had gone in the water and drowned, they would have been swept back up onto the shore.
One hundred per cent. I was expecting her to be found coastal, in the wider Piha area, absolutely. It’s not uncommon for a body to go under for three to seven days until the gases start to build up through decomposition etc, and then they will float up again closer to Bethells [Beach]. I personally don’t know what happened to her, I can only hope that we did our job to the best of our ability with Search and Rescue [teams] and that ultimately, she didn’t go in the water that day. If she had [gone in the water], we would have found her.”
Coroner Peter Ryan ruled that, while Iraena “had a lot to live for”, there was “a strong probability that she went into the sea in the early hours of October 11, 2004, and subsequently drowned”. Senior Sergeant Mark Fergus, who led the five-day search for her, agreed with the finding, arguing her body would probably have been found if it was in the bush, and that foul play was unlikely