AUSTRALIAN detectives will question a suspect in New Zealand over a Sydney teenager`s disappearance 30 years ago.
Detective Superintendent Geoff Beresford of the New South Wales homicide squad said officers would seek to interview a person believed to have taken part in sexual assaults linked to the disappearance and suspected murder of Trudie Adams in 1978.
Adams, 18, disappeared after going to a dance at the Newport Surf Lifesaving Club on Sydney`s northern beaches.
She was last seen getting into a van in Barrenjoey Road, and police suspect she was murdered.
There is a $250,000 reward for any information leading to the conviction of her killer or killers.
Her death has been linked to 14 other violent sexual assaults that occurred on Sydney`s northern beaches between 1971 and 1978 in which victims had their eyes taped shut.
Det-Supt Beresford said the person police sought was a suspect in the sexual assaults and now lived in New Zealand.
"One of the people we are interested in ... has been identified as possibly being involved in the sexual assaults and being an associate, possibly, of a person that may know more about the disappearance of Trudie Adams," he said on Radio New Zealand.
"Detectives will be travelling to New Zealand and are very keen to speak to this person," he said.
Det-Supt Beresford said the investigation into Adams` disappearance had relied on the work of NSW`s unsolved homicide team, which recently reopened the case.
He said improvements in DNA technology and fingerprinting and searching techniques since 1978 had helped detectives.
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