Digging up Terry Floyd's past
EXCAVATION experts hope to find the body of schoolboy Terry Floyd when they start digging in a disused gold mine.
Vic and National section on Herald Sun iPad app
Don't miss out on the headlines from Vic and National section on Herald Sun iPad app. Followed categories will be added to My News.
EXCAVATION experts hope to find the body of schoolboy Terry Floyd, who disappeared 35 years ago, when they start digging in a disused gold mine.
Terry, 12, disappeared while hitchhiking from Avoca to his Maryborough home in 1975.
The Herald Sun revealed last month that new evidence implicated convicted paedophile Raymond Kenneth Jones.
Jones, 58, has been a suspect for years, but police have have not had enough evidence to charge him with murder.
Jones recently told the Herald Sun he wasn't involved in Terry's disappearance.
Terry's brother, Daryl, has spent decades investigating the case and has discovered evidence suggesting Terry's body may have been dumped in the 20m-deep Morning Star mine.
Police did not consider the information gathered by Mr Floyd strong enough to commission the dig.
Since the Herald Sun article last month several local people and businesses, including excavator Ballarat Coates Hire, have donated fencing and other equipment. The excavation is still expected to cost the Floyd family about $20,000.
Veteran homicide squad detective Ron Iddles has organised for a detective and a crime scene examiner to be at the mine site.
"If a bone or bones are found, the crime scene examiner will take a photograph and email it to the pathologist. If the bone appears to be human we will declare it to be a crime scene," he said.
Daryl Floyd said he had a strong feeling Terry's body was in the mine, but realised the search might not find anything.
"If we find something then my family can have closure. Terry can have a burial and be laid to rest with our parents," Mr Floyd said.