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21apr98 THE police investigation into missing American divers Thomas and Eileen Lonergan has been extended following the discovery of dramatic new evidence which supports the theory that they staged their own disappearance. Mike Rose, skipper of Quicksilver V which carried a party of Italian tourists on a private charter to the company's Agincourt Reef platform on January 27 the day after the Lonergans went missing has told police that the head count before the return journey was three over the passenger tally. As well, Rose recalls hearing American voices on board the vessel on the trip back to Port Douglas, the sharp accents apparently standing out against the background of Italian being spoken by all other members of the tour group. In a related development, police are hoping to question a member of the crew of the Quicksilver maintenance boat Kalina, who reportedly saw a black-and-pink wetsuit snagged on coral in the vicinity of the pontoon. Eileen Lonergan was wearing a black-and-pink wetsuit when she and her husband made their third and final dive from the Outer Edge cruise boat on January 26 at St Crispin Reef, about 6km south of the pontoon. In a further twist, Outer Edge operations manager Tom Colrain has told for the first time that Tom Lonergan phoned him the day before the cruise seeking repeated assurances that the boat would visit Agincourt Reef. In a statement Colrain lodged with his solicitor within days of the Lonergans' disappearance being noticed, Colrain wrote: "He asked me the question about where we were going at least three times and I remember thinking to myself at the time: 'What a pest! How many times do I have to tell this guy?"' Supt Col McCallum, who is overseeing the police investigation, said yesterday that the new evidence all had to be investigated and would be included in the report to the coroner. "This has put us back again," said Supt McCallum, who had hoped to wrap up the investigation soon. Police investigators interviewed Mr Rose late last week following a tip-off from Mr Colrain, who had learnt of the head count discrepancy and the out-of-place American accents from a member of the Quicksilver crew. Mr Rose said he had not contacted police with the information because he did not think it was solid enough. Even now, he warned against reading too much into the information and said he had a feeling the American voices were male. "But had I known about the third piece of the puzzle (the black-and-pink wetsuit), I'd have gone to the police. The first I heard of it was when the police interviewed me," Mr Rose said. He said it was "a week or two" after the Lonergans went missing, when speculation was running rife as to how it might have been possible for them to stage their own disappearance, that he recalled hearing the American accents. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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