Car seen with boot and car doors open at house missing real estate agent helped buy

A car at the centre of the investigation into Yanfei Bao’s disappearance was parked across the drive of her accused kidnapper’s home for two hours with its boot and car doors open, two days after she was last seen.

A neighbour of the Bryndwr, Christchurch, property the 52-year-old accused lives at said the same silver car the police wanted information on was always at the property, but was not there on Wednesday or Thursday.

However, it was parked across the driveway on Friday with the boot and doors open for several hours. It was gone the following day, she said.

On Saturday, the Mitsubishi sedan, registration DPH101, was seized by police, and police called for people to report sightings of it.

Bao’s alleged kidnapper had booked a one-way flight to China before his arrest, Stuff understands. He was remanded in custody after appearing in the Christchurch District Court on Monday.

The man, has was granted interim name suppression, was charged with unlawfully taking Bao away without her consent, with intent to cause her to be confined, after police arrested him on Saturday at an airport.

It is believed he’s linked to a property deal Bao was negotiating.

Stuff can also reveal Bao acted as the agent for the buyer of the same property the alleged kidnapper lives at in Bryndwr, and completed the sale in June, about the time two men moved in.

The neighbour also confirmed two men had moved in. A lovely couple lived there before, but it since “became sketchy”. She said the men put up a lot of security cameras around the house.

The owner was not home when Stuff went around to ask him questions about Bao.

A close friend of Bao’s said the house owner contacted her on Thursday and asked her if Bao was the missing real estate agent.

At the man’s first court appearance, Bao’s husband, Paul Gooch, and friends were in court along with Detective Inspector Nicky Reeves.

Gooch was pale and looked solemn as the accused entered court, and some friends quietly wept.

The man was dressed in a striped rugby shirt and did not speak English. A Mandarin interpreter spoke on his behalf.

Bao is still missing, five days after she was last seen at 10.30am on Wednesday while she was cold calling potential customers on Vickerys Rd.

On Sunday night, police raided a third property at Trevor St, Hornby, after searching a property at Iroquois Place in Wigram and a house at Bryndwr.

Previously, Stuff reported Bao spoke to a friend 45 minutes after she was last seen.

A man at the Iroquois Place property police raided on Saturday answered the door on Monday, but declined to comment.

Asked how he was, the man said: “Not good.”

Curtains at the property were drawn. The man shut the door before Stuff could ask any further questions.

At 11.16am on Wednesday, Bao rang her friend Jin Tian and had a four-minute conversation with her.

During the conversation, Bao asked Tian how someone she was working with could transfer $600,000 (more than 2.6 million RMB) from China to pay cash for a house.

After Stuff published details of the conversation, police interviewed Tian for several hours on Saturday and took a statement.

Bao’s sister, Huafei, said the family suspected the kidnapping was in relation to the cash buyer.

“The thing I hope for most is to find my younger sister, and that she is OK,” Huafei sobbed as she spoke to Stuff on Sunday.

Police confirmed a car pulled over in the Air Force Museum car park in Wigram on Saturday was the same car they were seeking information about, despite initially denying it was part of the investigation.

A local resident who saw the incident just before 11am said at least four police cars blocked off half of the car park. She saw them talking to a middle-aged man with a bald head, of Asian descent. Police also checked the car’s boot.