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A murder confession has come to light 50 years after the shocking killing of a North Wales school teacher in New Zealand.

Jennifer Beard was travelling around New Zealand in 1969 when she was strangled in a sexually motivated attack on New Year's Eve.

The 25-year-old from Hawarden , Flintshire had been working in a school in Tasmania at the time of her murder.

Her disappearance sparked one of the biggest ever manhunts in New Zealand history that saw nearly 60,000 people being interviewed.

But 50 years on no-one has ever been held to account and no strong evidence has ever been uncovered.

Jennifer had only emigrated to the country the year before and was hitchhiking on the West Coast to meet her fiance Reg Phillips when she was reported missing.

She was due to meet him on January 5, 1970, in the picturesque lake town of Wanaka, where the pair planned to go hiking in the area’s stunning mountain scenery.

When she failed to turn up, he contacted police and the hunt began.

Police were able to trace her movements up to 12.30pm on December 31 and she was last seen riding down a country lane in a remote area with an unidentified man in a dust-covered Vauxhall Velox.

Her disappearance marked a huge police hunt across the South Island, which ended on January 19 when her body was discovered by soldiers under a bridge over the River Haast, in the far west of the country, nearly three weeks later.

Her body was so badly decomposed it was impossible to determine the cause of death, but her shirt had been ripped apart and her tracksuit trousers had been neatly rolled down to beneath her knees.

Her killer has never been found, but the New Zealand Herald paper is reporting that an accused sex offender confessed in 2013 to a close friend that he carried out the murder, before taking his own life days later.

On the day of his death Reginald Wildbore had been due to be arrested for historical sex crimes against a child.

But now, his close friend Ian Molloy has come forward with news of the confession, according to reports from Wales Online .

He told the New Zealand Herald: "Quite often he'd come around in the morning. This morning he'd come around and he knocked on the door and I went out to the porch, and he just looked at me and then he just broke down crying his eyes out.

"He said 'I've done something really, really bad.' He said 'I killed Jennifer Beard.'

"He couldn't control himself for crying. He hung around for a little bit then he took control of himself and he just went away. I never saw him again."

Wildbore's daughter Pam Routhan also told the Herald she'd heard of a confession "years ago", saying Wildbore's ex-wife Glennis Henderson used to say he'd confessed to her.

Routhan said the ex-wife, who is now dead, reported him to the police and he was thoroughly investigated.

A relative of Jennifer's said the family did not wish to give an interview.

"From my own personal perspective, it happened such a long time ago and we have all grieved and moved on," he said.

"To relive the experience is to open a wound which healed years and years ago, and to do so serves no useful purpose."

At an inquest, a coroner said it appeared Jennifer had been strangled, but ruled a lack of evidence meant her death was due to “causes unknown”.

Mr RM Vincent told the inquest in Auckland in 1971: "From the disarrayed clothing and the fact Miss Beard’s effects were never found, there is no doubt another person was implicated in this death."

But while police investigating the mystery questioned a middle-aged man and impounded a car fitting the description of the one Jennifer was last seen in, no-one has ever been charged with her murder.

The hunt centred around one man – Gordon Bray from Timaru, New Zealand, who named himself as the key suspect but denied any involvement in her death.

The truck driver was on a fishing trip in the area of a Haast at the time of the murder and drove a dark blue Vauxhall.

A receipt with Bray's name on it was found near Jennifer's body, but Bray died in November 2003, aged 83, perhaps taking the secrets of a murderer to his grave.

Speaking in 1988, Bray came forward and spoke to his local newspaper, the Timaru Herald.

Then 70 years old, he publicly said he had been interviewed by lead investigator Emmitt Mitten and his Vauxhall had been examined.

But Bray claimed he had gone down the highway near the bridge the day before the murder, and that unfortunately, he fitted the description of the wanted man and had a similar car.

He said he was innocent – the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bray, who never married, said: "I had nothing to do with it. The police were only doing their job I suppose."

Speaking on New Zealand Herald podcast The 50 Year Secret, his nephew Sam Leary described him as a "gentle giant" who was a very "quiet guy".

He added: "I know my uncle is innocent."

Jennifer, the daughter of Methodist minister Rev Murray Beard, had emigrated to Hobart, Tasmania, in 1968, just after her parents had moved back to Wales from their previous home in Surrey.

She had only recently graduated from Cardiff University with a diploma in education and gone out to Tasmania to work, travel and live with her uncle, Dr Trevor Beard.

The teacher joined Campbelltown School in Hobart and quickly became a passionate walker in the rugged countryside of Tasmania.

She had arrived in New Zealand for a climbing and camping holiday on December 19 and had planned to meet up with her fiance at the start of the new year.

In 2012, private investigator Cindy Roberts made a film about the findings into the cold case.

Her movie looked at a number of possible theories into how Jennifer was killed.