Body recovered from Rotorua lake believed linked to Pahīatua homicide

Nearly a year after Karen Gilbert-Palmer was killed in Pahīatua, police divers surfaced from Lake Rotokākahi in Rotorua with what they believe to be the remains of her son — the sole person of interest in her death. The long arc of this case, which began with a vehicle abandoned at a lakeside lookout and months of fruitless searching, appears to have reached a quiet and sorrowful terminus. Two lives have ended, and the questions that linger now belong less to the pursuit of a suspect than to the deeper work of understanding what happened between a mother and her son.