‘A needle in a haystack’: Mother of Kiwi woman missing in Miami speaks out

From drug taking to partying on Epstein's Island, Alysha Hanin was living the fast life before she vanished into the night in Miami in 2002. Now, her son is on a mission to find out what happened to her. Katie Ham investigates.

The last time Cilla Senk saw her daughter she was leaving New Zealand on a flight to the United States. It was December 10, 2001 and Alysha Hanin's 24th birthday.

Just weeks earlier, Hanin had returned to Aotearoa from Miami Beach to drop her young son with her mother while she went back to Florida to "tie up some loose ends".

"She'd recently broken up with her partner, and said she was going back to get her stuff before coming back to start a new life here," Senk told Stuff.

Immersed in the darker side of life, Hanin had been living a fast life of drugs and partying at places like sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's island she had told her mother before she vanished.

On January 6, 2002, Hanin - known to family in New Zealand as Krsangi - was last seen leaving the luxury hotel Shore Club in south Miami Beach at approximately 4am.

She never returned to the hotel and has not been heard from since. Her passport, luggage, purse, ID and credit cards were found inside the hotel room.

According to the Miami Beach Police Department, "foul play is suspected" to have played a role in Hanin's disappearance.

Now, more than two decades later, Senk has spoken publicly for the first time about the loss of her daughter.

"It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack - how do you even begin to try and find a person?" Senk said.

Senk first became aware that something was wrong when she received a call from one of Hanin's friends in Miami saying that she'd gone missing.

"I then spoke to a woman from Interpol who was based in Wellington, but as soon as she heard there were drugs involved, it was like Alysha went straight to the bottom of the pile."

So, Senk decided to take matters into her own hands.

With the help of family in New Zealand, Senk engaged a private investigator and the pair travelled to Florida in a desperate bid to find out what had happened to Hanin.

Top of Senk's to-do list was to speak to Hanin's ex-boyfriend, who spoke briefly with the private investigator before leaving the state. Hanin's family have been unable to contact him again.

Senk also met with local law enforcement agencies, but to no avail.

"The police gave me a jewellery case that I'd given Alysha and some jewellery that I knew was hers, but it wasn't her clothing.

"She liked nice things, but this looked like what you'd find in a black rubbish bag at an op shop. She wouldn't wear those kinds of things."

The Miami Beach Police Department took a hairbrush so they had a sample of Hanin's DNA, and gave Senk $22 that they'd found with her belongings at the hotel.

It was only through talking to the local police that Senk realised how out of control Hanin's life had become, with drug use and work as an escort becoming more regular.

"I knew bits and pieces about what her life was like, but I had no idea of the extent of it until she went missing.

"The police talked us through it - she'd fly around the world on private jets with CEOs, being paid money for whatever kind of interaction they had.

"There's a certain type of person - and you see it a lot with the people who surrounded Jeffrey Epstein - who prey on the vulnerable, and in lots of ways Alysha was vulnerable at that time," Senk said.

But after their ten days in Miami were up, Senk and the private investigator were no closer to an answer about what had happened to Hanin.

"We did everything to retrace her steps, but no one would tell us anything. It was like everyone had just scarpered," Senk said.

As the years rolled by, the Miami Police Department would occasionally get in contact to say that while the case had gone cold, it was still considered active.

"I often see young girls that look like her, and it makes me sad. But she's definitely not forgotten.

"I know she's gone, but I just hope that we can find answers for Adrian."

Although he was just 3 years old when his mother went missing, Hanin's son, Adrian Hoffmann is now a year older than his mother was when she was last seen and is on a mission to find out more about what happened to her.

"My hope is to shed a little bit more light on what happened to her, to just find out that little bit more.

"There are a lot of little pathways that I have a gut feeling will end up connecting," Hoffmann told Stuff last week.

Part one of a two part story.

- This story was originally published by Stuff