Steven Williams

When six-year-old Coral Burrows went missing on September 9, 2003, the nation stopped. For 10 days, people flocked to Featherston from all around New Zealand to search for the little girl who had failed to return from school. The truth, when it was revealed, was dreadful. Coral had been bludgeoned to death by one of the few people she should have been able to trust, her stepfather Steven Williams. He then stuffed her in a sack and threw her in a clump of toi toi. Williams blamed his brutality on the drug P, claiming he’d spent the three nights before Coral’s disappearance continuously smoking methamphetamine. However, as Beyond the Darklands reveals, the reality is far more complicated and sinister than that.