Three-and-a-half year old Lachie Jones was found dead in the Gore oxidation ponds back in January 2019. Photo: Supplied via NZ Herald
Lachie Jones' father hopes new evidence has "opened up a can of worms" and will get him closer to the truth about how he died.
Paul Jones said he would go into the second phase of the inquest into his son's death with more confidence after newly discovered messages came to light.
On Friday, Newsroom revealed that since the first phase, messages between two anonymous people discussing a third party putting a boy in a pond emerged.
Person A wrote: "Bro do U remember how [redacted] said he threw that boy in the pond?"
Person B replied: "yea I told ya haha".
Person A: "U should really go to the pigs bro it's a 3 year old boy [redacted] is f...ed up in the head for that that's disgusting".
Jones said this evidence was not surprising to him.
"I've always said that he was taken out there by someone, so I'm closer to finding the truth hopefully," he said.
"The people that have made these comments need to justify why they've made them now."
He said he would go into the second part of the inquest with more confidence and would be "pushing more for the truth".
"Now I'm calling for the people that know something to come forward, because there's more than one," Jones said.
"Hopefully, it's just opened up a can of worms."
Part one of Coroner Alexander Ho's inquest into the 2019 death of the three-year-old concluded in May and heard from eye witnesses, police and the boy's family.
The expert phase of the inquest will begin on Monday.
The inquest came five years after police quickly concluded Lachie had tragically drowned after he was found more than one kilometre away from his Gore home, face up in a sewage pond.
Jones never accepted that his son's death was an accident, calling the investigation "a bloody botched-up police job".
Jones' lawyer Max Simpkins put allegations of foul play and neglect to the witnesses, including Lachie's mother and half-brothers.
For two weeks from Monday, the Invercargill District Court will hear expert opinions about the case.
Forensic pathologists, an investigator to be called by Jones and a child behaviour expert are among the witnesses to be called.
Lachie's half-brother Jonathan Scott is also expected to be recalled in this phase.
The gap between the two sessions was to allow the experts to review the evidence heard in the first phase.
At the beginning of the inquest, counsel assisting the coroner, Simon Mount KC, explained why Lachie's death had gripped so many.
"How can it be that a three-and-a-half-year-old boy runs away 1.2km, nine o'clock at night, dirty nappy, climbs a fence, travels across some pretty uncomfortable ground ... through the vegetation. No one out searching sees him. He doesn't respond to anyone calling out his name.
"The police dog doesn't pick up the scent until quite close to him. Do you understand why people say this doesn't add up?" he said.
At the end of the first session, Ho directed police to further investigate specific details about the scene such as the composition of the pond water, the slipperiness of its surface and wind data.
He also wanted the sighting of a mystery shirtless man to be followed up, as neighbour Kimberley Marshall's whereabouts might align.
The second police investigation remains open and Ho said the inquest would continue striving to find answers and justice for Lachie.