AUSTRALIA’S 10 MOST BAFFLING Disappearances
…
Copen also presented a radio program on Melbourne station 3XY.
The Cuckoo played host to the rich and famous from entertainers and celebrities to senior state and federal politicians.
However, with the success of fame also came its downfalls.
Willie and Karin’s marriage began to fall apart and it was reported that both had taken up with other lovers.
But despite this, their business flourished and they also had three children together.
Eventually, the marriage fell apart and Willie relocated from their marital home.
Karen began to associate with a group of close-knit people, including well-known barrista Tony Bonichi, whom she partied with regularly.
It was on February the 28th, 1976 at 8:00 pm that a very noticeable drunk Willie Copen stumbled into the Cuckoo restaurant.
Looking for an outlet to vent his frustrations, he picked on one of his employees, waitress June [ __ ] and in an abusive tirade, threatened to sack her.
Willy’s aranged wife, Karen, was called to the restaurant to calm him down, but things only escalated.
Willie accused Karen of being in a relationship with a member of her pos, Dr.
Bernard Butler, who was also in a steady relationship with a mutual friend of the couple.
The doctor was called to help diffuse the situation and on route to the restaurant, he stopped by his surgery to gather some strong antiscychotics in case they were needed.
Managing to calm Willie down, the pair continued their drinking session at Butler’s request.
According to Butler, Willie arrived at his surgery.
They continued to drink for another 45 minutes to an hour and then Willie departed.
But before he went, Willie apparently received a mysterious phone call at the surgery.
This was just before the doctor saw Willie out of the surgery and apparently he let Willie get into his combi van and drive home.
Like, come on, mate.
Didn’t you ever watch a TAC ad? Wait, they probably didn’t have them back then.
Anyway, Greg, you missed the stop sign.
If you know, you know.
This is the last time that Willie Copen is seen alive.
The next morning, about 4:00 am on Sunday, February 29, the cleaner arrived at the Cuckoo restaurant, finding Willy’s combi van parked in an unusual location.
He normally parked near the rear kitchen doors, but she found the van parked in a lower car park, hidden from the main road above.
Also, strangely, she found the kitchen doors a jar, highly unusual for the very security conscious chef.
Willie had vanished without a trace, but the alarm wouldn’t be raised for several days when he failed to return to take up a planned holiday in Queensland.
The police investigation was told the cleaner and the local police officer, Philip Fars, both saw a mysterious dark-coled Americanstyle car parked outside the Cuckoo restaurant facing the wrong way in the early hours of the morning.
They believe it could be a Ford or a Chevrolet.
This car has never been found, but it could be the key to unlocking this mystery.
The following five decades have seen multiple theories to the mysterious disappearance.
Willie was known to have some mental health issues which he documented in a letter expressing certain ideologies.
A possible motive for self-inflicted harm.
Who knows? His behavior became erratic and he even threatened his wife with a rifle.
Some have suggested he was dealt to by the doctor or perhaps an associate of currents.
Possible motive for murder.
Anonymous letters did appear over the years.
one suggesting that the celebrity chef’s body is buried at the sight of a dam that was being constructed at the time of his disappearance.
Other theories have espoused gambling debts to a mob hit.
However, none have been substantiated.
If Karen was a person of interest, she took her secrets to the grave in 2002.
Butler, while still alive, denies any involvement.
To this date, the mysterious disappearance of Willie Copen remains unsolved.
Number nine, Sarah McDermad, 1990.
the Canonuk Station, Melbourne.
Sarah McDermad, 23, never made it home.
Blood stains, drag marks, and a woman calling for help.
Her car abandoned along with her possessions.
No leads, no CCTV.
A quiet platform and a moment forever frozen.
Gone in the space between trains.
an unsolved missing person’s case that has intrigued Australians for over 30 years and ties to another set of unsolved disappearances and murders in the notorious Melbourne suburb of Frankston.
23-year-old Sarah McDermad was from a Scottish immigrant family and lived in Frankston with them.
An afterwork social game of tennis with her co-workers sees Sarah and her friends get onto a train at Richmond Station on the 11th of July 1990 sometime after 900 pm Sarah and her friends miss the train to Cananuk station and instead opt to board the train to Corfield where they will switch trains to Canonuk.
The group departs from Sarah at around 9:30 pm at Bond Beach and Sarah continues on her journey to Frankston.
At approximately 10:20 pm the train arrives at Cananuk station where Sarah disembarks.
This is where we have to rely on witness statements and things get a bit hazy because it’s the last time anyone sees Sarah McDermad alive.
It’s a few hours later after Sarah hasn’t returned home that the alarm is raised by her family.
Her brother goes to Canonuk Station to look for her, but only finds her red Honda Civic in the dimly lit car park.
The next morning, the police are notified and the investigation begins.
What they find is Sarah’s car, a lighter belonging to her on the ground, and what appears to be blood stains on the concrete next to the car.
The car is still locked.
The blood stain had a trail of droplets leading from the car to a nearby bush where a disturbance in the soil was noted, indicative of something or someone being dragged.
An extensive 21-day air, sea, and land search followed, and police interviewed witnesses who were at the train station that night.
According to them, three people positively witnessed Sarah getting off the train at 10:20 pm and saw her walking down the platform towards the car park where her car was.
Witnesses also described hearing a struggle taking place in which they heard a woman shouting, “Give me back my keys.
” Other witnesses claimed they saw a group of suspiciousl looking persons, two men and one woman, loitering in the car park.
Despite the investigation, the search was eventually called off and Sarah McDermad was never found.
Several theories have arisen over the years.
The first notable one is that of Frankston’s serial killer Paul Dena.
However, the timing of his crimes do not coincide with Sarah’s disappearance.
Frankson was known in the previous decade to have several women being murdered in a spate of killings called the Frankston Tynong North killings, which has never been solved.
So, it could tie into this, but again, the timing doesn’t fit and neither does the MMO.
It came to light in recent years about a gang of near wells who may be linked to Sarah’s disappearance.
One person of interest was Jod Jones, a prostitute with a penchant for violent robberies.
She is known to police and had associates and links to the Frankston area.
Jod was interviewed by police when her associates informed police of her confession to the murder of Sarah McDermad.
They told police she was at Cananuk station the same night and was accompanied by two other men.
This was corroborated by several witnesses who stated they saw this group at the train station that night and the struggle that took place.
However, police did not have enough evidence to convict Jod at that time and she died 14 months later from an overdose.
While it’s most likely that Sarah was murdered, her body has never been found and the case remains one of Australia’s most high-profile missing person’s cases.
I’ve talked about Sarah McDermott a couple of times before and I’ve actually got a fulllength video on that case.
Actually, I’ve got a whole series on the Frankston saga, so I’ll leave a link for those in the description below.
Number eight, William Tyrell, the boy in the Spider-Man suit.
September 2014, 3-year-old William Tyrell played in his foster grandmother’s yard dressed as Spider-Man.
In a blink, he vanished into the forested silence of Kendall, New South Wales.
Searches, suspects, accusations.
Years passed, still no answers, no child, no closure, just a haunting image frozen in time.
In early spring 2014, 3-year-old William Tyrell went missing from a house in Kendall, a seemingly typical Australian regional town on the midn north coast of New South Wales.
He has not been seen since, and yet everyone in Australia seems to know what he looks like.
William is the boy with light brown hair with wide eyes, his mouth a gape as if mid roar who wears a Spider-Man suit.
Seen everywhere found nowhere.
It’s been over a decade since the little boy was last seen when he vanished on the 12th of September 2014.
William Tyrell was the foster child of two foster parents who cannot be named for legal purposes.
He was in the care of his foster mother and grandmother and playing a game of hideand- seek with his sister at the time of his disappearance.
It was between 10:00 am and 11:00 when William’s two guardians were watching the siblings play outside at the grandmother’s property in Kendall, New South Wales.
The mother goes inside the home to fix a cup of tea, and after 5 minutes, she cannot hear William any longer.
She begins searching the house and yard, but cannot find him anywhere.
Shortly after, Tyrell’s foster father returned after going to Lakewood on business and began searching the street and door-nocking neighbors.
At 10:57, Tyrell’s foster mother phoned Triple0 to report it missing.
The New South Wales police force arrived at 11:06.
His foster mother’s last memory was that Tyrell was imitating a tiger’s roar while running towards the side of the home and then there was silence and he just disappeared.
His foster mother looked for him but without success.
Alleged prime suspects were named publicly only to be discounted later.
New South Wales police officers were admonished by the court of appeal and there were multiple searches for Williams remains.
According to an article from the Guardian, a former lead detective in the investigation claimed in his memoir that Kendall, the town where William disappeared, was far from normal, and instead it was the home to so many known sex offenders that quote, “It’s as if they settled in this quiet, overlooked backwater like mosquitoes.
” End quote.
The police cleared Tyrell’s family of any involvement in the disappearance and initially believed the boy was abducted by an opportunistic stranger who may have had connection with a pedophile ring.
The foster parents were also suspected and from what I could find, they were taken to court over the alleged mistreatment of the two children in their care.
The foster mother did plead guilty but were ultimately excluded from the investigation or suspect list.
Whatever the case may be, poor young William Tyrell remains an unsolved missing person.
The investigation is still ongoing.
Number seven, Christopher Dale Flannry, aka Mr.
Rentill, a hitman, a ghost.
Christopher Dale Flannry was Sydney’s most feared gun for hire.
Linked to underworld slaying’s corruption terror.
But in 1985, he disappeared.
No body, no bullet, just whispers.
Did someone silence the silencer? Or did Flannry become the ultimate vanishing act? Mr.
Rentill, Christopher Dale Flannery, alleged to be a hitman with over 15 kills.
His price for a contract was believed to be $50,000 and bragged that quote, “Anyone could be eliminated.
” Most definitely a cult of personality.
In the Sidi underworld of Sydney during the 80s, it was almost certainly his ego that was his undoing.
Reckless, charming, and connected.
Flannry was the go-to hitman during the notorious and often overlooked Sydney gangland wars of the 1980s.
Growing up tough and becoming somewhat of a failed armed robber, he positioned himself as a gun for hire and became very involved with underworld figures and even corrupt police.
It was in May of 1985 that Fenry was staying low at a hotel apartment in Sydney’s CBD that he received a call from his associate or boss George Freeman asking for a meeting.
Flenry in leaving for the rendevous was unable to start his car.
Flenry contacted Freeman who told him to catch a taxi.
Flenry did so after exiting the Conort where he lived onto Liverpool Street.
He was never seen again.
It has been claimed by notorious underworld figure Nedi Smith that police may have been responsible for Flanner’s disappearance as Smith noticed him enter a police car with officers he knew on May the 9th.
The officers had allegedly offered to take Flannery to meet with Freeman.
On the 6th of June 1997, a coroner handed down the finding that Flannery was murdered, most probably on or about 9th of May 1985.
He also found that the key to solving this murder lay with disgraced detective Roger Roger.
On the 22nd of February 2004, Roger told Seven Network Sunday program, quote, Flannry was a complete piss.
The guys up here in Sydney tried to settle him down.
They tried to look after him as best they could, but he was, I believe, out of control.
Maybe it was the Melvin instinct in him coming out.
He didn’t want to do as he was told.
He was out of control, and having overstepped that line, well, I suppose they said he had to go, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with it.
” End quote.
Flenry left a wife and two children, and his disappearance only adds to the one of many mysteries that surround the criminal underworld of Sydney.
Obvious rumors abound suggest that Roger was the one to do it and that he buried him at a beach on New South Wales or that he was taken out to Sydney Heads and disposed of there.
Roger later died last year in 2024 and the secrets may have gone to the grave with him.
If you care to look at my fulllength videos on these particular cases and you can be bothered to read through the comments, you can find a plethora of conspiracies and theories as to what happened to Mr.
Rendill which are very interesting I must say.
Number six, Patty Moriati.
The Outback Mystery.
Lama, Northern Territory, population 11.
Then Patty Moriati and his dog vanished.
Left behind his hat and dinner on the table.
A town feud, meat pie, and a suspected murder with no witnesses.
Only one rode in, one out, and still no trace.
Like the outback itself swallowed them both whole.
70-year-old Patrick Patty Moriati disappeared from the very small Northern Territory town of Lama in December of 2017.
This case gained a massive amount of media attention in Australia.
Patty, by all accounts, was a bit of a joker.
He liked to have a few beers at the local.
He mostly got on with everyone in the town, but he was known to start a bit of drama.
I mean, what else are you going to do for fun in a town with only 11 people, right? He lived alone with his dog Kelly and had a few spats with his neighbor Fran Hodgets who owned the pie shop across the road.
His last sighting was at the Pink Panther Hotel in Lama on December the 16th, 2017.
After downing a few bears, he drove some 800 m with his dog on the back of his quad bike.
He wasn’t seen again.
After several days of no sighting, he was eventually reported as missing to the police.
His house was searched and police found signs that he had in fact returned home as there was dog food prepared and his wallet and hat on the table which he never left without.
The elephant in the room is obviously Fran Hodgets and her living gardener Owen Lurorry who had a long history of beef, no pun intended, with the local Larkin.
Police have suspected both of being involved and a secretly recorded audio tape by police suggested that Luri was singing about how he quote killerated Moriati.
A recent coroner’s findings handed down to police suggest that Patty was most likely murdered in the context of an ongoing feud within the small town, but could not legally elaborate on who was involved.
While officially solved, Patty and his dog have never been found and the perpetrators have never been caught.
Number five, the McDougalls, the missing doomsday cult family.
In 2007, three members of the McDougall family vanished from a remote Western Australian town.
All they left was a few simple words on a note.
And while authorities can’t rule them out as dead, they can’t rule them out as alive either.
They were members of a new age internet religion or cult if you prefer that term.
Simon or Sai Cadwell was originally from the UK and the leader of an online 40 member sect where he preached about the usual stuff.
You know, apocalypse, God, a second coming, you know, that sort of nonsense.
It should be noted that Simon Cadwell wasn’t his real name and he was actually born as Gary Fenton.
There were also reports of Cadwell being a con artist.
He preached to his followers on a group forum called the Truth Fellowship from his rented house in Nanip, Western Australia, some 270 km away from Perth.
At some point, this must have attracted Chantel McDougall who was originally from Victoria because she shacked up with Cadwell and the two became parents to daughter Leela.
They relocated from Perth to the small town of Nanip, 270 km south of Perth.
They rented a house there and another of Cadwell’s disciples, Antonio Popic, lived in a caravan in the backyard.
In 2006, Cadwell began telling his neighbors and others in their community that the little family along with Antonio Pop were going to relocate to Brazil.
The four fled their home in the nearby town of Nanip in July 2007, leaving behind wallets, credit cards, food in the fridge, dirty dishes on the table, and a note that simply read, “Gone to Brazil.
” Ms.
McDougall told her mother, Kathy, that they were going away on holiday to Brazil.
They called their real estate agent to say they were leaving and he could have their furniture, packed up their belongings, and on July the 13th, 2007 traveled to Bustleton where they sold their car.
This was the last time they were seen.
Chantel’s father reported his daughter and granddaughter missing in October of that same year when the McDougall family had not heard from either them or Cadwell.
Police investigations proved unfruitful and their whereabouts have never been found.
Passports had not been used to fly out of the country and their bank accounts have not been touched.
A trail of digital breadcrumbs may be the clue to solving this baffling case.
Prior to their disappearance, Mr.
Cadwell told a woman in his online cult forum that he was quote planning a peaceful side pact.
When the woman mentioned that this would amounting his young daughter, Mr.
Cadwell revoked his idea and said they would instead move to an isolated area where they could not be reached.
Police discovered a call was made from their nanop home to TransWA on July the 12th to book a bus ticket from Bridgetown to Northcliffe under the name J.
Roberts.
The ticket was never used.
However, two train tickets booked under that name were redeemed on the morning of July 16th.
One going from East Perth to Calguri, the other one from Perth to Northcliffe.
It was established that a passenger under that name got off at Northcliffe and someone boarded the train to Calguri, but there’s no evidence that they got to the final destination.
Mr.
Pop’s mobile phone was traced to Perth on July the 15th.
It was used to call a backpacker’s accommodation, Domino’s Pizza, and a gay bar called the Court Hotel.
His driver’s license was also used to check into a hostel in Northbridge.
Police have not ruled anything out, but say it is likely they were Mr.
Popage’s movements because the Domino’s delivery driver later identified him as the one he delivered a pizza to in King’s Park.
Mr.
Pop was also gay, so the phone call to the court hotel provided the vital clue.
On July the 16th, his phone was used to call TransWA.
To this day, it has not been established why Mr.
Popit would try to conceal his identity to catch public transport or what happened to him.
After July the 16th, Western Australia police investigated whether they snuck out of Australia and traveled to Brazil to live in a commune on the outskirts of Rio Branco, a town in the Amazon rainforest that is home to syncric religious cults.
A few years after they went missing, it was discovered the cult leader had stolen his identity from a former colleague, and reports abound about him being a con artist.
Amateur sleuths also argued over the group’s fate in online private investigative forums, putting forward the idea that they had been aboard an Airbus plane that crashed and exploded, killing all on board in Sa Paulo, Brazil in 2007.
To this day, the investigation is ongoing and even a coroner could not rule without any possibility of doubt that they were dead.
So, it remains unsolved.
Number four, Rall Bain, the dancer who disappeared.
1994.
Rall Bain was a model, a dancer, and an escort.
She never returned from a client meeting in Sydney.
Her shoes, bag, and keys scattered on the street.
Her phone call cut short, a life undone.
Her case remains open.
The city saw everything and nothing.
Rall Sabine Belmeain, a model and dancer, was preparing to embark on a six-month dance contract in Japan and had planned to meet a girlfriend on the night of November the 5th, 1994 for a drink, but she never showed up.
2 days later, one of her cork high heels, makeup bag, diary, and the keys to her Belleview Hill unit were found scattered along four Kingsford Streets in Sydney’s southeast.
The striking blonde beauty had been secretly working as a high-end escort for two agencies and had gone to see a client, Gavin Samur, at his home in McNair Avenue in Kingsford on the night she disappeared.
The 22-year-old, who had recently started dating a new boyfriend, had told friends she had planned to quit prostitution after that shift.
Mr.
Samr, the last person to see her alive, has always maintained to police that he then drove Rall to the nearby Red Tomato Inn at 7:00 pm that evening, but no one from the inn ever saw her.
He was named the main person of interest during a coronial inquiry in 1998 and 1999, but no charges against him were ever laid.
Mr.
Sam has always denied being involved in her disappearance.
Belain’s disappearance hung over the city for three decades.
Belmanain’s face has become a fixture on lists of cold cases, missing person’s appeals, and even conspiracy theories.
But there have been few signs of meaningful progress since 1999.
Number three, Harold Halt, the prime minister who disappeared.
December the 17th, 1967, Prime Minister Harold Halt goes for a swim at Chevet Beach.
Waves crash, currents pull, and Halt vanishes.
No body, no official explanation.
Some say drowning, others CIA extraction, Chinese submarine, and naturally an alien abduction.
The truth might lie beneath the waves or nowhere at all.
This was during a time of cold war tensions, spies, the Vietnam War, the summer of love, and one of the shortest terms in office for an Australian prime minister.
Harold Halt was only in office for just over a year before he mysteriously vanished at Chevat Beach on the Morningington Peninsula in December of 1967.
A keen swimmer, Harold was holidaying in Victoria’s Morningington Peninsula when on the morning of December the 16th, he decides to take a day out and visit the nearby beaches, briefly catching up with old acquaintances first and then later taking a dip at Cheviat Beach.
It should be noted that prior to this, Hol’s doctor informed against any water-based recreation as his shoulder was on the mend from an earlier accident.
Hol went out with a mate of his who stayed closer to the shore, but Hol swam out deeper and appears to have got caught in a rip.
Eventually, he disappeared from view.
This sparked a massive search and one of the biggest in Australian history.
But alas, Holt’s body was never found.
In most cases where a person drowns at sea, they usually sink to the bottom before their remains fill up with gas and then float to the surface.
Eventually, and almost in all cases, the body will be carried back to shore by the currents.
So, where is Harold Halt? This sparked a lot of theories and even conspiracies as to what happened to the prime minister sharks.
It’s quite possible.
However, some theories range from Chinese submarines alien abductions to CIA involvement wanting to quash some anti-war agenda and replace the leader of Australia with someone more malleable.
Harold Halt was officially ruled dead by a coroner sometime later, and they found that the cause was an accidental drowning.
What’s ironic about this is that there’s actually a swimming pool named after him.
Classy, guys.
There was also a naval spy base in Western Australia named after him that involved some freaky UFO encounter.
I’ve done a whole video on that, so go and check that out if you’re interested.
Link below.
Number two, the Bowmont Children.
Innocent stolen.
Australia Day 1966.
Three children, Jane, Anna, Grant, walked to Glennel Beach and never returned.
Seen with a tall blonde man, then gone.
Despite nationwide searches, psychic consultations, and even digging under a factory floor, not a single trace.
Their story haunts a nation.
The case that stole Australia’s innocence.
One of Australia’s biggest missing person’s cases that people still talk about today, almost 60 years on.
I get a lot of comments about this one in previous videos where people who were alive during that time often describe how Australia lost its innocence that day.
a time when doors were left unlocked and children played outside or away from the home unsupervised and nobody blinked an eye.
This case changed all of that.
It was the morning of Australia Day 1966 when mother of three Nancy Bowmont entrusted her responsible eldest child, Jane Bowmont, aged nine, with taking her youngest siblings to the nearby Glennel Beach unsupervised just the day before they had made the short trip back from the beach to their home in the Adelaide suburb of Adelaide Park.
So Jane, Anna, and Grant Bowmont take a 5-minute bus ride to the beach, caught the 8:45 am bus, and were expected to return home on the 12:00 pm bus.
When the children didn’t return on either the 12 noon or the 2:00 pm bus, their mother, Nancy, became extremely worried.
When Father Jim Bowmont returned home at 3 pm, he immediately drove to the crowded beach, but he was unable to locate his children.
At around 5:30 pm, the parents went to Glennel Police Station to report the disappearance.
Police searched the beach and the surrounding areas initially, thinking that the children had simply lost track of time.
As the search expanded, fears had now arisen and an accident or kidnap was suspected.
Within 24 hours, the entire nation was aware of the missing children.
After 3 days of no sign of the Bowmont children, media outlets began running with the narrative of a sex crime as a possible motive for an abduction.
Several witnesses who had seen the children in Collie Reserve near Glennel Beach told police that they saw the trio in the company of a tall man with fair to light brown hair and a thin face in his mid30s.
The witnesses claimed that the children were playing with them and appeared to be relaxed and enjoying themselves.
The man who was also said to approach the witnesses and asked them if anyone had seen the children’s belongings as their money was missing.
The group was then seen walking away from the beach sometime later.
Police estimated this time to be around 12:15 pm The Bowmont’s parents described their children as shy, and for them to be playing so confidently with the stranger was very much out of character.
Investigators theorized that the children had perhaps met the man during previous visit and had grown to trust him.
A chance remark at home, which seemed insignificant at the time, supports this theory, that Anna had told her mother that Jane had quote got a boyfriend down at the beach.
Nancy thought that her daughter had made a playmate and thought nothing more of it until after the disappearance.
Later investigations were halted by hoax letters and unreliable witnesses.
As stated before, possible remains were thought to be buried under a factory in North Plimpmpton.
In November 2013, a 1 m squared section of a factory in North Plimpmpton, which had been owned by one of the police’s persons of interest, was excavated.
A ground penetrating radar found one small anomaly which can indicate movement or objects within the soil, but the dig found no additional evidence and investigations into the site were closed.
However, on January the 22nd, 2018, Adelaide detectives announced that they would return to the factory site and conduct further excavations after a private investigation sponsored by Channel 7 in Adelaide.
The excavation on the 2nd of February 2018 took 9 hours.
Animal bones and general rubbish were found, but nothing related to the Bowmont case.
In February 2025, again, based on new evidence, South Australian MP Frank Pangello organized a third privately funded excavation at the site.
The week-long search did not find any remains of the children.
The Bumont case resulted in one of the largest police investigations in Australian criminal history and today remains one of Australia’s most infamous cold cases.
Almost 60 years on, the tragic and mysterious case of the Bowmont children remains unsolved.
Number one, Frederick Valentich, lost in the sky.
Yeah, you knew this one was coming.
1978, pilot Frederick Valentich was flying over the Bass Straight when he radioed in.
Strange lights, a metallic object, then silence.
Only 20 years old, his last words were, “It’s not an aircraft.
” Wreckage never found.
Frederick banished, but the mystery remains in the skies above.
Damn, man.
Welcome to the repeat offenders club here on Shadow Matter.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve actually spoken about this case.
It is a doozy, though, so that’s why it’s at number one.
It really is truly bizarre.
20-year-old Frederick Balantic was a pilot who was looking to increase his flight time hours and disappeared flying over the Bass Straight.
His final radio transmission back to the mainland reads as an eerie situation that he seemed to have found himself in.
Valentich’s last words were, “It’s not an aircraft.
” In October 1978, Valentic was on a 235 km training flight from Moraban in Victoria to his intended final destination, King Island, in the Bass Strait.
What should have been a routine flight quickly turned into a scary situation.
Valentic radioed Melbourne Flight Service at 7:06 pm to report an unidentified aircraft was following him at 4,500 ft.
He was told that there were no known traffic at that level.
Valentage then told them that he could see a large unknown aircraft which appeared to be illuminated by four bright landing lights.
He was unable to confirm its type, but said it passed about 1,000 ft overhead and was moving at a high speed.
Valentic then reported the aircraft was approaching him from the east and said that the pilot might be toying with him.
Then Valentic reported that the aircraft was orbiting him from above.
When he asked to describe the aircraft, Valentic replied, “It’s not an aircraft.
” His transmission was then interrupted by an unidentified noise described as being a metallic scraping sound.
And then transmission was lost.
an aircraft.
[Laughter] 20-year-old Frederick Valentic was never seen or heard from again.
Theories to his disappearance range from Valentic staging his death to an abduction by aliens or perhaps being lost and disorientated.
Valent’s remains and whereabouts of his plane are still to be found.
And that is today’s episode.
I hope you enjoyed watching and thanks for coming to chill out with me in the dark.
If you like this kind of content, please remember to like, subscribe, and slap that bell.
And I’ll see you here next time in the shadows.
