The Truth About Missing People in Australia (It’s Not All Murder)

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They’re called Vanished and Missing.

She gets asked to help families every week.

Can you find my brother? My mother’s missing.

My best friend hasn’t checked in with anyone for weeks.

Can you help? She has dedicated her life to humanizing the missing, to helping families get their stories out there beyond a poster or a news article, to being a voice for the voiceless.

Nicole joins us now.

Why are you so passionate about this area? >> It’s a question I’m asked a lot and even after 21 years of doing this, I don’t think I have a satisfactory answer.

It’s uh I, you know, I don’t want to be a bit cliched and say I think it’s my calling.

Uh, and I’ve never had a missing person in my own life, so I don’t have that lived experience, but I think it was just from a child I was always had a curious nature.

And for someone to go missing is such a mystery and I was always fascinated by that mystery.

And then when I became an adult, I was able to maybe do something about it.

So I thought to myself, what can I do in a practical sense to assist the world of missing persons and maybe help people because I think that we all should go through life thinking, what can I do to help the person beside me because I I think that’s why we’re here.

Uh and so I was able to see a need in getting the word out about missing persons um through the internet.

And 21 years ago, the the internet was in its infancy and was not in everybody’s home, but was just starting to be.

So, I thought, well, that’s something I can do.

I’ll taught myself how to make a website.

And from there, just started to reach out to say, what can I do to help get the word out about missing persons? And it was just it was just something I found that I was good at, I suppose.

And um 21 years later, still going.

>> So, it was back in 2005 that you created kind of a more formal register.

So before the register, a national person’s register, what did people do to find missing people? They would just kind of search on the internet and see what they could find.

>> And there was very little available on the internet and people were not able to search on the internet.

So it was newspapers.

It was books and newspapers, which is amazing.

I I created the register by scanning photos from books from Australian true crime books that might have mentioned a missing person, and I would gather the information from a book and put it onto the website.

So it was that that basic back then.

>> So if someone had a missing person and they went onto your register, what would they find when they typed in the name? >> Well, I wanted to be more than just a photo and a description because people are so much more than that.

So I wanted with the register to be able to create a a whole background.

And so I wanted to get every news article I could find about missing persons.

uh so that they had lots of points of view.

They learned more about the missing person.

Were they a mom or a dad or a brother or sister? Were they on their way to work? Were they did they have a mental illness that could have contributed it to it? Did they have dementia? So, I wanted to learn more about the missing person instead of, you know, here’s a photo and they’re 5 foot seven and you know that that tells people nothing and it doesn’t help find them.

So, I wanted as many photos as I could find on the website and as much information as I could.

>> Through doing this for so many years, well, decades, you’ve come to know a lot of these families quite closely, haven’t you? >> Absolutely.

Yep.

Very much.

Some of them are like family to me.

There’s uh the the sister-in-law of a missing person is my best friend and has been my best friend for 15 years or something.

So, uh, it it’s I I feel very close to them all and and you get to know them really well over the years and they know that if they’re having a bad day, they can reach out and hopefully you’ll you’ll make their day a little bit better.

And just by remembering their missing person, you you make their day a little bit better.

>> Why do people go missing? Because it’s not just because they’re the victim of a crime.

>> Well, people, I think, have an idea.

Maybe because there’s lots of Netflix documentaries out there, but I think people have this idea that that homicide is the primary reason for people to go missing, and that’s absolutely not true.

Uh 56,000 people a year go missing in Australia, and they’re not all murdered.

Um more Yeah.

more than half of those are runaway teenagers.

>> Uh and then you have uh we have a mental health crisis in this country uh that we’re not addressing.

and not managing very well at all.

So there’s it’s really hard for people to access help when they are having a bit of a mental health crisis and the alternative is that they’re going to just say I have to get away.

I have to get out of this situation that I’m in and they will go missing.

So they’ll choose to go missing horrifically.

A lot of those people might take their own lives, but some people will just need to get away for a little bit and then they’re found safe and then hopefully we’ll get some help.

You’ve you’ve also got we live in a vast um wilderness of a country with lots of cliffs and oceans and bushland and people go missing in that all the time and then you have people with dementia who will who will wander and get lost.

>> What is it that strikes you about the experience of those with missing loved ones? Because it’s a particular kind of torture not having closure.

Do you find people respond in the same way? >> No.

>> When they have a loved one that goes missing? >> Not at all.

Not at all.

Um, in the missing person’s world, we call it an ambiguous loss because you’ve lost something, but you don’t know why, who, where, how.

Uh, so you’ve got all of those questions and the brain works in a way to try to fill in the blanks.

So the brain will kind of go, okay, what could have happened? And you imagine so many different scenarios.

Uh on one end of the scale, you have people like the Morhams who even, you know, so many years after their son was found, they’re still working to help find missing persons.

And in that missing person child safety space, um and then you have missing person, you have people who can’t uh they they don’t have the strength, I guess, and that’s completely understandable.

Um, I one thing I noticed when I was writing the books is that I would talk to the brothers and sisters of missing persons because they were stronger and more able to talk to me about it, but the parents of missing persons were just so broken that they that they struggled to to put into words.

I did speak to some of the parents um and some of them were amazing.

Some of them were just they went to pieces.

And uh just this last weekend I was helping a family um locate a man who was missing overseas.

And I was helping his sister who was really gung-ho.

Let’s you know let’s find him.

Let’s find him.

And uh and also his friend who on on the other end of the scale went to pieces and said I can’t do this.

And actually got on a plane and came home and said I can’t cope with this.

I can’t cope with this.

So everybody’s different.

you get you get people who uh have high levels of anxiety and um >> and they they just don’t have the capacity to do that.

And that’s no judgment on anybody because to have a missing person is horrific and there’s no guide book.

There’s no manual.

There’s no, you know, how do I do this? You don’t.

People don’t know what to do in that situation.

>> Two common themes that you mention that do pop up a fair bit.

vivid dreams which you can so imagine why that would happen and then survivors built.

>> Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Uh people someone said this to me yesterday as well.

They they said oh I had a friend who went missing I think 21 years ago and she said why didn’t I see the signs and she had taken her own life.

Why didn’t I see the signs? Why didn’t I look closer? But you don’t you don’t think to yourself if someone is feeling a little bit quiet perhaps you don’t think to yourself, oh they’re in danger of going missing or they’re going to take their own life.

You don’t think that.

You just you do what you can as well.

Uh but people uh feel overwhelmingly guilty that they didn’t spot the signs that maybe they didn’t check in with that person.

Maybe they should have they thought, “Oh, I should have given her a lift home from the party that night instead of just, you know, thinking that she would be okay.

” There’s there’s amazing guilt, but I I kind of have a bit of the way the way that I look at it is I think that if something is going to happen, it’s going to happen and there’s not always anything that anybody can do about it.

Um, and and the dreams are interesting as well because I think I don’t know any of the people that I I I’ve never met any of the people that I deal with, even though I feel like I’ve got to know them a lot after listing them and making appeals for them for so many years and talking to their families and writing about them.

I feel like I know them really well.

But it’s the families who know them the best.

And again, it comes back to the brain trying to figure out what’s happened.

So the the brain is okay, >> could they have >> wandered off? Could someone have taken them? Did they possibly take their own life? What happens? And that’s also a reason why someone who might never go to a psychic in their entire life would choose to go to a psychic because they’re looking for that answer.

It’s just not there.

>> And you find that a lot of families do end up doing that, don’t they? They they turn to psychics >> almost 100%.

Uh even people who are who are skeptical of psychics, who are um who’ve never been to a psychic, who don’t like psychics, even uh there’s some deeply religious families who uh don’t believe in psychics at all.

But if someone comes to you and says, “Oh, you know, I I just have a very strong feeling that she might have gone in a green car.

” That will stick in their mind and they’ll go, “Oh, okay.

Maybe I should just mention to the police that there was a green car.

” So it’s they will clutch at anything when you have nothing.

Any tiny thread of a lifeline people will clutch at.

>> This might be too hard a question to answer but is there a family that you have helped that really sticks in your mind? >> Wow.

Over such a long time.

I think I mentioned before that uh that the sister-in-law of a missing person had become my best friend.

And you know I would never prioritize any missing person over another.

But I I think that family is so special to me because I’m I’m close with them.

I’ve watched her kids grow up.

Um and looking exactly like their missing auntie and and so it I I feel an obligation and a need to find answers for them because I know what a special uh and so that’s the family of Tanya Farington and uh a a special need to find answers for them.

And so I’m going to put Tanya in my third book.

I haven’t interviewed them yet and it’ll be weird to interview someone I know so well.

Um but I but I really wanted to and she actually said no to the first few book to the first two books.

She said no I can’t do it yet.

I can’t do it yet.

She said I’ll do it for the third.

So I I >> Can you just tell us >> Can you just tell us briefly about when >> Yeah.

1979.

Unbelievable.

So, uh, 1979 was a particularly bad year for missing persons.

I don’t know why.

Uh, you know, Malat was active at that time.

So, he certainly didn’t kill every missing person in Australia as as some would have you believe.

But, uh, it’s possible because we think that she she was living in Crows in Sydney.

Um she snuck out of the house um told her mom she was going to bed but instead snuck out of the house to go to a disco.

We think probably at Manley.

She had done that before.

She was a little bit of a rebel.

Uh and if she couldn’t find a bus or she didn’t have money for a bus, she absolutely may have hitchhiked um through those through those northern suburbs of Sydney to get to um to get to a disco at Manley.

Um and she may have been picked up by the wrong person.

And it was a it was a terrible time.

There was a lot of um a lot of awful things happening to young girls on the northern beaches of Sydney at that time.

Yeah, awful.

>> Can you take us through the process of reporting someone missing in Australia? What does it look like? >> Uh sometimes people will come to me first and I will say, “I can’t do anything to help you unless you’ve been to the police.

” Because when I make an appeal, I will put the police number on there.

Uh, some families say, “Oh, here’s my mobile number.

Put it on the appeal.

” I will never ever do that because you get all kinds of crazy people calling you, telling you ridiculous things, trying to take advantage of a panicking family.

So, the very number one thing is to go to the police and say, “I have this missing person.

” Uh, they will react in a number of ways depending on what sort of missing person it is.

So if uh the person has dementia, if it’s a young child, >> they will act extremely quickly.

Uh if it’s somebody who is lost in a particularly dangerous area, they will act very quickly.

Uh if it’s a different kind of missing person, sometimes the urgency isn’t there.

And I will always urge people if if you have serious concerns like you know that your husband is due home from work every night at this time and he doesn’t arrive and the police will probably say oh he’s probably stopped off for a drink with the mate.

He’s probably you know just taken some time out.

He’s probably just gone to to he’s he’s done say no this is out of character.

So you need to sometimes insist that they’ll take a report.

Um give the police as much information as possible.

So employment um details, details of friends, details of their car.

I think a car is sometimes easier to spot than a missing person.

So details and registration and photo of a car if possible is really important.

Um and I guess just the the information about where they were supposed to be and photographs, all of that kind of information.

give all of that to the police and they can check things that other people can’t check like bank activity, phone activity.

They won’t put all of that into place uh immediately for every missing person.

They’ll sort of do the basic checks first and then uh either they’ll find them really easily or they’ll come back to you and say, “Okay, we haven’t been able to locate them.

Maybe we’ll make a public appeal now.

” And so that’s when police will issue a media release and uh then they’ll contact me and then I can uh get the word out to a lot of people.

>> So there’s quite a few steps before like a land search for instance.

>> Yes, absolutely.

And you have to for a land search you have to know that the person was last seen in that exact location.

So sometimes people will say oh why haven’t they called out the SCES? It’s because they don’t know exactly where to direct them to search.

If you’ve got someone missing in a a massive national park, you sort of have to have a bit of a location like at least a trail or somewhere, you know, a car in a car park for a starting point because you can’t just send the SCES out into the wild to search a vast area.

Uh it’s it’s really difficult.

There’s a um there’s a woman missing.

She went missing from a bus stop in Logan.

um a few weeks ago and people are saying why haven’t they sent the SCS out and I said because maybe she got on a bus so where did they start where do you start looking >> yeah I want to touch on a case in your books now uh I kind of talked the listeners through this story a little bit at the start of this podcast the story of Kay and Tony the 15year-olds >> who went missing how did the police treat their their disappearance and what happened because that was quite a few decades ago now.

But how was their case? >> It was very much treated as as if they were a runaway as if they were runaways.

Uh despite their family saying no, this is completely out of character.

Um both 15 years old.

But, you know, I guess when people think of a runaway teenager, they think of someone as rebellious and wild and, you know, sneaking off behind the bus shed to smoke and and these were not these girls.

Um, Kay had actually never been out after dark before.

She had to beg her mother to let her go over to Tony’s house.

Um, she didn’t tell her mother the truth about where she was going, uh, because her mother would have never let her.

It it was that kind of family.

Very very protected.

She was a very protected, very serious, intelligent girl.

Um, and Tony there uh have been a few people over the years who kind of said Tony was the instigator of this and and she was the wild child.

She really wasn’t.

I I interviewed her family and got to know her and she was a really sweet girl.

Uh she did try hitchhiking with her older sister once and cried through the whole experience.

So she was not she was not a worldly girl who just wanted to jump in a car and run away.

Neither of these girls were like that at all.

>> Um so they did tell their parents that they were babysitting.

Um and then they told the other family that they were going to the movies.

They did neither of those things.

They went to a bus stop and that was where they were last seen.

And they actually I interviewed the the woman who last saw them.

So, she was absolutely positive about her because she knew them and waved to them and said, “Hi, where you going?” Um, and that’s how we knew disco at Wing Bong.

Uh, so we don’t know if they caught the bus.

We don’t know if they were uh if they got into a car with someone else.

I I can’t imagine, and Malat is is a prime suspect in that particular case, but I can’t imagine these two quite shy girls getting into a car with Ivan Mallet.

can’t see that happening.

>> I I I just don’t see it happening.

>> Um and so either something either they did manage to get the bus and did get all the way to Wingong and then maybe couldn’t get home um and were desperate, I don’t know, or if they were picked up by someone else, maybe someone they knew at the bus stop at Warilla.

Um and it’s just a complete mystery.

There were mysterious letters sent home in those cases.

um to both parents received letters that they don’t believe were written they either don’t believe were written by the girls or were written under coercion because they had deliberate spelling mistakes that Kay would never have made.

So it’s and again that’s a really weird update to you know why would someone send letters but there were also other weird letters sent in other missing person’s cases at exactly the same time.

So there’s something strange was going on in Sydney in 1978 1979 >> cuz it when you were describing your friend’s family story >> I had K and Tony in my head because it is so weirdly familiar that you know the two the young girls at night going to a disco on the side of the road.

>> It’s a bit eerie.

>> Yeah.

And Trudy Adams exactly the same time exactly the same location also at a disco.

It’s it it is very concerning and and of course if you if you read Baron Jerry Road there were so many girls at that time who were picked up hitchhiking abducted terrible terrible things happened to them and the suspects in those cases are now dead.

So are we ever going to get answers? Um, with Kay and Tony, there were people who came forward, particularly when I was writing the book, um, who suggested there was another person who lived locally at that time, um, and who had a son who went to school with the girls.

And that is a plausible theory to me.

If they if a if a car pulled up and it was a a guy that they recognized that they went to school with, maybe they’d get in that car.

So I don’t think in a car with >> Matt who was you know he wasn’t too old at that time but he was an old he was definitely a man.

So >> yeah I do I just don’t >> and a stranger and a stranger.

I can’t see them getting into a car but but if someone pulled up that you knew and said hey I’m going there anyway.

They said oh well we go to school with him.

We know who he is.

I reckon they might have gotten into that car.

I did notice a lot of criticism in your books towards the police.

In almost every case, >> there are kind of sightings of inadequate or bad policing or you know loss of evidence, police not believing them.

Can you talk to that because it does pop up a lot and it kind of >> makes it feel like it is bit more of a systemic issue.

>> Yeah.

And it’s certainly definitely not something I intended to do.

I’ve always had a really good working relationship with the police and it’s definitely not something I wanted to do or intended to do, but I couldn’t uh change the stories that were coming from the families.

Uh and it’s and it’s very much from them.

>> Uh and because I would say to the question, okay, how did police handle your case? And in Kay and Tony’s case, um Tonyy’s stepmom went to the police and said and said, “Has there been any news about about Tony?” And they said, “Oh, you know, if there is, we’ll let you know.

” And she she walked away.

And the words she used to me were, “Um, I felt like they were talking about a missing dog.

” And and how awful that the police would make you feel that that that’s how they felt about your child.

>> Um, and And so I can’t portray that in any other way than that’s how it made them feel.

And there there are amazing police officers out there.

There are some who uh will get a case and and never let it go and and still even after they retire, they’re still going, we have to solve this.

And that was the the case with Kay and Tony’s, one of the initial police officers who was just a young constable at the time.

Um spoke to me for the book.

And we’re talking 40 plus years later.

They uh and it and it still eats away at him and he’s still plugging away now an elderly person.

Um plugging away trying to find answers.

So it’s I don’t like to tar them all with the same brush because that’s completely unfair.

But in many cases, there are things that have happened that are inexcusable, like um you know, Tony Ryan going to the police and saying, “I found my sister’s car.

Would you like to come and check it out?” Um just in case she’s in the boot or something.

And they handed him a coat hanger and said, “Off you go.

” I can’t fathom how that is acceptable.

And and I just keep getting these stories over and over that are just not okay.

Um, and I think we’ve come a long way since the 70s where they just said, “Oh, it’s a runaway.

Well, you know, she’ll turn up.

” We’ve come a long way and there are protocols now in place, but it’s still there are still very frustrating stories coming out like Riby Fieldings um family feeling very much that his case was uh almost treated with contempt because he was homosexual and Rick went missing in uh 2015, so 10 years ago.

10 years ago it shouldn’t happen.

Today it shouldn’t happen.

And and yet there are still times when a family will walk into a police station and say, “I need to report my person missing.

” And they go, “Oh, you know, just see if they turn up, come back tomorrow.

” >> Not okay.

>> I guess when there’s 140 people reported missing every day, >> it’s like, where do you put the resources? I’m not trying to make excuses here, >> but how do you how do you even change this? I think the the protocols are in place and I think people if they watch a lot of American TV they’ll say oh well you have to wait 24 hours before reporting a missing person.

That’s not the case in Australia.

Has never been the case in Australia.

Uh so it’s not okay for any police officer to say oh you know come back and make the report tomorrow.

It by that stage you’ve you’ve lost a lot.

Uh and it and you a police officer on the other side of a desk doesn’t know your missing person.

And if you’re worried enough to go to the police and stand in front of a policeman and say, “I am so worried because my son didn’t come home from a party last night.

” And for them to say, “I’m sure he’s fine.

” Not having ever met your son, not knowing anything about the situation, not knowing that your son comes home every night or he rings you is insulting.

And so the the protocol needs to be take the report and then decide sort of how how urgent the case is, but you’ve got to take the report every time.

um that that should have been evident um after Daniel Moran went missing because they had trouble reporting him missing and it should have changed then >> and but there are still but as you said that there are they are very underresourced and and in in as in many industries and service industries you’ve got to allocate your staff where you can but that protocol should be you walk into a police station say I want to report someone missing they say okay let’s go Yeah.

And it sounds like you kind of have to be quite bullish to get hurt.

>> I think so.

>> You have to really advocate >> and I advise families that I advise families to to use certain words like um his disappearance is out of character and I’m very worried and I have fears for his safety.

I I say use those exact words because then they have a duty of care to to take on that particular case.

They if you say I have fears for his safety and a police officer says, “Oh, I’m sure they’ll be fine.

” No, no, you that you can’t you can’t do that.

>> We’ve been finding in recent years some historical cold cases are are being solved all these years later with DNA >> if you know blood or other bodily fluids have been saved and preserved.

We’re actually able to say uh solve some of these crimes years and years later.

>> Are you finding that that’s giving some of the families you know and work with hope? Uh it is it is it really is.

I think uh um with Susan Goodwin being found in um Adelaide just Port Lincoln, sorry, in in just recent months, that has given people hope because she was missing for decades.

And so people go, “Oh, the there are still people being found.

” And uh in cases like Rox Bowie and Lynn Dawson, there are convictions that are still happening 40 plus years on from someone going missing.

So uh I think that the challenges that they have been facing with DNA testing in Australia has shaken the confidence of of people.

Um but we there was a push a couple of years ago.

Um the the Australian Federal Police came to me and said, “Can you help us get the word out to all the families um to give their DNA if they haven’t before?” Um I I do know of a family of someone that I’m writing about in the next book who have given their DNA four times.

The police keep losing it.

And so it’s really hard and they came back to the family and said, “Oh, can we just take it one more time?” And they said, “No.

” And so it’s really hard to to keep those families going and say, “Yes, please.

Let’s just keep keep trying.

Keep trying.

Keep trying.

” because if they find someone then then the match can be made um it is it’s sometimes really hard when you you try to give them that hope and uh then this the technology lets you down if um if the system doesn’t work if they’re not not storing the DNA and in the case of Queensland that the terrible DNA bungles um mean that DNA testing of remains is years behind and and and so I I It’s there.

The system is there.

Um, but it just needs to be implemented properly.

>> I want to talk about Jason Mazerik because his disappearance, which you mentioned in your book, was particularly mysterious, wasn’t it? Can you tell us about his story? >> Absolutely.

I think uh it’s one that does stick with me and um it’s a family I’ve gotten to know very well.

I I met his sister, so I I have that personal connection with them and know how devastated they were when he went missing.

He was 20 years old.

Uh went to the casino in Sandy Bay in Hobart um for a night out.

His sister had won her her sporting match and uh and he and his sister and his best mate went to the casino to celebrate.

there was a disco upstairs in the casino.

So, they went up there.

Um, and at the end of the night, it’s about 2 o’clock in the morning, and they said, “Okay, let’s call them.

” They were heading back to another sister’s house uh for the evening, and uh Jason’s sister Jess said, “Oh, um, your mate is still upstairs.

I’ll go and get him.

You wait here in the lobby.

I’ll just go up and get him, and I’ll meet you down here in a minute.

” She went upstairs.

In the time it took her to just go upstairs to the disco, um, find the best mate, come back down to the lobby, Jason completely disappeared.

Uh, there is CCTV footage of him walking outside the lobby with a security guard.

Um, the casino said that he wasn’t being escorted out, that they just happened to be walking out at the same time.

Um but it but the family has said that he it has happened before um that they don’t like people waiting around in the lobby.

So they say no, you have to wait outside.

You can’t sort of loiter in the lobby.

So it it is I think that he probably was asked to wait outside instead of waiting in the lobby.

But whatever has happened uh outside the casino, Jason has totally disappeared.

The police think for some really bizarre reason that Jason has suddenly decided to kill himself despite absolutely no evidence whatsoever of there’s no mental illness.

There’s no depression.

There’s no anything whatsoever.

He was he had had a fantastic night with his sister and his friend.

He was happy in his life.

20 years old.

Uh he was about to join the Navy.

He had an appointment um with the recruitment officer in two days time.

He had a a dental appointment because he had a broken front tooth.

He had a dentist appointment to fix that tooth.

He was really excited about that.

He was going to get his tooth fixed.

Loving family.

And so for some reason, whether it was the easiest uh answer to what happened, but police um and the coroner decided that he himself into the water at Sand Bay and his family have never accepted that.

Um and it makes no sense to anyone who knew Jason or even to me.

I didn’t know Jason, but it makes no sense to me at all that that’s what would happen in this is that’s a ridiculous thing to say.

So, what happened to Jason that night? I have no idea.

And I can only hope that people might be sitting on something that they saw that night and and can still come forward.

Maybe they’re frightened to come forward.

Maybe they saw I I have no idea.

Like maybe Jason saw a drug deal going down in the car park and and they saw him watching and attacked him.

I have no idea.

I have no idea.

>> It is one of those cases where it appears like someone literally has vanished into thin air >> and you you struggle in your brain to kind of logically work it out.

>> What What did his disappearance do to his family? >> They were in absolute disbelief like they they couldn’t they they did try to think, okay, what are the possibilities here? Has he just decided to go off and make a new life? They very quickly decided that was not the case.

Did he throw himself into the harbor at Sandy Bay? They very quickly decided that was absolutely not the case.

So they after going through the possibilities of what could happen, they they came back to foul play fairly quickly.

Uh and then they were faced with the frustration of police not accepting that that was the only explanation.

Uh, and so it it just it tore them apart.

Their mother just went to pieces and then the rest of the family it they were thrown into I I think it was probably responsible for the breakup of one of the marriages of of one of his sisters.

Um, he was the baby.

He was the little boy of the family and all of the sisters just loved him so much.

um and that was torn apart and now they’ve had to try and rebuild their lives without him and it’s it has devastated that entire family.

>> Moving to the case of Marsha Ryan which was 1996 that she went missing.

>> There are some family members that believe that she might have started a new life which >> how common is that as a as a theory? >> Uh extremely uncommon.

Uh because it’s hard to do.

It’s really hard to do in in I paid my gas bill the other day and had to verify my identity.

So >> yeah, >> if there are someone if there’s someone out there wanting to pay my bills for me, go ahead.

So you have to verify your identity to do absolutely anything in Australia.

Um to log into your email account, to log into your work emails, you have to get text verification.

it is really really difficult to disappear and go completely off-rid.

She actually had done it before and I think that that’s why they thought maybe she was capable of doing that again.

Um Marcia had a very complex and tragic history.

Uh she witnessed the death of her sister in a car accident.

literally witnessed it, like ran to the car after it had happened and saw her, and that triggered a a horrific mental spiral in her uh to to the point where she completely lost her mind.

Her family would agree that that’s that’s the the most accurate way of putting it.

um they found her in an absolute um complete mess and she had been living offrid and living in the bush in Northern New South Wales with a boyfriend.

Um uh and she was immediately hospitalized and they took her by ambulance back to Victoria.

She was hospitalized for a very long time in a psychiatric institution, but she actually did recover.

um a lot of work and a lot of therapy went into her recovery and she had been fine and she had been stable for a long time.

She um had she was engaged but that engagement ended but she was quite okay with that.

Um she was working for family members um and she seemed quite happy.

She she socialized.

She went out with friends, but the the mental spiral uh we’re not sure what triggered it, but uh the mental spiral started to happen again, and I think that’s what contributed to Marcia going missing.

But um but she had lived off grid before.

So it it is possible that that she chose to do that.

Um although she was very close to her family, I don’t imagine.

And and the other thing is because she had lost a sister and her parents had already lost a daughter and she saw what it did to her parents.

I don’t think she would have willingly done that to them again.

>> Maria’s last known movements were around 1000 p.

m.

at night.

She had planned to drive interstate from Victoria to Queensland to see her parents.

>> But then you’ve got an abandoned car.

They found her wallet.

So there’s all these kind of clues that go, oh, >> like what happened here? >> Exactly.

It it would seem to be f one of her brothers put it to me, the chance of a a psychopathic maniac um driving past at the exact moment that Marcia was walking along the side of the prince’s highway is is astronomical.

But perhaps there was someone who did have terrible intentions who who took it saw an opportunity and took it to harm her.

Um the other mystery is that she was with her dog uh Ziggy who would not have left her side but Ziggy has also never been found.

Uh so what happened and why was her wallet found at Darnham which is on the way back towards Melbourne.

So the car went missing the car was found between Maui and Morwell.

Um but then her wallet was found on the way back to Melbourne.

So, did she get a lift with someone? And why did she get lift with someone when her car was fine? She had a petrol card.

She’d just passed a fuel station.

She could have put fuel in her own car very easily.

So, why then did she jump into someone else’s car and if that’s the case, where did she go? Um, there was a massive search of the local area.

And you would have thought if uh if she had um accidentally died, they would have found her body and they would have found Sigi.

Um if someone had harmed her, >> again, wouldn’t they have found some sort of trace? >> Um but but it was a few days before the alarm was raised because police did keep spotting her car by the side of the road and u didn’t alert anyone and the family did think that she was just still on her way to Queensland.

So, it was a few days before her parents said, “Oh, hang on.

Maria hasn’t turned up at all.

” Uh, and and something has happened.

So, it was a while before the alarm was raised.

It wasn’t immediate.

>> I know it would be hard now in 2026 to go missing, but in 1996, >> would there would there have been more of a chance? >> Uh, I think so.

We didn’t have the internet in 1996.

We didn’t have a lot of um digital checks.

I think sometimes um if you’re if you manage to get a cash inhand job then you can live off grid and she did live off grid but also if you had such a serious illness uh as as Maria had had in her youth >> um that’s going to come to someone’s attention.

you can’t live um you know I think that there are in communities where they think oh you know there is a crazy old lady that lives in a little shack in that little country town or lives in the bush somewhere and there there are people like that who I think manage to grow their own vegetables and live um away from the rest of the world but generally if your mental illness is that severe you won’t be able to function certainly Marcia’s illness when she was young meant she could not function at all.

You can’t feed yourself.

You can’t dress yourself.

You can’t she she was an absolute mess.

And if her mind did get to that point again, she couldn’t have uh looked after herself.

And and I I can’t see a reason for it as well, unless the the only thing that her brother suggested was um she was terrified of going back into a psychiatric institution because it, you know, it would have been awful for her to be in there.

And so she’s thought or perhaps if I just stay away, they can’t put me back in there.

Even though that’s probably where she needed to be at that stage.

>> There was a moment there where one of Marcia’s brothers was a suspect, which I imagine would happen a lot because you look at the people closest to someone missing first.

>> But what is that experience like for families where >> they are suspected when they have had nothing to do with it? That must be quite a traumatizing experience.

>> I think so.

And I think if you look at it from the point of view of police uh and statistically uh people are harmed by the people who are closest to them.

Um so stranger >> murders are much rarer than say husband or um generally brothers and sisters don’t tend to hurt each other.

Um but in many cases the brothers and sisters if they’re the last people to have seen them they are treated as suspects until that is no longer the case.

But uh to have that initial panic as where where is my brother gone? Where is my sister gone? And then to have uh to have the suspicion as well that just compounds your trauma and they’ll never get over that.

And it probably does breed a distrust of the police because they would be thinking, why are you looking at me? Obviously, I didn’t do anything.

Go and find the person that did it.

And so, it would be very frustrating because they would not uh they would just have that immense weight of and the pressure of um of what’s happened to them uh just compounding everything.

Um in the case of Maria’s brother, he did not cope at all.

He’s since passed away and I interviewed him before he passed away and he was difficult to talk to.

He uh he still carried that trauma and I think and I and that uh he he did want to impress upon me that he had nothing to do with it and I never once ever thought that he had anything to do with it.

>> Just cared about her so much.

And >> uh and so he carried that forever.

He carried that throughout his life and it had a devastating impact on him and probably contributed to his death.

I think >> it really does show how when one person goes missing just how wide that effect is, how many people’s lives >> can be ruined >> by something like that.

>> Yeah.

>> Which I think your work really shows us.

>> I think so.

You know, most people that you talk to will they might have some connection to a missing person somewhere along the line.

I had a man who came to my house who wanted to buy one of my books and he said, “Oh yeah, I had my friend’s brother went missing.

” And I ended up writing about him for the third book.

Um um but uh yeah, you you most people will go, “Oh yeah, yeah, I know someone who knows someone who went missing.

” So it affects I suppose when you have 56,000 a year, it affects it affects so many people.

And then that ripple effect.

In 1997, a 28-year-old mother of two, Gail King, left her family’s home on South Australia’s York Peninsula one evening to head home for a work meeting the next day in Adelaide.

Her car was found back home.

It turns out there was no work meeting scheduled and she was nowhere.

We’ve never found her.

>> What stays with you about that case? Well, with Gail, uh, I think I do know what happened and I think her her family know exactly what happened.

Uh, and I think police know exactly what happened, >> but the question of there not being any evidence to prove that.

>> Um, and police, >> which is another hardship.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

It is it is so frustrating because you think um this poor woman has absolutely no justice and as you said there’s no there was no work meeting to come home to um she was unhappy in her life and I think she wanted to make changes in her and uh and the police absolutely made the very rare uh statement of saying to the media at the time there is absolutely no evidence that she left Middleton on the York Peninsula.

There’s no evidence that she ever made it back to Adelaide.

>> So that uh leaves people to draw their own conclusions about what may have happened uh and who is telling the truth in whatever case.

So uh there there is very little evidence that she got back to um Brahma Lodge.

Um, I think that they were desperately trying to track down a milkman who may have sort of been delivering milk at around the same time that that she may have got back there.

But, uh, if there was no meeting to come back to, there’s it the why did she come back to Adelaide? Um, and there was the remains of a chicken dinner in the fridge.

But, uh, yeah, very very little evidence to suggest what actually happened to Gail King.

But her uh brother and sister-in-law are among the most determined family members I have ever seen and they will never give up.

>> But it does kind of bring up when you know there’s the families that have no idea what’s happened.

And then there’s other families who do believe they know what’s happened.

>> Both are >> horrendous realities to live with.

>> So very much so.

you know they uh if you know if if this particular scenario didn’t happen then what did happen and if there isn’t another scenario you have to keep coming back to that one.

uh and the frustration that that must um be that the incredible frustration that they live with every day knowing that someone is walking around having committed the worst possible crime that you can commit um taken a mother away from her children.

um you know, how can you and and in cases like Cheryl Grimmer’s brother, he just just is feeling rage towards the person that he feels took his baby sister um and expresses that publicly to the point where police had to to sort of warn him to stop.

Whereas I I think that’s completely justified and understandable.

I think that we must express our rage and we shouldn’t be polite about these things and and say no, this is not okay.

If we don’t stand up and and fight for these people who don’t have a voice anymore, then who will? >> I want to touch on one more case because it’s one that’s recently reopened.

Sandrine Jordan.

>> What do we know about her disappearance and why was it back in the headlines recently? uh Sandrian’s case uh is so complex um and it’s another one where I do fear that police have got it wrong and I think it’s a it’s a very good illustration of how police can make assumptions about a person.

Um Sandrine did have a bit of a troubled past.

Um but she absolutely adored her children and all she wanted in life was to have her children to live with her again and she had achieved that at the time that she went missing.

She had secured housing so that the kids come and live with her again.

Um she was painting.

She was a very creative person.

She went to drumming retreats.

She had a wide group of friends that she absolutely loved.

She was really thriving in her life.

She was very happy.

But for some reason again police decided that she’d taken her own life.

And the reason that they decided that was because she had tried to before.

She had made a previous suicide attempt and did have um some mental illness.

Um, but what they if if they had dug a little deeper, they would have realized that after that suicide attempt, Sandrine made very clear statements to her family saying, “I saw what this did to you all and realized the impact it had on my children and my marriage and all of these things and I will never do that again.

” And she was absolutely, “If you promise your mother that you’ll never do that again.

” Uh and so she and she had no reason to at that particular time.

She was doing really well.

So for police to just say, “Oh, she’d had a previous suicide attempt.

There what’s happened is lazy policing.

” And I’m happy to say that because it is lazy policing.

You need to look much deeper at all the complex relationships that Sandreine had in her life.

She had a lot of different men in her life.

Um uh none of whom can be ruled out as suspects.

Um the day she went missing, she had gone to visit a friend.

Um that friend has recently died.

Uh so we can no longer ask him about what happened in that particular situation.

Uh he he told police that Sandrine came to visit him.

He took his son and his son’s mate to motocross.

Uh left Sandrine by the gate.

Um said, you know, I’ll be back.

Went to motocross, but it wasn’t on.

So he returned to the house quite quickly and Sandreine had vanished.

Uh so where she went that day is anybody’s guess.

Um she didn’t have a car so would have needed a lift or to walk or a bus somewhere.

Um the under investigation program which I think came out last year um did uncover quite a few new um details and clues for the investigation.

There were witnesses who came forward who apparently heard gunshots, heard screaming, um saw different cars doing different things in Tomlinson Road in Kabula.

Um there were suspicious neighbors and of course uh a group of friends and family of Sandrine did dig up items that they believe were the clothes that she was last wearing and those were dug up on a property next door to where she went missing.

>> Um >> and police did search but no remains were found.

Uh and and again they sent the items off for forensic testing and it came back in.

So that’s why when I said before about DNA testing being a little bit, you know, it’s sometimes you think, oh well, if you found the clothes that she was last wearing, surely there’s evidence on that.

But according to police, they couldn’t match that even though there were things like >> um a shell um half a shell and and Sandreine’s daughter has the other half of the shell.

So they match and it is they are exactly the clothes that she was last wearing.

I have a photo of her wearing these clothes.

So, uh, it would seem that there’s a lot of evidence, but, uh, the coroner very quickly wielded a suicide and closed the case.

So, her family have been pushing and pushing and pushing for, um, a a proper investigation into it.

Um, and I think hopefully um, with a bit of luck that that will actually it will happen very soon because there was never a proper inquest.

So, we need an inquest to investigate everything that went on.

All of the people she was involved with, all of the witness sightings, everything that happened that day.

The clothes need to be retested, all of that needs to be properly looked at because no one who knew Sandrine believes that she took her own life.

I think that someone took her.

>> And that inquest was 2018.

So, her family have been fighting for >> a very long time since then even >> to have stuff.

Exactly.

Because an inquest should be a a total investigation, but it was not a proper inquest.

They just ruled that she’d taken her own life.

It was nothing has been done properly.

It was just very quickly, oh well, she’s previous suicide attempt, therefore she’s taken her own life.

Yeah.

It’s not good enough.

>> How has working on so many cases of missing people affected you and your mental health and your sense of the world? >> Uh, it’s because I’ve been doing it for such a long time, it’s a lot easier now.

I because it’s uh in my day job I deal with a lot of death and uh you sort of have to be a little bit immune to that.

You can’t go to pieces.

And me, if I if I was in distress and went to pieces, then I would be not of no use to the families at all.

And you do have to look at it objectively and say, “This is not happening to my family, so I can’t let it devastate me.

” But it does it it can get to me and I um there are times when I recognize that it is affecting me and I need to take a little break.

Uh, and I haven’t been very good at that.

I I particularly because I’ve been writing the books as well.

Uh, so it’s it I feel like I’ve added to that that mental workload uh rather than eased it off.

Uh, which which can be really tricky.

I I think after missing person’s week this week, I remember in the middle of it, I um I sent a message to Susie Ratcliffe, who’s the sister of Joanne Ratcliffe, missing a missing child.

Um, Susie runs the Leave a Light On Foundation, so we work quite closely together.

Um, and I sent a message to Susie going, “I can’t do this.

I can’t do this.

” And she said, “Of course you can.

Don’t be silly.

” Uh, and it was because Facebook dramatically increased uh my post reach for missing person’s week.

um and said, “Oh, because you post great content content, we’re um increasing the the amount of people that we share, you know, we and I had I think it got up to 86 million views of the posts, which was which was amazing, but I am one person and I then had to moderate comments from around the world.

I had thousands and thousands of people commenting and sending me messages and uh and I think because they kind of promote it as >> um a crime page where it that way at all.

I see it as a support and assistance page.

I don’t I don’t I that the thought of that kind of horrifies me that people just see it as oh you know let’s go in and read about these juicy crimes that makes me feel a bit sick.

Um I see it as >> very much I’m making these appeals for these missing persons and the reason I want you to read it is in case you know something.

So that’s that’s how I view it.

So but I had to deal with all of these people and people who get on and and speculate and make make comments or oh obviously they’re dead.

Obviously they’re you know I think husband killed her and and all of these things that can’t be out in the public.

So, I had to just be on it 24 hours a day.

And it re it really really got to me to the point where I was just like and it was it was a family member who um was angry about something or other um a photo or something um at the time.

That was kind of the tipping point where I just thought, why am I doing this? Why am I I can’t do this anymore.

But you just need to take a break, step back, relax, and go, okay, this is not happening to me.

like this is my job that I don’t get paid for.

This is this is just what I do to help people.

And if I can’t do it calmly and effectively, I I need to stop and just reset and then do I can only do what I can do.

When you’ve got 56,000 a year, you have to just kind of only do what you can do and and keep doing it as long as people need me to.

flicking through your books, so many of those names people won’t recognize.

They’re they’re new cases to them.

I feel like we know, >> you know, you can mention the Bowmont Children and people know who that is, or Daniel Morham, who you said before, or >> William Tier, but there are so many other stories that I would argue are just as >> I guess interesting from a media perspective.

But why don’t we know more of these stories? Well, that was that’s been quite deliberate.

I I’ve sought out stories that people don’t know because the some of those families don’t need me to give them that extra publicity because they’re doing such a great job on their own of getting the word out there.

But it’s those families that don’t have perhaps that ability that they sort of go, “Oh, you know, I’ve got my missing person, but I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to get how to contact the media or how to tell their story or how to do that.

” So those are the stories that I wanted to tell.

Uh because there and and often when I started to investigate it, I would sometimes think, oh, this is a fairly simple case.

This is just a guy who went missing on a beach.

This is a guy who’s lost in the bush on his own property.

And the more that I dug into it, the the more complex it would be.

And I realized that it’s just so interesting for people to read.

And when something is interesting to read, they’ll read it.

and maybe they know something about it.

So, um that’s that’s the really important thing.

Maybe it’ll strike a cord going, “Oh, hang on a minute.

I you know, my cousin lives up that road.

I’ll go and ask them if they know about this or you and people talk about interesting cases.

” So, I think uh it’s just it’s it’s sometimes it’s a privilege to be able to tell their stories when they can’t when a family can’t tell the story themselves, when they perhaps um sometimes it’s too hard.

Sometimes they just don’t know how.

They just can’t find the words.

And so, it’s a privilege to be able to do that for them and to get those those stories out there.

And I feel like when I write them, I feel like I’ve got those missing persons kind of standing behind my shoulder.