November 16, 2024 • 19 mins
There's a serial killer on the loose in Byron Bay... allegedly.
People are starting to connect the dots between multiple cases of women going missing or being murdered in the Byron and New South Wales coastal areas, including women with their own first-hand encounters.
So how likely is it all these cases and run ins are linked? And what's the underlying lesson we can all take away from these experiences?
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CREDITS
Host: Claire Murphy
With thanks to:
Laura Clare, Byron Bay local
Gemma Bath, Mamamia's News Editor & Host of True Crime Conversations
Executive Producer: Taylah Strano
Audio Producer: Tegan Sadler
Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Mamma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and orders.
This podcast was recorded on Hi True Crime Conversations listeners.
It's your host, Gemma, and I'm jumping back into your
ears today to share an important episode with you. It's
from Mamma MIA's news podcast, The Quickie, hosted by Claire Murphy.
She spoke to me for a recent episode investigating whether
(00:36):
there is a Byron Bay serial killer on the loose.
Right now, people are starting to connect the dots between
multiple cases of women going missing or being murdered in
the Byron and New South Wales coastal areas, including women
with their own first hand accounts. You may have seen
these women on TikTok and Instagram while you've been scrolling.
(00:57):
And in this episode, Claire and I talk about how
likely it is that all of these cases and run
ins are actually linked. Let us know what you think
of the episode and I'll see you next week for
another true crime conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hi. I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily
news podcast, The Quickie. We all love a bit of
true crime, right It's weirdly soothing listening to stories of
horrible things happening to someone else, somewhere else. But what
if that true crime gets a little too close to home, Like.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
I looked at this man and I felt terror.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
There's a theory being floated that the worst serial killer
in Australian history could be behind dozens of missing and
murdered New South Wales women, and there are some first
hand accounts from those who feel they might have even
been a potential target. Today we look at the alarming
similarity of more than sixty unsolved crimes and wonder if
they might all be linked. Last month, Melbourne woman Kayleie
(02:08):
was walking alone in the northern New South Wales suburb
of Suffolk Park. It was around four pm on a
Saturday afternoon and she was going to meet friends at
the beach when a car all of a sudden pulled
up beside her.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
As I'm walking, there is a car that pulls up
like on the other side of the parked cast me
there in the middle of the road. I look into
the car and it's a young couple and the woman
in the passenger seat he's looking at me, and then
she's looking behind me at something and she looks terrified,
and I was like, what on earth is going on?
So I look behind me to see a man a
(02:41):
couple of meters behind me. And this man does not
look dressed for where we are. It's like thirty degrees
and he is in gloves, which I thought was really freaky.
Like I looked at this man and I felt terror.
The thing is is for that man to be as
close to me as he was, he had to have
run up on me because I had already been checking
behind me because I'm just like that type of person.
(03:01):
As soon as I look at him, he disappears, either
like down this side street or like into somebody's front yard.
I wouldn't have even noticed this man if not for
the fact that the couple in the car were distressed
and they'd pulled over. Every single part of me felt
like that was a really really close encounter with something
really evil.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Kaylie says she informed local police, but found them to
be dismissive of her experience. Her TikTok comments section, though,
was flooded with similar experiences, experiences like Laura Claire's. Laura
is a Barron Bay local who's been documenting her run
ins a info about the alleged Byron Bay serial killer. Laura,
can you talk us through that day where you and
(03:41):
your friend decided to go hitch hiking? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Sure, I think Byron has this this hold on people.
It's just this idolistic kind of town and there's a
lot of people hitch hiking there, and you just have
this sense of safety. Well I did when I first
went there, obviously. So my friend and I needed to
get from Byron to Suffolk. It was a really hot day.
(04:03):
I suggested that we hitch hike. She had never hitch
hike before and was very much against it, and I
kind of convinced her it wasn't a very long distance
and it was safe and all the things that I
shouldn't have said, all the things that I felt, a
sense of safety that I shouldn't have felt. So we
go to hit to Ride and this van pulls up.
He's so normal looking I can barely remember his details,
(04:26):
and he seemed to look very friendly as well. So
my friend I put her in the back and I
went to sit in the front and there was a
big knife on the front seat, and not having any
survival instincts at all, I just grabbed the knife and
put it on the floor to get in, and I
(04:46):
think I even asked him permission to do so. And
then I kind of just out of curiosity, was like, oh,
what's the knife for?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
And he said that he was a chef. And that's
kind of when.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
I started to feel uncomfortable. Most people would have felt
uncomfortable hit hiking. This is where I started to feel uncomfortable.
The knife was very rusty, the knife did not look
like it should go anyway.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
We're near food.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
It just kind of started mulling in my mind, and
I said, Oh, where are you a chef? Because I
thought maybe i'd know the restaurant or you know, just
get some comfort in knowing that he worked around the area.
And he said, oh, I'm not working at the moment.
And that's when I just went, Okay, I don't feel
comfortable here. We need to get out of this situation.
(05:32):
And so I said, oh, yeah, that's us just up there.
He led us out of the van like we got out.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Of the van.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
So that was my experience, and honestly, I don't think
I even thought about it again after that day for
a long time, but a few friends of mine have
contacted me in the last couple of days and said, oh,
you told me about that story, so it has sort
of stuck with me, but not as much as it
probably should have.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Well, can you explain what happened after you shared that
story publicly? Because we've seen this happen with other women
too in the area who've shared their close encounters that
it's essentially kind of opened up the floodgates.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
Absolutely has, and it's quite distressing. In my mind. I
was going to share this story about what happened, I
was either going to have people going, you're overreacting or
people going, oh my god, that was really scary. I
didn't prepare myself for hundreds of women coming forward speaking
about close call encounters, rapes, drink spikings, names of people
(06:34):
that are dangerous in the area.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
You know.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
I just wasn't prepared for the volume. I wasn't prepared
for the horrific details, and it's just so alarming, and
at times I felt defeated because I'm like, how do
we help?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
How do we change this?
Speaker 5 (06:51):
Like what do we do? Obviously my first point is
to call the police and report what you know, but
in a lot of these cases, they were actually let
down by the police in either not showing up on
the scene, taking too long to get to the scene
where they were no longer in danger, saying that they
didn't have enough information, not taking down details, telling them
(07:15):
to go home when they went into the station, the stress,
all of that kind of stuff as well.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
This is something that a lot of women come up
against when it comes to crimes against them like this,
and another of its nature is that police are so
under resourced. These are sometimes put in the two hard basket,
especially when there's many, many of them to look at.
But I think what we have realized when yourself and
others who are also looking at crimes against women like
(07:44):
this in the area where you live, is that when
you start to map this out, that map starts to
look very crowded, doesn't it, Like with if you were
to pin all of these instances to a real physical map,
like there'd be no space in between.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
And look, this has been common knowledge among locals for years,
and I think one of the biggest things that kind
of is terrifying is these are maps of women that
have gone missing or died. It would be interesting to
see a map of women that have been assaulted because
what I've heard in the last seventy two hours is
(08:17):
a lot a lot of assaults and people that didn't
die that are left with the consequences of this, and
these can often be behaviors in the lead up to
worse crimes. Some of these haven't been reported or weren't
reported or it's interesting with a lot of this information
women when they haven't reported it, I've asked them why.
(08:41):
And there's quite a common thread of young women being
worried that they were going to get in trouble with
their parents for not being where they were supposed to.
And so I think that there's a lot of information
out there that we're not getting through to the legal
system either. But in the case of the map and
how many crimes happen in this area, it is unbelievably high.
(09:02):
And when you're going to a town like Byron and
you don't live there, you have this kind of view
of it, like I did, that it was this sleepy
coastal town. And so when you have that view of
a town, you're walking around doing things that you do
on holiday that you probably wouldn't do it at home,
and you're not really fearing for your safety or being
(09:26):
concerned about it at all because you're not hearing about
it on the news and you're not realizing actually that
you may be in danger. Like I had a friend
of mine that lives in Byron and I was talking
to her about it, and she said, I'd rather walk
around alone in the Cross or Redfern than I would
en Byron.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It's well known by.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
The locals, and I think, you know Kaylee, the other
girl that spoke out about it, she kind of got
attacked and shut down when she first came out about it,
and a lot of that was by the locals. You
don't want to try that with me because I've lived
there and I can name, you know, incidences that happen
and people that have gone missing, and no one from
the community has tried to say to me, no, no,
(10:08):
it's not no, it didn't happen. Because when you live there,
you know, it's very easy to shut down a girl
from Melbourne that was visiting a week because she just
had this bad experience and she had a very off
feeling about it. But if you live there, you know,
trying to cover it up for the sake of tourism
or house prices or whatever it is is actually doing
(10:28):
the town at disservice.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Laura, you said that when the hitch hiking incident happened,
you kind of dismissed it and almost essentially forgot about
it until now. Would you say the same thing now,
with all the responses that you got to it and
all the stories that you've heard, do you feel like
that has now changed you where that hitch hiking incident didn't.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
It's interesting because the hitch hiking incident, when I think
about it at a core level, did change me. I
hit taged once again after that, but I was in
a very desperate situation. I remember thinking I shouldn't be
doing this, So it did change me at that level.
But what it's kind of changed for me now as
a woman, especially after speaking out about this, is just
(11:12):
how careful I need to be. Like I was walking
my dog yesterday and I just went wow, Like, I'm
not as aware of my surroundings as I should be,
and maybe I need to be more careful in a
lot of other areas in my life, because after hearing
the things that I did and reading what I have
in the last seventy two hours, it's pretty bleak.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
While Laura is thinking her lucky stars that she and
her friend didn't find themselves potentially in the path of
a killer. There are potentially more than sixty others who
weren't so lucky. Last week, New South Wales MP Jeremy
Buckingham addressed State Parliament stating that the worst serial killer
in the nation's history has gotten away with it.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
Ivan Malat, was convicted of seven murders. There is someone
on the North Coast that has murdered as many or
more and they are still amongst us sixty seven the
numbers of unsolved homicides of women on the north coast
of New South Wales, and as indication that someone operated
(12:13):
in that area, traveled that area, lived across that area
and took women, destroyed their bodies, destroyed their lives and
it's appalling that it's taken so long for this matter
to come before House and to public attention.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Buckingham told Parliament that he's been called alarmist because his
view and the view of some senior police like Detective
Gary McAvoy, who investigated these matters from Coffs Harbor, is
that they were and are linked. He, with the support
of Green's MP Sue Higginson, has called on the Premier,
Chris Mins to hold a special commission of inquiry that
has been rejected amid suggestions a new police task force
(12:54):
be set up to investigate the unsolved cases instead. According
to a Daily Telegraph investigation, there are sixty seven women
who've been murdered or who've gone missing in the area
over the last thirty years. They include a number of
disappearances around Newcastle in the nineteen seven. Jemma Bath is
Mumam's news editor and host of the true Crime Conversations
(13:15):
podcast Jemma, these cases go back as far as the
nineteen seventies. Can you give us a rundown of some
of those older cases that they think might be the
work of this serial killer?
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, And so they kind of spread all the way
up the coast. We're talking from like Coffs Harbor to
after kind of the Gold Coast area, but there does
seem to be a concentration around Newcastle, which is one
of the biggest centers along that coast if you know
the area, and many of the disappearances or alleged murders
in that area are from the seventies. So we've got
eighteen year old Robin Hickey She was last seen at
(13:46):
a bus stop in April nineteen seventy nine. Eight months
after that, fourteen year old Amanda Robinson. She vanished while
walking home Miss Swansea. The following year, seventeen year old
Annie and eighteen year old Joy. They both went missing
after a night out at a club in the city.
So in Newcastle again, there's Norell Cox. She was twenty one.
(14:06):
She was last seen in Grafton in nineteen seventy seven.
He actually left a note for her family and it
read gone to Nosa to see Fae. Be back on Monday,
which is just heartbreaking, isn't it. A truck driver said
he picked her up and actually dropped her in Brunswick
Heads and she's never been seen again. Then we've got
Rose How she was eighteen, went missing in two thousand
(14:27):
and three about twenty five kilometers from Coffs Harbor. Susan
Marie Killy she was thirty three. She's been missing from
Bellingen on the Mid North Coast since nineteen eighty nine.
Her body's never been found. I could go on and
on and on. There's literally dozens of cases.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
But general are we just seeing patterns when there might
not be one. You know how humans really like to
seek patterns and find those kind of things that look linked,
when really they might not be. Why are we thinking
that all of these have a connection.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
When you think about the string that's linking all of
these cases women who have gone missing while hitchhiking or
walking or traveling to another place. That's obviously a very
broad term, but I don't think that doesn't mean it's
not a pattern, particularly when you consider the fact that
when you compare how many women have gone missing along
the stretch of the New South Wales coastline, you just
(15:16):
don't see that kind of concentration of missing and murdered
women anywhere else in the country anywhere for that kind
of population geography, that span of time. To give you
an example, in the whole of Tasmania, there's less than
ten cases, and we're talking over sixty in this one area.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Why is this only being discussed now though we mentioned
some of these cases date back more than thirty years.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Why now because technology, forensics, investigative techniques, they've come so
far in the last few years alone. I mean, we're
learning new things every day. A lot of these cases
weren't thoroughly investigated or properly investigated at the time, sometimes
because they just didn't have the resources or the technology
to do so. I mean, we're seeing so many cold
(16:03):
cases being solved. One that comes to mind recently is
the Easy Street murders in Melbourne that was from nineteen
seventy seven, and that is a really highly publicized case.
You know, everyone in Melbourne knows that story. The two
sus that were murdered in their house, a little boy
that was left crying in the middle of their dead bodies.
Horrific story. They've got a man in custody all these
(16:24):
years later, decades later because of DNA, Because of DNA
that is now able to be traced and tracked back
to people all these decades later. So I think the
reason that we're talking about it now is because some
of these cases need to be reinvestigated with fresh twenty
twenty four eyes, because you never know what you're going
to find. You're never going to know what we're going
(16:44):
to be able to solve with everything that's at our fingertips.
And we also know so much more about serial offenders
now than we did back then. We've just got so
much more knowledge in the police force, so we definitely
need to go back. We need to go back and
look at these cases with fresh eyes.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Well, speaking of the police force, obviously these are cold
cases and cold cases are never officially closed. But as
you mentioned, they might not be being investigated to the
extent that we would hope or that we would prove
that they are investigated, especially if they're beyond thirty years old.
But obviously New South Wales police know more than any
of us about all of these cases. What have they
said about this alleged linking of all of them.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
They have released a statement, it's not as exciting as
you might expect. It says there is no evidence to
indicate a common offender was responsible for the disappearance. They've
said that the matters remain under investigation by the State
Crime Commands, Homicide Squad, Unsolved Homicide Team that's a mouthful,
and the Missing Person Registry as part of recent recommendations
(17:41):
that were handed down by a Special Commission of Inquiry.
So they're reviewing all unsolved cases every two years, which
is amazing. It does mean each of these cases at
getting fresh eyes, but there are so many cases, so
we've just got a hope that they're getting the attention
that they deserve.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
We don't want to alarm people, but we do want
to arm them. So if you find yourself along the
New South Wales northern coast, please be careful and be
aware of your surroundings. Laura says she wants women to know, though,
that they're experiences aren't just fine, and to ignore the
gas lighting that comes with reporting them.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
I've noticed people were more likely to come to me
than they were to call crime stoppers. And that is
us systematically as women, being taught that, oh, it's probably nothing.
You're being over dramatic, you're overreacting, you're being hysterical. And
so even with me with the incident in two thousand
and eight, I played it down to well, he let
(18:36):
me out of the band, so he couldn't be well,
I've a mala led a lot of people out of
his car too, So we kind of gaslight ourselves, and
we also go to people who were meant to help
us that also gas light us and make us feel
like we're being idiots. And so I think that that
needs to change. I think that there needs to be
a safe space to be able to discuss these issues
(18:58):
and what I wanted to achieve. Often we hear these
different separate stories, but this is hundreds of women and
hundreds of close goals that you're seeing in these comments sections,
And maybe when you see that volume altogether, you start
to realize, Okay, this is a really big issue. Can
we get it now? Like we need to do something
about this. Women aren't feeling safe.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Thanks for taking the time to feed your mind with
us today. The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy
and our executive producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by
Teagan Sadler.
You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Mamma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and orders.
This podcast was recorded on Hi True Crime Conversations listeners.
It's your host, Gemma, and I'm jumping back into your
ears today to share an important episode with you. It's
from Mamma MIA's news podcast, The Quickie, hosted by Claire Murphy.
She spoke to me for a recent episode investigating whether
(00:36):
there is a Byron Bay serial killer on the loose.
Right now, people are starting to connect the dots between
multiple cases of women going missing or being murdered in
the Byron and New South Wales coastal areas, including women
with their own first hand accounts. You may have seen
these women on TikTok and Instagram while you've been scrolling.
(00:57):
And in this episode, Claire and I talk about how
likely it is that all of these cases and run
ins are actually linked. Let us know what you think
of the episode and I'll see you next week for
another true crime conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hi. I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily
news podcast, The Quickie. We all love a bit of
true crime, right It's weirdly soothing listening to stories of
horrible things happening to someone else, somewhere else. But what
if that true crime gets a little too close to home, Like.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
I looked at this man and I felt terror.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
There's a theory being floated that the worst serial killer
in Australian history could be behind dozens of missing and
murdered New South Wales women, and there are some first
hand accounts from those who feel they might have even
been a potential target. Today we look at the alarming
similarity of more than sixty unsolved crimes and wonder if
they might all be linked. Last month, Melbourne woman Kayleie
(02:08):
was walking alone in the northern New South Wales suburb
of Suffolk Park. It was around four pm on a
Saturday afternoon and she was going to meet friends at
the beach when a car all of a sudden pulled
up beside her.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
As I'm walking, there is a car that pulls up
like on the other side of the parked cast me
there in the middle of the road. I look into
the car and it's a young couple and the woman
in the passenger seat he's looking at me, and then
she's looking behind me at something and she looks terrified,
and I was like, what on earth is going on?
So I look behind me to see a man a
(02:41):
couple of meters behind me. And this man does not
look dressed for where we are. It's like thirty degrees
and he is in gloves, which I thought was really freaky.
Like I looked at this man and I felt terror.
The thing is is for that man to be as
close to me as he was, he had to have
run up on me because I had already been checking
behind me because I'm just like that type of person.
(03:01):
As soon as I look at him, he disappears, either
like down this side street or like into somebody's front yard.
I wouldn't have even noticed this man if not for
the fact that the couple in the car were distressed
and they'd pulled over. Every single part of me felt
like that was a really really close encounter with something
really evil.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Kaylie says she informed local police, but found them to
be dismissive of her experience. Her TikTok comments section, though,
was flooded with similar experiences, experiences like Laura Claire's. Laura
is a Barron Bay local who's been documenting her run
ins a info about the alleged Byron Bay serial killer. Laura,
can you talk us through that day where you and
(03:41):
your friend decided to go hitch hiking? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Sure, I think Byron has this this hold on people.
It's just this idolistic kind of town and there's a
lot of people hitch hiking there, and you just have
this sense of safety. Well I did when I first
went there, obviously. So my friend and I needed to
get from Byron to Suffolk. It was a really hot day.
(04:03):
I suggested that we hitch hike. She had never hitch
hike before and was very much against it, and I
kind of convinced her it wasn't a very long distance
and it was safe and all the things that I
shouldn't have said, all the things that I felt, a
sense of safety that I shouldn't have felt. So we
go to hit to Ride and this van pulls up.
He's so normal looking I can barely remember his details,
(04:26):
and he seemed to look very friendly as well. So
my friend I put her in the back and I
went to sit in the front and there was a
big knife on the front seat, and not having any
survival instincts at all, I just grabbed the knife and
put it on the floor to get in, and I
(04:46):
think I even asked him permission to do so. And
then I kind of just out of curiosity, was like, oh,
what's the knife for?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
And he said that he was a chef. And that's
kind of when.
Speaker 5 (04:58):
I started to feel uncomfortable. Most people would have felt
uncomfortable hit hiking. This is where I started to feel uncomfortable.
The knife was very rusty, the knife did not look
like it should go anyway.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
We're near food.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
It just kind of started mulling in my mind, and
I said, Oh, where are you a chef? Because I
thought maybe i'd know the restaurant or you know, just
get some comfort in knowing that he worked around the area.
And he said, oh, I'm not working at the moment.
And that's when I just went, Okay, I don't feel
comfortable here. We need to get out of this situation.
(05:32):
And so I said, oh, yeah, that's us just up there.
He led us out of the van like we got out.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Of the van.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
So that was my experience, and honestly, I don't think
I even thought about it again after that day for
a long time, but a few friends of mine have
contacted me in the last couple of days and said, oh,
you told me about that story, so it has sort
of stuck with me, but not as much as it
probably should have.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Well, can you explain what happened after you shared that
story publicly? Because we've seen this happen with other women
too in the area who've shared their close encounters that
it's essentially kind of opened up the floodgates.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
Absolutely has, and it's quite distressing. In my mind. I
was going to share this story about what happened, I
was either going to have people going, you're overreacting or
people going, oh my god, that was really scary. I
didn't prepare myself for hundreds of women coming forward speaking
about close call encounters, rapes, drink spikings, names of people
(06:34):
that are dangerous in the area.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
You know.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
I just wasn't prepared for the volume. I wasn't prepared
for the horrific details, and it's just so alarming, and
at times I felt defeated because I'm like, how do
we help?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
How do we change this?
Speaker 5 (06:51):
Like what do we do? Obviously my first point is
to call the police and report what you know, but
in a lot of these cases, they were actually let
down by the police in either not showing up on
the scene, taking too long to get to the scene
where they were no longer in danger, saying that they
didn't have enough information, not taking down details, telling them
(07:15):
to go home when they went into the station, the stress,
all of that kind of stuff as well.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
This is something that a lot of women come up
against when it comes to crimes against them like this,
and another of its nature is that police are so
under resourced. These are sometimes put in the two hard basket,
especially when there's many, many of them to look at.
But I think what we have realized when yourself and
others who are also looking at crimes against women like
(07:44):
this in the area where you live, is that when
you start to map this out, that map starts to
look very crowded, doesn't it, Like with if you were
to pin all of these instances to a real physical map,
like there'd be no space in between.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
And look, this has been common knowledge among locals for years,
and I think one of the biggest things that kind
of is terrifying is these are maps of women that
have gone missing or died. It would be interesting to
see a map of women that have been assaulted because
what I've heard in the last seventy two hours is
(08:17):
a lot a lot of assaults and people that didn't
die that are left with the consequences of this, and
these can often be behaviors in the lead up to
worse crimes. Some of these haven't been reported or weren't
reported or it's interesting with a lot of this information
women when they haven't reported it, I've asked them why.
(08:41):
And there's quite a common thread of young women being
worried that they were going to get in trouble with
their parents for not being where they were supposed to.
And so I think that there's a lot of information
out there that we're not getting through to the legal
system either. But in the case of the map and
how many crimes happen in this area, it is unbelievably high.
(09:02):
And when you're going to a town like Byron and
you don't live there, you have this kind of view
of it, like I did, that it was this sleepy
coastal town. And so when you have that view of
a town, you're walking around doing things that you do
on holiday that you probably wouldn't do it at home,
and you're not really fearing for your safety or being
(09:26):
concerned about it at all because you're not hearing about
it on the news and you're not realizing actually that
you may be in danger. Like I had a friend
of mine that lives in Byron and I was talking
to her about it, and she said, I'd rather walk
around alone in the Cross or Redfern than I would
en Byron.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It's well known by.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
The locals, and I think, you know Kaylee, the other
girl that spoke out about it, she kind of got
attacked and shut down when she first came out about it,
and a lot of that was by the locals. You
don't want to try that with me because I've lived
there and I can name, you know, incidences that happen
and people that have gone missing, and no one from
the community has tried to say to me, no, no,
(10:08):
it's not no, it didn't happen. Because when you live there,
you know, it's very easy to shut down a girl
from Melbourne that was visiting a week because she just
had this bad experience and she had a very off
feeling about it. But if you live there, you know,
trying to cover it up for the sake of tourism
or house prices or whatever it is is actually doing
(10:28):
the town at disservice.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Laura, you said that when the hitch hiking incident happened,
you kind of dismissed it and almost essentially forgot about
it until now. Would you say the same thing now,
with all the responses that you got to it and
all the stories that you've heard, do you feel like
that has now changed you where that hitch hiking incident didn't.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
It's interesting because the hitch hiking incident, when I think
about it at a core level, did change me. I
hit taged once again after that, but I was in
a very desperate situation. I remember thinking I shouldn't be
doing this, So it did change me at that level.
But what it's kind of changed for me now as
a woman, especially after speaking out about this, is just
(11:12):
how careful I need to be. Like I was walking
my dog yesterday and I just went wow, Like, I'm
not as aware of my surroundings as I should be,
and maybe I need to be more careful in a
lot of other areas in my life, because after hearing
the things that I did and reading what I have
in the last seventy two hours, it's pretty bleak.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
While Laura is thinking her lucky stars that she and
her friend didn't find themselves potentially in the path of
a killer. There are potentially more than sixty others who
weren't so lucky. Last week, New South Wales MP Jeremy
Buckingham addressed State Parliament stating that the worst serial killer
in the nation's history has gotten away with it.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
Ivan Malat, was convicted of seven murders. There is someone
on the North Coast that has murdered as many or
more and they are still amongst us sixty seven the
numbers of unsolved homicides of women on the north coast
of New South Wales, and as indication that someone operated
(12:13):
in that area, traveled that area, lived across that area
and took women, destroyed their bodies, destroyed their lives and
it's appalling that it's taken so long for this matter
to come before House and to public attention.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Buckingham told Parliament that he's been called alarmist because his
view and the view of some senior police like Detective
Gary McAvoy, who investigated these matters from Coffs Harbor, is
that they were and are linked. He, with the support
of Green's MP Sue Higginson, has called on the Premier,
Chris Mins to hold a special commission of inquiry that
has been rejected amid suggestions a new police task force
(12:54):
be set up to investigate the unsolved cases instead. According
to a Daily Telegraph investigation, there are sixty seven women
who've been murdered or who've gone missing in the area
over the last thirty years. They include a number of
disappearances around Newcastle in the nineteen seven. Jemma Bath is
Mumam's news editor and host of the true Crime Conversations
(13:15):
podcast Jemma, these cases go back as far as the
nineteen seventies. Can you give us a rundown of some
of those older cases that they think might be the
work of this serial killer?
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, And so they kind of spread all the way
up the coast. We're talking from like Coffs Harbor to
after kind of the Gold Coast area, but there does
seem to be a concentration around Newcastle, which is one
of the biggest centers along that coast if you know
the area, and many of the disappearances or alleged murders
in that area are from the seventies. So we've got
eighteen year old Robin Hickey She was last seen at
(13:46):
a bus stop in April nineteen seventy nine. Eight months
after that, fourteen year old Amanda Robinson. She vanished while
walking home Miss Swansea. The following year, seventeen year old
Annie and eighteen year old Joy. They both went missing
after a night out at a club in the city.
So in Newcastle again, there's Norell Cox. She was twenty one.
(14:06):
She was last seen in Grafton in nineteen seventy seven.
He actually left a note for her family and it
read gone to Nosa to see Fae. Be back on Monday,
which is just heartbreaking, isn't it. A truck driver said
he picked her up and actually dropped her in Brunswick
Heads and she's never been seen again. Then we've got
Rose How she was eighteen, went missing in two thousand
(14:27):
and three about twenty five kilometers from Coffs Harbor. Susan
Marie Killy she was thirty three. She's been missing from
Bellingen on the Mid North Coast since nineteen eighty nine.
Her body's never been found. I could go on and
on and on. There's literally dozens of cases.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
But general are we just seeing patterns when there might
not be one. You know how humans really like to
seek patterns and find those kind of things that look linked,
when really they might not be. Why are we thinking
that all of these have a connection.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
When you think about the string that's linking all of
these cases women who have gone missing while hitchhiking or
walking or traveling to another place. That's obviously a very
broad term, but I don't think that doesn't mean it's
not a pattern, particularly when you consider the fact that
when you compare how many women have gone missing along
the stretch of the New South Wales coastline, you just
(15:16):
don't see that kind of concentration of missing and murdered
women anywhere else in the country anywhere for that kind
of population geography, that span of time. To give you
an example, in the whole of Tasmania, there's less than
ten cases, and we're talking over sixty in this one area.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Why is this only being discussed now though we mentioned
some of these cases date back more than thirty years.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Why now because technology, forensics, investigative techniques, they've come so
far in the last few years alone. I mean, we're
learning new things every day. A lot of these cases
weren't thoroughly investigated or properly investigated at the time, sometimes
because they just didn't have the resources or the technology
to do so. I mean, we're seeing so many cold
(16:03):
cases being solved. One that comes to mind recently is
the Easy Street murders in Melbourne that was from nineteen
seventy seven, and that is a really highly publicized case.
You know, everyone in Melbourne knows that story. The two
sus that were murdered in their house, a little boy
that was left crying in the middle of their dead bodies.
Horrific story. They've got a man in custody all these
(16:24):
years later, decades later because of DNA, Because of DNA
that is now able to be traced and tracked back
to people all these decades later. So I think the
reason that we're talking about it now is because some
of these cases need to be reinvestigated with fresh twenty
twenty four eyes, because you never know what you're going
to find. You're never going to know what we're going
(16:44):
to be able to solve with everything that's at our fingertips.
And we also know so much more about serial offenders
now than we did back then. We've just got so
much more knowledge in the police force, so we definitely
need to go back. We need to go back and
look at these cases with fresh eyes.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Well, speaking of the police force, obviously these are cold
cases and cold cases are never officially closed. But as
you mentioned, they might not be being investigated to the
extent that we would hope or that we would prove
that they are investigated, especially if they're beyond thirty years old.
But obviously New South Wales police know more than any
of us about all of these cases. What have they
said about this alleged linking of all of them.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
They have released a statement, it's not as exciting as
you might expect. It says there is no evidence to
indicate a common offender was responsible for the disappearance. They've
said that the matters remain under investigation by the State
Crime Commands, Homicide Squad, Unsolved Homicide Team that's a mouthful,
and the Missing Person Registry as part of recent recommendations
(17:41):
that were handed down by a Special Commission of Inquiry.
So they're reviewing all unsolved cases every two years, which
is amazing. It does mean each of these cases at
getting fresh eyes, but there are so many cases, so
we've just got a hope that they're getting the attention
that they deserve.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
We don't want to alarm people, but we do want
to arm them. So if you find yourself along the
New South Wales northern coast, please be careful and be
aware of your surroundings. Laura says she wants women to know, though,
that they're experiences aren't just fine, and to ignore the
gas lighting that comes with reporting them.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
I've noticed people were more likely to come to me
than they were to call crime stoppers. And that is
us systematically as women, being taught that, oh, it's probably nothing.
You're being over dramatic, you're overreacting, you're being hysterical. And
so even with me with the incident in two thousand
and eight, I played it down to well, he let
(18:36):
me out of the band, so he couldn't be well,
I've a mala led a lot of people out of
his car too, So we kind of gaslight ourselves, and
we also go to people who were meant to help
us that also gas light us and make us feel
like we're being idiots. And so I think that that
needs to change. I think that there needs to be
a safe space to be able to discuss these issues
(18:58):
and what I wanted to achieve. Often we hear these
different separate stories, but this is hundreds of women and
hundreds of close goals that you're seeing in these comments sections,
And maybe when you see that volume altogether, you start
to realize, Okay, this is a really big issue. Can
we get it now? Like we need to do something
about this. Women aren't feeling safe.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Thanks for taking the time to feed your mind with
us today. The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy
and our executive producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by
Teagan Sadler.
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