Searching For Sarah MacDiarmid - Episode 1

With Casefile on a short break, we thought this would be a great time to shine a light on some of the shows that may have flown under the radar for many of you. These are shows we've put our hearts into and are really proud of. Today, we’re sharing another one of those shows — Searching for Sarah MacDiarmid. On 11 July 1990, 23-year-old Sarah MacDiarmid went missing from the Kananook railway station. Blood found beside her car suggested a violent attack — but Sarah was gone, and her body has never been found. Across nine episodes, the series follows Sarah’s last known movements, investigates the witness accounts and leads, revisits the searches, and examines the possible connection to serial killer Paul Denyer. Decades on, Sarah’s family still believe someone knows the truth — and hopes this series will reach the person holding that missing piece. We’re releasing the first episode here on the Casefile feed. You can find the full nine-part series by looking up Searching for Sarah MacDiarmid, wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy the series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  From journalist Olivia LaVoix, the creator of the hidden investigative series The Bakersfield Three, comes the new Case File Presents series, Ada. In 2011, the body of a woman was discovered in a California vineyard. For more than a decade, she was known only as Jane Doe. Then detectives finally discovered her name. But identifying her was only the beginning. Listen to Ada wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:34Speaker 01

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• 1:04Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Hi, it's Casey here. As you probably know by now, Case File will be back with all new episodes in March 2026 for what will be our 10th year. We will also be releasing some bonus content and other things to mark the occasion, so keep an eye out for that. But earlier this year, you might have noticed that we released the first episodes of some of the Case File Presents shows we've produced in the Case File feed. The decision to do so came after I learnt something surprising while talking with people at our live events. Many Case File listeners had no idea that we produce other shows outside of Case File, and some had never even heard of Case File Presents.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  It dawned on me that if someone is a big enough supporter of our show to come to a live event but hasn't heard of our production company, then clearly we need to do a better job of highlighting the other stories we've put so much care and work into. For those who don't know, Case File Presents is our broader production platform. While Case File is our flagship show, we've also created a number of other podcasts under the Case File Presents banner. Our level of involvement differs from project to project, but we've played a direct role in all of them. Today, we're sharing another one of those shows: Searching for Sarah McDermott.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  On the 11th of July 1990, 23-year-old Sarah McDermott went missing from the Cannonock Railway Station. Blood found beside her car suggested a violent attack, but Sarah was gone, and her body has never been found. Across nine episodes, the series follows Sarah's last-known movements, investigates the witness accounts and leads, revisits the searches, and examines the possible connection to serial killer Paul Denyer. Decades on, Sarah's family still believe someone knows the truth, and hope this series will reach the person holding that missing piece.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  We're releasing the first episode here on the Case File feed. You can find the full nine-part series by looking up Searching for Sarah McDermott wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here's episode one.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  She was always a very good daughter. If she was out somewhere going to be late, she would ring and let us know. We never, ever, until that night, on the 11th of July in 1990, was the night we didn't know. And what really plays on my mind now is that poor soul with whatever happened to her that night at the railway station. I wasn't there for it then. So that, as a mother, has been a big thing. I don't go on about it, but now that I'm older, I think I'm spilling over.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  When my podcast Case File launched our Submitter case page, we were inundated by thousands of suggestions. One case in particular came up over and over. The disappearance of 23-year-old Sarah McDermott from the Kananook railway station on the 11th of July 1990. Kananook train station is a little over 41 kilometres from Melbourne's CBD. The station is the last stop on the Frankston train line before the train reaches Frankston proper, two and a half kilometres further down. Three years after Sarah disappeared, this whole area would become infamous when the

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Frankston serial killer, Paul Denyer, murdered three women in a seven-week killing spree. These crimes were covered on episode 23 of Case File and will be explored in further detail throughout this series. It is worth noting that Paul Denyer spent a number of years identifying as a woman, during which he was known as Paula. Several sources have since advised that he no longer identifies as a woman and uses the name Paul again. Therefore, we will refer to him as Paul and use male pronouns.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Back when Sarah McDermott went missing in 1990, Frankston hadn't been tainted by the serial killings, but it did have a history of murdered women long before Sarah vanished. A decade earlier, a woman disappeared in 1980 and another the following year. Both women vanished while waiting for buses on the Frankston Dantonong Road. One was later found murdered in Scrub off McClelland Drive in Frankston and the other in Scrub along Sky Road. There were seventeen months between these two murders, but in the intervening time,

• 6:50Speaker 00

  four other women vanished from around Melbourne. Their bodies would later be found buried in Scrubland in Tainong North. The Frankston-Tainong North serial killings were covered in episode forty-six of Case File. Then, ten years later, Sarah McDermott vanished too. But unlike the Frankston-Tainong North victims, Sarah's body was never recovered. Vicky Petradus had just finished making The Vanishing of Vivian Cameron, and I thought, who better to tackle this case than Vicky?

• 7:32Speaker 00

  Her book, The Frankston Murders, about serial killer Paul Denyer, had touched on the disappearance of Sarah McDermott, as well as another unsolved murder in 1992 in Frankston: that of Michelle Brown. In this podcast, Vicky explores Sarah McDermott's case in detail. She interviews Sarah's family and friends, and the detectives who deeply regret that they couldn't return Sarah to her family. 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of Sarah McDermott’s disappearance on that cold July night in 1990.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  We are going to leave Vicky to piece together Sarah’s final movements and look at the police theories about what might have happened to the 23-year-old woman as she got off the train at the Cannonock Railway Station.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  My name is Vicky Petratas and I’m a true crime author. I’ve been writing about real police cases for nearly three decades now, and there are few more tragic than the case of Sarah McDermott. For her family left behind, there is nothing worse than not knowing. There is no relief from the constant wondering: where is she? What happened to her? Did she suffer?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  It is our greatest hope that this podcast will bring a renewed focus on to Sarah’s case and that someone listening will have a piece of the puzzle that will help return Sarah to her parents, Peter and Sheila, and her brother Elastair.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  Even though she was 23 years old, Sarah McDermott was the kind of daughter who always told her parents what time she’d be home. She always took the time to ring so they wouldn’t worry.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  On Wednesday the 11th of July 1990, Sarah played tennis with friends after work. Her parents expected her home around 10:30pm. Sarah got off the train when it stopped at the Cannonock Railway Station at 10:20pm. She was seen by several witnesses walking toward the car park and several people later reported hearing screams coming from that direction. And then Sarah McDermott was gone.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  It's easy for history to cast Sarah McDermott as the missing girl. But we are not the sum total of our final moments. Before we die, we live. And so, before we examine the time following the disappearance of Sarah McDermott, we must look at the time before, her time. Because if we don't, we do Sarah an injustice. She lived, she disappeared, she was mourned. And she lives on in the memories of those who love her. And when we tell stories of the missing, for a moment in time, we bring them back.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  To begin this journey, Sarah's mum, Sheila McDermott, wanted to tell me the story of Sarah's birth in 1966. She hadn't spoken about it widely before, but she felt like it was time to share it. While Sheila tells the story calmly now, over half a century later, one can only imagine the anxiety of giving birth to your first child only to be told there was something wrong.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  She was born on the 15th of November. And I was just thrilled a bit. She looked just like any newborn baby. And everything went well. She was born at 2 o'clock in the morning. 6 o'clock in the morning, they told me that Sarah was a little mucousy, so they would leave her in the nursery and bring her out at 9. I wasn't worried because I'm aware of babies being like that. But at 9 o'clock, they came and the curtains were pulled round. And the doctor came in to see me. And they told me that Sarah wasn't well

• 12:27Speaker 03

  and that they didn't know what the problem was, but that they were going to have to take her to another hospital because it was a small hospital I had her in.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  About half an hour later, the ambulance men came with an incubator and my little baby in it. And she was lying on her side, looking at me. And I'd had a dream about her when I was expecting her and everyone laughed when I said that I was worried I'd seen her and that she had a hair lip with a cliff palate. Well, the colour of her hair, the way she was lying was just how I'd seen her in my dream. They went off and in those days, we had to stay six days in bed before we could get up and leave hospital.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  And so she was six days old before I went to this other hospital to see her and I had a shock. She was in an incubator, tipped up, tubes in every place. They had discovered that she had what they called a Pierre Robin syndrome. She didn't have the hair lip, but she had the cliff palate. She also had a heart condition and they just kept telling me she was holding her own. She stopped breathing, they had to intubate her and she was intubated for three months. And when it came to the fourth month, they told me everything was going good and that was fine. So I got her home at four months.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  And the reason I'm telling that little bit of a story is as a mother, and with, well, I don't know what's happened to Sarah, but over the years, and now I'm older myself, it has become, why did that wee soul have to suffer when she was born?

• 14:33Speaker 03

  She gets over everything, she comes off heart medicine when she's five. She's a happy girl that grows up, loves her friends, always loves friends round her. The usual ups and downs that all mums and dads have with children as they're growing up, but nothing bad. We were a very good family.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Sarah suffered, but she fought back and overcame each setback, marking her as a fighter right from the start. After having faced such difficulties with feeding when she was born, as Sarah grew into a little girl, she developed a voracious appetite. It became a family joke.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Funnily enough, although she was a problem feeder because of her problem, she loved food, she loved her food. And I can remember she would eat until she...

• 15:34Speaker 05

  Sarah could eat, by...

• 15:35Speaker 03

  And one day I said to her, "Sarah, I don't think you could eat any more of that. You've had enough." Well, she took another bit, it was pizza, I think. And then the next thing, she said to me, "Mum, I'm feeling awfully sick." And I wasn't surprised, but, you know, she did go off and she was, was sick and she came back and she was fine, but, but...

• 15:57Speaker 05

  It was a standing joke in the family.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:00Speaker 05

  You used to watch her. She loved her food and I'm talking about when she was seven, eight, nine, 10. You'd go out for a meal with, with my parents, let's say.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  And they'd say it was a standing joke. The pork chop bone would be there, to be stripped. And I used to say, "I'd never like to be stuck in a desert island with that one. All that would be left would be a pair of boots."

• 16:25Speaker 04

  Two years after Sarah was born, Peter and Sheila welcomed a son into their family. Like Sarah, Alastair too was born with Pierre Robyn's syndrome. And like Sarah, he had to spend a couple of months in hospital after he was born. When it was finally time to bring him home, Peter and Sheila remember taking little Sarah to the hospital to collect him.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  It was the same baby unit and they remembered Sarah from when she was there and she came running in, Peter was coming behind with the caricot to collect Alastair and myself to take him home. And one of the nurses said to her, hello Sarah, who have you come to collect today? My brother. My brother. And I can honestly, this is not put on because she's missing or anything. I never ever had to worry about her being jealous. She was never jealous of him. She just loved him. And one day she gave me a fright and I had Alastair. I was thinking about it. We had a lounge in the front. You were in the police force at that time and it was a police house and it was really a lovely one.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  That's right. And I had a lounge that I could keep if anyone came and wanted to sit without toys and everything. And then I used the Internet. What they'd have, like a family room at the back. But I had him in the front room in the pram asleep. And he woke up and I heard him and I was just in the middle of wet hands or something and I'm shouting to this little baby as though he could, as though he could answer me. I'll be there in a minute, Alastair, you know, I'll be, I'll be there in a minute, Alastair. And he stopped crying. I thought, that's fine. Next thing, puff puff puff puff. Here's herself coming through, carrying this bit. Oh. And he's gradually slipping.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  And he's looking up at her grinning, grinning, grinning. And oh, I didn't want to tell her off. She thought she was doing a good thing bringing it to me and I ran. Oh, I said, Sarah, I'll take Alastair, thank you very much. And I got, I got him. And she was so excited that she had carried him through. Yeah, she was.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Peter McDermott's brother, Sarah's uncle Doug, said that he would be thrilled to write something for Sarah for the podcast, but he wouldn't be able to read it because even after 30 years, it would be beyond difficult to speak those words out loud. Instead, I asked Peter McDermott if he would read the letter. I'm not sure if it was any easier for Peter to do it, but he did it anyway.

• 19:11Speaker 06

  My earliest memory of Sarah was in Minton Magna at her Granny Bond's cottage when she was a babe in arms.

• 19:21Speaker 06

  Sarah, as a child, had a fine Dorset accent, even after living in Scotland in the early 1970s for a couple of years. On one occasion, Granny McDermott and I had taken the two children down to Ovan to see two old and much-loved aunties. On the way back home late in the day, Sarah stood up in the back of the car between the two front seats, watching the headlights play on the road ahead, and announced in her broad Minton accent, "We're in the bloody dark now." We were in no doubt that the swear word came from our daddy. She was a determined wee lass. Some would say thron, a good Scottish word for obstinate.

• 20:05Speaker 06

  A characteristic to be admired, in my opinion.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Half a world away from Scotland, the McDermots moved to Australia, Townsville to be exact. Townsville is in Queensland, around 1300 kilometres north of Brisbane. With its tropical climate, it was a very different place to the one the McDermots had left.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  We came out originally in 1973.

• 20:36Speaker 06

  19... yeah, 74, 75.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  And we lived in Townsville, and we had a wonderful life there. It was really great.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  In Townsville, Sarah and Alastair were enrolled in the local school, and the McDermott family met Jenny Carr and Donna McMahon, who were teachers there. Like so many people I spoke to for this podcast, Jenny and Donna were so taken by the McDermots that they have remained lifelong friends, even though the McDermots only stayed in Townsville for four years. Jenny Carr remembers the time well.

• 21:20Speaker 07

  It was the mid seventies. I was teaching at a primary school in Townsville. I was the music teacher. Sarah's class teacher brought her to me and introduced her as a little Scottish girl. And then she brought her parents, when they came up to school one day, she brought them and introduced them. And from that day on, we were really very close friends, for who we always have been. And while they lived in Townsville, you know, we saw them daily, we socialised, we partied, we drank, we did all the things that you do when you're young. And they were just wonderful parents.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  So, from Jenny's point of view, what was little Sarah McDermott like as a primary school student?

• 22:10Speaker 07

  Oh, she was just delightful. She was musical, she had a very pretty voice. And she was learning the violin, and she had a great ear for music. And she practised really hard. She was quite small for age, in fact, I don't think she was ever very tall. She was quite small but very strong personality. And not subtle in any way, she was all very straight, very truthful. And she had an amazing sense of humour, like both her mum and dad's too, but different types of sense of humour they've got, and she had to sort of blend up the two.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  Teaching at the same school, Donna McMahon taught Sarah the violin. Since the lessons were one-to-one, Donna got to know the strong-willed little Scottish girl.

• 23:06Speaker 08

  She was a person who's bucket was always full. You would never talk about Sarah's bucket being half-empty or half-full, it was full. And she gave or would win whatever she was doing, whether it was sport, whether it was the music, you know, whether it was in social interaction or whatever, she was an amazing young woman.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  Sarah made a lifelong friend in Townsville, a neighbourhood girl nicknamed Noni.

• 23:35Speaker 09

  I met Sarah when I think I would have been about 11 and Sarah was nine. And they moved into the house diagonally behind us. And we just seemed to click as friends. We spent a lot of time on our bikes, just riding around the streets. This was 30 years ago when you could do that quite safely. We would ride up to the top of one of the hills and ride down Houthers Skelter. I'm not sure whether Peter and Sheila want to know about those things, but it was just childhood fun. We went to the pool, we used to just do things together. We would be in her room and just listen to records.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Noni recalled those days playing in the sun with her newfound friend.

• 24:15Speaker 09

  She was very feisty. I can remember we always, like, we always got on very well. But often we would play... She used to like to play rugby in the backyard. And always inevitably ended up with her tackling Alistair, her brother. And then she wasn't the best of sports, I don't think, in that regard.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  For the McDermots, the idyllic days in Townsville didn't last forever. A family business back in the UK beckoned them home.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Peter's family back home had a chartering business and his dad wanted to go out of it. So Peter decided he would go back and take over from his dad. So we went back to Britain.

• 25:02Speaker 04

  While Sarah was excited about going home to see her granny and Uncle Dougie, her friend Noni was upset to lose her.

• 25:10Speaker 09

  I was very devastated when they decided to return back to Scotland. But we kept in touch from then, just letters. And then when I started working, I would ring Sarah occasionally. It was very occasionally, obviously, from Australia over to there.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, the family business Peter had gone to work in wasn't the success he'd hoped for. While they wanted to move back to Australia, the McDermids decided they wouldn't move back till their children were older.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  And we couldn't come back straight away because both the children then were in high school and you can't move them when they're in high school, that's so important. And so that was fine and all the time Sarah was in, right from year one till she left school, eighteen, she was in the Gaelic choir and she just loved that. And she also had started learning the violin in Townsville before we went back. So that continued on, she enjoyed that.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Sarah's friend Noni went over to visit the McDermids.

• 26:23Speaker 09

  I saved up enough money to go over and visit. That was a holiday that I will always remember as probably one of the best holidays of my lifetime. Yeah, I stayed with them and Sarah and I hired some pushbikes and used to ride around close by or just go up to the shops there or just go down to the river that was not far from where they were living and just spend time together.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  Because of the move to Queensland in 1974, then the move back to the UK in 1978, then back to Australia in 1987, Sarah's brother Alastair thinks perhaps this is why he and Sarah developed the closeness they did. Moving overseas removed access to long-term friends, so the only long-term friends Sarah and Alastair had were each other.

• 27:19Speaker 10

  When we were kids, Sarah and I were close as a brother and a sister. But that closeness was represented in doing things together. So I think, and I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing partly because we moved around a bit as kids from the UK to Australia. And I think that shifting around probably, I think we were close anyway, but I think that added to the closeness. And not in the form of always hugging each other or whatever. It was more just hanging out together. When we were young, we would play games in the house together and do different things as well as playing our own games. And then when we were older and sort of teenage years, we would

• 28:05Speaker 10

  go and play tennis together. And we did that back in the UK and we did it when we arrived back in Australia.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  The loss of Sarah has never dulled for any of the McDermids. All they have now are memories, perhaps sharpened by that loss. When Sarah's parents were at work, she easily stepped into the role of boss of the house where her brother Alastair was concerned.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  Sarah could be relied on to see if Sheila was off to work in Scotland and when they were in high school, you know, remember? He was going to go out for a sharp for the second day running and Sarah says, "You're not going to school in that shop. Get it off and put a clean one up." I was tickled pink. Off he goes out the stairs.

• 28:54Speaker 04

  What sort of sister was she? She sounds a bit motherly and a bit bossy.

• 28:59Speaker 05

  Yes. Yes, yeah, very motherly.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  Peter's younger brother Doug remembers an idyllic childhood for the MacDiarmid children. Peter reads his memories.

• 29:13Speaker 06

  I bought a box of pup. Sarah and Alastair came with me down to Glasgow to collect the wee dog from the kennels. They spent a very happy two hours on the way home in the backseat of the car, nothing but new baby. That was typical. Sarah was just such a loving and kind wee girl. All hungrily.

• 29:38Speaker 06

  A perfect example was when she was around nineteen or twenty. She and Granny MacDiarmid were great pals, notwithstanding a fifty-year age gap.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  When Sarah returned to the UK, she met a new friend called Maria Broli. The two bonded as schoolgirls over their shared love of music.

• 30:04Speaker 11

  I first met Sarah at high school in about nineteen eighty. And we had very similar interests in music and we performed together in a school choir. We used to have great fun going away on trips with the Gaelic Choir at the school to different parts of Scotland. And that's when Sarah's personality really came out because she was quite a fun-loving, giggly girl. Always giggling, always full of fun, never took herself too seriously.

• 30:35Speaker 11

  And we were best friends right through high school. And I know the circumstances were different, we'd probably still be best friends today.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  Sarah and Maria joined the Gaelic Choir and toured around performing. But it wasn't just Gaelic music that Sarah loved. She quickly became a connoisseur of the top forty charts. She loved Wham! and the Eurythmics most of all.

• 31:02Speaker 11

  There was a disco she loved to go to in Fort William where we grew up called McTavish's Kitchens. And she loved dancing, particularly to the Eurythmics. And she was a big Wham! fan.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  Sarah finished high school at eighteen and enrolled in college. While she and Maria went off in different career directions, they still kept in touch.

• 31:30Speaker 11

  When we left school at eighteen, Sarah and I still kept in touch. She went off to college in Aberdeen to study travel and tourism. And we used to phone each other, but in those days it was lots of letter writing.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  At college in Aberdeen, Sarah met her new roommate Caroline Lyons. The two went out a lot during that year. They went to see Desperately Seeking Susan and loved it, and even tried to copy the fashion of the movie, the tights, the singlets, the rah rah skirts, which in the Aberdeen winter needed to be layered with warmer things on top. Caroline has kept a diary since she was about six or seven. She offered to look back through her diaries before we spoke.

• 32:17Speaker 12

  Going back through the diary, I pinpointed the day when I first met Sarah, and I wrote down everything that we did. It's been quite an emotional experience.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Like a lot of Sarah's friends, Caroline embraced the opportunity to take that trip down memory lane. To move forward after such a tragedy means that we sometimes have to put our memories in a box and close the lid. It's how we survive.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  When we do look back after years pass, we can see our memories in a different light. As we grow older, the lens we look through changes.

• 32:58Speaker 12

  This past week is the first time I've gone back over every single day, from the 2nd of September 1985 until June 10th 1986, where we said goodbye. It's the first time I've gone through every day, and very emotional experience.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  Peter and Sheila McDermott are lovely people. I suspect that part of the reason police took Sarah's disappearance so seriously was that she clearly came from a really nice family.

• 33:32Speaker 04

  When the family unit is strong, it is less likely someone might take flight from it. Caroline spent time with the McDermott's in Scotland when she and Sarah were roommates. I asked her what she remembered of the family back then.

• 33:50Speaker 12

  Funny, kind. Sheila's got a beautiful accent and then Pete was so different with his very broad Scottish accent, always cracking jokes. Sarah was just like him, funny, warm, loving, kind. They took us out for dinner, paid for everything. They cooked dinner in their home, just such lovely people and they seemed to be so happy to meet me.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  Peter and Sheila loved spending time with Sarah's friends as much as they loved spending time with the McDermott family. Their small family extended open arms to everyone. The McDermott's didn't want to move while their kids were in high school and the minute Alastair finished, they made plans to return to Australia. Not Queensland in the north this time, but Victoria in the south.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Given the friendship that developed between Sarah and her roommate Caroline, it's not surprising that when the McDermott's started talking about moving back to Australia, Caroline planned to visit them there.

• 35:00Speaker 12

  Towards the end of my time with Sarah, her parents were starting to talk about going back to Australia. And I can pinpoint almost exactly the first time I heard about Australia as a country. And this was in the few months before neighbours took Britain by storm, because then everybody loved Australia. And you can imagine, I always tell people, imagine sitting at four o'clock in the afternoon, it's dark, it's snowing, you turn on the telly and there's sunshine, beaches, blonde tanned, happy people, very attractive. I'm one of

• 35:42Speaker 12

  a generation of backpackers, which what I originally was, who saw Australia like that for the first time. And that's what made me come here. I'd seen that with Sarah. She pulled out the photos, they became very clear to me when I look back through my diaries. Her and Al, bang on the beach, aged about, I don't know, six, seven, eight, that kind of age, blonde, tanned, swimmers, big blue sky. It just looked great. And I think that probably triggered my first...

• 36:16Speaker 12

  Introduction to Australia as a place, as a country, that I might like to visit one day.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  So, when the McDermott's left for Australia, Caroline had a firm plan to visit. The two friends settled on a date for her to come over, October 1990. The girls could have no way of knowing that by then, Sarah would be gone.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  But as much as Sarah was looking forward to coming back to Australia, the childhood memories she had from Townsville were very different to arriving in Melbourne as an adult. She hit a bit of a funk and her family noticed her normally happy disposition fade. Sheila had a talk to Sarah about her dark mood and Sarah broke down. It was like a well overflowing.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  She was missing her friends in Scotland, but then, one day she came in and she said, "I've got an idea." And I said, "What's that?" I think, she says, "If I go back over to Scotland for a holiday at Christmas time", she said, "I can bring Grandma back with me", and Douglas, Peter's brother, he always went to Japan on business and then he used to come to Melbourne to have a holiday with us and then fly back to the UK. So, oh, we said, "That would be lovely." And then she said to Alice, "You come with me", and of course, he was a uni student. He says, "Well, I can't afford it."

• 37:56Speaker 03

  And she said, "Don't worry about that. I'll pay your fare."

• 38:00Speaker 04

  Sarah's uncle Dougie remembered their trip fondly. Peter McDermott reads from the memory that Doug composed.

• 38:10Speaker 06

  Having returned to Australia two years earlier, Sarah hatched a plan with her wee brother that the two of them would come out to Scotland, stay with Gran for a few weeks over Christmas and New Year, and then escort her back to Australia for a holiday. Sarah stayed with Gran in her small retirement cottage, out partying with her old school friends almost every night. Gran would wait up for her and the two of them, I'm told, would blather into the wee small hours. They were as thick as thieves and I never did find out what they discussed during these long late-night giddly chats.

• 38:52Speaker 06

  But they loved each other to bits and had an exceptional bond.

• 38:58Speaker 04

  After the visit back to Scotland, Sarah seemed to settle down once she returned to Melbourne.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Of course Douglas came at his time and then they went back and from then on, Sarah started making lovely, lovely friends here.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Once Sarah established a wider friendship group, she was determined to take her brother Alistair along with her.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  Sarah would drag him everywhere. She would be going to Anna's on a Saturday night and she would say, "Anna says that you're to come as well, Alistair." Because he would say, "No, I'm not going." She says, "Anna says you're to come as well."

• 39:41Speaker 04

  As well as having the travel bug, the McDermott kids were sporty.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  They loved their hockey. When they were in primary, they played, she played hockey, yes. And then, of course, she was playing, she liked playing tennis and that's what she'd been doing. The day that it was after work, they always, every Wednesday.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  And like every decision made in a convergence of things, they'd come together when someone disappears. Sarah McDermott's decision to play tennis every Wednesday night with her workmates would put her in the path of someone who would take her from her family forever.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  Once the McDermids settled in Melbourne, they first moved to Pasco Vale. Peter and Sheila remember when Sarah got her first grown-up job.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  She never liked maths.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  I know.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  The laugh was, she ended up working with...

• 40:45Speaker 05

  She worked with C E Heath and then she ended up as finance clerk.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  And we laughed.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  And she hated arithmetic and maths. But she was fine, she was as happy as Larry.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Happy as Larry and she had a lovely lot of friends there.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  C E Heath would play an important part in Sarah's life. She met lots of new friends there and started to establish her life as a working adult. Her friend Anna Tarantino remembers meeting Sarah at the same job interview. They hit it off immediately.

• 41:22Speaker 13

  Sarah and I first met, we were at the same job interview at C E Heath Underwriting and Insurance. It was a really poshy place because I think it was at the Hyatt Hotel on Collins Street, I think, their office on the 37th floor. So that was a really beautiful because it had a fantastic view of the city. And we were both sitting in the same waiting office. And I remember that we started looking at each other and we were waiting, you know, for ages. Well, it seemed like ages because probably we were both very nervous. I could immediately tell that she was very shy. I was too, I guess, but not as much as she was. We started talking and I think because she said, "Oh my God, I need a cigarette", because she had this bad habit of smoking.

• 42:05Speaker 13

  I said, "Oh, I don't know if you can smoke here?" And she said, "Oh, I want to ask someone."

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Anna was a little shocked about the smoking. In her Italian family, smoking was frowned upon. Sarah and Anna both had their interviews for the job.

• 42:23Speaker 13

  I remember that she had a very good wit. We got along really well because we started laughing, you know, for no reasons and all that sort of stuff. So at the start, we were a bit looking at each other, saying, oh, I hope I'll get the job. And she was probably thinking the same thing. But in the end, we started saying, oh, hopefully they take us both on. And she said, oh, girls, I've got some good news. Maybe they want to take the both of you on because they like the both of you. And so we were really happy because we just started our friendship from that day on. Till the day that she disappeared, we were always together.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Peter and Sheila remember when Sarah confessed her bad habit to them. Sheila was sorry for her daughter. Peter, on the other hand, was just relieved that the bad habit wasn't anything worse than cigarettes.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  I was in the kitchen and Sarah came up to me and she says, ma'am, I've got something to tell you. And I thought, oh, my grief, what, what? She says, I've got a bad habit. And I said, bad habit, what? She says, I'm smoking. And I said to her, or Sarah, I said, I feel so sorry for you that you started that. But I said, I can't say anything to you because we were smokers then, you see.

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• 45:44Speaker 02

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• 46:23Speaker 04

  Friends from our childhood are a cherished and irreplaceable commodity. We knew each other when we were awkward teens and we formed as people in front of each other's eyes. Our values, our hopes and our dreams meld together in a connection stronger than steel. It is why when we can't see each other for ages, we pick up where we left off when we meet again. Sarah was no different, but sometimes the distance between her and her old friends bothered her and got her down.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  Her parents noticed and finally Sheila sat her down and asked her what was wrong.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  She just looked at me and she just burst into tears.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  And she said, "You don't know how unhappy I am."

• 47:19Speaker 03

  And I sat on the bed, we both sat down on the bed and I said, "What do you mean you're not happy?" Well then, of course, it all started flowing out. And it was the best thing, although it was not nice, it was the best thing I did. Because she, once she had broken that and burst into tears and we sat there, I said, "Why didn't you tell me you know that we can talk about things?" And it all came out then and what it was, I think she'd had these memories from Townsville and then she had come back and you forget that places change and this was Melbourne.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  She was now an adult, she was working, it wasn't all the fun that you have as a kid.

• 48:12Speaker 04

  Sarah hinted at the way she was feeling in a letter to her friend back in Scotland, Maria Broli. Maria has kept the letter and it's moving to hear these words that Sarah wrote.

• 48:27Speaker 11

  The letter was written on the 7th of March 1988.

• 48:33Speaker 14

  Hi, how's it going? So much for me saying that I'll write more letters this year. It's better late than never. Thanks for the little cheering up letter from yourself and Marie. I think I pulled myself together a bit since then. I just got really depressed at that stage because it had been almost a year since we left and I miss you a lot like hell sometimes. Especially you. It's just that all my friends are from work and they've obviously got all their own friends from school and that's when I feel totally lost. I've got two best friends in this world. You and Noni. And unfortunately, you are 12,000 miles away and she's 2,000 miles away. Oh well. Say lovey. Anyway. I must stop moaning every time I write to you. You'll be getting quite sick of it.

• 49:16Speaker 14

  I'm suffering slightly today as I was sunbathing yesterday and my face got a little burnt. I'm trying to get my tan up as I'm going off to Townsville on holiday on the 18th. I don't want to look any whiter than I have to coming from Melbourne. I'm really looking forward to it as I haven't been there since the day we started travelling back to Britain nearly 10 years ago. They've just had a cyclone in Townsville so it will be absolutely hot. I'm staying with Noni and Paul for the week and then Jenny and Donna. My music teachers who are now family friends. The best part about this trip is that I'm flying on my own for the first time in my life. If I'm lucky, I'll have some gorgeous humps sitting next to me. Guess who I'm going to see on Friday night? Cliff Richard.

• 49:58Speaker 14

  Anything to keep my mum happy so it'll be good for a laugh if nothing else. Needless to say, my love life is non-existent as usual. Although George is trying to pair me up with a guy from work just because he gave me a bunch of red roses for my birthday. She'll be the death of me. As you can see, I've remembered the photos this time so have a good laugh at them. Take care. Say good day to your mum and dad for me. Bless everyone else. Lots of love. Sarah.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  And as the letters suggest, Sarah was stoic about her situation. Once she relaxed into her new adult life, her parents could see that she just wanted to be settled and happy.

• 50:40Speaker 05

  She just wanted, like so many youngsters, she wanted a, she was at this stage for a happy life, just an easygoing.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Life, yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 05

  With a job and the money and the friends.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  She was just about to join the tennis down in Frankston because they had one in North Frankston.

• 50:58Speaker 04

  Peter and Sheila have always been close to Sarah's friends and many of those friendships continue to this day. If they had a day off work, they would often go into town to meet their daughter at the pub or the cafe downstairs at her work.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Sarah would say, "Come into the city and we'll have a meal in the evening." She worked in Little Collins Place and they were high-rise, they were up on 37th floor.

• 51:30Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  But on the ground floor was Hugo's, the pub.

• 51:34Speaker 05

  Nice little pub.

• 51:36Speaker 04

  Sarah's workmates, Angela, Con and Sonia, remembered meeting Peter and Sheila at Hugo's bar for after-work drinks.

• 51:47Speaker 15

  But they were lovely because it was very, very friendly people, very friendly people.

• 51:52Speaker 16

  Going down to Hugo's, I remember Peter and Sheila would come and have coffee or they'd meet up with them after work or maybe at lunch.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  So what were the McDermott family like in those carefree days before their daughter was taken? Angela, Con and Sonia reminisce.

• 52:12Speaker 16

  Sarah always spoke highly of her mum and dad at the time.

• 52:15Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 16

  Because they were really close, like it wasn't like a normal mother and daughter relationship.

• 52:19Speaker 15

  No, but she understood, I'm sure she understood that they brought her here for a better life. So she understood that, even though she didn't have her friends.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  I'm not sure why, but before I started researching this podcast, I always thought that Sarah McDermott was tall. Maybe she looks tall in pictures. So it was a surprise to me when people started to talk about how little she was. A hundred and fifty-three centimetres, or five foot tall in the old measure. Her friend Sonia remembers a nickname that she and Sarah got at the bar near their work.

• 52:59Speaker 17

  There is one story I do remember. So there was Sarah, myself, and I'm not a very tall person, sort of like five, one and a half. And we were all sort of the same height. So there was myself and Sarah and was it Anna? And the three of us walked in one after the other and these guys at the, at the bar just turned around and said, oh, look, the munchkins are coming in. And that was a running joke with us.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  Sarah's friend Caroline Lyons was so excited about her visit to Australia. She and Sarah were going to travel around and go interstate. On Monday, the twenty-second of January, nineteen ninety, Sarah missed a train at the Flinders Street Railway Station. She passed the time till the next one, writing a letter to Caroline. The letter is especially poignant because all the plans she had made for Caroline's visit in October wouldn't come to pass. By July, Sarah had vanished.

• 54:04Speaker 14

  Dear Caroline, sorry I took so long to write. Anyway, what's new and how are you? At the moment, I'm sitting in North Melbourne Railway Station, waiting for my train home after work. I'm decidedly cranky as the one I was supposed to get has been cancelled and I have to wait half an hour for the next one. At least the sun's shining. By the end of this week, I will be the proud owner of a little red Honda Civic, provided I don't have to spend too much extra to get a few mechanic jobs done to it. All being well, I will be zipping around in that in and around Melbourne when you come over. I'm so raptur coming over. I'm planning to take about a month's leave while you're here, so we can travel interstate. Sydney, Brisbane, or wherever you want. Sydney is fantastic.

• 54:48Speaker 14

  I've been there twice briefly since I saw you. I would also love to see Townsville again, but we'll see. Mum and dad have just bought a house, hence the new address, on the other side of the city, near the beach. It looks like a little Spanish villa. I met Steffi Graff a couple of weeks ago. She was sitting in this Italian restaurant down where we work, so I went up to her and asked for a couple of autographs. The girls at work reckoned I would chicken out, but I didn't. And I went straight up to her as I thought it would be my first and probably my only opportunity. I'll be writing in the near future. I know it's your birthday soon. I'll try and send some photos too, so until then, take care. Lots of love, Sarah.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  The new house that Sarah referred to in her letter was in Sky Road in Frankston. The woman they had bought the house from gave Sarah some advice about which railway station to catch the train from.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  She looked at Sarah, she said, "Well, Sarah," she said, "all the time I've lived here, I've always used Cannanuck." She says, "Don't use Frankston because Frankston's got an underpass and sometimes it's not always the best place to be." So she said, "That's why I've always used Cannanuck and I find that a good station." So that's what we used, was Cannanuck.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  And so, the McDermids settled into their new house in Frankston, and Sarah took possession of her little red car, and each day she parked it at the Cannanuck Railway Station and caught the train to work.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  Her brother Alastair was enrolled in uni in the city, and she often drove him to the station with her in the mornings. But workdays are longer than uni days, and they made their way home separately.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Two months before Sarah disappeared, her beloved Uncle Douglas came from Scotland for a visit. Douglas wrote about the memory, which Peter McDermott reads for him.

• 56:54Speaker 06

  In May 1990, I visited Australia briefly en route to business in Japan. I'm so glad that I did. Little did I know that it was the last time I was to see Sarah. The shy reginald had blossomed into a beautiful, mature and self-ensured young lady. She had bought a little red nissen of which she was very proud. And for my visit, she'd taken two days off work to tour me around places of interest near Melbourne. A great honour for me because it was something she wouldn't normally have done otherwise.

• 57:34Speaker 06

  I cannot tell you now where we went, but they are cherished days for me. The morning of my departure on that last visit, Sarah came into my room before going to work to give me a farewell kiss and to say goodbye. She was in tears as she left the very last time I saw her.

• 57:56Speaker 06

  It's beyond difficult for me to speak about Sarah, even after all these years. Her memory and her love will stay with me evermore.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  Podcast makers are creators of story. We weave the threads that people share into a pattern that makes the best sense. People come to us and tell us things that they've kept largely to themselves for years. They are not provable and rarely satisfy the laws of evidence or burden of proof. But some threads are worth mentioning because they add a layer to the story that may not have been considered. And if one woman tells a story of being followed after she got off the train at Canonook in 1990, perhaps other women will come forward with similar stories that will help us weave closer to the truth.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  Around May or June in 1990, something happened to a local woman called Carolyn McAllister that may or may not be related to what happened to Sarah in the July. Carolyn contacted me on a different matter entirely. I'd mentioned a relative of hers in my book, Once a Copper, about legendary Melbourne cop, Brian the Skull Murphy. We got chatting over Messenger, and in one message she wrote that she had come close to being a victim of the Frankston serial killer, Paul Denyer, who killed three women in 1993. I asked her what happened, and she told me her story.

• 59:39Speaker 04

  Now, there is no evidence beyond a gut feeling that the man in this story was Paul Denyer. But whether it was Denyer or not, her experience does show that there was a man in the area at the time, possibly targeting young women on their own at night, who got off the train at Cannonock Rowway Station.

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  Carolyn was at university on the other side of town in Bandura and lived near the campus during the week. Each Thursday, she would return to her parents' house for the weekend. She would catch the train home. As you listen to Carolyn, remember, this is about a month before Sarah disappeared.

• 1:00:27Speaker 18

  I'd get off at Cannonock Station. It would have been after seven, and it was winter, so it was definitely dark. I would have still been 18, and so I got off the train and walked across the platform and over the walkway down to the other side. And I'd walk along through the back streets there, up to Bruce Street, which was off Claude Street. As you walk along Bruce Street, it then becomes Lorna Street, and there's a reserve there. And I was walking on that side of the road where the reserve was. I was carrying my backpack that had all my university books in it, and I'd also had a small suitcase because I'd bring home clothes and wash them on the weekend. So I was walking along there, and I could hear footsteps behind me.

• 1:01:13Speaker 18

  I looked back and I could see a guy in the distance and he was maybe 100, 150 metres away. Maybe more, but definitely I could see it was the outline of a male figure. I was quite aware that I was hearing the footsteps, they were sort of quickening. And they were getting closer, so I quickened as I was walking past the reserve because I just didn't feel at all safe then. As I quickened my pace, I was hearing the footsteps getting closer and that was when I started to feel really quite scared. So I swung my bag with my clothes in front of me so I could hold them closer.

• 1:01:53Speaker 18

  And I pretty much started running as quickly as I could with the backpack on my back and also carrying the suitcase in front of me. And so I was running to the end of that and then you turn left and into Hadley Street. And I, I knew I wanted to get up to Cloud Street, which was at the end of Hadley Street. And so I just kept moving, it would have been, I guess, about 100 metres or so. And I was running by this stage. I wasn't normally a runner, but I certainly ran that night. And I ran because I thought if I get to Cloud Street, there's lights all along there, there's cars going along there, it's just busier.

• 1:02:35Speaker 18

  And my aim was to get to the servo, which was at that stage, it was Food Plus on the corner of Cloud Street and Frankston Daniel Road.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  As Carolyn told me about being followed, hearing the man get closer and making her run from him, it was a chilling reminder of the words the judge said as he sentenced Paul Denyer. He said, "For many, you are the fear that quickens their steps as they walk home."

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  After a desperate sprint, Carolyn made it to the service station and dashed inside. She moved through the service station shop to the payphone at the back. As she called her dad and tried to catch her breath and ask him to come and get her, she saw the man.

• 1:03:23Speaker 18

  It seemed that he was looking for me after I went into the shop. I'm not sure that he saw me duck in there, but he was there looking around. He was still walking and looking, and he was still travelling along Frankston-Daninong Road. He was going north and quite determinedly as he was walking. So I stayed there and I knew there was a public phone there. And I rang my dad and said, "Look, I think somebody's following me. Can you come and pick me up?" So he came round and he picked me up and we drove along the service road, which was in front of the Nylex factory. And the Nylex factory in those days, there was only a short fence, it would have only been waist-high, that was pipes, sort of a pipe fence.

• 1:04:06Speaker 18

  And it was all bushes along that area, right up until you hit Madden Street. So we couldn't see him, even though we were looking for him. And I would have thought that I would have seen him there or even further along as we got to Madden Street and turned in, but he wasn't there either. And he wasn't in Madden Street. There was just nobody walking around. I often wondered where he was, you know, where did he go? And I do wonder whether or not maybe he was in the back of that Christian church that was on the corner there. He could have been in behind the building because there was a car park through there that you could walk and there was bush behind there, but I guess I just don't know.

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  The Christian church Carolyn is referring to was the New Life Christian Centre. It was on the corner of Madden Street and Frankston-Daninong Road. It was this exact location, three years later, that serial killer Paul Denyer would leave his second victim Debbie Fram's abandoned car parked right in front of it. Denyer was quite casual when he mentioned Madden Street in his interview. He doesn't say that the Christian Centre is, in fact, his place of worship.

• 1:05:24Speaker 19

  He hit her back Madden Street? Why was it Madden Street? Wasn't too close, wasn't too far from her.

• 1:05:32Speaker 04

  It's worth mentioning another coincidence here. The Food Plus service station Carolyn ran to was the same place where murder victim Michelle Brown was last seen in March 1992. It was perhaps even the same phone that Carolyn used to call her dad from, that two years later, Michelle would call her mum to ask to be picked up, not from the service station, but from the Frankston Railway Station. But by the time Michelle's mum arrived, Michelle wasn't at the train station, although people later reported hearing screams near there. Michelle's mum then drove to the Food Plus, but her daughter was gone.

• 1:06:18Speaker 18

  Looking back, if it was Paul Denyer, I think that might have been his plan, was actually to get me into that area, because it's quite isolated. There were no houses close to that area. You had the houses further past Madden Street and across the road on Frankston-Danilong Road. But certainly around there, there were no houses at all.

• 1:06:41Speaker 04

  After this terrifying experience, Carolyn didn't call the police. Most women don't. Nothing had actually happened, but despite her strong gut feeling and the terror of having to take flight from a man following her down dark streets, matching his pace to hers, what would she have to say? I heard footsteps and a guy was following me? And if she did, there was very little the police could do. They might drive around the area and take a look, but without a proper description of the man, what was the point? Carolyn just put the experience behind her and stopped getting off the train at Cannonock Railway Station.

• 1:07:25Speaker 04

  Instead, she got off at Seaford and her parents picked her up.

• 1:07:31Speaker 04

  Now, back to Sarah. Before that fateful night in July 1990, Sarah was living her best life. She planned to travel, she was independent, she was earning her own money, and while she joked to friends about finding a boyfriend, it wasn't something she wanted to rush into. Despite the matchmaking attempts from friends at work, this is the way her friend Maria saw it.

• 1:08:00Speaker 11

  It wasn't high on her priority list. I think she wouldn't have minded, but I don't think it was high on her priority list. She really just wanted to enjoy herself and have fun. I mean, she loved her tennis, loved her music.

• 1:08:13Speaker 04

  Sarah had been playing tennis on a Wednesday night after work for around four or five months. She rarely missed a session, but at the end of June and early July, she missed two weeks in a row. The first Wednesday, she met her friend Anna for drinks. Anna was heading overseas on an extended holiday, and Sarah wanted to say goodbye.

• 1:08:39Speaker 13

  I remember the night before I went on holiday, we went out to drink at the same place in the city. And that night, she seemed a bit, not sad, but she had something on her mind. And I'd say, "Sarah, what's the matter?" And she'd say, "No, nothing, nothing." And I don't know if she was upset because I was going on holiday, but I don't think so. Maybe there was something on her mind and she wanted to tell me. And I remember she gave me a little padding from there, and he was in a suitcase and a package, and it had written on it, "Please look after me."

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  When Anna described Sarah's melancholy mood that night, it reminded me of a story I'd heard when I was writing the Frankston Murders book. Serial killer Paul Denier's last victim, Natalie Russell, experienced something similar a couple of weeks before she died. She had gone around to visit her boyfriend and sat down in his lounge room and suddenly burst into tears.

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  After crying and shaking uncontrollably, Natalie was later at a loss to explain why she cried. There was no reason. Afterwards Natalie's mother Carmel told me that she wondered whether Natalie somehow knew she didn't have long. I don't mean to sound melodramatic, but maybe this kind of thing has an echo or a foreboding.

• 1:10:07Speaker 04

  The week before the final night was a busy one. On Wednesday the 4th of July, Sarah's brother Alastair turned 21. The McDermots celebrated with a family dinner. And on that final weekend, the family did what families did back in the 1990s, when gender roles were more clearly defined. The boys did a bit of tinkering on Sarah's car while Sarah and her mum cleaned the house.

• 1:10:38Speaker 03

  And on Sunday before she was abducted, on the Wednesday, we were busy. I always remember, she loved music, we always had music on. And Alastair and Peter were working on her car because she had never bothered with a car until we moved to Frankston in the January into our own home. And she then said, "You get a car." So even though she'd had a licence, we were so near all the public transport before, she never, she wasn't one that was dying to get a car, but she said, "I'll get a car." Which was not the best thing as it turned out, but anyway, she got the car.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  And that afternoon, we had music going. And Elton John's, I always remember.

• 1:11:30Speaker 20

  Sacrifice.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  Sacrifice. And I loved that tune. And that was played. And then I said to Sarah, "They're outside, Sarah, they won't hear you." I said, "Would you play that one again for me? Because I just love that one." So when I hear that one, that one really is just, you know.

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  Of course, Sheila would have no inkling that a song about sacrifice and two hearts living in two separate worlds would come to have such devastating meaning for her in just a few short days. For the McDermott family, the minutes were ticking slowly by until they ran out completely.

• 1:12:20Speaker 04

  Coming up in the next episode of Searching for Sarah McDermott.

• 1:12:25Speaker 21

  And then I followed the trail of blood drips to a nearby bush area. I found some blood on concrete curbing. And I could see it was still, it was in a bush area to the western side of the car park. And I could see what appeared to be heel drag marks across the grass verge that led to a little bush area. I followed that in there and I found more blood that was still fairly fresh.

• 1:12:55Speaker 20

  Well, I think it was the, obviously, the blood changes your whole perspective about what's happening. And there was quite obvious that where the blood had been located, there were drag marks. So it was suspected at that stage that either a lifeless or unconscious body had been dragged to an area near the car.

• 1:13:23Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening. If you'd like to hear the rest of Searching for Sarah McDermott, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bank. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini.