Pod Insights The Case Of PRESENTS — What Became of Jack? About this episode Jack McLennan went missing in October 2024 from Ficks Crossing, a small town in southeast Queensland. A few of his personal belongings have been found scattered kilometers apart; a pair of cheap trainers, a hat and wallet, but no sign of Jack.
In this episode of The Case Of, we retrace his last moments with Rob Burgin, the host of the ABC's latest Unravel series: What Became of Jack?
If you have any information on Jack's disappearance, email the Unravel team at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]
The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.
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0:16 Speaker 01 One night, Jack is hanging out with a friend in a park not far from where he lives. But then he's gone and he's never been seen again. What happened to him is the mystery being unpacked in the latest season of Unravel, one that you might be able to help solve. I'm Stephen Stockwell, this is The Case Of.
0:36 Speaker 02 There's no sign of him, no messages, no contact, no footage, nothing, just gone.
0:41 Speaker 03 You could nearly say an alien took him away because he's just vanished.
0:45 Speaker 04 So we knew something was off here big time, something was off.
0:49 Speaker 05 We were told by so many people, don't go there, you'll get killed, you'll get chewed. You don't really know what to believe, who to trust.
0:54 Speaker 02 Is it a murder? Is it someone just gone missing? There seems to be foul play, Rob, involved here.
1:01 Speaker 01 Nothing else makes sense of it.
1:05 Speaker 01 The latest season of Unravel, What Became of Jack, is fresh in your feeds at the moment. And in it, Rob Burgin is trying to find a young man who disappeared in Queensland almost two years ago. Episode three has just dropped and there is so much to talk about. So I'm very pleased that Rob could make some time for a chat on The Case Of. Rob, welcome to the pod.
1:24 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me, Steve.
1:26 Speaker 01 In the first two episodes, I've gone from thinking that Jack has just wandered off to being suspicious of almost every single person in this story. And this is just the start. To get us going, Rob, who is Jack?
1:40 Speaker 02 Jack is a guy who'd recently transitioned from, he'd worked in gyms most of his life and he'd just gone into a construction company. He'd hit that age of 27, I guess where a lot of things change for us in our lives. But it seems particularly the case for Jack here. He'd changed his social.
1:58 Speaker 06 Circle, uh, that day that he goes missing, he broke up with his long term partner. And just his world was a state of flux. His, his car wasn't working properly. He was trying to find a new place. It just seems like this crescendo of things in his life. But for us, I think we can all, you know, have a little bit of a relatable moment to that. It, it, it all happens to us in our twenties at some point. But he goes out to hang out with a mate. They go five kilometres out of the nearest town and it's a water hole with a picnic spot next to it. And then things just go wrong and weird from there.
2:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is the thing that really surprises me. This seems like such a normal kind of experience, right? You know, you're, you're growing, there's lots of changes in your life. You know, one of them is kind of dramatic and, you know, you go away with a friend, you know, you just, you know, jump in a car, let's go, have a couple of drinks, sit in a park that we know and are very familiar with. And then, you know, he just vanishes at that point. This is all happening in Mergan, a town, kind of a couple of hours north west of Brisbane. Can you tell me a bit about what this area is, is like?
3:06 Speaker 06 Yeah, so he goes missing in a spot called Fix Crossing, which only has less than forty people live there. And it basically is agricultural, uh, ground around a specialist indigenous school and the water hole where Jack's been hanging out. Now, I would say if you grabbed a hundred people off the street in Queensland and asked them where Fix Crossing is, maybe one or two could answer. But they would maybe know Mergan, which is five Ks up the road. Mergan itself, uh, it's got a really upheaval, a lot of upheaval in its history. It, uh, it's just six kilometres down the road from a forced indigenous settlement that a lot of people would know Sherberg. And although there's not that racial tension in this story about
3:50 Speaker 06 Jack, it's a place where you don't have to scratch far under the surface to find some sort of angst. And because it is that three hours north west of Brisbane, it's not near the Sunshine Coast, it's not near Toowoomba, it's not near Bundaberg, it's kind of slips between the gaps. In a geographic sense, but also a socio economic sense. And out here, every, the average living income is three hundred and fifty dollars a week less. So the average household income is about seven hundred dollars a week less than you get in the rest of Australia. So imagine that every week getting seven hundred dollars less, what impact that has on the broader community there. So there are things like higher than average divorce
4:34 Speaker 06 rates, higher than average, people in their twenties leaving the area. You've got a very low educational profile for the region. So it has fascinated me. And the region, the reason I originally went out there, and I think probably the reason a lot of people would go there was just for rugby league. Steve Renoff comes from Mergan, and that's what we know that area for, and not much else, aside from maybe cattle, cotton, peanuts. So it's just a mysterious place. And it's always seemed to me like somewhere where the stakes can be high because people get forced into tough positions. And a lot of it occurs
5:17 Speaker 06 in the shadows. There's not the police numbers or the resourcing that perhaps that area warrants.
5:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's such a strange part of Queensland. You know, the way that you're talking about it, you know, not many people would know Wicks Crossing, a few, maybe a few more would know of Mergan. But really, the place that I'm familiar with around there is Gimpie. And I grew up, I grew up in Queensland, I grew up in Brisbane, and never really spent any time at all out in any of these places, except for kind of passing visits through places like Gimpie and Maryborough, which are separate to what we're talking about here.
5:47 Speaker 06 So Gimpie's like two hours away from here. But a lot of the cases from the courts will be heard there. So that gives you an idea of how sparse a region it is.
5:57 Speaker 01 That's it. Yeah, that's the sort of the, you know, how big it is, but also how I guess small it is in that, in that same way. And Rob, you talk about the courts there. I mean, the case office is usually a court podcast. We've had Jack missing for a couple of years at this point, or almost two years now. Has anyone ever been charged in relation to his disappearance?
6:15 Speaker 06 No one's ever been charged and no one has been declared a person of interest in this case. That's the official line. If you've seen things online from all the citizen sleuths, there's probably a hundred suspects in this case. But at the moment, it's before the coroner's court. It hasn't been determined if it will go from being an investigation into an inquest. And the family's still waiting to hear some details around what is happening with that. But mentioning courts, and an interesting thing here is, while I've been out there frequently, I've noticed some days in those tiny towns where there might be two police officers on at any time, there's up to 90 listings in the court on a day. So you can
6:58 Speaker 06 imagine that workload. I'm kind of painting the picture of what sort of place it is.
7:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, what the police are trying to work through and deal with, you know, alongside the, you know, the disappearance of Jack. And I mean, that's the background of this. And there really is so much happening in this story. And I think one of the key pieces, something that's really stood out to me as I've been listening to the first couple of episodes, are some of the things that Jack ended up leaving behind. And I wanted to take a listen to some of the things that Jack ended up leaving behind. And I wanted to give everyone a chance to kind of catch up on this that haven't been listening to what became of Jack. So let's take a listen to some of the things that you've kind of like been left in his wake almost. And when this finishes in a few minutes, Rob, I'm keen to talk a little bit about some of the citizen sleuths that you've mentioned just there. And also more about Jack's ex-girlfriend, one of the last people to ever have contact with him.
7:48 Speaker 07 26 past 10. It's been one week since missing man Jack McLennan was last seen in the South Burnett. Inspector Scott Stullitt is leading that search and has more of an update for you, including some shoes of Jack's that have been discovered.
8:06 Speaker 05 A promising sign several days ago were a pair of shoes which we located on a creek line.
8:12 Speaker 06 The first clue is Jack's white trainers. They were found, the laces still tied, as though he just kind of stepped out of them and walked away barefoot.
8:22 Speaker 05 So based on that, an assumption could be made that a direction of travel was towards the highway. Those shoes have been positively Identified by a close associate.
8:32 Speaker 06 So the theory seems to be that Jack could have been walking away from the fixed crossing picnic area towards the north, back to the nearest town, Mergon. He could have been intending on going either via the highway or a slightly more direct dirt back road on the other side of the creek. It's completely possible he was going to walk the roughly 5Ks along either of those roads back to where his car was parked in Mergon. But whatever he did, he clearly never made it there.
9:01 Speaker 05 So we can't discount the fact that, you know, Jack may have got a lift with someone. Or Jack may not want to necessarily be located at the moment for whatever particular reason. We are concerned for Jack's welfare. It's been nearly a week since, since he was last seen. So we are appealing to people that might have any information that they can provide. That would be appreciated as well.
9:24 Speaker 06 Although the police say the discovery of Jack's shoes are a hopeful lead to the family, that explanation doesn't make sense and the discovery is an ominous sign.
9:36 Speaker 06 When his shoes are found, what's your initial reaction?
9:42 Speaker 03 Fear. Now it's gone up a level because why are his shoes here? He should have them on his feet. You know, you're walking in snake territory. Why would you take your shoes off?
9:53 Speaker 06 When Jack Sad Ross hears the news, he travels to the place they were found.
9:58 Speaker 04 The shoes were found in a spot where it didn't make sense. Well, we were at the place where they allegedly were and where he started walking off into the darkness. Now, it was a very dark night by all accounts, no moonlight. So he had his phone torch, I would imagine, because it would have been pitch dark. And he's apparently climbed through barbed wire fence into some paddock, which was just unforgiving vegetation. Like it's precarious in the daylight, let alone. Without torture or anything. And why he would have gone through that fence? Nothing was making sense.
10:40 Speaker 04 Why would anyone kick their shoes off, tramping through this uns forgiving country? And make things worse for yourself?
10:49 Speaker 06 To Ross, the whole thing feels off. For starters, even barefoot, Jack should have been able to make it back into town. It was only five Ks. He'd been known to walk distances much longer than that if he felt like it. And after all, he was a fitness instructor. Secondly, if he did get picked up on the highway, why hasn't anyone come forward to say so? It's been in the news for days. Why hasn't someone seen him? The shoes do not feel like a positive clue to the family.
11:20 Speaker 04 There seems to be foul play, Rob, involved here. Nothing else makes sense of it. And we just don't know why. He's such a loving guy. He's just such a giving guy, Jack. He never said a bad thing about anyone. Almost borderline naive, but in a beautiful way, a forgiving way, a compassionate way. And someone's taken advantage of him. And we just can't understand it.
11:49 Speaker 06 So that's a bit of a taste of what you can hear in the unravel feed at the moment on ABC Listen. Definitely make the effort to have a listen to What Became of Jack? Because it is an incredibly compelling story. Um, Rob, there are so many strange things happening here and I want to talk about the shoes. This seems like such a promising lead, but does it just end up making things a bit more confusing? Yeah, it really does because they're his white trainers, which is weird in itself because they're these twenty dollar generic, uh, sort of department store shoes. And you would think this athletic former personal trainer might have a more elaborate pair on the day he goes missing.
12:31 Speaker 06 But he leaves these twenty dollar shoes, uh, laces fully tied about five hundred to seven hundred metres north of where he was last seen. And this is in. An area that's fenced off, he's most likely gone through barbed wire to get there. Uh, there's small ponds that are around, there's uneven surfaces, big fallen trees, lot of snakes, like this area, I've been out there searching in this case and I've seen some huge snakes and, you know, quite often, uh, very close together. So for him to take his shoes off in that situation, in what seems like it was pitch black darkness, it it's crazy and the undergrowth there is really tricky.
13:14 Speaker 06 If you look on Google Maps, you might think, oh yeah, that that that could be negotiated. Once you're on ground level, it's actually a lot more undulating and complex than what you would think, uh, looking from the outside. And my understanding is Jack had not visited this kind of spot much before.
13:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. And it's not just his shoes either, cause there's, and there's a hat that turns up, there's a wallet and everything in kind of a slightly different direction, which just kind of spun me out.
13:44 Speaker 06 Yeah, so that's the thing. So these shoes are found five hundred, seven hundred metres north of where he goes missing. The same day, his hat is declared found in town in Mergon, about five kilometres to the east of that spot and over the creek, which he would have had to traverse to get back there. There is an explanation for the hat that comes through, but even with the explanation, it's still pretty odd.
14:07 Speaker 01 Hmm.
14:07 Speaker 06 Uh, and then about a month later, after these two items are found, an olive grove farmer around two kilometres to the south, he finds Jack's credit card and then his wallet. Uh, the police come out and drop mark that and again, I've been out to that spot and it's just a really weird place to end up, uh, and not really an obvious place to go to from there.
14:30 Speaker 01 Hmm. What are the possibilities here, Rob? I mean, has Jack gone lost? Has Jack been taken? What are people thinking?
14:38 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, I guess there's no evidence to point towards anything other than he is lost, uh, but there's nothing to say that he most definitely is in a certain spot either. Like they've never found his phone.
14:51 Speaker 01 Hmm.
14:51 Speaker 06 The triangulation from that seems to have given minimal information. The shirt and the shorts that he was wearing that day have never been found and neither of any human remains, so. It's, it it does start to ask questions in your mind about has he been involved in foul play and I know with in regards to the mother, uh for the first three months, she was out searching on foot with other members of the family.
15:19 Speaker 01 Hmm.
15:20 Speaker 06 Was very reluctant to think that it was foul play at first, but then after the three months period, she's almost become convinced of that. And I think probably the father from earlier than that. And it's been, it's been interesting and sad observing from the sidelines how suspicion plays on the human mind when you have this uncertainty and unresolved trauma.
15:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, hearing about how the um, the family kind of searches and you know, there's a point, I think, in the first episode when they're just so disappointed at the weather one day because they worry the, you know, they think about the impact that's going to have in them being able to try and find Jack. It just seems something that's so close to them and yeah, something that they really care about and yeah, are obviously out there kind of involved in for so long. Um, it's very strange that there's never been any human remains recovered, especially with all of those searches that were going on, Rob. Um, and you talk about the family, about, you know, Jack's dad. You've also spoken to Jack's ex. Now, he had just fought with her and the conversation you have is is really revealing. It changed a lot of what I thought about Jack. But in that kind
16:29 Speaker 01 of lead up, when you're talking to her and it was very hard to get her to talk, you you kind of point out that she had been getting a bit of heat, some pretty heavy messages being sent her way. What's happening there?
16:39 Speaker 06 I guess whenever something like this happens where it is unresolved, people go looking for where are the tendrils that might create an answer. And you look to the people closest to those who've gone missing or or who have had some sort of fate before them. And Carly was living with him up until that day. Uh, that fact, I guess, has played into people's suspicions of her, but.
17:06 Speaker 06 She's definitely worn some commentary that has been way out of hand and there's all sorts of rumours and almost fantasies about what may have taken place. Part of me from right at the start wonders if this is a human tendency to look for a femme fatale in these kind of stories. There are elements of this that remind me of what Joanna Lee's went through with the Peter Falconio disappearance and subsequent investigation. People have levelled all sorts of things at Carly and so her response was after organising some of the initial searches, she had to go through counselling, she was copying it
17:47 Speaker 06 left, right and centre, so basically shut down any response to the community and wouldn't buy into some of the conversations because she was not finding a lot of things that she offered were then being used against her. She has got a different partner since Jack has vanished and someone took a photo of her with her new partner at the markets one night, posted it up online and said, you know, look how disgusting is this. I've seen an incident where like a grown man who's much, much older has posted a photo of Carly in her formal dress and said like, what a beautiful young lady, I wonder where along her life she lost her virtue and stuff like this.
18:30 Speaker 06 It's, for me, it's like baseless and the other thing is she's a very small female living in a quite isolated place. And now she is just at the mercy of everyone, but she doesn't want to leave because she knows that will add to this whole sense of, you know, she's guilty and she's running away from something. So it's a bit of court stuck in a hard place for her.
18:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, it, it sounds like you spent a long time talking to her, trying to convince her to, to talk to you. What was that process like? How hard was it to get her to come around?
19:02 Speaker 06 Extremely hard. I would say Carly was the, the hardest person to get to speak to about this and that is on top of other people who, you know, probably have more reason to have suspicion over them. But Carly had really retreated by the, the time that I approached her. And, you know, she told me things in that interview that I spoke direct to her sister and to her mother and they did not know these things either. So it took her a long time to tell anybody about these things and. I guess what we've seen in the last period of time since this episode came out is that she's copped even more and no matter what she answers, people will throw it in her face.
19:44 Speaker 06 And, you know, it's fair to say, I interviewed probably three hundred people all up to get the fullest background. I could have Jack and the people around him. Some people really didn't like Carly and some people did. And you've kind of got to find that middle ground where it's, you know, what's bias? And what are people just picking at because they don't like that person to start with?
20:05 Speaker 01 Hmm. You were talking about that kind of, I guess, suspicion that grows out of a a lack of information. Do you think that that's what's driving this reaction against Carly and others in this story?
20:17 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think that's a huge part of this. And one of the reasons I took this whole project on was I think there's two things, right? You want to know that justice is being done and that it's been pursued in the correct channels and to the fullest of its ability. I think for the community, they want to see justice to be done as well. And that is one of the big concerns here is this region, Mergan, surrounding towns of South Burnett. They feel like they are an area that gets ignored a lot. They feel like they don't have the resources at hand. If they call the police, they don't feel like they're going to arrive in time. You know, Carly talks about calling the police for a domestic incident and it took four hours
20:59 Speaker 06 to the police to come to her. And she lives fifteen minutes down the road from the cop shop. Uh, so there's a sense there where people feel they have to take the law into their own hands and they have to drive these things forward. And you can see here, once the police stop giving interviews and stop doing press conferences about Jack, that's when this kind of whole flame of, you know, speculation erupts. And people are throwing around accusations left, right and centre because they're not getting answers from the police. They don't really know if it's been followed up as far as they can tell because they they don't have that information in front of them. So that's a really central theme here and.
21:45 Speaker 06 For me, it's hard to criticize some of these people because they're well-meaning individuals, like they contribute to school fairs and to barbecues for charity groups and they might run the local school pickup, et cetera. And it's just that they wanna help. Mainly, they really see a mother that's hurting here and they wanna reach out and help. But sometimes it goes a little bit too far and feelings and thoughts run away with themselves.
22:16 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, Carly, in the interview that you have with her, it sounds like she's really keen for answers as well. It's not like she's sort of shying away from this. She puts herself out there and tells the story in a way that doesn't necessarily make her look good or bad in the way it's unfolding. And I mean, there's some really interesting insights in what she says as well. There were moments in this that, you know, really confused me, talking about shoes and the wallet and the hat. And then there's other things that Carly mentioned that I hadn't, you know, we'd never have an insight into without her. And these are some of the last messages that Jack sends before he disappears, probably the last contact he has with anyone. Carly seems to think something is off with them. Why do they stick out to her?
22:58 Speaker 06 Yeah, so on the final day of Jack being known to be alive, they share a series of messages and at first it's kind of arguing about when's he coming to come and collect the rest of his stuff from the house that they shared. And then from there, they make up in the middle and Carly sends this really beautiful messages about, I wish we could have ended on better times and I'll always look back at the, you know, the relationship we shared with fondness, et cetera. And it sounds really nice in the middle, then they fight again and you know how it is in your twenties with these kind of relationships. Right at the end, she asked Jack, have you got sick? Because she was sick and was wondering if she'd passed it on to him.
23:40 Speaker 06 And then he was like, oh, no, why don't you rest up, have some water? And she found the series of messages around that time as not really sounding like they were his words and that she has some sort of suspicion that Jack's phone might have been used by someone other than himself for perhaps an hour period there.
24:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's, it's a really strange kind of situation and the way she speaks about it is, yeah, it really caught my attention at the end of the second episode. Rob, something that stuck out to me at the end of the What Became of Jack episodes is this call out for help. You know, we have the case of email on the case of and we get a lot of emails from listeners who are interested in us explaining something a bit more detailed. But you've got the unravel email at the end of episodes of What Became of Jack, unravel [email protected] , also the Crime Stoppers number 1-800-333-00, asking people to get in contact to share any details they might have. What do you think people might be able to help you with?
24:47 Speaker 06 I think where we need to start is to ascertain what state that Jack and his best mate Chris were in when they were at Fix Crossing around this 10pm period where Jack's said to have disappeared. So I think we need people who were down Fix Crossing Road in the recreational area, near the water hole, that might have seen them between, say, 2 o'clock in the afternoon, 10 o'clock at night, even people that live up towards the highway or might have been passing the highway where Fix Crossing Road leaves that point. I think that intersection could be quite crucial to see what vehicles travelled back and forwards between there. And then I think also there are a lot of conversations going around town
25:29 Speaker 06 between different subcultures of people who don't want to speak to the police but have shared stories with each other. And I've had some conversations with people where they've said, "Look, I've got a story to tell you, but I'm going to wait until after this is all done" and then they've blocked me. And it's hard for me to know if that's a genuine lead or whether that's just one of these other fantastical stories that's popped up. But part of me thinks that there might be some people out of there that intersected with Jack on his final day and know a little bit more about what's gone on.
26:02 Speaker 01 If that's you and you can help here, please get in touch with the unravel team, [email protected] . Rob and the rest of the unravel team can dive into that. And yeah, you might be the piece that helps put all this together. If you've got friends in this area as well, have a talk to them and chat to them about how this is all going and, you know, if there's anything they might be able to help with too. Rob, thank you so much for joining us on the case of.
26:26 Speaker 06 Thanks Steve, and I know for the family, they really appreciate the attention that a show like yours will bring to this case.
26:32 Speaker 01 Oh, no, we appreciate it. Anything we can do to kind of help work out what became of Jack is a benefit in this scenario. So yeah, best of luck with the rest of the series. Episode three is out in ABC Listen at the moment, so grab that, dive into the Unravel feed and you can check all of that out. And Rob, they're dropping every Tuesday, is that right?
26:50 Speaker 06 That's right, at least up until the start of July.
26:53 Speaker 01 There we go. So get around ABC Listen, that's where you can find all of what became of Jack as it's rolling out in your feed. You can also check out the back catalogue of Unravel as well, once you've finished the episodes you've got. And there's also loads of other wonderful Australian content in ABC Listen as well. Next week, we're going to be taking you into the murder trial of Raymond Reddington. He's accused of murdering his wife Sharon Fulton more than 40 years ago, but he was only arrested in the last couple of years. And some of the evidence, the suggestion of the involvement of serial killers in Perth, the Bernies, and anonymous tip of where Sharon's body was found, make this a pretty interesting story.
27:37 Speaker 01 The Case Of is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by Rob Burgin and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rollinson. Thanks to senior lawyer, our legal queen Jasmine Sims for her legal advice, and to audio studios manager, Eric George. This episode was produced on the land of the Ginabar, Gubby Gubby and more entry people.
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