Ivan Milat’s Missing Victims & The Six Australians Who Vanished

Every year in Australia, nearly 50,000 people are reported missing. While the vast majority are located within days, thousands of families are left navigating the harrowing journey of ambiguous loss, fighting every day to keep their loved one's name alive. In this episode of True Crime Conversations, Gemma Bath speaks with Nicole Morris, founder and director of the Australian Missing Persons Register and author of the new book Lost. For over 20 years, Nicole has voluntarily advocated for missing individuals and provided a vital lifeline to grieving families who often feel unheard by system-level responses. Together, they delve into the complex realities behind missing persons statistics, the controversial disparity of police rewards across states, and six cases Nicole discusses in her book —including 1970s cold cases with potential links to Ivan Milat. LINKS Purchase Nicole’s book ‘Lost: More true stories from families of Australian missing person’ here. https://www.amazon.com.au/Lost-stories-families-Australian-Missing/dp/1923720007/ref=asc_df_1923720007?mcid=24b6bf8bad02302ba85408e03105656a&tag=googleshopmob-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=793850146685&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18125640615908912710&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9071834&hvtargid=pla-2505884714364&psc=1&hvocijid=18125640615908912710-1923720007-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1 We want to hear from you! Take our quick 3-minute survey for your chance to win a $1,000 gift card. https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8954679/HF-BUS-2026 If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. Contact Full Stop Australia https://fullstop.org.au/ on 1800 385 578, 7 days, 24 hours. GET IN TOUCH Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @truecrimeconversations https://www.instagram.com/truecrimeconversations/?hl=en Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] or send us a voice note. https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/send-a-podcast-voice-note-467960 MAMAMIA OFFERS: Get access to Very Peri, Mamamia's exclusive perimenopause series, for just $59. 25 world-leading experts, over 20 on-demand sessions, available now. We’ve sorted through the noise so you don't have to. Go toveryperi.com.au http://veryperi.com.au/ today. You hot? Same. Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. CREDITS Host & Executive Producer: Gemma Bath Guests: Nicole Morris Produced by Tahli Blackman & Ella Maitland Video Editor: Julian Rosario Audio Design: Tegan Sadler Mamamia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Gemma Bath?

  It's a Wednesday morning in May 1978 and it's pouring with rain. As 23-year-old Barbara Brown makes her way to Bee Croft Railway Station in Sydney's north. She's American and has been travelling the world for much of her twenties. She's no stranger to public transport, or hitchhiking for that matter. After arriving at Hornsby Station, Barbara stops for a milkshake and starts chatting to some road workers. The road crew give her a lift to the highway, where her plan is to hitch her way north to Queensland. But after that sighting, the girl with the golden hair and sunny disposition vanishes.

• 0:43Gemma Bath?

  Police believe she was killed on or around that rainy Wednesday, but they don't have concrete proof. For her family, they've spent their whole lives wondering, where is she? What happened? Who killed her?

• 1:09Gemma Bath?

  I'm Gemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. It's a uniquely painful experience to not know, to have someone vanish or disappear and not have any answers as to how or why, to not have a body to later rest. Life for a missing person's family is a harrowing journey of ambiguous loss. Trauma is not just in the disappearance, it's in the response. Because for many families, they're constantly having to fight to keep their loved one's name at the forefront of investigators and media's lips.

• 1:52Gemma Bath?

  Nicole Morris is the director of the Australian Missing Persons Register, a not-for-profit association that she set up in 2005 after realising there was nothing like it on the internet. She's never had a loved one go missing, but after more than 21 years of doing this work, voluntarily, I might add, she has a deep understanding of why people go missing, what happens when they do, and what the people left behind go through. For many loved ones of missing people, Nicole does something life-changing for them. She listens. She doesn't question or minimise their fears or make them feel like they're asking too much. She sees their loved ones as the human beings they are. She validates their anger, exhaustion and persistence.

• 2:36Gemma Bath?

  Put simply, Nicole refuses to let families disappear along with the people they love. She's already written two books filled with the stories of missing people. Now she's releasing a third. It's called Lost. Today, she's going to tell us about the people within those pages.

• 2:59Gemma Bath?

  Nicole, welcome back to True Crime Conversations.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 3:04Gemma Bath?

  Can you remind listeners, what is the current state of missing people in this country? How many go missing each year? And are most of those people found?

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and we've just received new statistics, so I can give you very accurate information about that. And it's just under 50,000, so about 49,000 something per year, which works out to 130 a day. But the bad news is that long-term missing persons, the number of those has increased. So we're looking at 2,800, so 2,800 long-term missing persons. A long-term missing person is anyone missing longer than three months, because then it becomes very difficult to find them. Out of the 49,000, there is a very good location rate. It's something like 98% of people are located within a couple of weeks.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  So, you know, that, things are improving there. But long-term missing persons, yeah, it's still a problem.

• 4:07Gemma Bath?

  Doing this for two decades, as you have, what stands out to you the most about the systems we currently have in place to find people? You did say that there are some improvements in that space?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  I don't know why it's improved. I guess there's a lot of pressure on police, but like every industry, they're under-resourced. So it's very difficult to allocate officers to missing persons when you've got a lot of other crimes going on in Australia. Not that missing persons is a crime, but it's an area of policing. So I'm not sure what the difference is. I don't know why that number has dropped, but it's fantastic that it has. Unless there's less people being reported missing, unless we are getting a little bit better at preventative mental health care and that kind of thing, which is one of the major reasons that people go missing.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  So it's interesting. There are academics who do studies in this field, so it'll be interesting to see if they're seeing some sort of a change in the trend.

• 5:16Gemma Bath?

  Because crime only makes up a small amount of those missing people, doesn't it?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely, much to the surprise of the public, I think, because we see Netflix documentaries and I sit down and watch Netflix documentaries all the time as well. And you think, oh, well, you know, obviously when someone goes missing, something terrible has happened to them at the hands of another. But that's actually, it's not the case. And it's, maybe it's an uncomfortable topic for people to think about, that mental health crises are a leading cause of people going missing. But unfortunately, that's the reality and we really need to be trying to address that major issue in Australia.

• 6:03Gemma Bath?

  I wanted to ask you briefly about rewards. Often when people are missing, we see a reward for information. What is your opinion on how that's decided? Who gets what money? Because, you know, in some cases you'll see 100,000, other cases you'll see a million.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  It's such a controversial issue and a contentious issue and a distressing issue in the world of missing persons, because people attach a value of a person's life to the monetary value of a reward. And that is hurtful to the families of a missing person who might see a million dollars offered in another state. Some states are doing really well, some states are appalling. And I will absolutely name and shame New South Wales as a state. And Queensland, I don't understand how they attach the particular figure to rewards. In Victoria, every child has a million dollar reward. Western Australia has just stepped up to the plate,

• 7:03Speaker 01

  offering half a million dollar rewards for every missing person. And not just, usually rewards are offered in the cases of homicides. But in Western Australia, they've said, okay, every missing person has a half a million dollar reward. And Northern Territory has also stepped up. One of the cases I featured in my first book, Vanished, Norman Lawson, after I wrote the book, Northern Territory Police came out and said, okay, we're putting a half a million dollar reward onto his case and to other Northern Territory cases, which is fantastic. But again, you've got a family going, well, why is my missing person only worth 100,000 dollars? Worth 100,000 dollars, that's how they see it.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  So I think it may make sense in the fiscal departments of the government, but it doesn't make sense to a family who's dealing with a real person.

• 7:57Gemma Bath?

  Who are already grieving, emotional, you know, it just adds fuel to that fire, doesn't it?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. You know, you don't want to add to their distress and this often does. And there's missing persons cases that don't have a reward attached. And I have personally gone to the commissioner and said, this is clearly a homicide. The coroner has urged a reward, it helps solve this case. And the commissioner said, oh, okay, yeah, we'll think about it.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Very frustrating.

• 8:27Gemma Bath?

  Because do we see rewards working? Like, do they, what's the hit rate? Are they actually helping?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  It's really hard to say because it's not made public. So if someone comes forward and claims a reward, that's not going to make the front page of the paper for, you know, the safety reasons of the person who's made the report, because quite often they need to stay anonymous for their own safety. So I'm not sure. I can't answer that question because it's just not talked about.

• 8:58Gemma Bath?

  Well, it can't hurt, can it?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. And it sort of, I think it shows to the family that police and the commissioner and the governments of each individual state are serious about finding missing persons. They're saying, yes, we actually do want to do something. So this is something we can do in addition to the investigation.

• 9:19Gemma Bath?

  This is your third book. So in each of your books, you have selected a number of missing people to feature. How do you decide that? Because once again, reading the names in your most current book, I didn't recognise any of them. Is that on purpose?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  It is partly, I think, because these are cases, I guess because they've been so familiar to me. It's, I don't know how familiar they are to other people. It's more about whether a family wants me to do it, because I don't write about a missing person without full family involvement. So that's really the criteria that I use. If I go to a family and say, do you want to do this? Or they approach me sometimes and say, can you put my person in your book? So it's not that I would just go, oh, this is, you know, I realise also that I haven't got any Tasmanian cases and I haven't got any Queensland cases in the book.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And, but then again, that's just how it worked out, I think. And some of them, like Brad's case, I intended to put in the first book. And for reasons that I've explained in the book, it just didn't happen. So that's been held over to the third book and the same with Tanya Harrington's case. So it's really an individual set of circumstances as to if it just tends to come together at the time. And it's the right time. There are cases where I've written a whole chapter and given that back to the family and they've said, oh, no, we've changed our minds, we don't want to do it anymore. And that's fine, because it's a really emotional thing to go through.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  And so the 12 families that have spoken to me about this, it's such a brave thing to do, because it's opening up all of those old wounds and I really applaud them for that.

• 11:14Gemma Bath?

  And something like Barbara's story, who we're going to talk about first up. She got a lot of media attention back when it happened in the seventies. But I mean, I wasn't alive in the seventies, so I didn't hear about Barbara. I'm learning about her through your book, which a lot of people will.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Barbara, um, I became a bit obsessed with that case. And I think, um, some of the people that I spoke to when I wrote it also became obsessed with that case because she, uh, and I had unprecedented access to her life uh, through her family's generosity in giving me her letters and her diaries and tapes that were made. And, and it, I really feel that I really got to know her very well. And she was just a delight. She was just so lovely. And I really hope that people reading her story will feel that and get to know her.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Um, she was just a young girl, free spirit, travelling the world, living her best life, um, backpacking all over the world because she felt like that was a safe thing to do and it should have been.

• 12:26Gemma Bath?

  Hmm. Well, let's tell her story a little bit more. She was twenty-three, an American backpacker. She was in Australia, as you say, backpacking, using public transport, hitchhiking, doing a bit of it all, as you did back then.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 12:40Gemma Bath?

  She went missing in Sydney in nineteen seventy-eight. Can you tell us a little bit about the last known sighting that we know about of Barbara?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting because the last, uh, official sighting is of her catching the train at Beecroft. Um, and we think she was heading to Hornsby, uh, because that was the furthest that she could travel by train um, without sort of then going interstate. Her, her destination was Queensland, but we know that she liked to hitchhike because she had done it very successfully. And she'd hitchhiked throughout America at the time of Ted Bundy. She, she was hitchhiking exactly when he was abducting people in exactly the same locations. So she was very lucky that nothing happened to her. Um, she did travel through America with her boyfriend, Mike, who I spoke to for the book.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Um, so she had that protection, I guess, there. Um, but she kind of felt that she was invincible. She kept saying to her mum in all her letters, you know, I'm, I'll be fine, I'll be fine, it's fine. Hitchhiking's very safe here. I've got lifts with truck drivers and it's, I've had and had, they've been really nice to me. And, and she just had this innocent way of looking at the world and, and at people. And she trusted everybody and everyone loved her. Um, and so it wasn't until she's met the wrong person on the road that the worst has happened. Um, so we think, uh, that she did make it to Hornsby. And there was a very credible sighting of her at Hornsby chatting to some road workers at that time.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  And, um, the term road workers will ring alarm bells for people because we know now that there was a very infamous road worker at the time who may have overheard that conversation and maybe followed her up the Pacific Highway. Um, and I am, of course, talking about Ivan Milat.

• 14:34Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  We know that she made references to Texas. So a blonde Texan hitchhiker at that time would attract attention. So she was chatted to by these road workers and then she headed north, probably, um, by hitchhiking. I found a witness in, uh, that I spoke to in the book, who is sure that he saw her the following day in Tari. Uh, so that's not a confirmed sighting, but the information that he gave me was extraordinary, down to describing clothing that he couldn't have known that she had with her. But I found out that she did have these exact, uh, types of clothing with her. So the last official sighting in Sydney, but I reckon she made it at least to Tari and probably to Kempsey.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And, uh, we know from her letters and her mother's letters that there were people who think that they saw her and spoke to her in Kempsey as well. Um, and that's also the last known location of another couple, also thought to have been abducted by Milat, um, at, at almost, within months of Barbara. So, uh, we think, I, I think that Kempsey was probably her final destination.

• 15:46Gemma Bath?

  You mentioned Milat and it is a connection you look at in depth. Do you think he took her?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. And I do, I don't say that lightly because it's, it's my personal, um, bugbear that, that every time I mention almost any missing person, even, even when I say a missing person who went, who was last seen years after he was in prison, people will say, oh, that was Milat. He didn't abduct every missing person in Australia. He absolutely didn't. And there were other predators, uh, active at that time, which is horrifying to think. But if we narrow it down to, um, records that we have, um, of where he was working at the time, where he liked to drive, and at that particular time, we don't have his exact work records.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  But I, it, it was, as close as we can get, he was exactly there at that time. Uh, and I believe that it was him who took her. There's, um, there's a mention in another book that has been written about Milat of him abducting a blonde hitchhiker who was on her way to Queensland. And I think that could have been Barbara. Uh, and, uh, unfortunately, everything points to him having been responsible for taking her.

• 17:12Gemma Bath?

  Wasn't there also a conversation that we know about that happened between Milat and his wife, where a blonde hitchhiker was mentioned?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, yeah, that's the one.

• 17:20Gemma Bath?

  That's what you're talking about.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  That's what I'm referring to, yeah. I think it was, uh, it, it was dated earlier than when, um, than when Barbara went missing. But I spoke to the authors of the book and they said they can't be sure when exactly that conversation happened. Uh, and I mean, there may have been, I, I think he was absolutely responsible for others as well. It might have been another blonde hitchhiker, but, uh, I, I, I, in, in everything that I've exhaustively looked at, I think he was the one.

• 17:50Gemma Bath?

  As far as the police investigation into Barbara's disappearance, how far did they get into what you're talking about? Did they get as far as looking into Tari, into Kempsey, into the connections to Milat?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  I think that they were limited in what they could do. So they did have people who saw her, um, who believed they spoke to her in a shop at Kempsey. They had, um, probably, uh, uh, something that sent them off on a different path. Um, they did have, uh, uh, someone who worked at a train station in Tari, who said that he sold her a train ticket to Queensland. I don't think it was possible. Um, and this sighting came weeks after she was last seen. So it doesn't make any sense to me. Um, that couldn't possibly have been Barbara, but I think maybe they said, oh, okay, well, she caught a train, but I don't think that was an accurate sighting.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  And I couldn't, um, I, I did track down that particular, uh, railway worker, but he wouldn't, um, make a statement to me or to police. Um, so I don't, I think that they had a lot of sort of red herrings and, and is it her, is it not her? Um, I think the fact that she was American and, uh, from Texas and made references to specifically Texan things when she was spoken to in Kempsey, such as Nassau, because Nassau was in Houston. And, um, and if she referenced Texas specifically, her family thought, well, that's got to be. I mean, how many, um, blonde hitchhikers of that age from Texas would there have been in that exact area at that time?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  So I think that those are pretty credible sightings. But police were sort of, it, it, it's in the days well, well before the internet and well before mobile phones. And, uh, so they were sort of relying on sightings, um, and, and chasing them up weeks later after she was long gone. So, and, and of course, at that time, we had never heard of Ivan Milat. So they didn't know who they were looking for. They didn't know what had happened to her. They could track her to the last sighting and that's where the trail went cold.

• 20:00Gemma Bath?

  And none of these people that you mentioned saw her get into a vehicle? We don't have a description?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  No, no, nothing at all. Um, uh, we know that Barbara happily accepted lifts with truck drivers because she trusted them. Um, and she had had very good experiences. She went all the way from Sydney to Melbourne with a truck driver, um, who was very kind to her. Um, and she had no problems whatsoever. So it wouldn't have surprised me if she had gotten into a truck and at that time Milat was driving trucks. And I think the other couple that I mentioned, which was, um, Alan Fox and Annika Adrianson, um, possibly also got into a truck around the Kempsey area.

• 20:42Gemma Bath?

  It was sad reading her story to hear that her parents passed without ever getting answers. And I know that that is, you know, a cruel reality in a lot of these cases, isn't it? That's something that you would come across a lot, where parents have fought for decades and then never find out.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's, it's, uh, it's completely tragic. Uh, and the, it, it, the legacy gets passed on, I think, to then other family members. So I spoke to Barbara's brother for the book, but I also spoke to her niece. So she has now, um, been passed the torch of trying to look for her aunt. Um, and, and if, you know, then she may pass that to her children. And, and it, it just goes down the line in these families. Uh, when there's no one left to look for them, who's going to, who's going to still remember that they're out there?

• 21:37Gemma Bath?

  Well, I know that there is an inquiry in New South Wales right now into Ivan Milat.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  I'm hoping that, um, that the powers that be will take a look at the book. Um, because there's, I think there's two cases in the book that I think, uh, were Milat related. Um, but it's a difficult thing because he's not here for us to ask or charge or question. Uh, so it's, it's going to be really, really difficult to, um, to get any answers. I think unless we find where he actually disposed of Barbara and the others, which I think is somewhere up the, up the North Coast, there could be a couple of different locations. Um, where other murder victims have already been found. I think that, that if we, if, if something does come out of this inquiry,

• 22:23Speaker 01

  it would be that we need to search specific locations up the mid North Coast for the second area that Milat, uh, disposed of his victims.

• 22:34Gemma Bath?

  Up next, what happened to ten-year-old Bradford Foley?

• 22:41Speaker 02

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• 23:17Gemma Bath?

  I want to move on now to 10-year-old Bradford Foley.

• 23:23Gemma Bath?

  Can you tell us a bit about him? He had a really hard life for his 10 years, didn't he? He went missing in December 1982 on Boxing Day.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  That's it, yeah.

• 23:35Gemma Bath?

  What happened?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  It's an absolutely tragic story. The kids really had to kind of look after each other from a very young age. There was a lot of violence in his background. Their mum, Lorna, did the best that she could, but was very ill-equipped. So the children were eventually taken into care. She still absolutely fought to get them back, and she did get them back. She met all the conditions that the government imposed on her as far as housing goes. And she was able to get them back for visits. She visited them all the time when they were in state care. So she had just sort of got them back to the house briefly. And on that

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Boxing Day, she asked Brad to go and visit, I believe, a family friend. And the story, it's not clear if she wanted money, if she wanted some cigarettes. But Brad was her golden child. That's how she referred to him all the time. He was the golden child. He was very close to his mum. They absolutely adored each other. And so Brad took off running to the train station, and his sister Anita said, oh, you know, don't let him go by himself. Said to brother Bernie, go with him. Bernie took off running, jumped fences, but Brad was too quick. And so Brad got to the train station, and we assume got to the train station

• 25:01Speaker 01

  somewhere, and completely disappeared. Bernie came home and said, couldn't catch him. So they just thought that he would come home that day, but he never came home. Both kids and their mum went to the police and tried to report him as missing. And they said, nuts too, you can't report him missing this soon. You know, he's just a little curry kid. He'll come back.

• 25:25Gemma Bath?

  He's 10.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Went back the next day and said, he still hasn't come home. Something has happened. And then horrifically, suspicion then fell on Lorna. And she was, for years, believed to have killed her child. And Anita loudly protested this and said, absolutely nowhere in the world. They were there for a start. They were all there in the house with her. She saw Brad leave the house, and her brother saw Brad leave the house. And they knew how much Lorna adored her kids. So it was up to Anita and Bernie to really fight to clear their mother's name, because she died only a couple of years after Brad

• 26:09Speaker 01

  went missing. So it was up to Anita and Bernie to say, no, something else has happened to our little brother.

• 26:16Gemma Bath?

  Why would they accuse Lorna in the first place? Did they have any evidence?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I don't. There were some neighbours who had some strange stories. One of them was about a fire. And Anita, I spoke to Anita about this directly, and said, well, you know, tell me about the fire. One of the neighbours reported that Lorna had burned Brad's body on a mattress in the bedroom. And Anita said, absolute rubbish. Anita still lived in the same house. She lived in the same house her entire life. And so she said, if anyone wants to come here, we did have a little fire in the house. It was here in the lounge room. I'm looking at it as I speak to you. There's still a scorch

• 27:01Speaker 01

  mark on the floor. It was a tiny little fire. It was absolutely not Bradford on a mattress in the bedroom. That didn't happen. So it was perhaps vindictive neighbours. Anita had a very troubled life and was in trouble with the law quite a lot. I think because of what happened to her throughout her whole life, she had quite a mistrust of the law. And then to have her brother go missing and police not be able to find him, that deepened her mistrust of the law. So there was a lot of animosity between her and police. So on one hand, they were trying to help her, but she did get in trouble a lot. So maybe that

• 27:42Speaker 01

  was sort of a retaliation by people who felt that they needed to accuse the family. They accused Anita as well. She said that she had a shipping container in the backyard, and there were constant rumours that Brad was under the shipping container. And that made her very angry as well. Someone told police that Brad was buried under the house. So police came and dug up under the house and found nothing. They had to endure that their whole lives, that suspicion, when in fact it had nothing to do with the family.

• 28:14Gemma Bath?

  Do you think you know what happened to him?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  I do. I do. Because I did speak to other people connected to the family who told me horrific stories about a person connected to the family. I'm not a big fan of coincidences. I think if you've got a person who has these particular behaviours, and that person has a direct link to the family, and then you have a missing child, you have to put all of those pieces together. And police, they were aware of that. But again, it comes down to evidence. They don't have a body. They don't have any evidence. They've got nothing to prove that that's what happened. But I think there's a definite strong suspect in that case.

• 28:59Gemma Bath?

  And once again, Anita died in 2020 without answers. And the death of Brad really kind of followed her throughout her whole life, didn't it?

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. She didn't, I think she was always Brad's sister. She struggled to be Anita. And she was such a, she could tell you to the minute, all of the birthdays of her family, the dates of the deaths of her family. She was a very proud Foley woman, and loved her family deeply. They were everything to her. Adored her brother Bernie. When we spoke, she was just desperate for him to come and live with her so that they could be together, because all they had left was each other. And she was a tortured woman

• 29:52Speaker 01

  who was in a lot of pain.

• 29:55Gemma Bath?

  I do need to ask, in terms of that case, it was the 80s. Do you think racism played a part in the lack of investigation in that story?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  I did speak to a man who grew up with the Foleys and was in care with the Foleys. So he sort of was looking at it from the outside, and that's what he believes. He believes that police did say, just an Aboriginal kid, they run away all the time. Look at his upbringing. He lived on the streets half the time. You know, he's just run off to King's Cross. He's just run off here. So I think that wasn't exclusive to Aboriginal children. I saw that attitude in the 70s and 80s with other missing kids, missing teenagers. Unfortunately, they just had this attitude of, oh, you know, they're just a troubled

• 30:50Speaker 01

  kid. They'll come back, instead of taking it seriously from the start. So it's a difficult question to answer, because I don't know. But that's what people close to the family believe.

• 31:03Gemma Bath?

  Atilla Bogar. Now, this case is quite baffling, really. Would you agree with that?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yes. It's one of those cases where, when I was writing it, I was thinking, I bet he's going to be watching the interviews that I do and talking about him. So Atilla, if you are out there, hello, please give your sister a call.

• 31:25Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yes, it's very strange.

• 31:28Gemma Bath?

  Well, he was once called the most promising upcoming developer of the time by then Prime Minister John Howard.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:36Gemma Bath?

  He was from Melbourne, went missing aged 35 in 2014. Was Mr. Howard on to something? Was he developing the next big thing?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  He could well have been. He was one of those computer geniuses that was so clever. He could well have been snapped up by the government. That's what his sister believes. Snapped up by the government to work on technical AZO surveillance. It's all well beyond my comprehension. But he was a very, very intelligent man who had his own computer company at a very young age, and was working on complicated systems. He was developing a system that went into schools that other people failed to develop. And he went in and did what he

• 32:27Speaker 01

  did and made it perfect. And he was extremely clever. So who knows? It just seems a bit strange that someone that clever would just disappear.

• 32:39Gemma Bath?

  Well, I found it interesting that back in 2014, he was talking about wanting to get into AI. I mean, fast forward to 2026, look where we are.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I think he was well beyond his time. I think if anyone could orchestrate a disappearance, it may be someone like Atilla.

• 32:57Gemma Bath?

  Let's talk about it because he was quite paranoid before his disappearance, wasn't he? Tell me about those weeks and days because there was an early morning phone call, some weird stuff with asking his mum to give him cash. What happened?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, uh, his behaviour did sort of decline over a period of time, but he was still running his company. He was still a very capable man. He had set up meetings. He was waiting for bank investment to expand the business. So it wasn't like he was in, in a complete disarray in his life. But he did have some paranoia whether or not that was justified. Perhaps he was working on something that made him concerned for his safety or the safety of his friends. We don't know. The bits that really confused me are that he hated driving.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  He wouldn't even drive 10 minutes from his home to his office. He would ask his sister to give him a lift or his mum to give him a lift. Absolutely hated driving. Sometimes he would pull over to the side of the road and say, ring someone and say, like, I pulled the car over, come and get me. He wouldn't drive over a bridge.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely hated driving, which I can relate to. I hate driving as well, so that's, I, I get that. But he, uh, for, for then some reason jumped in the car and drove from Melbourne to Sydney. And we think, according to his car GPS, as far as Noosa, turned around and came back down, went driving in, in the city Sydney, which the thought of that petrifies me. So I can't, I don't, how did Atilla do that? And then started to drive back to Melbourne. Why did he do all that driving? What was he doing? Was he going to meet someone? Uh, so it's very confusing. And then for someone who was almost surgically attached to his phone, left, um, certain things in his car, but took certain things with him.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  So left things that could be tracked, but took things that couldn't be tracked. And, and he's the sort of person who would be able to, to know if someone was able to track him with that information. And then more recently, um, I've discovered that he was possibly meeting someone in Wollongong.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And then, uh, that also turned into a huge mystery because the person that gave me that information then died a couple of days later after our phone call. So it's, it is just the most intriguing case. And, uh, if it is a case that Atilla did abandon his car at Pickton and take his own life, then where is his body?

• 35:37Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  And, and there's just too, too many questions really, and police are still looking into this case.

• 35:44Gemma Bath?

  He made a triple zero call. What did he say in that?

• 35:48Speaker 01

  He claimed that he had, he, he was confessing to a crime that he hadn't committed. So he claimed that he had taken a bribe from someone, a particular, a large payment of a few, of several thousand dollars, um, for, uh, he wasn't really clear with police about what that was for. He said that he had taken a bribe, but his sister then went through every account because she was, uh, she worked for his business and so she was in charge of all his financials. She, um, was his EPOA. So after he went missing, she was able to access absolutely everything. There was no payment. So, um, presumably that wasn't in cash

• 36:32Speaker 01

  because as you said, he asked his mum for some cash.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  He said for accommodation. So if he had taken this massive bribe in cash, then he wouldn't have needed to ask his mum for anything and worry her. And there was absolutely no evidence that he had taken a bribe for anything. And what would, what would someone need to bribe him about? So he kind of made a false confession to police and they, uh, then were not able to locate him. He sort of, he was on the phone for quite a while to the police during that triple zero call. But they don't know exactly where he was at that time. Um, and, uh, and again, then just vanished.

• 37:14Gemma Bath?

  What is your theory here? Because you said hello Atilla at the start. Do you think he could be alive?

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Well, I tend to go by the people who knew them and, uh, and he's, he was very close to his sister. It was just the two of them. They were extremely close. They lived together at one point. They worked together. She worked for his business. So they were together constantly. And that's what she thinks. So she thinks it's highly possible that Atilla orchestrated his own disappearance or the government orchestrated his disappearance and said, we need you, we need your brain for this secret project. Or, you know, it's just all sounding a little bit sci-fi, isn't it?

• 37:54Gemma Bath?

  Or conspiracy theory-esque, yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But I'm just going by the person that knew him the best and that's his sister. And she thinks that that is entirely possible. There's, strange things have happened as well. She's had, um, twins since then and, um, she's, she has, uh, she's specifically made that announcement public because she wanted Atilla to be able to see that he was an uncle. So little things like that, she thinks that maybe he is still out there.

• 38:25Gemma Bath?

  It is certainly one of the stranger stories I've heard in the missing persons world.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Definitely, definitely. It's one of those, uh, ones, you, normally you can sort of say, okay, this is the likely scenario.

• 38:37Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  With Atilla. I don't know. I think if he, if he was still somewhere by the side of the road at Pickton, they would have found him.

• 38:44Gemma Bath?

  Moving on to Brian Maxted, he was 25, disappeared in 2009 after taking a flight from his home in Darwin to Sydney. This is also another quite strange one. He checked into a hotel, a very expensive hotel. And they found his belongings there. So we know he was at the hotel. But this was all quite out of character for him. It was a bit weird.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Very much. And I think that's the point. I think he wanted to change his life. I think he wanted to do something exciting with his life. He had been in Darwin, you know, working at the local electronics store. He was briefly engaged, but that didn't work out. He was living in a caravan, um, on the property owned by his stepfather, who he didn't get on with. I think he just thought, my life is going nowhere. I need to do something. I need to shake it up. And he thought, right, I'm going to get on a plane. So he went to Sydney and thought, I'm going to just do something exciting. What do you do when you're 25 year old man, landing in Sydney for the first time, you go to King's Cross?

• 39:51Speaker 01

  And so that's what he did. And he also spoke to an escort agency, but just wanted to talk to them. And they found him really sweet and really nice. And they were concerned because he was quite a naive young guy, um, in, who wanted to go and experience a, a quite dangerous part of Sydney if you, you don't have your wits about you because there's a very big difference between Darwin and King's Cross. And at that time, I sort of delved into what was going on in King's Cross at that time. There was a lot of violence. There was a lot of street violence. There was a lot of robbery. It was not a, a great place for someone who really didn't know what they were doing.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  And so I think Brian just wanted to have some fun, wanted to experience the nightlife. But something's happened. Something has definitely happened. We know he saw a doctor in Sydney, um, at that time, who gave him antidepressants. Now I can't figure that out either because this doctor was a locum.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  And you don't go to, to a locum doctor on holidays and get antidepressants. It doesn't work like that. You need to be assessed and diagnosed and antidepressants take a long time to work. And so I don't know if this was a refill of a prescription he already had. So we know he filled the prescription because the medication was found in the hotel room. So we know he was feeling depressed, but if that may have been a long-term condition, it may not have been something he was feeling at the time. He may have been quite happy in Sydney. But I think, again, it's one of those cases where police has said, he was on antidepressants, therefore he's taken his own life.

• 41:35Gemma Bath?

  Yep.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  And that's, uh, that's a message his mother, makes his mother very angry. She said, no, that was not him at all. He absolutely adored his mum. They were very close. It was just the two of them for most of their life. In every conversation I have with Janine, she said, I love Brian so much and he loved me. Every conversation. That was the, he was her whole world and he still is, you know, she's, she has just been completely shattered by his disappearance.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  So I think it's, it's dangerous for police to make these assumptions. And they made the same assumption about Sandrine Jordan in my second book, Missing. She had had a previous suicide attempt. She was on antidepressants. She must have taken her own life. And so that's what they've assumed here. Um, but I would say, well, how would you do that in King's Cross and not be found? Uh, and why didn't anyone see anything? And so I think it's, my concern is that he's gone to King's Cross and has said the wrong thing to the wrong person. And, um, and I think someone may have harmed him. And that's the conclusion that I've come to with Brian's case.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  For him to suddenly just abandon everything. He was planning to go back to the hotel. Everything was there. Caught a taxi to King's Cross and has gone missing. So what happened to him that night?

• 43:02Gemma Bath?

  I was shocked to read that the Northern Territory and the New South Wales Police basically played hot potato with this case. I mean, it was two thousand and nine.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:12Gemma Bath?

  And the cross kind of police communication just wasn't there.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. They were saying, oh, it's a Darwin case. Well, it's not because he went missing in King's Cross. And his poor mother was caught in the middle of that and she was unaware that that no one was investigating her son's disappearance. Because they were saying, oh, he went missing in Darwin. It's the Northern Territory case. Oh, yeah, but he was last seen in Sydney. Uh, it is ridiculous to me that that sort of red tape exists and prevented what could have been, you know, they could have been interviewing taxi drivers, they could have been getting CCTV from nightclubs and from streets and and no one was doing anything. And by the time they sort of got themselves together and said, oh, yeah, it is really actually a Sydney case because he went missing in Sydney.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  All of that, that information and evidence was gone because it was too long. That they had just taken too long to get around to investigating it properly. And no one's investigated whether Brian was murdered.

• 44:10Gemma Bath?

  It feels like a lot of these missing people end up just falling through cracks. Am I right in that assumption?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  I think so, because as you said at the start, you haven't heard of these names. So why aren't there there's, there's a lot of uh names that are very familiar to the public. Um, but yeah, a lot of, I think it depends on investigating officers, it depends on um preconceived notions about what bad behaviours, but they didn't know these missing persons. And what they need to do is listen to their families. And if they had listened to his mother saying he would not have done this, he would not have taken his own life, he had no reason to. He had his whole life ahead of him. He was not clinically depressed. He was not suicidal. And why would he go to Sydney? To, you know, it's nothing, none of that makes sense.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  So I think they need to really listen to the families and take on board what they say about their missing person. Um, rather than a police officer who never met them, standing up in the coroner's court, saying it is my belief that they took their own life. Because that's offensive and upsetting to a family.

• 45:20Gemma Bath?

  Let's go back to the seventies. Rhonda State, she went missing in nineteen seventy nine. She was twenty. She was a young mum. She had a four-year-old daughter.

• 45:31Gemma Bath?

  And it was Camden that she went missing and other New South Wales. What can you tell me about her? Because she went to a dance and then vanished, didn't she?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  She did. Uh, again, it's alarming because it's that whole Camden, Campbelltown area. And we once again know that that was Milat's stomping ground.

• 45:53Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  And again, Rhonda had a little bit of a troubled past. Um, she was a very young mum. She became a mum as a teenager. But absolutely adored her daughter Sarah. Um, I spoke to Sarah for the book, who you know, only has limited memories of her mum because she was such a little girl when she went missing. But has grown up knowing that something terrible happened to her mother. And it's really just been so distressing for her. Um, it affected her deeply throughout her whole life. And so Rhonda did have a little bit of a troubled history. And I think that could have coloured the police investigation again. They thought, oh, you know, she's just a little bit of a, a tear away. She'll, she's taken off, she'll come back. But once again,

• 46:38Speaker 01

  uh, not really properly investigated because when I wrote the book, I spoke to someone who saw her getting into a car in the car park after the dance. And I said, so when you reported this to police? And she said, no.

• 46:53Gemma Bath?

  Oh.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  She's never spoken to police.

• 46:56Gemma Bath?

  What?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I spoke to a direct eyewitness who has never spoken to police. I said, why? And she said, they never asked me.

• 47:03Gemma Bath?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Now, wouldn't you have thought that police would have tracked down every single person at that dance and said, did you see anything? But they didn't. I don't know why. I don't know how you could not do that. So they uh, they certainly made public appeals. Rhonda's um case was in the media, it was in the newspapers. But they didn't do the basics of, of tracking down and asking people, what did you see? And so now me asking that question of this eyewitness, um, all of these years later, she can't remember. She can't remember, she, there was, she thinks there was a man at the wheel of the car.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Um, Rhonda got in willingly, so perhaps he had offered her a lift somewhere. There was a suggestion she wanted to go and visit a man at Campbelltown. So maybe this guy said, I'll give you a lift there. Maybe this guy was Ivan Milat. Um, she can't remember the details of the car. She thinks it was a station wagon. And then I had another eyewitness who has seen photos of what Milat looked like at the time in the late seventies. And has a memory, uh, whether it's an accurate memory or not, who knows? But she has a memory of a man who looked like that, who would hang around the dance. And would hang around inside. There was a, a, a, a dance area inside the Masonic Hall.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  And um, a, a bar area. And there were a group of men who sat in this bar area drinking and sort of watching the dancing. And um, she has a memory of him being there. And then another eyewitness who came forward, who said her husband worked with Milat at the um, I think it's a mine down there at, at that time. And knows that he frequented that particular dance. She, she knows that. Once again, the police don't have any of that information because they've not canvassed any of the people that were there at that time. So uh, in Rhonda's case again, and um, you know, a- again, I would never just say, oh, yeah, nineteen seventy eight, obviously it was Milat. I would never do that. There were so many other predators.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  But in this case, there is multiple people that can put him at that location at that time. And we know that he didn't just start um, abducting and killing people in the nineties. It, this was, this was going on in the late seventies.

• 49:26Gemma Bath?

  It's pretty scary, isn't it? You know, you've only covered a, a few cases in this book and two of them potentially were taken by Milat. How many people did this serial killer take?

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. It's um, there's a list at the end of the book as well of all of the people uh missing in the seventies, um, particularly young women, not just women, though. Sometimes there were couples, sometimes there were. And I don't, they definitely weren't all taken by Milat. But we need to, and I'm glad that the, that the inquiry is looking at it again. I'm not sure how we can prove that it happened. But uh, I think if we, if we really put together a strong timeline of where he was and his, his general MO, it's, it's what he did. He said, hey, do you want a lift somewhere? That's how he got people into his car.

• 50:18Gemma Bath?

  Yep.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Um, and, and I think that it, it's alarming at, that how many there are. And it, the thing that upsets me is that you've got families who can never lay that, lay those people to rest. So they're in a shallow grave somewhere. And that's what haunts Barbara's brother. And that's what haunts Sarah, that where, where are they? Why can't they be laid to rest in a decent, respectful way?

• 50:42Gemma Bath?

  Well, Rhonda's case was recently announced as part of a parliamentary inquiry.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:48Gemma Bath?

  But it does mean that, I mean, her case is getting looked at again. I mean, that's good news.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, all missing persons who are suspected unsolved, unsolved homicides are looked at every five years anyway. Whether that it's not, I don't think it's a particularly intensive um, reinvestigation. Um, they just kind of check things to see if there's been any new information, if they've got anything that might need to be looked at, any evidence that has popped up. So that is happening every five years anyway, according to um, New South Wales Unsolved Homicide. But anything that will take another look at, I'm very passionate about cold cases. Because these people have been tortured for their whole lives. So that needs to stop.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Um, but the other, the other thing that I really am so passionate about, that I've spoken about in the book, is that we have a lot of unidentified remains, particularly in New South Wales, thousands, thousands across the country. Um, that we just don't have the funding to identify. And it is difficult when you've got, yeah, um, particularly very degraded remains, it's very difficult to identify them and more expensive and needing further specific um testing, DNA testing. But we're not funding that. So I could be making appeals for people who were found years ago, that we just haven't been able to identify. So some of these people may have been found.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  But they're just lying in Glebe Morgue, unidentified without a name.

• 52:23Gemma Bath?

  That's devastating.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Hmm, hmm. Yeah, it, it horrifies me that we're spending money on, on things that, you know, statues and stadiums when we could be giving people back their daughters.

• 52:36Gemma Bath?

  Hmm. Because if there's anything from reading these stories, it's learning about how this grief destroys people. Or like, just is a shadow over them for their whole lives. In the case of Sarah, the young girl who lost Rhonda. You know, she was looked after by loving grandparents who just stopped talking about Rhonda. And, and she kind of faded into the background. But for Sarah, that's her mum. And it just was, it's, it's so sad to see how it shapes these people.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And uh, you know, the letter that um, Barbara Brown's mother wrote to the police, just saying, you know, I'm just one of many, but please don't forget my daughter. Um, and so it, it's a privilege to be able to now in twenty twenty six, still talk about these people. And, and say, I haven't forgotten them. I'm going to keep talking about these people because that's all we can do. It's um, and, and sometimes the families aren't strong enough. I think I, I've gone to a few of them actually and said, do you want to speak to the media when the book comes out? And um, many of them have said, I just can't. Can you talk for me?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Um, because it's too, it, it was hard enough doing the interviews and we all cried during the interviews. And it's, it's hard enough for them to relive it, uh, rather than to keep talking about it. You've got people like Sally Leyden, who is amazing at talking about her mum Marion Bada. She has this amazing strength and is able to do that all the time. Um, not all families have that. Um, and so they need others to speak on their behalf.

• 54:23Gemma Bath?

  After the break, Nicole tells me about a case that's close to her heart.

• 54:30Gemma Bath?

  The last missing person I want to talk about is Tanya Farrington. Another 1970s missing person, late 1970s. She was 14 and she went missing from Crowsnest, Sydney. Tell me why this case is so personal to you.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  It was not long after I started the register. So I've been doing this 21 years. So it was not long after I started, I got an email from Tanya's sister-in-law. So she was married to Tanya's brother, Tony. And said, oh, I've just spotted Tanya's entry on your website. Who are you? And, and that sparked a friendship that has lasted so almost 20 years. So Leanne is, is my best friend. We have become so close. And when Tanya's case went before the coroner, which was a very long time ago now,

• 55:29Speaker 01

  we bonded together and said, okay, we're going to present the absolute strongest submission to the coroner that we can. We are going to find every scrap of information about Tanya. The police literally lost her file. I think they said, Tony, Tony was told that it was just sitting dusty on a shelf at North Sydney Police Station somewhere, and it was pretty much empty. So Leanne and I said, we're going to fill that file up and we're going to give the coroner so much information. And so we tracked down everything. We went through every person she went to school with. We know that she had a boyfriend at that time, but the police couldn't figure out who he was. So Leanne and I figured out who he was and we sent the police to go and talk to him.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  We, we uncovered absolutely everything we possibly could because we wanted to just do the best that we could for Tanya and, and, and honour her and honour Tanya's parents who also died with never knowing what happened. So we gave all that information to the coroner and, and, you know, still no one has ever been charged. She is a case where I don't believe it was Ivan Mallett, even though he was around at that time, I don't think it was Mallett. There was another gang operating around the Northern Beaches at that time, who were thought to be responsible for the abduction and murder of Trudy Adams at around the same time.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  I think that those men are likely to have taken Tanya, but there's also some other kind of red herrings that we, that we found and, and other potential suspects. You know, we sort of discounted the boyfriend, but Tanya was someone who was really desperate to, for someone to love her. She, she wanted a boyfriend, she wanted that love, she wanted to feel happy in her life. She was sort of struggling to fit in with her school and her friends in Sydney. She had come from Port Macquarie, where she was very beloved by her friends and had loved her life there, moved to Sydney and sort of struggled to fit in where she was.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  So she was really looking for that connection with someone. And when we spoke to all of the people in her life, there were some, some concerns that we had that popped up, that we've passed on to police as well. And police are already very well aware of them as well. People that were interviewed at the time that sort of gave conflicting accounts of things. So it's, it's, it's far from over.

• 58:08Gemma Bath?

  To step back a bit, what were the circumstances of her disappearance? She went missing basically from her bedroom, right?

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Pretty much, yeah. Tanya was a bit of a rebel. She, she liked to sort of sneak out of the house on occasion. They had found her on Manly Beach one day with a boy. They, we know from speaking to her friends that she would sneak out and go to nightclubs, mostly at Manly. And she just wanted to have a good time. She wanted to be older than she was and just wanted to enjoy her life. And she had this big, bright city now around her and she wanted to explore it. So we know that she did sneak out quite often and that's probably what she did on that night. But where she went after that, we just don't know. Whether she hitchhiked down to Manly.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  But again, I did a lot of research about what was on that night in Manly at that time. And there's probably not a lot that she could have gone to see that, you know, she could have snuck into a pub, but there was, weren't any major events on that night. So I don't know that she would have snuck down to Manly on a Thursday night. So whether she was instead going to visit a friend locally, whether she was going to walk to that friend, or whether she was going to hitchhike somewhere and, and she's been picked up by the wrong person, we're not sure.

• 59:31Gemma Bath?

  You think that she could have been the victim of this potential gang that you mentioned? Is there just not enough evidence there or are the police not looking into it? Like, where are we at with her case?

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Again, all those suspects are dead. So it's, we can't go and say, hey. I, I did speak to an amazing police officer named Jason MacLeod, who has done so much work. It's a very complicated situation involving a corrupt police officer who kind of protected one of the main suspects. And, and he did a lot of work in trying to find out what happened to Tanya way back, sort of around the time of the coronal inquiry. And he did, I think the closest we came to was one of the suspects who in prison talked about taking a girl from Crowsnest. And we think that was Tanya.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  And we know that he was part of this particular gang of usually two or three that would roam around abducting these girls. There were a series of rapes on, abductions and rapes on the Northern Beaches at that time that we are sure that these people were responsible for. But again, they're all dead. We can't ask them, we can't charge them. So where Tanya's body may be, we have absolutely no idea. The same with Trudy Adams, no one was able to find her body either.

• 1:00:54Gemma Bath?

  Was it a really different experience for you, being so close to the family in this case and kind of investigating it alongside them? Because these people have become like family to you. I can imagine that's a very different kind of experience.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  It was. I think I never want to favour one missing person over another. And I always have always said that, you know, I, because I don't have a missing person in my own life, I can be impartial. So I didn't want to sort of say, oh, you know, Tanya is more special than the others. But it was, I think my friendship with Leanne was absolutely the reason that I jumped in and said, okay, let's really deep dive into this because I, I'm not able to do that for all missing persons. So it was, it just felt like I was honouring Tanya to do that. And the same with, with putting her in the book. I felt, I said to Leanne, do you think we've done her justice?

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  And, and she said, yes, we've done everything we can. So that was a new experience, certainly.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  And I feel like I wanted to do that for Tanya's mum as well.

• 1:02:08Gemma Bath?

  Reading about Tony's experience as the brother, you know, you could see a lot of survivor's guilt through him. That's another, that's another kind of thing that you see with a lot of these families, isn't it?

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Oh, it, it just horrendous. He is just a broken man. He really is. It's really affected him throughout his whole life. And he just kept saying, I should have been able to protect her. He was her big brother. There was quite a few years between them. He, you know, he said, I should have been there, I should have looked out, I should have known what she was doing, I should have stopped her from sneaking out. He, he feels guilty that it just annoyed him at the time. He was, he was annoyed with her when his mum told him the next morning, oh, Tanya didn't come home. He was like, oh, oh, you know, oh, Jesus. Typical Tanya. You know, he didn't, he wasn't worried. It wasn't until sort of the next day that it's like, oh, she still hasn't come home.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  And, and he feels tremendous guilt that he couldn't do anything to stop it from happening. But the reality is, there's nothing anyone could have done. I think she was gone before anyone knew that she was missing.

• 1:03:17Gemma Bath?

  Does, living in these stories and in the unknown of the missing person's world, has it taken a toll on you, 21 years of it?

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  I think it's, I'm, I'm very conscious of my own mental health because, you know, I, I think that I'm a sort of a mental health ambassador and I've got some qualifications in mental health. The work I do is with dementia, so I'm very interested in the brain and, and how it, how it works. So I'm conscious of my own mental health and I know that when I start getting really stressed, I can take a step back. And I do things to kind of manage my own stress levels. You know, I meditate and I watch silly Facebook videos and, and, and you've got to do things in your life that you enjoy to counteract the hard stuff.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  But I can also compartmentalise what I do with my own life because these things are not happening to me. So I, I don't take on that, that terrible feeling of, of distress because it's, I don't have the right to, because this isn't happening to my life, thankfully. I mean, it could, having a missing person could happen to anyone. But I'm just able to, to say, okay, I need to be this type of person to be able to help these people so that they don't need someone to cry with them, they need to say, right, let's do something.

• 1:04:55Gemma Bath?

  The register is something that you do in your own time for free. You've done it for 21 years.

• 1:05:02Gemma Bath?

  What's the future of it look like? Do you have another 20 years in you?

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely, yeah. As long as people still go missing, I can't imagine not doing it. I can't imagine living a life where you're not contributing something to the community around you because I think we're all here to help one another. And that's what society is, that's what community is. And if you have the ability to help someone and you don't, then what's the point? I, I can't imagine being, I can't imagine not helping someone because that's just kind of what I do. So if I have the ability to do it, then I'll absolutely keep doing it. And I've loved writing the books.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  That has been so incredible for me because I've always wanted to write and now I've written three books and that's so exciting to me. So I want to keep doing that, whether that's missing persons books or different kind of books. But I'll absolutely still be there. There's no reason why I wouldn't be able to, I think, to, just to help people because it's, it's, it's become automatic now.

• 1:06:14Gemma Bath?

  You're incredible, Nicole. Thank you for everything you do and thank you for joining us again.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. It was lovely.

• 1:06:22Gemma Bath?

  Thank you to Nicole for helping us to tell these stories. If you have any information about a missing person, you can contact Crime Stoppers on 1-800-333-000. Or go to www.crimestoppers.com.au. You can find a link to her book, Lost, in our show notes. You can also find a link to the Australian Missing Persons Register. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.