Pod Insights Unravel 03 What Became of Jack? | The dark side About this episode Rob retraces Jack's final hours via CCTV footage and meeting people who saw him in his last days. He also learns about another item found in Jack's wallet that reveals a different side to what went on that night. And finally, ABC journalist Rob Burgin gets a call through to the last known person to see Jack alive, and he agrees to speak publicly for the first time.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Whether it's a gun, a blade or a bomb, an assassination is rarely just about silencing an opponent. Usually, it's about trying to change the course of history with a single murder. And sometimes, it works. Join me, Azlan Pahadi, for Assassins, where we tell the stories behind some of the world's most startling assassinations. Find Assassins on the ABC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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0:36 Speaker 02 Just before we start, this episode contains some strong language.
0:41 Speaker 03 The Kilkeven Hotel is this beautiful old two-storey country pub. It's got this hand-carved wooden bar top and a wide wraparound balcony. And the outside is painted pink.
0:53 Speaker 04 It was really busy in the public bar and at the front, but nobody else was sort of sitting really in the dining room.
1:02 Speaker 03 A few days before Jack disappeared, Sue is sitting in the pokey room. Here's how she remembers what happens next.
1:08 Speaker 04 I was sitting at the pokies, playing the pokies, and this young fella comes in, right?
1:15 Speaker 03 He's tall and cradling a beer. The room is narrow with just one row of pokies. And if Sue leans back from her pokey chair, she can actually touch the wall behind her. It's only polite that she strikes up a conversation.
1:29 Speaker 04 He said, "Hello, how are you?" And I said, "Hi darling, how are you?" And he was sitting there for a few minutes. He was real fidgety. He was trying to drink his beer, but he didn't really want it. And he put like a $50 note in the pokies and just sort of hit it real quick and it was gone.
1:44 Speaker 03 She says the young man looks nervous.
1:47 Speaker 04 He was struggling to drink his beer. He kind of looked like he was going to bring it up at the same time he was swallowing it. That's how stressed he looked to me. We were talking for probably about 20 minutes, maybe even a little bit longer.
2:01 Speaker 03 Sue looks the bloke up and down. He's pretty fit looking, but he seems frightened. He tells Sue there's someone waiting for him in the car and he's been taken to meet some serious people.
2:12 Speaker 04 "I don't even really drink," he said, "but I've got a beer because I'm so nervous." And they're into drug dealers and shit and he doesn't want to go, he's scared. And I said, "Well, you should listen to yourself, sweaty, and go." He goes, "I just want to go home to mum." And I said, "Well, you know what? You should listen to your stomach and go home to your mum, darling. Your tummy's telling you something's not right, something's not right." And then he just gave me a hug and thanked me for listening to him.
2:37 Speaker 03 What did he say when he hugged you?
2:40 Speaker 04 He just said, "Thank you for listening to me. You're a beautiful lady." I said, "Take care" and then that was it.
2:50 Speaker 03 Sue is convinced that young man was Jack McLennan. And before the week was done, Jack would go missing, never to be seen again. How was your feeling when you saw the, all the bulletins about Jack going missing?
3:06 Speaker 04 I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried.
3:09 Speaker 03 It's hard to know how much of what Sue is remembering has been clouded by what happened since, and whether the young man she saw really was Jack McLennan.
3:19 Speaker 03 I've spoken to people who think Jack did go to the Kilkeevan pub in the week before he disappeared, possibly looking for a room, but they just couldn't be sure which night. I also checked with the pub's owner. He took a look in the pub's accommodation logbook for me, and he said, "Well, Jack's name isn't in it. It's still possible he came in to ask about a room." When I asked about the hotel's CCTV, the pub owner said it's long since been deleted. But whatever the case, Sue is convinced it was Jack, and she has lasting regrets about that night.
3:53 Speaker 04 He never told me his mate's name and I am so fucking angry at myself for not asking.
3:59 Speaker 03 She and her husband Shane asked me not to use their last names. They say it's not safe, not in a small town where everyone talks.
4:08 Speaker 04 You don't live near this town, it's very dangerous.
4:10 Speaker 05 Yeah, we live in a little quiet country town, you know what I mean?
4:13 Speaker 04 You're dead, just like Jack.
4:16 Speaker 03 She says if you open your mouth, you're dead, just like Jack.
4:23 Speaker 03 It's not just Sue who thinks Jack might have got tangled up in something. Lots of people I talk to in the area think he stumbled into something dangerous. But what kind of danger? And who was he with? I reckon maybe my best hope of finding out lies with the people he saw on that last day before he disappeared. I'm Rob Burgin and this is What Became of Jack?, the latest season of Unravel.
5:02 Speaker 03 First of all, I just want to say thanks to all of you who've got in touch or commented on the podcast. I know a lot of you are really invested in this and your feedback honestly means a lot to us. I've noticed quite a few of you have heard a rumour that Jack might have ended up at Kimbombi Falls, which is a remote scenic area about 30Ks from Fix Crossing. Don't worry, we've heard those stories too and we are looking into them. We will talk about that in a later episode. In the meantime, if you know something about what happened that night, or if you want to send us a message, get in touch at [email protected] . Or you can always call Crime Stoppers on 1-800-333-00.
5:45 Speaker 03 Okay, for now, back to the investigation. And I want to focus for a second on a short piece of CCTV footage that captured Jack on the day he went missing. It's from a bottle shop near the middle of Mergan, that town around five minutes up the road from Fix Crossing.
6:04 Speaker 03 All right, I'm just going to load up this video. As far as I know, this is the only bit of footage that exists of Jack from that day that's been released to the public.
6:15 Speaker 03 And I'll just hit play now.
6:19 Speaker 03 From the right side of screen, in comes this blue Toyota Kluger SUV. And Jack hops out of the passenger side with a black cap on back to front, camouflage shirt and he's got black shorts and a white pair of trainers. He enters the bottle shop with a guy of similar height in an orange shirt, blue shorts. Jack's leaning on the counter, he's kind of flexing his triceps and he's so relaxed. His mate's paying for the drinks that they've bought. And while his mate walks out the front, Jack remains behind talking briefly to the cashier, gives him a thumbs up and the guy that works at the bottle shop almost follows him out to the front door in a really friendly way.
7:05 Speaker 03 Everybody aside from Jack in this video is blurred. But really, they're the key pieces of the puzzle. I feel like I have to drive back out to Mergan, visit this exact bottle shop and speak to the exact same guy that served Jack that day.
7:37 Speaker 03 Hey mate, sorry to bother you, I'm Rob Mergan with ABC, I've been working on that Jack McLean story. I ask the guy behind the counter at the bottle shop if I can speak to whoever served Jack that day. He points over to a stocky guy with short red hair and a friendly face. He looks around the same age as Jack. But I can see now is not a good time. It's a Friday and the place is packed.
8:04 Speaker 03 Tomorrow morning, okay, sweet mate. It's actually two days later when we eventually catch up at the local tennis courts.
8:13 Speaker 03 Jeez, that's got hot.
8:15 Speaker 03 We sit on a retaining wall, squinting into the sun. Yeah, the sun's pretty warm today. Mergans not, um, not a cool place until winter. Two ginger blokes sitting outside. As I look around us, I feel like I'm surrounded by physical reminders of Jack's mysterious disappearance. I can see where Jack left his car, never to return to it. I can see the hedge where his hat was found. And I can see the bottle shop where Jack came on his last day with that bloke in the car. The one whose face was smudged out on the CCTV footage. Kyle's the guy who served them and he's a little nervous as we start the interview. I might get you to start by saying, hi, my name is. I have my name's Kyle, um, I've been living in Mergan for about twenty years of my life. Never done this stuff before, so. You're right.
9:00 Speaker 03 And so the Friday, uh, that he comes in, can you remember much about that day beforehand? Um, it seemed to be a normal day so far. It was just the normal run of the mill Friday. I can't remember exactly what they bought, but I think it was only like a six pack. I think it was only beers. Kyle recognised Jack. They actually used to work together. I worked with him in Kingaroy, uh, probably worked with him for around three months. And then I just kept in contact with him over Snapchat and Instagram and stuff like that. Kept the friendship going afterwards. He said Jack seemed fine that day. He seemed pretty calm and collected. He just seemed the normal old bubbly Jack. He didn't seem to have anything like off about him. He didn't seem a bit scared or anything like that.
9:44 Speaker 03 He seemed to be just about himself. On the CCTV, it looks like he, he kind of looks back at you and has like his arm expression seems like really friendly, like you two. Yeah, yeah, we were joking around the whole time he was in there and just having a good catch up. Since that day and since the investigation into Jack's disappearance has stalled, the local rumor mill has been in overdrive. Even Kyle, who only briefly crossed paths with Jack on his last day, has been dragged into the swamp. I've had a few people come in and accuse me and say that it wasn't, I couldn't see that he was distressed, but the Facebook messages. What, what do you think about that stuff? Um, well, you never have the full story. If you're not there, you're not gonna know. Did you know the person he was with at all or? Uh, no, I don't know. Yeah.
10:29 Speaker 03 Probably best left alone, yeah.
10:32 Speaker 03 I asked Kyle some more about this guy, but he says he really doesn't want to talk about it. And we finish up the interview.
10:44 Speaker 03 I completely understand why Kyle wants to be careful about what he says, and why so many people I've interviewed only want to be known by their first name. The online chatter about Jack's disappearance just seems to be getting more and more full-on the longer that he's missing. There's the Facebook pages families set up, but then there are others that have sprung up since. Like, there's one dedicated to following missing persons cases which has jumped on to Jack's story. There's another couple that look at crime in the region, and a handful more that are following along. There are some well-meaning people, no doubt, but there's also a lot of overly morbid discussion about the case, as well as some made-up stuff and unfair accusations.
11:26 Speaker 03 People appear under pseudonyms and they accuse each other of being involved. There are these big online fights that threaten to eventually spill offline. But these Facebook pages occasionally get something right, and pretty early on they seem to have worked out who Jack was with at the bottle shop.
11:45 Speaker 03 In the footage, the guy's face is blurred out, but you can pretty clearly see what car he's driving. And in these small towns, everyone knows what car everyone else drives. This car in particular was driven by Jack's mate, Chris Duke, the same mate that he ended up with out at Fix Crossing, the last known person to see him alive.
12:09 Speaker 03 I tracked down a phone number for Chris and I give him a call. At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up. Yeah, hi Chris, it's Rob Burgin calling from ABC. I'm just following up the Jack McLennan story. Call after call and a bunch of texts, I just can't get Chris to answer the phone. And when I ask around, no one seems to know where Chris has gone. All I can work out is, he's definitely left town. I need to find out more about Chris. But the Facebook pages following Jack's case, they're filled with all sorts of speculative claims. They're accusing him of knowing more than he's letting on without any apparent evidence.
12:51 Speaker 03 When I ask around about him, it seems plenty of people know him or know of him. Some say he's got a temper, that he's a drug user, that he hangs around with bad people. But no one wants to do an interview about him, so it's hard to know what to believe. It's Rob again from ABC, how are you mate?
13:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, good mate.
13:11 Speaker 03 One person who was happy to do an interview was Shane, first name only, of course. Tell me about how you came to know of Chris Duke and what sort of happened.
13:23 Speaker 05 I'd seen him getting around, cause he was wearing a, fuck, he had like a white Stetson hat.
13:27 Speaker 03 Just a warning here, Shane doesn't mind swearing a bit, or actually quite a lot. Cause he's into rodeo, I think, isn't he?
13:36 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think so. Yeah, he might be into a bit of rodeo circuit shit, mate. Um, you know, he's, he thinks he's a cowboy, whatever.
13:44 Speaker 03 We heard from Shane earlier in this episode. It was his wife Sue who thinks she ran into Jack in the pokey room at the Kilkeven pub. Shane's never actually spoken to Chris, but his two sons know him. And one of them gave Shane a colourful story about Chris. It takes a bit of telling, but it's pretty revealing.
14:05 Speaker 03 So a few years ago, Shane's away on a trip to Brisbane and he asks his son Canaan to house at his place and look after the dog. Then out of the blue, Shane gets a phone call from Canaan.
14:19 Speaker 05 I was on my way home and Canaan rang me and said, fucking hell dad, I've just had this fucking prick here.
14:29 Speaker 03 He tells Shane, someone's just rocked up to the front door, totally uninvited.
14:33 Speaker 05 He didn't hide his name in any way. My name's Chris Duke. How you going, man? My name's Chris Duke, you know, and he was just fucking shitfaced. He came here to try and score some pot, cause somebody in town told him that I smoke pot. He must be at the pub or something, asking around.
14:55 Speaker 03 Shane doesn't deny that he smokes a bit of weed, or that he's got a reputation around town. And actually, it'd be pretty hard for him to deny it, because just a few weeks after this interview, he pleaded guilty to possession of nearly a kilo of marijuana.
15:11 Speaker 03 At the front door, Chris is insisting.
15:13 Speaker 05 And Kane's been yelling, "Get fucked with, you know, he's so awful, I don't know you." The parents aren't home.
15:20 Speaker 03 According to Shane, Chris won't listen.
15:23 Speaker 05 And he's going, "I wanna get some, um, weed, I'm coming in there." And he's going, "Fucking what, fuck you." "Go away, don't tell ya. I'm just watching the house. Go away."
15:36 Speaker 03 The way Shane tells it, Chris tries to barge his way into the house and just stands there, like he's waiting for Canaan to run off and grab him some pot. Shane says Canaan's left thinking...
15:47 Speaker 05 "What the fuck am I gonna do with this fucking idiot, you know what I mean?"
15:51 Speaker 03 But Shane has a dog named Lexi, and Lexi is not afraid of a fight.
15:55 Speaker 05 She was a cruelly crossed cattle dog, and she didn't give a fuck. She liked biting, can't say.
16:02 Speaker 05 And yeah, I'm saying she probably bit him, maybe a couple of times.
16:07 Speaker 03 Shane says Chris starts kicking the dog back, and Canaan won't stand for it.
16:12 Speaker 05 And the dog was going sick. He thought he was gonna hurt the dog, so he said, "Fuck you, mate, you're not hurting my dog." And he went out and had a crack at him.
16:20 Speaker 03 They end up out the front of the house, going at each other.
16:23 Speaker 05 Ended up on the ground having a wrestle. Canaan dropped behind him, found one of the rocks surrounding the garden, and just smashed him in the fucking head with it.
16:33 Speaker 03 After the fight settles down, the boys share a bong and go their separate ways. It was a pretty nasty brawl, though, not one they could walk off, and they both land in the emergency room because of it.
16:45 Speaker 05 He ended up in Gimpie Hospital that night, that Chris Duke, or so did Canaan. They both ended up in Gimpie Hospital.
16:55 Speaker 03 I've spoken to Canaan, and he agreed that he and Chris had a fight, and that this is basically how it went down. But it seems like that's not the only trouble that Chris Duke's been caught up in. When I first searched Queensland court records, I saw Chris Duke's been in and out of the court system since at least 2014. The charges are for things like driving under the influence, petty theft, and since I first looked, willful damage has been added to the list. He was once reported to police for allegedly threatening a shop attendant and stealing cigarettes. The business responded by plastering a still from their CCTV camera all over Facebook. And in that image, Chris can be seen wearing a pink beanie shaped like a pig.
17:41 Speaker 03 Virtually everyone's telling me how Jack was such a clean living guy. So what I can't figure out is, how did he end up hanging out with this bloke? And when I asked Jack's old landlord and boss Trent about it, he paints a very different picture of Chris. Mate, like, literally, I worked with Chris for three and a half years and I've never seen one bit of aggression at work, nothing. Trent wasn't just Jack's friend and supervisor, he was Chris's too. So basically put him through his whole apprenticeship as well. We originally worked for another, another builder together. He says he got to see Chris up close and in his mind, Chris was a hard worker, willing to learn, and he didn't take shortcuts.
18:21 Speaker 03 The only thing that held him back was probably his, um, his home life was a bit complicated in certain times. And that's where you'd see a reflection of his work. Um, when he was having trouble at home, he was no good at work. When his home life was good, he was one of the best employees you could ever have. And I know for a fact that if I, you know, if I rang him and I, I needed help, he would be, he would, he would drop everything and come because, you know, at the end of the day, he's only got his apprenticeship because of me. Um, and yeah, like he's still a good, he's still a good person.
18:59 Speaker 03 Working with both Chris and Jack, Trent got to see how the two of them started off as workmates and then became friends, even though Jack was in his late twenties and Chris was mid thirties with his fourth kid on the way. I did notice, um, that they were getting closer, um, sort of like when we started off working together, you know. We would, you know, just have lunch together or whatever like that. The two of them talked about Jack's problems with Carly, but like a lot of blokes, they didn't get too deep about their feelings. Then I did notice if Chris had to go to town to get some lunch, Jack would go with. So they were getting closer, but still I'd never seen them outside of work, um, sort of catching up.
19:41 Speaker 03 In the weeks leading up to Jack's disappearance, Chris had become less reliable. And whatever the reason for it, Trent says it's not something you'd ever noticed with Jack. And what was your reaction when you found out that they were hanging out that Friday night? I mean, they were, they were two people that have had volatile relationships. So I mean, it's not, um, didn't shock me. Trent first heard Jack had gone missing when he got a phone call from Chris.
20:11 Speaker 03 I would have received the phone call about maybe ten thirty in the morning. Chris sounded panicked. Jack wasn't answering his phone and Chris wanted to know if Trent had seen Jack. He explained that they were drinking at Fix Crossing and then Jack just disappeared. He said, oh, we can't find him. I said, I mean, what do you can't, you can't find him. He said, he goes, oh, we were at the car and then I just looked up and he was gone. Trent says he told Chris, sorry, mate, I haven't seen him. Monday's a public holiday, so Trent doesn't see Chris until Tuesday, when he shows up late to work. Chris seems worse for wear and it's not just your average hangover.
20:50 Speaker 03 It's like he hadn't slept for a couple of days and then he was ordered off site, basically just to go and sort yourself out.
21:01 Speaker 03 He was on his final warning, um, the weeks prior to that because he was just getting real unreliable. Um, just not rocking up. When he was at work, he was good, but he just, you know, you're trying to run a construction site and do stuff on schedule. When people aren't rocking up, so you've got the shits with it all. Trent realises they're gonna have to let Chris go. He can't just be showing up late for work. But it's not just that. It's becoming common knowledge around the region that Chris Duke is likely the last known person to have seen Jack alive. Like, so it's not, you know, not something my boss wanted to be involved in in any way. And I've never really asked, like, never really asked Chris either, you know,
21:44 Speaker 03 apart from, he sort of just said to me, you know, that he just disappeared, like, he was there that night in the car, and then all of a sudden, Jack was gone, and that's all he's ever really said.
21:56 Speaker 03 And that's why Chris sort of, you know, just walked away, because literally, he's, he's the only real witness.
22:05 Speaker 03 To begin with, this was the dominant story I heard about Chris. He was the one with Jack that night. He had a slightly dodgy track record. And when people spoke to him the day after Jack disappeared, some say he sounded high. So it seems pretty clear that drugs of some kind were involved that night. But would Jack have taken drugs too? In the weeks and months before he disappeared, no one spent as much time with Jack as Carly, his then-girlfriend. One of the themes that's emerged over the course of the investigation in this story is, is Jack's use of drugs. What would you say was his situation?
22:43 Speaker 04 Jack was very weird, like, he'd go through stages where he'd just drink for, like, a couple of days or for a week, he'd just drink, and then all of a sudden, he'd stop. And it wouldn't, and it wouldn't happen again for months.
22:57 Speaker 03 Carly says she and Jack occasionally smoked pot together when they went out, but it wasn't a regular thing, and it was never in the home.
23:04 Speaker 04 Otherwise, he didn't touch stuff, and he didn't touch other drugs because he knew I was not about that. I didn't like it, I wouldn't accept it. Um, you know, I'm all for if we're going out drinking and you wanna smoke a bit of pot, or you wanna, you know, whatever, but, yeah, it was never more than pot. So if he was to smoke anything, or there was a pipe, I would know about it.
23:31 Speaker 03 But Carly says before she and Jack met, he smoked pot more often. And during a phase, it seemed like he'd tried harder drugs.
23:39 Speaker 04 Jack, you know, had his party days, I'm sure, you know, drink. Did all kinds of things, um, and you know, Jack was someone who would try anything. And he was very trusting.
23:51 Speaker 03 When I asked Carly about Chris, she says she only knew him vaguely.
23:55 Speaker 04 I knew that he was a bit, I don't know what you call it, all over the shop or something, or a bit, bit different, um, with like how Jack would describe him, you know, he was a bit of a character.
24:09 Speaker 03 But when it comes to what Jack got up to with Chris the night he disappeared, she says she's only guessing.
24:15 Speaker 04 Like I always say, yeah, he was probably upset that night, you know, drank, did some drugs and who knows what happened. But he was probably just trying to have some fun and just, you know, whatever. And it's just gone bad. I just know that Jack made the wrong decision to hang out with the wrong people. And that's what has happened.
24:43 Speaker 03 I asked Jack's dad Ross about his son's drug use and he says he also spoke to Carly about it.
24:49 Speaker 06 I said to his girlfriend, is there any way, because they were living together, is there any way that Jack was doing this under your notes? Uh, was he going out to the shed? Was he? And she said, no, she said, I would have known. And that was lovely to hear.
25:05 Speaker 03 Ross knows there were harder drugs like meth in the area, but when anyone asked him and Kelly about whether Jack could have been taken anything like that, the answer was pretty simple.
25:15 Speaker 06 We know that element exists in a lot of towns. I mean, it's just the way it is, but we were declaring, well, our son wasn't caught up in that.
25:24 Speaker 03 But Ross was forced to question how well he knew his son when one day after Jack disappeared, he got a call from the police. He says police told him they'd interviewed Chris Duke about his recollection of the night and that he'd said something about Jack.
25:40 Speaker 06 The police said to me, oh, well, if he's had, according to Chris Duke, he had two points.
25:46 Speaker 03 Two points as in point two of a gram of methamphetamine. Ross was trying hard to catch up.
25:52 Speaker 06 And I said, well, what's that? What's the point? Is that two grams? And he said, no, no, no, two points. And I said, is that a lot to have? And he goes, oh, yeah, especially if you swallow it. So I was thinking, what the?
26:06 Speaker 03 The fuck's going on?
26:10 Speaker 03 When Ross told me this, on the one hand, I was shocked. According to him, the police are saying Jack was on methamphetamine or meth the night that he disappeared. And two points of meth, that's not just a dabble. And it's more than enough to make you behave out of character. What's more, it goes totally against this clean living image of Jack that everyone's talked to me about.
26:35 Speaker 03 But you know, on the other hand, I was thinking, I can actually kind of relate to this sort of behaviour.
26:42 Speaker 03 When I was around the same age as Jack, I had some intense relationships of my own come to a jarring end.
26:49 Speaker 03 I also know that as a young man, when you're feeling lost and disillusioned, it can make you do some crazy shit, like take drugs you normally wouldn't. Not many people know this about me, but that's exactly what I did in my mid twenties. I had some fun moments, but also some big lows that went with it. And I definitely put myself in a vulnerable position more than once. I can see how this might be what happened to Jack.
27:23 Speaker 03 I keep trying Chris Duke. I've heard that he might be mustering cattle in North Queensland, but no one seems to know exactly where. I was resigned to putting in the occasional phone call, hoping that he'd answer, but ending up with the same result as always.
27:39 Speaker 04 Your call has been forwarded to voicemail.
27:41 Speaker 03 I was more surprised than anyone when finally, after nearly six months of trying, he picked up my call. Hello? Yeah, hey, it's Rob from ABC, just seeing if this is Chris? Yeah, it is, mate. Hey, mate, it's, yeah, obviously, um, been working on the Jack story for a while and just trying to establish fact from fiction, because it seems like there's a lot of stuff swirling around, so seeing if you could tell.
28:08 Speaker 06 From Facebook mate, I don't even know where they come up with the shit.
28:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:12 Speaker 06 But um listen, my my story is I've I've worked with the detectives and the C I B as much as I can. Um at the end of the day, I don't even know where he went. You know, like, I don't know, he left me um but I've worked with the C I B eh. Giving them everything I can and basically because of all the shit fight they've created over Facebook and everything. I've lost work, I've lost jobs, I've fucking, it's just been an absolute nightmare. Um so as soon as the detectives figure out what the hell happened, then I'll I'll come out with my story.
28:51 Speaker 03 And so the last time you definitely saw him was like ten o'clock at Fix Crossing, around there.
28:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, around that time, mate, yeah.
28:58 Speaker 03 Yeah. And and how did he disappear?
29:02 Speaker 06 I've got no fucking idea. That's what I mean. I turned in a packet of my shit up and um he's gone.
29:11 Speaker 06 And that's as far as I'm gonna go with it, mate. I'm sorry, but I've gone over this so many times with everybody. And I've had enough now, mate.
29:22 Speaker 03 I do my best to convince Chris to stay on the phone. I haven't even had a chance to ask him about the drugs. We can kind of correct the record if it's if it's incorrect. So I'm trying to, you know, trying to do the best to establish what is fact and what is fiction.
29:36 Speaker 06 Yep.
29:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:37 Speaker 06 Yep. Well, maybe that's good, mate. At least there's someone out there trying to do it the right way.
29:42 Speaker 03 But I have to settle for just trying to keep the relationship open. At uh yeah, at a later stage, maybe if if you just want to drop me a text when you're uh you're happy to talk more.
29:51 Speaker 06 Yeah, definitely, mate.
29:52 Speaker 03 Okay, thanks, mate, Chris.
29:53 Speaker 06 All right, take it easy.
29:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, you too, bye.
29:57 Speaker 03 After that, he stops answering my calls again.
30:01 Speaker 03 I've got so many questions I still want to ask you, Chris, but he does sound pretty believable. I've been told for decades as a journalist to remain open to all possibilities, to follow the hard evidence. But I've seen nothing presented that implicates him in Jack's disappearance. Police have never declared Chris or anyone else as suspect or even a person of interest in their investigation. So if I want to get closer to the truth, for now, I think I've got to explore other avenues.
30:32 Speaker 03 I already told you about Jack's wallet, the one that was found nearly totally empty out in the olive grove near Fix Crossing. Well, I later learned that something else was found inside that wallet. I was chatting with Jack's dad, Ross, when he revealed to me that one of the few things left in there was a small plastic bag. The kind of bag you put drugs in. The kind of bag that can get you into all sorts of trouble. It's another thing that reinforces this other version of Jack. The one that sounds like he was on the gear the night that he disappeared. It made me think, if Chris Duke doesn't know what happened to Jack, maybe someone else he saw that night knows more.
31:16 Speaker 03 And you know who else Jack might have seen? Whoever he got this little plastic bag from. That's next episode on What Became of Jack, the latest season of Unravel.
31:41 Speaker 03 This season of Unravel is intended to be listened to as a whole. If you haven't heard all the episodes, you shouldn't draw any conclusions because you haven't heard all sides of the story yet.
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