Speaker 1: Approche production. Have you ever lost something, maybe it was
Speaker 1: your keys, your mobile phone, or something more valuable. To
Speaker 1: find them, you retrace your steps, You look in all
Speaker 1: the places they're most likely to be, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: look in places where they're probably not, but just in case.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when things go missing, you blame other people. You
Speaker 1: ask them if they've put them somewhere, if they've seen them.
Speaker 1: You sometimes think the worst, maybe they've been stolen, taken
Speaker 1: from you when you weren't looking. Some of those theories
Speaker 1: that you come up with when something goes missing are
Speaker 1: far fetched. You blame and have unreasonable thoughts. Those themes
Speaker 1: will be explored in this podcast, but not with insignificant
Speaker 1: material things, but with a person. This is a story
Speaker 1: of Desmond Francis Carr, who was last seen at three
Speaker 1: pm on August two, nineteen seventy nine, and then he disappeared.
Speaker 1: Here's what we've learned so far. There are four theories
Speaker 1: around Desert's disappearance. UFO's concussion, he got lost in the bush,
Speaker 1: or he was drunk. There has only ever been one siding,
Speaker 1: a man whose named rhyme with car. Apart from that,
Speaker 1: he's never been seen again.
Speaker 2: Evidently his wallet and everything, and Medicare card and all
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. We're still in his room, plus
Speaker 2: his new coach he'd brought to go home for Christmas,
Speaker 2: and his little dog and his car and everything was
Speaker 2: all left there at the main road place. I don't
Speaker 2: know what happened to his car that one the men
Speaker 2: took his real dog, I think, but his money and
Speaker 2: everything was still there that had never been touched, his Medicare.
Speaker 1: In an earlier episode, we met Susie, who runs leve
Speaker 1: light on Ink, a face book community of people who
Speaker 1: share a common goal of helping find long term missing persons.
Speaker 1: It's important to Susie as her eleven year old sister
Speaker 1: Joanne went missing in nineteen seventy three and has never
Speaker 1: been found. Head back to here Susie's story if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard it yet. She mentions that dealing with a
Speaker 1: long term missing person not only affects family and friends
Speaker 1: at the time the person goes missing, but it can
Speaker 1: affect future generations.
Speaker 3: It affects generations to come, not just the immediate of
Speaker 3: the family that has experienced it now but when they
Speaker 3: go missing, but in future generations, even those kids have
Speaker 3: known that missing person. They grow up learning so much
Speaker 3: about it and affects them still emditionally and mentally.
Speaker 1: This comment really connected with me. It connected with me
Speaker 1: on a few levels. On one level, it shows the
Speaker 1: true impact when someone goes missing they are someone's son, daughter,
Speaker 1: best friend, partner, or sibling. But it connected with me
Speaker 1: on a much deeper and more personal level. You see,
Speaker 1: up to this point in the podcast, I've been talking
Speaker 1: about Desmond Carr, a man whoever forty years ago went
Speaker 1: missing from a deserted stretch of road in outback Western Australia.
Speaker 1: He was the brother of Shirley, Joy and Gwen. He
Speaker 1: was the son of Dolly and Frank, but he was
Speaker 1: also my uncle, Uncle Dev. I share a lot with
Speaker 1: my uncle Dev. We're about the same height, the same build,
Speaker 1: and the same receding hairline. My mummy is Shirley, and
Speaker 1: Joy and Gwen are my aunties, and DES's mum and
Speaker 1: dad were my grandma and grandpap. Uncle Dez as i'll
Speaker 1: call him from now on in this story, went missing
Speaker 1: when I was ten years old. We weren't necessarily close,
Speaker 1: but I remember him well to me as a ten
Speaker 1: year old. He was a tall, lanky man. He was
Speaker 1: pretty quiet and not the sort of uncle you play
Speaker 1: football with in the backyard. But he was my uncle,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, he was my mum's brother. I still
Speaker 1: have a vivid image of him sitting on the front
Speaker 1: step of my Grandma and Grandpop's house in Leedaville in
Speaker 1: Western Australia at Christmas in his orange top and black
Speaker 1: shorts as we gathered for one of Grandma's famous Sunday
Speaker 1: roasts with soggy vegetables. It's the same photo you'll see
Speaker 1: in the cover art. That photo has been etched in
Speaker 1: my family's mind for the last forty years and pinned
Speaker 1: to missing persons all over Australia for the last thirty years.
Speaker 1: Uncle Devz has always been brought up in conversations. When
Speaker 1: I was recording with my mum Shirley for this podcast,
Speaker 1: my memories of the conversations that we had over the
Speaker 1: past thirty years were the basis of most of my research.
Speaker 1: I'm not an investigative reporter. I don't have any journalistic background,
Speaker 1: but I do have memories. Memories of my mum crying
Speaker 1: a lot when I was young. She wouldn't do it
Speaker 1: much around my brothers and me, but she would be sad.
Speaker 1: It's the sort of sadness that may have faded over time,
Speaker 1: but it's still there when we talk about Uncle Dev's.
Speaker 1: When I first recorded Mum over a cup of tea
Speaker 1: about twelve months ago in Perth, Mum was stressed and
Speaker 1: still sad.
Speaker 4: I don't missing and missing and is probably it's under
Speaker 4: missing and presumed dead. That's that's what the last thing
Speaker 4: I ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you think about him still now?
Speaker 5: Of course? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: If I'm watching TV of a night time and you
Speaker 4: see something, you know it looks like this, but I'm
Speaker 4: thinking of at that time what he looked like then,
Speaker 4: and nobody would know what he looked right now if
Speaker 4: he watched it alive, you know what I mean. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a terrible feeling. You never forget it never.
Speaker 1: That's really good, Yeah, very good.
Speaker 4: And that's just what I was scared of all right
Speaker 4: last night I thought they don't start crying.
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine having a missing person in your family.
Speaker 1: I now have three kids, a boy who is nineteen
Speaker 1: and strangely enough, is about to head up to our
Speaker 1: back Western Australia to work in the minds and two
Speaker 1: twin girls who are ten, the same age I was
Speaker 1: when Uncle Deaz went missing. My girls didn't really know
Speaker 1: the story about my uncle Daz. But one day, as
Speaker 1: I was preparing to write an episode, they asked me
Speaker 1: what I was doing, so I thought I should tell
Speaker 1: them about him and what happened. They had so many questions,
Speaker 1: as most ten year olds do. I was ten when
Speaker 1: DEAs went missing. I can only imagine what questions I had.
Speaker 1: Did I ask them of my mum? Or was I
Speaker 1: afraid that if I did, she'd be sadder than she
Speaker 1: already was. I think for a long time as a kid,
Speaker 1: we just stayed away from the topic of Uncle Dave's
Speaker 1: so as not to upset mum. My daughter Holly, who
Speaker 1: was younger by a minute than her sister Amelia, explains
Speaker 1: what she remembers about the story.
Speaker 6: He was going on a roll. They normally dropped them
Speaker 6: off and picked her up, and he took a lunch
Speaker 6: in his awards bottle, and they went back to pick
Speaker 6: him up, and he wasn't there, but his lunch, his
Speaker 6: role thing. He was still rolling, but his lunch, his
Speaker 6: sandwich or his lunch was still there. And this Wade
Speaker 6: Butter was still there, but he wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Her memory of my uncle Dav's going missing from what
Speaker 1: I told her a month or so before this recording,
Speaker 1: was very clear. I guess because it's such a mystery,
Speaker 1: it's not something you easily forget, and kid's minds are
Speaker 1: super inquisitive. My girls are the same age as I
Speaker 1: was when Das went missing. My memories of how I
Speaker 1: felt have faded, but hearing it from my kid's mouths
Speaker 1: helps bring back some of the questions I might have
Speaker 1: had as a ten year old. So what does a
Speaker 1: ten year old thing happened?
Speaker 6: Someone might have taken him and murdered him.
Speaker 1: Or so if someone murdered him, what would we expect
Speaker 1: to find if someone murdered him.
Speaker 6: Like him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he was never found, So what else could
Speaker 1: have happened?
Speaker 6: Someone might have told him to work for him and
Speaker 6: if he doesn't in a different country, and if he
Speaker 6: doesn't do it, then he would die. They would kill him.
Speaker 1: What do you think if I told you a UFO
Speaker 1: took my uncle Daz, what would you think about me?
Speaker 6: I would think A part of that is sure, and
Speaker 6: post that's not true, like they're part of its toure?
Speaker 6: Is that someone in a like a spaceship or a
Speaker 6: plane took him, but maybe it wasn't a UFO.
Speaker 1: It is highly unlikely a UFO took my uncle Daz. However,
Speaker 1: around the same time as Daz went missing, there were
Speaker 1: at least five reported sightings of UFOs.
Speaker 6: In the area.
Speaker 7: Australian police are stumped after they captured bizarre footage of
Speaker 7: what appears to be an unidentified flying object. Police couldn't
Speaker 7: help but notice the rather unusual object upon reviewing vision
Speaker 7: of a storm that erupted over a beach in the
Speaker 7: town of Broom. The video, posted on Twitter by the
Speaker 7: Broom Police Department has many speculating on what exactly it
Speaker 7: could be.
Speaker 1: Outside of the theories of my uncle DES's disappearance, my
Speaker 1: ten year old daughter Holly also explained how she would feel,
Speaker 1: which helps me understand what I may have been going through.
Speaker 1: How would you feel if your sister just vanished.
Speaker 6: Upset and I'll try and find her?
Speaker 1: What would you do? How would you try and find her?
Speaker 6: I would look like where like she would go in
Speaker 6: like this spot? State you would find her like that,
Speaker 6: like likes what's that you know? Like if school or
Speaker 6: like a park?
Speaker 1: So you would go to the regular spot, so you
Speaker 1: think your sister would be to see if she was there?
Speaker 1: Where would you stop looking?
Speaker 6: I would stop looking when like, I've looked everywhere and
Speaker 6: I still can't.
Speaker 1: Find And how would you feel if you've looked everywhere,
Speaker 1: all of her regular places, everywhere where you think it
Speaker 1: could have happened, and you she still wasn't there?
Speaker 6: Upset?
Speaker 1: What do you think people should think now that it's
Speaker 1: been forty years since my uncle Das went missing where
Speaker 1: my mum's mother went missing.
Speaker 6: I would say, look out, maybe posters up telling him
Speaker 6: what he looks like, and I would like text all
Speaker 6: the people I know it's them a picture what he
Speaker 6: looks like to look out for him.
Speaker 1: It's so sweet hearing my daughter and how she would
Speaker 1: solve this mystery. I'm guessing as a ten year old
Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty I would have had the same feelings. Mum,
Speaker 1: why don't you just look for him and surely you'll
Speaker 1: find him. They did at least six months of countless
Speaker 1: searches across hundreds of kilometers of bushland. Nothing. Mum, why
Speaker 1: not put some pictures up of uncle Davs. We have
Speaker 1: des is still on the Australian Missing Person's Register. His
Speaker 1: disappearance was investigated by the police, main roads and even
Speaker 1: a few private detectives that my pop and grandma hired,
Speaker 1: and nothing ever found. My family appeared in newspapers and
Speaker 1: TV shows to talk about Uncle Davs and his disappearance,
Speaker 1: but to no avail. They wish it was as simple
Speaker 1: as just telling people and hope someone saw something. For
Speaker 1: the last thirty years, since I was a full grown adult,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to be able to do something to help.
Speaker 1: Do I think this podcast will find Dez, No, I don't.
Speaker 1: I think it can bring awareness to Dez being missing,
Speaker 1: but also the amazing work that people like Susie Ratcliffe
Speaker 1: and the police and Missing persons departments do at trying
Speaker 1: to find the answers. I did this for my family.
Speaker 1: My mum, Shirley, has mild dementia and she's in her seventies.
Speaker 1: My Auntie Joy is also aging, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: create this podcast as a living memory for Dez and
Speaker 1: our family. But even more than these two very important reasons,
Speaker 1: there are over two thy five hundred long term missing
Speaker 1: persons in Australia. Multiply that number by parents siblings, friends
Speaker 1: and workmates who wake up every morning without an answer.
Speaker 1: That's also what Susie from Leave a Light on Ink wants.
Speaker 3: There would be nothing better than to be able to
Speaker 3: close the page down because there are no more long
Speaker 3: times in Australia. That would be my ultimate dream. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: I think that's everything to happen. But we will certainly
Speaker 3: keep sharing, keep spreading the news and information about missing persons,
Speaker 3: and keep providing supports for families as long as we're
Speaker 3: going to need it.
Speaker 1: When I first wrote this podcast, I believe this would
Speaker 1: be the final episode, four short episodes as a living
Speaker 1: memory of my uncle, des for my family and to
Speaker 1: bring awareness to missing people. However, listening to the raw
Speaker 1: interview I did with detectives Argent Jude sav Wright, I
Speaker 1: heard something that I wanted to explore some more. There
Speaker 1: was something in that interview that came as a shock
Speaker 1: to me, something that I don't even think the rest
Speaker 1: of the family knew.
Speaker 5: Did you know that? No?
Speaker 8: I didn't know that.
Speaker 5: No, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I didn't something that required more digging and possibly a
Speaker 1: fresh lead that could give us some answers. This podcast
Speaker 1: was only ever design to be four episodes. I knew
Speaker 1: when I went into it there was a little chance
Speaker 1: of finding DEAs or any new information. My true belief
Speaker 1: is that my uncle des walked off into the bush
Speaker 1: and because of his head knock and illness, he simply died.
Speaker 1: His body was never found, but it was most likely
Speaker 1: taken by wild animals like dingoes and feral cats that
Speaker 1: live in the bush. That was until my call with
Speaker 1: the detective Sergeant Jude Severright in June of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: This is new information to me and my family has
Speaker 1: never heard it before.
Speaker 9: There was a witness who came forward in two thousand
Speaker 9: and fourteen who believed he saw Dez at a certain
Speaker 9: location and he provided a map of that location, and
Speaker 9: then he mentions that he went back to that location
Speaker 9: ten years later and believed he found a sock.
Speaker 1: Did this sighting? Was this was this someone that was
Speaker 1: alive that they saw Desmond alive or they thought they
Speaker 1: saw Desmond alive.
Speaker 9: I'll just clarify that. So he presented in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 9: The information that he stated is that he believes what
Speaker 9: he saw someone who looked like Dez when he was driving.
Speaker 9: He was driving a truck about one hundred k's out
Speaker 9: of broom when he believes he saw the missing person
Speaker 9: walking along the road. This was back at the time
Speaker 9: of when Des went missing.
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, so back.
Speaker 9: Then, yep, he believed he saw him. He didn't stop
Speaker 9: at the time he drove past with his truck. And
Speaker 9: then approximately ten years later, whilst he was going past
Speaker 9: this same particular spot, so back in like nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 9: he stopped and he's walked around the area and he's
Speaker 9: found an old black and white sop And then he
Speaker 9: for some reason did not report this to police at
Speaker 9: the time, and then reported it in twenty fourteen this
Speaker 9: information and he advised it it was due to his
Speaker 9: memory loss.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 9: So he presented this map that he drew a map
Speaker 9: of the area and dropped that off to the police.
Speaker 1: You may not have this information, but was that map
Speaker 1: actually anywhere near where Des originally went missing.
Speaker 9: It's that area. Apparently he also believes he may have
Speaker 9: seen him around Sanfhire Road house the day before.
Speaker 1: You can hear in my call with the detective that
Speaker 1: I was confused about what happened. It was really more shock.
Speaker 1: My mind went straight to I have to tell mum
Speaker 1: about this. Information, but at the same time, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to fill her with any hope. So let's just
Speaker 1: recap what I heard. In twenty fourteen, a man came
Speaker 1: forward to police to say that back on August two,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, he saw a man that he believes
Speaker 1: was des walking along the stretch of highway where he
Speaker 1: went missing. Ten years later, in nineteen eighty nine, that
Speaker 1: same man went back to the same stretch of road
Speaker 1: and found a black and white sock in the bushes
Speaker 1: surrounding that area, a sock which he believes was my
Speaker 1: uncle De's. Then, in twenty fourteen, he finally reports it
Speaker 1: to the police and draws them a map where he
Speaker 1: believes he saw Dez. This map was very close to
Speaker 1: where Dez went missing. When police asked him why it
Speaker 1: took thirty years to come forward, he had said he
Speaker 1: had issues with his memory. The first thing I felt
Speaker 1: compelled to do after hearing this new information was to
Speaker 1: tell my wife when I got home, and her first
Speaker 1: thought was who was this guy? Did he have something
Speaker 1: to do with Uncle Dez's disappearance. Could he have killed him,
Speaker 1: either on purpose or accidentally, or was this man actually
Speaker 1: my uncle Deaz? The man that came forward's name has
Speaker 1: been redacted from the police report, but as it was
Speaker 1: only five years ago, there is a chance this man
Speaker 1: is still living and may no more than he has
Speaker 1: come forward with. My hope is that this podcast might
Speaker 1: open up some more questions with this strange occurrence from
Speaker 1: this man. It does feel very suss. It's played on
Speaker 1: my mind since I heard the information. Police at the
Speaker 1: time didn't believe the information was credible, although we heard
Speaker 1: that the map the man drew detailed the place where
Speaker 1: DEAs went missing and the timing of his disappearance. It's
Speaker 1: unclear if the sock that the man said he found
Speaker 1: was from my uncle Dave's, as it was never recovered.
Speaker 1: I have no issue with the police investigation into my
Speaker 1: uncle Dev's disappearance forty years ago. However, this does feel
Speaker 1: like new information that should be thoroughly investigated. Was there
Speaker 1: ever a colonial in quest into this back in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties.
Speaker 9: I don't believe this matter has gone before the Coroner
Speaker 9: broughor to mid nineteen nineties from what I understand from
Speaker 9: that date of the change in the Coroner's Act where
Speaker 9: the kinner wouldn't necessarily hold an inquest without an actual body.
Speaker 9: So I don't believe that a lot of matters didn't
Speaker 9: go to the coroner without without a physical physical body
Speaker 9: as deceased person.
Speaker 1: I struggled with what to do with this newfound information.
Speaker 1: I was mindful that I didn't want to clutch its
Speaker 1: straws and didn't want to build a story out of nothing.
Speaker 1: For me, this was less about having some sort of
Speaker 1: podcast plot twists, but it does feel like this information
Speaker 1: should at least be followed up. I also struggled with
Speaker 1: whether to tell my mum, Shirley, about this information. Mum
Speaker 1: is in the seventies and suffers from mild dementia, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to cause her any undue stress, but
Speaker 1: she had to know. This is a call the mum
Speaker 1: that I recorded on my phone just before leaving to
Speaker 1: work the day after I spoke to the detective.
Speaker 5: So you know how I'm doing that podcast? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I spoke to the missing persons in Perth. Yeah, so
Speaker 5: I spoke to the man. Well, I emailed the guy
Speaker 5: who was the investigating officer back in nineteen seventy nine. Yes,
Speaker 5: I believe it or not. His name was dead too. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's just yeah an hedyly two now, so he's left
Speaker 5: the plage for But he then put me in touch
Speaker 5: with the missing person zero in Perth now and they
Speaker 5: were able to pull the file from Uncle Jav back
Speaker 5: from the Really. Yeah, so I've got all this information
Speaker 5: and a bit that came up that I wanted to
Speaker 5: talk to you about up was and I don't know
Speaker 5: if you know this. In two thousand and fourteen, a
Speaker 5: man came forward to the police and said that back
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy nine he saw a man that looked
Speaker 5: like Uncle Dev who was walking away from the tractor
Speaker 5: on the road about a kilometer from where the roller was.
Speaker 5: So then that same bloke that saw Uncle Dev, ten
Speaker 5: years later, after all that happened, he went back to
Speaker 5: that same part of the road and on the side
Speaker 5: of the road he found a sock that he thought
Speaker 5: Uncle Davi's. Did you know that? No, I didn't know that.
Speaker 5: No he didn't know that. No I didn't. So then
Speaker 5: he's taken twenty five years to come forward to police,
Speaker 5: and he only told police this in two thousand and fourteen, and.
Speaker 6: It neither should have really been.
Speaker 5: Brought out, you know what I mean? Well, this is
Speaker 5: it reckons that he found the sock from under dead
Speaker 5: the entre of that of where he found it and
Speaker 5: gave it to the police, the police for me that
Speaker 5: and the police have never investigated.
Speaker 8: It that I know of, because when when passed away,
Speaker 8: it's a very pep. We'll put your name in it,
Speaker 8: and you know because Gwen's dechief, so you was the
Speaker 8: next one. But I've never even heard anything.
Speaker 5: It's crazy. They've never investigated this guy, and so mine questions.
Speaker 5: Did this guy have something to do with it?
Speaker 8: Nothing to deal with it? And he's had a feet just.
Speaker 5: Have them to get.
Speaker 8: The body out.
Speaker 4: But even though only you and I talk about it now.
Speaker 8: You know, she said, I still dream she would really
Speaker 8: shod food telling me that now there.
Speaker 1: Is genuine surprise your mum's voice, especially around the sock
Speaker 1: that was found, you can tell that is new information.
Speaker 1: Her first thought is exactly what I thought and my
Speaker 1: wife thought when I mentioned it to her for the
Speaker 1: first time. Did this guy have something to do with
Speaker 1: the disappearance? Why was this not followed up more? Why
Speaker 1: was the family not notified about this piece of information,
Speaker 1: which seems to open up even more questions. The only
Speaker 1: real truth lies in the police report from over forty
Speaker 1: years ago, and more recently, what was documented in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen when this man came forward. So my emailed detective
Speaker 1: Jude Severright from Missing Persons wa in the hope that
Speaker 1: she might be able to shed some light on some
Speaker 1: of the questions that now occupied my mind. We took
Speaker 1: a few days to connect, but it was interesting to
Speaker 1: hear what she had to say.
Speaker 9: Good morning, Hi Jude, how are you good? Thank you?
Speaker 1: So did police have a question why this man took
Speaker 1: over thirty years to come forward.
Speaker 9: I spoke to the missing person investigator at the time.
Speaker 9: Actually he said to me that he was initially quite
Speaker 9: excited about the information that came through, thinking that there
Speaker 9: might have been a breakthrough in the case. I believe
Speaker 9: that the witness came into the police station in Headland
Speaker 9: and they also spoke to him over the phone, and
Speaker 9: I think after speaking to him for some time, it
Speaker 9: sort of became apparent that perhaps it wasn't going to
Speaker 9: be the breakthrough that we're hoping for. It seemed to
Speaker 9: me that he explained to them that his memory wasn't
Speaker 9: very good. His short term memory was okay, but his
Speaker 9: long term memory was no good and this event had
Speaker 9: just come to him, So that was why he then
Speaker 9: came forward quite some time later after the events.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to read between the lines. Yeah, is it
Speaker 1: saying that this man might have maybe not seen DEAs
Speaker 1: in fact, and maybe it was just a bit of
Speaker 1: a story.
Speaker 9: Well, it appears to be the case. Obviously, he whether
Speaker 9: he believed that at the time he did, But given
Speaker 9: the quite large passage of time, it's possible that he
Speaker 9: may have been mistaken about the time that he actually
Speaker 9: saw a person who he may have believed to have
Speaker 9: been dead. From what I understand that the witness doesn't
Speaker 9: know dead. He may have been traveling through that area
Speaker 9: around that time, and I've given a significant passage of time,
Speaker 9: it's quite likely that he's mistaken.
Speaker 1: One of the questions that came up with the family,
Speaker 1: a few family members at least, was could this man
Speaker 1: have actually had something to do with his disappearance? Was
Speaker 1: question number one? And was that thoroughly investigated?
Speaker 5: Do you think.
Speaker 9: People report things? I guess for different reasons. Sometimes it's
Speaker 9: they want to help with investigation. Sometimes it may be
Speaker 9: the case that they are involved. I think after speaking
Speaker 9: to this gentleman, and the discussion between the investigator and
Speaker 9: the officer in charges the missing person's team at the time,
Speaker 9: they didn't believe there was anything suspicious. There's nothing to
Speaker 9: suggest that there was any involvement with this particular witness
Speaker 9: with the case.
Speaker 1: The witness he talked of sock that he found was
Speaker 1: that sock ever recovered by police.
Speaker 9: From what I understand from the records and from speaking
Speaker 9: to the previous investigator, that the witness was recalled by
Speaker 9: his account that he saw a man that appeared to
Speaker 9: be Des the day after Des was reported missing in
Speaker 9: that sort of vicinity, and then he mentions that ten
Speaker 9: years later he was driving past the same spot and
Speaker 9: he has found a sock. He left the sock at
Speaker 9: that location we're talking in nineteen eighty nine, and then
Speaker 9: by the time he's reported this matter to police in
Speaker 9: twenty fourteen. The chance of recovering a sock from nineteen
Speaker 9: eighty nine from the side of a highways obviously quite
Speaker 9: an impossible task.
Speaker 1: So from a police perspective, it doesn't seem like this
Speaker 1: man that came forward holds any clue to what happened
Speaker 1: to my uncle Dez back in nineteen seventy nine, although
Speaker 1: he took a long time to come forward and the
Speaker 1: sock was never recovered. This follow up call doesn't really
Speaker 1: give us much more info. There was one question I
Speaker 1: hadn't asked yet, and it was the question that was
Speaker 1: brought up with my mum when we spoke of this
Speaker 1: new information. Could that man have actually been Uncle Dav's Yeah.
Speaker 9: From what I understand, the witness is similar age, about
Speaker 9: six years younger than Dez, but a different description with
Speaker 9: different colored eyes, and I was borne over in the
Speaker 9: Eastern States, so nothing to suggest that it's the same person.
Speaker 6: Though.
Speaker 1: The one saving grace right now is that this podcast
Speaker 1: might expedite a coronial inquest into Deser's disappearance.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the matter is going to progress, along with a
Speaker 9: number of other older missing person's cases from around that time,
Speaker 9: through to the coroner's office for some sort of judicial decision.
Speaker 1: And if people listening to this podcast now Jude had
Speaker 1: information or think they had information, what's the best way
Speaker 1: for them to give that information forward.
Speaker 9: We're definitely always looking for information to move cases forward,
Speaker 9: especially these older cases. It's quite difficult to get an outcome.
Speaker 9: So if anyone does have any information, if they can
Speaker 9: call crime Stoppers or report to their local police station
Speaker 9: crime Stoppers. It's anonymous. You don't need to leave your details,
Speaker 9: but any information that we get the police will look
Speaker 9: into and hopefully we can get some closure and some
Speaker 9: information for the families and for the missing person.
Speaker 1: At the start of every one of these podcasts, I
Speaker 1: talk about losing something, the fact that you blame other people,
Speaker 1: have some far flung theories, You retrace your steps and
Speaker 1: still find no answers. That's how it feels to be
Speaker 1: the nephew of a long term missing person my uncle,
Speaker 1: Uncle Dez. Any story always has a beginning, a middle,
Speaker 1: and an end. This story, unfortunately, cannot end until we
Speaker 1: have some answers. Thanks for listening to this episode and
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