Speaker 1: From The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey. We're hoping you're having
Speaker 1: a great holiday break and today we're bringing you one
Speaker 1: of our favorite episodes.
Speaker 2: From the year.
Speaker 1: This episode originally aired on March eighth, when Australians were
Speaker 1: enthralled by a bush mystery. What happened to Ballarat mum
Speaker 1: Samantha Murphy, a twenty three year old man, the son
Speaker 1: of a former Australian rules player, has been charged for
Speaker 1: her murder. Bard Searchers by police have so far failed
Speaker 1: to locate her remains. Patrick Orn Stevenson appeared in Victoria's
Speaker 1: Supreme Court in late November, where he pleaded not guilty
Speaker 1: to the chargers. The Front will return with all new
Speaker 1: episodes on Monday, January thirteenth. Just hit follow or subscribe
Speaker 1: to make sure you don't miss an episode.
Speaker 2: The Australian Bush It has forever lurked, not just at
Speaker 2: the edges of our towns and cities, but our collective subconscious,
Speaker 2: a place of almost indescribable beauty and at the same
Speaker 2: time a black hole, a more a haunted landscape that
Speaker 2: in the blink of an eye, can snatch us away
Speaker 2: without a trace. It is a place where ghosts lurk,
Speaker 2: boogie men, monsters, and for centuries it has become almost
Speaker 2: mythical in our literature, art and films. This fear is
Speaker 2: manifested in the psychopath at the Heart of Wolf Creek,
Speaker 2: it's the omniscient villain in the latest Eric Banner movie
Speaker 2: Force of Nature, and it's most hauntingly embodied in the
Speaker 2: classic nineteen seventy five film Picnic at Hanging Rock. The
Speaker 2: pan pipe's theme by George Zamfia is enough to send
Speaker 2: a chill down Australian's spines, and this anxiety gripped us
Speaker 2: all over again when Ballarat mother of three Samantha Murphy
Speaker 2: fifty one, seemingly vanished into thin air after she took
Speaker 2: off for a routine early morning jog into the bush
Speaker 2: near her home in early February. For a month, we
Speaker 2: followed every detail of the search for sam the police
Speaker 2: and volunteers scouring the bush near her home. These vast
Speaker 2: tracts of land outside the old Goldfield town with names
Speaker 2: like the wou Wookeerung Regional Park and Mount Clear. We
Speaker 2: witnessed the tears of the family, the broken heart of
Speaker 2: her daughter Jess.
Speaker 3: Just On behalf of my dad and myself and my siblings.
Speaker 3: I just really like the bank out, family and friends
Speaker 3: were just the continuous love and support. It's really helping
Speaker 3: us to get through and to keep us strong and
Speaker 3: to keep us motivated, to keep looking and keep moving forward.
Speaker 3: Mum's a really strong woman and she's far too determined
Speaker 3: to give up this fight. I know she's out there somewhere.
Speaker 2: As each night fell, we sensed with dread that Samantha
Speaker 2: was out there in the dark. Was she yet another
Speaker 2: of that long line of Australians lost to the bush?
Speaker 2: Then suddenly the answer.
Speaker 4: Detectives from the Missing Person Squad yesterday morning at six
Speaker 4: am arrested a twenty two year old Scottspurn man. They
Speaker 4: arrested him at his home address and took him into custody.
Speaker 4: The man was interviewed over a number of hours. A
Speaker 4: number of search warrants have been executed as a result
Speaker 4: of those investigations. He has today been charged with the
Speaker 4: murder of Samantha.
Speaker 2: At a press conference on Thursday, the Chief Commissioner of
Speaker 2: the Victorian Police, Shane Patten, delivered the news the nation
Speaker 2: had been dreading.
Speaker 4: We will be alleging that murder occurred at Mount Clair
Speaker 4: on the day she disappeared. In the interview with the suspect,
Speaker 4: he has not disclosed to police where Samantha's body is.
Speaker 4: I want to be very clear, unlimited what I can
Speaker 4: say given at there Hous now been a charge of
Speaker 4: murder aid.
Speaker 2: Last week on the front we brought you a very
Speaker 2: different kind of police press conference fronted in Sydney by
Speaker 2: homicide detectives and the New South Wales Police Commissioner. In
Speaker 2: that instant, police had obtained the cooperation of the suspect,
Speaker 2: serving policeman Beau Lamar Condon, and alleged the suspect had
Speaker 2: told them where to find the bodies of murdered couple
Speaker 2: Jesse Baird and Luke Davies. The level of detailed New
Speaker 2: South Wales Police divulged about that matter was extraordinary, surprising
Speaker 2: even veteran crime reporters. In this matter, Shane Patten batted
Speaker 2: away almost every question about detail, eventually making this pointed remark.
Speaker 4: Again, I'm not going to go into the evidence and
Speaker 4: speculate about the evidence. So in Victoria, when someone's charged,
Speaker 4: irrespective of what people's views may be, the details of
Speaker 4: that evidence are tested. In court, not a press conferences.
Speaker 2: For the past thirty three days, the Australian's reporters have
Speaker 2: been in Ballarat trying to talk to Samantha Murphy's family
Speaker 2: and everyone else in a town gone wild with frustration
Speaker 2: and suspicion.
Speaker 5: There was no apparent reason for Samantha Murphy, a fifty
Speaker 5: one year old mother who loved her three children, who
Speaker 5: lived in a comfortable house in East Ballarat, to disappear.
Speaker 2: Damon Johnston is The Australian's Victorian editor.
Speaker 5: The circumstances of her last appearance were that she left
Speaker 5: the family home shortly after seven am on Sunday, February four,
Speaker 5: dressed in her jogging gear. This is something she did
Speaker 5: a lot, so ostensibly she appears to have been very
Speaker 5: much your quintessential Ossie mum, raising a kids, raising a
Speaker 5: family and staying fit. And the inexplicable nature of her disappearance,
Speaker 5: the fact that there was nobody found despite all the
Speaker 5: police searchers, I think, has led to what is ultimately
Speaker 5: a tragedy, also being a mystery that's captivated the nation.
Speaker 2: It's been thirty four days since Samantha Murphy was last seen.
Speaker 2: That gap has prompted questions about whether the police were
Speaker 2: moving fast enough.
Speaker 5: I'm sure there was a lot of action going on
Speaker 5: below the waterline, so to speak, over the last thirty
Speaker 5: three days. That said, the initial messaging from Victoria Police
Speaker 5: was somewhat confusing. It left the perception that they weren't
Speaker 5: treating it seriously enough in that first few days or
Speaker 5: maybe that first week. Now clearly that's changed over the
Speaker 5: last two to three weeks, where they've deployed their expert investigators.
Speaker 5: The language that Victoria Police has used has changed. And
Speaker 5: two weeks ago they tragically announced that they were looking
Speaker 5: for a body and that they believed that she had
Speaker 5: been her remains had been removed by one or more people.
Speaker 5: So the police approach to this did escalate in public,
Speaker 5: and I think it would be premature to judge the
Speaker 5: police too harshly. Because we now have a charge laid.
Speaker 5: We'll wait for the courts to determine the fate of
Speaker 5: that charge, but we just need more information before we
Speaker 5: assess the police investigation.
Speaker 2: I think during that long wait for information, detectives repeatedly
Speaker 2: asked for Victorians to stop unhelpful speculation about the case,
Speaker 2: particularly about their theories on who might have taken Samantha.
Speaker 5: The vacuum has been filled with speculation and online gossip.
Speaker 5: Ballaratza town of about one hundred and twenty thousand people,
Speaker 5: so it's big, but not that big. The Murphys were
Speaker 5: a high profile couple. They ran a successful panel beating business,
Speaker 5: and on one hand, it's only human nature for people
Speaker 5: to speculate, but now, obviously with modern technology, it enables
Speaker 5: that to go like wildfire. Coming up.
Speaker 1: What we know about motive and method in the alleged
Speaker 1: murder of Samantha Murphy.
Speaker 2: While I've got you.
Speaker 1: As this story develops, the Australian subscribers will be the
Speaker 1: first to know. Join us at the Australian dot com
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Speaker 1: out at the Australian dot com dot a U and
Speaker 1: we'll be back after this break.
Speaker 2: Samantha Murphy's family found out about the arrest on Wednesday night.
Speaker 2: On Thursday, just before they spoke to the media, police
Speaker 2: told the family they'd charge the man with murder. That
Speaker 2: should have caused some pause for those who'd speculated about
Speaker 2: family members not or involvement Shane Patten again made it
Speaker 2: clear the family was not under suspicion and said police
Speaker 2: believe the man in custody is not known to the
Speaker 2: family at all.
Speaker 4: Samantha's family has been advised of this tragic news this
Speaker 4: afternoon by detectives from the Missing Person Squad, and obviously
Speaker 4: this is a tragic outcome knowing that she has been murdered.
Speaker 4: Our thoughts and support are with her family and I
Speaker 4: do just want to say something about the family since
Speaker 4: the outset. In these cases, it's often that the family
Speaker 4: come under scrutiny. They have been cooperative with us, they
Speaker 4: have provided everything we needed and they have had no
Speaker 4: involvement whatsoever in this matter.
Speaker 2: Asked if he was known to Samantha Murphy, Patten said this.
Speaker 4: I don't have that knowledge. I don't believe that to
Speaker 4: be the case.
Speaker 2: Man whose name was suppressed by the court appeared before
Speaker 2: Ballarat Magistrate's Court and police opposed bail. He has not
Speaker 2: yet been required to enter a plea and has not
Speaker 2: been convicted of anything. Police haven't yet disclosed an alleged
Speaker 2: motive or method for Samantha's death. They won't say if
Speaker 2: there was a sexual element to the crime, only that
Speaker 2: they believe she died in Mount Clear, a suburb on
Speaker 2: Ballarat's outskirts. The nation has suffered a string of shocking
Speaker 2: crimes already this year. A mother and child, then the father,
Speaker 2: were stabbed to death in Sydney, allegedly by a martial
Speaker 2: arts instructor known to the family. The murders of Jesse
Speaker 2: Baird and Luke Davies on the eve of Mardi Gras
Speaker 2: devastated Sydney's LGBTI community. Now the search for Amantha Murphy's
Speaker 2: remains somewhere out there in that haunted landscape.
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