Speaker 1: Okay, let me pass the tree and then we've got
Speaker 1: a gate up here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gates open.
Speaker 3: This is the sound of Nina and I back in
Speaker 3: the car on the trail of Frank Abbott on this car.
Speaker 3: We'll get to the gate, and this is the sound
Speaker 3: of us hitting an obstacle, or in this case, a
Speaker 3: series of obstacles, big rough bumps and rocks in the
Speaker 3: dirt road.
Speaker 1: It's definitely not a way anyone goes regularly.
Speaker 3: No, it's not calling it a road is probably overstating it.
Speaker 1: No one has come out and screamed with this to
Speaker 1: get off their properly. Probably not on someone's property.
Speaker 2: Well, I also think that's because no one lives here.
Speaker 3: To fully appreciate the situation Nina and I are now in.
Speaker 3: It helps to know that the car we're driving is
Speaker 3: all most brand new.
Speaker 1: Very high grass here that we're driving through.
Speaker 3: The car also belongs to our employers, freaking right down,
Speaker 3: and our bosses have absolutely no idea.
Speaker 2: What we're up to.
Speaker 3: What we're going to do is get to the gate
Speaker 3: and then just check the underside of the car. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But to understand why Nina and I have got ourselves
Speaker 3: into this situation.
Speaker 1: Dean's gone to move a fallen tree. Valliant effort. You
Speaker 1: might do it. It's a full tree.
Speaker 4: Car's fine, really objectively creepy looking forest.
Speaker 3: To understand why we're bumping our way through this creepy
Speaker 3: looking forest, and why we've ignored the advice of local
Speaker 3: people who say you cannot get through on the road
Speaker 3: this way.
Speaker 4: Now, well, the local kids said we couldn't get through
Speaker 4: this way, Well they might be right.
Speaker 1: They may be right.
Speaker 3: To understand why you have to go back.
Speaker 2: And I think at this point we run out of road.
Speaker 3: Back to that witness statement from Irish Northam which was
Speaker 3: released to us by the inquest into William Tyrrel's disappearance,
Speaker 3: I think we have to walk from him. The witness
Speaker 3: statement we looked at in the last episode, which talks
Speaker 3: about Frank Abbott and the unsolved murder of Margaret Cox.
Speaker 3: Because that witness statement also talks about Frank and another
Speaker 3: unsolved murder, this time of a teenage girl whose body
Speaker 3: was discovered near a rough dirt road like this one.
Speaker 1: So let's go for a walk, maybe lock the car.
Speaker 3: I'm Danbox and from news dot com dot Au. This
Speaker 3: is witness William Tyrell episode fifteen. Hry Lee, All right,
Speaker 3: let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: What are we doing?
Speaker 3: All right, So we're sitting in the car in Kendletown,
Speaker 3: which is a village outside Tari on the north coast
Speaker 3: of New South Wales. And the reason we're sitting here
Speaker 3: is Iris Northam, who's the witness who gives evidence of
Speaker 3: the inquest. In her statement, she says that Frank Abbot
Speaker 3: would go the back road from Cundletown through Brimbin Road
Speaker 3: which was partly forest, and make his way to Tarree.
Speaker 3: And he'd also drive a back road from Cedar Party
Speaker 3: onto Wingham Road which brings you back to Tarre. If
Speaker 3: you're struggling to follow, the key thing is Frank Abbot
Speaker 3: told Iris Northam that he drove the back roads.
Speaker 2: He'd gone the back roads to avoid the police, according
Speaker 2: to Iris.
Speaker 3: According to Iris, but we also know from other evidence
Speaker 3: of the inquest that Frank often drove cars without a
Speaker 3: license and he often drove unregistered cars, so he had
Speaker 3: a reason to want to avoid the police. Other people
Speaker 3: we've spoken to have said the same, that people used
Speaker 3: to drive the back roads through the forest between Cundletown
Speaker 3: and Tarree. And that might be important because Iris also
Speaker 3: said that another girl went missing from Tarree and her
Speaker 3: body was found a few years after she went missing.
Speaker 3: And Iris says her body was found in Brimbin Road.
Speaker 3: Brimbin Road in the back road between Condletown and Tarree,
Speaker 3: and Iris says she only mentions it because it's one
Speaker 3: of the roads that Frank used to drive to avoid
Speaker 3: being caught by the police. Now, Iris doesn't name that girl,
Speaker 3: but she names her father. And you worked out that
Speaker 3: that girl's a teenager called Showily Masters who was ultimately
Speaker 3: found on a bush track not far from Brimban Reserve.
Speaker 3: So what Iris is doing is she's the one making
Speaker 3: the connection and the evidence before the inquest between Frank
Speaker 3: and this girl's disappearance. But when I looked at a
Speaker 3: map this back road from Condletown to Tarree, I don't
Speaker 3: think you can drive a back road from Kendletown to
Speaker 3: Tiree because on the map it doesn't seem to work. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a river in the way and no bridge that
Speaker 3: I can see. And if it's not possible, then everything,
Speaker 3: Iris says there falls apart. There is no connection that
Speaker 3: she's made between Frank Abbot and this girl's disappearance because
Speaker 3: you can't drive this back road. So there's only one
Speaker 3: way to test it, which is to try and drive
Speaker 3: the back road.
Speaker 1: So let's do it.
Speaker 2: We're going to do it.
Speaker 3: So we set out to test Iris's statement, can you
Speaker 3: go this way?
Speaker 2: What am I looking for? Brimmen Road?
Speaker 3: Aiming to see if we can find the road Iris describes,
Speaker 3: which she says Frank Abbot used to drive, and where
Speaker 3: the body of a seventeen year old girl known as
Speaker 3: Shirrilee Masters was discovered. Sharry Lee was a carefree, spirited
Speaker 3: teenager who was crazy about horses and cats and dogs,
Speaker 3: any animal really, and she was last seen around the
Speaker 3: year two thousand in Taree, telling friends she was going
Speaker 3: to hitchhike south. At first, our attempt to find this
Speaker 3: back road doesn't go well.
Speaker 4: Directions it's off Landsdowne right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Stuck.
Speaker 2: In three hundred meters, Turn left onto Dinnison's where we going?
Speaker 3: Oh, we're not too far away, and hilariously, it's the
Speaker 3: other direction to the one.
Speaker 2: We were driving it.
Speaker 3: So we turn around, leave Cundletown behind us, and quickly
Speaker 3: the road empties and starts heading to empty country.
Speaker 2: Like there's no road markings after here.
Speaker 1: Where do we think we're going to turn off?
Speaker 2: It could be this one here.
Speaker 1: And my observation is this is quite far.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've got to really want to not meet the police.
Speaker 1: Because this isn't the convenient way to go.
Speaker 3: No, it's empty road, gum trees on one side, fields on.
Speaker 2: Either side, horses. Okay. So the next question then is
Speaker 2: can you get to Tari?
Speaker 1: What straight are we looking for?
Speaker 4: That was my una.
Speaker 3: That's the street okay, looking at the map, that's the
Speaker 3: one that I think is most likely a backway to Tari.
Speaker 1: Had always just ask the local children.
Speaker 2: See, that's a really good ideas.
Speaker 3: A bunch of kids here mucking around on motorbikes. Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: is there a back road from here to Tarre without
Speaker 3: having to go down all the way to the main road.
Speaker 3: You have to go along the road, so none of
Speaker 3: these turns on the right take you down there. So
Speaker 3: the kids who live here and who muck around on
Speaker 3: these roads on their dirt bikes, they seem to be
Speaker 3: saying that Iris must be wrong because you can't drive
Speaker 3: a back road from Kendletown to Tarree. Like she says,
Speaker 3: thank you, guys. Nina and I decide to ignore the
Speaker 3: locals and try to find a back road like the
Speaker 3: one Iris describes anyway.
Speaker 1: I reckon, we're on Summ's properly, not on the.
Speaker 2: Property, but I don't know what is at the end
Speaker 2: of the road.
Speaker 3: You got the map, Yeah, yeah, so this one that
Speaker 3: one there the kids told us ended in the sewage works.
Speaker 1: One of them is going to take us to this.
Speaker 2: This takes us right to the river.
Speaker 1: Does it? And this is this is the only one.
Speaker 1: This is the only way I think you could go
Speaker 1: from having the place.
Speaker 2: If we go down here and there's an old bridge,
Speaker 2: it might be usable. It might not.
Speaker 1: Then confirmed you could go. This way is a very
Speaker 1: inconvenient way to go, but it's going to.
Speaker 3: Be inconvenient because I don't know if we can actually
Speaker 3: turn around once we start driving down here.
Speaker 2: So let's go. As you know, this ends badly, car
Speaker 2: will get to the game.
Speaker 3: What Nina and I do discover is that the kids
Speaker 3: on bikes were right. You definitely can't drive on a
Speaker 3: back road between Kendletown and Tarre, as Iris says in
Speaker 3: her statement to the William Tyrell in quest. So Iris's
Speaker 3: statement is wrong except it turns out that that's not
Speaker 3: quite what Iris was saying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but we're just doing a little bit more follow up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and some of the questions.
Speaker 3: That we have that came out of the unrest, we
Speaker 3: visit Iris and ask her specifically about this back road
Speaker 3: you mentioned in.
Speaker 6: Your statement as well, some of the back roads.
Speaker 5: Oh. Yes, he used to do that because he said
Speaker 5: they took me liscense away because of fines for different
Speaker 5: things that I hadn't paid, and he said I couldn't
Speaker 5: got on the highway in case they picked me up.
Speaker 3: So I used to use.
Speaker 5: The our fire tracks fire trials.
Speaker 3: In Australia, a fire trails, a rough dirt road cleared
Speaker 3: through the bush for fire crews to use in case
Speaker 3: of a bushfire.
Speaker 4: We're trying to drive them yesterday.
Speaker 2: But we tell Iris the road that we tried to follow.
Speaker 5: No, No, that's another one. Yeah, that's out near Candletown.
Speaker 3: About another back road from Condletown to Taree.
Speaker 5: Well, this one leads from.
Speaker 3: You've got Iris gets a pen and paper and starts
Speaker 3: drawing a rough map.
Speaker 5: You've got John Throver there. Next down here is small
Speaker 5: lane and from there it used to go through the
Speaker 5: Forest to Lansdowne.
Speaker 2: Suddenly we realize.
Speaker 5: From Lansdowne it used to come into Candletown.
Speaker 2: Nina and I had been on the wrong road.
Speaker 5: To Brimbon Road and into the bushes and whatever.
Speaker 3: We thought we'd been following the route in Iris's witness statement.
Speaker 5: And from there around it comes out. I think it's
Speaker 5: Young's but.
Speaker 3: We were mistaken. We've been trying to follow Google maps.
Speaker 5: Mostly, and from there they used to go along.
Speaker 3: Wingham Row and the Iris is drawing on this piece
Speaker 3: of paper on her kitchen table.
Speaker 5: And turn left to go to the tendin Barling. It
Speaker 5: isn't marked on our map, and the other one goes
Speaker 5: to Brimbon.
Speaker 3: I've been looking at a map one you've been saying.
Speaker 3: So I've been looking at this map on my phone.
Speaker 3: That road you're describing takes you straight through the Yarret Forest,
Speaker 3: the state forest there. But that's where that body you're
Speaker 3: talking about, Chevroley masters. That's the rough area where she
Speaker 3: was found.
Speaker 2: Yes, so if Frank.
Speaker 3: Did use to drive along this road, that would put
Speaker 3: Frank in the area where Chery's body was discovered.
Speaker 5: He told us that's the way he went because he
Speaker 5: didn't have a license, didn't want to get picked up.
Speaker 3: So taking the map Iris has now drawn for us.
Speaker 3: Nina and I decide again to go and try to drive.
Speaker 5: It, and we'll give you a call if we guess.
Speaker 2: How about that you could.
Speaker 4: Tell us that with us.
Speaker 3: So this is the Old Port mcquarie Road, a few
Speaker 3: kilometers north of Tare and we're here because bluntly, we're
Speaker 3: looking for where the body of show Lee Masters was found,
Speaker 3: which is in this forest. And all we really know
Speaker 3: is from newspaper reports at the time that is described
Speaker 3: as a rarely used bush track within a kilometer of
Speaker 3: where you come off the sealed road.
Speaker 1: I mean she wasn't found for six years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's rarely used.
Speaker 3: But the problem with that newspaper report is I don't
Speaker 3: know if the reporter had actually been here because they
Speaker 3: got the name of the road roll. They're called it
Speaker 3: the Old Port Road and it's actually the Old Port
Speaker 3: mcquarie Road.
Speaker 1: It was written like they saw the crime scene tape.
Speaker 3: Could it be that that looks like it might once
Speaker 3: have been a track? Do you have the descript Yeah,
Speaker 3: it says the crime scene tape roped off a rarely
Speaker 3: used bush track leading off the Old Port Road, not
Speaker 3: far from Brimban Reserve. The track is located less than
Speaker 3: a kilometer off the tarred Cedar Party Road, which.
Speaker 2: Is the way we drove up to get here.
Speaker 3: It could be if that is an old bush track.
Speaker 2: Let me have a look.
Speaker 3: I get out and walk into the forest following the
Speaker 3: bush track, trying to see if it could be the
Speaker 3: same place described in the old newspaper clippings as where
Speaker 3: Cheryly's body was discovered. And if you're thinking this all
Speaker 3: seems quite vague, well so are we. One thing we
Speaker 3: are learning is there's so little known about Scherly's murder
Speaker 3: it's almost as if she vanished.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an old bush track.
Speaker 3: It doesn't get much traffic, and there's no obvious gravesite
Speaker 3: or anything, but I wouldn't expect one. What there is
Speaker 3: is there's a bunch of stuff that's been flight tipped there.
Speaker 3: So there's some old kind of old sofa cushions maybe,
Speaker 3: and some kind of household.
Speaker 4: It's said in the article that this is a popular
Speaker 4: dumping area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people have been out there and just chuck stuff
Speaker 3: in the bush. But I guess the significance of it
Speaker 3: isn't so much that that might be the track where
Speaker 3: Serie was found. As we know she was found in
Speaker 3: this forest. We know she was found on this road.
Speaker 3: And when we just were talking to Iris then and
Speaker 3: the description she gave us of how Frank drove from
Speaker 3: Condletown to Taree on back roads. The roads she described
Speaker 3: the only way you can get between them are on
Speaker 3: this old Port mcquarie road. So if her description of
Speaker 3: how Frank drove at the time to escape the police
Speaker 3: is accurate, then he had to come along this road,
Speaker 3: which is where Cheverley Masters was found. But looking at
Speaker 3: a map, I don't know if you can actually do
Speaker 3: that loop through the forest. If you can, it's on
Speaker 3: this road which is a dirt track, and the only
Speaker 3: way to find out if you can or not is
Speaker 3: to keep going. But I don't know if this car
Speaker 3: is going to make.
Speaker 1: It more concerning. The phrase she used was roads and
Speaker 1: fire trails.
Speaker 3: Why it's more concerning if you're the owner of this car,
Speaker 3: which are.
Speaker 1: And there's a trail going there that way?
Speaker 2: What's that That one's not even on the map.
Speaker 1: That one looks like you could have driven on it.
Speaker 3: You said this earlier. You're only going to know these
Speaker 3: roads if you're a local. Yeah, so you're only going
Speaker 3: to find this is a place to dispose of Shery's body.
Speaker 3: And I hate saying it as bluntly as that. Sorry,
Speaker 3: if anyone's listening that did know her. But you're only
Speaker 3: going to use these places and come to these places
Speaker 3: if you know of them, and you'd have to be
Speaker 3: a local to do that. It doesn't make me think
Speaker 3: one or two things. One is, if Frank Abbot's really
Speaker 3: driving this road, then why is he so keen to
Speaker 3: avoid police, like getting stopped for driving without a license. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: you'd get in trouble for that, but driving this far
Speaker 3: out of your way rather than taking the chance on
Speaker 3: the three kilometer drive on the main road, it feels
Speaker 3: like you really wanted to avoid police.
Speaker 2: But the other thing it makes me think.
Speaker 3: Is all right, so you can't get through on these roads,
Speaker 3: like Iris said, Frank told her he used to do,
Speaker 3: so you can't do that. That doesn't mean that Iris
Speaker 3: is wrong. It might mean that Frank was lying to Iris,
Speaker 3: that he wanted to give her a different reason for
Speaker 3: why he was driving on these roads, and maybe he
Speaker 3: had a reason he wanted to disguise, not necessarily that
Speaker 3: he was involved in Sherly Master's murder. I'm not suggesting that,
Speaker 3: but maybe there was something else he did up here
Speaker 3: that he didn't want Irish to know about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the problem is you can see.
Speaker 1: On the map we're about to hit the end of
Speaker 1: what Google says this.
Speaker 2: Map is, and then there's a river.
Speaker 3: And that river's problem because if you can't get through
Speaker 3: on this road, like Iris says Frank used to in
Speaker 3: her witness statement, then there is nothing to connect Frank
Speaker 3: Abbott to the place where Showy's body was discovered. And
Speaker 3: if Iris's statement is wrong about that, then maybe she's
Speaker 3: also wrong about everything else, including the alleged links between
Speaker 3: Frank Abbott and the unsolved murder of Margaret Cox, which
Speaker 3: we looked at in the last episode.
Speaker 1: All right, doesn't go through.
Speaker 3: No, on the map, you can't get past the river.
Speaker 3: But if we're going to find a way, it's going
Speaker 3: to be just here, he says.
Speaker 1: As he drives towards.
Speaker 3: He says, as there's a massive close game. But the
Speaker 3: thing about that closing gate road, old Port McQuary Road
Speaker 3: goes beyond it and it's now.
Speaker 1: A footpath authorized vehicles only, But.
Speaker 2: How old is the gate, So we're talking thirty years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if that gate wasn't there thirty years ago
Speaker 3: when Shirrilee was murdered, maybe you could keep driving on
Speaker 3: this road over the river for now. Nina and I
Speaker 3: pull up at a little picnic area. It's completely empty.
Speaker 3: I walk over to a wooden sign where there's a
Speaker 3: map saying Brimbin Nature Reserve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look at this. Look at this.
Speaker 3: This is the map on the I don't know what
Speaker 3: is it nature Reserve information sign and shows So we're there,
Speaker 3: see the end of the road of the picnic area,
Speaker 3: but it shows that that old Fort mcquarie road turns
Speaker 3: into a footpath here and then it crosses the river.
Speaker 3: It says it's called the Tommy Owen's Crossing. And then
Speaker 3: the track goes on through the bush here and missus
Speaker 3: Kelly's Crossing and miss Kelly's crossing of the river further up.
Speaker 3: And then if you look on my phone and you
Speaker 3: look at that bend in the river again, that takes
Speaker 3: you back over it's the Awson River there and onto
Speaker 3: dirt tracks in the forest that lead you back to
Speaker 3: Brimbin Rogue.
Speaker 2: So possibly actually there was a way to drive through here.
Speaker 2: It's really out of the way, so maybe maybe you
Speaker 2: could once drive the whole way the way Frank told
Speaker 2: Iris that he used to.
Speaker 3: So it's only now that you can actually put Frank
Speaker 3: Abbott as having been at the place where Sherrily Master's
Speaker 3: body was found. So it's only now we've got that connection.
Speaker 3: But none of this is proof of anything. Far from it,
Speaker 3: particularly because when Nina and I do get to the river,
Speaker 3: there's no way you could drive a car across it, at.
Speaker 6: Least in its current state.
Speaker 7: We can't drive that.
Speaker 2: You can't get across that.
Speaker 3: There is a bridge, but it's a narrow walking bridge.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thirty years and floods.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it looks about, unless there's any
Speaker 3: evidence that there was a bigger bridge there once.
Speaker 1: When there's a library, what's your local library full.
Speaker 2: Of old maps?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So ever stopped researching.
Speaker 3: We stopped recording and head back to the car, feeling subdued.
Speaker 3: No bridge, no road, no connection between Frank wants driving
Speaker 3: this route through the forest where Chery's body was discovered
Speaker 3: after she was last seen in Taree in the year
Speaker 3: two thousand.
Speaker 2: Back at our.
Speaker 3: Motel, I go to bed and wake up to a
Speaker 3: text message from Nina.
Speaker 2: She wants to talk.
Speaker 1: Good morning, Good morning.
Speaker 4: So I did some reading about the town planning. I
Speaker 4: am not the navigator, as we've established, so I.
Speaker 1: Need you to interpret this and tell me if I'm right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So have a look. Do you want me?
Speaker 4: I want you to look at this email I sent
Speaker 4: you in the middle of the night about town planning
Speaker 4: in the early two thousands entire Okay, all right.
Speaker 3: So this is the email you sent, which she sent
Speaker 3: to me at on fairness, it was only ten past
Speaker 3: eleven at night.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 3: And it's the one title Brimban Reserve Development Plan in two.
Speaker 2: Thousand and five. Click click that link. So just click
Speaker 2: on that link.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So it's the Brimbin Nature Reserve Plan of
Speaker 3: Management from the New South Wales National Parks and wild
Speaker 3: Life Service from May two thousand and five. This is
Speaker 3: what you were reading in the middle of the night
Speaker 3: last night. Oh hang on, that's interesting. So there's a map.
Speaker 1: There's a map.
Speaker 2: There's a map of where we were yesterday. Isn't there
Speaker 2: the Brimbin Picnic area?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 8: And then.
Speaker 1: This is addition to Brimban Nature Reserve.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when on it, it marks the old Port mcquarie Road,
Speaker 3: which is what we were driving on as continuing across
Speaker 3: the river, which is where we stopped yesterday and we
Speaker 3: couldn't get across. But this shows that there was a
Speaker 3: road there, Page seven, So Part three point five, two
Speaker 3: wheel drive vehicle access to the reserve is available along
Speaker 3: the old Port mcquarie Road, So that's what we drove along.
Speaker 2: The road. Reserve of the old Port mcquarie.
Speaker 3: Road continues east across Tommy Owens Creek towards Lansdowne, though
Speaker 3: this section is overgrown and not suitable for vehicle access,
Speaker 3: but it was.
Speaker 2: The route of the old road. So when was Shirley
Speaker 2: Masters discovered.
Speaker 1: She went missing in two.
Speaker 2: Thousand, two thousand?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this documents from two thousand and five calling
Speaker 4: that road untraffickable.
Speaker 1: We don't know if it was untrafficable in two thousand.
Speaker 3: No, you're right, but it shows that the road continued.
Speaker 3: You can't do it now, but the Park Service took
Speaker 3: it over in nineteen ninety nine, just before Shirley Masters
Speaker 3: goes missing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's quite possible at that point you could
Speaker 2: still drive that road. I think that's it. Nina.
Speaker 3: I think it shows there is an alleged connection between
Speaker 3: Frank Abbot and the place Scherri Lee was discovered contained
Speaker 3: in the witness statement Irish Northam gave to the William
Speaker 3: Tyrell inquest. And there is another alleged connection there in
Speaker 3: Iris's statement, But you have to look closely, blink and
Speaker 3: you'd miss it because in her witness statement, Iris doesn't
Speaker 3: actually mention Sherri Lee by name. Instead, she describes a
Speaker 3: girl who went missing maybe five years after Margaret Cox's murder,
Speaker 3: and says this girl's body was only found a few
Speaker 3: years later on Brimbin Road and that she was about
Speaker 3: fifteen or sixteen and her father was a man called
Speaker 3: Rex Nolan.
Speaker 5: The one I was talking to them about was Rex's daughter.
Speaker 3: Years it's Nina who puts the clues together.
Speaker 1: That's chery Lee masters A.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sherrily was found in Brimbin Reserve, not Brimbin Road,
Speaker 3: and she was seventeen, not fifteen or sixteen. But she
Speaker 3: was Rex Nolan's daughter. When did you start thinking about
Speaker 3: this other young woman who was found in that bit
Speaker 3: of bush and maybe in connection to Frank.
Speaker 5: Well any that reason, because he used to go out
Speaker 5: around it why and with the connection that he knew
Speaker 5: Rex and Karen.
Speaker 3: But that that Frank knew Rex Shoally's father, and Karen
Speaker 3: Shirly's stepmother.
Speaker 5: And they worked at the markets.
Speaker 2: This is new. It's not in Iris's witness statement.
Speaker 5: Any connection that could be Frank worked at the markets.
Speaker 3: John's River is the tiny town where Frank once lived
Speaker 3: in the years before Sholy went missing. The town has
Speaker 3: a market held on the second Saturday of each month
Speaker 3: at the Johns River Community Hall, which is opposite the
Speaker 3: house where Frank was living.
Speaker 5: He helped at the markets out there where Rix and
Speaker 5: Karen used to silster. He used to go to the
Speaker 5: markets and he'd help help them set up things and
Speaker 5: do a little odd jobs for them there.
Speaker 3: So's parents he knew then.
Speaker 2: And did you ever see them together? How do you
Speaker 2: know the connection?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 5: I only know that Frank lived opposite the hall where
Speaker 5: they had the markets. Frank used to help there just
Speaker 5: about a month.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: Other people from John's River tell us the same thing.
Speaker 3: Frank was always at the markets where Vally's family were regulars.
Speaker 3: That alone proves nothing. But here's what bothers me about it.
Speaker 3: We found this connection me and Nina, not the police,
Speaker 3: and it didn't take us long to do it. The
Speaker 3: clues were right there. In the statement, Iris gave the
Speaker 3: inquest into William Tyrell's disappearance, which was signed by a
Speaker 3: police detective, and Iris has previously told us this detective
Speaker 3: promised to pass the information on to the Unsolved Homicide
Speaker 3: Team for them to follow up, but Iris says she
Speaker 3: never heard back. We asked the New South Wales Police
Speaker 3: what happened? Was this information ever passed on? But they
Speaker 3: declined to answer. So we find our own.
Speaker 2: Detective were still recording.
Speaker 3: Our colleague Gary Jubilin, who used to be the lead
Speaker 3: detective on the investigation into William's disappearance.
Speaker 10: I left the investigation at the time when there was
Speaker 10: certain lines of inquiry that hept the Frank Abbott.
Speaker 3: Gary says he can't answer for what the police did
Speaker 3: after he left the investigation.
Speaker 10: And then, to my surprise, Frank Ebbott became the only
Speaker 10: suspect in the William Tyrol matter.
Speaker 3: Okay, Gary's making a point here. Frank was not the
Speaker 3: only suspect in the William Tyrell investigation, but he was
Speaker 3: a very prominent person of interest that the police were
Speaker 3: clearly focused.
Speaker 2: On at that point. But given how much attention Frank
Speaker 2: was getting.
Speaker 10: You'd be doing a deep diving to him and this
Speaker 10: type of stuff based on that statement. You'd want to
Speaker 10: have a look at that, because I would what's written
Speaker 10: in the statement from Iris Northam, I would imagine that
Speaker 10: when you're sitting here taking the statement, she's adding some
Speaker 10: other bits and pieces to it.
Speaker 2: When we sat down with her, we learned more than
Speaker 2: was in her statement.
Speaker 10: Yeah, if you're asking me how I would approach it.
Speaker 10: If we're looking at Frank Abbott, which once I'm taken
Speaker 10: off the investigation, if it has been run the way
Speaker 10: an investigation should be run, there'd be briefings and that
Speaker 10: certainly would be brought to the attention of the person
Speaker 10: running the investigation. She said this, said that, Okay, we've
Speaker 10: got to have a look at that. How do we
Speaker 10: have a look at that, We look at the cases
Speaker 10: we get that information in, and is Frank Abbitt involved
Speaker 10: in that? I want to preface that with it's not
Speaker 10: going to solve the William Tyrell matter. Like that doesn't
Speaker 10: necessarily mean that he's involved in William Tyrell. But you'd
Speaker 10: be looking as deep as deep as you can. You
Speaker 10: want as much information. So I don't want to be
Speaker 10: critical of it because I just don't know the full circumstances.
Speaker 10: I'm just looking at it from an investigative point of view.
Speaker 10: I think I'm informed enough having led the investigation for
Speaker 10: four years, know how we had to go through persons
Speaker 10: of interest and you had to look at everything about
Speaker 10: the person of interest. If someone's presented a statement from
Speaker 10: sitting in a briefing room and being told this and
Speaker 10: told that, Okay, well we're going to have a look
Speaker 10: at this, we've got to have a look at that.
Speaker 10: Does it solve wi tyrol matter? Perhaps not. But if
Speaker 10: we're looking at a person of interest, you've got to
Speaker 10: look at them completely.
Speaker 3: So you would have looked at these two cases. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: Margaret Cox and very Masters.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and knowing the way that the investigation was run.
Speaker 10: If you're saying someone's a person of interest, you look
Speaker 10: at absolutely everything about that person. And when you're looking
Speaker 10: at the murder investigation, which Tyrrell is, there's enough there
Speaker 10: in the way that you've relaid the information what you've
Speaker 10: provided to me to think, yeah, it's worth looking at.
Speaker 10: Coming back to Cheryl Lee Masters, yeah, if you knew
Speaker 10: her father was associated with the markets around there, Yeah,
Speaker 10: you'd have a look and you'd do it. As a
Speaker 10: matter of course I would anyway.
Speaker 3: We suspect the New South Wales police have not looked
Speaker 3: closely enough the information about Shirley contained in Irish Northam's statement.
Speaker 3: We suspect this because Nina tracks down Sheerly's brother, Tony Masters,
Speaker 3: and he says he hasn't heard anything from the police
Speaker 3: in years.
Speaker 9: Shirley was a very carefree, spirited, very outgoing person. She
Speaker 9: had very say eachy feet. She never could seem to
Speaker 9: stay in one place for too long. She was a
Speaker 9: very kind person.
Speaker 3: Tony has a kind face and a nervous energy. Sitting
Speaker 3: on a park bench near his home in north West Sydney,
Speaker 3: he tells Nina how his sister, Shery Lee grew.
Speaker 9: Up tough with her slow development, like she was seventeen,
Speaker 9: but probably in the mind of a thirteen or fourteen
Speaker 9: year old child, so that's where she was at.
Speaker 3: Sherri Lee lived in and out of foster care, always
Speaker 3: seeming to fall through the gaps in the system.
Speaker 7: You'll learn not to trust.
Speaker 9: Like if we have a saw the place, we'd run,
Speaker 9: so I feel like the authorities weren't people that she
Speaker 9: could turn to and trust, so she really had no one.
Speaker 9: She had herself, and that I think kind of helped
Speaker 9: a lot to her demise.
Speaker 3: While still only in her mid teens, Sheerrily was living
Speaker 3: on her own in an apartment, but under the watch
Speaker 3: of the state government Department of Community Services, which has
Speaker 3: since changed its name, but is the same department that
Speaker 3: was later responsible for looking after three year old William Tyrrell,
Speaker 3: who also disappeared.
Speaker 9: I just feel like every possible system really let her down,
Speaker 9: also let the whole family down.
Speaker 3: It's easy to understand why Tony's family might feel this way,
Speaker 3: he says. Sheerrily was last seen in the year two thousand,
Speaker 3: when she told some friends in Taree she was going
Speaker 3: to hitchhikes south.
Speaker 9: It was pretty much her main mode of transportation. But
Speaker 9: I don't think she really had money to pay for transports.
Speaker 7: So she just used to hear child.
Speaker 3: Tony first heard his sister was missing in a phone call.
Speaker 9: I got a phone call from the police saying, you know,
Speaker 9: she's a missing person.
Speaker 1: Did the place seem concerned?
Speaker 7: Not overly?
Speaker 9: They It was more of a I felt like the
Speaker 9: phone the calls were just a duty like for them,
Speaker 9: like a responsibility, like we have to notify somebody.
Speaker 1: What were they doing that you're aware of?
Speaker 6: To find her?
Speaker 7: Not much.
Speaker 9: I don't even think they bothered to place the menican
Speaker 9: they had with a previous lady in at the shopping
Speaker 9: center near where I worked. Put aminican that was wearing
Speaker 9: the same clothes as a young lady that disappeared.
Speaker 3: If that sounds odd that Tony would talk about the
Speaker 3: police not putting a mannekin of his sister in the
Speaker 3: shopping center after she went missing, there's a reason. Four
Speaker 3: years before before Cherri Lee was last seen in Tarree,
Speaker 3: another woman went missing from the same small city. That
Speaker 3: was Margaret Cox, who we talked about in the last episode,
Speaker 3: and then the police put a mannequin of Margaret dressed
Speaker 3: in the clothes she'd been wearing in the local shopping center,
Speaker 3: hoping it would remind someone that they'd seen her on
Speaker 3: that day.
Speaker 9: I used to work at Kamar in Tari and I
Speaker 9: was about fifteen. I just used to walk past the
Speaker 9: mannequin every day going into work.
Speaker 3: Chery Lee would also have sent that mannequin, according to Tony.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I actually think one time I even sat down
Speaker 9: near that manniquin.
Speaker 3: So when Cherrily went missing, Tony wondered where's her mannequin?
Speaker 3: Were the police just not so interested in his sister.
Speaker 3: Nina and I have spoken to the cop who oversaw
Speaker 3: the detectives working in tar in two thousand. He says
Speaker 3: he does not remember Cherally's disappearance being reported and six
Speaker 3: years passed. In two thousand and six, a group of
Speaker 3: soldiers were on an exercise in the state forest just
Speaker 3: north of Taree when they discovered human remains and the
Speaker 3: police got back in touch with Tony.
Speaker 9: They told me that they had actually found some remains
Speaker 9: and they wanted DNA testing.
Speaker 3: It was two more years, two thousand and eight before
Speaker 3: the DNA tests finally identified the body as Shery Lee.
Speaker 3: Finally it seemed the police were doing something.
Speaker 9: They said that there was a special task force that
Speaker 9: they'd been set up to investigate Shiryly's murder.
Speaker 7: I think I met them maybe twice.
Speaker 9: Over the toll duration, but I invited them to Shirly's memorial,
Speaker 9: but they didn't come. I spoke with them once after that,
Speaker 9: and they just said that it was still an ongoing investigation,
Speaker 9: and therefore they can't talk about anything.
Speaker 7: And that was pretty much.
Speaker 9: I made numerous phone calls to them, who always took
Speaker 9: forever to get phone calls returned. So they couldn't tell
Speaker 9: us really any anything or any possible leads or anything.
Speaker 9: They couldn't tell us anyone's name, and they couldn't tell
Speaker 9: us anything at all.
Speaker 7: So yeah, we really didn't get anything.
Speaker 3: From them, unbelievably. Tony says his family were never even
Speaker 3: told the results of the autopsy, saying how Shaly died.
Speaker 9: There was literally nothing explained the extent of what Winne
Speaker 9: was a shallow grave.
Speaker 2: A shallow grave.
Speaker 3: Tony says he almost hoped his sister had died in
Speaker 3: an accident.
Speaker 9: Maybe she got hit by a car or something while
Speaker 9: hitch hiking, because you know, sometimes hard to see people
Speaker 9: of highways if it's raining and stuff.
Speaker 3: That wouldn't be so bad, He says. At least that way,
Speaker 3: very Lee might not have suffered.
Speaker 9: And when we questioned the police, they're like, we can't
Speaker 9: tell you anything. Well, they said that it definitely was
Speaker 9: a homicide.
Speaker 7: She had actually been murdered.
Speaker 3: In the end, it was the funeral director, not the police.
Speaker 3: Detectives who explained that very Lee had suffered a massive
Speaker 3: head injury.
Speaker 9: She showed us to the back of Shirley's skull and
Speaker 9: said that her professional opinion was that Shirley had actually
Speaker 9: taken something to the back of the head, which would
Speaker 9: have been enough.
Speaker 2: To kill her.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how difficult that must have all been
Speaker 1: to go through.
Speaker 7: I think I just felt really sorry for her.
Speaker 3: Then things got worse. Very Lee's family were told her
Speaker 3: remains were missing.
Speaker 1: How long could I missing?
Speaker 3: For probably a couple of years.
Speaker 7: It took them a while to get her back to us.
Speaker 1: Years.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was a long time.
Speaker 1: How do you misplace something that important?
Speaker 9: I think she was just I think it because they
Speaker 9: have a whole lot of unsolved crimes and just evidence
Speaker 9: in storage, and they maybe mislabeled it, or the box
Speaker 9: was behind another box, or maybe their short on staff
Speaker 9: that really didn't want to take the time to look.
Speaker 9: We were never really given a reason why, just that
Speaker 9: she was misplaced.
Speaker 7: So and they would they would get her to us
Speaker 7: as soon.
Speaker 2: As they could.
Speaker 3: It wasn't soon enough, though, Cherly's father, Rex Nolan, died
Speaker 3: before his daughter's remains were returned to the family.
Speaker 9: So he actually never got to bury her.
Speaker 3: With her murder still unsolved, the family held a memorial.
Speaker 9: Service and the police didn't come to it, even though
Speaker 9: they were invited, and it was a big turnout, like
Speaker 9: a lot of people from Tire were there. We thought
Speaker 9: they could come and maybe, you know, hear some stories
Speaker 9: about our they might hear something that matches up with
Speaker 9: something they already had, I thought, But they didn't bother coming,
Speaker 9: and yeah, we didn't really hear much from them over
Speaker 9: that whole period.
Speaker 3: By this time there had been an inquest, so a
Speaker 3: formal investigation into how Shirrily died, but Tony says his
Speaker 3: family were not invited to take part and the inquest
Speaker 3: findings are easily the most upsetting of any that I've
Speaker 3: seen in almost twenty years of reporting on crime.
Speaker 4: Are you okay if I read this?
Speaker 7: Let of course yes.
Speaker 4: So it's as in quest into the death of Sharyli Masters,
Speaker 4: I make the following finding. I find that the deceased
Speaker 4: Cheryly Master they've spelt her name wrong. Between October nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety five and October two thousand and five, at an
Speaker 4: unknown place in the state of New South Wales, died
Speaker 4: of an undeterminable cause in circumstances that I've also not
Speaker 4: been able to determine.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that pretty much sounds like the whole you know,
Speaker 9: we don't really know, and that they one would misspell
Speaker 9: her name, and in fact, legally her name isn't Masters,
Speaker 9: it's actually Nolan. And my father was really upset because
Speaker 9: her name was never legally changed to Masters and on
Speaker 9: her grave zone it's hyphen eight. We actually have Masters Nolan.
Speaker 9: So the fact that they'd never even used her actual.
Speaker 4: Legal name in a coronial finding.
Speaker 9: In the coronial finding and there was no reference to it,
Speaker 9: but also to the fact that the dates were so
Speaker 9: broad they didn't even mention when she was actually discovered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I noticed that the earliest date there is
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety five. She was definitely seen alive post nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety five, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she was definitely seen alive.
Speaker 9: I had seen her in ninety eight, ninety nine, and
Speaker 9: she'd been out to Tamworth to see our mom and
Speaker 9: our little sisters out there, and she had actually been
Speaker 9: dating a glade. His name was Patrick, So she had
Speaker 9: actually been seen And I just don't think the police
Speaker 9: had bothered to try to track any of these people
Speaker 9: down interview any of these people, and if they did,
Speaker 9: they made no reference of it to me at all.
Speaker 4: So were you able to submit anything for the inquest?
Speaker 9: I don't believe I was actually asked to submit anything
Speaker 9: for the inquest. I didn't think that was something you
Speaker 9: could do, So no, I don't think I did.
Speaker 3: Families can very much provide information to an inquest, and
Speaker 3: most inquests I've seen, the grieving family is right at
Speaker 3: the heart of the process. The fact Tony wasn't told
Speaker 3: that his family could be appause me. And then when
Speaker 3: we asked the coroner's court to see the records from
Speaker 3: the inquest into Cherly's death, we were told, quote, archives
Speaker 3: have not had any luck finding this file after numerous searches,
Speaker 3: meaning they can't find the file of she Rely's inquest.
Speaker 3: They've lost it after somehow also misplacing Sheerly's body. How
Speaker 3: does that happen with a murder victim who leaves these
Speaker 3: gaps in the system.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it just still baffled me that the police didn't treat.
Speaker 7: It a little bit more with more urgency in case
Speaker 7: the killer was still out there, still killing people.
Speaker 3: Tony says he doesn't know who if anyone is now
Speaker 3: responsible for catching his sister's killer.
Speaker 9: No, just an unsole murder mystery, just like so many
Speaker 9: other cases, Like there's a lot and I just feel
Speaker 9: like Shirlie's now just another number, you know, on someone's
Speaker 9: desk or locked away in a room that nobody bothers
Speaker 9: to go into anymore.
Speaker 3: Nina asks if anyone from the police has recently contacted Tony.
Speaker 9: No, I haven't heard from the police for decades.
Speaker 3: Now, meaning it is Nina who first tells Tony about
Speaker 3: Iris Northam's evidence to the William Tyrell Inquest, which mentions
Speaker 3: his sister's disappearance.
Speaker 4: Okay, so this is the statement of a woman named
Speaker 4: Iris Northam that she made to the William Tyrell inquest
Speaker 4: about a person of interest called Frank Abbott.
Speaker 3: Nina shows Tony the part of Iris's statement that talks
Speaker 3: about his dad.
Speaker 1: Rex, So I'll show you where you can go from.
Speaker 3: And tells him what Iris told us about Rex and
Speaker 3: Frank both working at the Johns River Markets market.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so Rex and Karen they used to like go
Speaker 9: to all the markets. Oh, bar Turrey definitely in John's
Speaker 9: River was one of the areas that they would go to.
Speaker 4: Would Serlee have been to those markets with them.
Speaker 7: Shirrely may have, but I can't say definitely.
Speaker 3: We don't know exactly where Sheerly was living at the time,
Speaker 3: whether she even was living with Rex or Karen, so
Speaker 3: it's hard to know how much time they spent together.
Speaker 3: But even if there's a possibility, Tony thinks the police
Speaker 3: should have told him about Iris Northam's evidence.
Speaker 7: I feel a bit annoyed. I think I feel annoyed
Speaker 7: that people.
Speaker 9: Knew these I feel a bit I think disappointed that
Speaker 9: people have actually given information to the police and they
Speaker 9: haven't passed that along.
Speaker 3: So that's now three unsolved murders. Helen Harrison where Frank
Speaker 3: Abbot was found not guilty, Margaret Cox who we talked
Speaker 3: about in the last episode, and Sherri Lee. In all
Speaker 3: three cases, new evidence has come to light at the
Speaker 3: inquest into William Till's disappearance, but the victims' families and
Speaker 3: the potential witnesses that we've spoken to, none of them
Speaker 3: have been contacted by the New South Wales Police.
Speaker 9: You think you would at least inquire and ask around
Speaker 9: and do a little bit of digging.
Speaker 7: I kind of feel like when when people go missing.
Speaker 9: Too many people are just you know, a picture on
Speaker 9: the side of a milk carton, and that's so detached.
Speaker 9: But when you actually start thinking of them, oh, this
Speaker 9: is actually somebody that you know, used to play hopscotch
Speaker 9: and skip.
Speaker 7: And like playing with dolls and loved animals.
Speaker 9: And if people actually got to see that this was
Speaker 9: a person and not just you know, some you know,
Speaker 9: kind of wild teenager that deserve what she got, it'd
Speaker 9: be different because really, like people don't deserve it.
Speaker 3: Nobody deserves what happened to Tony's sister, Shery Lee, who
Speaker 3: was lost and whose murderer has not been brought to justice.
Speaker 3: But as Nina and I discover, there are other unsolved
Speaker 3: murders of women and children up here on the New
Speaker 3: South Wales North coast. In fact, there are dozens of them.
Speaker 3: So I've taken pages out of a road atlas and
Speaker 3: stuck them on the wall. So we've got a map
Speaker 3: of the whole north Coast in New South Wales, all
Speaker 3: the way up to the Queensland border. The map reaches
Speaker 3: almost floor to ceiling, and it looks like a long way,
Speaker 3: but it's what it's a day's drive really isn't it
Speaker 3: a long day's drive?
Speaker 2: But what I want to.
Speaker 3: Do is try to get a sense of the number
Speaker 3: of unsolved murders and missing people on this one stretcher coast.
Speaker 3: So we've got a list, and I've got some sticky labels,
Speaker 3: and I thought we'd literally just stick an arrow on
Speaker 3: the map for each of these unsolved murders or missing persons. Okay,
Speaker 3: So Noarel Cox disappears from Grafton.
Speaker 4: Nineteen seventy seven, seventy seven.
Speaker 3: Next up, Joy Hodgkins and Annie Tominak. They either go
Speaker 3: missing or their bodies are found in Mayfield.
Speaker 4: You want two or ones?
Speaker 2: They cut two.
Speaker 3: It takes Nina and I an hour to work through
Speaker 3: the list of missing and unsolved murder victims. I've actually
Speaker 3: noticed that both our houses are on here. There's you
Speaker 3: at the bottom and there's me just there. We got
Speaker 3: the list of names from Questions and Answers in the
Speaker 3: New South Wales State Parliament same year. Nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: Leanne Goodall last scene outside the Star Hotel in Newcastle,
Speaker 3: and this information comes from the police themselves. Nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: Robin Hickey disappears from Belmont same year Amanda Robinson disappear
Speaker 3: from Swansea, and Adriansen and Caroline dow Kingscliff.
Speaker 4: Are still in the seventies, We're.
Speaker 2: Still in the same year.
Speaker 3: Through the seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousands and twenty ten's
Speaker 3: the names just keep on coming. Alfried Sirich, Amanda Zaliz
Speaker 3: Hazel Fiddler, Elizabeth Dixon, Susan Mary Smith.
Speaker 2: And slowly we start noticing patterns.
Speaker 3: There's five in a group just around Newcastle and south.
Speaker 3: Then we've actually got three in Bowerville, so Evelyn green Up,
Speaker 3: Collen Walker Craig and Clinton Speedy Duroux.
Speaker 1: In nineteen nineties yeh.
Speaker 3: Nineteen nineteen, nineteen ninety one, but over six months, and
Speaker 3: that we know almost certainly is a serial killer, all right.
Speaker 3: And then we've got another for nineteen Ninetynica Rigney, Hazel
Speaker 3: Christian nineteen ninety one, nineteen ninety two, Ada Collins in Swansea.
Speaker 2: So that's just outside Newcastle. Again, God, there's so many
Speaker 2: of them in.
Speaker 4: Newcastle actually getting hard to read the map.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're not saying Frank Abbott has any link to
Speaker 3: any of these cases.
Speaker 4: Some of these in the nineties are the ones that
Speaker 4: they were looking at for grenakilla Is, and they thought they.
Speaker 3: Were all possible victims of another known serial killer. In fact,
Speaker 3: we're saying there is no link between Frank and almost
Speaker 3: all of them, Bromwin, Winfield, Lesson Newstead and Melissa Astill.
Speaker 3: It's just there are so many unsolved cases. Nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: Gordana Kotevski disappears from Charlestown, Melissa Hunts, you know, Meghan Pitt,
Speaker 3: Margaret Howlett, Angela Foley in Hinckley, Margaret Cox murdered in Taree.
Speaker 3: And when you see them all together on the wall
Speaker 3: in front of you, it's a lot to get your
Speaker 3: head around. Lee Ellen Stace murdered in Yamber, Marian Barter,
Speaker 3: Lois Roberts.
Speaker 4: Bernadette Donaldson, Elizabeth Wright, Lisa ver Ignola from Hexham.
Speaker 3: The police have looked at connections between some of these
Speaker 3: unsolved cases. In nineteen ninety eight, a task force was
Speaker 3: set up to look at potential links between ten missing
Speaker 3: people and the backpacker killer Ivan Malatt.
Speaker 4: Just flag Malat's arrested here.
Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety four. Yeah, but the murders continue.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Other police investigations also looked for links between some of
Speaker 3: the cases, and there was a quote in one of
Speaker 3: the papers. We've had one young woman murdered at a
Speaker 3: truck stop barely an hour away, so it would be
Speaker 3: stupid to dismiss the possibility of the same person could
Speaker 3: have struck again. So the lead detective. Both women were young,
Speaker 3: blonde and hitchhiking alone. Both disappear from busy roads, and
Speaker 3: there's a possible link to the Pacific Highway. And then
Speaker 3: there's Task Force METS, which is a police investigation looking
Speaker 3: at the disappearance and the murder of Lois Roberts, but
Speaker 3: it's reported as also looking at the deaths of Leel
Speaker 3: and Stace, Nicka Hinckley, and Margaret Cox. But few of
Speaker 3: these police investigations are successful, and the names just keep
Speaker 3: on coming, Susan Kay and Joanne Teterin, and then Celeste
Speaker 3: Gilbert and Shirley Masters, Tyer Colwell or Taya Colwell, Roonder Bickley,
Speaker 3: Lucy MacDonald, Margaret god two thousand and three, Rose Howell
Speaker 3: disappears from Bellinger two thousand and four, Kylie Ann shafferd
Speaker 3: Two thousand and five, Rosalin Ray, Simone Strobel, Amanda Odell
Speaker 3: murdered in Kempsey, Danika Dixon Lismore, third in Lismore two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight, Stacey mcmore two thousand and nine, Jasmine
Speaker 3: Morris disappears from Grafton, and the last one on this
Speaker 3: list is Ellen Wilson, who disappears from Ballina in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: Got it? So that's it? What do you think?
Speaker 4: It's shocking to look at? Even more so when I
Speaker 4: remember that these aren't just a list of murders that
Speaker 4: have happened. These are just the unsolved murders.
Speaker 3: So why are all these cases unsolved? Nina and I
Speaker 3: go back and read through some of the inquest findings
Speaker 3: that have looked at some of these cases, and they
Speaker 3: are utterly damning of the initial police investigations. One coroner
Speaker 3: talks about major failure. Another describes a violent death wrongly
Speaker 3: written off by police as an accident. They talk about
Speaker 3: people who were reported missing who are just not properly investigated,
Speaker 3: evidence that is lost, witnesses who are not taken seriously,
Speaker 3: and by the time other detectives do go back and
Speaker 3: pick up some of these cases, years have passed, those
Speaker 3: witnesses have grown old or died and more records have
Speaker 3: gone missing, meaning these missing or murdered people like Cherry
Speaker 3: Lee keep falling through the gaps.
Speaker 6: All right, it's almost one am, and I am really,
Speaker 6: really tired.
Speaker 3: Both Nina and I are trouble by what we've discovered.
Speaker 6: I'd like to be asleep, but my head is my
Speaker 6: head is spinning trying to sort of digest all of
Speaker 6: the information that we got today. And there's just one
Speaker 6: point that's kind of stuck out to me that I
Speaker 6: just want to document, So I'm documenting it here.
Speaker 2: Okay, So.
Speaker 6: We know that there are a lot of unsolved murders
Speaker 6: on the North Coast, and there's been a lot of
Speaker 6: talk of them being linked or you know, serial killers,
Speaker 6: and there's been talking of Malatt, there's been talk of others,
Speaker 6: real gulars that could have operated in the area, and
Speaker 6: there's been task forces during that time that have looked
Speaker 6: at various links. And we know that but two of
Speaker 6: those women were missing. Hirtare nineteen ninety six, Margaret is murdered.
Speaker 4: Four years after that, Sheryl Lee Masters goes missing. Those
Speaker 4: women were found or with head injuries, and all this
Speaker 4: rambling is just for me to.
Speaker 6: Say, if you're looking at all these unsolved cases, and
Speaker 6: you're the police, you're and you're looking at linking cases
Speaker 6: and potential links. Why has no task force publicly looked
Speaker 6: at those cases? Okay, I'm going to bed.
Speaker 1: I've got that out of my system.
Speaker 6: Good night.
Speaker 3: The next morning, Nina and I get ready to leave
Speaker 3: the North Coast. This might be our last visit to Kendall.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been coming here for ten years. But
Speaker 3: before we do leave, there's one last place we both
Speaker 3: want to go to, and there's the house, the house
Speaker 3: where all this started, where three year old William Tyrrell
Speaker 3: is last known to have been alive because of a
Speaker 3: photograph taken at nine thirty seven am on the twelfth
Speaker 3: of September twenty fourteen. So we're sitting outside the house
Speaker 3: where William tool was reported missing. There's a gray sky,
Speaker 3: crowded trees on either side, the same silence you always
Speaker 3: hear on this road. There's nobody moving, no noise, and
Speaker 3: in the past ten years, more than ten years now,
Speaker 3: it's like everything has changed and nothing has changed. The
Speaker 3: people who live in this house weren't the people who
Speaker 3: lived in that house then. Plenty of people in this
Speaker 3: street have gone, some of them because of what happened,
Speaker 3: And yet the street is almost identical to the first
Speaker 3: time I came here, just after William was reported missing. God,
Speaker 3: it feels quite oppressive being here.
Speaker 1: I was just looking at you and looking at how
Speaker 1: much and more tired.
Speaker 2: You are, more tired than.
Speaker 1: The last time we were here.
Speaker 2: Isn't that obvious?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do feel tired, and I feel that there's
Speaker 3: too much of this in my head now, like last
Speaker 3: night as I went to sleep. But at the point
Speaker 3: I say, don't think about William Tyrell and don't think
Speaker 3: about Frank Abbott. And I'm not even close to the
Speaker 3: center of this. I'm not one of those people actually
Speaker 3: directly affected by it. But I do feel tired. But
Speaker 3: there is one thing which we haven't done, one place
Speaker 3: we haven't been and which we know that the police
Speaker 3: haven't searched.
Speaker 11: And.
Speaker 3: That's the bird tree where we've been told that William's
Speaker 3: body was buried. But look, we've got no reason to
Speaker 3: think it's true. It's a second hand account that Frank
Speaker 3: Abbot's brother told someone, and when we spoke to that person,
Speaker 3: they said they didn't remember.
Speaker 2: But still.
Speaker 3: It is the one place we haven't been and if
Speaker 3: we're going to look for answers to what happened, I
Speaker 3: think we do have to go there, so I think
Speaker 3: we should go.
Speaker 11: All right.
Speaker 3: So if we start driving here from outside the house
Speaker 3: where William was reported missing, he drives down.
Speaker 2: Beniruin drive.
Speaker 3: And here at the bottom you've got a choice of
Speaker 3: left or right, and left takes you to Kendall, which
Speaker 3: is the town. But if you want to get away,
Speaker 3: you choose right, which takes you here. This is Batar
Speaker 3: Creek Road, single lane, no paint on the road, no
Speaker 3: street lights. It feels like you're driving deep into the forest.
Speaker 3: And here's the crossroads where the police most recently were
Speaker 3: alleging that William's foster mother disposed of his body, despite
Speaker 3: the fact there's no evidence she even went there that
Speaker 3: morning and when they searched it they found nothing. And
Speaker 3: the police haven't been back since that's search, which was
Speaker 3: what now four years. Country opens up a little and
Speaker 3: there's horses, a couple of really isolated buildings. So far,
Speaker 3: there's been two turnings, both of them onto very small roads.
Speaker 1: Haven't seen any other cars.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen any people. But here.
Speaker 3: We turn off the bitchermen onto I mean there's kind
Speaker 3: of a road. Now it's very narrow, and now we're
Speaker 3: on dirt, so again we're on the back. If you
Speaker 3: thought it was isolated before, now the forest is really
Speaker 3: crowding in, reaching into the road on either side, and
Speaker 3: the trees are hanging right over the road, so it's dark.
Speaker 2: There's no turning around on the road. There's no going back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, had the same feeling of about driving brim And road.
Speaker 3: That was where Cheverley Masters was found, wasn't it. And
Speaker 3: again on the road out to where Margaret Cox's clothes
Speaker 3: were found, there's these thin dirt roads out when no
Speaker 3: one's looking.
Speaker 2: Up.
Speaker 3: Until this point we've been following Google Maps, but that's
Speaker 3: now lost us.
Speaker 2: There's just no reception here.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of really small dirt tracks leading off
Speaker 3: this dirt tracks a sign for the bird tree for kilometers.
Speaker 3: I love the fact I'm indicating like there's anyone to
Speaker 3: see it. And we're getting higher now. Just through the
Speaker 3: few breaks in the trees you can see we've come
Speaker 3: right almost to the top of this.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 2: I guess it's a mountain. It's Middle Brother Mountain. Okay,
Speaker 2: so now do we go here? It looks like it
Speaker 2: all up.
Speaker 3: It takes less than twenty minutes to drive from the
Speaker 3: house where William was reported missing to the bird tree.
Speaker 2: I feel actually like my skin's crawling. I think it's
Speaker 2: the forest.
Speaker 1: It's so dense, the groundcover is so thick.
Speaker 3: I remember flying in the first time I came up
Speaker 3: here for this, and looking out of the plane and
Speaker 3: looking down at the dark forest and these pools of
Speaker 3: black water, and just thinking, if William is lost in there,
Speaker 3: it's an almost no, it's not impossible, like he has
Speaker 3: to be found, and we do have to find answers.
Speaker 2: Come on, let's go.
Speaker 11: And find the bird tree.
Speaker 2: There's a picnic table and a map.
Speaker 3: With the that tree that might be the bird tree.
Speaker 2: See, people have walked.
Speaker 3: Around the outside of it. There's like a faint path
Speaker 3: walking around it. It must be four or five meters
Speaker 3: across at the base. It's enormous.
Speaker 2: The bush is so thick.
Speaker 3: If you're going walking out onto it, you're gonna be
Speaker 3: walking on a dense mass of rotting leaves and branches
Speaker 3: and bark. You'd only have to force your way out
Speaker 3: into that for ten fifteen meters, and anything you left
Speaker 3: there will not be found unless the police would have
Speaker 3: come out in force on the kind of scale we've
Speaker 3: seen them do before more than once in William's case,
Speaker 3: and just strip everything away.
Speaker 2: So they can do it.
Speaker 3: Nina and I start walking out into the forest. I
Speaker 3: reckon that way, even though I don't think we'll find anything.
Speaker 1: Round is just stick with wet leaves.
Speaker 3: And I don't think there's even anything to be found here.
Speaker 3: But having come this far, imagine if we didn't at
Speaker 3: least try, we kind of have to. Nina and I
Speaker 3: get separated in the forest, lost in our own thoughts,
Speaker 3: and it takes a while before we find each other.
Speaker 2: Are you doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I went out and I found a footpath that isn't
Speaker 3: marked on the maps, and I followed it, and it
Speaker 3: takes you to another one of these huge black butt trees,
Speaker 3: but this one, the trunk's been hollowed out at the
Speaker 3: bottom and you can go inside, and inside there's this
Speaker 3: great pile of earth, almost like it's been dug up,
Speaker 3: and you can see termites are building spires up out
Speaker 3: of it. And then the path goes on and it
Speaker 3: turns out this forest is riddled with them, completely unmarked footpaths.
Speaker 3: And I followed two now, and I have no idea
Speaker 3: where they take you. But the one thing I do
Speaker 3: know is that if you wanted to hide something, I
Speaker 3: can think of no better place. I try showing Nina
Speaker 3: where I was looking in the forest, so that fort
Speaker 3: path isn't marked on the maps, but that's not the
Speaker 3: one I ended up on. We stop at another of
Speaker 3: those giant trees. This tree is so big, and inside
Speaker 3: the trunk it's been burnt out, maybe by a bushfire,
Speaker 3: but it's so big.
Speaker 2: I can stand inside.
Speaker 3: It and you could fit one fifteen people in here.
Speaker 3: And I look up and I cannot see.
Speaker 2: The top. It's just blackness.
Speaker 11: I am.
Speaker 3: I think I actually feel sick. I think we came
Speaker 3: out when we started this. We were looking at the
Speaker 3: investigation into a missing child, and we've found child abuse
Speaker 3: and unsolved murders and broken lives and broken families. And
Speaker 3: I think I don't have I think we're all human.
Speaker 3: I don't think we have the ability to deal with
Speaker 3: this much.
Speaker 11: Horror.
Speaker 3: But that's what the disappearance of William Tyrrell has led to,
Speaker 3: is that horror, particularly for those people who knew him
Speaker 3: and loved him and now live with it. We've been
Speaker 3: looking for answers since the inquest finished, and we've only
Speaker 3: got questions just with Frank Abbott. So much time has passed,
Speaker 3: and the people with the answers to those questions, so
Speaker 3: many of them are dead. There's Frank's mum and his
Speaker 3: dad and his brother Ted, all of them alibi witnesses
Speaker 3: when he was put on trial for the murder of
Speaker 3: Helen Harrison. There's Frank's brother Bluie, who is the person
Speaker 3: who apparently said that William was here near.
Speaker 2: The bird tree.
Speaker 3: There's the prison informant who gave evidence against Frank at
Speaker 3: his trial, all dead. There's nol Snter and Dooley Iris's
Speaker 3: husband who they're still with us, but they're old and
Speaker 3: they're no longer able to give evidence. And we know
Speaker 3: that the police failed to follow up on two of
Speaker 3: those witnesses, Frank's wife's sister and her cousin back in
Speaker 3: the seventies when they came forward. But the bigger question
Speaker 3: and the question for right now, is whether the police
Speaker 3: have followed up the evidence about Frank that has come
Speaker 3: up at the William Tyrell inquest, and from what we've seen,
Speaker 3: they haven't. When we looked at all those unsolved murders
Speaker 3: up the North Coast. I asked the police about them,
Speaker 3: and they sent us a written statement that says there
Speaker 3: is no evidence to indicate a common offender was responsible
Speaker 3: for the disappearances. So they're saying there's no serial killer.
Speaker 3: And then I thought about that, and I thought, actually,
Speaker 3: that's not entirely true, because I know the police have
Speaker 3: argued in court because I was there, that three of
Speaker 3: those unsolved murders were committed by one offender, a serial killer.
Speaker 3: And I know from the inquest that the police do
Speaker 3: suspect that some of those murders were committed by Ivan Malatt,
Speaker 3: another serial killer. And we know the police also suspects
Speaker 3: some of those murders may have been committed by a
Speaker 3: third convicted serial killer, the granny killer. So if the
Speaker 3: police do accept that there may be three serial killers
Speaker 3: who've committed some of these dozens of unsolved murders, and
Speaker 3: the question is, will the police accept that there may
Speaker 3: be another killer out there who's not been convicted. Will
Speaker 3: the police investigate? And if not, all of these murdered
Speaker 3: women and children, all of those families william risk being forgotten.
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 3: I feel pretty sick at that thought, how do you feel?
Speaker 1: You feel like I might cry?
Speaker 2: Don't cry?
Speaker 3: Hey, you know what, you couldn't have done anymore. You've
Speaker 3: done so much more than we ever set out to do,
Speaker 3: and more than I ever expected you to do, and
Speaker 3: for a long time, more than.
Speaker 2: I knew you were doing.
Speaker 8: You couldn't have done anymore. And now the rain comes, we.
Speaker 2: Should go scat.
Speaker 3: There is a PostScript to this episode. Back at the
Speaker 3: start of this series, I talked about the sheer number
Speaker 3: of lives that have been caught up and damaged by
Speaker 3: the police investigation into William Tyrrell's disappearance, talking about family
Speaker 3: members and witnesses, those wrongly put under suspicion and arrested,
Speaker 3: even charged, and then their families. I'm tempted to add
Speaker 3: to that number the families of Helen Harrison, Margaret Cox,
Speaker 3: and Sherrily Masters, who now have to come to terms
Speaker 3: with the fact that the police and the inquest into
Speaker 3: William's disappearance received new alleged information about their deaths and
Speaker 3: did not even contact either the witnesses or these women's families.
Speaker 3: After we spoke to one of those relatives, Sheerly's brother,
Speaker 3: Tony Masters, he called police asking who's now handling his
Speaker 3: sister's murder and if he could have an update. That
Speaker 3: was more than two months ago and as of this morning,
Speaker 3: Tony has never heard back. But it doesn't have to
Speaker 3: end there. After ten years in which the New South
Speaker 3: Wales Police Force has failed to find William Tyrrell, this
Speaker 3: may be a part of his legacy that this alleged
Speaker 3: evidence has been uncovered and through this podcast it has
Speaker 3: been made public. It's now up to the police if
Speaker 3: and how they decide to act. A lot of different
Speaker 3: people have been involved in making this series. Among them,
Speaker 3: the executive producer is Nina Young. The sound design was
Speaker 3: by Tiffany Dimmack. The producers have been Emily Pigeon, Nicholas Adams,
Speaker 3: Jazz Bar, Phoebe Zakowski Wallace and Tabby Wilson. Research by
Speaker 3: Adan Patrick, original music by Rory O'Connor. Our lawyer is
Speaker 3: Stephen Coombs. The editor at news dot com dot Au
Speaker 3: is Kerry Warren.
Speaker 2: I'm Dan Box