Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and orders.
Speaker 2: This podcast was recorded on Hi True Crime Conversations listeners.
Speaker 2: It's your host, Gemma, and I'm jumping back into your
Speaker 2: ears today to share an important episode with you. It's
Speaker 2: from Mamma MIA's news podcast, The Quickie, hosted by Claire Murphy.
Speaker 2: She spoke to me for a recent episode investigating whether
Speaker 2: there is a Byron Bay serial killer on the loose.
Speaker 2: Right now, people are starting to connect the dots between
Speaker 2: multiple cases of women going missing or being murdered in
Speaker 2: the Byron and New South Wales coastal areas, including women
Speaker 2: with their own first hand accounts. You may have seen
Speaker 2: these women on TikTok and Instagram while you've been scrolling.
Speaker 2: And in this episode, Claire and I talk about how
Speaker 2: likely it is that all of these cases and run
Speaker 2: ins are actually linked. Let us know what you think
Speaker 2: of the episode and I'll see you next week for
Speaker 2: another true crime conversation.
Speaker 3: Hi. I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily
Speaker 3: news podcast, The Quickie. We all love a bit of
Speaker 3: true crime, right It's weirdly soothing listening to stories of
Speaker 3: horrible things happening to someone else, somewhere else. But what
Speaker 3: if that true crime gets a little too close to home, Like.
Speaker 4: I looked at this man and I felt terror.
Speaker 3: There's a theory being floated that the worst serial killer
Speaker 3: in Australian history could be behind dozens of missing and
Speaker 3: murdered New South Wales women, and there are some first
Speaker 3: hand accounts from those who feel they might have even
Speaker 3: been a potential target. Today we look at the alarming
Speaker 3: similarity of more than sixty unsolved crimes and wonder if
Speaker 3: they might all be linked. Last month, Melbourne woman Kayleie
Speaker 3: was walking alone in the northern New South Wales suburb
Speaker 3: of Suffolk Park. It was around four pm on a
Speaker 3: Saturday afternoon and she was going to meet friends at
Speaker 3: the beach when a car all of a sudden pulled
Speaker 3: up beside her.
Speaker 4: As I'm walking, there is a car that pulls up
Speaker 4: like on the other side of the parked cast me
Speaker 4: there in the middle of the road. I look into
Speaker 4: the car and it's a young couple and the woman
Speaker 4: in the passenger seat he's looking at me, and then
Speaker 4: she's looking behind me at something and she looks terrified,
Speaker 4: and I was like, what on earth is going on?
Speaker 4: So I look behind me to see a man a
Speaker 4: couple of meters behind me. And this man does not
Speaker 4: look dressed for where we are. It's like thirty degrees
Speaker 4: and he is in gloves, which I thought was really freaky.
Speaker 4: Like I looked at this man and I felt terror.
Speaker 4: The thing is is for that man to be as
Speaker 4: close to me as he was, he had to have
Speaker 4: run up on me because I had already been checking
Speaker 4: behind me because I'm just like that type of person.
Speaker 4: As soon as I look at him, he disappears, either
Speaker 4: like down this side street or like into somebody's front yard.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have even noticed this man if not for
Speaker 4: the fact that the couple in the car were distressed
Speaker 4: and they'd pulled over. Every single part of me felt
Speaker 4: like that was a really really close encounter with something
Speaker 4: really evil.
Speaker 3: Kaylie says she informed local police, but found them to
Speaker 3: be dismissive of her experience. Her TikTok comments section, though,
Speaker 3: was flooded with similar experiences, experiences like Laura Claire's. Laura
Speaker 3: is a Barron Bay local who's been documenting her run
Speaker 3: ins a info about the alleged Byron Bay serial killer. Laura,
Speaker 3: can you talk us through that day where you and
Speaker 3: your friend decided to go hitch hiking? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Sure, I think Byron has this this hold on people.
Speaker 5: It's just this idolistic kind of town and there's a
Speaker 5: lot of people hitch hiking there, and you just have
Speaker 5: this sense of safety. Well I did when I first
Speaker 5: went there, obviously. So my friend and I needed to
Speaker 5: get from Byron to Suffolk. It was a really hot day.
Speaker 5: I suggested that we hitch hike. She had never hitch
Speaker 5: hike before and was very much against it, and I
Speaker 5: kind of convinced her it wasn't a very long distance
Speaker 5: and it was safe and all the things that I
Speaker 5: shouldn't have said, all the things that I felt, a
Speaker 5: sense of safety that I shouldn't have felt. So we
Speaker 5: go to hit to Ride and this van pulls up.
Speaker 5: He's so normal looking I can barely remember his details,
Speaker 5: and he seemed to look very friendly as well. So
Speaker 5: my friend I put her in the back and I
Speaker 5: went to sit in the front and there was a
Speaker 5: big knife on the front seat, and not having any
Speaker 5: survival instincts at all, I just grabbed the knife and
Speaker 5: put it on the floor to get in, and I
Speaker 5: think I even asked him permission to do so. And
Speaker 5: then I kind of just out of curiosity, was like, oh,
Speaker 5: what's the knife for?
Speaker 1: And he said that he was a chef. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of when.
Speaker 5: I started to feel uncomfortable. Most people would have felt
Speaker 5: uncomfortable hit hiking. This is where I started to feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 5: The knife was very rusty, the knife did not look
Speaker 5: like it should go anyway.
Speaker 1: We're near food.
Speaker 5: It just kind of started mulling in my mind, and
Speaker 5: I said, Oh, where are you a chef? Because I
Speaker 5: thought maybe i'd know the restaurant or you know, just
Speaker 5: get some comfort in knowing that he worked around the area.
Speaker 5: And he said, oh, I'm not working at the moment.
Speaker 5: And that's when I just went, Okay, I don't feel
Speaker 5: comfortable here. We need to get out of this situation.
Speaker 5: And so I said, oh, yeah, that's us just up there.
Speaker 5: He led us out of the van like we got out.
Speaker 1: Of the van.
Speaker 5: So that was my experience, and honestly, I don't think
Speaker 5: I even thought about it again after that day for
Speaker 5: a long time, but a few friends of mine have
Speaker 5: contacted me in the last couple of days and said, oh,
Speaker 5: you told me about that story, so it has sort
Speaker 5: of stuck with me, but not as much as it
Speaker 5: probably should have.
Speaker 3: Well, can you explain what happened after you shared that
Speaker 3: story publicly? Because we've seen this happen with other women
Speaker 3: too in the area who've shared their close encounters that
Speaker 3: it's essentially kind of opened up the floodgates.
Speaker 5: Absolutely has, and it's quite distressing. In my mind. I
Speaker 5: was going to share this story about what happened, I
Speaker 5: was either going to have people going, you're overreacting or
Speaker 5: people going, oh my god, that was really scary. I
Speaker 5: didn't prepare myself for hundreds of women coming forward speaking
Speaker 5: about close call encounters, rapes, drink spikings, names of people
Speaker 5: that are dangerous in the area.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: I just wasn't prepared for the volume. I wasn't prepared
Speaker 5: for the horrific details, and it's just so alarming, and
Speaker 5: at times I felt defeated because I'm like, how do
Speaker 5: we help?
Speaker 1: How do we change this?
Speaker 5: Like what do we do? Obviously my first point is
Speaker 5: to call the police and report what you know, but
Speaker 5: in a lot of these cases, they were actually let
Speaker 5: down by the police in either not showing up on
Speaker 5: the scene, taking too long to get to the scene
Speaker 5: where they were no longer in danger, saying that they
Speaker 5: didn't have enough information, not taking down details, telling them
Speaker 5: to go home when they went into the station, the stress,
Speaker 5: all of that kind of stuff as well.
Speaker 3: This is something that a lot of women come up
Speaker 3: against when it comes to crimes against them like this,
Speaker 3: and another of its nature is that police are so
Speaker 3: under resourced. These are sometimes put in the two hard basket,
Speaker 3: especially when there's many, many of them to look at.
Speaker 3: But I think what we have realized when yourself and
Speaker 3: others who are also looking at crimes against women like
Speaker 3: this in the area where you live, is that when
Speaker 3: you start to map this out, that map starts to
Speaker 3: look very crowded, doesn't it, Like with if you were
Speaker 3: to pin all of these instances to a real physical map,
Speaker 3: like there'd be no space in between.
Speaker 5: And look, this has been common knowledge among locals for years,
Speaker 5: and I think one of the biggest things that kind
Speaker 5: of is terrifying is these are maps of women that
Speaker 5: have gone missing or died. It would be interesting to
Speaker 5: see a map of women that have been assaulted because
Speaker 5: what I've heard in the last seventy two hours is
Speaker 5: a lot a lot of assaults and people that didn't
Speaker 5: die that are left with the consequences of this, and
Speaker 5: these can often be behaviors in the lead up to
Speaker 5: worse crimes. Some of these haven't been reported or weren't
Speaker 5: reported or it's interesting with a lot of this information
Speaker 5: women when they haven't reported it, I've asked them why.
Speaker 5: And there's quite a common thread of young women being
Speaker 5: worried that they were going to get in trouble with
Speaker 5: their parents for not being where they were supposed to.
Speaker 5: And so I think that there's a lot of information
Speaker 5: out there that we're not getting through to the legal
Speaker 5: system either. But in the case of the map and
Speaker 5: how many crimes happen in this area, it is unbelievably high.
Speaker 5: And when you're going to a town like Byron and
Speaker 5: you don't live there, you have this kind of view
Speaker 5: of it, like I did, that it was this sleepy
Speaker 5: coastal town. And so when you have that view of
Speaker 5: a town, you're walking around doing things that you do
Speaker 5: on holiday that you probably wouldn't do it at home,
Speaker 5: and you're not really fearing for your safety or being
Speaker 5: concerned about it at all because you're not hearing about
Speaker 5: it on the news and you're not realizing actually that
Speaker 5: you may be in danger. Like I had a friend
Speaker 5: of mine that lives in Byron and I was talking
Speaker 5: to her about it, and she said, I'd rather walk
Speaker 5: around alone in the Cross or Redfern than I would
Speaker 5: en Byron.
Speaker 1: It's well known by.
Speaker 5: The locals, and I think, you know Kaylee, the other
Speaker 5: girl that spoke out about it, she kind of got
Speaker 5: attacked and shut down when she first came out about it,
Speaker 5: and a lot of that was by the locals. You
Speaker 5: don't want to try that with me because I've lived
Speaker 5: there and I can name, you know, incidences that happen
Speaker 5: and people that have gone missing, and no one from
Speaker 5: the community has tried to say to me, no, no,
Speaker 5: it's not no, it didn't happen. Because when you live there,
Speaker 5: you know, it's very easy to shut down a girl
Speaker 5: from Melbourne that was visiting a week because she just
Speaker 5: had this bad experience and she had a very off
Speaker 5: feeling about it. But if you live there, you know,
Speaker 5: trying to cover it up for the sake of tourism
Speaker 5: or house prices or whatever it is is actually doing
Speaker 5: the town at disservice.
Speaker 3: Laura, you said that when the hitch hiking incident happened,
Speaker 3: you kind of dismissed it and almost essentially forgot about
Speaker 3: it until now. Would you say the same thing now,
Speaker 3: with all the responses that you got to it and
Speaker 3: all the stories that you've heard, do you feel like
Speaker 3: that has now changed you where that hitch hiking incident didn't.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because the hitch hiking incident, when I think
Speaker 5: about it at a core level, did change me. I
Speaker 5: hit taged once again after that, but I was in
Speaker 5: a very desperate situation. I remember thinking I shouldn't be
Speaker 5: doing this, So it did change me at that level.
Speaker 5: But what it's kind of changed for me now as
Speaker 5: a woman, especially after speaking out about this, is just
Speaker 5: how careful I need to be. Like I was walking
Speaker 5: my dog yesterday and I just went wow, Like, I'm
Speaker 5: not as aware of my surroundings as I should be,
Speaker 5: and maybe I need to be more careful in a
Speaker 5: lot of other areas in my life, because after hearing
Speaker 5: the things that I did and reading what I have
Speaker 5: in the last seventy two hours, it's pretty bleak.
Speaker 3: While Laura is thinking her lucky stars that she and
Speaker 3: her friend didn't find themselves potentially in the path of
Speaker 3: a killer. There are potentially more than sixty others who
Speaker 3: weren't so lucky. Last week, New South Wales MP Jeremy
Speaker 3: Buckingham addressed State Parliament stating that the worst serial killer
Speaker 3: in the nation's history has gotten away with it.
Speaker 6: Ivan Malat, was convicted of seven murders. There is someone
Speaker 6: on the North Coast that has murdered as many or
Speaker 6: more and they are still amongst us sixty seven the
Speaker 6: numbers of unsolved homicides of women on the north coast
Speaker 6: of New South Wales, and as indication that someone operated
Speaker 6: in that area, traveled that area, lived across that area
Speaker 6: and took women, destroyed their bodies, destroyed their lives and
Speaker 6: it's appalling that it's taken so long for this matter
Speaker 6: to come before House and to public attention.
Speaker 3: Buckingham told Parliament that he's been called alarmist because his
Speaker 3: view and the view of some senior police like Detective
Speaker 3: Gary McAvoy, who investigated these matters from Coffs Harbor, is
Speaker 3: that they were and are linked. He, with the support
Speaker 3: of Green's MP Sue Higginson, has called on the Premier,
Speaker 3: Chris Mins to hold a special commission of inquiry that
Speaker 3: has been rejected amid suggestions a new police task force
Speaker 3: be set up to investigate the unsolved cases instead. According
Speaker 3: to a Daily Telegraph investigation, there are sixty seven women
Speaker 3: who've been murdered or who've gone missing in the area
Speaker 3: over the last thirty years. They include a number of
Speaker 3: disappearances around Newcastle in the nineteen seven. Jemma Bath is
Speaker 3: Mumam's news editor and host of the true Crime Conversations
Speaker 3: podcast Jemma, these cases go back as far as the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies. Can you give us a rundown of some
Speaker 3: of those older cases that they think might be the
Speaker 3: work of this serial killer?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they kind of spread all the way
Speaker 1: up the coast. We're talking from like Coffs Harbor to
Speaker 1: after kind of the Gold Coast area, but there does
Speaker 1: seem to be a concentration around Newcastle, which is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest centers along that coast if you know
Speaker 1: the area, and many of the disappearances or alleged murders
Speaker 1: in that area are from the seventies. So we've got
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Robin Hickey She was last seen at
Speaker 1: a bus stop in April nineteen seventy nine. Eight months
Speaker 1: after that, fourteen year old Amanda Robinson. She vanished while
Speaker 1: walking home Miss Swansea. The following year, seventeen year old
Speaker 1: Annie and eighteen year old Joy. They both went missing
Speaker 1: after a night out at a club in the city.
Speaker 1: So in Newcastle again, there's Norell Cox. She was twenty one.
Speaker 1: She was last seen in Grafton in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: He actually left a note for her family and it
Speaker 1: read gone to Nosa to see Fae. Be back on Monday,
Speaker 1: which is just heartbreaking, isn't it. A truck driver said
Speaker 1: he picked her up and actually dropped her in Brunswick
Speaker 1: Heads and she's never been seen again. Then we've got
Speaker 1: Rose How she was eighteen, went missing in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three about twenty five kilometers from Coffs Harbor. Susan
Speaker 1: Marie Killy she was thirty three. She's been missing from
Speaker 1: Bellingen on the Mid North Coast since nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Her body's never been found. I could go on and
Speaker 1: on and on. There's literally dozens of cases.
Speaker 3: But general are we just seeing patterns when there might
Speaker 3: not be one. You know how humans really like to
Speaker 3: seek patterns and find those kind of things that look linked,
Speaker 3: when really they might not be. Why are we thinking
Speaker 3: that all of these have a connection.
Speaker 1: When you think about the string that's linking all of
Speaker 1: these cases women who have gone missing while hitchhiking or
Speaker 1: walking or traveling to another place. That's obviously a very
Speaker 1: broad term, but I don't think that doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: not a pattern, particularly when you consider the fact that
Speaker 1: when you compare how many women have gone missing along
Speaker 1: the stretch of the New South Wales coastline, you just
Speaker 1: don't see that kind of concentration of missing and murdered
Speaker 1: women anywhere else in the country anywhere for that kind
Speaker 1: of population geography, that span of time. To give you
Speaker 1: an example, in the whole of Tasmania, there's less than
Speaker 1: ten cases, and we're talking over sixty in this one area.
Speaker 3: Why is this only being discussed now though we mentioned
Speaker 3: some of these cases date back more than thirty years.
Speaker 1: Why now because technology, forensics, investigative techniques, they've come so
Speaker 1: far in the last few years alone. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: learning new things every day. A lot of these cases
Speaker 1: weren't thoroughly investigated or properly investigated at the time, sometimes
Speaker 1: because they just didn't have the resources or the technology
Speaker 1: to do so. I mean, we're seeing so many cold
Speaker 1: cases being solved. One that comes to mind recently is
Speaker 1: the Easy Street murders in Melbourne that was from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and that is a really highly publicized case.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone in Melbourne knows that story. The two
Speaker 1: sus that were murdered in their house, a little boy
Speaker 1: that was left crying in the middle of their dead bodies.
Speaker 1: Horrific story. They've got a man in custody all these
Speaker 1: years later, decades later because of DNA, Because of DNA
Speaker 1: that is now able to be traced and tracked back
Speaker 1: to people all these decades later. So I think the
Speaker 1: reason that we're talking about it now is because some
Speaker 1: of these cases need to be reinvestigated with fresh twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four eyes, because you never know what you're going
Speaker 1: to find. You're never going to know what we're going
Speaker 1: to be able to solve with everything that's at our fingertips.
Speaker 1: And we also know so much more about serial offenders
Speaker 1: now than we did back then. We've just got so
Speaker 1: much more knowledge in the police force, so we definitely
Speaker 1: need to go back. We need to go back and
Speaker 1: look at these cases with fresh eyes.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of the police force, obviously these are cold
Speaker 3: cases and cold cases are never officially closed. But as
Speaker 3: you mentioned, they might not be being investigated to the
Speaker 3: extent that we would hope or that we would prove
Speaker 3: that they are investigated, especially if they're beyond thirty years old.
Speaker 3: But obviously New South Wales police know more than any
Speaker 3: of us about all of these cases. What have they
Speaker 3: said about this alleged linking of all of them.
Speaker 1: They have released a statement, it's not as exciting as
Speaker 1: you might expect. It says there is no evidence to
Speaker 1: indicate a common offender was responsible for the disappearance. They've
Speaker 1: said that the matters remain under investigation by the State
Speaker 1: Crime Commands, Homicide Squad, Unsolved Homicide Team that's a mouthful,
Speaker 1: and the Missing Person Registry as part of recent recommendations
Speaker 1: that were handed down by a Special Commission of Inquiry.
Speaker 1: So they're reviewing all unsolved cases every two years, which
Speaker 1: is amazing. It does mean each of these cases at
Speaker 1: getting fresh eyes, but there are so many cases, so
Speaker 1: we've just got a hope that they're getting the attention
Speaker 1: that they deserve.
Speaker 3: We don't want to alarm people, but we do want
Speaker 3: to arm them. So if you find yourself along the
Speaker 3: New South Wales northern coast, please be careful and be
Speaker 3: aware of your surroundings. Laura says she wants women to know, though,
Speaker 3: that they're experiences aren't just fine, and to ignore the
Speaker 3: gas lighting that comes with reporting them.
Speaker 5: I've noticed people were more likely to come to me
Speaker 5: than they were to call crime stoppers. And that is
Speaker 5: us systematically as women, being taught that, oh, it's probably nothing.
Speaker 5: You're being over dramatic, you're overreacting, you're being hysterical. And
Speaker 5: so even with me with the incident in two thousand
Speaker 5: and eight, I played it down to well, he let
Speaker 5: me out of the band, so he couldn't be well,
Speaker 5: I've a mala led a lot of people out of
Speaker 5: his car too, So we kind of gaslight ourselves, and
Speaker 5: we also go to people who were meant to help
Speaker 5: us that also gas light us and make us feel
Speaker 5: like we're being idiots. And so I think that that
Speaker 5: needs to change. I think that there needs to be
Speaker 5: a safe space to be able to discuss these issues
Speaker 5: and what I wanted to achieve. Often we hear these
Speaker 5: different separate stories, but this is hundreds of women and
Speaker 5: hundreds of close goals that you're seeing in these comments sections,
Speaker 5: And maybe when you see that volume altogether, you start
Speaker 5: to realize, Okay, this is a really big issue. Can
Speaker 5: we get it now? Like we need to do something
Speaker 5: about this. Women aren't feeling safe.
Speaker 3: Thanks for taking the time to feed your mind with
Speaker 3: us today. The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy
Speaker 3: and our executive producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by
Speaker 3: Teagan Sadler.