The Daily Examiner/Daily Telegraph online, 22 October 2024:
A list of more than 60 women who were brutally murdered or disappeared on the NSW North Coast, but whose perpetrators were never caught can be revealed among fears some of them could be the work of one or more serial killers.
NSW Upper House MP Jeremy Buckingham will today receive a briefing from the NSW Police over the devastating list of women who were found dead or vanished between Newcastle and Byron Bay over a 30-year-period. In all these cases, no culprit was brought to justice.
For years police have suspected that some of the deaths or disappearances of the women were connected, but while some had operations set up to explore the potential connections, others may never have been properly investigated.
Former NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Mick Willing, who commanded the homicide squad between 2011 and 2017 said the way cold cases from decades ago are prioritised has led to many not being properly reinvestigated, leaving police open to missing possible connections between cases.
“There are a lot of these cases that just sit in databases and have never been reviewed,” he said.
“There are unsolved homicide cases that sit there - there are many cases that are not even looked at.
“So you could miss things that are connected to other things - ideally what you need is a database that links all these cases together across Australia.”
Mr Willing said while there had not been a serial killer identified in NSW since Ivan Milat murdered multiple hitchhikers along the Hume Highway in the 1980s and 90s, there was a possibility some of the disappearances along the North Coast could have the same perpetrator, though many would also be isolated incidents.
“You would think there’s a possibility that some of them could be connected,” he said.
“The thinking around a few of the cases was that maybe Milat might be responsible - but there is no evidence of that,” he said.
What people don’t realise about unsolved homicides is that most of them were solved by DNA but some of the old exhibits that were collected have been destroyed.”
A NSW Police spokesperson said there had been multiple investigations including taskforce Fenwick and strike force Arapaima had been established to investigate links between some of the north coast abductions...
Mr Buckingham will request parliament call for papers from police detailing how the unsolved crimes have been investigated including any possible connections.
“When I looked at the list of country towns, Coffs harbour, Taree and Grafton, what you see in all these towns stretching all the way down to Newcastle there were murders everywhere that had a similar modus operandi,” he said.
“That is young women who had been picked up hitchhiking, gone walking, seen getting in cars who had either disappeared or had almost egregiously been found dumped in remote areas.”
Criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro said the number of women who had been killed on the north coast was “extremely disturbing”
“If people are going missing at the same time and place it’s a massive red flag,” he said.
“Beyond Milat there may have been another serial killer or possibly two operating in the area.”
“With such a significant number of people involved, there’s an argument to reopen those cases and drill down a bit further.”
WARNING: linked news articles below contain the names and images of people who have passed away.
The full paywalled article can be read at
Paywalled article with full list of names and images at
There has also been a NSW Police reappeal issued on 21 October 2024 concerning the murders of three children between 1990 & 1991 in the town of Bowraville in the Nambucca Valley on the Mid North Coast hinterland. With the aim of finally finding the remains of the eldest girl.
