August 17, 2025 • 52 mins
In this new season Sally Leydon wants to help others who are dealing with ambiguous loss due to a missing loved one.
In this episode Jay Walkerden tells the story of his uncle Des Carr, who went missing in 1979 and has never been seen since.
If you want to contact sally to have an episode feature your missing loved one, contact her here The Missing Matter
If you want to listen to the full podcast series on Des Carr's disappearance, search The Disappearance of Des in your preferred podcast app.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Apodge production. Out on a red dirt track south of Broom.
A road roller sits humming in the afternoon heat. It's Thursday,
second of August nineteen seventy nine, around three pm. Thirty
two year old road worker Desmond Francis car is seen
(00:27):
beside that machine, nine kilometers south of Thango Station. An
hour later, the foreman comes back.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
The roller is still running. Des is gone.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Des was a hard working bloke on a remote main
roads camp. His ute, his clothes, his money all left
at camp. No note, no sign he planned to go anywhere.
When he didn't turn up for pickup, the crew searched.
Police were called the next day. Over the following days,
(01:01):
fifty seven volunteers and officers pushed through thick bush. An
aircraft swept the country from above. Nothing not a footprint
they could follow to an answer.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thinking he may have quit work early, the fore man
didn't raise the alarm until after the weekend. Gwen and
her father then flew from Perth to Room and visited
the road cruise camp.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
There's another part of this story.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
In the weeks leading up to his disappearance, Des had
been unwell, blackouts, head knocks in his past epilepsy, splitting headaches,
stomach trouble.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
There had been a fight with a couple of guys
and one picked up a chair and threw it and
he just happened to be in the way and got
hid in the head, went into the room and there
was all blood on his pillow.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Colleagues said he'd barely eaten and the day before he vanished.
His behavior seemed off in a place where the scrub
can swallow you in minutes. Disorientation can be deadly. There
were rumors UFOs.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
My eldest sister, Gwen, she believed, didn't you know, it
was all very fashed week we thought, not knowing what
was going on.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Another man decades on.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
There was a witness that came forward in two thousand
and fourteen. He believed he saw Des at a certain
location and he provided a map.
Speaker 7 (02:20):
It was not a Nayga's past. I don't dance think
of him.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
I often get his spaders out into.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Forty two years later, in twenty twenty one, the deputy
state coroner ruled that Des likely died on or around
the day he went missing.
Speaker 8 (02:34):
It's been more than twenty five years, but police have
reopened the file on a man who might just as
well have disappeared into thin air.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Cause and manner of death unknown, No remains, no certainty.
But there is a family, sisters who never stopped asking,
a niece and nephew who kept Dez's name in the
public eye through media, podcasts, appeals, anything that might shake.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Loose the truth.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
I think it ended with my mum and Dad's flower.
We should have done.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
In twenty twenty, his surviving sisters gave DNA, hoping one
day science might do what the search lines could not.
This is not a story about a man who chose
to disappear. It's a story about a man who vanished
in one of the most unforgiving landscapes in Australia. Welcome
(03:30):
to the missing matter. There's matters.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
If I'm watching TV of a nighttime and you see
somebody say, oh cool, you know that looks like these
terrible feeling you never forget it all right, Well, hi Jay,
heyself sitting here together, it feels different.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
It's feel weird for me because I'm normally the one
doing the interviews.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Yes, you're normally the one controlling the conversation. And I'm
going to sit here and try and ask you some
questions and dig a little deep into your uncle Dez.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
Yeah, it's interesting that we're having this chat and how
we're having this chat and how paths cross. I guess
I'm a little bit spiritual. But at the same point,
I think there's a point in our lives where we
meet people for reasons, and I think we met out
of a mutual friend and I knew your story, but
I never thought to reach out to you because you
(04:28):
had a massive podcast and yeah, like you were doing
your thing, and I do.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Get that a lot. I must say, in the missing space,
I do feel a bit lonely sometimes because I think
everyone thinks that old Sally's got this massive platform. So
sometimes I feel a bit lonely in the space. So
I think that's what probably drives me. I have an
understanding and a feeling and a deep connection with that feeling,
(04:53):
and I feel that for others. So I've had quite
a lot of people connect with me through my mum's story,
some of them in absolute stress of wanting to do
a similar thing. They want to do a they want
to talk to Headley, they want to talk to the
Australian newspaper. They want they're asking me questions. And I
have befriended those people and brought them in and honestly
(05:18):
want to share with them some help. You know, there's
one lady that she's so sad. When I call her,
she cries nearly the whole conversation, and she was telling
me how she couldn't even leave her house, and I
was trying to encourage her to just to go for
a walk, just go for a walk, to step outside
the steps and go for a walk and come back.
And then next day you might drive somewhere and go
and get a coffee, or the next day you might
(05:39):
drive to the beach. Your mental health can really mess
with you on this journey, and your missing person's case
is a long one where you know, we're stretching now
forty plus years it is, so it's been a long time.
And something that I've been wanting to do for a
little while now is try and help those people who
(05:59):
are living with a missing person who don't have a platform,
or they're getting shut doors because their story doesn't seem
to have enough trauma behind it to make it an
interesting story for sixty minutes to run. And I know
that myself, I had that door shut in my face
many many times. So now that we have that opportunity,
and you and I have been working together for the
(06:20):
last couple of months doing the Missing Matter Marion Matters,
and when I suggested to you we do something like this,
I found it quite interesting because I've gone back and
listened to your podcast that you did about Dez the
disappearance of des Car. I hear you saying that you
wanted to do something like this. So I'm just like,
oh my gosh, we're on the same page here, and
you are living your lived experience when l is what
(06:43):
we refer to. We're not here to solve cases, We're
here to bring awareness. And you know, from that, a
media outlet might go, that's a great story, let me
run it. Or an agency might go, you know what,
We've got new technology, let's help this family. Let's start
with maybe the obvious and tell me what made you
choose to do a podcast about Dez.
Speaker 6 (07:06):
It was really simple. Airs was my first ever podcast.
I'd never listened to a podcast before, right, but I
happened to get a job as the head of podcasts
for a network. Yeah okay, and so it went deep
into podcasting really fast, and we were toying with all
sorts of different podcasts at the company I was working for.
(07:27):
It was really interesting, but we saw true crime as
like the big thing. This is in the days where
your podcast was out right, this is twenty nineteen, yeah, right,
twenty nineteen, twenty tween.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
You released it funnily enough on the second of August
twenty nineteen. And for my listeners who know my story
will know that my mum's passport flew back into Australia
on the second of August nineteen ninety seven. So I
just went, oh, my god, there is a definite connector
here that we need to help tell the story. And
the reason you did that is, in my opinion, is
(08:01):
because that was the forty year anniversary. That's right, Dars
going miss.
Speaker 6 (08:04):
It was really based on that day Because of there,
it probably took about nine months to do. In twenty eighteen,
my dad was ill that he's fine now, and I
decided to fly out to Perth where my family lives,
and go and visit everyone. So I actually just went
over by myself. My wife and kids stayed here. It
was school time. It was like busy, so so I
(08:26):
went over and Dad was in hospital. And I was
staying with my brother and my mum was at the
hospital a lot, and I sort of between the hospital
and my brother's house for a period of time. And
me and Mum were sitting on my brother's couch one
afternoon and we'd been at the hospital all day and
your dad was recovering and looked like he was going
to be okay. And I just said, Mom, do you
(08:47):
want to do She want to chat about Uncle Dav's
So my mom's brother, my mom's she was the youngest
of the family, She had two sisters, And so he
sat on the couch in my brother's house and Mum
was suffering at that stage with it wasn't diagnosed, but
it was definitely signs of early dementia, which is a horrible,
(09:08):
horrible disease. And we sat on the couch and I
just said, do you want to tell me about Uncle Daz. Now,
at that stage, Mum couldn't remember whether she'd maybe a
cup of tea or not. She could remember facts from
forty years ago. And so I opened up my voice recorder,
I stuck it on the table in front of me,
and we had a two hour chat about Daz.
Speaker 9 (09:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
So it's tenth of May two thousand and eighteen at lunchtime. Huh, okay,
how are you? It's a weird, isn't it? Good morning?
Good one afternoon afternoon. So we're going to ask a
whole bunch of questions about Uncle Daz, and I guess
the first question I want to know is what was
(09:55):
Uncle Daz like with me? Brother? A big what easy
to look after me? You know what I mean? Everything
was done for sure? Yeah? And was it all what
sort of cool? I'd say six?
Speaker 5 (10:11):
And that recording would be quite precious to you now
that she has passed sadly it is it is.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
It sits on my phone in my notes section. It's
called Mum Uncle Dez. From a memory perspective, it's really precious.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Yeah, And you probably could reflect back to and now
that you are doing podcasts and you own pod Shape
and you've produced a number of amazing podcasts to help
many people, you probably have a different appreciation to you
to how precious capturing chat is?
Speaker 6 (10:43):
I so important?
Speaker 5 (10:44):
I have realized that myself right doing my own investigations.
And it's not necessarily that you want to go and
put it on a podcast. It's just for you.
Speaker 6 (10:53):
What was really interesting is I just got after chatting
with Mum for a couple of hours. We had a
lovely time and you know, I had some amazing stories,
which is all covered in the podcast, and then I
went I was it was like four or five when
Marcale went missing, so I don't really remember him, okay,
but I do remember the feelings that were going on
(11:17):
around our house, my grandma, Grandpap's house, mum's sister's house,
Like this feeling of it's not losing your keys, this
is like losing a brother or a son and going
and for you a mum are going what's happening? So
(11:38):
this feeling of dread is what I remember, and I've
no doubt got trauma over it that I haven't recognized
throughout the years, but and I no doubt we'll talk
about that later. I think what I found super interesting
is that I started just thinking about who do I
need to contact because I'm not a police officer. Ye,
(12:00):
I've done a fair bit in this space now, but
at the time, who's the first call after Mum, who
do I speak to?
Speaker 5 (12:07):
Yeah, that's something that I want to try and bring
awareness to in the space because there are a lot
of people who still go missing every day, right, so
I think we're up to some crazy number of you know,
over fifty thousand people going missing or reported missing every
year in Australia. There needs to be an understanding and
a conversation. I think I recently, as you know, spoke
(12:30):
to Gary Jubalan and he was you know, we were
having a big chat about that, and it's an important topic.
I think for a conversation to have so you know,
knowing what to do and where to turn to and
how to do it is really important if this sadly happens,
which it does to a lot of people.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
When I started making conversations and calls to people, so
what happened Mark? After he's gone missing, everyone's done the
search and you know, there's some stuff going on. You
where did it end? And it just ended? He goes
into a police file, so we're talking the seventies, a
physical police file. He's in a filo compartment somewhere in
(13:11):
a police office in Western Australia.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
Do you know where he is right now? Where that
file is?
Speaker 6 (13:16):
Oh? Yeah, it's so because of the podcast, we do
a lot in missing persons in true crime, and we
speak to police a lot, and some of super helpful,
some aren't that helpful. The particular person I got at
missing persons in West Australia, the police officer was brilliant,
absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 7 (13:35):
From what I understand, the search consisted of four groups
of eight persons who was sending to the bush to
walk a parallel line to the road, and there was
two groups on either side of the road walking in
north and south direction.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
Because she was I found her very helpful actually, and
obviously myself, I've had many dealings with many different police
at many different levels, and I haven't had that. I
haven't had that connection. So some cases do, some cases don't,
So that's an interesting element.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
She was brilliant and she actually told me, well, interestingly,
where in the process of all these long term missing persons,
where in the process of digitizing all of the things,
which is a big step, Like once something goes from
physical copy to digital copy, it's searchable, you know, it's
in a data base as opposed to in a filing cabinet.
(14:30):
And so that was for us the first step. It
was like, okay, great, what can we do to get
that information now?
Speaker 5 (14:39):
And so do you think she was more open with you,
talking to you because des did go to an inquest
and the coroner did Dean that he died and that
no foul play. He just hasn't been found and therefore
he's deceased. Do you feel like that's why she was
open with you.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
I just think she was a good person. Okay, I
don't know her reasons why, but the sense that I
got was that she genuinely felt that she could help.
And there's obviously a whole bunch of rules around what
she couldn't tell me and all of that stuff, which
is all privacy. But that was the other challenge. I'm
related to my uncle Dez, but he's my uncle. You're
not next of care, correct. My grandparents, who had both
(15:22):
passed by the time we started the podcast, couldn't say anything.
My mum had early onset dementia, one auntie had passed,
and my other auntie, Auntie Joy, was also older. Fantastic memory,
don't get me wrong, but they were I don't know
what we do.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
How did she feel about you doing the podcast?
Speaker 6 (15:43):
Yeah, that was my second call, So my second cause
to my auntie because obviously mum's sister. I said, listen,
I want to do a podcast. She asked what a
podcast was. I told her and then she said, of course,
of course, And I said, would you be prepared to
chat to me? She said of course. Those two sort
(16:03):
of gave me a green light to be able to
go into it. So I had my mom's conversation, I
had an early conversation with the police around what could
I access? And remember, I'm going at this like a novice.
I've never looked into this sort, not an investigator one
hundred percent.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
So you're trying to learn baby steps, right, yeah, with
no one really guarding you.
Speaker 6 (16:24):
Correct and there's no expert in and this in twenty
eighteen nineteen did I speak to Mauntie Joy and she
was wonderful and then we went about going, okay, what
do we do? And that's where things get really interesting.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
So I guess one of the questions I want to
ask is did you guys find anything through that process
of doing the podcast and going public?
Speaker 6 (16:48):
Yeah? We did, so as we sort of started searching
for things, we were able to grab things like my
mum and my Auntie had done various TV appearances back
in the late seventies early eighties. We're in Perth, so
I had a few content in Perth are able to
find the videos of them on Telly.
Speaker 8 (17:09):
For more than a quarter of a century, des Car's
devastated family has searched in Vain for answers.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
Adrian Betty reports I was on August the second.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
It was a Monday Day's Car's sister will never forget
the day her family's nightmare began from.
Speaker 6 (17:27):
I was then able to speak more with the police
and say, what do they recall about what happened? Can
I go to the search results? Now, not a lot
of this stuff's on Google at the time, Like you
can't just google it and chat. Chipet wasn't around, so
you can't just Google and find all the information about Daz.
It was largely left up to talking with the family,
(17:49):
talking with my mum and her sister, I joy and
then corresponding that with what police said.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
As a kid, I always had this eerie story you
heard at the start of the show. He's working on
a road roller in the middle of nowhere. Drop him off
in the morning. They come back at four o'clock that afternoon.
His road roll is still there. It's still on his lunch,
is there his water bottles there and there's no tracks
around him. As a kid, that's a scary story, but
(18:20):
as an adult, it's a mystery that you go so
what happened to him?
Speaker 5 (18:25):
Yeah? When I was listening to the podcast just to
get some background on des and the story, I found
it quite confronting, the whole idea of a UFO. But
you've got the police actually saying that there was weird
lights in the sky and it's being reported in America,
and you know so, I think when you're so desperate
(18:48):
for the answers, you will grab and grapple with any
concept or any idea, and that can be very challenging
for your head and your heart.
Speaker 6 (18:57):
That UFO's story. Mum didn't remember it as much when
I spoke to her by the time we spoke in eighteen,
but I remember growing up with that story like that
was the thing. It was probably UFOs.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
And is it because there was not a footprint in
the red dirt that he was working on for everyone,
so that they're clear. So he's on a stretch of
road that goes for what fifty kilometers right, a long way, yeah,
and he works for main roads and they drop him
off and everything's there working as it should like, even
(19:30):
the roller is still kicking over like it's not being
turned off. So if he'd gone to the toilet, you'd
think that when he jumped off, there potentially would be
a footprint in the sand.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
So this is a road just to give you the idea.
A road roller is like a steamroller before.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
They lay bitchmen. Correct, right, they're building a right.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
So there's and up that way we're talking northwest Australia,
there's red dirt and so if you were to step
off the road roller, which is compacting dirt to be
able to put gravel and they put bitchumen on, there
would be a footprint. It was a big it's a
big unit. He's tall. Yeah, you would expect that there
would be a footprints. So the fact that there were
(20:07):
no footprints there, the fact that all of his stuff
was still at the camp, so that UFO's story was
a big one. You know. As we started to investigate
and we then start finding out more, we find out that, yeah,
all of his stuff was still in his camp. We
(20:28):
found out that he'd been in a fight a couple
of weeks before. Apparently he drunk a fair bit. You
know back probably in the seventies where five FO workers
were working up there. The two things would drink and work.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
And he had a trauma, right Like, his friend went
to Vietnam and he died shortly after going. So after
that he started drinking quitefully.
Speaker 6 (20:51):
The fact that everything was still where he was. He'd
be talking about coming home for Christmas, He'd bought a dog, like,
all of these things sort of went. He didn't really
want to go missing because if he did that, why
would you do any of that stuff?
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Well, these are the things we have to go back
and dig really deep into, right, Like am I right
in thinking that he bought an outfit or something to
wear to Christmas? And he told someone, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
That was all laid out in his room. I think
you've said it in your podcast. If your mum was
planning on going missing and never seeing you again, she
probably wouldn't have done all of the things that she did.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
She wouldn't be going to the effort of writing postcards
or sending presents back to her sister.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
Would you just go?
Speaker 5 (21:33):
You just live? I have said that many times. If
I was going to leave and disappear and go and
live in Luxembourg for the rest of my days. I'd
get on a plane and you wouldn't hear from me.
I'd be gone. But the fact that she kept in
contact and dropped little cookie crumbs for us to be
able to go back through and investigate, that's not the
signal of someone who wants to go missing. And so
(21:54):
when I was listening to the I think episode four,
which ended up episode five, maybe it was a bonus episode.
You were listening to the lady from Missing Persons in
WA and she was reading information and she told you
something that you hadn't heard before. Tell us about that.
Speaker 6 (22:10):
I had this conversation and she goes, obviously, she's just
reading part of her report. And she says, obviously the
sock that was found. And I went sorry, and she went, yeah,
there was a sock found. And I double back, And
then I actually call mom afterwards and asked, Mom, do
you know about was there a sock found? No, honey, Joy, No.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
And suddenly so we're sitting in a report somewhere that
was like, well, you know, the obvious question is was
it his sock? Was a DNA testing done?
Speaker 5 (22:43):
Where is this?
Speaker 6 (22:44):
Where is the sock? Now?
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Yeah? Do we know that?
Speaker 6 (22:46):
No?
Speaker 5 (22:47):
No, we don't. Okay, so these are important. This is
what we need to suck out of these things and
put it out there, right, I reckon?
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Can I just also say this? So the moment then
I asked a question about DNA. I say to the police.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
Officer, I know what you're going to say, Do you.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
Have DNA on file? And hello?
Speaker 5 (23:05):
No?
Speaker 6 (23:05):
I'm like, so you don't have anything from his DNA
and you also don't have any family from family DNA,
which obviously can link people. I'm like, okay, can we Yeah?
Speaker 5 (23:17):
Well I noted that too, because you started the podcast
in twenty nineteen and then in twenty twenty. Oh, we're
going to take some DNA. And one of the questions
I wanted to ask you was do you know what
type of DNA test they did from recollection?
Speaker 6 (23:32):
It's called familiar.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
Okay DNA familiar Yeah.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Yep, DNA, which is essentially family DNA. I had to
tell mum, hey, mum, they've got to do some DNA
testing and she was like, what's that?
Speaker 5 (23:46):
And the reason I ask you that question is because
I had a similar situation where the new OOC another
OIC came into the mix for my mum's case in
two thousand and nine, so he's in charge of the
case or she, depending on who it is. He had
asked me, he'd noted that I had no DNA testing,
(24:07):
and again I was like, oh gosh, yeah, okay, that
should be a thing, but not being a police officer
and not thinking from a forensic point of view, that's
something that you should be doing. So everyone should just
keep that in mind. But they made me drive to
Byron Bay, so I had to drag all three of
my kids who were under ten, to go and do
this DNA test and I went into the police station,
(24:29):
they shoved a swab in my mouth. And so fast
forward to when things start to heat up. We started
the podcast. There's podcasts coming out about missing persons. The
Teacher's pet had been massive with Lynette Dawson's case, and
things were starting to take a turn. I personally could
see that there was a change in the weather pushing forward.
(24:52):
The New South Wales Police missing persons units set up
tents around, particularly northern New South Wales where there are
a lot of missing persons. You probably all know about
that because it's been quite a lot of chat about
that recently. I found out because I started asking questions
to missing persons and I said, oh, I'm just confirming
(25:13):
that my DNA is actually on the national DNA program
or list, and they said, oh, I'm just gonna have
to check for you and come back on that. They
did not come back to me. She came back a
little bit later with me chasing, going, actually, you are
on one but not on the other. And I'm like,
hang on a minute. So I had to go and
do my research. What do you mean like I gave
(25:36):
my DNA, isn't it as simple as giving a DNA TESTTA?
And I might add too, I had just been to
the AFP launch for the DNA National DNA program, right,
and I did it on camera for the cameras I
put did a DNA test as well. I found out
that the voluntary sample that I did with Byron Bay
Police in twenty ten, they cannot upload it to the
(25:58):
national database. Why because I have to give my authorization
in writing for them to do it. So it's sitting
somewhere in the New South Wales whatever you want to
call it, a database of some sort, but it's not
on the national program. And this really bothered me, and
it has similar feelings with Desert's case, being that he
bumped his head, he had memory loss, he had really
(26:20):
bad headaches, he was vomiting, he wasn't eating, he had
all of these symptoms of someone who potentially could wander off,
pass out, have amnesia, end up in a hospital, and
no one knows who he is because there's no DNA
on the register. Right, So this had a big problem
for me. So that's why I asked what kind of
DNA testing it was. It's a pretty big deal, Like
(26:42):
the DNA thing is a big deal, and it makes
me wonder why a case that happened in nineteen seventy nine,
no one thought to ask for the family's DNA before
these people start to pass away from old age get
DNA taken like you know, so it is important, is
your DNA now. It's a funny thing you ask, because
(27:03):
I actually have asked for that in and no one
will give it to me. We should not have to
go through all of theirs to have our DNA put
on a profile that can go anywhere to solve a
mystery of a missing person.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
If my uncle Dez was found dead or alive, we
wouldn't know. Yeah, he'd be a John Doe and your
mum would be a Jane Doe.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Correct, And that is possible. She could be in a
morg sitting somewhere in a box and no one's tested
her against my DNA. I did give New Softwales police
some ballet slippers of my mum's which she had worn.
They will leather ballet slippers, and they came back they
said to me, oh, we will have to destroy them,
which broke my heart because that was one of the
(27:44):
things I had of my mums because all her stuffs
in storage right, it's all gone missing, and I stupidly
should have kept one. So if I had a tip
for anybody, don't give everything away, keep something because.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
I don't need both feet.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
I don't need both. But they didn't get anything. They said,
we've got no DNA from that.
Speaker 6 (28:01):
I must have destroyed them.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
How possible? Yeah, so of them both. Silly mistake. But
I'm learning and want to I want to help teach
people from my mistakes and my errors as we move
through this journey. I want to come back to the
(28:27):
sock for a minute. So let's talk about this gentleman
has come back and he's given you information or given
police information that he saw Dez on the day that
he went missing, but he was further down the road
from where he went missing. He then drives back past
(28:51):
that location ten years later and had a moment where
he remembered that he'd seen this man. He potentially might
have seen something in the news about Deaz that he
was missing, like, we don't know that. But he stopped,
and he stopped, he had to walk around, and he
says he found a sock. Now that sock he described
as being black and white. The first thing that came
(29:13):
to my head was have we researched did Mainz Roads
because he was working for Mains Roads and they were
on a camp together right at Thangu station. Did they
have did they supply things like socks?
Speaker 6 (29:25):
So really interestingly around main Roads is obviously I went
digging into his records at main Roads.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
And very very slim, scant on details.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
Scant on details. I mean, it's ninety seventy nine. I'm
pretty positive now there would be a lot of detail around,
you know, any incident that were to happen. Sure main
Roads already were these days. My family was pretty sure
that it was a type of sock demarcles would wear.
Speaker 5 (29:51):
Have we got I remember listening to the Western Australian
missing person's officer who said that he had given her
or given them a map which was on his file
as well of a location. Is there any way that
you guys can dig into that a bit more and
ask for where is the sock? Has it been tested
(30:12):
for DNA? And where is the map?
Speaker 6 (30:15):
We did ask that question around the sock the sock.
From what I understand, they didn't feel that he was
a reliable witness, given that he just happened to drive
past the same place ten years later and stop in
the area that he thought he saw my uncle.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
But you know, like if you've got no leads on
this and he's a missing person, you do everything. You
don't make assumptions and go, oh, he might be an
unreliable witness. You don't know that.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
But I find that in a lot of cases, and
that needs to change one hundred percent. Like everything is
suspicious until it's proven.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Otherwise, started suspicious and work backwards. If you find out
it's not the case, well good, that's you can tick.
Speaker 6 (30:58):
That box off himself, right like any police detective you
speak to, whether he's sold will say anything we find
we deem as suspicious until proven otherwise.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
I have a bone with that, because that doesn't always happen.
Like you know, sometimes I'll go searching for ten days
and goo, we're not treating this suspicious, I'm like, And
then three months later, oh, we're actually treating a suspicious now,
and they've already lost a lot of information, which is
a problem. And so today Deres has sadly been missing
for sixteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty three days.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
That is, let me tell you what's happened in the
sixteen thousand days. My grandpa, my grandma died. DES's middle
sister died, his youngest sister died. All of those sisters
have had children, their cousins have had children. And then
in twenty eighteen, his nephew releases a podcast, and we're
(31:59):
in twenty twenty five. It's still no answer.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
How did you feel when your son decided he was
going to go to a similar kind of location as
a young person, How did that affect you as a
dad knowing and living with the fact that your uncle
went there and he disappeared, Like, I.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
Actually haven't thought of that until you've just asked me.
And it's actually bigger than just my son. It's about
my daughters too.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
He did, he go?
Speaker 6 (32:27):
He did? Ye. Yeah, he only spent a little bit
of time up there because he hated it. But it
was a very different time. But it does change the
way you act. I reckon because now you've said it,
I go, I'm really protective of my daughters. I'm really
protective with my son. But he's a he's a twenty
(32:49):
five year old bloke now.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
So yeah, he's being Oh, your son, though he'll always
be your son and you'll always still be protective.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
But yeah, I'm a My wife is probably less worried
about my daughters, you know, doing something, whereas I'm like,
but no, no, I'll be around. And I've actually not
thought about it until you just said that.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
It's an interesting thought, Jay, because I live that as well.
I look at Chris, and I so Chris. Those few
don't know with my husband, we've been together for thirty years.
And for example, my middle daughter, she's twenty, she's gorgeous,
she's blonde and beautiful and all the rest of it.
She goes out for a night, her phone starting to
(33:33):
lose battery. I can see her on Life three sixty,
because that's the rules. If you go out and you're
by yourself with your friends, if you get separated from
them or something, I will come and pick you up.
I never ever think that I will never come and
get you. I will always pick you up. And I'm
very chill. I go to bed, I go to sleep,
and I know that I know who she is, and
(33:54):
I know who she's with and good communication, which is
very important. And I think my children completely get that
I need good communication. I wake up at say eleven,
and go home yet and then I start to worry,
and then I don't sleep until I know she's in
a uber with a friend, or I won't pick her up.
(34:15):
And my husband is just soundly lying there, snoring's a
little hard out. And it's not that he doesn't care,
but he doesn't worry like I do. And I have
to pull myself back to times when I was that
age and I didn't have mobile phones, and my mum
didn't know where I was or where I was going.
We didn't sort of have constant contact. And I'm certainly
(34:36):
not a helicopter parent or anything like that. I let
them do what they want to do. And they have
to have their own independence and learn from mistakes and things.
But it's just that whole coming home at nighttime when
you're a young person and you might have had a
few drinks and you know, you just need to be
really with it. So I get it.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
The question, I guess, and I think I know the
answer to it is that the trauma of going something
that has happened to you, with your mom going missing
and with me my uncle going missing, and just not
necessarily that I was super close with my uncle, but
it is how it affected my family.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
Yeah, well, you saw it affect your mom, right.
Speaker 6 (35:15):
I saw it affect my mom. I saw it affect
my auntie's and.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
My grandparents granddads in particular.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
Correct, I mean my mum and my family said for
a long time that my granddad died early because of
a heartache.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
And I totally get that. I totally see how just
the ambiguity of not knowing yeah, can eat you alive
for breakfast. Just anxiety, anxiety, that's all it is. It's
just stress. My heart is very healthy, but I have
really high anxiety and high stress and probably PTSD. To
be honest, what.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
I was doing, dares I was like, this is actually
a family heirloop. Yeah, this has actually got like I
listen when I call my dad. Now he's in my
phone as Mom's phone. So mom and dad have this
one mobile phone to do anything else but answer it.
Pall yeah, And I call that phone a Dad doesn't answer,
(36:10):
it goes to a voicemail, and Mom's voice is on
that voicemail. Oh bless, which is beautiful. But I've also
got two hours of her talking to me, which I
never had. That is really precious. Not for the podcast, yeah,
but just for me.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
I have thought the same too, And I remember asking
Allison actually from Channel seven, how I could get the
podcast about my mum the Lady Vanishes downloaded into some
sort of format so I could keep it forever so
if the server drops or it drops off, like because
for me, that is the story of my family history.
This my children's grandmother who they never met. And then
(36:51):
they're going to have children forward think about life and
AI and all sorts of crazy stuff. My grandchildren and
great grandchildren are going to be asking questions about this,
and you've seen that even through your kids. I don't
know that it doesn't stop when the next ukin dies right,
it keeps going and one missing person affects I know
(37:11):
there's researched on this. I should look at it, but
to get the numbers. But there is like a certain
amount of people I think maybe sixteen direct people missing person.
So you think about that and fifty thousand people going
missing every year. Yes, sure most of those people are
found within a week, but at the current state, like
even since I've been doing Mum's podcast, the lady vanishes
(37:33):
and then the missing matter. The numbers are growing every year.
I think we're up to, you know, twenty nine hundred.
I was trying to find the right number last night
and it was a bit difficult, but I've been told
different numbers from different people. But it's a high number.
We're nearly up to three thousand long term missing people
in Australia and that's that's crazy.
Speaker 6 (37:53):
And then when you extrapolate that out over if the
numbers sixteen signs that into generationally, you know, this is
daughters pacity onto their daughters and sons on to Now
how it affects my daughters now as sixteen going on
seventeen year old daughters might not show up for another
(38:15):
ten or fifty years, but give it time.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
But give a time when they're having babies or when
they're getting married and go, oh.
Speaker 6 (38:20):
Someone wants to go away, or a sub wants to
go work up north on the roads.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
And it's different. I think it's different when you when
someone dies, like my brother died right so in tragic circumstances.
He took his own life. We cremated him and we
scattered his ashes, and I know where he is and
I can think about him, and you know, there's little
things that come up, like owls. Every time I see
an owl, I think of him, because we talked about
(38:47):
that as a as a funny thing is when we
were kids, he was always going to come back as
an owl. And then you know, during the inquest, I've
got an owl in the back points here. I was
sitting in the tree, like what is going on? And
then he's sitting out the front on the power lines
looking at Chris and I when we're sitting on the deck,
I'm like I sat out there again. And then when
Johnnie and I were traveling all through Europe, every time
we go somewhere there was an hour, whether it be
(39:10):
a soft fluffy toy or a real hour, in the
tree hooting out out of our window. It just stays with.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
You, and I think it does stay with you, and
you don't know how it's going to stay with you
until it appears. Yeah, and then suddenly it appears and
you're like, oh shit, like you've just revealed to me today.
I didn't actually connect my uncle going missing with how
I am with my daughters.
Speaker 5 (39:33):
So one other thing I wanted to touch on was
the story of a missing person who was actually found.
It's Corey O'Connell. Now. His sister Hailey was leading the
family search with her parents for Corey and he actually
went missing near nan Up in Western Australia. He went
(39:55):
missing in June twenty twenty one, but they found him
in May twenty twenty three. And how they found him
would she be alive sadly deceased? So how they found him?
There was a drone a gentleman called Dan Wood. I
don't know if Dan lives in Western Australia, but just
(40:16):
got me thinking, right. He was doing drone shots of
mapping out areas and he sent them to Haley and
the family to do assessment on it. Now, I remember
seeing an interview with Haley and She was talking about
how they'd gone through a lot of drone photos and
because of where that is, and we're talking, you know,
semi desert, kind of vibes very desolate, not a lot
(40:39):
of greenery, red dirt, so forth, etc. They were finding
a lot of bones that looked like potentially human bones,
but they turned out to be a kangaroo. But there
was this one that just spiked their interest and Dan
sent it to the family and they sent the police
out and they found him.
Speaker 6 (40:56):
My goodness, you.
Speaker 5 (40:58):
Know, I sadly want to tell you that I don't
know if you might not be aware of this, but
when I checked the National Missing Person's Register last night,
des is actually not on there.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
I didn't know that. I is that because he was
because an inquestor's found him that he's deceased.
Speaker 5 (41:24):
Well, the inquest found my mum is deceased, but my
mum is still on there. Right.
Speaker 6 (41:29):
I had no idea, and I don't know the process
of getting someone on that.
Speaker 5 (41:33):
Register, but I can help you with that.
Speaker 6 (41:36):
That is a government register, right AFP.
Speaker 5 (41:39):
So we need to write to the AFP, and we
need to say my person is missing still yep, we
would like to have him put on the National Missing
Person's Register because if he's not on that register, Jay
and they find bones in Queensland, if someone's finding that
in Queensland. And this is something I struggled with with
(42:01):
my mum's case, was that if she's on the New
South Wales Missing Person's Register but she's found with amnesia
in WA in a hospital, they are not connecting the dots.
So it's they're not connecting WA with New South Wales.
It has to be on a national register and that
goes for the DNA and for the National Missing Person's Register.
(42:21):
They need to all be connected otherwise they don't.
Speaker 6 (42:25):
Communicate Desmond Francis car Big Punt. You searched his full name,
I just.
Speaker 5 (42:30):
I did des and I did Desmond. So do you
want to have a look on your phone now while
we're sitting here, put his full name in and see
see what comes up. Because for my mum, she comes
up as Marion Barter aka Flora Bella Natalia Marian Ramkel,
which is difficult in itself, but it took me years
(42:52):
to have her put on there, and it was only
after doing the podcast that they actually put her on
the National Missing Person's Register for the very first time.
Speaker 6 (42:59):
I've just put it in Desmond car des Car or
Desmond Francis Car. No search found.
Speaker 5 (43:08):
All right, So I'm sorry. I tend to do this
and then I get into trouble for causing people trauma.
Speaker 6 (43:17):
And this is the point.
Speaker 5 (43:19):
But I just wanted to do some due diligence and
go he's on the register, right, he's got a reward, right,
And I went, oh my god, I can't find any
of those things.
Speaker 6 (43:27):
This is the point with missing persons, and this is
why I think there's a community of missing persons, of
people who suffer from long term missing persons that antiguous loss.
There is a community. I've spoken to a bunch of them,
you know, most of the people I've spoken to. There's
(43:48):
not like a playbook. There's not like a what to
do if your person goes missing?
Speaker 5 (43:53):
That's right, there's no there's no instructions. You're doing it
on your own. You're fumbling your way through. And I'm
sure you would agree with me. It's fumbling because you
don't know what you're doing. And you go, oh, I
shouldn't have given them the two ballet slippers. I should
have given them one, or I should have pushed for
my DNA to be that DNA, not this DNA. You know,
(44:13):
how do you know that you are literally at the
hands and the mercy of the police.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
Really, I sent an email. I won't say who too,
because I think it's disrespectful, but I sent it to
someone quite high up in the court system in Western Australia.
I had their email address, but I didn't address them right, okay,
And I got their assistant came back to me and said,
(44:38):
you can't address that person like that, right, You must
address them like this, right. So I addressed them like
that on the way back and just said, sorry, my
uncle's been missing for forty years, my mum's just passed away. Yeah,
excuse my excuse my lack of understanding on how to
address this person, but could I have an answer to
(44:59):
my question please? That should just shows a lack of
empathy when it comes to dealing with people, yeah, who
are suffering long term, ambiguous loss at whatever level.
Speaker 5 (45:12):
And just think about that for one second. You're sending
an email about a missing person and they come back with, hey,
you didn't say the words correctly.
Speaker 6 (45:21):
Correct.
Speaker 5 (45:22):
I had same with me going into the New South
Wales Police station, They argued at the inquest that I
didn't say my mum was missing, so it was my
fault that they didn't do more at the time I
walked into the police station. That's essentially what they said.
You're losing the point here. My mum is missing still today,
twenty eight years down the track. So we you and
(45:44):
I are in a very unique space in life. We're
about the same age, and we are both dealing with
very long term missing, like decades long missing people. I'm
glad we've come together to do this because I think
even though we're chatting a lot about other things in
the missing person's space, the key element here is that
des is missing as matters. So I want you to
(46:06):
finish for me. Listen to me, goo, I want you
to tell me why does dares matter?
Speaker 6 (46:16):
There's matters? There's matters now? Oh jeez, I think I'd
get emotional. Does matters now more than ever? Because my
mom matters? And and she passed sadly last year, but
(46:45):
she passed not knowing what happened to her brother, and
that would just yeah, I can't imagine how that would you.
(47:06):
I just can't imagine it. Yeah, And so that's why
for me does matters. He matters because of the heartache
that my mum suffered for the rest of her life
not knowing where a big brother went.
Speaker 5 (47:29):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that with us, because I
think you know it is hard and your mum, you know,
recently passed away. Really you know, she's not long left you,
and you have seen through her eyes the heartache and
the stress and the ambiguity that she's lived with. And
(47:52):
you've lived with as well, because you've witnessed it as
a person in that family who care and want to
help in any way you possibly can. So thank you
for sharing the story of Days with us. And he
does matter to us.
Speaker 6 (48:08):
I think one of the interesting things that we could
do in this podcast would be almost use it as
a tool for everyone if they know information. Obviously, Daz
is our first story, but there are stories every week,
so maybe there's a way that Deaes matters. So if
(48:28):
you've got information about Days, you're going to hear this story.
You might not have listened to the disappearance of Das
and you don't need to if you don't want to,
but just by hearing the story, you might go, oh,
I lived in that area that actually happened to me.
That actually happened. As part of the podcast, a woman
reached out just out of the blue and said, Hey,
she reached out on Instagram. Hey, my dad's been telling
(48:51):
me for the last thirty years about this bloke that
went missing up here, and we always just thought dad
was telling a story. But he reckons he saw dead
a week after he went missing at the rodeo, right,
(49:11):
And I was like, nah, obviously this is just an
old bloke's memory. Yeah, so I called guy no word
of a lie. It's in the podcast he talks about
that he saw him, He spoke to him. It was
with his daughter at the time, but Dez was drunk,
so he didn't want to go over to him because
(49:31):
he looked pretty happy. But he was with to what
he called to foreign looking backpackers, right, And he said,
my uncle Dez left with those two backpackers. Now, we
chased that story to the end of where we could
get it. No record of it in police it was
(49:56):
it formed part of the current's decision. We obviously gave
her that information at the time. It's a story of
someone who went on record to say that's what he saw. Yeah,
we reached out to the rodeo people up there and
say do you have ticketing information? Was there a rodeo
at that week? We found that there definitely was a
rodeo the week after.
Speaker 5 (50:19):
And there are all little pieces of the puzzle piece.
That's the stuff that you put together and that becomes
our lives. Right.
Speaker 6 (50:24):
Is there a way for people to make contact with
us they're listening to this podcast, not about Dez, maybe
about Dez, maybe about your mum.
Speaker 5 (50:33):
For those that don't know, we do have a website
set up called the Missing Matter the Missingmatter dot com
so www dot the Missingmatter dot com, or we have
a contact page, so you can't actually contact us. So
I would probably suggest that anybody who has any information
about any of these cases that we're going to profile
on the Missing Matter, first point a call. I would
(50:55):
say to ring crime Stoppers and reference the person's name
in full and the number four crime Stoppers is one
eight hundred and three to three three zero zero zero.
But you can also send us an email through the
contact page on the Missing Matter website and I will
pass those messages on to the families who we talk to.
Speaker 6 (51:19):
Next week on the Missing Matter.
Speaker 9 (51:22):
Almost Deliban years are for his father vanished without a trace.
A Tasmanian man remains hopeful he may one day find
out what happened to him.
Speaker 6 (51:30):
Yeah, like, it was horrible.
Speaker 10 (51:34):
It was absolutely horrible. The last known confirmed sighting is
just out of Sheffield by a local mechanic who knew dad.
Speaker 9 (51:45):
The family of Nicholas Slice has once again called for
help from the community in the hopes of closure.
Speaker 10 (51:51):
Getting hold of that information hasn't been easy. They'd like
to charge me per page further documents. In the first
couple of days of that going missing, we were paying
fifteen hundred dollars an hour for helicopters. Was a big undertaking,
a big expense.
Speaker 6 (52:13):
It's been a difficult decade for Jason Sales, who's never
given up searching for answers.
Apodge production. Out on a red dirt track south of Broom.
A road roller sits humming in the afternoon heat. It's Thursday,
second of August nineteen seventy nine, around three pm. Thirty
two year old road worker Desmond Francis car is seen
(00:27):
beside that machine, nine kilometers south of Thango Station. An
hour later, the foreman comes back.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
The roller is still running. Des is gone.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Des was a hard working bloke on a remote main
roads camp. His ute, his clothes, his money all left
at camp. No note, no sign he planned to go anywhere.
When he didn't turn up for pickup, the crew searched.
Police were called the next day. Over the following days,
(01:01):
fifty seven volunteers and officers pushed through thick bush. An
aircraft swept the country from above. Nothing not a footprint
they could follow to an answer.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thinking he may have quit work early, the fore man
didn't raise the alarm until after the weekend. Gwen and
her father then flew from Perth to Room and visited
the road cruise camp.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
There's another part of this story.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
In the weeks leading up to his disappearance, Des had
been unwell, blackouts, head knocks in his past epilepsy, splitting headaches,
stomach trouble.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
There had been a fight with a couple of guys
and one picked up a chair and threw it and
he just happened to be in the way and got
hid in the head, went into the room and there
was all blood on his pillow.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Colleagues said he'd barely eaten and the day before he vanished.
His behavior seemed off in a place where the scrub
can swallow you in minutes. Disorientation can be deadly. There
were rumors UFOs.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
My eldest sister, Gwen, she believed, didn't you know, it
was all very fashed week we thought, not knowing what
was going on.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Another man decades on.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
There was a witness that came forward in two thousand
and fourteen. He believed he saw Des at a certain
location and he provided a map.
Speaker 7 (02:20):
It was not a Nayga's past. I don't dance think
of him.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
I often get his spaders out into.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Forty two years later, in twenty twenty one, the deputy
state coroner ruled that Des likely died on or around
the day he went missing.
Speaker 8 (02:34):
It's been more than twenty five years, but police have
reopened the file on a man who might just as
well have disappeared into thin air.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Cause and manner of death unknown, No remains, no certainty.
But there is a family, sisters who never stopped asking,
a niece and nephew who kept Dez's name in the
public eye through media, podcasts, appeals, anything that might shake.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Loose the truth.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
I think it ended with my mum and Dad's flower.
We should have done.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
In twenty twenty, his surviving sisters gave DNA, hoping one
day science might do what the search lines could not.
This is not a story about a man who chose
to disappear. It's a story about a man who vanished
in one of the most unforgiving landscapes in Australia. Welcome
(03:30):
to the missing matter. There's matters.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
If I'm watching TV of a nighttime and you see
somebody say, oh cool, you know that looks like these
terrible feeling you never forget it all right, Well, hi Jay,
heyself sitting here together, it feels different.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
It's feel weird for me because I'm normally the one
doing the interviews.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Yes, you're normally the one controlling the conversation. And I'm
going to sit here and try and ask you some
questions and dig a little deep into your uncle Dez.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
Yeah, it's interesting that we're having this chat and how
we're having this chat and how paths cross. I guess
I'm a little bit spiritual. But at the same point,
I think there's a point in our lives where we
meet people for reasons, and I think we met out
of a mutual friend and I knew your story, but
I never thought to reach out to you because you
(04:28):
had a massive podcast and yeah, like you were doing
your thing, and I do.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Get that a lot. I must say, in the missing space,
I do feel a bit lonely sometimes because I think
everyone thinks that old Sally's got this massive platform. So
sometimes I feel a bit lonely in the space. So
I think that's what probably drives me. I have an
understanding and a feeling and a deep connection with that feeling,
(04:53):
and I feel that for others. So I've had quite
a lot of people connect with me through my mum's story,
some of them in absolute stress of wanting to do
a similar thing. They want to do a they want
to talk to Headley, they want to talk to the
Australian newspaper. They want they're asking me questions. And I
have befriended those people and brought them in and honestly
(05:18):
want to share with them some help. You know, there's
one lady that she's so sad. When I call her,
she cries nearly the whole conversation, and she was telling
me how she couldn't even leave her house, and I
was trying to encourage her to just to go for
a walk, just go for a walk, to step outside
the steps and go for a walk and come back.
And then next day you might drive somewhere and go
and get a coffee, or the next day you might
(05:39):
drive to the beach. Your mental health can really mess
with you on this journey, and your missing person's case
is a long one where you know, we're stretching now
forty plus years it is, so it's been a long time.
And something that I've been wanting to do for a
little while now is try and help those people who
(05:59):
are living with a missing person who don't have a platform,
or they're getting shut doors because their story doesn't seem
to have enough trauma behind it to make it an
interesting story for sixty minutes to run. And I know
that myself, I had that door shut in my face
many many times. So now that we have that opportunity,
and you and I have been working together for the
(06:20):
last couple of months doing the Missing Matter Marion Matters,
and when I suggested to you we do something like this,
I found it quite interesting because I've gone back and
listened to your podcast that you did about Dez the
disappearance of des Car. I hear you saying that you
wanted to do something like this. So I'm just like,
oh my gosh, we're on the same page here, and
you are living your lived experience when l is what
(06:43):
we refer to. We're not here to solve cases, We're
here to bring awareness. And you know, from that, a
media outlet might go, that's a great story, let me
run it. Or an agency might go, you know what,
We've got new technology, let's help this family. Let's start
with maybe the obvious and tell me what made you
choose to do a podcast about Dez.
Speaker 6 (07:06):
It was really simple. Airs was my first ever podcast.
I'd never listened to a podcast before, right, but I
happened to get a job as the head of podcasts
for a network. Yeah okay, and so it went deep
into podcasting really fast, and we were toying with all
sorts of different podcasts at the company I was working for.
(07:27):
It was really interesting, but we saw true crime as
like the big thing. This is in the days where
your podcast was out right, this is twenty nineteen, yeah, right,
twenty nineteen, twenty tween.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
You released it funnily enough on the second of August
twenty nineteen. And for my listeners who know my story
will know that my mum's passport flew back into Australia
on the second of August nineteen ninety seven. So I
just went, oh, my god, there is a definite connector
here that we need to help tell the story. And
the reason you did that is, in my opinion, is
(08:01):
because that was the forty year anniversary. That's right, Dars
going miss.
Speaker 6 (08:04):
It was really based on that day Because of there,
it probably took about nine months to do. In twenty eighteen,
my dad was ill that he's fine now, and I
decided to fly out to Perth where my family lives,
and go and visit everyone. So I actually just went
over by myself. My wife and kids stayed here. It
was school time. It was like busy, so so I
(08:26):
went over and Dad was in hospital. And I was
staying with my brother and my mum was at the
hospital a lot, and I sort of between the hospital
and my brother's house for a period of time. And
me and Mum were sitting on my brother's couch one
afternoon and we'd been at the hospital all day and
your dad was recovering and looked like he was going
to be okay. And I just said, Mom, do you
(08:47):
want to do She want to chat about Uncle Dav's
So my mom's brother, my mom's she was the youngest
of the family, She had two sisters, And so he
sat on the couch in my brother's house and Mum
was suffering at that stage with it wasn't diagnosed, but
it was definitely signs of early dementia, which is a horrible,
(09:08):
horrible disease. And we sat on the couch and I
just said, do you want to tell me about Uncle Daz. Now,
at that stage, Mum couldn't remember whether she'd maybe a
cup of tea or not. She could remember facts from
forty years ago. And so I opened up my voice recorder,
I stuck it on the table in front of me,
and we had a two hour chat about Daz.
Speaker 9 (09:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
So it's tenth of May two thousand and eighteen at lunchtime. Huh, okay,
how are you? It's a weird, isn't it? Good morning?
Good one afternoon afternoon. So we're going to ask a
whole bunch of questions about Uncle Daz, and I guess
the first question I want to know is what was
(09:55):
Uncle Daz like with me? Brother? A big what easy
to look after me? You know what I mean? Everything
was done for sure? Yeah? And was it all what
sort of cool? I'd say six?
Speaker 5 (10:11):
And that recording would be quite precious to you now
that she has passed sadly it is it is.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
It sits on my phone in my notes section. It's
called Mum Uncle Dez. From a memory perspective, it's really precious.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Yeah, And you probably could reflect back to and now
that you are doing podcasts and you own pod Shape
and you've produced a number of amazing podcasts to help
many people, you probably have a different appreciation to you
to how precious capturing chat is?
Speaker 6 (10:43):
I so important?
Speaker 5 (10:44):
I have realized that myself right doing my own investigations.
And it's not necessarily that you want to go and
put it on a podcast. It's just for you.
Speaker 6 (10:53):
What was really interesting is I just got after chatting
with Mum for a couple of hours. We had a
lovely time and you know, I had some amazing stories,
which is all covered in the podcast, and then I
went I was it was like four or five when
Marcale went missing, so I don't really remember him, okay,
but I do remember the feelings that were going on
(11:17):
around our house, my grandma, Grandpap's house, mum's sister's house,
Like this feeling of it's not losing your keys, this
is like losing a brother or a son and going
and for you a mum are going what's happening? So
(11:38):
this feeling of dread is what I remember, and I've
no doubt got trauma over it that I haven't recognized
throughout the years, but and I no doubt we'll talk
about that later. I think what I found super interesting
is that I started just thinking about who do I
need to contact because I'm not a police officer. Ye,
(12:00):
I've done a fair bit in this space now, but
at the time, who's the first call after Mum, who
do I speak to?
Speaker 5 (12:07):
Yeah, that's something that I want to try and bring
awareness to in the space because there are a lot
of people who still go missing every day, right, so
I think we're up to some crazy number of you know,
over fifty thousand people going missing or reported missing every
year in Australia. There needs to be an understanding and
a conversation. I think I recently, as you know, spoke
(12:30):
to Gary Jubalan and he was you know, we were
having a big chat about that, and it's an important topic.
I think for a conversation to have so you know,
knowing what to do and where to turn to and
how to do it is really important if this sadly happens,
which it does to a lot of people.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
When I started making conversations and calls to people, so
what happened Mark? After he's gone missing, everyone's done the
search and you know, there's some stuff going on. You
where did it end? And it just ended? He goes
into a police file, so we're talking the seventies, a
physical police file. He's in a filo compartment somewhere in
(13:11):
a police office in Western Australia.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
Do you know where he is right now? Where that
file is?
Speaker 6 (13:16):
Oh? Yeah, it's so because of the podcast, we do
a lot in missing persons in true crime, and we
speak to police a lot, and some of super helpful,
some aren't that helpful. The particular person I got at
missing persons in West Australia, the police officer was brilliant,
absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 7 (13:35):
From what I understand, the search consisted of four groups
of eight persons who was sending to the bush to
walk a parallel line to the road, and there was
two groups on either side of the road walking in
north and south direction.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
Because she was I found her very helpful actually, and
obviously myself, I've had many dealings with many different police
at many different levels, and I haven't had that. I
haven't had that connection. So some cases do, some cases don't,
So that's an interesting element.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
She was brilliant and she actually told me, well, interestingly,
where in the process of all these long term missing persons,
where in the process of digitizing all of the things,
which is a big step, Like once something goes from
physical copy to digital copy, it's searchable, you know, it's
in a data base as opposed to in a filing cabinet.
(14:30):
And so that was for us the first step. It
was like, okay, great, what can we do to get
that information now?
Speaker 5 (14:39):
And so do you think she was more open with you,
talking to you because des did go to an inquest
and the coroner did Dean that he died and that
no foul play. He just hasn't been found and therefore
he's deceased. Do you feel like that's why she was
open with you.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
I just think she was a good person. Okay, I
don't know her reasons why, but the sense that I
got was that she genuinely felt that she could help.
And there's obviously a whole bunch of rules around what
she couldn't tell me and all of that stuff, which
is all privacy. But that was the other challenge. I'm
related to my uncle Dez, but he's my uncle. You're
not next of care, correct. My grandparents, who had both
(15:22):
passed by the time we started the podcast, couldn't say anything.
My mum had early onset dementia, one auntie had passed,
and my other auntie, Auntie Joy, was also older. Fantastic memory,
don't get me wrong, but they were I don't know
what we do.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
How did she feel about you doing the podcast?
Speaker 6 (15:43):
Yeah, that was my second call, So my second cause
to my auntie because obviously mum's sister. I said, listen,
I want to do a podcast. She asked what a
podcast was. I told her and then she said, of course,
of course, And I said, would you be prepared to
chat to me? She said of course. Those two sort
(16:03):
of gave me a green light to be able to
go into it. So I had my mom's conversation, I
had an early conversation with the police around what could
I access? And remember, I'm going at this like a novice.
I've never looked into this sort, not an investigator one
hundred percent.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
So you're trying to learn baby steps, right, yeah, with
no one really guarding you.
Speaker 6 (16:24):
Correct and there's no expert in and this in twenty
eighteen nineteen did I speak to Mauntie Joy and she
was wonderful and then we went about going, okay, what
do we do? And that's where things get really interesting.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
So I guess one of the questions I want to
ask is did you guys find anything through that process
of doing the podcast and going public?
Speaker 6 (16:48):
Yeah? We did, so as we sort of started searching
for things, we were able to grab things like my
mum and my Auntie had done various TV appearances back
in the late seventies early eighties. We're in Perth, so
I had a few content in Perth are able to
find the videos of them on Telly.
Speaker 8 (17:09):
For more than a quarter of a century, des Car's
devastated family has searched in Vain for answers.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
Adrian Betty reports I was on August the second.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
It was a Monday Day's Car's sister will never forget
the day her family's nightmare began from.
Speaker 6 (17:27):
I was then able to speak more with the police
and say, what do they recall about what happened? Can
I go to the search results? Now, not a lot
of this stuff's on Google at the time, Like you
can't just google it and chat. Chipet wasn't around, so
you can't just Google and find all the information about Daz.
It was largely left up to talking with the family,
(17:49):
talking with my mum and her sister, I joy and
then corresponding that with what police said.
Speaker 5 (17:56):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
As a kid, I always had this eerie story you
heard at the start of the show. He's working on
a road roller in the middle of nowhere. Drop him off
in the morning. They come back at four o'clock that afternoon.
His road roll is still there. It's still on his lunch,
is there his water bottles there and there's no tracks
around him. As a kid, that's a scary story, but
(18:20):
as an adult, it's a mystery that you go so
what happened to him?
Speaker 5 (18:25):
Yeah? When I was listening to the podcast just to
get some background on des and the story, I found
it quite confronting, the whole idea of a UFO. But
you've got the police actually saying that there was weird
lights in the sky and it's being reported in America,
and you know so, I think when you're so desperate
(18:48):
for the answers, you will grab and grapple with any
concept or any idea, and that can be very challenging
for your head and your heart.
Speaker 6 (18:57):
That UFO's story. Mum didn't remember it as much when
I spoke to her by the time we spoke in eighteen,
but I remember growing up with that story like that
was the thing. It was probably UFOs.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
And is it because there was not a footprint in
the red dirt that he was working on for everyone,
so that they're clear. So he's on a stretch of
road that goes for what fifty kilometers right, a long way, yeah,
and he works for main roads and they drop him
off and everything's there working as it should like, even
(19:30):
the roller is still kicking over like it's not being
turned off. So if he'd gone to the toilet, you'd
think that when he jumped off, there potentially would be
a footprint in the sand.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
So this is a road just to give you the idea.
A road roller is like a steamroller before.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
They lay bitchmen. Correct, right, they're building a right.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
So there's and up that way we're talking northwest Australia,
there's red dirt and so if you were to step
off the road roller, which is compacting dirt to be
able to put gravel and they put bitchumen on, there
would be a footprint. It was a big it's a
big unit. He's tall. Yeah, you would expect that there
would be a footprints. So the fact that there were
(20:07):
no footprints there, the fact that all of his stuff
was still at the camp, so that UFO's story was
a big one. You know. As we started to investigate
and we then start finding out more, we find out that, yeah,
all of his stuff was still in his camp. We
(20:28):
found out that he'd been in a fight a couple
of weeks before. Apparently he drunk a fair bit. You
know back probably in the seventies where five FO workers
were working up there. The two things would drink and work.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
And he had a trauma, right Like, his friend went
to Vietnam and he died shortly after going. So after
that he started drinking quitefully.
Speaker 6 (20:51):
The fact that everything was still where he was. He'd
be talking about coming home for Christmas, He'd bought a dog, like,
all of these things sort of went. He didn't really
want to go missing because if he did that, why
would you do any of that stuff?
Speaker 5 (21:05):
Well, these are the things we have to go back
and dig really deep into, right, Like am I right
in thinking that he bought an outfit or something to
wear to Christmas? And he told someone, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
That was all laid out in his room. I think
you've said it in your podcast. If your mum was
planning on going missing and never seeing you again, she
probably wouldn't have done all of the things that she did.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
She wouldn't be going to the effort of writing postcards
or sending presents back to her sister.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
Would you just go?
Speaker 5 (21:33):
You just live? I have said that many times. If
I was going to leave and disappear and go and
live in Luxembourg for the rest of my days. I'd
get on a plane and you wouldn't hear from me.
I'd be gone. But the fact that she kept in
contact and dropped little cookie crumbs for us to be
able to go back through and investigate, that's not the
signal of someone who wants to go missing. And so
(21:54):
when I was listening to the I think episode four,
which ended up episode five, maybe it was a bonus episode.
You were listening to the lady from Missing Persons in
WA and she was reading information and she told you
something that you hadn't heard before. Tell us about that.
Speaker 6 (22:10):
I had this conversation and she goes, obviously, she's just
reading part of her report. And she says, obviously the
sock that was found. And I went sorry, and she went, yeah,
there was a sock found. And I double back, And
then I actually call mom afterwards and asked, Mom, do
you know about was there a sock found? No, honey, Joy, No.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
And suddenly so we're sitting in a report somewhere that
was like, well, you know, the obvious question is was
it his sock? Was a DNA testing done?
Speaker 5 (22:43):
Where is this?
Speaker 6 (22:44):
Where is the sock? Now?
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Yeah? Do we know that?
Speaker 6 (22:46):
No?
Speaker 5 (22:47):
No, we don't. Okay, so these are important. This is
what we need to suck out of these things and
put it out there, right, I reckon?
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Can I just also say this? So the moment then
I asked a question about DNA. I say to the police.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
Officer, I know what you're going to say, Do you.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
Have DNA on file? And hello?
Speaker 5 (23:05):
No?
Speaker 6 (23:05):
I'm like, so you don't have anything from his DNA
and you also don't have any family from family DNA,
which obviously can link people. I'm like, okay, can we Yeah?
Speaker 5 (23:17):
Well I noted that too, because you started the podcast
in twenty nineteen and then in twenty twenty. Oh, we're
going to take some DNA. And one of the questions
I wanted to ask you was do you know what
type of DNA test they did from recollection?
Speaker 6 (23:32):
It's called familiar.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
Okay DNA familiar Yeah.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Yep, DNA, which is essentially family DNA. I had to
tell mum, hey, mum, they've got to do some DNA
testing and she was like, what's that?
Speaker 5 (23:46):
And the reason I ask you that question is because
I had a similar situation where the new OOC another
OIC came into the mix for my mum's case in
two thousand and nine, so he's in charge of the
case or she, depending on who it is. He had
asked me, he'd noted that I had no DNA testing,
(24:07):
and again I was like, oh gosh, yeah, okay, that
should be a thing, but not being a police officer
and not thinking from a forensic point of view, that's
something that you should be doing. So everyone should just
keep that in mind. But they made me drive to
Byron Bay, so I had to drag all three of
my kids who were under ten, to go and do
this DNA test and I went into the police station,
(24:29):
they shoved a swab in my mouth. And so fast
forward to when things start to heat up. We started
the podcast. There's podcasts coming out about missing persons. The
Teacher's pet had been massive with Lynette Dawson's case, and
things were starting to take a turn. I personally could
see that there was a change in the weather pushing forward.
(24:52):
The New South Wales Police missing persons units set up
tents around, particularly northern New South Wales where there are
a lot of missing persons. You probably all know about
that because it's been quite a lot of chat about
that recently. I found out because I started asking questions
to missing persons and I said, oh, I'm just confirming
(25:13):
that my DNA is actually on the national DNA program
or list, and they said, oh, I'm just gonna have
to check for you and come back on that. They
did not come back to me. She came back a
little bit later with me chasing, going, actually, you are
on one but not on the other. And I'm like,
hang on a minute. So I had to go and
do my research. What do you mean like I gave
(25:36):
my DNA, isn't it as simple as giving a DNA TESTTA?
And I might add too, I had just been to
the AFP launch for the DNA National DNA program, right,
and I did it on camera for the cameras I
put did a DNA test as well. I found out
that the voluntary sample that I did with Byron Bay
Police in twenty ten, they cannot upload it to the
(25:58):
national database. Why because I have to give my authorization
in writing for them to do it. So it's sitting
somewhere in the New South Wales whatever you want to
call it, a database of some sort, but it's not
on the national program. And this really bothered me, and
it has similar feelings with Desert's case, being that he
bumped his head, he had memory loss, he had really
(26:20):
bad headaches, he was vomiting, he wasn't eating, he had
all of these symptoms of someone who potentially could wander off,
pass out, have amnesia, end up in a hospital, and
no one knows who he is because there's no DNA
on the register. Right, So this had a big problem
for me. So that's why I asked what kind of
DNA testing it was. It's a pretty big deal, Like
(26:42):
the DNA thing is a big deal, and it makes
me wonder why a case that happened in nineteen seventy nine,
no one thought to ask for the family's DNA before
these people start to pass away from old age get
DNA taken like you know, so it is important, is
your DNA now. It's a funny thing you ask, because
(27:03):
I actually have asked for that in and no one
will give it to me. We should not have to
go through all of theirs to have our DNA put
on a profile that can go anywhere to solve a
mystery of a missing person.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
If my uncle Dez was found dead or alive, we
wouldn't know. Yeah, he'd be a John Doe and your
mum would be a Jane Doe.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Correct, And that is possible. She could be in a
morg sitting somewhere in a box and no one's tested
her against my DNA. I did give New Softwales police
some ballet slippers of my mum's which she had worn.
They will leather ballet slippers, and they came back they
said to me, oh, we will have to destroy them,
which broke my heart because that was one of the
(27:44):
things I had of my mums because all her stuffs
in storage right, it's all gone missing, and I stupidly
should have kept one. So if I had a tip
for anybody, don't give everything away, keep something because.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
I don't need both feet.
Speaker 5 (27:58):
I don't need both. But they didn't get anything. They said,
we've got no DNA from that.
Speaker 6 (28:01):
I must have destroyed them.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
How possible? Yeah, so of them both. Silly mistake. But
I'm learning and want to I want to help teach
people from my mistakes and my errors as we move
through this journey. I want to come back to the
(28:27):
sock for a minute. So let's talk about this gentleman
has come back and he's given you information or given
police information that he saw Dez on the day that
he went missing, but he was further down the road
from where he went missing. He then drives back past
(28:51):
that location ten years later and had a moment where
he remembered that he'd seen this man. He potentially might
have seen something in the news about Deaz that he
was missing, like, we don't know that. But he stopped,
and he stopped, he had to walk around, and he
says he found a sock. Now that sock he described
as being black and white. The first thing that came
(29:13):
to my head was have we researched did Mainz Roads
because he was working for Mains Roads and they were
on a camp together right at Thangu station. Did they
have did they supply things like socks?
Speaker 6 (29:25):
So really interestingly around main Roads is obviously I went
digging into his records at main Roads.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
And very very slim, scant on details.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
Scant on details. I mean, it's ninety seventy nine. I'm
pretty positive now there would be a lot of detail around,
you know, any incident that were to happen. Sure main
Roads already were these days. My family was pretty sure
that it was a type of sock demarcles would wear.
Speaker 5 (29:51):
Have we got I remember listening to the Western Australian
missing person's officer who said that he had given her
or given them a map which was on his file
as well of a location. Is there any way that
you guys can dig into that a bit more and
ask for where is the sock? Has it been tested
(30:12):
for DNA? And where is the map?
Speaker 6 (30:15):
We did ask that question around the sock the sock.
From what I understand, they didn't feel that he was
a reliable witness, given that he just happened to drive
past the same place ten years later and stop in
the area that he thought he saw my uncle.
Speaker 5 (30:33):
But you know, like if you've got no leads on
this and he's a missing person, you do everything. You
don't make assumptions and go, oh, he might be an
unreliable witness. You don't know that.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
But I find that in a lot of cases, and
that needs to change one hundred percent. Like everything is
suspicious until it's proven.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Otherwise, started suspicious and work backwards. If you find out
it's not the case, well good, that's you can tick.
Speaker 6 (30:58):
That box off himself, right like any police detective you
speak to, whether he's sold will say anything we find
we deem as suspicious until proven otherwise.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
I have a bone with that, because that doesn't always happen.
Like you know, sometimes I'll go searching for ten days
and goo, we're not treating this suspicious, I'm like, And
then three months later, oh, we're actually treating a suspicious now,
and they've already lost a lot of information, which is
a problem. And so today Deres has sadly been missing
for sixteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty three days.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
That is, let me tell you what's happened in the
sixteen thousand days. My grandpa, my grandma died. DES's middle
sister died, his youngest sister died. All of those sisters
have had children, their cousins have had children. And then
in twenty eighteen, his nephew releases a podcast, and we're
(31:59):
in twenty twenty five. It's still no answer.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
How did you feel when your son decided he was
going to go to a similar kind of location as
a young person, How did that affect you as a
dad knowing and living with the fact that your uncle
went there and he disappeared, Like, I.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
Actually haven't thought of that until you've just asked me.
And it's actually bigger than just my son. It's about
my daughters too.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
He did, he go?
Speaker 6 (32:27):
He did? Ye. Yeah, he only spent a little bit
of time up there because he hated it. But it
was a very different time. But it does change the
way you act. I reckon because now you've said it,
I go, I'm really protective of my daughters. I'm really
protective with my son. But he's a he's a twenty
(32:49):
five year old bloke now.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
So yeah, he's being Oh, your son, though he'll always
be your son and you'll always still be protective.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
But yeah, I'm a My wife is probably less worried
about my daughters, you know, doing something, whereas I'm like,
but no, no, I'll be around. And I've actually not
thought about it until you just said that.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
It's an interesting thought, Jay, because I live that as well.
I look at Chris, and I so Chris. Those few
don't know with my husband, we've been together for thirty years.
And for example, my middle daughter, she's twenty, she's gorgeous,
she's blonde and beautiful and all the rest of it.
She goes out for a night, her phone starting to
(33:33):
lose battery. I can see her on Life three sixty,
because that's the rules. If you go out and you're
by yourself with your friends, if you get separated from
them or something, I will come and pick you up.
I never ever think that I will never come and
get you. I will always pick you up. And I'm
very chill. I go to bed, I go to sleep,
and I know that I know who she is, and
(33:54):
I know who she's with and good communication, which is
very important. And I think my children completely get that
I need good communication. I wake up at say eleven,
and go home yet and then I start to worry,
and then I don't sleep until I know she's in
a uber with a friend, or I won't pick her up.
(34:15):
And my husband is just soundly lying there, snoring's a
little hard out. And it's not that he doesn't care,
but he doesn't worry like I do. And I have
to pull myself back to times when I was that
age and I didn't have mobile phones, and my mum
didn't know where I was or where I was going.
We didn't sort of have constant contact. And I'm certainly
(34:36):
not a helicopter parent or anything like that. I let
them do what they want to do. And they have
to have their own independence and learn from mistakes and things.
But it's just that whole coming home at nighttime when
you're a young person and you might have had a
few drinks and you know, you just need to be
really with it. So I get it.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
The question, I guess, and I think I know the
answer to it is that the trauma of going something
that has happened to you, with your mom going missing
and with me my uncle going missing, and just not
necessarily that I was super close with my uncle, but
it is how it affected my family.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
Yeah, well, you saw it affect your mom, right.
Speaker 6 (35:15):
I saw it affect my mom. I saw it affect
my auntie's and.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
My grandparents granddads in particular.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
Correct, I mean my mum and my family said for
a long time that my granddad died early because of
a heartache.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
And I totally get that. I totally see how just
the ambiguity of not knowing yeah, can eat you alive
for breakfast. Just anxiety, anxiety, that's all it is. It's
just stress. My heart is very healthy, but I have
really high anxiety and high stress and probably PTSD. To
be honest, what.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
I was doing, dares I was like, this is actually
a family heirloop. Yeah, this has actually got like I
listen when I call my dad. Now he's in my
phone as Mom's phone. So mom and dad have this
one mobile phone to do anything else but answer it.
Pall yeah, And I call that phone a Dad doesn't answer,
(36:10):
it goes to a voicemail, and Mom's voice is on
that voicemail. Oh bless, which is beautiful. But I've also
got two hours of her talking to me, which I
never had. That is really precious. Not for the podcast, yeah,
but just for me.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
I have thought the same too, And I remember asking
Allison actually from Channel seven, how I could get the
podcast about my mum the Lady Vanishes downloaded into some
sort of format so I could keep it forever so
if the server drops or it drops off, like because
for me, that is the story of my family history.
This my children's grandmother who they never met. And then
(36:51):
they're going to have children forward think about life and
AI and all sorts of crazy stuff. My grandchildren and
great grandchildren are going to be asking questions about this,
and you've seen that even through your kids. I don't
know that it doesn't stop when the next ukin dies right,
it keeps going and one missing person affects I know
(37:11):
there's researched on this. I should look at it, but
to get the numbers. But there is like a certain
amount of people I think maybe sixteen direct people missing person.
So you think about that and fifty thousand people going
missing every year. Yes, sure most of those people are
found within a week, but at the current state, like
even since I've been doing Mum's podcast, the lady vanishes
(37:33):
and then the missing matter. The numbers are growing every year.
I think we're up to, you know, twenty nine hundred.
I was trying to find the right number last night
and it was a bit difficult, but I've been told
different numbers from different people. But it's a high number.
We're nearly up to three thousand long term missing people
in Australia and that's that's crazy.
Speaker 6 (37:53):
And then when you extrapolate that out over if the
numbers sixteen signs that into generationally, you know, this is
daughters pacity onto their daughters and sons on to Now
how it affects my daughters now as sixteen going on
seventeen year old daughters might not show up for another
(38:15):
ten or fifty years, but give it time.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
But give a time when they're having babies or when
they're getting married and go, oh.
Speaker 6 (38:20):
Someone wants to go away, or a sub wants to
go work up north on the roads.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
And it's different. I think it's different when you when
someone dies, like my brother died right so in tragic circumstances.
He took his own life. We cremated him and we
scattered his ashes, and I know where he is and
I can think about him, and you know, there's little
things that come up, like owls. Every time I see
an owl, I think of him, because we talked about
(38:47):
that as a as a funny thing is when we
were kids, he was always going to come back as
an owl. And then you know, during the inquest, I've
got an owl in the back points here. I was
sitting in the tree, like what is going on? And
then he's sitting out the front on the power lines
looking at Chris and I when we're sitting on the deck,
I'm like I sat out there again. And then when
Johnnie and I were traveling all through Europe, every time
we go somewhere there was an hour, whether it be
(39:10):
a soft fluffy toy or a real hour, in the
tree hooting out out of our window. It just stays with.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
You, and I think it does stay with you, and
you don't know how it's going to stay with you
until it appears. Yeah, and then suddenly it appears and
you're like, oh shit, like you've just revealed to me today.
I didn't actually connect my uncle going missing with how
I am with my daughters.
Speaker 5 (39:33):
So one other thing I wanted to touch on was
the story of a missing person who was actually found.
It's Corey O'Connell. Now. His sister Hailey was leading the
family search with her parents for Corey and he actually
went missing near nan Up in Western Australia. He went
(39:55):
missing in June twenty twenty one, but they found him
in May twenty twenty three. And how they found him
would she be alive sadly deceased? So how they found him?
There was a drone a gentleman called Dan Wood. I
don't know if Dan lives in Western Australia, but just
(40:16):
got me thinking, right. He was doing drone shots of
mapping out areas and he sent them to Haley and
the family to do assessment on it. Now, I remember
seeing an interview with Haley and She was talking about
how they'd gone through a lot of drone photos and
because of where that is, and we're talking, you know,
semi desert, kind of vibes very desolate, not a lot
(40:39):
of greenery, red dirt, so forth, etc. They were finding
a lot of bones that looked like potentially human bones,
but they turned out to be a kangaroo. But there
was this one that just spiked their interest and Dan
sent it to the family and they sent the police
out and they found him.
Speaker 6 (40:56):
My goodness, you.
Speaker 5 (40:58):
Know, I sadly want to tell you that I don't
know if you might not be aware of this, but
when I checked the National Missing Person's Register last night,
des is actually not on there.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
I didn't know that. I is that because he was
because an inquestor's found him that he's deceased.
Speaker 5 (41:24):
Well, the inquest found my mum is deceased, but my
mum is still on there. Right.
Speaker 6 (41:29):
I had no idea, and I don't know the process
of getting someone on that.
Speaker 5 (41:33):
Register, but I can help you with that.
Speaker 6 (41:36):
That is a government register, right AFP.
Speaker 5 (41:39):
So we need to write to the AFP, and we
need to say my person is missing still yep, we
would like to have him put on the National Missing
Person's Register because if he's not on that register, Jay
and they find bones in Queensland, if someone's finding that
in Queensland. And this is something I struggled with with
(42:01):
my mum's case, was that if she's on the New
South Wales Missing Person's Register but she's found with amnesia
in WA in a hospital, they are not connecting the dots.
So it's they're not connecting WA with New South Wales.
It has to be on a national register and that
goes for the DNA and for the National Missing Person's Register.
(42:21):
They need to all be connected otherwise they don't.
Speaker 6 (42:25):
Communicate Desmond Francis car Big Punt. You searched his full name,
I just.
Speaker 5 (42:30):
I did des and I did Desmond. So do you
want to have a look on your phone now while
we're sitting here, put his full name in and see
see what comes up. Because for my mum, she comes
up as Marion Barter aka Flora Bella Natalia Marian Ramkel,
which is difficult in itself, but it took me years
(42:52):
to have her put on there, and it was only
after doing the podcast that they actually put her on
the National Missing Person's Register for the very first time.
Speaker 6 (42:59):
I've just put it in Desmond car des Car or
Desmond Francis Car. No search found.
Speaker 5 (43:08):
All right, So I'm sorry. I tend to do this
and then I get into trouble for causing people trauma.
Speaker 6 (43:17):
And this is the point.
Speaker 5 (43:19):
But I just wanted to do some due diligence and
go he's on the register, right, he's got a reward, right,
And I went, oh my god, I can't find any
of those things.
Speaker 6 (43:27):
This is the point with missing persons, and this is
why I think there's a community of missing persons, of
people who suffer from long term missing persons that antiguous loss.
There is a community. I've spoken to a bunch of them,
you know, most of the people I've spoken to. There's
(43:48):
not like a playbook. There's not like a what to
do if your person goes missing?
Speaker 5 (43:53):
That's right, there's no there's no instructions. You're doing it
on your own. You're fumbling your way through. And I'm
sure you would agree with me. It's fumbling because you
don't know what you're doing. And you go, oh, I
shouldn't have given them the two ballet slippers. I should
have given them one, or I should have pushed for
my DNA to be that DNA, not this DNA. You know,
(44:13):
how do you know that you are literally at the
hands and the mercy of the police.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
Really, I sent an email. I won't say who too,
because I think it's disrespectful, but I sent it to
someone quite high up in the court system in Western Australia.
I had their email address, but I didn't address them right, okay,
And I got their assistant came back to me and said,
(44:38):
you can't address that person like that, right, You must
address them like this, right. So I addressed them like
that on the way back and just said, sorry, my
uncle's been missing for forty years, my mum's just passed away. Yeah,
excuse my excuse my lack of understanding on how to
address this person, but could I have an answer to
(44:59):
my question please? That should just shows a lack of
empathy when it comes to dealing with people, yeah, who
are suffering long term, ambiguous loss at whatever level.
Speaker 5 (45:12):
And just think about that for one second. You're sending
an email about a missing person and they come back with, hey,
you didn't say the words correctly.
Speaker 6 (45:21):
Correct.
Speaker 5 (45:22):
I had same with me going into the New South
Wales Police station, They argued at the inquest that I
didn't say my mum was missing, so it was my
fault that they didn't do more at the time I
walked into the police station. That's essentially what they said.
You're losing the point here. My mum is missing still today,
twenty eight years down the track. So we you and
(45:44):
I are in a very unique space in life. We're
about the same age, and we are both dealing with
very long term missing, like decades long missing people. I'm
glad we've come together to do this because I think
even though we're chatting a lot about other things in
the missing person's space, the key element here is that
des is missing as matters. So I want you to
(46:06):
finish for me. Listen to me, goo, I want you
to tell me why does dares matter?
Speaker 6 (46:16):
There's matters? There's matters now? Oh jeez, I think I'd
get emotional. Does matters now more than ever? Because my
mom matters? And and she passed sadly last year, but
(46:45):
she passed not knowing what happened to her brother, and
that would just yeah, I can't imagine how that would you.
(47:06):
I just can't imagine it. Yeah, And so that's why
for me does matters. He matters because of the heartache
that my mum suffered for the rest of her life
not knowing where a big brother went.
Speaker 5 (47:29):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that with us, because I
think you know it is hard and your mum, you know,
recently passed away. Really you know, she's not long left you,
and you have seen through her eyes the heartache and
the stress and the ambiguity that she's lived with. And
(47:52):
you've lived with as well, because you've witnessed it as
a person in that family who care and want to
help in any way you possibly can. So thank you
for sharing the story of Days with us. And he
does matter to us.
Speaker 6 (48:08):
I think one of the interesting things that we could
do in this podcast would be almost use it as
a tool for everyone if they know information. Obviously, Daz
is our first story, but there are stories every week,
so maybe there's a way that Deaes matters. So if
(48:28):
you've got information about Days, you're going to hear this story.
You might not have listened to the disappearance of Das
and you don't need to if you don't want to,
but just by hearing the story, you might go, oh,
I lived in that area that actually happened to me.
That actually happened. As part of the podcast, a woman
reached out just out of the blue and said, Hey,
she reached out on Instagram. Hey, my dad's been telling
(48:51):
me for the last thirty years about this bloke that
went missing up here, and we always just thought dad
was telling a story. But he reckons he saw dead
a week after he went missing at the rodeo, right,
(49:11):
And I was like, nah, obviously this is just an
old bloke's memory. Yeah, so I called guy no word
of a lie. It's in the podcast he talks about
that he saw him, He spoke to him. It was
with his daughter at the time, but Dez was drunk,
so he didn't want to go over to him because
(49:31):
he looked pretty happy. But he was with to what
he called to foreign looking backpackers, right, And he said,
my uncle Dez left with those two backpackers. Now, we
chased that story to the end of where we could
get it. No record of it in police it was
(49:56):
it formed part of the current's decision. We obviously gave
her that information at the time. It's a story of
someone who went on record to say that's what he saw. Yeah,
we reached out to the rodeo people up there and
say do you have ticketing information? Was there a rodeo
at that week? We found that there definitely was a
rodeo the week after.
Speaker 5 (50:19):
And there are all little pieces of the puzzle piece.
That's the stuff that you put together and that becomes
our lives. Right.
Speaker 6 (50:24):
Is there a way for people to make contact with
us they're listening to this podcast, not about Dez, maybe
about Dez, maybe about your mum.
Speaker 5 (50:33):
For those that don't know, we do have a website
set up called the Missing Matter the Missingmatter dot com
so www dot the Missingmatter dot com, or we have
a contact page, so you can't actually contact us. So
I would probably suggest that anybody who has any information
about any of these cases that we're going to profile
on the Missing Matter, first point a call. I would
(50:55):
say to ring crime Stoppers and reference the person's name
in full and the number four crime Stoppers is one
eight hundred and three to three three zero zero zero.
But you can also send us an email through the
contact page on the Missing Matter website and I will
pass those messages on to the families who we talk to.
Speaker 6 (51:19):
Next week on the Missing Matter.
Speaker 9 (51:22):
Almost Deliban years are for his father vanished without a trace.
A Tasmanian man remains hopeful he may one day find
out what happened to him.
Speaker 6 (51:30):
Yeah, like, it was horrible.
Speaker 10 (51:34):
It was absolutely horrible. The last known confirmed sighting is
just out of Sheffield by a local mechanic who knew dad.
Speaker 9 (51:45):
The family of Nicholas Slice has once again called for
help from the community in the hopes of closure.
Speaker 10 (51:51):
Getting hold of that information hasn't been easy. They'd like
to charge me per page further documents. In the first
couple of days of that going missing, we were paying
fifteen hundred dollars an hour for helicopters. Was a big undertaking,
a big expense.
Speaker 6 (52:13):
It's been a difficult decade for Jason Sales, who's never
given up searching for answers.
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