May 25, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode, Sally and the team join Search Dogs Sydney at two different locations in New South Wales, following up on leads that have emerged over the past few years. You can help Search Dogs Sydney continue their incredible work for people like Sally—who are living with the pain of ambiguous loss—by visiting https://searchdogssydney.org/ and making a donation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Appogie Production. Welcome back everyone. I'm sitting here with Joanie
here in Brisbane. Hello yet again, I'm back episode three
and we just getting now Mojo, aren't we? Joy Like?
This is not natural about this episode by telling you
all about a story and share with you why words
(00:30):
are important and what your words say can impact somebody else.
I've had a lot of this happened to me through
the journey. My brother took his own life, and you know,
I think the catalyst for him doing that was the
police telling us that they'd located my mother and she
didn't want anything to do with us, essentially, and that
(00:52):
was proven at the inquest to be incorrect. No one
actually has ever sighted my mum or spoken to her
identified her. So not so long after Mum went missing,
a friend of mine engage with a psychic who had
done a very accurate reading for her sister in law.
Her parents had been in a car accident in New Zealand,
(01:13):
and this psychic was able to tell her exactly what
happened and sadly her dad passed away in that accident.
And my friend was telling me about this and how
accurate this woman was, and I said, do you think
that she would help me do a reading, or we're desperate.
At this point, I'm like, I don't know what's happened.
(01:33):
I feel. It was around two thousand and four, so
mom had been missing for about seven years. Anyway, she
went and asked her if she would talk to me,
and she said, look, I don't do it. It's not
what I do. It's just something that I have in me.
But I'm happy to write her a letter about what
I feel and what I see. And so she wrote
to me a letter and she told me that my
(01:56):
mum was alive and living in Mare. Now. Mare is
situated about six hours northwest of Byron Bay, New South Wales,
so I knew about the Byron Bay connection at that point.
So I was like, okay, we're talking in the same versifity.
We're not talking Western Australia or Tasmania. We're all in
that same pocket, which seems to be the case with
(02:19):
my mum's situation. So she wrote that my mom's house
was situated on the low side of the road, just
outside town and there's a dip in the road. She
wrote that my mum would sit and drink cups of
tea whilst watching the mist roll over the fields. One
of my mom's favorite movies was Wuthering Heights. And if
(02:40):
my brother I'm not pretty Cliff so low, I shouldn't
have thought of it. It would agree to me to
marry Heathcliffe now. So I imagine my mom's sitting there,
drinking her cups of tea as she did, and a
pretty little teacup waiting for her Heathcliff. The lady warned
(03:02):
me in the letter not to try and look for
her and said it would be detrimental to my children.
That's very hard to hear, and I was more confused
than comforted and told the police what she had told me.
That's when the nightmare started. A reoccurring dream I had
(03:22):
on repeat for years where Chris and I drove to Maurie.
We found a house just outside of town where there
was a dip in the road and it had a big,
long concrete footpath that went up to the front door.
And in the dream, I have Darcy on my hip
as a baby, and I'm holding Ella's hand, who is three.
(03:46):
Chris is waiting in the car. He's got the window down.
As I'm walking up to the door, I knock on
the door and my mum opens the door and she
closes the door in my face, doesn't say anything, and
I turn around and I walk back up to Cree
and she opens the door and she shoots me into
(04:07):
that while I'm holding my children. So to me, that
was the detriment for me finding my mum, detriment to
my children, and that haunted me for years. I could
not get that dream out of my head. I even
rang more a police and said, this is what I've
(04:30):
been told, and he goes, oh, well, there is a
dip in the road outside of town, so I've never
driven there. I cannot bring myself to do that, probably
because I'm dramatized by the dream that im on to repeat.
But these are problems that you have, and this is
sort of part of your subconscious self trying to process
(04:52):
and work out what does that mean exactly and what
are you supposed to do with that information. So while
I appreciate people trying to help and give you the information,
that whole looking for her and having consequence was really
hard for me. Like that was a very hard thing
for me because I took it pretty literally, like, you know,
something might happen if I go digging and I'll tell
(05:15):
you even not so long ago, I was worried about
walking out of my front of my house. Yes, and
you know that because I was panicking at some page.
So I don't know what could happen here, like I'm
poking the bear and it's left for me. And when
I mentioned it to the detective on the case, she
turned around and said to me, oh, well, don't worry,
(05:35):
we've got people here. And I went, not close and
not out the front of my house. You don't. So
there were times when I have been quite worried about myself.
And I'm sure there are other people in my same circumstances,
because let's face it, if someone's gone missing and there's
no answer, there's usually probably something that's gone wrong, and
(05:58):
you know who knows, Like I won't name them, but
there's plenty of cases that I know that are happening
even right now, where you might not want to poke
the bear. I have a fear. I don't know. I
kept thinking that someone might just shoot me, Like I
will just walk down my stairs and someone will shoot
me to shut me up. And that's pretty horrifying, to
(06:20):
be honest, And I'm scared even telling you that, because
I don't really want to put that into the universe.
At the end of the day, I'm the daughter trying
to find my mum. I'm not trying to bring problems
to other people or cause issues for others. But if
someone's done something wrong, who's fighting for mom, who's fighting
for her? She has no voice, She's not here to
(06:41):
tell us what happened. And unfortunately that means I have
to suck it up and be brave and actually go
and do the things that terrify me. That includes doing podcasts,
you know, and talking about it openly and honestly, and
having everyone judge and jury what's happened and how why
I'm here and what I'm doing, so I'll never forget.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
When I listened to one of the episodes of The
Lady Vanishes and I heard Finnan Ramichal, who was the
real Ramichal, not the one in Australia that took his identity.
So I'm sitting there, I'm listening to this episode and
I'm hearing this man with a very thick Luxembourgish accent,
(07:22):
French accent, German accent saying.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Give me Sally Leiden, give me Sally Leiden's address. Where
does Sally Leiden live, Give me the name of details
of give me her phone number.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Give me her address. On repeat, he kept on repeating
that constantly.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I want to contact Shellie Leighton. Give me the address
of Shellie Leiden, address and email and all you have
and telephone number.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
So even way back then, I felt that that was
again a bit of a moment.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I found that quite confronting, and I did Allison had
rung him and didn't know that that was happening. So
when everyone else is listening to it for the first time,
I was listening to it for the first time as well.
So at the Sydney show, Chris and Adele from Search
Shog Sydney came along. They're in the uniform and so
people knew who they were, and I think at that
(08:23):
point they also met a lovely lady named Mindy and
she's now working on the Deer Rechelle podcast. So there's
lots of connectors through this space when people come together
and help each other. And I was talking to them
about a situation where a phone call had been made
to crime stoppers very very early on, and this is
(08:44):
way before any media or anybody really knew about my
mum's case and a guy had rung. What he actually
says in the report is that a woman by the
name of Marion who went missing from northern New South
Wales is buried near the bike track on Niagara Street
in Armadale. And when I read the report that was
(09:05):
in the brief of evidence, I was quite disturbed by
the fact that the first initial officers from Armidale didn't
do a search. They just went and did a door
knock on an address which was noted which will keep confidential,
and they spoke to a gentleman who had been named
(09:25):
as the person and an interesting name. It's sort of
like an abbreviation if I can sort of use not
the real name that we've got because I want to
keep that identity private for the person. But let's say
Daniel and someone calling him Danny, right, so that kind
of scenario. Anyway, they went to the house and spoke
to this man. He's like, well, he has a home
(09:48):
line that has restrictions on it so he can't ring out,
but he can only receive calls, so it couldn't have
possibly been him who made the one eight hundred call
to crime Stoppers and they sort of just took that
and went Okay, then no problem, and I think the
notation says, oh, well, there was nothing really to follow
up on, so no further action required at that point.
(10:09):
And they linked it to my mum because my mum's
name was Marian and she was no one to be
missing from northern New South Wales. But that was about
the end of it. And then when Gary Sheen took over,
he actually did another pull up of that and said
to me, I've found this in the file. I've asked
my commander if I can go out and do a
search with a Cadava dog. And this is where it
(10:33):
gets a bit messy, because he told me that he
went out for a day and it rained and they
found nothing. And then when Channel seven interviewed him, he
said they'd gone out for two days and had ses
helping them, and then in another report says it was
out for three days. So I'm like, okay, well, was
it one day, two days or three days that you
(10:54):
went searching? It was very unclear to me, and so
I think that was probably the drive for me to go.
If my mum's body is there, I want to go
and investigate it myself. So that sort of probed me
into the idea of if I could make that happen,
that would be amazing. And when I was talking to
Chris and Adell about it, they were doing a search
(11:15):
for another woman in Queensland because they're based in Sydney,
and being that this was in Armadale, they were suggesting
that maybe they could stop on the way home on
their way back and we could do a dog search there.
So that's how that whole thing sort of started. And
I asked Journey again if you would come with me,
and she said yes, of course. So you know, that
(11:37):
was something that we were doing in the background. Nobody knew, who,
had no media following us. We just did it in
our own time, and I was trying to process it,
and Chris Darcy actually turned around and said to me,
he goes, family don't usually do this. Now. This is
not normal that you are here looking for your mother's body.
This is not normal, And I said, well, I don't
think I'm a normal person, but especially when it comes
(11:58):
to this. But I just for myself, I needed to
do it to know that I can put it to
rest and know we've done the job properly. Well, I
just racked up at my local shopping center where there's
a kmart. I'm going to go in and see if
I can purchase a high viz vest for me and
one for Chris. As tomorrow morning at four am, will
(12:19):
be making our way down to Armadale to do a
search with search dog Sydney, and Joanie is joining us
as well, so she's just about to jump on a
flight heading up to Newcastle where she'll stay the night,
and then she's going to drive from Newcastle up to
Armadale and meet us there in the morning. I know
Chris and Adele and the team with their dogs have
(12:41):
been out there already today and pop the drone up
to get lots of images and map out where we're
going to be searching tomorrow and the next day. Mix
of emotions as I start this next part of the
journey to find my mum and see if that crime
stop is call that came in to the Armadale area
(13:05):
in two thousand and eight has any legs and so
began a crazy journey. So for me and Chris, it's
about a six hour drive and we were trying to
aim to be in Armadale by about ten o'clock being realistic,
so I think we were up very early, around quarter
to four in the morning. Chris is just filling up
the car withst and petrol as we make our way
(13:27):
down to Armadale. I can tell by the bags onto
my eyes. I have not slept at all last night,
and I woke up at about twenty past three. I
had a really bad vertigo and I was very wobbly.
Had to hold on it's everything while I went to
the bathroom. I'm feeling quite nauseous right now, actually don't
(13:51):
feel very well. I'm not sure I feel like driving
for the next six hours. But anyway, we'll see how
we go and try and have a sleep here. Hopefully
the nausea goes away. So we just stopped to go
to the bathroom. When I got into the bathroom, there
was a young girl in the toilet who had just
come out. There was another lady who was bending over
(14:11):
the toilet when I walked in there. Anyway, I've gone
in closed to my cubicle door and I've tried to
push the toilet rob containing back up into the wall
and it made quite a loud bang, and this woman
started having a go at This young girl and started
saying I've got a I've got a gun. I've got
a gun that's in the car. The police think I'm
(14:34):
going to shoot somebody. My heart does not need this
sort of thing in the middle the morning as I'm
on my way to Armadale. That was a moment in itself.
I've thought I was going to have a heart attack,
but anyway, I survived once again. And you know, we
saw the sunrise come up and we were just on
a mission to find mum. And I don't know, it
(14:57):
was a weird feeling as I approached it, but I
sort of just seemed to remove myself from the reality
of what I'm actually doing and just put my cap
on and go on a search mission. I'm not the daughter.
I'm just on a search mission to find the answers.
And we were a little bit late. It took us
a bit longer to get there than we thought.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So meanwhile, I'm flying from Victoria up to Newcastle and
then I'm staying overnight and then hiring a car to
get from Newcastle to Armadale. Well, here I am at
the airport, ready to jump on the long term parking
bus and.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Head in to fly to Newcastle once I forward was
closed while phones must be switched off the flight road
and laptops stored away inside the bags take off the landing.
We can assist you with anything. Don't hesitate to her.
Let's get a quiet of us.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Wanted a lot of minutes and should be touching the
ten and.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
So traveling through all of I think it was a
three and a half hour drive, I think, so that
was organized very quickly.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
So that was, yeah, basically a flight, a flight.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
For me and overnight stay and then traveling up just
because we wanted to be together to do it.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And so Joni, you know, coming and helping me every
time is you know, more flights, more car higher and
for us as well, like we have the expense of
driving there, and yeah, Jodah, we've got a big room
this time, and n bumped in with Chris and I
didn't sleep in the same bed, you know, I'm share
her home room. But doing it together and then taking
(16:30):
people out for dinners and saying thank you for being
so grateful for their efforts, because people are doing it
all based on their donations as well, you know, that's
how they run their business is on donations. Something I've
always asked you this, but you should tell people like
why are you doing this? Why are you helping?
Speaker 5 (16:50):
Why?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Why?
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Why?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Why?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Well, basically, I'm just an extremely determined person who does
things until the end. That is all I can honestly say.
So when my mother in law came to me, her
grandmother went missing, as you know, so we spent fifteen
years of our lives getting from point A to point
(17:14):
Z where we did locate her. So finding her and
getting to the end of it is that's just what
I'm like.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I'm like a dog with a bone.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I don't leave things until they're actually wrapped up or
and we've spoken about this many times, if you need
to wrap this up, or if you need to do
other things and then come back to it. So I
guess that is my motivation, as you know, like I
enjoy gathering facts information together. I love going through things,
(17:47):
and I love pulling everything in and working it out simple.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I think I remember you saying to me once, because
I've asked you this quite a few times, and you
said to me that most bizarre thing ever, you kind
of felt a bit responsible because you found the ad
in the period. That is true.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So basically, and this is why people query me often,
you know, what are you doing this for? So basically
I was a podcast listener. I was listening around, I
was listening to everything. I enjoyed it. It was like
my hobby, like a lot of other people are. But
when I was sitting there that night having a little
(18:26):
search around in all my little databases and that that
I had learned how to do because of searching for
Chris's great grandmother, that ad popped up, and I knew
at that point in time my life was just going
to change.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I knew it straightaway. That was the golden ticket. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
So basically I thought to myself at that point, Okay,
your podcast, if there was no actual outcome as such,
like there was no way forward, your episodes would have
been done in however many you did.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, well, we were saying there was probably seven episodes. Yeah,
so unless we find something and we found it, yeah,
and then you found it.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So therefore I feel as though, Okay, I've basically thrown
this big bomb into your life. So therefore I feel
as though I need to as much as possible actually
see this through to the end.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
That's why I'm still here. And I think from my
point of view too, Like you've given so much to
me and the case that I feel like I wanted
to bring you on this journey with me to see
it through, because in my world, it would be pretty
horrible to sit there and go, well, you've done all
of this, you've found all of these things for you
(19:40):
later I'm out. So for me, I know that finding
an answer and getting to the end as best we
can is really important for you too. You know, we've
been friends for six years now, so yeah, you know,
we've learnt a lot about each other and I know
who you are as a person and I'm really grateful
to be able to do that. Your husband, who's super supportive,
you know, and who is a bit like my Chris Prier.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And look, it's not something that I ever visage like
I know at times we'll talk on the phone. I mean,
we're two states away from each other, and it is
quite bizarre, like when you actually think about it, a
lot of my friends have focused in my local area.
I'm in a rural area. But for some reason we've
just come together and we're on a mission. So it's
(20:24):
no more complicated than that.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Really.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, well, I'm very grateful that you're here still. Well,
I mean if we talk a little bit about what
happened in the dog search. Right when we arrived, Jonie
and Adele were already doing a scale of one area
and Chris Darcy greeted myself and my Chris and we
(20:48):
spent the day in Armadale.
Speaker 6 (20:51):
We finally made it. Are you going, jeez, Louise, counce.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
The dogs there?
Speaker 7 (21:02):
The dogs are just coming around the bend.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Okay, so is this the actual bike track here?
Speaker 4 (21:11):
That's why have the bike tracks?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Okay, the second five.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
Track before searching.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I wonder where exactly they noted about the entire area
with the drone yesterdays giving the dog's nose and sped
to do their job very good. You know, we had
(21:39):
a lot of people onlookers walking up and down the
street looking at us as what are you guys doing?
Why are you here? And we were getting a bit panicky,
like especially when the drones went up, because Chris had
actually got approval from the airstrip to put the drones
up so that they could do mapping. So they actually
put the drones up and map out a whole area.
(22:00):
And then the dogs actually have these little GPS collars
and they're different colors for each dog, and then they
can see exactly where the other dogs have walked. So
it's quite a phenomenal system that they've got going on,
(22:21):
and you know, it just made me feel better being there.
I've always wanted to go there and see it, but
I didn't want to do it by myself. So it's
very interesting with the cadaver dogs because they're obviously smelling
a scent, they're following their noses. Where at the Training
Academy of Search Dogs, a volunteer organization that teaches dogs
(22:43):
and handlers to find missing people.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
We've been called into quite a few missing person searches,
both live and deceased. However, most of our work at
the moment is for human remains detection of the long
term missing.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
We were walking along their joney and on the other
side of the bridge, Chris and Rufus heading to the
other side of the bridge because remembering too, it's difficult
to work out when someone says the left, but you
can see here too, like it's quite denseer. There's obviously
(23:16):
being water that's come over the bridge, and I'm guessing
these I think it's got the measurement here for when
it floods.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
And they've actually got like a closed.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Gate on either side of this causeway here, so obviously
does flood. So when you look at that street, there's
actually one of those flood zone poles. Yeah, so the
instant I looked at that and I thought, that's a
flood zone like that floods. If they've got that sign there,
that's telling us that this is an area that definitely floods.
(23:51):
And I was walking and I stood and looked over
and just had a moment by myself in that space
and looked at the reeds below me, and I could
see the water and the reeds were all bent over,
and in my heart, I was like, if her body
was here, it's probably been washed away. If they've dumped
dead body in the water, it's potentially been washed away,
(24:13):
And how will we ever find her if that's the case.
So I sort of had this moment once again. You know,
we letterbox drive dropping. I've got Sonya's cards that she
made Eko, you know who spent all this money making
these beautiful glossy, double sided hard cardboard brochure. I just
went and put them in all the mailboxes, thinking if
(24:33):
someone saw anything it would be helpful to know. We've
got like a little blurb on the back, and there's
a QR code on here as well, so people can
actually scan that and find out what's happening. And I'm
just getting easy in people's mailboxes just to bring some
awareness to the local community that my mummy is a
(24:55):
missing person. We are getting a lot of attension, so
a little weird feeling, but hopefully, you never know, people
might actually start talking a little bit. It's not a
very a huge town, so these guys don't look like
they get much because there's cobwebs, they're mailbox you know.
(25:20):
One of the things I really wanted to do, which
sort of stems back to that dream that I kept having,
was something I've thought about for a long time because
I had another cleavoyant tell me, actually too Clevelance tell
me them they could see my mum was buried under floorboards,
and so the drama of that in itself is quite
hard to fathom with because you think that she's been
(25:41):
murdered and someone's done something to her, right, and that
was very early on, when I'm still trying to grapple
with the police telling me she's alive and well and
doesn't want anything to do with me, and just me
knowing something was not right. Later in that day, we
made the brave decision to walk up to the house
(26:02):
that we knew to be the point of.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Entry stiff you like, So just where the alleged crime
Stoppers caller came from was the house that we actually visited.
We'd spied it a few times during the day, hadn't
we Like, we were kind of as we're doing a
little bit stopping, we're kind of looking around. We've done
as much work as we can on who's currently living
there now to sort of know what we're going to
(26:25):
be facing.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And once again I was in that position of going,
I don't really want to go and knock on these
people's door if they have no idea of what this
is about or have anything to do with it, and
upset them and make them feel like something's happened and whatnot.
But we didn't enter the premises. The lady was actually
already in the garden.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
Hello, how are you? My name is a girl.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I'm from Searchgog, Sydney. So what we do is we
look for missing people.
Speaker 8 (26:53):
Sally here, her mother went missing back in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, and then Chris goes in and does the search,
and as we're standing at the front, the granddaughter rocks
up and she's like, Hi, what's happening, And so she
sort of negotiates with us and says, oh yeap. Nana
says it's fine. So I'm going to myself, Okay, Well,
this is potentially the house that has been nominated in
the crime stoppers call. And I've always had a vision
(27:18):
of that house in my head. I could actually see
the house. Looked nothing like my vision, I want to say,
but it was really vital. And I asked Chris if
he could take Rufus the dog underneath the house and
just to do a search, just so I could walk
away from that space and go, I know that's been checked.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Now.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
We were just hoping maybe we could just let the
dog come up and have a sniff around and see
if there was any trace of her. There's half a
million dollars up for grabs. If you found her.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
He'll learn a bit.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Thank you for doing that, Ankaya never as you say.
And the lady remembered the police coming and verified for
(28:10):
us that her husband had passed away. The next time,
they came, which is what we knew because what was
in the report. So we had the right family, we
had the right information, but we still are not confident
today that they had the right person ad with somebody else.
And that was a big day. I was exhausted, plus
I had still was not feeling very well, and Adele
(28:32):
actually had to do some work so she didn't come.
But we took Chris out for dinner and we were
sitting there and you had gotten alerk come through. So
for those of you who don't know, Joni has got
this really great thing which I'm sure other people know
but I didn't know about it, which is a Google
trendsearch and you can actually put in code words and
it actually will bring up information for you. And she
(28:55):
alerted me to the fact that a letter had been
sent to the Attorney generally New South Wales from New
South Wales Police an overview of what the coroner had
said at the findings. So when you have a finding
from the coroner, the police have six months to formally
(29:16):
let the Attorney General know what has happened to your
person and they literally take it right up literally the
last minute. I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked to
see that they had removed the words of the coroner
on that document that went to the Attorney General's Office
and lo and behold, it wasn't just mum. It was
(29:37):
multiple cases, wasn't it. So the letters were basically exactly
the same written. That was just almost and it was
just you know, we did a review of the findings
for that year, so the actual words that were removed
from the letters was ongoing investigation, so it was monitoring
and review only. So basically the coroner sends their findings
(30:01):
recommendations to the New South Wales Police and the letters
that are actually sent to the Attorney General removes the
word investigate. We were sitting there eating and we're talking
about it and you were like, oh my god, there's molden. Yeah,
it's not just you. I didn't know that the New
South Wales Police had sent anything to the Attorney General's Office,
and then I was quite concerned because that language is
(30:23):
very different. So the coroner is saying, and she says,
at the end of her findings, I am leaving it
with the New South Wales Homicide Investigation Team for ongoing investigation,
review and update.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
I recommend that the new South Wales Commissioner of Police
calls the investigation into the death of missing person Flora
Bella Natalia at Marian Ramcol formerly known as Marion Barter
to be referred to or to remain within the State
Crime Command Unsolved Homicide Team for ongoing Investigation, review and monitoring.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And then they took out the words ongoing investigation and
then I remember hearing about it. We'll just do an
update in a review. And here's the cracker. Guys, they
don't have to update review for the first five years
after an inquest. They don't have to tell me a thing.
And because the case is open but inactive, unless any
new information becomes available to them, and guess who gets
(31:16):
the new information. We have to give it to them
for them to do something unless it falls in their lap,
they're not looking for it. So it puts us back
in that position where you're back to the families haveting
to go to, the media, haveting to do. You know
what we do. Even my lawyer said to me at
the end of the inquest, he goes, the media might
be your best bet, Sally, and I'm like, I'm tired.
(31:36):
I'm tired of having to go to the media, Like
you know, I'm very grateful for it all, but it's
exhausting and very stressful to have to put your whole
life out in the world and have people you know
trying to help you. That that can be it's as
great as it is, it can be very hard and
and very exhausting as well. Okay, So then the next
(31:57):
morning we tried to get some sleep that night and
we said goodbye to you because you went off on
your merry way down it to new and Chris and
I went with Adele and Chris followed them out to Inverrel.
And the reason we went to Inverrel was because there
had been during the podcast a gentleman had gone into
a police station in Penrith, I believe, and said that
(32:20):
he had coordinates of a location of where my mum's
body was buried, and that happened to be in Inverrel.
And you know, we've got connectors as well, don't We
to Inverrel with people who live in in Verrel who
we know had connections in Byron Bay, and we were
just our brains were just going a million miles an hour.
(32:43):
So what's interesting in this location is that there's a
family connection with a lot of the same family who
are also connected to dog food manufacturing in Byron Bay,
and there's a connection there with the delivery driver for
that dog food company who told everybody he was one
(33:06):
of the owners of the company, but in fact he
was just the driver and he has a connection.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
So he thought that was quite an odd coincidence that
this popetive location is that as such, so at least.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Doesn't look like a standard house. It actually looks like
multiple small dwellings dwellings. The police have been here and
spoken to them and they just had a look around.
They didn't actually do a dog search or probing or
anything like that, and he just said reported back that
it didn't look like there was a grave.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Fare, to which I went, well, that's really good looking.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Thank you. If you're going to take all the gilatic
come out here, I would have thought you would actually
probably do a proper search of the area. In What
year was that that was recent it came out here, Yeah,
like twenty twenty one, so we're looking at it's twenty
two years.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Unfortunately, Clandestin engraves do change considerably in that amount of time, and.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
It would be very difficult to recognize from an untrained
why I always feel like it was the same with
Finan Ramika. When we were driving to his house, I
was saying to the team, you know, it got to
be conscious that these people have forgotten nothing to do
with my mum's disappearance at all when sort of coming
into their space, and so just for knowledge, this is
(34:35):
for location here. Yeah, hello, how are you snucky? How
are you? That's good?
Speaker 8 (34:49):
My name's a Dalom from Search Dog City and we're
currently in the area doing a search for a missing
person and this is Sally and it's actually her mother
that we're searching for.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
She said, no problem, just keep the dogs away from caddle,
that's her main concern. I said, well, the cattle are
actually down the front gate. We'll make sure we're and
he's on the lead. Anyway. She said that the police
had been twice. What didn't That's interesting, which is interesting
because the dates she gave are like a few years ago.
(35:23):
Yep was the last time, and they came a few
years before that, So that's very interesting. Why were they
coming twice and why were they coming before those coordinates
were handed in before the cause If you couldn't give
dates all right, she wished me well in my search.
(35:46):
So you know, it's nice that people actually.
Speaker 8 (35:50):
Very accommodating the.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
This must be very weird for them, you know, to
go why would there be coordinates on my property like
that is a weird, weird situation.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
So set the noise of the camera taking photos from
the drone.
Speaker 7 (36:12):
Yeah right, it's all right, all right, Well we'll just
gone this snapping and have a look check it all out.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So what I'll do is definition. So meanwhile I'm going south.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
So essentially the wonderful Ballan, a retiree, did a bit
of a map of the family group of the man
in Armadale whose house was supposedly connected to the crime
stoppers call. So I then on my way back down,
did actually meet up with the wife of another family
(37:04):
met with a similar name, just to check as to
whether she'd ever heard anything about this, whether there was
any connection there, etc. And so I did that on
the way down. There was no results, so she had
no idea. There was no connection there. They were separated,
so there was no alliances or anything like that. So
(37:28):
then I just continued my way down, went through Cessnock,
which is where mister Blum lived, and his family members
lived for an extended period of time, so visited there,
had to look at the house, knocked on the door,
attempting to find the neighbor who signed the passport under
his new name. He had passed away, so again we're
(37:49):
just dealing with time. So none of the neighbors around
that surrounding house knew anything about it because they were
knew they had no idea and then just went in
and had to look at the records in the cesnot
library and no joy there.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
So down I went back down to new Castle. You
were by yourself too.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I was by myself, but I guess probably twenty years
social work Cross's intervention. I've never ever been injured. I've
always gotten myself out of sticky situations, so I wasn't
really that concerned.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Driving home, I was a very long day, way longer
than I was sort of anticipating, because we'd gone out
in Virel and then we had to go all the
way back to Brisbane, you know, just to be able
to reflect and be very grateful for the opportunity of
the help that was given to us. And I ticked
those boxes like we checked. There was no sign of
(38:45):
my mum anywhere. And I think it's a very hard
thing to sort of process in the world of the missing,
because how devastating it is to think that you want
to find your missing mother's bones in a lake or
in a creek or in a cow paddock, but you
desperately want to find them so that you can have
(39:06):
peace and you can know that you've done everything you
possibly can. And I think I've just said that for
so long, like I'm only doing this so my kids
don't have to you know, I'll do the best I
absolutely can to get the answers. But you know, it's
a bit of a box ticking exercise at this point too,
where we're just going, right, we didn't needed to do that. Bang,
(39:26):
let's ticket, let's go. We've done that. Move to the
next thing, and I can put that at rest. I
can go, Okay, we did it, We've done it. I'm satisfied.
I've done it myself. I'm at a point I don't
trust anybody anymore. There are people I do trust, obviously,
company excluded, but I've been let down, I've been disappointed.
(39:47):
I've been promised with no results, and that's very draining
on a human body and a human soul because it
depletes you of your energy, and so it is important
that we go through these processes. And you know, it's
mentally good for my health to do this, and I
think my husband particularly and my eldest daughter, she sees
(40:08):
that is important for me. She's like, right, I know
you have to do this because it's important for you.
So having the support of them is amazing as well.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
I think that because what I've noticed over the time
is that one incident or one situation you might have
heard two or three or four or five or six
different versions of that. So therefore it's sort of taught you. Okay,
if I don't do it myself, then.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I'm never going to really know.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
I don't know how many times we've picked through things over,
especially over the phone, pick through words, pick through sentences
to find out, Okay, is this accurate? Is this actually true?
Was that a typo? How many typos have we come across?
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Too many?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So it's just spelling dais problems, errors, two different versions
of events, and so therefore you sort of think to yourself, Okay,
you I think over this whole period has come to
a point where you're like, like, if I don't see
it myself. If I don't do it myself, if I
don't read it myself or confirm it directly with that person,
(41:13):
then I'm not trusting that. That's why I think you
have to be constantly doing things yourself and seeing things
with your own eyes, which.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
And some people have referred and said, you know, you
try to control the narrative. I'm like, I'm not trying
to control anything, but I'm trying to make sure that
the information is correct, the information is true and fact checked,
because at the end of the day, there's too many
things that haven't been done and I'm left to pick
up the pieces because some people just come in, drop
(41:43):
a bomb and leave and then I'm left to deal
with it. That's right.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
And also what we found too is one wrong move,
so one wrong piece of information and you are going
mentally down a whole nother track, and so it takes
time to actually pull your own self back onto the
truth of the matter. I think there's just so many
different roads that you could go down with this, it's
(42:09):
quite maddening.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah, well, you've got to have fact Everyone talks about
the rabbit holes that we've been down. I mean, there's
plenty of them.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
In the next episode of The Missing Matter Well where
this is a big episode because we're going to tell
you why the why Joanie and I are continuing on
this journey and what have we found that we have
not told you yet.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
So before we go, I just like to give a
shout out to Adele and to Chris Stacy from Search
Dog Sydney. We couldn't have done that search without you, guys,
and I'm really grateful for your energy, your professionalism, your enthusiasm,
and your understanding of what it is to have to
do such a task in looking for a missing loved one.
(42:59):
You guys are second to none in this area, and
I'm really grateful for all your efforts and your kind
and giving me the opportunity to do something that I
really needed to do, so I'm really grateful for that.
We've actually popped the Search Struck Sydney link in our
show notes, so if you'd like to pop along, go
(43:20):
and check out their Facebook page. They do work off
donations as well, so I'm sure any offering would be
very much appreciated in this space. Thanks again, guys,
Appogie Production. Welcome back everyone. I'm sitting here with Joanie
here in Brisbane. Hello yet again, I'm back episode three
and we just getting now Mojo, aren't we? Joy Like?
This is not natural about this episode by telling you
all about a story and share with you why words
(00:30):
are important and what your words say can impact somebody else.
I've had a lot of this happened to me through
the journey. My brother took his own life, and you know,
I think the catalyst for him doing that was the
police telling us that they'd located my mother and she
didn't want anything to do with us, essentially, and that
(00:52):
was proven at the inquest to be incorrect. No one
actually has ever sighted my mum or spoken to her
identified her. So not so long after Mum went missing,
a friend of mine engage with a psychic who had
done a very accurate reading for her sister in law.
Her parents had been in a car accident in New Zealand,
(01:13):
and this psychic was able to tell her exactly what
happened and sadly her dad passed away in that accident.
And my friend was telling me about this and how
accurate this woman was, and I said, do you think
that she would help me do a reading, or we're desperate.
At this point, I'm like, I don't know what's happened.
(01:33):
I feel. It was around two thousand and four, so
mom had been missing for about seven years. Anyway, she
went and asked her if she would talk to me,
and she said, look, I don't do it. It's not
what I do. It's just something that I have in me.
But I'm happy to write her a letter about what
I feel and what I see. And so she wrote
to me a letter and she told me that my
(01:56):
mum was alive and living in Mare. Now. Mare is
situated about six hours northwest of Byron Bay, New South Wales,
so I knew about the Byron Bay connection at that point.
So I was like, okay, we're talking in the same versifity.
We're not talking Western Australia or Tasmania. We're all in
that same pocket, which seems to be the case with
(02:19):
my mum's situation. So she wrote that my mom's house
was situated on the low side of the road, just
outside town and there's a dip in the road. She
wrote that my mum would sit and drink cups of
tea whilst watching the mist roll over the fields. One
of my mom's favorite movies was Wuthering Heights. And if
(02:40):
my brother I'm not pretty Cliff so low, I shouldn't
have thought of it. It would agree to me to
marry Heathcliffe now. So I imagine my mom's sitting there,
drinking her cups of tea as she did, and a
pretty little teacup waiting for her Heathcliff. The lady warned
(03:02):
me in the letter not to try and look for
her and said it would be detrimental to my children.
That's very hard to hear, and I was more confused
than comforted and told the police what she had told me.
That's when the nightmare started. A reoccurring dream I had
(03:22):
on repeat for years where Chris and I drove to Maurie.
We found a house just outside of town where there
was a dip in the road and it had a big,
long concrete footpath that went up to the front door.
And in the dream, I have Darcy on my hip
as a baby, and I'm holding Ella's hand, who is three.
(03:46):
Chris is waiting in the car. He's got the window down.
As I'm walking up to the door, I knock on
the door and my mum opens the door and she
closes the door in my face, doesn't say anything, and
I turn around and I walk back up to Cree
and she opens the door and she shoots me into
(04:07):
that while I'm holding my children. So to me, that
was the detriment for me finding my mum, detriment to
my children, and that haunted me for years. I could
not get that dream out of my head. I even
rang more a police and said, this is what I've
(04:30):
been told, and he goes, oh, well, there is a
dip in the road outside of town, so I've never
driven there. I cannot bring myself to do that, probably
because I'm dramatized by the dream that im on to repeat.
But these are problems that you have, and this is
sort of part of your subconscious self trying to process
(04:52):
and work out what does that mean exactly and what
are you supposed to do with that information. So while
I appreciate people trying to help and give you the information,
that whole looking for her and having consequence was really
hard for me. Like that was a very hard thing
for me because I took it pretty literally, like, you know,
something might happen if I go digging and I'll tell
(05:15):
you even not so long ago, I was worried about
walking out of my front of my house. Yes, and
you know that because I was panicking at some page.
So I don't know what could happen here, like I'm
poking the bear and it's left for me. And when
I mentioned it to the detective on the case, she
turned around and said to me, oh, well, don't worry,
(05:35):
we've got people here. And I went, not close and
not out the front of my house. You don't. So
there were times when I have been quite worried about myself.
And I'm sure there are other people in my same circumstances,
because let's face it, if someone's gone missing and there's
no answer, there's usually probably something that's gone wrong, and
(05:58):
you know who knows, Like I won't name them, but
there's plenty of cases that I know that are happening
even right now, where you might not want to poke
the bear. I have a fear. I don't know. I
kept thinking that someone might just shoot me, Like I
will just walk down my stairs and someone will shoot
me to shut me up. And that's pretty horrifying, to
(06:20):
be honest, And I'm scared even telling you that, because
I don't really want to put that into the universe.
At the end of the day, I'm the daughter trying
to find my mum. I'm not trying to bring problems
to other people or cause issues for others. But if
someone's done something wrong, who's fighting for mom, who's fighting
for her? She has no voice, She's not here to
(06:41):
tell us what happened. And unfortunately that means I have
to suck it up and be brave and actually go
and do the things that terrify me. That includes doing podcasts,
you know, and talking about it openly and honestly, and
having everyone judge and jury what's happened and how why
I'm here and what I'm doing, so I'll never forget.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
When I listened to one of the episodes of The
Lady Vanishes and I heard Finnan Ramichal, who was the
real Ramichal, not the one in Australia that took his identity.
So I'm sitting there, I'm listening to this episode and
I'm hearing this man with a very thick Luxembourgish accent,
(07:22):
French accent, German accent saying.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Give me Sally Leiden, give me Sally Leiden's address. Where
does Sally Leiden live, Give me the name of details
of give me her phone number.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Give me her address. On repeat, he kept on repeating
that constantly.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I want to contact Shellie Leighton. Give me the address
of Shellie Leiden, address and email and all you have
and telephone number.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
So even way back then, I felt that that was
again a bit of a moment.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I found that quite confronting, and I did Allison had
rung him and didn't know that that was happening. So
when everyone else is listening to it for the first time,
I was listening to it for the first time as well.
So at the Sydney show, Chris and Adele from Search
Shog Sydney came along. They're in the uniform and so
people knew who they were, and I think at that
(08:23):
point they also met a lovely lady named Mindy and
she's now working on the Deer Rechelle podcast. So there's
lots of connectors through this space when people come together
and help each other. And I was talking to them
about a situation where a phone call had been made
to crime stoppers very very early on, and this is
(08:44):
way before any media or anybody really knew about my
mum's case and a guy had rung. What he actually
says in the report is that a woman by the
name of Marion who went missing from northern New South
Wales is buried near the bike track on Niagara Street
in Armadale. And when I read the report that was
(09:05):
in the brief of evidence, I was quite disturbed by
the fact that the first initial officers from Armidale didn't
do a search. They just went and did a door
knock on an address which was noted which will keep confidential,
and they spoke to a gentleman who had been named
(09:25):
as the person and an interesting name. It's sort of
like an abbreviation if I can sort of use not
the real name that we've got because I want to
keep that identity private for the person. But let's say
Daniel and someone calling him Danny, right, so that kind
of scenario. Anyway, they went to the house and spoke
to this man. He's like, well, he has a home
(09:48):
line that has restrictions on it so he can't ring out,
but he can only receive calls, so it couldn't have
possibly been him who made the one eight hundred call
to crime Stoppers and they sort of just took that
and went Okay, then no problem, and I think the
notation says, oh, well, there was nothing really to follow
up on, so no further action required at that point.
(10:09):
And they linked it to my mum because my mum's
name was Marian and she was no one to be
missing from northern New South Wales. But that was about
the end of it. And then when Gary Sheen took over,
he actually did another pull up of that and said
to me, I've found this in the file. I've asked
my commander if I can go out and do a
search with a Cadava dog. And this is where it
(10:33):
gets a bit messy, because he told me that he
went out for a day and it rained and they
found nothing. And then when Channel seven interviewed him, he
said they'd gone out for two days and had ses
helping them, and then in another report says it was
out for three days. So I'm like, okay, well, was
it one day, two days or three days that you
(10:54):
went searching? It was very unclear to me, and so
I think that was probably the drive for me to go.
If my mum's body is there, I want to go
and investigate it myself. So that sort of probed me
into the idea of if I could make that happen,
that would be amazing. And when I was talking to
Chris and Adell about it, they were doing a search
(11:15):
for another woman in Queensland because they're based in Sydney,
and being that this was in Armadale, they were suggesting
that maybe they could stop on the way home on
their way back and we could do a dog search there.
So that's how that whole thing sort of started. And
I asked Journey again if you would come with me,
and she said yes, of course. So you know, that
(11:37):
was something that we were doing in the background. Nobody knew, who,
had no media following us. We just did it in
our own time, and I was trying to process it,
and Chris Darcy actually turned around and said to me,
he goes, family don't usually do this. Now. This is
not normal that you are here looking for your mother's body.
This is not normal, And I said, well, I don't
think I'm a normal person, but especially when it comes
(11:58):
to this. But I just for myself, I needed to
do it to know that I can put it to
rest and know we've done the job properly. Well, I
just racked up at my local shopping center where there's
a kmart. I'm going to go in and see if
I can purchase a high viz vest for me and
one for Chris. As tomorrow morning at four am, will
(12:19):
be making our way down to Armadale to do a
search with search dog Sydney, and Joanie is joining us
as well, so she's just about to jump on a
flight heading up to Newcastle where she'll stay the night,
and then she's going to drive from Newcastle up to
Armadale and meet us there in the morning. I know
Chris and Adele and the team with their dogs have
(12:41):
been out there already today and pop the drone up
to get lots of images and map out where we're
going to be searching tomorrow and the next day. Mix
of emotions as I start this next part of the
journey to find my mum and see if that crime
stop is call that came in to the Armadale area
(13:05):
in two thousand and eight has any legs and so
began a crazy journey. So for me and Chris, it's
about a six hour drive and we were trying to
aim to be in Armadale by about ten o'clock being realistic,
so I think we were up very early, around quarter
to four in the morning. Chris is just filling up
the car withst and petrol as we make our way
(13:27):
down to Armadale. I can tell by the bags onto
my eyes. I have not slept at all last night,
and I woke up at about twenty past three. I
had a really bad vertigo and I was very wobbly.
Had to hold on it's everything while I went to
the bathroom. I'm feeling quite nauseous right now, actually don't
(13:51):
feel very well. I'm not sure I feel like driving
for the next six hours. But anyway, we'll see how
we go and try and have a sleep here. Hopefully
the nausea goes away. So we just stopped to go
to the bathroom. When I got into the bathroom, there
was a young girl in the toilet who had just
come out. There was another lady who was bending over
(14:11):
the toilet when I walked in there. Anyway, I've gone
in closed to my cubicle door and I've tried to
push the toilet rob containing back up into the wall
and it made quite a loud bang, and this woman
started having a go at This young girl and started
saying I've got a I've got a gun. I've got
a gun that's in the car. The police think I'm
(14:34):
going to shoot somebody. My heart does not need this
sort of thing in the middle the morning as I'm
on my way to Armadale. That was a moment in itself.
I've thought I was going to have a heart attack,
but anyway, I survived once again. And you know, we
saw the sunrise come up and we were just on
a mission to find mum. And I don't know, it
(14:57):
was a weird feeling as I approached it, but I
sort of just seemed to remove myself from the reality
of what I'm actually doing and just put my cap
on and go on a search mission. I'm not the daughter.
I'm just on a search mission to find the answers.
And we were a little bit late. It took us
a bit longer to get there than we thought.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So meanwhile, I'm flying from Victoria up to Newcastle and
then I'm staying overnight and then hiring a car to
get from Newcastle to Armadale. Well, here I am at
the airport, ready to jump on the long term parking
bus and.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Head in to fly to Newcastle once I forward was
closed while phones must be switched off the flight road
and laptops stored away inside the bags take off the landing.
We can assist you with anything. Don't hesitate to her.
Let's get a quiet of us.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Wanted a lot of minutes and should be touching the
ten and.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
So traveling through all of I think it was a
three and a half hour drive, I think, so that
was organized very quickly.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
So that was, yeah, basically a flight, a flight.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
For me and overnight stay and then traveling up just
because we wanted to be together to do it.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And so Joni, you know, coming and helping me every
time is you know, more flights, more car higher and
for us as well, like we have the expense of
driving there, and yeah, Jodah, we've got a big room
this time, and n bumped in with Chris and I
didn't sleep in the same bed, you know, I'm share
her home room. But doing it together and then taking
(16:30):
people out for dinners and saying thank you for being
so grateful for their efforts, because people are doing it
all based on their donations as well, you know, that's
how they run their business is on donations. Something I've
always asked you this, but you should tell people like
why are you doing this? Why are you helping?
Speaker 5 (16:50):
Why?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Why?
Speaker 6 (16:50):
Why?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Why?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Well, basically, I'm just an extremely determined person who does
things until the end. That is all I can honestly say.
So when my mother in law came to me, her
grandmother went missing, as you know, so we spent fifteen
years of our lives getting from point A to point
(17:14):
Z where we did locate her. So finding her and
getting to the end of it is that's just what
I'm like.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I'm like a dog with a bone.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I don't leave things until they're actually wrapped up or
and we've spoken about this many times, if you need
to wrap this up, or if you need to do
other things and then come back to it. So I
guess that is my motivation, as you know, like I
enjoy gathering facts information together. I love going through things,
(17:47):
and I love pulling everything in and working it out simple.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I think I remember you saying to me once, because
I've asked you this quite a few times, and you
said to me that most bizarre thing ever, you kind
of felt a bit responsible because you found the ad
in the period. That is true.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So basically, and this is why people query me often,
you know, what are you doing this for? So basically
I was a podcast listener. I was listening around, I
was listening to everything. I enjoyed it. It was like
my hobby, like a lot of other people are. But
when I was sitting there that night having a little
(18:26):
search around in all my little databases and that that
I had learned how to do because of searching for
Chris's great grandmother, that ad popped up, and I knew
at that point in time my life was just going
to change.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I knew it straightaway. That was the golden ticket. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
So basically I thought to myself at that point, Okay,
your podcast, if there was no actual outcome as such,
like there was no way forward, your episodes would have
been done in however many you did.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, well, we were saying there was probably seven episodes. Yeah,
so unless we find something and we found it, yeah,
and then you found it.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So therefore I feel as though, Okay, I've basically thrown
this big bomb into your life. So therefore I feel
as though I need to as much as possible actually
see this through to the end.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
That's why I'm still here. And I think from my
point of view too, Like you've given so much to
me and the case that I feel like I wanted
to bring you on this journey with me to see
it through, because in my world, it would be pretty
horrible to sit there and go, well, you've done all
of this, you've found all of these things for you
(19:40):
later I'm out. So for me, I know that finding
an answer and getting to the end as best we
can is really important for you too. You know, we've
been friends for six years now, so yeah, you know,
we've learnt a lot about each other and I know
who you are as a person and I'm really grateful
to be able to do that. Your husband, who's super supportive,
you know, and who is a bit like my Chris Prier.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And look, it's not something that I ever visage like
I know at times we'll talk on the phone. I mean,
we're two states away from each other, and it is
quite bizarre, like when you actually think about it, a
lot of my friends have focused in my local area.
I'm in a rural area. But for some reason we've
just come together and we're on a mission. So it's
(20:24):
no more complicated than that.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Really.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, well, I'm very grateful that you're here still. Well,
I mean if we talk a little bit about what
happened in the dog search. Right when we arrived, Jonie
and Adele were already doing a scale of one area
and Chris Darcy greeted myself and my Chris and we
(20:48):
spent the day in Armadale.
Speaker 6 (20:51):
We finally made it. Are you going, jeez, Louise, counce.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
The dogs there?
Speaker 7 (21:02):
The dogs are just coming around the bend.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Okay, so is this the actual bike track here?
Speaker 4 (21:11):
That's why have the bike tracks?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Okay, the second five.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
Track before searching.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I wonder where exactly they noted about the entire area
with the drone yesterdays giving the dog's nose and sped
to do their job very good. You know, we had
(21:39):
a lot of people onlookers walking up and down the
street looking at us as what are you guys doing?
Why are you here? And we were getting a bit panicky,
like especially when the drones went up, because Chris had
actually got approval from the airstrip to put the drones
up so that they could do mapping. So they actually
put the drones up and map out a whole area.
(22:00):
And then the dogs actually have these little GPS collars
and they're different colors for each dog, and then they
can see exactly where the other dogs have walked. So
it's quite a phenomenal system that they've got going on,
(22:21):
and you know, it just made me feel better being there.
I've always wanted to go there and see it, but
I didn't want to do it by myself. So it's
very interesting with the cadaver dogs because they're obviously smelling
a scent, they're following their noses. Where at the Training
Academy of Search Dogs, a volunteer organization that teaches dogs
(22:43):
and handlers to find missing people.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
We've been called into quite a few missing person searches,
both live and deceased. However, most of our work at
the moment is for human remains detection of the long
term missing.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
We were walking along their joney and on the other
side of the bridge, Chris and Rufus heading to the
other side of the bridge because remembering too, it's difficult
to work out when someone says the left, but you
can see here too, like it's quite denseer. There's obviously
(23:16):
being water that's come over the bridge, and I'm guessing
these I think it's got the measurement here for when
it floods.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
And they've actually got like a closed.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Gate on either side of this causeway here, so obviously
does flood. So when you look at that street, there's
actually one of those flood zone poles. Yeah, so the
instant I looked at that and I thought, that's a
flood zone like that floods. If they've got that sign there,
that's telling us that this is an area that definitely floods.
(23:51):
And I was walking and I stood and looked over
and just had a moment by myself in that space
and looked at the reeds below me, and I could
see the water and the reeds were all bent over,
and in my heart, I was like, if her body
was here, it's probably been washed away. If they've dumped
dead body in the water, it's potentially been washed away,
(24:13):
And how will we ever find her if that's the case.
So I sort of had this moment once again. You know,
we letterbox drive dropping. I've got Sonya's cards that she
made Eko, you know who spent all this money making
these beautiful glossy, double sided hard cardboard brochure. I just
went and put them in all the mailboxes, thinking if
(24:33):
someone saw anything it would be helpful to know. We've
got like a little blurb on the back, and there's
a QR code on here as well, so people can
actually scan that and find out what's happening. And I'm
just getting easy in people's mailboxes just to bring some
awareness to the local community that my mummy is a
(24:55):
missing person. We are getting a lot of attension, so
a little weird feeling, but hopefully, you never know, people
might actually start talking a little bit. It's not a
very a huge town, so these guys don't look like
they get much because there's cobwebs, they're mailbox you know.
(25:20):
One of the things I really wanted to do, which
sort of stems back to that dream that I kept having,
was something I've thought about for a long time because
I had another cleavoyant tell me, actually too Clevelance tell
me them they could see my mum was buried under floorboards,
and so the drama of that in itself is quite
hard to fathom with because you think that she's been
(25:41):
murdered and someone's done something to her, right, and that
was very early on, when I'm still trying to grapple
with the police telling me she's alive and well and
doesn't want anything to do with me, and just me
knowing something was not right. Later in that day, we
made the brave decision to walk up to the house
(26:02):
that we knew to be the point of.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Entry stiff you like, So just where the alleged crime
Stoppers caller came from was the house that we actually visited.
We'd spied it a few times during the day, hadn't
we Like, we were kind of as we're doing a
little bit stopping, we're kind of looking around. We've done
as much work as we can on who's currently living
there now to sort of know what we're going to
(26:25):
be facing.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And once again I was in that position of going,
I don't really want to go and knock on these
people's door if they have no idea of what this
is about or have anything to do with it, and
upset them and make them feel like something's happened and whatnot.
But we didn't enter the premises. The lady was actually
already in the garden.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
Hello, how are you? My name is a girl.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I'm from Searchgog, Sydney. So what we do is we
look for missing people.
Speaker 8 (26:53):
Sally here, her mother went missing back in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, and then Chris goes in and does the search,
and as we're standing at the front, the granddaughter rocks
up and she's like, Hi, what's happening, And so she
sort of negotiates with us and says, oh yeap. Nana
says it's fine. So I'm going to myself, Okay, Well,
this is potentially the house that has been nominated in
the crime stoppers call. And I've always had a vision
(27:18):
of that house in my head. I could actually see
the house. Looked nothing like my vision, I want to say,
but it was really vital. And I asked Chris if
he could take Rufus the dog underneath the house and
just to do a search, just so I could walk
away from that space and go, I know that's been checked.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Now.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
We were just hoping maybe we could just let the
dog come up and have a sniff around and see
if there was any trace of her. There's half a
million dollars up for grabs. If you found her.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
He'll learn a bit.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Thank you for doing that, Ankaya never as you say.
And the lady remembered the police coming and verified for
(28:10):
us that her husband had passed away. The next time,
they came, which is what we knew because what was
in the report. So we had the right family, we
had the right information, but we still are not confident
today that they had the right person ad with somebody else.
And that was a big day. I was exhausted, plus
I had still was not feeling very well, and Adele
(28:32):
actually had to do some work so she didn't come.
But we took Chris out for dinner and we were
sitting there and you had gotten alerk come through. So
for those of you who don't know, Joni has got
this really great thing which I'm sure other people know
but I didn't know about it, which is a Google
trendsearch and you can actually put in code words and
it actually will bring up information for you. And she
(28:55):
alerted me to the fact that a letter had been
sent to the Attorney generally New South Wales from New
South Wales Police an overview of what the coroner had
said at the findings. So when you have a finding
from the coroner, the police have six months to formally
(29:16):
let the Attorney General know what has happened to your
person and they literally take it right up literally the
last minute. I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked to
see that they had removed the words of the coroner
on that document that went to the Attorney General's Office
and lo and behold, it wasn't just mum. It was
(29:37):
multiple cases, wasn't it. So the letters were basically exactly
the same written. That was just almost and it was
just you know, we did a review of the findings
for that year, so the actual words that were removed
from the letters was ongoing investigation, so it was monitoring
and review only. So basically the coroner sends their findings
(30:01):
recommendations to the New South Wales Police and the letters
that are actually sent to the Attorney General removes the
word investigate. We were sitting there eating and we're talking
about it and you were like, oh my god, there's molden. Yeah,
it's not just you. I didn't know that the New
South Wales Police had sent anything to the Attorney General's Office,
and then I was quite concerned because that language is
(30:23):
very different. So the coroner is saying, and she says,
at the end of her findings, I am leaving it
with the New South Wales Homicide Investigation Team for ongoing investigation,
review and update.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
I recommend that the new South Wales Commissioner of Police
calls the investigation into the death of missing person Flora
Bella Natalia at Marian Ramcol formerly known as Marion Barter
to be referred to or to remain within the State
Crime Command Unsolved Homicide Team for ongoing Investigation, review and monitoring.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And then they took out the words ongoing investigation and
then I remember hearing about it. We'll just do an
update in a review. And here's the cracker. Guys, they
don't have to update review for the first five years
after an inquest. They don't have to tell me a thing.
And because the case is open but inactive, unless any
new information becomes available to them, and guess who gets
(31:16):
the new information. We have to give it to them
for them to do something unless it falls in their lap,
they're not looking for it. So it puts us back
in that position where you're back to the families haveting
to go to, the media, haveting to do. You know
what we do. Even my lawyer said to me at
the end of the inquest, he goes, the media might
be your best bet, Sally, and I'm like, I'm tired.
(31:36):
I'm tired of having to go to the media, Like
you know, I'm very grateful for it all, but it's
exhausting and very stressful to have to put your whole
life out in the world and have people you know
trying to help you. That that can be it's as
great as it is, it can be very hard and
and very exhausting as well. Okay, So then the next
(31:57):
morning we tried to get some sleep that night and
we said goodbye to you because you went off on
your merry way down it to new and Chris and
I went with Adele and Chris followed them out to Inverrel.
And the reason we went to Inverrel was because there
had been during the podcast a gentleman had gone into
a police station in Penrith, I believe, and said that
(32:20):
he had coordinates of a location of where my mum's
body was buried, and that happened to be in Inverrel.
And you know, we've got connectors as well, don't We
to Inverrel with people who live in in Verrel who
we know had connections in Byron Bay, and we were
just our brains were just going a million miles an hour.
(32:43):
So what's interesting in this location is that there's a
family connection with a lot of the same family who
are also connected to dog food manufacturing in Byron Bay,
and there's a connection there with the delivery driver for
that dog food company who told everybody he was one
(33:06):
of the owners of the company, but in fact he
was just the driver and he has a connection.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
So he thought that was quite an odd coincidence that
this popetive location is that as such, so at least.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Doesn't look like a standard house. It actually looks like
multiple small dwellings dwellings. The police have been here and
spoken to them and they just had a look around.
They didn't actually do a dog search or probing or
anything like that, and he just said reported back that
it didn't look like there was a grave.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Fare, to which I went, well, that's really good looking.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Thank you. If you're going to take all the gilatic
come out here, I would have thought you would actually
probably do a proper search of the area. In What
year was that that was recent it came out here, Yeah,
like twenty twenty one, so we're looking at it's twenty
two years.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Unfortunately, Clandestin engraves do change considerably in that amount of time, and.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
It would be very difficult to recognize from an untrained
why I always feel like it was the same with
Finan Ramika. When we were driving to his house, I
was saying to the team, you know, it got to
be conscious that these people have forgotten nothing to do
with my mum's disappearance at all when sort of coming
into their space, and so just for knowledge, this is
(34:35):
for location here. Yeah, hello, how are you snucky? How
are you? That's good?
Speaker 8 (34:49):
My name's a Dalom from Search Dog City and we're
currently in the area doing a search for a missing
person and this is Sally and it's actually her mother
that we're searching for.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
She said, no problem, just keep the dogs away from caddle,
that's her main concern. I said, well, the cattle are
actually down the front gate. We'll make sure we're and
he's on the lead. Anyway. She said that the police
had been twice. What didn't That's interesting, which is interesting
because the dates she gave are like a few years ago.
(35:23):
Yep was the last time, and they came a few
years before that, So that's very interesting. Why were they
coming twice and why were they coming before those coordinates
were handed in before the cause If you couldn't give
dates all right, she wished me well in my search.
(35:46):
So you know, it's nice that people actually.
Speaker 8 (35:50):
Very accommodating the.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
This must be very weird for them, you know, to
go why would there be coordinates on my property like
that is a weird, weird situation.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
So set the noise of the camera taking photos from
the drone.
Speaker 7 (36:12):
Yeah right, it's all right, all right, Well we'll just
gone this snapping and have a look check it all out.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So what I'll do is definition. So meanwhile I'm going south.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
So essentially the wonderful Ballan, a retiree, did a bit
of a map of the family group of the man
in Armadale whose house was supposedly connected to the crime
stoppers call. So I then on my way back down,
did actually meet up with the wife of another family
(37:04):
met with a similar name, just to check as to
whether she'd ever heard anything about this, whether there was
any connection there, etc. And so I did that on
the way down. There was no results, so she had
no idea. There was no connection there. They were separated,
so there was no alliances or anything like that. So
(37:28):
then I just continued my way down, went through Cessnock,
which is where mister Blum lived, and his family members
lived for an extended period of time, so visited there,
had to look at the house, knocked on the door,
attempting to find the neighbor who signed the passport under
his new name. He had passed away, so again we're
(37:49):
just dealing with time. So none of the neighbors around
that surrounding house knew anything about it because they were
knew they had no idea and then just went in
and had to look at the records in the cesnot
library and no joy there.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
So down I went back down to new Castle. You
were by yourself too.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I was by myself, but I guess probably twenty years
social work Cross's intervention. I've never ever been injured. I've
always gotten myself out of sticky situations, so I wasn't
really that concerned.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Driving home, I was a very long day, way longer
than I was sort of anticipating, because we'd gone out
in Virel and then we had to go all the
way back to Brisbane, you know, just to be able
to reflect and be very grateful for the opportunity of
the help that was given to us. And I ticked
those boxes like we checked. There was no sign of
(38:45):
my mum anywhere. And I think it's a very hard
thing to sort of process in the world of the missing,
because how devastating it is to think that you want
to find your missing mother's bones in a lake or
in a creek or in a cow paddock, but you
desperately want to find them so that you can have
(39:06):
peace and you can know that you've done everything you
possibly can. And I think I've just said that for
so long, like I'm only doing this so my kids
don't have to you know, I'll do the best I
absolutely can to get the answers. But you know, it's
a bit of a box ticking exercise at this point too,
where we're just going, right, we didn't needed to do that. Bang,
(39:26):
let's ticket, let's go. We've done that. Move to the
next thing, and I can put that at rest. I
can go, Okay, we did it, We've done it. I'm satisfied.
I've done it myself. I'm at a point I don't
trust anybody anymore. There are people I do trust, obviously,
company excluded, but I've been let down, I've been disappointed.
(39:47):
I've been promised with no results, and that's very draining
on a human body and a human soul because it
depletes you of your energy, and so it is important
that we go through these processes. And you know, it's
mentally good for my health to do this, and I
think my husband particularly and my eldest daughter, she sees
(40:08):
that is important for me. She's like, right, I know
you have to do this because it's important for you.
So having the support of them is amazing as well.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
I think that because what I've noticed over the time
is that one incident or one situation you might have
heard two or three or four or five or six
different versions of that. So therefore it's sort of taught you. Okay,
if I don't do it myself, then.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I'm never going to really know.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
I don't know how many times we've picked through things over,
especially over the phone, pick through words, pick through sentences
to find out, Okay, is this accurate? Is this actually true?
Was that a typo? How many typos have we come across?
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Too many?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So it's just spelling dais problems, errors, two different versions
of events, and so therefore you sort of think to yourself, Okay,
you I think over this whole period has come to
a point where you're like, like, if I don't see
it myself. If I don't do it myself, if I
don't read it myself or confirm it directly with that person,
(41:13):
then I'm not trusting that. That's why I think you
have to be constantly doing things yourself and seeing things
with your own eyes, which.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
And some people have referred and said, you know, you
try to control the narrative. I'm like, I'm not trying
to control anything, but I'm trying to make sure that
the information is correct, the information is true and fact checked,
because at the end of the day, there's too many
things that haven't been done and I'm left to pick
up the pieces because some people just come in, drop
(41:43):
a bomb and leave and then I'm left to deal
with it. That's right.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
And also what we found too is one wrong move,
so one wrong piece of information and you are going
mentally down a whole nother track, and so it takes
time to actually pull your own self back onto the
truth of the matter. I think there's just so many
different roads that you could go down with this, it's
(42:09):
quite maddening.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah, well, you've got to have fact Everyone talks about
the rabbit holes that we've been down. I mean, there's
plenty of them.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
In the next episode of The Missing Matter Well where
this is a big episode because we're going to tell
you why the why Joanie and I are continuing on
this journey and what have we found that we have
not told you yet.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
So before we go, I just like to give a
shout out to Adele and to Chris Stacy from Search
Dog Sydney. We couldn't have done that search without you, guys,
and I'm really grateful for your energy, your professionalism, your enthusiasm,
and your understanding of what it is to have to
do such a task in looking for a missing loved one.
(42:59):
You guys are second to none in this area, and
I'm really grateful for all your efforts and your kind
and giving me the opportunity to do something that I
really needed to do, so I'm really grateful for that.
We've actually popped the Search Struck Sydney link in our
show notes, so if you'd like to pop along, go
(43:20):
and check out their Facebook page. They do work off
donations as well, so I'm sure any offering would be
very much appreciated in this space. Thanks again, guys,
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