Keeping Hope Alive: The Search for Bung Siriboon Continues

It's every parent's worst nightmare.  Seeing your child off to school in the morning and never having them return. 

Today's episode of BOLO is an exploration of the still unsolved case of Siriyakorn Bung Siriboon, or as she was known to most people, Bung.

I'm your host, Carla Morgan, and I'll be guiding you through the harrowing events of that fateful day twelve years ago, when Bung's disappearance sent shockwaves through Melbourne's community.

Bung's family continue to hold unwavering hope to find her. Every bit of information counts, if you know something, please says something.  Let's keep the hope alive, and let's bring Bung home.

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Music is Forest Lullaby by LESFM Oleksii Kaplunskyi

Missing Persons Organisations:
The Missed Foundation
Leave a Light On Inc
Australian Missing Persons Register

For Support Helplines in Australia go to:
https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/Find-Help/Help-Lines

Episode Transcript

Carla Morgan (00:00):
On the 2nd of June 2011, Siriyak orn BUng Siriboon
put on her school uniform, saidgoodbye to her mum and breezed
out the door, just like she didevery morning to walk the short
distance from home to school.
Most mornings she walked with afriend, but not this day, and

(00:23):
on this day she never made it toschool and she has never been
seen or heard from since.
This episode contains contentrelated to child abduction and
homicide and is not suitable forchildren.
Today, I'm delving into themissing persons case of ,

(00:45):
affectionately known as Bung.
She was last seen around 8.30amas she left for school.
How can a 13 year oldschoolgirl literally vanish into
thin air?
This question has haunted theneighbourhood of Baronia and
Bang's family for 12 long andgruelling years.
They are still desperate foranswers and, until Bang is found

(01:11):
, will not give up hope that shemay be alive somewhere.
I'm Carla Morgan and this isBOLO, a podcast covering cold
and active missing persons caseswith the aim of helping
families bring their loved oneshome.
Bang was born in Thailand,where she lived with her mother,

(01:42):
father and her older sisterPang.
Her parents split up when shewas very young, so she was
mostly raised by her mother,Vanidda, until her mum met an
Aussie traveller, Fred Patterson.
Fred and Vanita dated for a fewyears and then, in 2006, in

(02:02):
Thailand, they got married.
They started a businesstogether, but it didn't go as
planned, so Fred returned toAustralia to get a job to
support the family.
In 2008, vanita and the girlsmoved out to Melbourne,
Australia, so they could all bea family together.
At this time, Bung was 10 andher sister, Pang, was 17.

(02:27):
Fred and Vanita also thoughtthe girls might have more
opportunities in the future ifthey attended school here.
Fred had bought a house inBaronia, a suburb in Melbourne's
east and Melbourne is thecapital city of Victoria in
Australia and they all livedtogether happily until their

(02:50):
entire world shattered when Bungdisappeared.
They lived on Elsie Street,which was very close to Baronia
Heights Secondary College, whereBung attended school, and close
to where both Fred and Vanitaworked.
Bung was a great student.
She excelled at maths andscience and she really loved

(03:11):
arts subjects like music, danceand theatre.
She also loved K-pop and JustinBieber, and to everyone who
knew her well, she was describedas fun and bubbly.
She enjoyed school and she wasnever absent, except for this
one cold and drizzly Tuesday inJune.

(03:32):
On the day she went missing,Fred returned home from work
around the same time he didevery day.
It was morning and Bung wasgetting herself ready for school
.
She ate breakfast and she saidgoodbye to her mum and then she
walked out the door.

(03:53):
This was around 8.30am and ifshe had taken her normal route
to school she would arrive by8.40 or 8.45.
She was wearing her schooluniform, a dark blue zip front
school jacket, and she had herschool backpack with her.

(04:13):
Bung was 154cm tall, thin andof tie appearance.
She has brown eyes and she hadlong dark hair at the time she
went missing.
One neighbour a few doors downsaw Bung pass by her house.
This was on the same street,Elsie Street, and she said Bung

(04:38):
was walking towards Anzac Avenue, which is in the direction of
her school.
This was close to 8.30am orjust after, so fits with the
timeline of when she left home.
Anzac Avenue is an extremelybusy road and at that
intersection Bung wouldordinarily turn right and then

(04:59):
make a left onto Harcourt Roadand then a final left onto
Moncoe Street.
Moncoe Street was a dead end,but there was a back gate to the
school on this street, so manystudents entered the school
grounds through Moncoe Street.
A second witness reportedseeing Bung at 8.55am, just 100m

(05:22):
from that back gate to theschool.
However, this second sightingis not one that is widely
reported and it hasn't beenconfirmed by police, as we'll
learn later.
It also contradicts a sightingby a witness claiming they saw
Bung in a car travelling southof Baronia at roughly the same

(05:44):
time.
Everyone at school that dayassumed Bung was sick.
It definitely wasn't normal forher to be away and at that time
there was no school to parentcommunication if your child was
absent for the first class ofthe day.
It is now practised in allschools in Australia that if a

(06:06):
child doesn't show up to a classand the school has not been
notified of an absence inadvance, the parents will be
contacted via automated textmessage or a phone call.
The whole point of this is, yes, to combat truism, but also to
get an immediate report onchildren who may have been
abducted or had an accident enroute to school, so the alarm

(06:28):
can be raised early in the day.
Taking children on the way toschool used to be a surefire way
of getting a full day headstart for any perpetrator, but
not anymore.
So in Bung's case.
It wasn't until she didn't comehome from school that afternoon
that her parents had theslightest idea that anything was
wrong.
They were worried as soon asshe didn't walk through the door

(06:51):
at her normal time, but theykind of brushed it off, thinking
she was just running late ordoing something else at school.
That afternoon At 4pm a friendcalled to chat to Bung, and
that's when they realised shehadn't been at school all day.
They tried calling her phonebut quickly realised she'd left

(07:12):
it at home, as she did most days.
So they headed straight to theschool to confirm that Bung had
not been there at all or thatshe was not still there
somewhere.
They were thinking okay, shedidn't attend classes, but maybe
she spent the day in thelibrary.
From the school they wentstraight to the police station.
The police urged them tocontact Bung's friends.

(07:36):
So they did all that.
They called each of the friendsthat evening and then they went
round to each of their housesjust to check and double check
is she here?
Have you seen her?
Where can she be?
But she wasn't anywhere, whichis every parent's worst possible
nightmare.
The next morning, after asleepless night and no sign of

(08:08):
Bung, they went straight back tothe police station to urge them
to take action.
They also started putting upmissing persons posters and
scouring the streets looking forher back.
By Friday, the media had pickedup the story and the community
rallied, helping Fred and Vanitaput up more posters and conduct

(08:30):
searches in the surroundingareas.
Fred faced the media as Vanitajust couldn't.
She was heartbroken anddevastated.
The investigation began and thepolice pretty quickly ruled out
Bung as a runaway.
She had no reason to leave.
She didn't have a boyfriend,she was a good kid and she was

(08:53):
happy.
They looked closely at hersocial media accounts she did
have a few, but they detected nosuspicious activity or
communication with anyone whocould have been an online
predator.
Fred was also looked into veryclosely for weeks.
He was followed, the house wassearched from top to bottom and

(09:17):
he really welcomed it.
He wanted the police to clearhim as quickly as possible so
that they could focus theirefforts on finding out who had
Bung and where she was.
After three weeks of searchingthe local area, including
bushland, questioning locals andlooking into sex offenders in

(09:39):
the area, police believed thatBung had likely been abducted,
and at exactly that time, sothree weeks after she went
missing, there was a very scaryattempted abduction of a 16 year
old Caucasian girl fromRingwood East.
Ringwood East is a 10 minutedrive from Elsie Street, where

(10:04):
Bung lived, and the teenagerreported that she was walking
alongside the road in theafternoon when a man pulled up
in a car, approached her frombehind and tried to drag her by
the arm into his vehicle.
She managed to kick and fightand escape and get away from him

(10:26):
and hid in some bushes nearbyuntil he took off.
The car was a blue sedan andthe man was described as being
in his 50s or 60s, with greyhair and wearing dark clothing.
Then, just a week later, therewas another abduction attempt,

(10:47):
this time in Baronia as well.
The girl was 11 years old andof Asian appearance, and she
knew Bung.
Panic set in and parents werekeeping their children within
sights at all times.
Sadly, however, it turned outthat once police started their

(11:07):
investigation, the girl admittedshe had made the whole thing up
.
The case pretty much went coldafter that and by 2013, so two
years later, after police hadspoken to thousands of people,
received hundreds of calls andtips, they really didn't have
any significant leads and theinvestigation had not progressed

(11:30):
, so Bung's case was passed onto the Homicide Squad.
Later that year, policerevealed that a 24 year old
local man had confessed toknocking Bung over in his car
and accidentally killing her.
He claimed to have left herbody in a local reserve.
He was arrested, but after athorough look at the man after

(11:56):
searching the reserve, afterlooking at his car, it proved to
be a false confession and hewas released.
One person of interest wasconvicted sex offender Robert
Knight.
He was charged with sexualassault of girls in the 80s and
90s and he was released fromprison in 2009.

(12:18):
He was living just threekilometres from Baronia in
Ferntree Gully when Bungdisappeared.
He was also arrested in 2013for having over 10,000 child sex
abuse images on his computer.
He was questioned in relationto Bung's disappearance, but he

(12:40):
was later ruled out.
He has since died by suicidewhile he was being held in
Melbourne Romand Centre.
In 2014, Victoria PoliceDetectives released a statement
announcing a $1 million reward,asking for information and also
stating that the Department ofPublic Prosecutions will also

(13:03):
consider grantingindemnification from prosecution
to any person who providesinformation as to the identity
of the principal offender oroffenders in Bung's case.
A few months later, policereleased information to the
public in the hopes of bringingin more leads and information.
So Detective Inspector MichaelHughes said he wanted people to

(13:26):
connect the dots between a manand a specific make of car.
They told the public that awitness had come forward saying
they saw a young girl who lookedlike Bung around 9am on the
morning of her disappearance.
She was in the passenger seatof a white 1971-1973 Holden HQ

(13:49):
Kingswood station wagon with norear seats or possibly the seats
had been folded down.
The driver was a white male inhis late 30s to early 40s.
He was either bald, balding orwith light coloured hair.
He had both arms sleeved withtattoos and a large tattoo on

(14:10):
the left side of his neck.
The car was seen passing theintersection of Kellett's Road
and Napoleon Road in a suburbcalled Rowville between 8.45am
and 9am.
Now, Rowville is about a 13minute drive from Bung's home in
Baronia.
So this timeline fits if thefirst sighting of Bung at around

(14:33):
8.30 is correct.
It does not fit, however, ifthe second sighting of her near
the school gate at around 8.50is accurate.
There were two other witnesseswho claimed they saw Bung that
day or a girl of similarappearance in a white Holden
wagon, but neither of these havebeen confirmed by police.

(14:56):
On the fifth anniversary ofBung's disappearance, Fred spoke
to the Knox Reader saying 'Westill hope and believe she's
alive.
We have to.
It's been long enough.
We need information.
We want information about ourdaughter, about our angel.
We want to know good or bad.

(15:18):
If anyone out there knowsanything or suspects anything,
come forward and tell thepolice'.
Ten years on, police madeanother appeal.
Detective Leading SeniorConstable Justin Tippett said
that they receive weekly callsabout Bung but nothing has come

(15:42):
of any call or any lead.
They do have people that theyhave spoken with and not all of
them have been excluded or ruledout.
So it seems the police may havewon or some people in mind, but
don't have enough to pin themfor Bung's disappearance and
likely murder.
Ten years on, police madeanother appeal.

(16:05):
Detective leading SeniorConstable Justin Tippett said
they receive weekly calls aboutBung but nothing has come of any
call or any lead.
They do have people that theyhave spoken with and not all of
them have been excluded or ruledout.
So it seems the police may havewon or some people in mind, but

(16:26):
they just don't have enough topin them for Bung's
disappearance and likely murder.
So as it stands.
Currently, Bung's case is stillopen.
Her family are still desperateto know where she is.
Her mother, Vanidda returned toThailand long ago because

(16:46):
living in Melbourne was too hardfor her.
But Fred, her stepfather, stillremains in the house in Baronia
and still gives interviews tothe media on significant
anniversaries, pleading foranswers and information, he has
said, 'without evidence of herdeath.
We must cling to hope that sheis still alive'.

(17:08):
In a letter that Vanidda wroteand I found published on the
Australian Missing PersonsRegister, courtesy of the Herald

Sun, it says (17:16):
'My birthday is coming up and I wish my girl to
come back for me.
That is all I wish for mybirthday present.
I just want to know whathappened.
If you were a mum, try andimagine for me.
It has been very hard.
Sometimes you have to step backand look at another way to look

(17:40):
and walk forward, and I have todo this every day.
You would be my birthdaypresent.
I need you to be my present,the best present.
Please come back.
Thank you, every person whoprayed for Bung and my family.
Thank you so much.
Bung would be turning 26 thisyear.

(18:04):
It's way past time for herfamily to bring her home, if you
or anyone you know knowanything at all.
Please contact Police Link on13 14 44 or call Crime Stoppers
on 1800-333-000.
Thanks for listening to BOLO.

(18:27):
If this episode has brought upfeelings for you and you need
support, please reach out toLifeline on 13-11-14.
You can connect with me onInsta or TikTok @bolo.
pod or email me at bolo.

(18:47):
pod@ icloud.
com if you have a case you'dlike me to cover.
There's also a form on my Instaprofile that you can fill in.
Until next week, stay safe.