November 3, 2024 • 21 mins
ICYMI: There's a serial killer on the loose in Byron Bay... allegedly.
People are starting to connect the dots between multiple cases of women going missing or being murdered in the Byron and New South Wales coastal areas, including women with their own first-hand encounters.
So how likely is it all these cases and run ins are linked? And what's the underlying lesson we can all take away from these experiences?
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CREDITS
Host: Claire Murphy
With thanks to:
Laura Clare, Byron Bay local
Gemma Bath, Mamamia's News Editor & Host of True Crime Conversations
Executive Producer: Taylah Strano
Audio Producer: Tegan Sadler
Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily news podcast,
The Quickie. We all love a bit of true crime,
right It's weirdly soothing listening to stories of horrible things
happening to someone else, somewhere else. But what if that
true crime gets a little too close to home?
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Like I looked at this man and I felt terror.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
There's a theory being floated that the worst serial killer
in Australian history could be behind dozens of missing and
murdered New South Wales women, and there are some first
hand accounts from those who feel they might have even
been a potential target. Today we look at the alarming
similarity of more than sixty unsolved crimes and wonder if
they might all be linked. But before we look into it,
(01:05):
here's the letters from the Quicki newsroom, Monday, November fore.
Kamla Harris has surprised viewers appearing on the US TV
show Saturday Night Live, urging people to keep Karmela kick.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
Backing our Pajamala's and watch a rum kamala.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Like legally Blondola and start decorating for Christmas.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
Falla lala la.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Because what don't we always say? Keep karmala and carry on.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Alah Harris appeared alongside my Rudolph, who's been playing the
Vice President on the show since twenty nineteen, the final
time it will air before Americans hit the polling booths tomorrow.
Trump has been on the show in the past while
campaigning to become president, appearing in twenty fifteen. He was
also a guest before he even entered politics, back in
two thousand and four. Meanwhile, US authorities are working to
(01:54):
ensure this election doesn't end with a situation like the
riots on January sixth. Some elected officials mobile phones have
reportedly been fitted with a panic button, and the election's
bureau office has had the windows replaced with bulletproof glass.
While some believe the prosecution of those in the January
sixth capital will deter any further violence, Trump is already
suggesting this election is rigged, saying Pennsylvania is cheating big
(02:17):
on votes in pre polling, making some very nervous. The
Israeli military has carried out a ground rate in Syria,
seizing a Syrian citizen who's belief to be connected to Iran.
Israel has carried out multiple air strikes on Syria over
the past year, claiming to be targeting members of HESBOLA
and officials from Iran, but until this point has not
undertaken any ground operations. The IDF says it was part
(02:41):
of a special operation. Iran's supreme leader on the weekend,
threatened Israel and the US with a crushing response over
attacks on Iran and its allies. Israeli naval forces also
announced they've captured a senior hesbela operative in northern Lebanon,
Lebanese authorities saying they are investigating whether Israel was behind
the capture of a sea captain who was taken away
(03:01):
by a group of armed men. The operation is the
first time Israel has announced it has deployed troops in
northern Lebanon. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has taken a tumble
on stage in shades of what happened to Olivia Rodrigo here.
Just last month, Coldplay were playing at Marvel Stadium in
Melbourne when he stepped back and fell through a trapdoor
on the stage. Martin was overheard saying afterwards that that
(03:23):
wasn't planned, then thanking a production stuff member for catching him,
saying that was nearly a YouTube moment, which is what
it was for Olivia Rodrigo, who was also in Melbourne
last month when she fell through a trapdoor on stage
at rod Laver Arena. The clip of the tumble shows
her emerging from the whole saying that was fun and
that she's okay. The cast of the new Wicked movie
opened the show in Sydney on the weekend. Cynthia Arrivo,
(03:46):
Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldbloom, Marissa Boden, Ethan Slater
walked out onto the stage of the State Theater to
welcome fans and announce the first screening of the stage
to screen adaptation of the movie around the origins of
the Goodwitch and the Wicked Witch of the West from
The Wizard of Oz. Cynthia Arrevo saying it was fitting
to be here to start showing it.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
This is an absolute dream.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I'm true to be able to do this here. It's
my first home being there as well.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
Really on the car, that's what's going on in the
world today.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Next, is there a serial killer on the loose around
Byron Bay or have we been following a bit too
much true crime? Last month, Melbourne woman Kayleie was walking
alone in the northern New South Wales suburb of Suffolk Park.
(04:39):
It was around four pm on a Saturday afternoon and
she was going to meet friends at the beach when
a car all of a sudden pulled up beside her.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
As I'm walking, there is a car that pulls up
like on the other side of the parked cast me
there in the middle of the road. I look into
the car and it's a young couple and the woman
in the passenger seat she's looking at me, and then
she's looking behind me at something and she looks terrified,
and I was like, what on earth is going on?
So I look behind me to see a man a
(05:09):
couple of meters behind me. And this man does not
look dressed for where we are. It's like thirty degrees
and he is in gloves, which I thought was really freaky.
Like I looked at this man and I felt terror.
The thing is is for that man to be as
close to me as he was, he had to have
run up on me because I had already been checking
behind me, because I'm just like that type of person.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
As soon as I.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Look at him, he disappears, either like down this side
street or like into somebody's front yard. I wouldn't have
even noticed this man if.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Not for the fact that the couple in the.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Car were distressed and they'd pulled over. Every single part
of me felt like that was a really, really close
encounter with something really evil.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Kaylie says she informed local police, but found them to
be dismissive of her experience. Her TikTok comments section, though,
was flooded with similar experiences, experiences like Laura Claire's. Laura
is a bar and Bay local who's been documenting her
run ins a info about the alleged Barron based serial killer. Laura,
can you talk us through that day where you and
(06:08):
your friend decided go hitch hiking?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Sure, I think Byron has this hold on people. It's
just this idolistic kind of town and there's a lot
of people hitch hiking there, and you just have this
sense of safety. Well I did when I first went there, obviously,
So my friend and I needed to get from Byron
to Suffolk. It was a really hot day. I suggested
(06:32):
that we hitch hike. She had never hitch hike before
and was very much against it, and I kind of
convinced her it wasn't a very long distance and it
was safe and all the things that I shouldn't have said,
all the things that I felt, a sense of safety
that I shouldn't have felt.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
So we go to hit to ride and this vand
pulls up.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
He's so normal looking I can barely remember his details,
and he seemed to look very friendly as well. So
my friend I put her in the back and I
went to sit in the front and there was a
big knife on the front seat, and not having any
survival instincts at all, I just grab for a knife
(07:10):
and put it on the floor to get in, and
I think I even asked.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Him permission to do so.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
And then I kind of just out of curiosity, was like, Oh,
what's the knife for?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And he said that he was a chef. And that's
kind of.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
When I started to feel uncomfortable. Most people would have
felt uncomfortable hit hiking. This is where I started to
feel uncomfortable. The knife was very rusty, the knife did
not look like it should go anywhere near food. It
just kind of started mulling in my mind, and I said, oh, where.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Are you a chef?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Because I thought maybe i'd know the restaurant or you know,
just get some comfort in knowing that he worked around
the area. And he said, oh, I'm not working at
the moment, and that's when I just went, Okay, I
don't feel comfortable here. We need to get out of
this situation. And so I said, oh, yeah, that's us
just up there. He led us out of the van
(08:04):
like we.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Got out of the van.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
So that was my experience, and honestly, I don't think
I even thought about it again after that day for
a long time. But a few friends of mine have
contacted me in the last couple of days and said, oh,
you told me about that story. So it has sort
of stuck with me, but not as much as it
probably should have.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
Well, can you explain what happened after you shared that
story publicly, because we've seen this happen with other women
too in the area who've shared their close encounters, that
it's essentially kind of opened up the floodgates.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
It absolutely has, and it's quite distressing. In my mind.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I was going to share this story about what happened.
I was either going to have people going you're overreacting
or people going, oh my god, that was really scary.
I didn't prepare myself for hundreds of women coming forward
speaking about close call encounters, rapes, drink spikings, names of
people that are dangerous in the area.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I just wasn't prepared for the volume.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
I wasn't prepared for the terrific details, and it's just
so alarming, and at times I felt defeated because I'm like,
how do we help, how do we change this?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Like what do we do?
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Obviously, my first point is to call the police and
report what you know. But in a lot of these cases,
they were actually let down by the police in either
not showing up on the scene, taking too long to
get to the scene where they were no longer in danger,
saying that they didn't have enough information, not taking down details,
(09:43):
telling them to go home when they went into the station, distressed,
all of that kind of stuff as well.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
This is something that a lot of women come up
against when it comes to crimes against them like this,
and another of its nature is that police are so
under resourced. These are sometimes put in the two hard basket,
especially when there's many.
Speaker 6 (10:02):
Many of them to look at.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But I think what we have realized when yourself and
others who are also looking at crimes against women like
this in the area where you live, is that when
you start to map this out, that map starts to
look very crowded, doesn't it, Like with if you were
to pin all of these instances to a real physical map,
like there'd be no space in between.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
And look, this has been common knowledge among locals for years,
and I think one of the biggest things that kind
of is terrifying is these are maps of women that
have gone missing or died. It would be interesting to
see a map of women that have been assaulted, because
what I've heard in the last seventy two hours is
(10:45):
a lot a lot of assaults and people that didn't
die that are left with the consequences of this, and
these can often be behaviors in the lead up to
worse crimes.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Some of these haven't been.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Reported or weren't reported or it's interesting with a lot
of this information women when they haven't reported it, I've
asked them why. And there's quite a common thread of
young women being worried that they were get to get
in trouble with their parents for not being where they
were supposed to. And so I think that there's a
lot of information out there that we're not getting through
(11:21):
to the legal system either. But in the case of
the map and how many crimes happen in this area,
it is unbelievably high. And when you're going to a
town like Byron and you don't live there, you have
this kind of view of it, like I did that
it was just this sleepy coastal town.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And so when you have that view of a.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Town, you're walking around doing things that you do on
holiday that you probably wouldn't do it at home, and
you're not really fearing for your safety or being concerned
about it at all because you're not hearing about it
on the news and you're not realizing actually that you
may be in danger. Like I had a friend of
mine that lives in Byron and I was talking to
(12:07):
her about it, and she said, I'd rather walk around
in the cross or Redfern then i would Environ.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
It's well known by the locals.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And I think, you know, Kaylee, the other girl that
spoke out about it, she kind of got attacked and
shut down when she first came out about it, and
a lot of that was by the locals. You don't
want to try that with Meybe, because.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I've lived there and I can.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Name, you know, incidences that happen and people that have
gone missing, and no one from the community has tried
to say to me, no, no, it's not no, it
didn't happen. Because if you live there, you know, it's
very easy to shut down a girl from Melbourne that
was visiting a week because she just had this bad
experience and she had a very off feeling about it.
But if you live there, you know, trying to cover
(12:50):
it up for the sake of tourism or house prices
or whatever it is is actually doing the town a disservice.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Laura, you said that when the hitchhiking incident happened, you
kind of dismissed it and almost essentially forgot about it
until now. Would you say the same thing now, with
all the responses that you got to it and all
the stories that you've heard, do you feel like that
has now changed you where that hitch hiking incident didn't.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
It's interesting because the hitch hiking incident, when I think
about it at a core level, did change me. I
hitch tagged once again after that, but I was in
a very desperate situation. I remember thinking I shouldn't be
doing this, So it did change me at that level.
But what it's kind of changed for me now as
a woman, especially after speaking out about this, is just
(13:40):
how careful I need to be. Like I was walking
my dog yesterday and I just went wow, Like I'm
not as aware of my surroundings as I should be,
and maybe I need to be more careful in a
lot of other areas in my life, because after hearing
the things that I did and reading what I have
in the last seventy two hours, it's pretty bleak.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
While Laura is thinking her lucky stars that she and
her friend didn't find themselves potentially in the path of
a killer, there are potentially more than sixty others who
weren't so lucky. Last week, New South Wales MP Jeremy
Buckingham addressed state Parliament stating that the worst serial killer
in the nation's history has gotten away with it.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Ivan Malapp was convicted of seven murders. There is someone
on the North Coast that has murdered as many or more,
and they are still amongst us sixty seven the numbers
of unsolved homicides of women on the north coast of
New South Wales, and has every indication that someone operated
(14:41):
in that area, traveled that area, lived across that area
and took women, destroyed their bodies, destroyed their lives and
it's appalling that it's taken so long for this matter
to come before House and to public attention.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Buckingham told Parliament that he's been called alarmist because his
view and the view of some senior police like Detective
Gary McAvoy who investigated these matters from Coffs Harbor, is
that they were and are linked. He, with the support
of Green's MP Sue Higginson, has called on the Premier,
Chris Mins to hold a special Commission of inquiry that
has been rejected amid suggestions a new police task force
(15:22):
be set up to investigate the unsolved cases instead. According
to a Daily Telegraph investigation, there are sixty seven women
who've been murdered or who've gone missing in the area
over the last thirty years. They include a number of
disappearances around Newcastle in the nineteen seventies. Jemma baf is
Mumama's news editor and host of the True Crime Conversations podcast, Jemma,
(15:44):
these cases go back as far as the nineteen seventies.
Can you give us a rundown of some of those
older cases that they think might be the work of
this serial killer.
Speaker 7 (15:52):
Yeah, And so they kind of spread all the way
up the coast. We're talking from like coffs Haaba to
after kind of the Gold Coast area, But there does
seem to be a concentration around Newcastle, which is one
of the biggest centers along that coast if you know
the area, and many of the disappearances or alleged murders
in that area are from the seventies. So we've got
eighteen year old Robin Hickey. She was last seen at
(16:14):
a bus stop in April nineteen seventy nine. Eight months
after that, fourteen year old Amanda Robinson. She vanished while
walking home Miss Swansea. The following year, seventeen year old
Annie and eighteen year old Joy they both went missing
after a night out at a club in the city.
So in Newcastle again, there's Norell Cox. She was twenty one.
(16:34):
She was last seen in Grafton in nineteen seventy seven.
She actually left a note for her family and it
read gone to Noosa to see Faye be back on Monday,
which is just heartbreaking, isn't it. A truck driver said
he picked her up and actually dropped her in Brunswick
Heads and she's never been seen again. Then we've got
Rose Howe she was eighteen, went missing in two thousand
(16:55):
and three about twenty five kilometers from Coffs Harbor. Susan
Marie Killy she was thirty three. She's been missing from
Bellingen on the Mid North Coast since nineteen eighty nine.
Her body's never been found. I could go on and
on and on. There's literally dozens of case.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
But general are we're just seeing patterns when there might
not be one. You know how humans really like to
seek patterns and find those kind of things that look linked,
when really they might not be.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
Why are we thinking that all of these have a connection.
Speaker 7 (17:23):
When you think about the string that's linking all of
these cases women who have gone missing while hitchhiking or
walking or traveling to another place. That's obviously a very
broad term, but I don't think that doesn't mean it's
not a pattern, particularly when you consider the fact that
when you compare how many women have gone missing along
the stretch of the New South Wales coastline. You just
(17:44):
don't see that kind of concentration of missing and murdered
women anywhere else in the country anywhere for that kind
of population geography, that span of time. To give you
an example, in the whole of Tasmania, there's less than
ten cases and we're talking over sixty in this one area.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Why is this only being discussed now though we mentioned
some of these cases date back more than thirty years.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
Why now because technology, forensics, investigative techniques, they've come so
far in the last few years alone. I mean, we're
learning new things every day. A lot of these cases
weren't thoroughly investigated or properly investigated at the time, sometimes
because they just didn't have the resources or the technology
to do so. I mean, we're seeing so many cold
(18:30):
cases being solved. One that comes to mind recently is
the Easy Street murders in Melbourne that was from nineteen
seventy seven, and that is a really highly publicized case.
You know, everyone in Melbourne knows that story. The two
sues that were murdered in their house, a little boy
that was left crying in the middle of their dead bodies.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Horrific story.
Speaker 7 (18:50):
They've got a man in custody all these years later,
decades later because of DNA, because of DNA that is
now able to be traced and tracked back to people
all these decades later. So I think the reason that
we're talking about it now is because some of these
cases need to be reinvestigated with fresh twenty twenty four eyes,
because you never know what you're going to find. You're
(19:11):
never going to know what we're going to be able
to solve with everything that's at our fingertips. And we
also know so much more about serial offenders now than
we did back then. We've just got so much more
knowledge in the police force, so we definitely need to
go back. We need to go back and look at
these cases with fresh eyes.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Well, speaking of the police force, obviously these are cold cases,
and cold cases are never officially closed, but as you mentioned,
they might not be being investigated to the extent that
we would hope or that we would presume that they
are investigated, especially if they're beyond thirty years old. But
obviously New South Wales police know more than any of
us about all of these cases. What have they said
about this alleged linking of all of them.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
They have released a statement it's not as exciting as
you might expect. It says there is no evidence to
indicate a common offender was responsible for the disappearance. They've
said that the matters remain under investigation by the State
Crime Commands, Homicide Squad, Unsolved Homicide Team that's a mouthful,
and the Missing Person Registry as part of recent recommendation
(20:09):
that were handed down by a Special Commission of Inquiry.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
So they're reviewing all.
Speaker 7 (20:13):
Unsolved cases every two years, which is amazing. It does
mean each of these cases are getting fresh eyes, but
there are so many cases, so we've just got to
hope that they're getting the attention that they deserve.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
We don't want to alarm people, but we do want
to arm them. So if you find yourself along the
New South Wales Northern coast, please be careful and be
aware of your surroundings. Laura says she wants women to know, though,
that their experiences aren't just fine, and to ignore the
gas lighting that comes with reporting them.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
I've noticed people were more likely to come to me
than they were to call crime stoppers, and that is
us systematically as women being taught that, oh, it's probably nothing.
You're being over dramatic, you're overreacting, you're being hysterical. And
so even with me with the incident in two thousand
and eight, I played it down to well, he let
(21:04):
me out of the van, so he couldn't be well,
I've lent a lot of people out of his car too.
So we kind of gaslight ourselves, and we also go
to people who are meant to help us that also
gas light us and make us feel like we're being idiots.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
And so I think that that needs to change. I
think that there needs to.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Be a safe space to be able to discuss these
issues and what I wanted to achieve. Often we hear
these different separate stories, but this is hundreds of women
and hundreds of close goals that you're seeing in these
comments sections, And maybe when you see that volume altogether,
you start to realize, Okay, this is a really big issue.
Can we get it now? Like we need to do
(21:45):
something about this. Women aren't feeling safe.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Thanks for taking the time to feed your mind with
us today. The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy
and our executive producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by
Teag and Sadler.
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily news podcast,
The Quickie. We all love a bit of true crime,
right It's weirdly soothing listening to stories of horrible things
happening to someone else, somewhere else. But what if that
true crime gets a little too close to home?
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Like I looked at this man and I felt terror.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
There's a theory being floated that the worst serial killer
in Australian history could be behind dozens of missing and
murdered New South Wales women, and there are some first
hand accounts from those who feel they might have even
been a potential target. Today we look at the alarming
similarity of more than sixty unsolved crimes and wonder if
they might all be linked. But before we look into it,
(01:05):
here's the letters from the Quicki newsroom, Monday, November fore.
Kamla Harris has surprised viewers appearing on the US TV
show Saturday Night Live, urging people to keep Karmela kick.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
Backing our Pajamala's and watch a rum kamala.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Like legally Blondola and start decorating for Christmas.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
Falla lala la.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Because what don't we always say? Keep karmala and carry on.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Alah Harris appeared alongside my Rudolph, who's been playing the
Vice President on the show since twenty nineteen, the final
time it will air before Americans hit the polling booths tomorrow.
Trump has been on the show in the past while
campaigning to become president, appearing in twenty fifteen. He was
also a guest before he even entered politics, back in
two thousand and four. Meanwhile, US authorities are working to
(01:54):
ensure this election doesn't end with a situation like the
riots on January sixth. Some elected officials mobile phones have
reportedly been fitted with a panic button, and the election's
bureau office has had the windows replaced with bulletproof glass.
While some believe the prosecution of those in the January
sixth capital will deter any further violence, Trump is already
suggesting this election is rigged, saying Pennsylvania is cheating big
(02:17):
on votes in pre polling, making some very nervous. The
Israeli military has carried out a ground rate in Syria,
seizing a Syrian citizen who's belief to be connected to Iran.
Israel has carried out multiple air strikes on Syria over
the past year, claiming to be targeting members of HESBOLA
and officials from Iran, but until this point has not
undertaken any ground operations. The IDF says it was part
(02:41):
of a special operation. Iran's supreme leader on the weekend,
threatened Israel and the US with a crushing response over
attacks on Iran and its allies. Israeli naval forces also
announced they've captured a senior hesbela operative in northern Lebanon,
Lebanese authorities saying they are investigating whether Israel was behind
the capture of a sea captain who was taken away
(03:01):
by a group of armed men. The operation is the
first time Israel has announced it has deployed troops in
northern Lebanon. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has taken a tumble
on stage in shades of what happened to Olivia Rodrigo here.
Just last month, Coldplay were playing at Marvel Stadium in
Melbourne when he stepped back and fell through a trapdoor
on the stage. Martin was overheard saying afterwards that that
(03:23):
wasn't planned, then thanking a production stuff member for catching him,
saying that was nearly a YouTube moment, which is what
it was for Olivia Rodrigo, who was also in Melbourne
last month when she fell through a trapdoor on stage
at rod Laver Arena. The clip of the tumble shows
her emerging from the whole saying that was fun and
that she's okay. The cast of the new Wicked movie
opened the show in Sydney on the weekend. Cynthia Arrivo,
(03:46):
Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldbloom, Marissa Boden, Ethan Slater
walked out onto the stage of the State Theater to
welcome fans and announce the first screening of the stage
to screen adaptation of the movie around the origins of
the Goodwitch and the Wicked Witch of the West from
The Wizard of Oz. Cynthia Arrevo saying it was fitting
to be here to start showing it.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
This is an absolute dream.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I'm true to be able to do this here. It's
my first home being there as well.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
Really on the car, that's what's going on in the
world today.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Next, is there a serial killer on the loose around
Byron Bay or have we been following a bit too
much true crime? Last month, Melbourne woman Kayleie was walking
alone in the northern New South Wales suburb of Suffolk Park.
(04:39):
It was around four pm on a Saturday afternoon and
she was going to meet friends at the beach when
a car all of a sudden pulled up beside her.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
As I'm walking, there is a car that pulls up
like on the other side of the parked cast me
there in the middle of the road. I look into
the car and it's a young couple and the woman
in the passenger seat she's looking at me, and then
she's looking behind me at something and she looks terrified,
and I was like, what on earth is going on?
So I look behind me to see a man a
(05:09):
couple of meters behind me. And this man does not
look dressed for where we are. It's like thirty degrees
and he is in gloves, which I thought was really freaky.
Like I looked at this man and I felt terror.
The thing is is for that man to be as
close to me as he was, he had to have
run up on me because I had already been checking
behind me, because I'm just like that type of person.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
As soon as I.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Look at him, he disappears, either like down this side
street or like into somebody's front yard. I wouldn't have
even noticed this man if.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Not for the fact that the couple in the.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Car were distressed and they'd pulled over. Every single part
of me felt like that was a really, really close
encounter with something really evil.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Kaylie says she informed local police, but found them to
be dismissive of her experience. Her TikTok comments section, though,
was flooded with similar experiences, experiences like Laura Claire's. Laura
is a bar and Bay local who's been documenting her
run ins a info about the alleged Barron based serial killer. Laura,
can you talk us through that day where you and
(06:08):
your friend decided go hitch hiking?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Sure, I think Byron has this hold on people. It's
just this idolistic kind of town and there's a lot
of people hitch hiking there, and you just have this
sense of safety. Well I did when I first went there, obviously,
So my friend and I needed to get from Byron
to Suffolk. It was a really hot day. I suggested
(06:32):
that we hitch hike. She had never hitch hike before
and was very much against it, and I kind of
convinced her it wasn't a very long distance and it
was safe and all the things that I shouldn't have said,
all the things that I felt, a sense of safety
that I shouldn't have felt.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
So we go to hit to ride and this vand
pulls up.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
He's so normal looking I can barely remember his details,
and he seemed to look very friendly as well. So
my friend I put her in the back and I
went to sit in the front and there was a
big knife on the front seat, and not having any
survival instincts at all, I just grab for a knife
(07:10):
and put it on the floor to get in, and
I think I even asked.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Him permission to do so.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
And then I kind of just out of curiosity, was like, Oh,
what's the knife for?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And he said that he was a chef. And that's
kind of.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
When I started to feel uncomfortable. Most people would have
felt uncomfortable hit hiking. This is where I started to
feel uncomfortable. The knife was very rusty, the knife did
not look like it should go anywhere near food. It
just kind of started mulling in my mind, and I said, oh, where.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Are you a chef?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Because I thought maybe i'd know the restaurant or you know,
just get some comfort in knowing that he worked around
the area. And he said, oh, I'm not working at
the moment, and that's when I just went, Okay, I
don't feel comfortable here. We need to get out of
this situation. And so I said, oh, yeah, that's us
just up there. He led us out of the van
(08:04):
like we.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Got out of the van.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
So that was my experience, and honestly, I don't think
I even thought about it again after that day for
a long time. But a few friends of mine have
contacted me in the last couple of days and said, oh,
you told me about that story. So it has sort
of stuck with me, but not as much as it
probably should have.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
Well, can you explain what happened after you shared that
story publicly, because we've seen this happen with other women
too in the area who've shared their close encounters, that
it's essentially kind of opened up the floodgates.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
It absolutely has, and it's quite distressing. In my mind.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I was going to share this story about what happened.
I was either going to have people going you're overreacting
or people going, oh my god, that was really scary.
I didn't prepare myself for hundreds of women coming forward
speaking about close call encounters, rapes, drink spikings, names of
people that are dangerous in the area.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I just wasn't prepared for the volume.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
I wasn't prepared for the terrific details, and it's just
so alarming, and at times I felt defeated because I'm like,
how do we help, how do we change this?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Like what do we do?
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Obviously, my first point is to call the police and
report what you know. But in a lot of these cases,
they were actually let down by the police in either
not showing up on the scene, taking too long to
get to the scene where they were no longer in danger,
saying that they didn't have enough information, not taking down details,
(09:43):
telling them to go home when they went into the station, distressed,
all of that kind of stuff as well.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
This is something that a lot of women come up
against when it comes to crimes against them like this,
and another of its nature is that police are so
under resourced. These are sometimes put in the two hard basket,
especially when there's many.
Speaker 6 (10:02):
Many of them to look at.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But I think what we have realized when yourself and
others who are also looking at crimes against women like
this in the area where you live, is that when
you start to map this out, that map starts to
look very crowded, doesn't it, Like with if you were
to pin all of these instances to a real physical map,
like there'd be no space in between.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
And look, this has been common knowledge among locals for years,
and I think one of the biggest things that kind
of is terrifying is these are maps of women that
have gone missing or died. It would be interesting to
see a map of women that have been assaulted, because
what I've heard in the last seventy two hours is
(10:45):
a lot a lot of assaults and people that didn't
die that are left with the consequences of this, and
these can often be behaviors in the lead up to
worse crimes.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Some of these haven't been.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Reported or weren't reported or it's interesting with a lot
of this information women when they haven't reported it, I've
asked them why. And there's quite a common thread of
young women being worried that they were get to get
in trouble with their parents for not being where they
were supposed to. And so I think that there's a
lot of information out there that we're not getting through
(11:21):
to the legal system either. But in the case of
the map and how many crimes happen in this area,
it is unbelievably high. And when you're going to a
town like Byron and you don't live there, you have
this kind of view of it, like I did that
it was just this sleepy coastal town.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And so when you have that view of a.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Town, you're walking around doing things that you do on
holiday that you probably wouldn't do it at home, and
you're not really fearing for your safety or being concerned
about it at all because you're not hearing about it
on the news and you're not realizing actually that you
may be in danger. Like I had a friend of
mine that lives in Byron and I was talking to
(12:07):
her about it, and she said, I'd rather walk around
in the cross or Redfern then i would Environ.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
It's well known by the locals.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And I think, you know, Kaylee, the other girl that
spoke out about it, she kind of got attacked and
shut down when she first came out about it, and
a lot of that was by the locals. You don't
want to try that with Meybe, because.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I've lived there and I can.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Name, you know, incidences that happen and people that have
gone missing, and no one from the community has tried
to say to me, no, no, it's not no, it
didn't happen. Because if you live there, you know, it's
very easy to shut down a girl from Melbourne that
was visiting a week because she just had this bad
experience and she had a very off feeling about it.
But if you live there, you know, trying to cover
(12:50):
it up for the sake of tourism or house prices
or whatever it is is actually doing the town a disservice.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Laura, you said that when the hitchhiking incident happened, you
kind of dismissed it and almost essentially forgot about it
until now. Would you say the same thing now, with
all the responses that you got to it and all
the stories that you've heard, do you feel like that
has now changed you where that hitch hiking incident didn't.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
It's interesting because the hitch hiking incident, when I think
about it at a core level, did change me. I
hitch tagged once again after that, but I was in
a very desperate situation. I remember thinking I shouldn't be
doing this, So it did change me at that level.
But what it's kind of changed for me now as
a woman, especially after speaking out about this, is just
(13:40):
how careful I need to be. Like I was walking
my dog yesterday and I just went wow, Like I'm
not as aware of my surroundings as I should be,
and maybe I need to be more careful in a
lot of other areas in my life, because after hearing
the things that I did and reading what I have
in the last seventy two hours, it's pretty bleak.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
While Laura is thinking her lucky stars that she and
her friend didn't find themselves potentially in the path of
a killer, there are potentially more than sixty others who
weren't so lucky. Last week, New South Wales MP Jeremy
Buckingham addressed state Parliament stating that the worst serial killer
in the nation's history has gotten away with it.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Ivan Malapp was convicted of seven murders. There is someone
on the North Coast that has murdered as many or more,
and they are still amongst us sixty seven the numbers
of unsolved homicides of women on the north coast of
New South Wales, and has every indication that someone operated
(14:41):
in that area, traveled that area, lived across that area
and took women, destroyed their bodies, destroyed their lives and
it's appalling that it's taken so long for this matter
to come before House and to public attention.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Buckingham told Parliament that he's been called alarmist because his
view and the view of some senior police like Detective
Gary McAvoy who investigated these matters from Coffs Harbor, is
that they were and are linked. He, with the support
of Green's MP Sue Higginson, has called on the Premier,
Chris Mins to hold a special Commission of inquiry that
has been rejected amid suggestions a new police task force
(15:22):
be set up to investigate the unsolved cases instead. According
to a Daily Telegraph investigation, there are sixty seven women
who've been murdered or who've gone missing in the area
over the last thirty years. They include a number of
disappearances around Newcastle in the nineteen seventies. Jemma baf is
Mumama's news editor and host of the True Crime Conversations podcast, Jemma,
(15:44):
these cases go back as far as the nineteen seventies.
Can you give us a rundown of some of those
older cases that they think might be the work of
this serial killer.
Speaker 7 (15:52):
Yeah, And so they kind of spread all the way
up the coast. We're talking from like coffs Haaba to
after kind of the Gold Coast area, But there does
seem to be a concentration around Newcastle, which is one
of the biggest centers along that coast if you know
the area, and many of the disappearances or alleged murders
in that area are from the seventies. So we've got
eighteen year old Robin Hickey. She was last seen at
(16:14):
a bus stop in April nineteen seventy nine. Eight months
after that, fourteen year old Amanda Robinson. She vanished while
walking home Miss Swansea. The following year, seventeen year old
Annie and eighteen year old Joy they both went missing
after a night out at a club in the city.
So in Newcastle again, there's Norell Cox. She was twenty one.
(16:34):
She was last seen in Grafton in nineteen seventy seven.
She actually left a note for her family and it
read gone to Noosa to see Faye be back on Monday,
which is just heartbreaking, isn't it. A truck driver said
he picked her up and actually dropped her in Brunswick
Heads and she's never been seen again. Then we've got
Rose Howe she was eighteen, went missing in two thousand
(16:55):
and three about twenty five kilometers from Coffs Harbor. Susan
Marie Killy she was thirty three. She's been missing from
Bellingen on the Mid North Coast since nineteen eighty nine.
Her body's never been found. I could go on and
on and on. There's literally dozens of case.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
But general are we're just seeing patterns when there might
not be one. You know how humans really like to
seek patterns and find those kind of things that look linked,
when really they might not be.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
Why are we thinking that all of these have a connection.
Speaker 7 (17:23):
When you think about the string that's linking all of
these cases women who have gone missing while hitchhiking or
walking or traveling to another place. That's obviously a very
broad term, but I don't think that doesn't mean it's
not a pattern, particularly when you consider the fact that
when you compare how many women have gone missing along
the stretch of the New South Wales coastline. You just
(17:44):
don't see that kind of concentration of missing and murdered
women anywhere else in the country anywhere for that kind
of population geography, that span of time. To give you
an example, in the whole of Tasmania, there's less than
ten cases and we're talking over sixty in this one area.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Why is this only being discussed now though we mentioned
some of these cases date back more than thirty years.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
Why now because technology, forensics, investigative techniques, they've come so
far in the last few years alone. I mean, we're
learning new things every day. A lot of these cases
weren't thoroughly investigated or properly investigated at the time, sometimes
because they just didn't have the resources or the technology
to do so. I mean, we're seeing so many cold
(18:30):
cases being solved. One that comes to mind recently is
the Easy Street murders in Melbourne that was from nineteen
seventy seven, and that is a really highly publicized case.
You know, everyone in Melbourne knows that story. The two
sues that were murdered in their house, a little boy
that was left crying in the middle of their dead bodies.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Horrific story.
Speaker 7 (18:50):
They've got a man in custody all these years later,
decades later because of DNA, because of DNA that is
now able to be traced and tracked back to people
all these decades later. So I think the reason that
we're talking about it now is because some of these
cases need to be reinvestigated with fresh twenty twenty four eyes,
because you never know what you're going to find. You're
(19:11):
never going to know what we're going to be able
to solve with everything that's at our fingertips. And we
also know so much more about serial offenders now than
we did back then. We've just got so much more
knowledge in the police force, so we definitely need to
go back. We need to go back and look at
these cases with fresh eyes.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Well, speaking of the police force, obviously these are cold cases,
and cold cases are never officially closed, but as you mentioned,
they might not be being investigated to the extent that
we would hope or that we would presume that they
are investigated, especially if they're beyond thirty years old. But
obviously New South Wales police know more than any of
us about all of these cases. What have they said
about this alleged linking of all of them.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
They have released a statement it's not as exciting as
you might expect. It says there is no evidence to
indicate a common offender was responsible for the disappearance. They've
said that the matters remain under investigation by the State
Crime Commands, Homicide Squad, Unsolved Homicide Team that's a mouthful,
and the Missing Person Registry as part of recent recommendation
(20:09):
that were handed down by a Special Commission of Inquiry.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
So they're reviewing all.
Speaker 7 (20:13):
Unsolved cases every two years, which is amazing. It does
mean each of these cases are getting fresh eyes, but
there are so many cases, so we've just got to
hope that they're getting the attention that they deserve.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
We don't want to alarm people, but we do want
to arm them. So if you find yourself along the
New South Wales Northern coast, please be careful and be
aware of your surroundings. Laura says she wants women to know, though,
that their experiences aren't just fine, and to ignore the
gas lighting that comes with reporting them.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
I've noticed people were more likely to come to me
than they were to call crime stoppers, and that is
us systematically as women being taught that, oh, it's probably nothing.
You're being over dramatic, you're overreacting, you're being hysterical. And
so even with me with the incident in two thousand
and eight, I played it down to well, he let
(21:04):
me out of the van, so he couldn't be well,
I've lent a lot of people out of his car too.
So we kind of gaslight ourselves, and we also go
to people who are meant to help us that also
gas light us and make us feel like we're being idiots.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
And so I think that that needs to change. I
think that there needs to.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Be a safe space to be able to discuss these
issues and what I wanted to achieve. Often we hear
these different separate stories, but this is hundreds of women
and hundreds of close goals that you're seeing in these
comments sections, And maybe when you see that volume altogether,
you start to realize, Okay, this is a really big issue.
Can we get it now? Like we need to do
(21:45):
something about this. Women aren't feeling safe.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Thanks for taking the time to feed your mind with
us today. The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy
and our executive producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by
Teag and Sadler.
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