by Justine Ford
Missing You
Australia’s Most Mysterious Missing Persons Cases
Justine Ford
To Darren, with all my love
I have been involved in the investigation of homicides and suspicious disappearances for twenty-three years. Those people who go missing in suspicious circumstances are very difficult to investigate. There is no body and no resolution for families. Investigations are like a large jigsaw; you often have many or most of the pieces. This book to some extent is about finding the missing piece. Justine Ford is very well respected within law enforcement agencies in Australia and has been a great supporter of this type of work, having been a reporter on the television production Australia’s Most Wanted. I urge you to take the time to read the stories; they are fascinating – and you may have the missing link.
Ron Iddles (APM)
Detective Senior Sergeant
Homicide Squad
Melbourne
Preface
By Bruce Morcombe (father of Daniel Morcombe)
A missing person. What does that really mean and what impact does it have on the family and friends of those left behind?
Do you hold the key to helping a family just like ours? I encourage people everywhere to educate themselves about issues related to missing persons. Reading this book will colour in a faint outline that most Australians have about this devastating void in people’s lives. Being observant and trusting your instincts, and reporting events, sightings or news to police, may make a huge difference.
Make no mistake, the daily impact this has on you is something I can only describe as worse than hell itself. Your mind cannot help but run wild with every conceivable thought. In spite of your desire to imagine that your loved one is in a safe location enjoying themselves, those dreams are simply swamped with pain and anguish from the haunting silence.
Unresolved loss is a description often used to illustrate a place of immeasurable hurt when we talk about a missing person. No funeral, no final goodbye, no answers, often no obvious reason, no finality. Family and friends simply do not know how to react. How do you address family Christmas cards and how does one talk to people known to the missing person? How do you update your family tree? For almost eight years we too had no answers.
In our travels around the country focusing our energy on child safety initiatives as part of the Daniel Morcombe Foundation’s aim, it is quite amazing how many people suffering similar grief have approached us. Reliving the loss of a friend or family member often years, even decades, later, they are still crushed by constant questions that have never been answered. But you know they all have something in common: they will never give up that search!
If you are someone who for whatever reason has ‘gone missing’, please acknowledge your wellbeing to the AFP so that their work can concentrate on other cases that are clearly of a more serious nature. If you have seen or hold news about someone since they were reported missing, please contact the AFP and report that.
Most of all, remember that life’s challenges are limitless. Seeking help before it sends you into a dark place is vital. Make the most of each and every day. Life is short.
Bruce Morcombe
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface by Bruce Morcombe
Introduction
Chapter 1 Who Killed Kath? – The murder of missing mum Kath Bergamin
Chapter 2 The Girl Who Would be Famous – The street abduction of teenager Siriyakorn ‘Bung’ Siriboon
Chapter 3 French Resistance – The bizarre vanishing act of Frenchman Antoine Herran
Chapter 4 Smile, Have a Nice Life – The dead man’s calling card
Chapter 5 Last Words – The case of the missing counsellor, Christine Redford
Chapter 6 Concrete Slippers – The resurfacing of Silvan Dam Man
Chapter 7 Matching the Missing and the Dead – A forensic odontologist’s story
Chapter 8 Epsom Road’s Lady of the Night – The body in the backyard
Chapter 9 The Long White Cloud to the Final Frontier – The disappearance of Kiwi traveller Jamie Herdman
Chapter 10 Three Strikes – The story of Raechel Betts, the girl with the floral tattoo
Chapter 11 Be Prepared – Boy scouts find bones in the bush
Chapter 12 A Mother’s Tears – The country town abduction of teenager Jessica Small
Chapter 13 The Kinglake Coincidence – The confusing case of the Kinglake bodies
Chapter 14 Digging Up the Truth – The search for Terry Floyd
Chapter 15 Find My Family – The quest to find out who loved Perth’s Mystery Man
Chapter 16 Babe in Arms – The kidnapping of toddler Cheryl Grimmer
Chapter 17 The Mad, the Bad and the Hag – The legend of the Beechworth Skeleton
Chapter 18 Laura, Look at the Moon – Where is Laura Haworth?
Chapter 19 Two Alight, One Extinguished – The disappearance and death of Daniel Morcombe
Chapter 20 Gone, but Not Forgotten – The abduction and presumed murder of Linda Stilwell
Chapter 21 Who is Fred Marriott? – Identifying a missing sailor
Chapter 22 Prelude to a Murder – The mystery of the man in the mud
Chapter 23 Fix It If You Can – Danny Walker, the man who wanted to come home
Chapter 24 The Sharp-dressed Man of Rotten Row – A fifty-year-old mystery solved
Chapter 25 The Runaway – A brother’s forty-year crusade to find his missing sister
Picture Section
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Imprint
Introduction
The vast, sweltering outback of the Northern Territory was the backdrop to one of Australia’s most famous missing persons cases – the disappearance in 2001 of British backpacker Peter Falconio.
Bradley John Murdoch was subsequently found guilty of the young Brit’s murder, and was sentenced to life in prison. There are still many unanswered questions about the twenty-eight-year-old’s disappearance, however, the most crucial one is: where is Peter’s body?
More than thirty years before Peter Falconio disappeared, there was baby Azaria Chamberlain, whose mother Lindy was wrongly jailed after her nine-week-old daughter was taken by a dingo at Uluru. To observers, the outback seemed to play a part in her mysterious disappearance – as though its beauty had somehow lured her family to this cruel fate.
There have been other famous missing persons cases in Australia of course, including the disappearance of former prime minister Harold Holt; the abduction of Adelaide’s Beaumont children; the murder of Kings Cross socialite Juanita Nielson; and of course, the disappearance of Sunshine Coast teenager Daniel Morcombe.
Not all missing people are so well known, however, and with the passage of time the public tends to forget their faces – but their families never do. Often, the first person they think about when they wake up in the morning is the same person they think about before they go to sleep at night – the one who isn’t there.
This book is an attempt to remember some of those much-loved missing people, and to help police find out where they are and what has become of them.
In Australia, 35,000 people go missing every year – that’s one every fifteen minutes. Fortunately, about 99 per cent of them turn up.
Most missing persons cases are not suspicious. Teenage runaways, absconders from psychiatric facilities and elderly people with dementia are often reported missing, along with people whose relationships have broken down, lost bushwalkers, and those who have drowned or committed suicide.
In this book, you will read about missing persons cases involving abductions, faked disappearances, murders, suicides, and disappearances that continue to defy explanat
ion. All the cases have twists and turns, and most are begging to be solved. Many of the chapters contain new, previously unpublished information and photos – so please, read carefully, and look closely.
Besides trying to find those who have vanished, another important role of the missing persons investigator is to help give names to unidentified bodies. There is much information within these pages about some of Australia’s most fascinating cases of unidentified remains and again, police hope that you hold the key.
If you have any information that could help police, please phone Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Stay safe.
Justine Ford
July 2012
Chapter 1
Who killed Kath?
The murder of missing mum Kath Bergamin
‘She was honest, friendly, hard working and an extremely devoted mum. But I have no doubt she’s met with foul play …’
Detective Sergeant Damian Jackson, Victoria Police Homicide Squad
Kath Bergamin shot herself in the head, but she didn’t want to die.
The bullet from the twenty-two-calibre rifle penetrated her soft pallet but missed her brain, miraculously allowing doctors to treat her without surgery. The depressed but loving mum eventually recovered and, for the first time in years, began to look forward to the future.
But not everyone was thrilled about Kath’s new lease on life and they made it their mission to somehow finish what she started when she pulled the trigger …
•••
When Kath Bergamin was sixteen she was literally swept off her feet.
The teenager, who’d recently finished Year 11 at Wangaratta Secondary School in north-eastern Victoria, had started work at a newsagent’s when she decided to kick up her heels at a local dance. It was there that she met a tobacco farmer, twenty-year-old John Bergamin, who charmed his way into her heart.
By seventeen, the smitten Kath was pregnant, and in March 1983, she and John tied the knot. A month later, Kath gave birth to their first child, Steven.
Two more children followed – Renee, who was born in 1987, and Dylan, who came along in 1990. The young family lived in a cottage on John’s family’s tobacco farm in Cheshunt, about 60 kilometres south of Wangaratta.
John was a born farmer, having been raised on the property and taking over the operation from his parents in the late eighties, later expanding into grape growing. Kath helped out on the farm and looked after the children but according to her brother, Roger Russell, ‘she was never suited to being a farm wife’, and ‘got married a bit young because she was pregnant’.
Kath adored the kids and made them her number-one priority but as time went by, she grew increasingly unhappy. ‘Witness accounts say she was unhappy with the marriage,’ says Detective Sergeant Damian Jackson from the Victoria Police Homicide Squad.
‘John was a hard worker but he’d just go away on weekends and leave her with the kids,’ Roger adds. ‘She was a very social person and found the isolation tough.’ But according to Roger, that was the least of Kath’s problems. He says John made it very clear that he never wanted her to leave the farm. ‘My sister said wherever she went he’d find her.’
As time went by, Kath turned to another man for affection. ‘She was actually having an affair with one of John’s friends,’ Roger reveals. ‘She thought she’d go off with him but it didn’t work out in the end.’
Roger believes John knew about the affair, yet to this day the men remain firm friends. Well, they do say that truth is stranger than fiction, especially in hill country. ‘Up in those country areas it can get pretty weird,’ Roger says. ‘In this case it brought out the full weirdness of the situation.’
Before the illicit relationship had ended, however, Kath’s troubles were reaching crisis point. So serious was her burgeoning depression that it led to several admissions to the psychiatric ward at Wangaratta Hospital. ‘In 1995 she was admitted involuntarily because she was delirious,’ Damian says. ‘She’d had a reaction to alcohol, marijuana and Paroxetine, an antidepressant. It was also reported that she had homicidal ideas towards her husband.’
The following year, Kath admitted herself to the hospital, complaining of insomnia and a lack of energy. She was also more worried than usual about her children. Kath was diagnosed with the manic-depressive illness bipolar affective disorder, given more antidepressants and referred to a psychiatrist, but her depression was so debilitating that it forced her back into hospital again that year. ‘I believe if she’d married happily she would never have had depression,’ Roger muses.
Kath’s unhappiness came to a head on 11 February 2002, the day she shot herself in the mouth. Remarkably she survived because when the bullet hit the back of her skull it fragmented, missing her brain. Kath was treated at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. She was then transferred to the Albert Road Clinic so that her depression could be managed. On 17 March, after an updated regimen of medication and numerous sessions with her psychiatrist, Dr Mark Johnson, Kath was discharged. At first, she stayed at her mother’s, but in April, she returned home to the farm.
‘We told her not to do it [go back to the farm] ’cos he’ll think you’re back for good,’ Kath’s brother, Roger, says. ‘But she wanted to go back for the kids. The kids were everything to her. She felt they still needed their mother and that she needed to be there for them.’
Over the next few months, Kath continued her treatment with Dr Johnson, to whom she made some alarming allegations. The Victorian Coroners Court later heard Kath had informed him that ‘over the years her husband had told her that she would never make it alive off the farm if she tried to leave him…[and] that he had pointed a firearm directly at her on at least three occasions and that he had left bullets out for her as a reminder of his threats.’
Interestingly, Dr Johnson did not confirm Kath’s early diagnosis of bipolar disorder. He believed she suffered from recurrent depression and ‘episodic hazardous drinking in relation to long standing marital difficulties’.
And it appeared those difficulties were not about to resolve any time soon.
‘Her relationship with her husband and her children deteriorated,’ Damian says, ‘and on 29 May 2002, she had an argument with her husband which caused her to flee to the home of some friends.’
The next day, the police encouraged her to apply for an interim intervention order, which was granted. ‘It was served on John and the police seized his firearms,’ Damian says. ‘He expressed anger [about that] to the attending police.’
Kath swiftly moved to a rental property and on 3 June, the intervention order was cancelled and the couple came to an agreement over finances in court.
For a while, it seemed as though Kath’s dark days were over and she rapidly transformed into a woman who wanted to live life to the full. ‘Her friends said she started to rebuild her life and that she had no more depression,’ Damian says. ‘She wanted to finish a Diploma of Commercial Services at Wangaratta TAFE and organised a field education placement at Ovens College, which she was looking forward to.
‘She was also participating in volunteer work – helping youth and people with disabilities.’
Suddenly Kath’s troubles seemed light years away.
‘And that’s when she started socialising more and seeing other men,’ Damian says. He adds that her relationships were doomed, however, because John allegedly ‘warned off’ his estranged wife’s suitors.
‘That was when we thought she’d be better off just leaving,’ Roger says, ‘going somewhere new and starting again, but she hung around for the kids.’
The Bergamins’ eldest, Steven, appeared particularly upset about what was going on. Coroner Peter White would later hear how on 5 June, Senior Constable Mick Harvey from Whitfield Police Station had casually asked the nineteen-year-old about his mother’s health and received a startling response. ‘Steven immediately became aggressive and said that she was crazy and that she wanted to leave his father but they could not afford
for her to leave. He further spoke about his plans to develop his father’s farm into a winery and that the business could not afford for her to leave, and that there was no way his father would want her to leave.’
‘The kids really didn’t understand what was going on,’ Roger says. ‘As far as they were concerned they wanted the family unit to stay as it was.
‘But,’ he continues, ‘it was a dysfunctional family unit at the best of times.’
Exactly what was going on between the Bergamins isn’t known but on 16 July 2002, Kath felt compelled to apply for a second order, which was extended on 12 August to allow for a contested hearing in early October. Kath reported an alleged breach of the interim order on the evening of 13 August to Wangaratta police, who took no further action at the time.
Then on 15 August, Kath, who’d recently moved to Brien Crescent in Wangaratta, went to see her solicitor, who mailed a letter to John’s solicitors advising that she was seeking both property settlement and spousal maintenance.
Much of what happened next isn’t known because three days later, Kath went missing.
•••
On the afternoon of Sunday 18 August 2002, after a night out socialising, Kath’s housemate Sandie drove her to a baseball game, which Kath watched while Sandie visited her mum. When Sandie came back half an hour later to pick Kath up, they did some grocery shopping then returned home.
Into the evening there was a lot of phone activity…and then nothing.
The phone records looked something like this:
At 4.38pm, John Bergamin’s mobile phone received a call from a phone box about 300 metres from Kath’s place. Eleven minutes later, John phoned Kath.
About an hour later, Kath took a call from her friend Hayley, and they arranged to catch up for a meal the following Tuesday, 20 August.
John phoned Kath again at 5.32pm. Calls between John and an associate indicated he was possibly in Wangaratta around that time.