Still Missing, Still Searching - Australian True Crime

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[00:05]
A
This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. And we're joined by Nicole Morris, who's the founder of the Australian Missing Persons Register. She joins us to talk about her new book, Lost. This Is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence. I use a stat. I don't know if it's still correct. It might be outdated. I always say to people, yes, roughly 30,000 people a year in Australia reported missing. Is that incorrect now?
[00:46]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah. The new stats are out and it's 49,000.
[00:51]
A
My God.
[00:52]
B
And the shocking figure is actually the long term missing person. So that's. Anyone missing longer than 90 days is 2,800.
[01:02]
A
Also in the book you do a really interesting chapter on. You say you call it runaways, but you make the point very early on that you don't like that term because we know in the past that sometimes police haven't perhaps jumped on an investigation early enough because they have said, it's a teenager, they've run away, they'll come back. Even though families say, please believe me, I know this child, that is not what's happening.
[01:25]
B
The reason I don't like the term also is people accuse them of being naughty and it, it trivializes the seriousness of, of a kid making a decision to maybe go and sleep in a park rather than where they're supposed to be living. And you have to think, what is going on? That's not naughty, that's desperation. So I think, you know, calling them a runaway is, is.
[01:49]
A
It's dismissive.
[01:50]
B
Yeah, it is. It really is. Yeah.
[01:52]
A
And you make the point in here too, that, you know, that it, it doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong. If young people pop up again in two days, it's still problematic that we didn't know where they were for a couple of days. And you talk to a couple of young people who were listed as missing and they'll say things like, I didn't realise I was listed as missing, or this is what happened, the chain of events and I've lost my phone. And so, you know, all of the reasons that this can happen. Nearly a quarter of Australia's homeless population are aged between 12 and 24 years. That's a lot. Isn't that awful of people who should be at home with their parents, frankly,
[02:29]
B
should have a home.
[02:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. Young people presenting alone. That is unaccompanied by a parent or a Guardian accounted for 14% of people seeking support from specialist homelessness services, that
[02:41]
B
no one is keeping them safe.
[02:42]
A
15% of people seeking support for homelessness are teenagers, young people.
[02:48]
B
Yes. Yep. On their own. Yep.
[02:51]
A
Of the 122,000, roughly people experiencing homelessness in 2021, 14% of them were aged under 12.
[03:00]
B
It breaks my heart, you know, our kids are home safe, where every child in Australia should be. They should have a bed, they should have a roof and it's not happening.
[03:09]
A
There are a lot of Australian children living in cars, living in, you know, all of these temporary situations.
[03:16]
B
Yeah.
[03:17]
A
Oh, this is a terrible one. In 2023, 8,450 children and young people seeking homelessness support had to be turned away. Yeah.
[03:27]
B
Yep. There's not enough beds. And I think one of the stories in the book, the. The girl said that, you know, if they even present at the shelter, there's a time limit on how long they're allowed to be there for. And then the. They're shuffled back out into the street and they're doing whatever they have to do to survive. And how can we be this amazing, great wealthy country that we are and allow this to happen?
[03:55]
A
Yeah. And obviously there's a correlation between homelessness and missing people who go missing, because if we don't have an address, if we don't know where you live, it's hard to keep tabs on people. And sometimes people have been missing longer than we realise.
[04:08]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, a park is not an address. And if they're choosing to run away and live in a park, if they're choosing to run away and couch surf, then, you know, how do we keep a track of them? How do we help them? How do we find them?
[04:24]
A
There's a lot of conversation and especially young people who are vulnerable if they're homeless. So that leaves them open to all sorts of problems. There's a lot of conversation around Australia at the moment about the cost of living. Have you seen, do you think, anecdotally, there has been an increase in homelessness and in the home insecurity in Australia?
[04:42]
B
I think so, yeah. I think so. I think it's certainly contributed to mental health crisises, which then leads to people going missing, to adults going missing. But, yeah, I think, and I'm quite often seeing the same kids pop up over and over again. The same, you know, they've been missing before and you recognise their name and again, missing again. And you just think, what is going on in this poor child's life to cause this. I think absolutely all of these pressures contribute to immense head pressure, immense head confusion. And that, you know, is obviously going to lead to bad choices.
[05:21]
A
And again, your book, this is the third.
[05:24]
B
Yes, yes.
[05:24]
A
So all new cases that you haven't written about before. But again, you demonstrate the variation of people who can be reported long term missing in Australia. All different ages, all different backgrounds. If we can talk about one that I had a personal connection to and I'm so glad that you wrote about him. Attila Bogart.
[05:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, Attila. It's such a mysterious case. And whoever you talk to will have a different opinion about what happened to Attila.
[05:52]
A
A phone call in the middle of the night from her panicked son kicked off a series of unexplained events for devoted mother Rosa Bogart.
[06:01]
B
That night, about half past two, he went to Sydney, 900km. It's unbelievable. I don't understand this one. That was the last word when I heard him 10th of October. Since then, I never heard anything from him. It's one of those where, you know, I think I've spoken to you about this before, that sometimes I'll write about something and I'll have a pretty good idea of what's happened. And in this case, I just, I don't know, because if I rely on the people who knew him best, like his mum and his sister, and they have different opinions from each other. Attila was an absolute genius. He was a computer genius, far, far more than I could ever imagine. One of those people who knows how it all works, how it all goes together and how to write programs and all of that kind of thing. Absolute genius. I think I said in the book. John Howard called him the greatest up and coming developer of our time, which is, is quite something. Back then when he was just a young man, he started his company in his early 20s. I guess when you have that kind of pressure on your head, it can affect you. So he did have some anxiety issues, but again, we can't just assume that that's what led to him going missing.
[07:20]
A
Also, he had mental health, mental health issues in the ran in the family. His sister suffered a, what I would term a breakdown, loosely, at some point, didn't she?
[07:29]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And she's very open about that as well. And she, you know, she recognized that her brother was probably vulnerable to that as well. And they were extremely close. They lived together. At one point, they worked together, she worked in his company. And one day he just, you know, he had been acting a Little bit strangely, but not. Nothing completely bizarre. He had a lot of pressure on him because there was some upcoming big deals that he was making with the company. He hated to drive, which I can totally relate to. I hate driving as well. And he would particularly. He hated going over brid. He would just have a panic attack to go over a bridge, really. So much so that he made his sister drive him to work. He made his mum come and get him in various places. Sometimes he'd pull the car over to the side of the road and call his mum and say, I just can't keep driving. Can you come and get me?
[08:20]
A
Okay, I didn't know that. And that makes his disappearance all the weirder to me because I. He's one of his former partners, was a very, very old friend of mine who I know you spoke to Julian Jones. And Julian and I were working together a lot when Attila went missing, and they were still very good friends. And Julian was still close to Attila's family, even though they weren't a couple anymore. So I knew that Attila's car was found somewhere weird. And so there was talk of a long drive, but I didn't realise he didn't like driving. So that does make it all the weirder, right?
[08:55]
B
It does, doesn't it? And so he didn't even like driving 10 minutes, but he got in a car and drove to New South Wales from Melbourne. And I think the car GPS indicated he may have driven as far as Noosa and then came back to Sydney. And then apparently tried to drive around Sydney looking for an old family friend. Got within a couple of streets, but couldn't remember where they lived, but didn't call them. So that was all strange as well. And so then left Sydney, drove to Wollongong. At some point in the journey, he's called Triple O and confessed to a crime that he didn't commit. Um, he confessed to taking a bribe, but Marianne has gone over all of the accounts and there is no evidence that that happened at all. And, I mean, why would you take a bribe? You know, what was it about? So then he's called his mother and he keeps saying, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm coming home, I'm coming home, I'm coming home, but didn't come home. So he stayed in a hotel in Wollongong. When I spoke to Julian, he. Julian felt that he may have met someone in that hotel at Wollongong, but he didn't know anyone down there. And then the next thing anyone knows is that his car is found Abandoned in Picton.
[10:10]
A
Now, Picton's is sort of a country area, isn't it?
[10:13]
B
Yeah. Kind of on the way back to Melbourne.
[10:15]
A
But also, would you. I imagined it the way it was described to me, as is. Was his car left, like, in a car park near where you might go hiking or something like that?
[10:24]
B
No, it was just sort of.
[10:25]
A
No.
[10:26]
B
Abandoned by the side of the road.
[10:27]
A
Okay.
[10:28]
B
So there was no car park. There was no anything. It was just sort of pulled off to the side of the road with nothing around. No buildings, no businesses, no anything at all.
[10:39]
A
Here's the thing, Nicole, I. To me, at the time, it seemed. I thought to myself, I think he has taken his own life. I think he is driven to. You know, we hear that a lot when cars are found abandoned near a national park or something. Yeah. We assume the person has walked into there and taken their own life. Julian, I don't think, ever really believed that. Did he not want to believe it or whatever? And I have to tell you that it was in reading this chapter this morning that I discovered that Julian had taken his own life in April. And I did not know that.
[11:16]
B
Yeah. Horrendous. And just a couple of days after I spoke to him.
[11:20]
A
Yeah.
[11:21]
B
Which chilled me.
[11:22]
A
Right. And it does. But again, it did remind me of how I would never in a million years have thought that Julian Jones would take his own life. And I know a lot of his friends would say the same thing. We never thought he'd leave his dogs.
[11:36]
B
Exactly.
[11:37]
A
So it does just go to show, you know, what mental health can do to people and how we oftentimes don't know what is going on inside someone's emotional life.
[11:50]
B
Exactly.
[11:52]
A
With Attila, there are so many other mysterious elements. There was another car abandoned close by. Right. To where his car was found.
[12:00]
B
Yeah. Yeah. A ute was pulled up on the other side of the road. Did that have anything to do with it?
[12:05]
A
Yeah.
[12:05]
B
And I think what struck strikes me as well is what Marianne said he took and left in the car because he would have been aware of which devices could have been tracked. And the ones that he left in the car were the devices that could have been tracked. And the ones he took with him were the ones that couldn't. Something like that.
[12:26]
A
Yeah.
[12:26]
B
It was. It was interesting. Like, of all people, Attila would have been able to figure out how to disappear, of course, and not leave a digital trace.
[12:36]
A
He's a computer genius.
[12:37]
B
Yeah. Because he was that clever. Yeah.
[12:39]
A
Yeah.
[12:39]
B
And Marianne keeps saying. She said to me things like, there's things that she's done in her life that probably, probably should have appeared on the Internet somewhere that is not there. And who is someone who would be able to do that is to, to alter, you know, digital records. Absolutely. Attila.
[12:57]
A
So she feels like she's got a guardian angel online.
[13:01]
B
Yeah, yeah. She deliberately made the birth of her twins. She. She put that as a public post because she wanted him to see it, if he is still out there. So she has this theory that perhaps the government has taken him. You know, I don't want to say by force because that sounds like he's been abducted by the government, but you know, he has been conscripted perhaps to work for the government in some sort of high end military computer capacity. And I'm not explaining that very well because this is not anything I know anything about.
[13:39]
A
Me neither.
[13:40]
B
But that's.
[13:41]
A
I hear what you're saying.
[13:41]
B
She has said to me.
[13:42]
A
Yeah, well, I wanted to add to that. I mean, I don't know about that. That is a big conspiracy. That's a very big idea. But also, in the days after his disappearance, there were a lot of weird phone calls to his mum's house, right?
[13:55]
B
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And some of those mysteries were solved, like he, he made a mysterious phone call and then a security device arrived for his mum. So in those, in those moments, like he was sort of having moments, it's not as if he was planning, you know, he was just crazy and distressed. He was planning very much that he wanted his mum to be safe. So he ordered her a particular device that arrived in the mail. And so she goes, oh, that's what that phone call was about. But he then asked her for money for accommodation, but he wanted cash for that, so why wasn't he going to use a card for that? So again, is he sort of trying to stay under the radar?
[14:37]
A
I tell you what, I'm not gonna dismiss the conspiracy theory by the way, because what it's making me think of is the Prisoner X book by Raphael Epstein and the documentary about that, which was about, you know, a young man who, who went overseas to Israel to fight in the army and became like a secret agent. And there was all sorts of stuff in that story that has, since we've since found out to be true, that you would never have believed in a million years. So, yeah, I don't want you or anyone else to think that I'm. That I think that's a crazy idea because I'm open to anything when it comes to missing people.
[15:12]
B
I wouldn't Have a clue. I don't know anything about that. You know, I, I would assume that we're a sophisticated enough country to have those kind of digital defenses and, and be prepared for any kind of cyber security attack. And you've got to have people working on that, and you've got to have people who are not going to reveal state secrets and all of that kind of thing. So I imagine it's possible when it
[15:36]
A
comes to missing people, you have to keep an open mind. I mean, detectives say that about every kind of investigation, but I think in this area, yeah, you absolutely have to. The other side of missing people, you know, one side of it is families desperately seeking knowledge, understanding of where their person has gone. The other side, of course, is unidentified remains. We know that. I think, again, I might be out of touch with my stats, but I think. Think there were about 500 sets of unidentified remains around Australia.
[16:07]
B
750.
[16:08]
A
750. God, I'm way behind.
[16:10]
B
750, 300 in Sydney alone. I just went and looked that up again because I was like, was that, Is that actually true? That's just. And it's horrifying. So I. I'm making appeals for people that have already been found, right? Without a doubt. I'm making appeals this week for people who have. Have been found years ago, and we just don't know because for whatever reason, they haven't been identified.
[16:34]
A
I remember speaking to people from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, maybe last year or the year before, about this very topic, because that's where they hold our unidentified remains in Victoria until they can identify them. And they were saying that we're getting better as a nation in terms of looking at all those records and joining the pieces together and finding them. But if you are a person who has a missing person in your family, it's important that you go and give your DNA again, because as DNA technology changes, there are different pathways to making those connections, right?
[17:10]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's. It's crucial because, you know, how cruel would it be to. To have someone even wait an hour longer than they need to. And these people are probably waiting years to find out the most important piece of news they'll ever hear in their lives because of What, a little $5 DNA test? It's. It can't be that expensive to get this done.
[17:32]
A
You write specifically in this book about the Aluka skeleton. What can you tell us about that?
[17:37]
B
Oh, it's. I still can't believe I've been making appeals for him for so long. And I Can't believe I still am to the point where I thought, well, I have to put him in the book because it's been so many years. So in 2003, skeletal remains were found in the rainforest reserve at Iluku beach in New South Wales, which is a very pretty spot. But sadly, it looks like this young man had taken his own life. The police I spoke to said, you know, we never say that definitively unless we have absolute proof, but it appears that way, that he has taken his own life. And he appeared to be a young man, late teens, early 20s, from what the forensic anthropologists could figure out. And all we have is the clothes that he was wearing, which was a pair of jeans and some quicksilver board shorts over that and a T shirt, and that's it. And no one has come forward to say, hey, I think that's my son, my brother, my nephew. He is unidentified. So how, how does that happen in all of this time? And Graham Burke, who is the fantastic police officer who has really taken this case to heart, and he has been the one asking me to keep making these appeals year after year. So I've gotten to know him very well because we've been doing it for years. And so I spoke to him for the book. He's a fantastic police officer and has had some really interesting cases as well. And he's just desperate to know he's retired now and this case stays with him because it's. Someone out there must know who this poor kid is.
[19:12]
A
It's horrible, isn't it? We've got one in Victoria as well we call the Purple Scarf man and he. Similar story.
[19:18]
B
Oh, yes, yes.
[19:19]
A
Yeah, right. Appears to have taken his own life and was wearing a very distinctive purple scarf. And again, the people at VIFM have, every single year they put out as much information as they can to try and help somebody connect the dots and know that this is the person that they no doubt have been looking for for decades. Tell us about Dylan Walsh. I was really interested to read about that story in this book because again, you've gone back to sort of the beginning of your work in missing persons a lot in this book, which is really good, really interesting. And Dylan Walsh is a man who, who managed to find it and make that connection, isn't he?
[19:59]
B
Exactly, exactly. And this is entirely your fault, by the way, because the last time we spoke, you said to me, you need to. I was really excited when you put more of yourself into this book. So I had that in my head when I wrote this one. Michelle Said I should put more of me into this. So there you go. He's a little bit more of my story. And, and Dylan was very inspirational to me because he was just so tenacious when he, he was just so sure that the remains that he was reading about were his aunt Susan Eisenhood, and her murder is still unsolved. She was found in Possum Brush. And again, that's a connection with me because where she was found was just a few kilometers from where I grew up as a teenager. So I was there in 1987, I think she was found. I was 17 and just a few kilometers away. And I would have taken an interest in it. I would have read about it in the news, seen it on our local TV and thought, oh, wow, that's okay, that's a bit weird that there's a body that's been found in the bush. And Dylan was so sure that this set of remains could have been his aunt. And he just kept pushing and pushing the police to the point where they really took on quite a major undertaking in flying the remains to America so that they could be identified. Because at that time when that all happened, that was around the time I started the register. So 2005, something like that, 2004, that they could be identified over there. And he was right, he was absolutely right that they were his missing aunt. Like, how do you. He just must have had some sort of sixth sense. How do you, how do you connect that? Because she didn't go missing in Possum Brush. She went missing in Newcastle. So. And, and I'm still in touch with Dylan today. I spoke to him a couple of months ago because we had a new witness that I found in the local area who may have known someone. Who may have known someone. So, yeah, we're still kind of still working on some connections there.
[21:55]
A
Absolutely. Because it's still an unknown crime, it's still an unsolved crime. But yeah, his story is, is so encouraging, isn't it? In the world of missing persons, unfortunately, we, I feel like we don't get a lot of after when people have been missing for that really short period of time, as you said earlier, 90 days, it tends to be a long term missing. It's fascinating, isn't it, that after that short period of time it tends to be. Yeah, forever.
[22:20]
B
Exactly, exactly. You, you just can't fathom. And you don't know either. Sort of. There was a Toowoomba case I don't know if you heard about a couple of weeks ago that the tragic Case of the young mum who was killed in Toowoomba, who went missing and where she was found is an absolute miracle that anyone found her. She, I, there is, I cannot fathom how she was actually found within a week she was found in a really remote place not far from where I live. So, you know, sort of a place where no one would go but she just happened to be stumbled over. So it's a miracle that more people are not long term missing persons. When you just think how easy it is to conceal remains here.
[23:07]
A
I mean, I think I know the answer to this question because you keep updating the stats on me, but I was gonna say, you know, how are people still going missing? Basically I was thinking now we're all tracked by everything. We're all, we've got cameras everywhere, you know, is it easier to find people? But I guess not. The stats would say no.
[23:26]
B
I think people are always going to go missing. I think, I don't think that there will ever be a time where I can sort of tick off every box on the register. It's just not going to happen because we live in a world where, you know, there's so many different reasons why people are going missing. We live on a big island with cliffs and oceans and bushland and there's always going to be somebody going missing and, and I think that's part of it as well. It's as civilized and populated as Australia is. There's still a lot of vastness out there. I was speaking with a radio station in Western Australia today and she was saying, oh, is there a lot of people in the Pilbara and Kimberley areas that go missing? And there are because it's just vast with no, no one. There's no communities, there's no businesses, there's no towns and it's, and it's easy to go missing in certain places in
[24:17]
A
Australia and it's super camouflage. We've learned that the Australian outback really camouflages everything, every colour, every, you know, you think you would spot a bright orange T shirt but when it's out there you don't.
[24:28]
B
Yep, exactly right. And, and people can, can be concealed in the tiniest of places.
[24:34]
A
I've had an awful thought lately, Nicole and I want to see what you think about it. It just suddenly dawned on me. I wonder how many long term missing children actually died at home in an accident or when I say accident, you know, actually the people in their family know exactly what happened to them but they are part of the long term missing statistics of children. Am I You know, paranoid. What do you think about that?
[25:04]
B
I think there's certainly some that I look at. We don't have a lot of missing children in Australia, which is a really good thing.
[25:11]
A
Good.
[25:12]
B
There are certainly some that I look at that I. That are probably in that number. But I think most of the missing children in Australia, the police have a pretty good idea of what's happened to them, what's gone on. It's fairly well known. So if, if they're, if they were taken by a predator, the police know exactly who that is. But for the ones that, it's kind of, there's an area of mystery. Like there's a couple in Sydney that I would say you're probably along the, the right lines of. So they are, they, they're kind of going, well, okay, yes, my child has gone missing, but they're not really. But yeah.
[25:50]
A
And it'd be hard to do a proper investigation if the family's not telling you the truth about things. But I want to make it very clear that I'm not referring to little Bradford Foley, the golden boy who you open the book with. Beautiful, precious little boy, whose mom was. A lot of people held a lot of suspicion around his mum and they're an Aboriginal family. And you discuss with a number of friends and family of his that there does feel like a racial element. For one thing, there's a $100,000 reward for information around Bradford Foley's disappearance, whereas there's generally a 500,000 to a million dollar reward for other similar situations. So that's one element of it. And the other element of it is a suggestion that their mum was, was abusive. And the behaviour that is described within those allegations, I have to say sounds a lot like my childhood, which was not described as abusive. Mine, my childhood was growing up in the 70s and 80s where you did get smacked, you did get flames, you did get a. Yeah, you did get a thong thrown at you if you were too far down the backyard, you know. So I, I hate to say I think there is a bit of a racial element here, but what do you think about that little boy? We really, we're really looking for remains when it comes to Bradford, aren't we?
[27:10]
B
Absolutely. And I think, you know, I think I've come awfully close in his chapter to figuring out what went on if, if we actually believe the witnesses that have come forward. Sadly, his sister is no longer with us to keep that going forward. And, you know, it's just a shattered family and there's another sibling who I'VE been speaking to just in the past week, who I wasn't able to contact when I was writing the book. And she described to me how she. The police made her feel like her mum did kill her little brother. And so she felt that for a long time. And she was in tears when I was saying to her on the phone, no, I don't think that's what happened at all. I think it was a completely different direction. And if we are to believe the witnesses that have come forward and they have. They have gone to police as well, but, you know, for whatever reason, that hasn't. They've not had enough evidence to act on it. He could well be not very far away from where he disappeared at all.
[28:13]
A
Yeah, his mum was very seriously investigated by police. The garden was excavated, all those sorts of things. And. And police actually made a statement, didn't they, at some point to say they don't believe his mum was involved in his death?
[28:25]
B
They had to. The coroner had to finally say that.
[28:28]
A
Right. Okay. Yeah. There are a couple of men in the mix that other kids have. Have nominated.
[28:34]
B
Yep, exactly. Exactly. I think there's a lot of evil people in the world. That's what I. Not just Brad's chapter, but several chapters that I was writing in the book. And I'm listening to these horrific stories and thinking, there are so many. There are evil, evil people in the world. And I don't. You don't think that you come across them very often in your general life, but they're out there. They are very much out there and they are targeting people and they are getting to know people who have these children in their lives and getting close to families with these children for that specific purpose. And it's not just happening in movies. This is happening in our lives. And it's. It's unbelievable and it's horrific to listen to and it. And it shatters these lives. You know, these people that have. That have come forward to give me this information. And now this has been decades that they've been living with this. And they. They live with this pain for their whole lives.
[29:35]
A
Yeah. We've learned a lot about ambiguous loss through your work and the work of Lauren o' Keefe and other people who have dedicated themselves to missing persons and the families looking for them. And it's one of those weird areas that I learned wasn't supported. You know, you think a loved one goes missing that all sorts of agencies would swing into action to support you and to look, and then you realize, no, that is not the case. If they don't think they've committed a crime or they don't think a crime's been committed against them, nobody's helping you look.
[30:08]
B
Exactly. And it's almost the opposite. It's almost difficult. In the book, if you read Michael Graham's chapter, he's his wife, while he was still missing, she was just. All she wanted to do was take their little girl to New Zealand for Christmas and she couldn't, because when you take a child out of the country, you need both parents permission and one of those parents was not there. So just that little act. And just imagine her sitting on the floor of the passport office, sobbing, because she said, I just need a passport. I just need to take my daughter to her family for Christmas. I can't get his signature because he's not here. She couldn't even put a notice in the paper about a memorial service because they said, oh, no, we need a funeral notice. We need the notice from the funeral director. And she said, there isn't one because he's missing. And missing doesn't fit any boxes. Missing is not dead or alive. Missing is in the middle. And that's the ambiguous part of the ambiguous loss. It's not alive and it's not dead. And so it doesn't fit government forms.
[31:16]
A
I mean, for life's work, even though you're working in sadness a lot, you are part of that support system that's sprung up around these people. So well done, you. And it's the Missing Persons Register, isn't it, that we can follow you on Facebook, keep up to date with you and buy your books.
[31:33]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely.
[31:34]
A
The book is called Lost. More True Stories From Families of Australian Missing Persons by Nicole Morris. Thank you so much.
[31:40]
B
Thank you very much, Michelle.
[31:46]
A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org AU. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org AU.
[32:17]
B
The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.

Summary6 min read

Australian True Crime: “Still Missing, Still Searching”
Host: Meshel Laurie
Guest: Nicole Morris (Founder, Australian Missing Persons Register; Author of “Lost”)
Date: August 9, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Meshel Laurie interviews Nicole Morris, a prominent advocate for missing persons in Australia and author of the book “Lost.” Together, they discuss the alarming scope of missing persons cases, the complex intersections with homelessness, individual stories behind long-term disappearances, issues of ambiguous loss for families, the role of technology and forensic identification, and the societal factors contributing to Australia’s missing persons crisis. The conversation draws deeply from lived experience, case studies, and Nicole’s own extensive investigative work.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Statistics: A Growing Crisis

Rising Numbers: Nicole reveals that the annual number of reported missing persons in Australia has increased from 30,000 to 49,000 per year, with 2,800 classified as long-term missing (over 90 days).

“The new stats are out and it’s 49,000... The shocking figure is actually the long-term missing person. That’s... 2,800.” – Nicole (00:45)
Demographics: There is a significant overlap with youth homelessness; almost 25% of the nation’s homeless are aged 12-24 (02:01), and 14% under 12.

“Nearly a quarter of Australia’s homeless population are aged between 12 and 24 years. That’s a lot. Isn’t that awful?” – Meshel (01:51)

The Problem with “Runaway”

Language & Stigma: Nicole critiques the use of the word “runaway” as dismissive and trivializing, arguing that youth leaving home often reflects desperation, not mere misbehavior.

“Calling them a runaway... is dismissive. It trivializes the seriousness... That’s not naughty, that’s desperation.” – Nicole (01:24-01:50)

Homelessness, Vulnerabilities, and Systemic Failures

Support Shortfalls: The system cannot meet demand—over 8,000 children and youth were turned away from homelessness services in 2023 (03:16).

“If they even present at the shelter, there’s a time limit...you’re shuffled back out into the street... How can we be this amazing, great wealthy country... and allow this to happen?” – Nicole (03:26)
Connection to Missing Persons: Homeless people, particularly youth, often “disappear” in systems—difficult to track and thus, more vulnerable to going missing.

“A park is not an address... how do we keep a track of them? How do we help them? How do we find them?” – Nicole (04:07)
Cost of Living Pressures: Nicole connects broader economic stress to a spike in both homelessness and adults going missing, noting repeat cases involving the same young people (04:41).

Case Studies Highlighted

The Disappearance of Attila Bogart (05:44–13:55)

Background: Attila, a technology prodigy and founder acclaimed by national leaders, disappears under mysterious circumstances.
Mental Health: Attila faced anxiety and history of mental illness in the family. His strong aversion to driving—especially over bridges—makes his disappearance particularly odd, as his last actions involved long, erratic road trips across states.
Final Movements: Car found abandoned in rural Picton with no clear indication of his fate, adding to the puzzle as he was highly tech-savvy and took steps to remain untraceable.
Conspiracy Theories: Attila’s sister theorizes he was possibly conscripted for government work (“conspiracy theory, but I’m open to anything when it comes to missing people.” – Meshel, 14:36), noting that he left behind only trackable devices, suggesting knowledge of how to vanish in the digital age.
Impact of Mental Health: The discussion is shadowed by the recent suicide of Julian Jones, Attila’s friend, illustrating the hidden struggles even among the apparently resilient.

“How we oftentimes don’t know what is going on inside someone’s emotional life.” – Meshel (11:36) “He would have been able to figure out how to disappear, of course, and not leave a digital trace.” – Nicole (12:26)

The Unidentified: Aluka Skeleton and “Purple Scarf Man” (17:31–19:19)

Unidentified Remains: As many as 750 sets of unidentified remains exist in Australia, 300 in Sydney alone (16:06), highlighting the gap between found remains and families seeking closure.

“750, 300 in Sydney alone ... I’m making appeals for people who have already been found years ago, and we just don’t know.” – Nicole (16:09)
The Aluka Skeleton: Remains belonging to a young man, likely aged late teens/early 20s, found in 2003 at Iluku beach, remain unidentified after two decades despite public appeals.
DNA Appeals: Nicole underscores the importance for families to submit DNA samples as technology advances, shortening wait times for identification.

Dylan Walsh’s Story—Finding Susan Eisenhood (19:19–21:54)

Persistence Pays: Dylan Walsh’s determination led to the identification of his aunt, Susan Eisenhood, whose remains were mislocated miles from her disappearance, exemplifying the need for tenacity in long-term cases.

Systemic Issues, Ambiguous Loss, and the Limits of Support

Barriers for Families

Lack of Official Recognition: Families of long-term missing struggle with bureaucratic obstacles—unable to get passports, place memorials, or access full support due to the undefined status of “missing.”

“Missing doesn’t fit any boxes. Missing is not dead or alive, missing is in the middle. And that’s the ambiguous part of ambiguous loss.” – Nicole (30:08)

The Australian Landscape: Hiding in Plain Sight

Vastness and Camouflage: Australia’s geography (outback, bushland, remote towns) makes it uniquely easy for people (and remains) to “vanish,” despite the proliferation of surveillance.

“The Australian outback really camouflages everything, every colour... you think you would spot a bright orange T-shirt, but when it’s out there you don’t.” – Meshel (24:17)

Racial Bias and the Case of Bradford Foley (25:50–28:34)

Disparities in Response: The disappearance of Aboriginal boy Bradford Foley surfaces concerns about institutional racism, including a comparatively low reward and greater suspicion of his family versus non-Indigenous cases.

“For one thing... a $100,000 reward... generally a 500,000 to a million dollar reward for other similar situations... I hate to say, I think there is a bit of a racial element here.” – Meshel (25:50)
Underlying Prejudice: Social norms and definitions of “abuse” are filtered through a biased lens; actions described as abusive in Indigenous families mirror non-criminalized behaviors in white families from similar eras.
Family Suspicion and Police: The mother was seriously investigated and ultimately cleared, though alternative suspects remain, showing the difficulties and long-term trauma for families—especially with unresolved cases and ambiguous witness statements.

Notable Quotes & Key Moments with Timestamps

“The new stats are out and it’s 49,000.” – Nicole (00:45)
“Calling them a runaway is dismissive... That’s not naughty, that’s desperation.” – Nicole (01:24)
“How can we be this amazing, great wealthy country... and allow this to happen?” – Nicole (03:26)
“A park is not an address... how do we help them? How do we find them?” – Nicole (04:07)
“You recognize their name... missing again. And you just think, what is going on in this poor child’s life to cause this.” – Nicole (04:41)
“He would have been able to figure out how to disappear, of course, and not leave a digital trace.” – Nicole on Attila (12:26)
“750, 300 in Sydney alone... horrifying. I’m making appeals for people who have already been found years ago, and we just don’t know.” – Nicole (16:09)
“Missing doesn’t fit any boxes... not dead or alive...” – Nicole on ambiguous loss (30:08)
“I hate to say, I think there is a bit of a racial element here.” – Meshel on Bradford Foley (25:50)
“There are evil, evil people in the world.” – Nicole (28:34)

Conclusion & Call to Action

The episode concludes with Meshel and Nicole acknowledging both the challenges and advances in the field of missing persons, emphasizing the importance of support, advocacy, and recognizing the humanity behind the statistics. Nicole’s work (through the Australian Missing Persons Register and her books) provides vital awareness and emotional support to affected families, and she encourages continued engagement through social media and community action.

Follow Up & Resources

Australian Missing Persons Register: [Facebook page]
Nicole Morris’s Book: “Lost: More True Stories from Families of Australian Missing Persons”
Support Contacts:
- Lifeline: 13 11 14
- 1800 Respect
- 13 Yarn (For Indigenous Australians)

This episode is a compelling, empathetic exploration of the realities faced by families and investigators in Australia’s long-term missing persons crisis, combining personal stories, expert insight, and a sobering look at the gaps in both perception and systemic response.

Loading summary

Transcript106 lines

[00:05]
A
This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. And we're joined by Nicole Morris, who's the founder of the Australian Missing Persons Register. She joins us to talk about her new book, Lost. This Is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence. I use a stat. I don't know if it's still correct. It might be outdated. I always say to people, yes, roughly 30,000 people a year in Australia reported missing. Is that incorrect now?
[00:46]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah. The new stats are out and it's 49,000.
[00:51]
A
My God.
[00:52]
B
And the shocking figure is actually the long term missing person. So that's. Anyone missing longer than 90 days is 2,800.
[01:02]
A
Also in the book you do a really interesting chapter on. You say you call it runaways, but you make the point very early on that you don't like that term because we know in the past that sometimes police haven't perhaps jumped on an investigation early enough because they have said, it's a teenager, they've run away, they'll come back. Even though families say, please believe me, I know this child, that is not what's happening.
[01:25]
B
The reason I don't like the term also is people accuse them of being naughty and it, it trivializes the seriousness of, of a kid making a decision to maybe go and sleep in a park rather than where they're supposed to be living. And you have to think, what is going on? That's not naughty, that's desperation. So I think, you know, calling them a runaway is, is.
[01:49]
A
It's dismissive.
[01:50]
B
Yeah, it is. It really is. Yeah.
[01:52]
A
And you make the point in here too, that, you know, that it, it doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong. If young people pop up again in two days, it's still problematic that we didn't know where they were for a couple of days. And you talk to a couple of young people who were listed as missing and they'll say things like, I didn't realise I was listed as missing, or this is what happened, the chain of events and I've lost my phone. And so, you know, all of the reasons that this can happen. Nearly a quarter of Australia's homeless population are aged between 12 and 24 years. That's a lot. Isn't that awful of people who should be at home with their parents, frankly,
[02:29]
B
should have a home.
[02:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. Young people presenting alone. That is unaccompanied by a parent or a Guardian accounted for 14% of people seeking support from specialist homelessness services, that
[02:41]
B
no one is keeping them safe.
[02:42]
A
15% of people seeking support for homelessness are teenagers, young people.
[02:48]
B
Yes. Yep. On their own. Yep.
[02:51]
A
Of the 122,000, roughly people experiencing homelessness in 2021, 14% of them were aged under 12.
[03:00]
B
It breaks my heart, you know, our kids are home safe, where every child in Australia should be. They should have a bed, they should have a roof and it's not happening.
[03:09]
A
There are a lot of Australian children living in cars, living in, you know, all of these temporary situations.
[03:16]
B
Yeah.
[03:17]
A
Oh, this is a terrible one. In 2023, 8,450 children and young people seeking homelessness support had to be turned away. Yeah.
[03:27]
B
Yep. There's not enough beds. And I think one of the stories in the book, the. The girl said that, you know, if they even present at the shelter, there's a time limit on how long they're allowed to be there for. And then the. They're shuffled back out into the street and they're doing whatever they have to do to survive. And how can we be this amazing, great wealthy country that we are and allow this to happen?
[03:55]
A
Yeah. And obviously there's a correlation between homelessness and missing people who go missing, because if we don't have an address, if we don't know where you live, it's hard to keep tabs on people. And sometimes people have been missing longer than we realise.
[04:08]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, a park is not an address. And if they're choosing to run away and live in a park, if they're choosing to run away and couch surf, then, you know, how do we keep a track of them? How do we help them? How do we find them?
[04:24]
A
There's a lot of conversation and especially young people who are vulnerable if they're homeless. So that leaves them open to all sorts of problems. There's a lot of conversation around Australia at the moment about the cost of living. Have you seen, do you think, anecdotally, there has been an increase in homelessness and in the home insecurity in Australia?
[04:42]
B
I think so, yeah. I think so. I think it's certainly contributed to mental health crisises, which then leads to people going missing, to adults going missing. But, yeah, I think, and I'm quite often seeing the same kids pop up over and over again. The same, you know, they've been missing before and you recognise their name and again, missing again. And you just think, what is going on in this poor child's life to cause this. I think absolutely all of these pressures contribute to immense head pressure, immense head confusion. And that, you know, is obviously going to lead to bad choices.
[05:21]
A
And again, your book, this is the third.
[05:24]
B
Yes, yes.
[05:24]
A
So all new cases that you haven't written about before. But again, you demonstrate the variation of people who can be reported long term missing in Australia. All different ages, all different backgrounds. If we can talk about one that I had a personal connection to and I'm so glad that you wrote about him. Attila Bogart.
[05:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, Attila. It's such a mysterious case. And whoever you talk to will have a different opinion about what happened to Attila.
[05:52]
A
A phone call in the middle of the night from her panicked son kicked off a series of unexplained events for devoted mother Rosa Bogart.
[06:01]
B
That night, about half past two, he went to Sydney, 900km. It's unbelievable. I don't understand this one. That was the last word when I heard him 10th of October. Since then, I never heard anything from him. It's one of those where, you know, I think I've spoken to you about this before, that sometimes I'll write about something and I'll have a pretty good idea of what's happened. And in this case, I just, I don't know, because if I rely on the people who knew him best, like his mum and his sister, and they have different opinions from each other. Attila was an absolute genius. He was a computer genius, far, far more than I could ever imagine. One of those people who knows how it all works, how it all goes together and how to write programs and all of that kind of thing. Absolute genius. I think I said in the book. John Howard called him the greatest up and coming developer of our time, which is, is quite something. Back then when he was just a young man, he started his company in his early 20s. I guess when you have that kind of pressure on your head, it can affect you. So he did have some anxiety issues, but again, we can't just assume that that's what led to him going missing.
[07:20]
A
Also, he had mental health, mental health issues in the ran in the family. His sister suffered a, what I would term a breakdown, loosely, at some point, didn't she?
[07:29]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And she's very open about that as well. And she, you know, she recognized that her brother was probably vulnerable to that as well. And they were extremely close. They lived together. At one point, they worked together, she worked in his company. And one day he just, you know, he had been acting a Little bit strangely, but not. Nothing completely bizarre. He had a lot of pressure on him because there was some upcoming big deals that he was making with the company. He hated to drive, which I can totally relate to. I hate driving as well. And he would particularly. He hated going over brid. He would just have a panic attack to go over a bridge, really. So much so that he made his sister drive him to work. He made his mum come and get him in various places. Sometimes he'd pull the car over to the side of the road and call his mum and say, I just can't keep driving. Can you come and get me?
[08:20]
A
Okay, I didn't know that. And that makes his disappearance all the weirder to me because I. He's one of his former partners, was a very, very old friend of mine who I know you spoke to Julian Jones. And Julian and I were working together a lot when Attila went missing, and they were still very good friends. And Julian was still close to Attila's family, even though they weren't a couple anymore. So I knew that Attila's car was found somewhere weird. And so there was talk of a long drive, but I didn't realise he didn't like driving. So that does make it all the weirder, right?
[08:55]
B
It does, doesn't it? And so he didn't even like driving 10 minutes, but he got in a car and drove to New South Wales from Melbourne. And I think the car GPS indicated he may have driven as far as Noosa and then came back to Sydney. And then apparently tried to drive around Sydney looking for an old family friend. Got within a couple of streets, but couldn't remember where they lived, but didn't call them. So that was all strange as well. And so then left Sydney, drove to Wollongong. At some point in the journey, he's called Triple O and confessed to a crime that he didn't commit. Um, he confessed to taking a bribe, but Marianne has gone over all of the accounts and there is no evidence that that happened at all. And, I mean, why would you take a bribe? You know, what was it about? So then he's called his mother and he keeps saying, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm coming home, I'm coming home, I'm coming home, but didn't come home. So he stayed in a hotel in Wollongong. When I spoke to Julian, he. Julian felt that he may have met someone in that hotel at Wollongong, but he didn't know anyone down there. And then the next thing anyone knows is that his car is found Abandoned in Picton.
[10:10]
A
Now, Picton's is sort of a country area, isn't it?
[10:13]
B
Yeah. Kind of on the way back to Melbourne.
[10:15]
A
But also, would you. I imagined it the way it was described to me, as is. Was his car left, like, in a car park near where you might go hiking or something like that?
[10:24]
B
No, it was just sort of.
[10:25]
A
No.
[10:26]
B
Abandoned by the side of the road.
[10:27]
A
Okay.
[10:28]
B
So there was no car park. There was no anything. It was just sort of pulled off to the side of the road with nothing around. No buildings, no businesses, no anything at all.
[10:39]
A
Here's the thing, Nicole, I. To me, at the time, it seemed. I thought to myself, I think he has taken his own life. I think he is driven to. You know, we hear that a lot when cars are found abandoned near a national park or something. Yeah. We assume the person has walked into there and taken their own life. Julian, I don't think, ever really believed that. Did he not want to believe it or whatever? And I have to tell you that it was in reading this chapter this morning that I discovered that Julian had taken his own life in April. And I did not know that.
[11:16]
B
Yeah. Horrendous. And just a couple of days after I spoke to him.
[11:20]
A
Yeah.
[11:21]
B
Which chilled me.
[11:22]
A
Right. And it does. But again, it did remind me of how I would never in a million years have thought that Julian Jones would take his own life. And I know a lot of his friends would say the same thing. We never thought he'd leave his dogs.
[11:36]
B
Exactly.
[11:37]
A
So it does just go to show, you know, what mental health can do to people and how we oftentimes don't know what is going on inside someone's emotional life.
[11:50]
B
Exactly.
[11:52]
A
With Attila, there are so many other mysterious elements. There was another car abandoned close by. Right. To where his car was found.
[12:00]
B
Yeah. Yeah. A ute was pulled up on the other side of the road. Did that have anything to do with it?
[12:05]
A
Yeah.
[12:05]
B
And I think what struck strikes me as well is what Marianne said he took and left in the car because he would have been aware of which devices could have been tracked. And the ones that he left in the car were the devices that could have been tracked. And the ones he took with him were the ones that couldn't. Something like that.
[12:26]
A
Yeah.
[12:26]
B
It was. It was interesting. Like, of all people, Attila would have been able to figure out how to disappear, of course, and not leave a digital trace.
[12:36]
A
He's a computer genius.
[12:37]
B
Yeah. Because he was that clever. Yeah.
[12:39]
A
Yeah.
[12:39]
B
And Marianne keeps saying. She said to me things like, there's things that she's done in her life that probably, probably should have appeared on the Internet somewhere that is not there. And who is someone who would be able to do that is to, to alter, you know, digital records. Absolutely. Attila.
[12:57]
A
So she feels like she's got a guardian angel online.
[13:01]
B
Yeah, yeah. She deliberately made the birth of her twins. She. She put that as a public post because she wanted him to see it, if he is still out there. So she has this theory that perhaps the government has taken him. You know, I don't want to say by force because that sounds like he's been abducted by the government, but you know, he has been conscripted perhaps to work for the government in some sort of high end military computer capacity. And I'm not explaining that very well because this is not anything I know anything about.
[13:39]
A
Me neither.
[13:40]
B
But that's.
[13:41]
A
I hear what you're saying.
[13:41]
B
She has said to me.
[13:42]
A
Yeah, well, I wanted to add to that. I mean, I don't know about that. That is a big conspiracy. That's a very big idea. But also, in the days after his disappearance, there were a lot of weird phone calls to his mum's house, right?
[13:55]
B
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And some of those mysteries were solved, like he, he made a mysterious phone call and then a security device arrived for his mum. So in those, in those moments, like he was sort of having moments, it's not as if he was planning, you know, he was just crazy and distressed. He was planning very much that he wanted his mum to be safe. So he ordered her a particular device that arrived in the mail. And so she goes, oh, that's what that phone call was about. But he then asked her for money for accommodation, but he wanted cash for that, so why wasn't he going to use a card for that? So again, is he sort of trying to stay under the radar?
[14:37]
A
I tell you what, I'm not gonna dismiss the conspiracy theory by the way, because what it's making me think of is the Prisoner X book by Raphael Epstein and the documentary about that, which was about, you know, a young man who, who went overseas to Israel to fight in the army and became like a secret agent. And there was all sorts of stuff in that story that has, since we've since found out to be true, that you would never have believed in a million years. So, yeah, I don't want you or anyone else to think that I'm. That I think that's a crazy idea because I'm open to anything when it comes to missing people.
[15:12]
B
I wouldn't Have a clue. I don't know anything about that. You know, I, I would assume that we're a sophisticated enough country to have those kind of digital defenses and, and be prepared for any kind of cyber security attack. And you've got to have people working on that, and you've got to have people who are not going to reveal state secrets and all of that kind of thing. So I imagine it's possible when it
[15:36]
A
comes to missing people, you have to keep an open mind. I mean, detectives say that about every kind of investigation, but I think in this area, yeah, you absolutely have to. The other side of missing people, you know, one side of it is families desperately seeking knowledge, understanding of where their person has gone. The other side, of course, is unidentified remains. We know that. I think, again, I might be out of touch with my stats, but I think. Think there were about 500 sets of unidentified remains around Australia.
[16:07]
B
750.
[16:08]
A
750. God, I'm way behind.
[16:10]
B
750, 300 in Sydney alone. I just went and looked that up again because I was like, was that, Is that actually true? That's just. And it's horrifying. So I. I'm making appeals for people that have already been found, right? Without a doubt. I'm making appeals this week for people who have. Have been found years ago, and we just don't know because for whatever reason, they haven't been identified.
[16:34]
A
I remember speaking to people from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, maybe last year or the year before, about this very topic, because that's where they hold our unidentified remains in Victoria until they can identify them. And they were saying that we're getting better as a nation in terms of looking at all those records and joining the pieces together and finding them. But if you are a person who has a missing person in your family, it's important that you go and give your DNA again, because as DNA technology changes, there are different pathways to making those connections, right?
[17:10]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's. It's crucial because, you know, how cruel would it be to. To have someone even wait an hour longer than they need to. And these people are probably waiting years to find out the most important piece of news they'll ever hear in their lives because of What, a little $5 DNA test? It's. It can't be that expensive to get this done.
[17:32]
A
You write specifically in this book about the Aluka skeleton. What can you tell us about that?
[17:37]
B
Oh, it's. I still can't believe I've been making appeals for him for so long. And I Can't believe I still am to the point where I thought, well, I have to put him in the book because it's been so many years. So in 2003, skeletal remains were found in the rainforest reserve at Iluku beach in New South Wales, which is a very pretty spot. But sadly, it looks like this young man had taken his own life. The police I spoke to said, you know, we never say that definitively unless we have absolute proof, but it appears that way, that he has taken his own life. And he appeared to be a young man, late teens, early 20s, from what the forensic anthropologists could figure out. And all we have is the clothes that he was wearing, which was a pair of jeans and some quicksilver board shorts over that and a T shirt, and that's it. And no one has come forward to say, hey, I think that's my son, my brother, my nephew. He is unidentified. So how, how does that happen in all of this time? And Graham Burke, who is the fantastic police officer who has really taken this case to heart, and he has been the one asking me to keep making these appeals year after year. So I've gotten to know him very well because we've been doing it for years. And so I spoke to him for the book. He's a fantastic police officer and has had some really interesting cases as well. And he's just desperate to know he's retired now and this case stays with him because it's. Someone out there must know who this poor kid is.
[19:12]
A
It's horrible, isn't it? We've got one in Victoria as well we call the Purple Scarf man and he. Similar story.
[19:18]
B
Oh, yes, yes.
[19:19]
A
Yeah, right. Appears to have taken his own life and was wearing a very distinctive purple scarf. And again, the people at VIFM have, every single year they put out as much information as they can to try and help somebody connect the dots and know that this is the person that they no doubt have been looking for for decades. Tell us about Dylan Walsh. I was really interested to read about that story in this book because again, you've gone back to sort of the beginning of your work in missing persons a lot in this book, which is really good, really interesting. And Dylan Walsh is a man who, who managed to find it and make that connection, isn't he?
[19:59]
B
Exactly, exactly. And this is entirely your fault, by the way, because the last time we spoke, you said to me, you need to. I was really excited when you put more of yourself into this book. So I had that in my head when I wrote this one. Michelle Said I should put more of me into this. So there you go. He's a little bit more of my story. And, and Dylan was very inspirational to me because he was just so tenacious when he, he was just so sure that the remains that he was reading about were his aunt Susan Eisenhood, and her murder is still unsolved. She was found in Possum Brush. And again, that's a connection with me because where she was found was just a few kilometers from where I grew up as a teenager. So I was there in 1987, I think she was found. I was 17 and just a few kilometers away. And I would have taken an interest in it. I would have read about it in the news, seen it on our local TV and thought, oh, wow, that's okay, that's a bit weird that there's a body that's been found in the bush. And Dylan was so sure that this set of remains could have been his aunt. And he just kept pushing and pushing the police to the point where they really took on quite a major undertaking in flying the remains to America so that they could be identified. Because at that time when that all happened, that was around the time I started the register. So 2005, something like that, 2004, that they could be identified over there. And he was right, he was absolutely right that they were his missing aunt. Like, how do you. He just must have had some sort of sixth sense. How do you, how do you connect that? Because she didn't go missing in Possum Brush. She went missing in Newcastle. So. And, and I'm still in touch with Dylan today. I spoke to him a couple of months ago because we had a new witness that I found in the local area who may have known someone. Who may have known someone. So, yeah, we're still kind of still working on some connections there.
[21:55]
A
Absolutely. Because it's still an unknown crime, it's still an unsolved crime. But yeah, his story is, is so encouraging, isn't it? In the world of missing persons, unfortunately, we, I feel like we don't get a lot of after when people have been missing for that really short period of time, as you said earlier, 90 days, it tends to be a long term missing. It's fascinating, isn't it, that after that short period of time it tends to be. Yeah, forever.
[22:20]
B
Exactly, exactly. You, you just can't fathom. And you don't know either. Sort of. There was a Toowoomba case I don't know if you heard about a couple of weeks ago that the tragic Case of the young mum who was killed in Toowoomba, who went missing and where she was found is an absolute miracle that anyone found her. She, I, there is, I cannot fathom how she was actually found within a week she was found in a really remote place not far from where I live. So, you know, sort of a place where no one would go but she just happened to be stumbled over. So it's a miracle that more people are not long term missing persons. When you just think how easy it is to conceal remains here.
[23:07]
A
I mean, I think I know the answer to this question because you keep updating the stats on me, but I was gonna say, you know, how are people still going missing? Basically I was thinking now we're all tracked by everything. We're all, we've got cameras everywhere, you know, is it easier to find people? But I guess not. The stats would say no.
[23:26]
B
I think people are always going to go missing. I think, I don't think that there will ever be a time where I can sort of tick off every box on the register. It's just not going to happen because we live in a world where, you know, there's so many different reasons why people are going missing. We live on a big island with cliffs and oceans and bushland and there's always going to be somebody going missing and, and I think that's part of it as well. It's as civilized and populated as Australia is. There's still a lot of vastness out there. I was speaking with a radio station in Western Australia today and she was saying, oh, is there a lot of people in the Pilbara and Kimberley areas that go missing? And there are because it's just vast with no, no one. There's no communities, there's no businesses, there's no towns and it's, and it's easy to go missing in certain places in
[24:17]
A
Australia and it's super camouflage. We've learned that the Australian outback really camouflages everything, every colour, every, you know, you think you would spot a bright orange T shirt but when it's out there you don't.
[24:28]
B
Yep, exactly right. And, and people can, can be concealed in the tiniest of places.
[24:34]
A
I've had an awful thought lately, Nicole and I want to see what you think about it. It just suddenly dawned on me. I wonder how many long term missing children actually died at home in an accident or when I say accident, you know, actually the people in their family know exactly what happened to them but they are part of the long term missing statistics of children. Am I You know, paranoid. What do you think about that?
[25:04]
B
I think there's certainly some that I look at. We don't have a lot of missing children in Australia, which is a really good thing.
[25:11]
A
Good.
[25:12]
B
There are certainly some that I look at that I. That are probably in that number. But I think most of the missing children in Australia, the police have a pretty good idea of what's happened to them, what's gone on. It's fairly well known. So if, if they're, if they were taken by a predator, the police know exactly who that is. But for the ones that, it's kind of, there's an area of mystery. Like there's a couple in Sydney that I would say you're probably along the, the right lines of. So they are, they, they're kind of going, well, okay, yes, my child has gone missing, but they're not really. But yeah.
[25:50]
A
And it'd be hard to do a proper investigation if the family's not telling you the truth about things. But I want to make it very clear that I'm not referring to little Bradford Foley, the golden boy who you open the book with. Beautiful, precious little boy, whose mom was. A lot of people held a lot of suspicion around his mum and they're an Aboriginal family. And you discuss with a number of friends and family of his that there does feel like a racial element. For one thing, there's a $100,000 reward for information around Bradford Foley's disappearance, whereas there's generally a 500,000 to a million dollar reward for other similar situations. So that's one element of it. And the other element of it is a suggestion that their mum was, was abusive. And the behaviour that is described within those allegations, I have to say sounds a lot like my childhood, which was not described as abusive. Mine, my childhood was growing up in the 70s and 80s where you did get smacked, you did get flames, you did get a. Yeah, you did get a thong thrown at you if you were too far down the backyard, you know. So I, I hate to say I think there is a bit of a racial element here, but what do you think about that little boy? We really, we're really looking for remains when it comes to Bradford, aren't we?
[27:10]
B
Absolutely. And I think, you know, I think I've come awfully close in his chapter to figuring out what went on if, if we actually believe the witnesses that have come forward. Sadly, his sister is no longer with us to keep that going forward. And, you know, it's just a shattered family and there's another sibling who I'VE been speaking to just in the past week, who I wasn't able to contact when I was writing the book. And she described to me how she. The police made her feel like her mum did kill her little brother. And so she felt that for a long time. And she was in tears when I was saying to her on the phone, no, I don't think that's what happened at all. I think it was a completely different direction. And if we are to believe the witnesses that have come forward and they have. They have gone to police as well, but, you know, for whatever reason, that hasn't. They've not had enough evidence to act on it. He could well be not very far away from where he disappeared at all.
[28:13]
A
Yeah, his mum was very seriously investigated by police. The garden was excavated, all those sorts of things. And. And police actually made a statement, didn't they, at some point to say they don't believe his mum was involved in his death?
[28:25]
B
They had to. The coroner had to finally say that.
[28:28]
A
Right. Okay. Yeah. There are a couple of men in the mix that other kids have. Have nominated.
[28:34]
B
Yep, exactly. Exactly. I think there's a lot of evil people in the world. That's what I. Not just Brad's chapter, but several chapters that I was writing in the book. And I'm listening to these horrific stories and thinking, there are so many. There are evil, evil people in the world. And I don't. You don't think that you come across them very often in your general life, but they're out there. They are very much out there and they are targeting people and they are getting to know people who have these children in their lives and getting close to families with these children for that specific purpose. And it's not just happening in movies. This is happening in our lives. And it's. It's unbelievable and it's horrific to listen to and it. And it shatters these lives. You know, these people that have. That have come forward to give me this information. And now this has been decades that they've been living with this. And they. They live with this pain for their whole lives.
[29:35]
A
Yeah. We've learned a lot about ambiguous loss through your work and the work of Lauren o' Keefe and other people who have dedicated themselves to missing persons and the families looking for them. And it's one of those weird areas that I learned wasn't supported. You know, you think a loved one goes missing that all sorts of agencies would swing into action to support you and to look, and then you realize, no, that is not the case. If they don't think they've committed a crime or they don't think a crime's been committed against them, nobody's helping you look.
[30:08]
B
Exactly. And it's almost the opposite. It's almost difficult. In the book, if you read Michael Graham's chapter, he's his wife, while he was still missing, she was just. All she wanted to do was take their little girl to New Zealand for Christmas and she couldn't, because when you take a child out of the country, you need both parents permission and one of those parents was not there. So just that little act. And just imagine her sitting on the floor of the passport office, sobbing, because she said, I just need a passport. I just need to take my daughter to her family for Christmas. I can't get his signature because he's not here. She couldn't even put a notice in the paper about a memorial service because they said, oh, no, we need a funeral notice. We need the notice from the funeral director. And she said, there isn't one because he's missing. And missing doesn't fit any boxes. Missing is not dead or alive. Missing is in the middle. And that's the ambiguous part of the ambiguous loss. It's not alive and it's not dead. And so it doesn't fit government forms.
[31:16]
A
I mean, for life's work, even though you're working in sadness a lot, you are part of that support system that's sprung up around these people. So well done, you. And it's the Missing Persons Register, isn't it, that we can follow you on Facebook, keep up to date with you and buy your books.
[31:33]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely.
[31:34]
A
The book is called Lost. More True Stories From Families of Australian Missing Persons by Nicole Morris. Thank you so much.
[31:40]
B
Thank you very much, Michelle.
[31:46]
A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org AU. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org AU.
[32:17]
B
The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.