From The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey. We're hoping you're having a great holiday break and today we're bringing you one of our favorite episodes.
From the year.
This episode originally aired on March eighth, when Australians were enthralled by a bush mystery. What happened to Ballarat mum Samantha Murphy, a twenty three year old man, the son of a former Australian rules player, has been charged for her murder. Bard Searchers by police have so far failed to locate her remains. Patrick Orn Stevenson appeared in Victoria's Supreme Court in late November, where he pleaded not guilty to the chargers. The Front will return with all new
episodes on Monday, January thirteenth. Just hit follow or subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.
The Australian Bush It has forever lurked, not just at the edges of our towns and cities, but our collective subconscious, a place of almost indescribable beauty and at the same time a black hole, a more a haunted landscape that in the blink of an eye, can snatch us away without a trace. It is a place where ghosts lurk, boogie men, monsters, and for centuries it has become almost
mythical in our literature, art and films. This fear is manifested in the psychopath at the Heart of Wolf Creek, it's the omniscient villain in the latest Eric Banner movie Force of Nature, and it's most hauntingly embodied in the
classic nineteen seventy five film Picnic at Hanging Rock. The pan pipe's theme by George Zamfia is enough to send a chill down Australian's spines, and this anxiety gripped us all over again when Ballarat mother of three Samantha Murphy fifty one, seemingly vanished into thin air after she took off for a routine early morning jog into the bush near her home in early February. For a month, we followed every detail of the search for sam the police
and volunteers scouring the bush near her home. These vast tracts of land outside the old Goldfield town with names like the wou Wookeerung Regional Park and Mount Clear. We witnessed the tears of the family, the broken heart of her daughter Jess.
Just On behalf of my dad and myself and my siblings. I just really like the bank out, family and friends were just the continuous love and support. It's really helping us to get through and to keep us strong and to keep us motivated, to keep looking and keep moving forward. Mum's a really strong woman and she's far too determined to give up this fight. I know she's out there somewhere.
As each night fell, we sensed with dread that Samantha was out there in the dark. Was she yet another of that long line of Australians lost to the bush? Then suddenly the answer.
Detectives from the Missing Person Squad yesterday morning at six am arrested a twenty two year old Scottspurn man. They arrested him at his home address and took him into custody. The man was interviewed over a number of hours. A number of search warrants have been executed as a result of those investigations. He has today been charged with the murder of Samantha.
At a press conference on Thursday, the Chief Commissioner of the Victorian Police, Shane Patten, delivered the news the nation had been dreading.
We will be alleging that murder occurred at Mount Clair on the day she disappeared. In the interview with the suspect, he has not disclosed to police where Samantha's body is. I want to be very clear, unlimited what I can say given at there Hous now been a charge of murder aid.
Last week on the front we brought you a very different kind of police press conference fronted in Sydney by homicide detectives and the New South Wales Police Commissioner. In that instant, police had obtained the cooperation of the suspect, serving policeman Beau Lamar Condon, and alleged the suspect had told them where to find the bodies of murdered couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies. The level of detailed New South Wales Police divulged about that matter was extraordinary, surprising
even veteran crime reporters. In this matter, Shane Patten batted away almost every question about detail, eventually making this pointed remark.
Again, I'm not going to go into the evidence and speculate about the evidence. So in Victoria, when someone's charged, irrespective of what people's views may be, the details of that evidence are tested. In court, not a press conferences.
For the past thirty three days, the Australian's reporters have been in Ballarat trying to talk to Samantha Murphy's family and everyone else in a town gone wild with frustration and suspicion.
There was no apparent reason for Samantha Murphy, a fifty one year old mother who loved her three children, who lived in a comfortable house in East Ballarat, to disappear.
Damon Johnston is The Australian's Victorian editor.
The circumstances of her last appearance were that she left the family home shortly after seven am on Sunday, February four, dressed in her jogging gear. This is something she did a lot, so ostensibly she appears to have been very much your quintessential Ossie mum, raising a kids, raising a
family and staying fit. And the inexplicable nature of her disappearance, the fact that there was nobody found despite all the police searchers, I think, has led to what is ultimately a tragedy, also being a mystery that's captivated the nation.
It's been thirty four days since Samantha Murphy was last seen. That gap has prompted questions about whether the police were moving fast enough.
I'm sure there was a lot of action going on below the waterline, so to speak, over the last thirty three days. That said, the initial messaging from Victoria Police was somewhat confusing. It left the perception that they weren't treating it seriously enough in that first few days or maybe that first week. Now clearly that's changed over the last two to three weeks, where they've deployed their expert investigators.
The language that Victoria Police has used has changed. And two weeks ago they tragically announced that they were looking for a body and that they believed that she had been her remains had been removed by one or more people. So the police approach to this did escalate in public, and I think it would be premature to judge the police too harshly. Because we now have a charge laid.
We'll wait for the courts to determine the fate of that charge, but we just need more information before we assess the police investigation.
I think during that long wait for information, detectives repeatedly asked for Victorians to stop unhelpful speculation about the case, particularly about their theories on who might have taken Samantha.
The vacuum has been filled with speculation and online gossip. Ballaratza town of about one hundred and twenty thousand people, so it's big, but not that big. The Murphys were a high profile couple. They ran a successful panel beating business, and on one hand, it's only human nature for people to speculate, but now, obviously with modern technology, it enables that to go like wildfire. Coming up.
What we know about motive and method in the alleged murder of Samantha Murphy.
While I've got you.
As this story develops, the Australian subscribers will be the first to know. Join us at the Australian dot com dot you for the best reporting and analysis, live updates direct to your phone, newsletters and special events. Check us out at the Australian dot com dot a U and we'll be back after this break.
Samantha Murphy's family found out about the arrest on Wednesday night. On Thursday, just before they spoke to the media, police told the family they'd charge the man with murder. That should have caused some pause for those who'd speculated about family members not or involvement Shane Patten again made it clear the family was not under suspicion and said police believe the man in custody is not known to the family at all.
Samantha's family has been advised of this tragic news this afternoon by detectives from the Missing Person Squad, and obviously this is a tragic outcome knowing that she has been murdered. Our thoughts and support are with her family and I do just want to say something about the family since the outset. In these cases, it's often that the family
come under scrutiny. They have been cooperative with us, they have provided everything we needed and they have had no involvement whatsoever in this matter.
Asked if he was known to Samantha Murphy, Patten said this.
I don't have that knowledge. I don't believe that to be the case.
Man whose name was suppressed by the court appeared before Ballarat Magistrate's Court and police opposed bail. He has not yet been required to enter a plea and has not been convicted of anything. Police haven't yet disclosed an alleged motive or method for Samantha's death. They won't say if there was a sexual element to the crime, only that they believe she died in Mount Clear, a suburb on Ballarat's outskirts. The nation has suffered a string of shocking
crimes already this year. A mother and child, then the father, were stabbed to death in Sydney, allegedly by a martial arts instructor known to the family. The murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies on the eve of Mardi Gras devastated Sydney's LGBTI community. Now the search for Amantha Murphy's remains somewhere out there in that haunted landscape.
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