Cherylee |15

Okay, let me pass the tree and then we've got a gate up here.

Yeah, gates open.

This is the sound of Nina and I back in the car on the trail of Frank Abbott on this car. We'll get to the gate, and this is the sound of us hitting an obstacle, or in this case, a series of obstacles, big rough bumps and rocks in the dirt road.

It's definitely not a way anyone goes regularly.

No, it's not calling it a road is probably overstating it.

No one has come out and screamed with this to get off their properly. Probably not on someone's property.

Well, I also think that's because no one lives here.

To fully appreciate the situation Nina and I are now in. It helps to know that the car we're driving is all most brand new.

Very high grass here that we're driving through.

The car also belongs to our employers, freaking right down, and our bosses have absolutely no idea.

What we're up to.

What we're going to do is get to the gate and then just check the underside of the car. Yeah, But to understand why Nina and I have got ourselves into this situation.

Dean's gone to move a fallen tree. Valliant effort. You might do it. It's a full tree.

Car's fine, really objectively creepy looking forest.

To understand why we're bumping our way through this creepy looking forest, and why we've ignored the advice of local people who say you cannot get through on the road this way.

Now, well, the local kids said we couldn't get through this way, Well they might be right.

They may be right.

To understand why you have to go back.

And I think at this point we run out of road.

Back to that witness statement from Irish Northam which was released to us by the inquest into William Tyrrel's disappearance, I think we have to walk from him. The witness statement we looked at in the last episode, which talks about Frank Abbott and the unsolved murder of Margaret Cox. Because that witness statement also talks about Frank and another unsolved murder, this time of a teenage girl whose body was discovered near a rough dirt road like this one.

So let's go for a walk, maybe lock the car.

I'm Danbox and from news dot com dot Au. This is witness William Tyrell episode fifteen. Hry Lee, All right, let's go back to the beginning.

What are we doing?

All right, So we're sitting in the car in Kendletown, which is a village outside Tari on the north coast of New South Wales. And the reason we're sitting here is Iris Northam, who's the witness who gives evidence of the inquest. In her statement, she says that Frank Abbot would go the back road from Cundletown through Brimbin Road which was partly forest, and make his way to Tarree. And he'd also drive a back road from Cedar Party

He'd gone the back roads to avoid the police, according to Iris.

According to Iris, but we also know from other evidence of the inquest that Frank often drove cars without a license and he often drove unregistered cars, so he had a reason to want to avoid the police. Other people we've spoken to have said the same, that people used to drive the back roads through the forest between Cundletown and Tarree. And that might be important because Iris also said that another girl went missing from Tarree and her body was found a few years after she went missing.

So let's do it.

We're going to do it.

So we set out to test Iris's statement, can you go this way?

What am I looking for? Brimmen Road?

Aiming to see if we can find the road Iris describes, which she says Frank Abbot used to drive, and where the body of a seventeen year old girl known as Shirrilee Masters was discovered. Sharry Lee was a carefree, spirited teenager who was crazy about horses and cats and dogs, any animal really, and she was last seen around the year two thousand in Taree, telling friends she was going to hitchhike south. At first, our attempt to find this back road doesn't go well.

Directions it's off Landsdowne right, Yeah.

Stuck.

In three hundred meters, Turn left onto Dinnison's where we going?

Oh, we're not too far away, and hilariously, it's the other direction to the one.

We were driving it.

So we turn around, leave Cundletown behind us, and quickly the road empties and starts heading to empty country.

Like there's no road markings after here.

Where do we think we're going to turn off?

It could be this one here.

And my observation is this is quite far.

Yeah, you've got to really want to not meet the police.

Because this isn't the convenient way to go.

No, it's empty road, gum trees on one side, fields on.

Either side, horses. Okay. So the next question then is can you get to Tari?

What straight are we looking for?

That was my una.

That's the street okay, looking at the map, that's the one that I think is most likely a backway to Tari.

Had always just ask the local children.

See, that's a really good ideas.

A bunch of kids here mucking around on motorbikes. Hey, guys, is there a back road from here to Tarre without having to go down all the way to the main road. You have to go along the road, so none of these turns on the right take you down there. So the kids who live here and who muck around on these roads on their dirt bikes, they seem to be saying that Iris must be wrong because you can't drive a back road from Kendletown to Tarree. Like she says,

I reckon, we're on Summ's properly, not on the.

Property, but I don't know what is at the end of the road.

You got the map, Yeah, yeah, so this one that one there the kids told us ended in the sewage works.

One of them is going to take us to this.

This takes us right to the river.

Does it? And this is this is the only one. This is the only way I think you could go from having the place.

If we go down here and there's an old bridge, it might be usable. It might not.

Then confirmed you could go. This way is a very inconvenient way to go, but it's going to.

Be inconvenient because I don't know if we can actually turn around once we start driving down here.

So let's go. As you know, this ends badly, car will get to the game.

What Nina and I do discover is that the kids on bikes were right. You definitely can't drive on a back road between Kendletown and Tarre, as Iris says in her statement to the William Tyrell in quest. So Iris's statement is wrong except it turns out that that's not quite what Iris was saying.

Yeah, but we're just doing a little bit more follow up.

Yeah, and some of the questions.

That we have that came out of the unrest, we visit Iris and ask her specifically about this back road you mentioned in.

Your statement as well, some of the back roads.

Oh. Yes, he used to do that because he said they took me liscense away because of fines for different things that I hadn't paid, and he said I couldn't got on the highway in case they picked me up.

So I used to use.

The our fire tracks fire trials.

In Australia, a fire trails, a rough dirt road cleared through the bush for fire crews to use in case of a bushfire.

We're trying to drive them yesterday.

But we tell Iris the road that we tried to follow.

No, No, that's another one. Yeah, that's out near Candletown.

About another back road from Condletown to Taree.

Well, this one leads from.

You've got Iris gets a pen and paper and starts drawing a rough map.

You've got John Throver there. Next down here is small lane and from there it used to go through the Forest to Lansdowne.

Suddenly we realize.

From Lansdowne it used to come into Candletown.

Nina and I had been on the wrong road.

To Brimbon Road and into the bushes and whatever.

We thought we'd been following the route in Iris's witness statement.

And from there around it comes out. I think it's Young's but.

We were mistaken. We've been trying to follow Google maps.

Mostly, and from there they used to go along.

Wingham Row and the Iris is drawing on this piece of paper on her kitchen table.

And turn left to go to the tendin Barling. It isn't marked on our map, and the other one goes to Brimbon.

I've been looking at a map one you've been saying. So I've been looking at this map on my phone. That road you're describing takes you straight through the Yarret Forest, the state forest there. But that's where that body you're talking about, Chevroley masters. That's the rough area where she was found.

Yes, so if Frank.

Did use to drive along this road, that would put Frank in the area where Chery's body was discovered.

He told us that's the way he went because he didn't have a license, didn't want to get picked up.

So taking the map Iris has now drawn for us. Nina and I decide again to go and try to drive.

It, and we'll give you a call if we guess.

How about that you could.

Tell us that with us.

So this is the Old Port mcquarie Road, a few kilometers north of Tare and we're here because bluntly, we're looking for where the body of show Lee Masters was found, which is in this forest. And all we really know is from newspaper reports at the time that is described as a rarely used bush track within a kilometer of where you come off the sealed road.

I mean she wasn't found for six years.

Yeah, it's rarely used.

But the problem with that newspaper report is I don't know if the reporter had actually been here because they got the name of the road roll. They're called it the Old Port Road and it's actually the Old Port mcquarie Road.

It was written like they saw the crime scene tape.

Could it be that that looks like it might once have been a track? Do you have the descript Yeah, it says the crime scene tape roped off a rarely used bush track leading off the Old Port Road, not far from Brimban Reserve. The track is located less than a kilometer off the tarred Cedar Party Road, which.

Is the way we drove up to get here.

It could be if that is an old bush track.

Let me have a look.

I get out and walk into the forest following the bush track, trying to see if it could be the same place described in the old newspaper clippings as where Cheryly's body was discovered. And if you're thinking this all seems quite vague, well so are we. One thing we are learning is there's so little known about Scherly's murder it's almost as if she vanished.

Yeah, that's an old bush track.

It doesn't get much traffic, and there's no obvious gravesite or anything, but I wouldn't expect one. What there is is there's a bunch of stuff that's been flight tipped there. So there's some old kind of old sofa cushions maybe, and some kind of household.

It's said in the article that this is a popular dumping area.

Yeah, people have been out there and just chuck stuff in the bush. But I guess the significance of it isn't so much that that might be the track where Serie was found. As we know she was found in this forest. We know she was found on this road. And when we just were talking to Iris then and the description she gave us of how Frank drove from Condletown to Taree on back roads. The roads she described the only way you can get between them are on

It more concerning. The phrase she used was roads and fire trails.

Why it's more concerning if you're the owner of this car, which are.

And there's a trail going there that way?

What's that That one's not even on the map.

That one looks like you could have driven on it.

You said this earlier. You're only going to know these roads if you're a local. Yeah, so you're only going to find this is a place to dispose of Shery's body. And I hate saying it as bluntly as that. Sorry, if anyone's listening that did know her. But you're only going to use these places and come to these places if you know of them, and you'd have to be a local to do that. It doesn't make me think one or two things. One is, if Frank Abbot's really driving this road, then why is he so keen to

But the other thing it makes me think.

Is all right, so you can't get through on these roads, like Iris said, Frank told her he used to do, so you can't do that. That doesn't mean that Iris is wrong. It might mean that Frank was lying to Iris, that he wanted to give her a different reason for why he was driving on these roads, and maybe he had a reason he wanted to disguise, not necessarily that

Yeah, but the problem is you can see.

On the map we're about to hit the end of what Google says this.

Map is, and then there's a river.

And that river's problem because if you can't get through on this road, like Iris says Frank used to in her witness statement, then there is nothing to connect Frank Abbott to the place where Showy's body was discovered. And if Iris's statement is wrong about that, then maybe she's also wrong about everything else, including the alleged links between Frank Abbott and the unsolved murder of Margaret Cox, which we looked at in the last episode.

All right, doesn't go through.

No, on the map, you can't get past the river. But if we're going to find a way, it's going to be just here, he says.

As he drives towards.

He says, as there's a massive close game. But the thing about that closing gate road, old Port McQuary Road goes beyond it and it's now.

A footpath authorized vehicles only, But.

How old is the gate, So we're talking thirty years ago.

Yeah, and if that gate wasn't there thirty years ago when Shirrilee was murdered, maybe you could keep driving on this road over the river for now. Nina and I pull up at a little picnic area. It's completely empty. I walk over to a wooden sign where there's a map saying Brimbin Nature Reserve.

Yeah, look at this. Look at this.

This is the map on the I don't know what is it nature Reserve information sign and shows So we're there, see the end of the road of the picnic area, but it shows that that old Fort mcquarie road turns into a footpath here and then it crosses the river. It says it's called the Tommy Owen's Crossing. And then the track goes on through the bush here and missus Kelly's Crossing and miss Kelly's crossing of the river further up.

So possibly actually there was a way to drive through here. It's really out of the way, so maybe maybe you could once drive the whole way the way Frank told Iris that he used to.

So it's only now that you can actually put Frank Abbott as having been at the place where Sherrily Master's body was found. So it's only now we've got that connection. But none of this is proof of anything. Far from it, particularly because when Nina and I do get to the river, there's no way you could drive a car across it, at.

Least in its current state.

We can't drive that.

You can't get across that.

There is a bridge, but it's a narrow walking bridge.

Yeah, thirty years and floods.

I don't know what it looks about, unless there's any evidence that there was a bigger bridge there once.

When there's a library, what's your local library full.

Of old maps?

Yeah, So ever stopped researching.

We stopped recording and head back to the car, feeling subdued. No bridge, no road, no connection between Frank wants driving this route through the forest where Chery's body was discovered after she was last seen in Taree in the year two thousand.

Back at our.

Motel, I go to bed and wake up to a text message from Nina.

She wants to talk.

Good morning, Good morning.

So I did some reading about the town planning. I am not the navigator, as we've established, so I.

Need you to interpret this and tell me if I'm right.

Okay, So have a look. Do you want me?

I want you to look at this email I sent you in the middle of the night about town planning in the early two thousands entire Okay, all right.

So this is the email you sent, which she sent to me at on fairness, it was only ten past eleven at night.

That's great.

And it's the one title Brimban Reserve Development Plan in two.

Thousand and five. Click click that link. So just click on that link.

Yeah, okay, So it's the Brimbin Nature Reserve Plan of Management from the New South Wales National Parks and wild Life Service from May two thousand and five. This is what you were reading in the middle of the night last night. Oh hang on, that's interesting. So there's a map.

There's a map.

There's a map of where we were yesterday. Isn't there the Brimbin Picnic area?

Yeah?

And then.

This is addition to Brimban Nature Reserve.

Yeah, when on it, it marks the old Port mcquarie Road, which is what we were driving on as continuing across the river, which is where we stopped yesterday and we couldn't get across. But this shows that there was a road there, Page seven, So Part three point five, two wheel drive vehicle access to the reserve is available along the old Port mcquarie Road, So that's what we drove along.

The road. Reserve of the old Port mcquarie.

Road continues east across Tommy Owens Creek towards Lansdowne, though this section is overgrown and not suitable for vehicle access, but it was.

The route of the old road. So when was Shirley Masters discovered.

She went missing in two.

Thousand, two thousand?

Yeah, so this documents from two thousand and five calling that road untraffickable.

We don't know if it was untrafficable in two thousand.

No, you're right, but it shows that the road continued. You can't do it now, but the Park Service took it over in nineteen ninety nine, just before Shirley Masters goes missing.

So yeah, it's quite possible at that point you could still drive that road. I think that's it. Nina.

I think it shows there is an alleged connection between Frank Abbot and the place Scherri Lee was discovered contained in the witness statement Irish Northam gave to the William Tyrell inquest. And there is another alleged connection there in Iris's statement, But you have to look closely, blink and you'd miss it because in her witness statement, Iris doesn't

The one I was talking to them about was Rex's daughter.

Years it's Nina who puts the clues together.

That's chery Lee masters A.

Yeah, Sherrily was found in Brimbin Reserve, not Brimbin Road, and she was seventeen, not fifteen or sixteen. But she was Rex Nolan's daughter. When did you start thinking about this other young woman who was found in that bit of bush and maybe in connection to Frank.

Well any that reason, because he used to go out around it why and with the connection that he knew Rex and Karen.

But that that Frank knew Rex Shoally's father, and Karen Shirly's stepmother.

And they worked at the markets.

This is new. It's not in Iris's witness statement.

Any connection that could be Frank worked at the markets.

John's River is the tiny town where Frank once lived in the years before Sholy went missing. The town has a market held on the second Saturday of each month at the Johns River Community Hall, which is opposite the house where Frank was living.

He helped at the markets out there where Rix and Karen used to silster. He used to go to the markets and he'd help help them set up things and do a little odd jobs for them there.

So's parents he knew then.

And did you ever see them together? How do you know the connection?

No?

I only know that Frank lived opposite the hall where they had the markets. Frank used to help there just about a month.

It was.

Other people from John's River tell us the same thing. Frank was always at the markets where Vally's family were regulars. That alone proves nothing. But here's what bothers me about it. We found this connection me and Nina, not the police, and it didn't take us long to do it. The

Detective were still recording.

Our colleague Gary Jubilin, who used to be the lead detective on the investigation into William's disappearance.

I left the investigation at the time when there was certain lines of inquiry that hept the Frank Abbott.

Gary says he can't answer for what the police did after he left the investigation.

And then, to my surprise, Frank Ebbott became the only suspect in the William Tyrol matter.

Okay, Gary's making a point here. Frank was not the only suspect in the William Tyrell investigation, but he was a very prominent person of interest that the police were clearly focused.

On at that point. But given how much attention Frank was getting.

You'd be doing a deep diving to him and this type of stuff based on that statement. You'd want to have a look at that, because I would what's written in the statement from Iris Northam, I would imagine that when you're sitting here taking the statement, she's adding some other bits and pieces to it.

When we sat down with her, we learned more than was in her statement.

Yeah, if you're asking me how I would approach it. If we're looking at Frank Abbott, which once I'm taken off the investigation, if it has been run the way an investigation should be run, there'd be briefings and that certainly would be brought to the attention of the person running the investigation. She said this, said that, Okay, we've got to have a look at that. How do we have a look at that, We look at the cases we get that information in, and is Frank Abbitt involved

So you would have looked at these two cases. Yeah, yeah, Margaret Cox and very Masters.

Yeah, and knowing the way that the investigation was run. If you're saying someone's a person of interest, you look at absolutely everything about that person. And when you're looking at the murder investigation, which Tyrrell is, there's enough there in the way that you've relaid the information what you've provided to me to think, yeah, it's worth looking at. Coming back to Cheryl Lee Masters, yeah, if you knew her father was associated with the markets around there, Yeah,

We suspect the New South Wales police have not looked closely enough the information about Shirley contained in Irish Northam's statement. We suspect this because Nina tracks down Sheerly's brother, Tony Masters, and he says he hasn't heard anything from the police in years.

Shirley was a very carefree, spirited, very outgoing person. She had very say eachy feet. She never could seem to stay in one place for too long. She was a very kind person.

Tony has a kind face and a nervous energy. Sitting on a park bench near his home in north West Sydney, he tells Nina how his sister, Shery Lee grew.

Up tough with her slow development, like she was seventeen, but probably in the mind of a thirteen or fourteen year old child, so that's where she was at.

Sherri Lee lived in and out of foster care, always seeming to fall through the gaps in the system.

You'll learn not to trust.

Like if we have a saw the place, we'd run, so I feel like the authorities weren't people that she could turn to and trust, so she really had no one. She had herself, and that I think kind of helped a lot to her demise.

While still only in her mid teens, Sheerrily was living on her own in an apartment, but under the watch of the state government Department of Community Services, which has since changed its name, but is the same department that was later responsible for looking after three year old William Tyrrell, who also disappeared.

I just feel like every possible system really let her down, also let the whole family down.

It's easy to understand why Tony's family might feel this way, he says. Sheerrily was last seen in the year two thousand, when she told some friends in Taree she was going to hitchhikes south.

It was pretty much her main mode of transportation. But I don't think she really had money to pay for transports.

So she just used to hear child.

Tony first heard his sister was missing in a phone call.

I got a phone call from the police saying, you know, she's a missing person.

Did the place seem concerned?

Not overly?

They It was more of a I felt like the phone the calls were just a duty like for them, like a responsibility, like we have to notify somebody.

What were they doing that you're aware of?

To find her?

Not much.

I don't even think they bothered to place the menican they had with a previous lady in at the shopping center near where I worked. Put aminican that was wearing the same clothes as a young lady that disappeared.

If that sounds odd that Tony would talk about the police not putting a mannekin of his sister in the shopping center after she went missing, there's a reason. Four years before before Cherri Lee was last seen in Tarree,

I used to work at Kamar in Tari and I was about fifteen. I just used to walk past the mannequin every day going into work.

Chery Lee would also have sent that mannequin, according to Tony.

Yeah, I actually think one time I even sat down near that manniquin.

So when Cherrily went missing, Tony wondered where's her mannequin? Were the police just not so interested in his sister. Nina and I have spoken to the cop who oversaw the detectives working in tar in two thousand. He says he does not remember Cherally's disappearance being reported and six years passed. In two thousand and six, a group of soldiers were on an exercise in the state forest just north of Taree when they discovered human remains and the police got back in touch with Tony.

They told me that they had actually found some remains and they wanted DNA testing.

It was two more years, two thousand and eight before the DNA tests finally identified the body as Shery Lee. Finally it seemed the police were doing something.

They said that there was a special task force that they'd been set up to investigate Shiryly's murder.

I think I met them maybe twice.

Over the toll duration, but I invited them to Shirly's memorial, but they didn't come. I spoke with them once after that, and they just said that it was still an ongoing investigation, and therefore they can't talk about anything.

And that was pretty much.

I made numerous phone calls to them, who always took forever to get phone calls returned. So they couldn't tell us really any anything or any possible leads or anything. They couldn't tell us anyone's name, and they couldn't tell us anything at all.

So yeah, we really didn't get anything.

From them, unbelievably. Tony says his family were never even told the results of the autopsy, saying how Shaly died.

There was literally nothing explained the extent of what Winne was a shallow grave.

A shallow grave.

Tony says he almost hoped his sister had died in an accident.

Maybe she got hit by a car or something while hitch hiking, because you know, sometimes hard to see people of highways if it's raining and stuff.

That wouldn't be so bad, He says. At least that way, very Lee might not have suffered.

And when we questioned the police, they're like, we can't tell you anything. Well, they said that it definitely was a homicide.

She had actually been murdered.

In the end, it was the funeral director, not the police. Detectives who explained that very Lee had suffered a massive head injury.

She showed us to the back of Shirley's skull and said that her professional opinion was that Shirley had actually taken something to the back of the head, which would have been enough.

To kill her.

I can't imagine how difficult that must have all been to go through.

I think I just felt really sorry for her.

Then things got worse. Very Lee's family were told her remains were missing.

How long could I missing?

For probably a couple of years.

It took them a while to get her back to us.

Years.

Yeah, it was a long time.

How do you misplace something that important?

I think she was just I think it because they have a whole lot of unsolved crimes and just evidence in storage, and they maybe mislabeled it, or the box was behind another box, or maybe their short on staff that really didn't want to take the time to look. We were never really given a reason why, just that she was misplaced.

So and they would they would get her to us as soon.

As they could.

It wasn't soon enough, though, Cherly's father, Rex Nolan, died before his daughter's remains were returned to the family.

So he actually never got to bury her.

With her murder still unsolved, the family held a memorial.

Service and the police didn't come to it, even though they were invited, and it was a big turnout, like a lot of people from Tire were there. We thought they could come and maybe, you know, hear some stories about our they might hear something that matches up with something they already had, I thought, But they didn't bother coming, and yeah, we didn't really hear much from them over that whole period.

By this time there had been an inquest, so a formal investigation into how Shirrily died, but Tony says his family were not invited to take part and the inquest findings are easily the most upsetting of any that I've seen in almost twenty years of reporting on crime.

Are you okay if I read this?

Let of course yes.

So it's as in quest into the death of Sharyli Masters, I make the following finding. I find that the deceased Cheryly Master they've spelt her name wrong. Between October nineteen ninety five and October two thousand and five, at an unknown place in the state of New South Wales, died of an undeterminable cause in circumstances that I've also not been able to determine.

Yeah, that pretty much sounds like the whole you know, we don't really know, and that they one would misspell her name, and in fact, legally her name isn't Masters, it's actually Nolan. And my father was really upset because her name was never legally changed to Masters and on her grave zone it's hyphen eight. We actually have Masters Nolan. So the fact that they'd never even used her actual.

Legal name in a coronial finding.

In the coronial finding and there was no reference to it, but also to the fact that the dates were so broad they didn't even mention when she was actually discovered.

Yeah, because I noticed that the earliest date there is nineteen ninety five. She was definitely seen alive post nineteen ninety five, right.

Yeah, she was definitely seen alive.

I had seen her in ninety eight, ninety nine, and she'd been out to Tamworth to see our mom and our little sisters out there, and she had actually been dating a glade. His name was Patrick, So she had actually been seen And I just don't think the police had bothered to try to track any of these people down interview any of these people, and if they did, they made no reference of it to me at all.

So were you able to submit anything for the inquest?

I don't believe I was actually asked to submit anything for the inquest. I didn't think that was something you could do, So no, I don't think I did.

Families can very much provide information to an inquest, and most inquests I've seen, the grieving family is right at the heart of the process. The fact Tony wasn't told that his family could be appause me. And then when we asked the coroner's court to see the records from the inquest into Cherly's death, we were told, quote, archives have not had any luck finding this file after numerous searches, meaning they can't find the file of she Rely's inquest.

Yeah, it just still baffled me that the police didn't treat.

It a little bit more with more urgency in case the killer was still out there, still killing people.

Tony says he doesn't know who if anyone is now responsible for catching his sister's killer.

No, just an unsole murder mystery, just like so many other cases, Like there's a lot and I just feel like Shirlie's now just another number, you know, on someone's desk or locked away in a room that nobody bothers to go into anymore.

Nina asks if anyone from the police has recently contacted Tony.

No, I haven't heard from the police for decades.

Now, meaning it is Nina who first tells Tony about Iris Northam's evidence to the William Tyrell Inquest, which mentions his sister's disappearance.

Okay, so this is the statement of a woman named Iris Northam that she made to the William Tyrell inquest about a person of interest called Frank Abbott.

Nina shows Tony the part of Iris's statement that talks about his dad.

Rex, So I'll show you where you can go from.

And tells him what Iris told us about Rex and Frank both working at the Johns River Markets market.

Yeah, so Rex and Karen they used to like go to all the markets. Oh, bar Turrey definitely in John's River was one of the areas that they would go to.

Would Serlee have been to those markets with them.

Shirrely may have, but I can't say definitely.

We don't know exactly where Sheerly was living at the time, whether she even was living with Rex or Karen, so it's hard to know how much time they spent together. But even if there's a possibility, Tony thinks the police should have told him about Iris Northam's evidence.

I feel a bit annoyed. I think I feel annoyed that people.

Knew these I feel a bit I think disappointed that people have actually given information to the police and they haven't passed that along.

So that's now three unsolved murders. Helen Harrison where Frank Abbot was found not guilty, Margaret Cox who we talked about in the last episode, and Sherri Lee. In all three cases, new evidence has come to light at the inquest into William Till's disappearance, but the victims' families and the potential witnesses that we've spoken to, none of them have been contacted by the New South Wales Police.

You think you would at least inquire and ask around and do a little bit of digging.

I kind of feel like when when people go missing.

Too many people are just you know, a picture on the side of a milk carton, and that's so detached. But when you actually start thinking of them, oh, this is actually somebody that you know, used to play hopscotch and skip.

And like playing with dolls and loved animals.

And if people actually got to see that this was a person and not just you know, some you know, kind of wild teenager that deserve what she got, it'd be different because really, like people don't deserve it.

Nobody deserves what happened to Tony's sister, Shery Lee, who was lost and whose murderer has not been brought to justice. But as Nina and I discover, there are other unsolved murders of women and children up here on the New South Wales North coast. In fact, there are dozens of them. So I've taken pages out of a road atlas and stuck them on the wall. So we've got a map of the whole north Coast in New South Wales, all

But what I want to.

Do is try to get a sense of the number of unsolved murders and missing people on this one stretcher coast. So we've got a list, and I've got some sticky labels, and I thought we'd literally just stick an arrow on the map for each of these unsolved murders or missing persons. Okay, So Noarel Cox disappears from Grafton.

Nineteen seventy seven, seventy seven.

Next up, Joy Hodgkins and Annie Tominak. They either go missing or their bodies are found in Mayfield.

You want two or ones?

They cut two.

It takes Nina and I an hour to work through the list of missing and unsolved murder victims. I've actually noticed that both our houses are on here. There's you at the bottom and there's me just there. We got the list of names from Questions and Answers in the New South Wales State Parliament same year. Nineteen seventy eight. Leanne Goodall last scene outside the Star Hotel in Newcastle, and this information comes from the police themselves. Nineteen seventy nine.

Are still in the seventies, We're.

Still in the same year.

Through the seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousands and twenty ten's the names just keep on coming. Alfried Sirich, Amanda Zaliz Hazel Fiddler, Elizabeth Dixon, Susan Mary Smith.

And slowly we start noticing patterns.

There's five in a group just around Newcastle and south. Then we've actually got three in Bowerville, so Evelyn green Up, Collen Walker Craig and Clinton Speedy Duroux.

In nineteen nineties yeh.

Nineteen nineteen, nineteen ninety one, but over six months, and that we know almost certainly is a serial killer, all right. And then we've got another for nineteen Ninetynica Rigney, Hazel Christian nineteen ninety one, nineteen ninety two, Ada Collins in Swansea.

So that's just outside Newcastle. Again, God, there's so many of them in.

Newcastle actually getting hard to read the map.

Yeah, we're not saying Frank Abbott has any link to any of these cases.

Some of these in the nineties are the ones that they were looking at for grenakilla Is, and they thought they.

Were all possible victims of another known serial killer. In fact, we're saying there is no link between Frank and almost all of them, Bromwin, Winfield, Lesson Newstead and Melissa Astill. It's just there are so many unsolved cases. Nineteen ninety four, Gordana Kotevski disappears from Charlestown, Melissa Hunts, you know, Meghan Pitt, Margaret Howlett, Angela Foley in Hinckley, Margaret Cox murdered in Taree.

Bernadette Donaldson, Elizabeth Wright, Lisa ver Ignola from Hexham.

The police have looked at connections between some of these unsolved cases. In nineteen ninety eight, a task force was set up to look at potential links between ten missing people and the backpacker killer Ivan Malatt.

Just flag Malat's arrested here.

Nineteen ninety four. Yeah, but the murders continue.

Yeah.

Other police investigations also looked for links between some of the cases, and there was a quote in one of the papers. We've had one young woman murdered at a truck stop barely an hour away, so it would be stupid to dismiss the possibility of the same person could have struck again. So the lead detective. Both women were young, blonde and hitchhiking alone. Both disappear from busy roads, and

Got it? So that's it? What do you think?

It's shocking to look at? Even more so when I remember that these aren't just a list of murders that have happened. These are just the unsolved murders.

So why are all these cases unsolved? Nina and I go back and read through some of the inquest findings that have looked at some of these cases, and they are utterly damning of the initial police investigations. One coroner talks about major failure. Another describes a violent death wrongly

All right, it's almost one am, and I am really, really tired.

Both Nina and I are trouble by what we've discovered.

I'd like to be asleep, but my head is my head is spinning trying to sort of digest all of the information that we got today. And there's just one point that's kind of stuck out to me that I just want to document, So I'm documenting it here.

Okay, So.

We know that there are a lot of unsolved murders on the North Coast, and there's been a lot of talk of them being linked or you know, serial killers, and there's been talking of Malatt, there's been talk of others, real gulars that could have operated in the area, and there's been task forces during that time that have looked at various links. And we know that but two of those women were missing. Hirtare nineteen ninety six, Margaret is murdered.

Four years after that, Sheryl Lee Masters goes missing. Those women were found or with head injuries, and all this rambling is just for me to.

Say, if you're looking at all these unsolved cases, and you're the police, you're and you're looking at linking cases and potential links. Why has no task force publicly looked at those cases? Okay, I'm going to bed.

I've got that out of my system.

Good night.

The next morning, Nina and I get ready to leave the North Coast. This might be our last visit to Kendall. You know, I've been coming here for ten years. But before we do leave, there's one last place we both want to go to, and there's the house, the house where all this started, where three year old William Tyrrell is last known to have been alive because of a photograph taken at nine thirty seven am on the twelfth of September twenty fourteen. So we're sitting outside the house

I was just looking at you and looking at how much and more tired.

You are, more tired than.

The last time we were here.

Isn't that obvious?

Yeah, I do feel tired, and I feel that there's too much of this in my head now, like last night as I went to sleep. But at the point I say, don't think about William Tyrell and don't think about Frank Abbott. And I'm not even close to the center of this. I'm not one of those people actually directly affected by it. But I do feel tired. But there is one thing which we haven't done, one place we haven't been and which we know that the police haven't searched.

And.

That's the bird tree where we've been told that William's body was buried. But look, we've got no reason to think it's true. It's a second hand account that Frank Abbot's brother told someone, and when we spoke to that person, they said they didn't remember.

But still.

It is the one place we haven't been and if we're going to look for answers to what happened, I think we do have to go there, so I think we should go.

All right.

So if we start driving here from outside the house where William was reported missing, he drives down.

Beniruin drive.

And here at the bottom you've got a choice of left or right, and left takes you to Kendall, which is the town. But if you want to get away, you choose right, which takes you here. This is Batar Creek Road, single lane, no paint on the road, no street lights. It feels like you're driving deep into the forest. And here's the crossroads where the police most recently were alleging that William's foster mother disposed of his body, despite the fact there's no evidence she even went there that

Haven't seen any other cars.

I haven't seen any people. But here.

We turn off the bitchermen onto I mean there's kind of a road. Now it's very narrow, and now we're on dirt, so again we're on the back. If you thought it was isolated before, now the forest is really crowding in, reaching into the road on either side, and the trees are hanging right over the road, so it's dark.

There's no turning around on the road. There's no going back.

Yeah, had the same feeling of about driving brim And road.

That was where Cheverley Masters was found, wasn't it. And again on the road out to where Margaret Cox's clothes were found, there's these thin dirt roads out when no one's looking.

Up.

Until this point we've been following Google Maps, but that's now lost us.

There's just no reception here.

There's a couple of really small dirt tracks leading off this dirt tracks a sign for the bird tree for kilometers. I love the fact I'm indicating like there's anyone to see it. And we're getting higher now. Just through the few breaks in the trees you can see we've come right almost to the top of this.

Well.

I guess it's a mountain. It's Middle Brother Mountain. Okay, so now do we go here? It looks like it all up.

It takes less than twenty minutes to drive from the house where William was reported missing to the bird tree.

I feel actually like my skin's crawling. I think it's the forest.

It's so dense, the groundcover is so thick.

I remember flying in the first time I came up here for this, and looking out of the plane and looking down at the dark forest and these pools of black water, and just thinking, if William is lost in there, it's an almost no, it's not impossible, like he has to be found, and we do have to find answers.

Come on, let's go.

And find the bird tree.

There's a picnic table and a map.

With the that tree that might be the bird tree.

See, people have walked.

Around the outside of it. There's like a faint path walking around it. It must be four or five meters across at the base. It's enormous.

The bush is so thick.

If you're going walking out onto it, you're gonna be walking on a dense mass of rotting leaves and branches and bark. You'd only have to force your way out into that for ten fifteen meters, and anything you left there will not be found unless the police would have come out in force on the kind of scale we've seen them do before more than once in William's case, and just strip everything away.

So they can do it.

Nina and I start walking out into the forest. I reckon that way, even though I don't think we'll find anything.

Round is just stick with wet leaves.

And I don't think there's even anything to be found here. But having come this far, imagine if we didn't at least try, we kind of have to. Nina and I get separated in the forest, lost in our own thoughts, and it takes a while before we find each other.

Are you doing.

Yeah?

I went out and I found a footpath that isn't marked on the maps, and I followed it, and it takes you to another one of these huge black butt trees, but this one, the trunk's been hollowed out at the bottom and you can go inside, and inside there's this great pile of earth, almost like it's been dug up, and you can see termites are building spires up out of it. And then the path goes on and it turns out this forest is riddled with them, completely unmarked footpaths.

I can stand inside.

It and you could fit one fifteen people in here. And I look up and I cannot see.

The top. It's just blackness.

I am.

I think I actually feel sick. I think we came out when we started this. We were looking at the investigation into a missing child, and we've found child abuse and unsolved murders and broken lives and broken families. And I think I don't have I think we're all human. I don't think we have the ability to deal with this much.

Horror.

But that's what the disappearance of William Tyrrell has led to, is that horror, particularly for those people who knew him and loved him and now live with it. We've been looking for answers since the inquest finished, and we've only got questions just with Frank Abbott. So much time has passed, and the people with the answers to those questions, so many of them are dead. There's Frank's mum and his dad and his brother Ted, all of them alibi witnesses when he was put on trial for the murder of

The bird tree.

There's the prison informant who gave evidence against Frank at his trial, all dead. There's nol Snter and Dooley Iris's husband who they're still with us, but they're old and they're no longer able to give evidence. And we know that the police failed to follow up on two of those witnesses, Frank's wife's sister and her cousin back in

And I.

I feel pretty sick at that thought, how do you feel?

You feel like I might cry?

Don't cry?

Hey, you know what, you couldn't have done anymore. You've done so much more than we ever set out to do, and more than I ever expected you to do, and for a long time, more than.

I knew you were doing.

You couldn't have done anymore. And now the rain comes, we.

Should go scat.

There is a PostScript to this episode. Back at the start of this series, I talked about the sheer number of lives that have been caught up and damaged by the police investigation into William Tyrrell's disappearance, talking about family members and witnesses, those wrongly put under suspicion and arrested,

I'm Dan Box