Ivan Milat’s Missing Victims & The Six Australians Who Vanished
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How many people go missing in Australia each year and what are the current statistics?
MORO, mitä iä! Tulit sitten taas! Anna kunvaa toit mulle uuden harvan tai tulit rakentamaan komposti. Ei parempaa katä syksyn tullen tuuli kuiskin mulle aina, että osta, oksta, silpuri ja niin ostin. Hää päivä. Ei vaan erittäin hyvää päivää! Sillä itse asiassa. Itse asiassa Bilteemasta löytyy edolliset välineet hommaa kuin homma. Oli kysymys sitten omasta tai kaverin projektista.
It's a Wednesday morning in May 1978 and it's pouring with rain as 23-year-old Barbara Brown makes her way to Beecroft railway station in Sydney's north. She's American and has been traveling the world for much of her twenties. She's no stranger to public transport, or hitchhiking for that matter. After arriving at Hornsby Station, Barbara stops for a milkshake and starts chatting to some road workers. The road crew give her a lift to the highway, where her plan is to hitch her way north to Queensland. But after that sighting The girl with the golden hair and sunny disposition vanishes. Police believe she was killed on or around that rainy Wednesday, but they don't have concrete proof. For her family, they've spent their whole lives wondering.
Where is she? What happened? Who killed her?
I'm Gemma Bath, and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. It's a uniquely painful experience to not know. To have someone vanish or disappear and not have any answers as to how or why. To not have a body to lay to rest. Life for a missing person's family is a harrowing journey of ambiguous loss. Trauma is not just in the disappearance, it's in the response. Because for many families, they're constantly having to fight to keep their loved ones' name at the forefront of investigators and media's lips. Nicole Morris is the director of the Australian Missing Persons Register, a not-for-profit association that she set up in 2005 after realizing there was nothing like it on the internet.
She's never had a loved one go missing, but after more than twenty one years of doing this work, voluntarily, I might add, She has a deep understanding of why people go missing, what happens when they do, and what the people left behind go through. For many loved ones of missing people, Nicole does something life-changing for them. She listens. She doesn't question or minimize their fears or make them feel like they're asking too much. She sees their loved ones as the human beings they are. She validates their anger, exhaustion, and persistence. Put simply, Nicole refuses to let families disappear, along with the people they love. She's already written two books filled with the stories of missing people.
Now she's releasing a third. It's called Lost. Today, she's going to tell us about the people within those pages. Nicole, welcome back to True Crime Conversations. Thank you so much. Can you remind listeners what is the current state of missing people in this country? How many go missing each year? And are most of those people found?
Absolutely, and we've just received new statistics so I can give you very accurate information about that. And it's just under fifty thousand, so about forty nine thousand something per year, uh, which works out to one hundred and thirty a day. Um But the bad news is that long term missing persons, the number of those has increased. So we're looking at twenty eight hundred. So two thousand eight hundred long term missing persons. Um I miss a long term missing person is anyone uh missing longer than three months uh because then it becomes very difficult to find them. Uh out of the forty nine thousand, um there is a a a very good location rate. It's something like ninety-eight percent of people are located within a couple of weeks.
So, you know, that we things are improving there, uh, but long term missing persons, um, yeah, it's still a problem.
Doing this for two decades as you have, what stands out to you the most about the systems we currently have in place to find people? You did say that there are some improvements in that space.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How many people go missing in Australia each year and what are the current statistics?
0:00–8:59
2
What are the differences in police reward policies across Australian states and why do they matter?
8:59–18:44
3
Who was Barbara Brown and what are the key details of her 1978 disappearance?
18:44–27:05
4
Is there evidence that Ivan Milat was involved in Barbara Brown’s case or other 1970s disappearances?
27:05–35:54
5
What happened to ten‑year‑old Bradford Foley and why has his case remained unsolved?
35:54–44:45
6
Who was Attila (the missing tech entrepreneur) and what are the theories behind his disappearance?
44:45–54:12
7
How did the disappearance of Brian Maxted unfold and what investigative challenges were faced?
54:12–1:03:10
8
What are the circumstances surrounding Tanya Farrington and Rhonda’s cases and why have they stalled?
1:03:10–1:06:38
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from True Crime Conversations
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