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The job of a homicide investigator is to find the suspect and gather enough evidence to gain a conviction in the Supreme Court, but in some cases there is another duty – a duty to the victim’s family.
These are the cases where the victim hasn’t been found and the killer (at least initially) is not talking.
Convicted killer Bradley John Murdoch, pictured in handcuffs after facing an extradition hearing in Adelaide 2003, has died of throat cancer aged 67. Credit: Getty Images
Such was the case with Bradley John Murdoch, convicted of the 2001 murder of British backpacker Peter Falconio, 28, who he abducted and killed off the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek, about 300 kilometres north of Alice Springs.
Police say he moved the body and, 24 years later, Falconio’s remains have not been found. Murdoch wouldn’t tell: first, because he maintained his innocence; later, when throat cancer robbed him of speech; and then, ultimately, due to his death in the palliative care unit at Alice Springs Hospital.
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One detective experienced in dealing with missing person murder cases told me finding the body is vital to help the families accept the unthinkable – that their loved ones have been killed. “Our job is to extinguish all hope,” he said.
Even when the evidence is overwhelming some families still hope for the miracle phone call.
It is why police are still looking for the body of Samantha Murphy, 51, who went missing in February last year while on a run from her Ballarat home.
And it is why governments in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory have passed laws saying that if convicted killers refuse to say where they have hidden bodies they cannot be eligible for parole.
Joy Membrey’s hopes for a new investigation into the 1994 murder of her daughter Elisabeth’s were dashed this month when Coroner John Cain said there wasn’t enough fresh evidence to identify her killer.
All she wants, she says, is to find some remains that can be laid to rest with Elisabeth’s now-dead father, Roger.
Elisabeth Membrey’s mother Joy outside the Coroners Court of Victoria on July 2.Credit: Nine News
In 1980, businessman Roger Wilson was abducted and murdered by a hit team. Without a body, the family had to listen to vicious and self-serving claims that he had engineered his own disappearance and was alive and well on the other side of the world.
A witness in the case, Debbie Boundy, was also abducted and killed, with her body never found.
When killer Barry Robert Quinn was doused with glue and set on fire inside Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison in 1984, medical staff assured him that he would pull through. Homicide Detective Senior Sergeant Jimmy Fry pushed through the crowd to tell him he was going to die and that he should talk.
He refused, adding, “You know me, Mr Fry.” Hours later he was dead.
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