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Speaker 4The family of missing Baptist woman Janine Vaughan has made an emotional plea for information into her whereabouts.
Speaker 5To be quite blunt with you, so most of this, if he's done it, arrests the man.
Speaker 6This stuff has tortured me for a long time. It drives me insane. It breaks my freaking heart.
Speaker 7Gentlemen, start your engines. Start your engines. This is an investigation into the disappearance
Speaker 3and almost certain murder of a young woman in the shadows of Mount Panorama, a mountain which is the spiritual home of motor racing in Australia, where some of the world's best drivers risk their lives in an often breathtaking annual race, a race around a mountain at the edge of a town called Bathurst that has been abandoned for more than a decade. that has been keeping a wicked secret. This is an investigation into the disappearance and almost certain murder of a young woman in the shadows of Mount Panorama, a mountain which is the spiritual home of motor racing in Australia, where some of the world's best drivers risk their lives in an often breathtaking annual race, a race around a mountain at the edge of a town called Bathurst, that has been tortured to death. You've seen how the rumour mill works.
Speaker 8Yeah, I know. I do, I get so consumed with it. The last couple of times that I've talked to you, like you'll say to me, oh, just explain this to me. When I start talking, I sort of feel like, oh my God, I'm lying about that, or that's not the truth because that's just what I've heard. And so you, by questioning me, makes me realise that a lot of it is just hearsay and we've just been so filled with shit. And I suppose it makes me feel stupid.
Speaker 9Kylie, you've been doing an amazing job.
Speaker 8I just want it to be over. I just need it to be over.
Speaker 3Some months before that telephone conversation, I went to a hotel in Sydney to meet a remarkable woman called Kylie Spelled and her fiercely loyal brother, Adam Vaughan. Kylie and Adam started telling me a sprawling and almost unbelievable story about their sister, a beautiful young woman called Janine, who worked in a menswear store in a country town called Bathurst and hoped to settle down with Mr Wright, marry and raise children. Kylie and Adam told me their family had waited almost 20 years to learn the truth about the fate of Janine, since her disappearance a stone's throw from friends, on one of the main streets of the town, a few hours west of Sydney. Kylie and Adam disclosed extraordinary allegations of corruption and cover-up in the police investigation. They talked about key evidence and even a possible murder weapon, a bloodied knife, which was destroyed by police when they. They were meant to keep it and have it tested for DNA. And they talked to me about illegal drugs, about cranks who claimed to know where Janine was buried in forest, and even links to students at the town's Charles Sturt University. I would learn how many people in Bathurst had turned almost mob-like on the town's senior police detective and deputy mayor, Brad Hosemans, painting this man as a killer as the community rumour mill rotated wildly in the months and years after Janine's death. Anyone that knows me
Speaker 10knows that it's just completely baseless.
Speaker 3Kylie wanted to know if a podcast investigation might find new evidence and expose a presumed killer who has eluded police since one fateful early morning in December 2001. We talked about Janine on a sunny afternoon in the outdoor garden bar of the hotel. The toll of the past two decades on Kylie and Adam was not obvious to me that day. They put on brave faces. In the months since, I've come to understand a little bit about how difficult it has been for them and the rest of the family.
Speaker 8It was so vulnerable, I suppose. I just believe everything.
Speaker 9Yeah, but you had to check out these different leads.
Speaker 8I know, but some of it, like you said, you know, you're a clear-minded person and you've come in going, well, this is very far-fetched and this is. Whereas I just believe everything and then go, well, it could happen because it does. Kylie hopes that
Speaker 3by re-examining Janine's case in this podcast, digging into new leads, talking to numerous people and inviting help from the public, we might find her sister's body and her killer. But this is a mystifying whodunit. Each time I think we're getting close, something new comes up and takes the investigation in another direction. I didn't know it when we first met, but this is also a story about Kylie. This is Kylie's relentless quest for answers. It has now enveloped me and my long-time friend, Peter Murphy. Peter is bringing his skills as a former criminal defence lawyer and judge to this investigation to try to find Janine's killer. As well as being a busy married mum in her early 20s, she's also been a busy mum in her early 20s. As well as being a busy married mum in her early 40s, Kylie is a passionate country music singer. She performs in pubs and at weddings and special occasions in towns across the Hunter Valley, lifting the spirits of revelers. Here she is at one of those gigs.
Speaker 11You've got to try a little bit, yes a little bit, to shine a light for it from within. And if you try it. In her spare time, she's out tracking down
Speaker 3witnesses, turning up evidence. She's dug with her bare hands into soil in thickly wooded forest near Bathurst when she's been told her sister's body was buried there. She stalks suspects and informants. She's online and chases cryptic leads sent to her Facebook page. And she tracks former and serving cops when she believes they might know something. Kylie tells me about most of these events, but usually she tells me afterwards because she knows that I want her to slow down. She also finds women who know very dangerous men in the Bathurst region and she wins their trust. I ask her to pause for her own safety and to let us try to catch.
Speaker 8And she said to me, if you ask me if I think he's capable of doing this to your sister, she said yes he is. 100% yes he is. He's a monster. He would shoot at anybody that would come to the property and put his big spotlights on them and make them that scared that they wouldn't be coming back. She said that there's a lot of mineshafts out on the property.
Speaker 12He is. A violent, fearless criminal.
Speaker 8Oh, I feel sick, to be honest. Every time I look at his photo, I think, oh my God. Oh, that's disgusting. You're disgusting. I sent the photo to Adam today, this morning, and he's like, I know that guy. I've seen that guy. I thought that guy was. So he's wracking his brain now thinking that he may have even seen him once when he was out with Janine.
Speaker 12You won't lose anything by pulling back and pursuing that life.
Speaker 8You won't lose anything. I wouldn't go out to the property and look around.
Speaker 9No, no, that would be crazy.
Speaker 8She said, I'll take you out there. I said, let's just get this bastard, and she pretty much took back saying, let's do that. I can't imagine if we got out there and we found something.
Speaker 12Just imagine. I think that you're really starting to poke the bear.
Speaker 8Well, I'd actually like that. I'd like them to come and say to me, what the hell have you been doing?
Speaker 3At our first meeting in that hotel in Sydney, Kylie told me about the three most prominent and known persons of interest in Janine's disappearance. They were called as witnesses to a coroner's inquiry in 2009. We're going to look at all of this evidence, and we're going to hear from each of these men. But there are others now. We've uncovered new evidence and compelling allegations about people who have not been publicly linked with Janine's disappearance before. One is a depraved and cruel individual. He's the same man Kylie was talking about before. We'll have a lot more to say about him later in this interview. series. In the meantime, it's important to know more about a trio of known men who are connected to each other because each has been raised in the past as a key person of interest. This three-word line, person of interest, is police speak, but it simply means someone suspected, and perhaps on flimsy evidence, and despite fierce denial, of being possibly involved in foul play over Janine. Janine Vaughan seemed to vanish into thin air. Steve Hart has tracked down two former persons of interest who speak out for the first time in this exclusive. Australia's Network 10 ran a TV news story in early 2019, briefly featuring the persons of interest, and a decade earlier, Coroner Mary Jerram, who heard the police evidence, did not make a single adverse finding about any of the three. There is local pharmacist, Andrew Jones, who was single. He said, when Janine disappeared. Jones is committed to church and prayer. He kept mostly to himself while living in Bathurst. He lived in accommodation at the prestigious The Scott School in Bathurst, and in return, he gave up some of his spare time to coach the students on the sporting fields. The pharmacy Jones worked in when Janine disappeared was in the same town shopping centre near the menswear store she managed. Andrew Jones tells friends that police have gone after him for no reason. Andrew Jones, who was a former police officer, said, he had no apparent reason, ruining his reputation and devastating his elderly mother.
Speaker 7Was she ever in your little red car, the Renault 19? Never been in my car. Didn't know her. But that's not quite true. Jones was a regular at the store managed by Janine. I obviously shopped at a menswear store, which was a great store, and it was, I shopped there, but obviously, you know, she worked there. Jones also matches the description of a man in a little red car that stalked another woman, 10 minutes before Janine vanished. They can test my car as much as they want. They won't find anything.
Speaker 3Next, there's the former police detective sergeant and deputy mayor of the town of Bathurst, Brad Hosemans. Some of the cops with whom he worked tipped him as a future head of the 20,000 strong New South Wales police force because of his work ethic and exceptional abilities as a detective. Hosemans was linked to Janine by innuendo and by witnesses. One in the town of Bathurst, and the other in the town of Bathurst, were linked to Janine by innuendo and by witnesses. One in the town of Bathurst, and the other in the town of Bathurst, and the other in the town of Bathurst, even came forward years later to swear that she saw him driving a car with a terrified Janine in the front passenger seat, her wrists bound and a look of pleading desperation on her face. The circumstances surrounding that disclosure were unusual. Hosemans rejected it and several others connecting him to Janine, calling them ludicrous. Hosemans has also been the subject of town innuendo that he was connected with an illegal drug crop. Once again, he rejects that claim as nonsense. The once highly regarded officer was as surprised as Jones when Network 10's Steve Hart turned up at his workplace in Sydney, far from his ruined career as a country cop with unlimited ambition.
Speaker 7Brad Hosemans was the leading suspect for many years. His alibi didn't stack up, and a former lover was caught out trying to fabricate one for him. But despite this, no hard evidence has ever been found to link Hosemans to Janine's murder. Janine's family, they have some questions. Brad, do you think you owe it to them to ask, Brad, can you tell us about your alibi?
Speaker 10Look, I'm sorry. This matter's been well and truly gone over. I'm sorry I can't help you.
Speaker 3As a detective, Brad Hosemans investigated and locked up dangerous criminals. He tells me that he's still looking over his shoulder because of his work on sensitive cases which put the guilty and often violent behind bars. He also went to some horrific crime scenes, like the one where Linda Andrews was blasted to death by her unhinged former boyfriend, Bruce Spate. Hosemans led the investigation into a murder and the killer's suicide. Sometimes he finds it hard to put the scenes out of his mind.
Speaker 10The average person just doesn't understand what goes on with those crime scenes. They just think it might be a bit of a pool of blood or something. But there were pieces of this bloke and her everywhere. And that's just one of hundreds of people who were killed. And I think that's just one of hundreds of cases that you've gone through in your life. And is that what people remember you for? No. And then you've got to sit here and try and defend yourself down the track because some dickhead thinks, oh yeah, Hosemans did it. I was a deputy mayor contributing to my community and doing a really good job for my community and trying to make it a better place. Either putting shitheads in jail or trying to get parks and swings and everything else that goes right's rubbish. Is any of that getting remembered? No. Brad Hosemans was some criminal mastermind or some supposed drug dealer or anything like that. You know, Brad Hosemans was none of that shit. Brad Hosemans was a bloke that was busting his ass for that town on so many facets, trying to make that place a better place, an even better place. And then here I am 20 years later, still trying to call my way out of some sort of suggestion that I was a person of interest in a discipline. A girl I had nothing to do with. Then you have to go and cop this sort of bullshit. And you just sit there and you think, you know, at the end of it, you just think, fuck me, you know, was it worth it? Was it worth that 20 years of it? And now to be subjected to this?
Speaker 3You'll hear a lot more about Brad Hosemans in later episodes. And thirdly, there's aged care home wardsman Dennis Briggs. Briggs was showing an infatuation with Janine in her workplace, the menswear store called Ed Harry in the seven days before she went missing. He was drinking heavily and he wasn't taking his antipsychotic medication. Briggs even told his partner, Julie Cleave, and several friends that he picked Janine up in his car, drove her out of town, tried to rape her, stabbed her to death, then disposed of her body near a place called White Rock, south of Bathurst. He got rid of his small reddish-colored car soon afterwards. Dennis Briggs also changed his mind about the appearance, getting his head shaved and having the image of a rat tattooed on one side of his face.
Speaker 5Briggs also told his partner, Julie Cleave, and several friends that he picked Janine up in his car, and said, look, to be quite blunt with you, I'm over this. If he's done it, arrest the man. I said, simple. I said, I'm not the only person he said it to. He said it to several other people. I said, and from what I understand, his story is consistent. And they said, oh, well, we just haven't found any traces in the car. And I said, oh, my fucking God, is that it? That was their excuse. They had found nothing in the car. And I said, oh, my God, is that it? And they said, no, it's not the car.
Speaker 3And they said, oh, my God, is that it? And pointed to a mound, and it was dug up, and Janine's remains were there. Would you be absolutely stunned, or would you be, you know?
Speaker 5No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. To be quite honest with you, I do not think that I would be stunned. I'd be mortified to think that I actually went out with him. But then again, how many times are people quite happily married to a partner, and they're off doing whatever they're doing, and the partner knows nothing, about it? And I said to him, well, why would you say something like that? I said, because if you didn't kill her, I said, that's going to make the police pin it on you anyway. And he just looked and said, oh, well, if they can't find the body, they can't pin anything on me. And I thought, oh, my God. I mean, maybe he was smarter than I thought that he was. Well, maybe she is buried somewhere at White Rock, but not where he has said, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3It's very important to stress that all three men emphatically deny wrongdoing. I've talked to two of the three over many hours. It might have seemed an open and shut case with Dennis Briggs, but he was off his medication, and he said that caused him to have delusions of grandeur, false confession. Like Kylie and the rest of her family, the three men say they have been profoundly affected too. By Janine's disappearance and almost 20 years of investigations and public finger pointing, the accusations leveled against them, their strenuous rebuttals and many new facts will be examined in The Night Driver. You heard Kylie at the start of this episode. After long weeks and months spent working together, talking constantly about the evidence and sharing new information, the pressure momentarily became too much for Kylie. But each day, brings us a little closer to where we believe the truth of what really happened to Janine lies. It's alright. We'll get there.
Speaker 13Yeah. Okay. A medium-sized red sedan has pulled up.
Speaker 14The passenger door opened and Janine got in the car and we understand from that point on she hasn't been seen since. From the information we've gathered in the investigation, it would appear that Janine Vaughan has been abducted and murdered.
Speaker 3That's the voice of Detective Richie Sim talking about 17 years ago to a journalist from the Seven Network's Today Tonight program. Back then, Sim was a homicide squad cop on Strike Force Toko, the official name for the police hunt for Janine's killer. But Sim made no secret of his view then that every avenue of the investigation to that point in time had been exhausted. And all potential leads are eliminated.
Speaker 14This investigation has been incredibly frustrating. Probably the most frustrating in my career. The circumstances of the investigation are very thin. We don't have a crime scene. We obviously haven't found Janine's body.
Speaker 3Now, that was not long after Janine had vanished, just a couple of years. But the mystery was still in the news and being talked about in Bathurst. Kylie's small collection of videotapes of reports like this one, are windows into earlier investigations. They show how a very serious murder probe by police started quickly and early and gathered momentum. It continued over several years. And they show the Vaughan family's snippets of footage of Janine as happy and outgoing with many friends.
Speaker 15Hi everyone, I hope everyone's having a great night. Most of you know. Two weeks before her disappearance, Janine had spoken at a family birthday. After Janine's disappearance, the Vaughan family endured each agonising hour. Extensive ground and air searches failing to yield a single clue as 20 homicide detectives from Sydney and Bathurst interviewed 1,000 people and recorded hundreds of statements.
Speaker 16I was over there scaring the streets. I was over there for three weeks.
Speaker 3And. It was so hard. That's Janine's father, Ian. Now you'll hear the voice of Jenny, the woman Janine called mum.
Speaker 15I don't think
Speaker 3there's a
Speaker 15day that goes by that I don't cry. I find myself talking to her photos. You know, it's just. What do you say, Jenny? I just say, give me some sun.
Speaker 16This constant thing in our hearts and heads of not knowing anything is driving us crazy. It never leaves your mind. You wonder every day, virtually every second of the day, where she is, what happened to her.
Speaker 15So can we assume she
Speaker 14knew the occupant or occupants of the car? Janine's personality indicates that she wouldn't have got in the car with a stranger. Well, I'm quite sure Janine knew exactly who was in that car.
Speaker 3Jenny had been a happy, contented wife and mother, but she died with a broken heart. I can imagine. I can assure you, she's never off my mind.
Speaker 16If someone's mind or conscience has been jogged by this story tonight, what would you like to say to them? Write a letter, a note, a phone call, anything, just to let us know where she is, please. You've got something. We've got nothing. We haven't got a. We haven't got a headstone. We've got absolutely nothing. Be a man and come forward. Keep yourself up.
Speaker 3This podcast is made possible by subscribers to The Australian and our principal sponsor, Harvey Norman. Since late 2017, when I started pursuing Chris Dawson for the 19th anniversary of his death, I've been a fan of his. I've been a fan of his. Since the 1982 murder of his wife, Lynn, Harvey Norman has been a loyal backer. It began with The Teacher's Pet, and Harvey Norman and its CEO, Katie Page's, support has continued for over eight years. I'm proud to have had their backing on all of mine and The Australian's investigative podcasts, The Night Driver, Shandy's Story, Shandy's Legacy, The Teacher's Trial, The Teacher's Accuser, Bronwyn, and most recently, the Sick to Death podcast. For more information on this podcast, go to theaustralian.com.au.
Speaker 17Hi, Hedley, how are you going?
Speaker 3G'day, Bec, I'm pretty good yourself?
Speaker 17Yeah, not bad, thank you.
Speaker 3I've become aware of a little-known fact about Janine. Even the local rumour mill protected this personal secret, held it close. It's smouldered in Janine for most of her relatively short life. I'm going to broach it with her family and with her friend Rebecca Howell because they believe this fact is fundamental to understanding Janine. Janine was raised in a loving family in a small town in the Hunter Valley, a three-hour drive north of Bathurst. Her move from Musselbrook to Bathurst a few years before she disappeared came after the breakdown of her brief marriage to Rod Ether. You're going to hear from Rod shortly. The woman Janine called Mum, Jenny Vaughan, did not give birth to Janine. Janine's biological mother was young and she gave her up for adoption immediately Janine's father Ian Vaughan was away at sea at the time so when Ian's parents heard a rumour in the town that they had a baby granddaughter and she was at the local hospital but likely to go to strangers they stepped in. This was a selfless act of love and loyalty but it became complicated too. As a small child Janine believed that her dad Ian was actually her big brother. When Ian returned from Navy duty and married Jenny, they raised three children, Kylie, Adam and Rodney. As children these three believed Janine was a really cool young auntie. They thought she was their dad's little sister. The extended Vaughan family was very tight-knit. Janine lived nearby with her grandparents. She adored Gran and Pa, she called them Mum and Dad. But Janine increasingly felt a special tie to her biological dad Ian. What to do? When the family decided that time was right Janine was sat down one day and told the full story. She learned where she really came from. And this part went well. Janine responded by just spending a bit more time with her father Ian and his young family. Everyone continued to love her at least as much as they had before the full story was disclosed. But one ongoing difficulty would play on Janine's mind until the day she died. Janine's biological mother who had all so stayed in the town lived a short walk from Janine's home. And she had by then her own family. She avoided contact with Janine. Janine wanted to meet and know the mother who had given her life. Janine's friends and family tell me Janine's yearning deepened as she became a young woman.
Speaker 17I remember her telling me that growing up that her biological mother obviously still lived in Musselbrook and used to live in the town of Musselbrook. She used to live around the corner from where Janine used to catch the bus. And she would tell me that she was really sad and she couldn't believe that she only lived not that far from Janine. And she'd never tried to reach out to Janine and make any contact with Janine. And Janine said that she used to have to walk past her place to go to the bus stop or sometimes ride her bike past where she lived and that she had never reached out to her. We used to have lunch every day. I was going through a bad time in my life too. So we sort of, we shared a lot. And that probably come up in the whole dynamics of when we used to talk about her family and her step-mum, Janine and Ian and Kylie and Adam and Rodney. She used to just say they were my brothers and sisters. She never used to really say they're my half-brothers or, you know, same dad but different mum.
Speaker 3I asked Rebecca whether Janine had told her that she she definitely wanted to have a relationship with her biological mother.
Speaker 17That was my understanding, that she couldn't believe that she had not ever reached out or tried to make any sort of contact with Janine. And I sort of think that that probably contributed to her sense of belonging, I guess, and also her feeling of probably in her relationships what she was looking for. She was looking for that person to settle down with and to have a family of her own.
Speaker 12It's a really quite tragic short life, isn't it? Not knowing her own mother and then being abducted and murdered at 31. I can't believe
Speaker 9someone can be so unfortunate.
Speaker 3I raised it with David, who became Janine's student boyfriend after she had moved to Bathurst.
Speaker 18I mean, that was a huge driving thing in her life and I guess the way she looked at things in those days was a lot of. Well, that was driven by the fact that her natural mother essentially abandoned her and she grew up in the same town as her natural mother. Her family was massively important to her, especially the brothers and the sisters. They were the most important thing in her life, essentially, along with her dad. So she was very much family-orientated, there was no doubt about it. But there was obviously a massive underlying sadness there.
Speaker 3All these years later, this is still a sensitive subject, Ingenie. Janine's family. It was raised awkwardly at the start of my first interview with her sister Kylie in a house filled with photographs and other reminders of Janine. This is the sound machine. Excellent. I'm going to turn it
Speaker 19on and we'll start recording, OK? OK. We're good.
Speaker 9I really just want to start at the beginning. I want to hear about the growing up years with your sister, who you used to call your auntie.
Speaker 20Yes. Why? We were. told, well, we just assumed, I suppose, that because she grew up with my grandparents, that she was one of theirs. So she had four brothers, which one was my dad. He was the eldest. And, yeah, so I think it was one of those things that when we sort of got to an age where we would understand, we were then told that she's actually your sister.
Speaker 3Someone who was really fortunate, ended up in a loving family after, you know, a bad break.
Speaker 20Yeah. Some part of me sort of feels that it's sort of like downgrades, if that makes sense. Like, I know at times, you know, people would sort of say that, oh, she's only your half-sister, isn't she? Like, what difference does that make, you know? So I kind of. I get quite defensive of the whole fact that she is only half and not full, I suppose. So, yeah, I do. That is something that has concerned me and I do get a little bit nervous about talking about that. But, like you said, it is part of her journey in life and it's got her to where she is today.
Speaker 3And where does that journey start? Kylie related some of the family history about her young father and his girlfriend in a small town where secrets like this can be hard to keep.
Speaker 20He obviously went off to the Navy and it was only. My grandparents found out on the day that Janine was actually born that they'd become grandparents. And they were just blown away and then they're ringing Dad going, did you know about this kind of thing, you know?
Speaker 3We're going to be careful to not identify Janine's biological mother in this podcast. In some of the comments from those close to Janine, you'll hear a slight pause and that's because we've edited them where they name the now elderly woman who was Janine's biological mother. When Detective Superintendent Peter Houlihan filed a detailed report on investigations into Janine's disappearance, he included a summary of this poignant part of her life. These are the Detective Superintendent's words, but not his voice.
Speaker 21In November 1969, Ian joined the Royal Australian Navy and was subsequently based at HMAS Cerberus at Port Phillip Bay. Due to his commitment to the Navy, Ian was unable to return to Muscleport, Musclebrook for the birth of Janine. He had initially heard that Janine had fallen pregnant to him. However, he was under the impression that Janine had miscarried. Janine was born at Scott Memorial Hospital, Scone, on 7 January 1970. At three weeks of age, Janine was adopted by her paternal grandparents, Athol and Nancy Vaughan, given Ian's inability to care for her due to his circumstances at the time. It was Janine's express wish, in a formal condition of the adoption, that she have nothing to do with the upbringing of Janine. In a statement taken from her following Janine's disappearance, she claims that she had seen Janine as she grew up in Musclebrook. However, they only acknowledged each other three or four times during this time. From the age of ten, Janine began calling Ian Dad. The contact between Janine, Ian, Jenny, and their other children remained regular, with them spending time together three to four times a day. The police officer
Speaker 3alluded to a neediness in Janine. He wrote that she didn't cope well on her own. She constantly sought companionship, and he made a nuanced connection to the circumstances surrounding her birth.
Speaker 21There was always the underlying discontent in relation to her birth and her natural mother's abandonment of her almost immediately after birth.
Speaker 20Here's Kylie again. So Janine was in hospital for three weeks. The nurses actually called her Rebecca while she was in hospital because poor little darling had no name and nobody there to care for her.
Speaker 3Janine's grandparents knew they wanted her.
Speaker 20She was brought up in a loving home.
Speaker 3It's an amazing story.
Speaker 20Yeah, I mean, Gran, she already had four boys. So for her to have this beautiful little daughter, little girl come into her life, like it was just, yeah, it completed her, I think.
Speaker 3What do you remember as a little girl
Speaker 19growing up with this older girl who you thought was an auntie?
Speaker 20I know I've got memories of us recording ourselves on tape recorders. We'd be singing and dancing in the boys' room and just playing, and we'd gone on holidays together a few times. And so, yeah, it was really. It was really good to have her around, but it wasn't all the time. And, yeah, I would have been this annoying little sister that, you know, these boys are coming into the house and I'd be. I can still remember myself being this little annoying girl that would be sitting on the boys' laps. And so, yeah, it was good. And, you know, I always looked up to Janine. She'd always made herself look beautiful and her hair was, you know, she was. I wanted to be when I got older, you know. My mum had no issues at all. She loved her as if she was her own as well. And it actually got to a point where it was quite difficult because she'd had visits with my parents and it got to the point where it was kind of. It was getting very difficult for Janine to then go back to Grenham Park because she was wanting to stay with mum and dad. And my mum and dad would never have taken her away from Grenham Park. Like, you know, they've raised her, you know, from a. baby right through to, you know, toddler age and even a little bit older, you know, and to take her away from. That would have just broken their hearts. Like, my parents would never have done that. So it was just something that had to work. We just. They obviously just made it work and. It was a shared upbringing. It was a shared upbringing and. I think they've all done a great job. Yeah. And what about on the other side with her natural mother? Janine would go to school, would see her, would see Janine. There was a time there where, which breaks my heart, that Janine used to sit across the road from her house and hope that she'd come over and talk to her. She went through her whole life just wanting that one person's attention and she never got it.
Speaker 3I mean, it's a small country town. Small town, yeah. Janine's growing. Now, in, you know, a loving home, how far away did her natural mother live from her house?
Speaker 20Literally, like, you go down the end of the street and her house is pretty much right across the road from the end of that street. She would have seen her walking to school. I know that this is something that has sat with Janine her whole life and it made her very sad.
Speaker 3It saddens the rest of the family too. Here's Janine's brother Adam telling me. about seeing Janine's biological mother when he was young.
Speaker 22You know, I remember when I was 16, got my first job at the shoe shop and I served her. She was so nice. And I just wanted to say, do you know who I am? Because I knew that Janine wanted to talk to her and I'm thinking, if you're this nice, why can't you just talk to her? But then later on, I realized that I was. over the top. I was being beautiful and so nice to her and didn't want to do anything wrong. To stuff up the chance that she might talk to Janine. She probably did know who I was. Janine got to 31.
Speaker 20By that point, you'd think that, you know, if she really wanted to know Janine, she would have reached out herself.
Speaker 3After lunch at a local pub where Kylie sometimes does singing gigs, she took me for a tour. It went past the house owned by Janine's biological mother.
Speaker 20This is the first time that I've driven past the house. I'm not a continual stalker. And that's the thing, like we don't, we've never had conversation to this, with this woman. So we don't know how. How she dealt with that. How she, you know, snuck around being pregnant with a baby and knowing full well that she wasn't going to keep this child. It must have been awful.
Speaker 12Can we agree on this now? Can we agree that we should try this? That I will record what we say from here?
Speaker 23Yeah, but I sort of don't know how to put it into words.
Speaker 3I've been talking to Janine's biological mother off the record. Until now, she did not want to be interviewed for this podcast. I'm going to call her Anna, but that isn't her real name. Anna spoke to me about her decision to give Janine up for adoption in a small country town half a century ago.
Speaker 12You said before that, you said it was the biggest regret of your life.
Speaker 23Well, the situation I was in at the time, I was living with my parents. I was living alone. I never had any child support for the little boy that I was raising on my own because my husband had walked out. I was working full time. I tried to look after him and my parents were wonderful to me, but I knew and they said that they didn't know if they could handle another baby or child in the house. And I thought, well, how can I raise two children on my own? And then when the family were interested in taking her and looking after her and I've thought, well, she'll have a good home and I know where she's going. And she seemed to be happy growing up. And I regret from that very first day what happened and the decision I made. So I can't change that now.
Speaker 9What would you have done differently?
Speaker 23Well, I, well, if I was in a better position, I would have raised her myself or tried to raise her myself. But I knew I just couldn't because financially and I didn't have the money. I didn't have anywhere permanently to live and I wasn't getting any help from Ian. And now I just wish that it didn't happen like it did. I sort of kept to myself for a long time after that.
Speaker 9Did you want to reach out to Janine
Speaker 23when she was a child? I did. But then I thought, well, she's been with them since she was a baby. They've read that she's happy. And I thought, no, I won't interfere. It's just, I don't know. All these things, you know, they come through your mind and you make mistakes and bad decisions. And that's just a bad decision that I made that I didn't reach out to her. But she had the opportunity to reach out to me too. And then I kept thinking, well, maybe she doesn't want anything to do with me. I had that in my mind all the time too.
Speaker 9If she had come around, knocked
Speaker 19on the door and said, you're my mum, I'd like to get to know you, what do you think you would have done?
Speaker 23Well, I certainly would have, I would have accepted her. I said, well, I would have liked to have got to know her too. I don't think that would have been a problem at all.
Speaker 3Anna told me that whenever she saw Janine on the handful of occasions in town, she saw a younger version of herself. She identified the physical likeness in her daughter, her young flesh and blood. But each time Anna considered initiating contact with Janine as a girl and then as a young woman in the small community, she stopped herself.
Speaker 9Were you curious about her growing up? Did you want to know what she was achieving?
Speaker 23Yeah, what she was going to do and, you know, things like that, like you do. Wondering what she was going to do in life and all those sorts of things. Being in a small town, you think we would have crossed paths, but we sort of never ever did, except for that one time at the club.
Speaker 3This moment must have been seared into Janine's memory. It was the only time the young woman and her biological mother had a face-to-face contact and spoke to each other.
Speaker 23Well, I didn't know who she was with. I know that she just came and stood at the bar and I could see it was her. And we just said hello and she said hello back and that was it. Turned around and she walked off and that was it. I never seen her again for the first time. Well, I didn't know if she made any effort to contact me or wrote to me or rang me or anything. I never heard a word. And I thought then, well, obviously she doesn't want anything to do with me, you know, if that's it, so.
Speaker 9Some people hearing this will ask why the onus was on Janine to contact you, why you didn't think there was also an onus on you to contact her.
Speaker 23Oh, I know that, yeah. I realise that.
Speaker 9What do you say about that?
Speaker 23As I said, if I could go back in time it wouldn't be like this, but I can't go back in time.
Speaker 12Did you grieve?
Speaker 23I certainly did. And I do every day. I think about it every day. You know, if her life was different, that probably never would have happened. And all those things are in your mind all the time.
Speaker 12You must have had strong feelings for her to have grieved and be thinking of her every day.
Speaker 23Oh, I definitely, oh, I did. I definitely did. I was her biological mother.
Speaker 12And that's the bit that's hard to reconcile, that you would have such strong feelings for her and think about her every day after she disappeared, but have nothing to do with it.
Speaker 23Yeah, and I keep asking myself why. Why didn't I? You know, I ask myself that
Speaker 12all the time.
Speaker 23What's your best guess about why? I really don't know. All the things that have happened, like, I don't know, through the family and things that have happened over the years and, like, I've lost three brothers. One took his own life, and I don't think I ever got over that, because I was the last person to see him. Yeah, I really don't know. I'm getting upset now, sorry. Yeah, I don't know. I went through a bad marriage. Yeah, like, domestic violence and things have been pretty tough for a lot of years, put it that way. And I more or less was thinking, well, you know, her living with them, she'll have a good life, and I'll look after her and raise her and all these things go through your mind. Then as the years go by, you wish that goodness had never made that choice.
Speaker 3Yeah. She told me that she could not bring herself to go to any of the community's public events, such as the memorial service held to honour Janine's life. She did not want to cause a scene with Janine's family.
Speaker 23None of her family sort of kept in contact with me or wondering how I was going or anything like that. They just, you know, I was just nothing, I suppose. But as I said, I was an outcast. They had no time for me, so everyone knows everyone's business. Unfortunately, the tongues were wagging. But anyway, I'm okay now.
Speaker 12She's a beautiful girl. Yes. Have you got any photographs of her? I do. Can I ask how you got those?
Speaker 23I cut them out of paper.
Speaker 19Do you have any other mementos of her?
Speaker 23No, I don't.
Speaker 19In sickness and in health.
Speaker 15To love and to cherish. As long as we both shall live.
Speaker 3Rod, Ether and Janine Vaughan married young. She wanted to settle down and have children. But Rod couldn't even settle down at weekends, let alone start raising kids with his striking young wife. Rod works in one of the Hunter Valley's mining operations. We met after work one day in the house that he and Janine had bought together. In the 1990s. He can't leave it all these years later because he doesn't want to walk away from the memories.
Speaker 24Janine's still a very big part of this place. Just for myself, the way that I feel. Is that right? Hopefully I won't get stumped for words when we talk. Because I still love the woman. We just weren't in love at the time, you know. We fell apart. Obviously for me, sitting in the position I am now, 52 years of age, she's the only woman that I've really loved. At the time, you don't know these things.
Speaker 3Rod told me that Janine's unusual upbringing and her unresolved questions about her biological mother were always just below the surface. He recalled one day when they were out together and it came to a head.
Speaker 24Her natural mother was actually in the pub at the same time and Janine mentioned, she said to me, she said, look, I really think that I want to approach you about why. She just wanted some answers. It didn't go well. Janine came back, she was shattered. I said, right, let's go home. She didn't want to be there anymore and hurt her really bad. The ultimate question, yeah, why? Why did you leave me at the hospital? And from that day forward, the milestones of 16th birthday or 18th birthday or 21st, you know, like. Not even a card, nothing. I know I left this mark with Janine, yeah. But she still went forward with life. I wasn't going to bring her down completely. As I say, she had so much love from, you know, her grandparents and Ian and Jenny.
Speaker 19Sounds like you did too.
Speaker 24Yeah, oh, look, the beautiful family. I love them to death, you know. And, um. I think every day, look, there's never a day that goes by that I don't think about Janine.
Speaker 19And how would you describe the marriage, right? How. You know, the good and the not so good.
Speaker 24Well. Um. It's going to be hard. I need a break from that. Sorry, it's, um. Take your time. Yeah, it's. Look, when we first met, it was fantastic. I couldn't believe that someone like Janine, felt the way she did about me. And I absolutely adored her as well. We were seeing each other for four years before we got married. And then we were married for four years. We just knew we were so compatible with each other. The conversations, the openness, the love. When it started to go downhill, this is where. This is where. You know, I blame myself because we. Janine was wanting to settle down. We were looking at having kids. And I believe that we married too young. Like, I blame myself for it all. Absolutely. I was still out, went to a party with my friends and had the best of both worlds, basically. I really wish that. Because she's still the love of my life. And I miss her dearly. I really wish that we had met further down the life. Like, I could have got that out of my system, so to speak. And been a better person that I know I am for her. And same as my parents and family absolutely adored Janine. Like, everyone loved Janine. She was just such a beautiful soul. Yeah. And I guess the only real enemies that she had were people that were just jealous of her. Yeah. It's just so wrong. Someone so beautiful can have this happen to her. Whatever has happened to Janine, obviously, um. has nothing to do with myself. But the fact that we separated, I do. I blame 100% on myself. For sure. If I'd have been a better person at the time and we stayed together, Janine would be still sitting in this lounge room and you wouldn't even be sitting there, mate.
Speaker 3Michelle Sullivan was Janine's. close friend from their late teens until her disappearance.
Speaker 25She was so happy. Um. The life of the party. Yeah. She brought that to the room. It was always good to see her. She was beautiful. I know she really wanted to start a family. We were all sort of starting a family. OK, we've got to grow up sooner or later. Let's start thinking about having a family. What was she like around children? Oh. To see her around the kids. She would have been a good mum.
Speaker 9Will this podcast open up wounds for you and others who knew Janine? Just talking about it like we are.
Speaker 26I hope it opens up the truth. Because I think it's been a cover-up from the beginning. It's been a set-up. I think the saddest thing is that we. we don't know. The hardest thing is we don't know. I don't know why it was her. Did she know something that she wasn't supposed to know? She would have had to have known the driver. She would have known the person in that car. She's special. We need to find her. I'm walking across
Speaker 3George Street in the heart of Bathurst with my friend Peter Murphy, the recently retired judge and former criminal defence lawyer from Brisbane. Early in my investigation, Peter offered his perspective on this case and then he volunteered his help. He's been examining many leads with me since I took up his offer to help find Janine and her killer. Now we are in Bathurst meeting contacts and testing various theories. Tonight we are retracing the footsteps of Janine. Her last steps outside a pub and nightclub called the Metro Tavern, otherwise known back in the day as the Dirty Tav.
Speaker 18It was just one of those sort of towny places where instead of making the smart decision and going home because nothing good ever happens after midnight, if you wanted to keep going, you'd go to the Metro and it was a drinking hole of last resort essentially.
Speaker 3That's David, one of Janine's boyfriends from that time. David was a decade younger than Janine. He and his student friends from Charles Sturt University adored her. You'll hear more from David later.
Speaker 27Back then this was the Metro Tavern. 3.30 on a Friday morning this place was humming.
Speaker 19Well, yeah, I'm trying to imagine it's pouring rain. There are people spilling out after last drinks here. Back then a lot of students and of course Janine was here with Jordan and Juanita and she's lost her handbag and she's distraught.
Speaker 27Yep, yep. And then to make things worse, Jordan, who's a good mate, was having a stoush with his girlfriend Juanita about some domestic issue of theirs. It's raining, it's very early in the morning, so she starts walking up this way and she says, "Well, let's go to the Ox," which is a pub just over there. You know, obviously they hatch a bit of a plan. It seems to be the pub that's open after this one. So she starts to come across here, it's in the rain, and her friends Jordan, Morris and Juanita Murphy, they follow her. So she walks ahead around about here.
Speaker 19She picks up the pace. But I think Jordan and Juanita are just distracted
Speaker 27by the domestic disagreement they're having. Yeah. And Jordan seems to think that Janine's giving him and Juanita some space to sort of have out their domestic issue. Yeah. So he describes her as picking up the speed and moving, you know, ahead of them quite quickly. Yeah, she's marching ahead. But Jordan was still concerned about it, so he was keeping an eye on her. The overall impression from Jordan is that she was in a pretty fragile state in the time leading up to this night. Yeah. She's heading up here towards the end of the park here. And they get up to around about this point, I think. And by this stage, Janine's, she's made it probably, what he says, about 25 metres or so ahead of them. Yeah. And gets up to the gates of the park here, these ornate metal gates. And this is the last time that he sees her. What he sees then is a car. And they yell out. And Jordan, describes it.
Speaker 3He thinks it's a sedan. He thinks it's reddish in colour.
Speaker 19And she gets straight in. She doesn't hesitate. Yep. As if she knows the driver.
Speaker 3Yep. At the corner, Peter and I turn into Keppel Street. So she gets up to the corner here. She must turn left.
Speaker 19Meanwhile, Strop, who knows Janine, he's upstairs and he's looking down out of his window in the rain. Yep. He sees Janine. Yep. And he'd seen her. Earlier that night.
Speaker 3Strop is the nickname for Ian Bryant, a man described by his friends as a gentle giant who worked in local pubs as a security guy. They say he was very rarely stroppy. He had a sunny personality and he got on well with just about everyone. But Strop is dead. We have his statements about Janine and the red car he saw her get in.
Speaker 27He lives up there, actually. And just up here in the unit above the. It's called the George now, but in those days. It was called the Park. Yeah. So he's got a pretty good view from up there, right down across this roundabout down Keppel Street.
Speaker 19Yeah. and about the same time as janine gets into the car he's seeing it from the rear so he sees the rear of the car which he thinks is a
Speaker 27bit like a hyundai excel yeah and jordan gets a side-on view and he gets a view across the park here the corner of the park he sees a car that he
Speaker 19thinks is more like possibly a sedan as big as a magna a mitsubishi magna so a bit bigger than a hyundai excel but they both describe it as reddish yep and he gives a pretty expansive description despite the fact that you know it's 10 to 4 in the morning he's had a few drinks too his girlfriend at the time later his wife when either she's not much help because she's the first to admit she's had far too much yeah she
Speaker 27can remember very very little of the
Speaker 3night a bathurst tv news report from monday december 10 2001 carried the story of janine jenny vaughn is filmed sobbing while being comforted by janine's uncle jeff as acting inspector mark gallagher raises the prospect of murder and friends at janine's workplace the menswear store ed harry's in the local shopping center try to make sense of what's happened
Speaker 4but first the family of missing bathurst woman janine vaughn has made an emotional plea for information into her whereabouts mrs vaughn was last seen in the early hours of friday morning police say they fear the worst
Speaker 28the vaughns are living every family's worst nightmare the emotional toll of her daughter's disappearance today too much for jenny vaughn her brother-in-law jeff left to describe the family's
Speaker 29anguish i think the worst two and a half days of our lives the car has stopped um janine has obviously got in and she's gone so at that point in time there wasn't any any alarm bells ringing it wasn't till the following morning
Speaker 28janine's friends describe her as bubbly and fun-loving her disappearance is a mystery to them all janine's friends describe her as bubbly and fun-loving her it's not like her
Speaker 30at all um we're just all totally devastated all the shopping centers rallying together to try and do whatever they can giving out posters trying trying to work out what what's going on and all eight
Speaker 28detectives from the chifley command are working the case at this point
Speaker 29in time it's it's fair to say that the police are treating it at the worst case scenario while
Speaker 28there was no signs of a struggle abduction isn't being ruled
Speaker 3out a few dozen paces along the footpath next to the park i'm looking at the spot where the mysterious red car had stopped i'm picturing janine in the small hours of a friday in early december 2001 peering through the darkness and rain and headlight glow at a wet windscreen and a driver who is he or have we always been mistaken about this is it a she janine was vulnerable at about 10 to 4 in the morning without her handbag her id and her phone and her phone number and her phone number and her phone number mobile phone house keys and the keys to the menswear store she's due to open in about five hours her bag was with her at the metro tavern and then it inexplicably vanished when she wanted to leave it was found by the pub's cleaner greg brody the following morning greg has told me he suspected the bag had been hidden deliberately janine had searched for it with the dirty tabs co-owner trevor howie before she finally walked away with her friends and got into that red car the footage recovered from the security cameras shows her as clearly upset at the loss of her bag her friend jordan had consumed fewer drinks than his girlfriend juanita and janine and he
Speaker 27doesn't get a perfect view as we stand here you look through the park and the car's parked just up there and jordan says pretty much what everyone else says and that is that she he's very confident that she knows the driver
Speaker 19you just think what might have been yeah she hadn't lost her bag yeah if it hadn't been raining
Speaker 27she hadn't walked ahead but who was it in that car everyone says everyone says janine would not have got into a car with someone she didn't know everyone's adamant about it her family her friends uh the friends that were here with her that night her previous partner says exactly the same thing they know her the people who know her best all say she would not have got into that car with someone she didn't know yeah but you know at a quarter to four in the morning you're tired you've lost your purse you're cranky you've had a few drinks i know i mean but we've asked plenty of people haven't we we've said to them look you know really you're sure she wouldn't have been tempted you know given those factors absolutely not they all say and
Speaker 19she had been targeted in a sustained series of stalking incidents in bathurst and she didn't know who was behind it you know as a younger woman she had also been the target of an attempted
Speaker 27right yeah so her radar's up in the next episode of the ninth
Speaker 3driver one of the last people to see janine describes what happened that night and she makes a chilling
Speaker 6prediction i feel like when it finally comes out we're all going to be astounded by oh my god we lived by this person because it's going to be a local person i'm assuming
Speaker 3the night driver is a podcast series investigated and written by me headley thomas with assistance from peter murphy music and audio production is by blacksmith and co with additional audio support from chris bosley this podcast series is brought to you by the australian newspaper and digital site visit the nightdriver.com.au for additional documentary material as well as credits for the full team behind this multi-part production anyone with information about the disappearance of janine vaughan can contact me confidentially by email by going to the nightdriver.com.au you can search for the night driver podcast official discussion group on facebook and join in with the exchange of ideas and information this podcast is made possible by subscribers to the australian and our principal sponsor harvey norman harvey norman has provided unwavering support for my investigative podcast since 2018 for more information on this podcast and on our entire investigative catalog go to the australian dot com dot au today on the
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