Searching For Sarah MacDiarmid - Episode 1

From journalists to Liviela Voice, the creator of the Hidden Investigative Series, the Bakersfield 3, comes the new case file-present series, Ada. In 2011, the body of a woman was discovered in a California vineyard. For more than a decade, she was known only as Jane Doe. Then, detectives finally discovered her name. But identifying her was only the beginning. Listen to Ada, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Casey here. As you probably know by now, case file will be back with all new episodes in March 2026 for what will be our 10th year. We will also be releasing some bonus content and other things to mark the occasion, so keep an eye out for that. But earlier this year, you might have noticed that we released the first episodes of some of the case file-present shows we've produced in the case file feed. The decision to do so came after I learned something surprising while talking with people at our live events. Many case file listeners had no idea that we produce other shows outside of case file, and some had never even heard of case file-present. It dawned on me that if someone is a big enough supporter of our show to come to a live event but hasn't heard of our production company, then clearly we need to do a better job of highlighting the other stories we've put so much care and work into. For those who don't know, case file-present is our broader production platform. While case file is our flagship show, we've also created a number of other podcasts under the case file-present banner. Our level of involvement differs from project to project, but we've played a direct role in all of them. Today, we're sharing another one of those shows, searching for Sarah McDermott. On the 11th of July 1990, 23-year-old Sarah McDermott went missing from the Cannanok railway station. Blood found beside her car suggested a violent attack, but Sarah was gone and her body has never been found. Across nine episodes, the series follows Sarah's last known movements, investigates the witness accounts and leads, revisits the searches, and examines the possible connection to serial killer Paul Daniel. Decades on, Sarah's family still believe someone knows the truth, and hope this series will reach the person holding that missing piece. We're releasing the first episode here on the case file feed. You can find the full nine-part series by looking up, searching for Sarah McDermott, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here's episode one. She was always a very good daughter. If she was out somewhere going to be late, she would ring and let us know we never, ever until that night. On the 11th of July 1990, was the night we didn't know, and what really plays on my mind now is not poor soul with whatever happened to her that night at the railway station. I wasn't there for it then, so that as a mother has been a big thing. I don't go on about it, but now that I m old or I think I'm spilling over. When my podcast case file launched our Subemitic case page, we were inundated by thousands of suggestions. One case in particular came up over and over, the disappearance of 23-year-old Sarah McDermott from the Canon or Railway station on the 11th of July 1990. Canon or train station is a little over 41 kilometres from Melbourne's CBD. The station is the last stop on the Frankston train line before the train reaches Frankston proper, two and a half kilometres further down. Three years after Sarah disappeared, this whole area would become infamous when the Frankston serial killer, Paul Daniel, murdered three women in a seven week killing spree. These crimes were covered on episode 23 of case file, and will be explored in further detail throughout this series. It is worth noting that Paul Daniel spent a number of years identifying as a woman, during which he was known as Paula. Several sources have since advised that he no longer identifies as a woman and uses the name Paul again. Therefore, we will refer to him as Paul and use male pronouns. Back when Sarah McDermott went missing in 1990, Frankston hadn't been tainted by the serial killings, but it did have a history of murdered women long before Sarah vanished. A decade earlier, a woman disappeared in 1980 and another the following year. Both women vanished while waiting for buses on the Frankston dead and on road. One was later found murdered in Scrub off McClelland Drive in Frankston and the other in Scrub along Sky Road. There were 17 months between these two murders, but in the intervening time, four other women vanished from around Melbourne. Their bodies would later be found buried in Scrub land in Tainong North. The Frankston Tainong North serial killings were covered in episode 46 of case file. Then, 10 years later, Sarah McDermott vanished too. But unlike the Frankston Tainong North victims, Sarah's body was never recovered. Vicky Petratus had just finished making the vanishing of Vivian Cameron and I thought who better to tackle this case than Vicky. Her book The Frankston Murders about serial killer Paul Daniel had touched on the disappearance of Sarah McDermott as well as another unsolved murder in 1992 in Frankston, that of Michelle Brown. In this podcast, Vicky explores Sarah McDermott's case in detail. She interviews Sarah's family and friends and the detectives who deeply regret that they couldn't return Sarah to her family. 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of Sarah McDermott's disappearance on that cold July night in 1990. We are going to leave Vicky to piece together Sarah's final movements and look at the police theories about what might have happened to the 23 year old woman as she got off the train at the Canon railway station. My name is Vicky Petratus and I'm a true crime author. I've been writing about real police cases for nearly three decades now and there are a few more tragic than the case of Sarah McDermott. For her family left behind, there is nothing worse than not knowing. There is no relief from the constant wondering, where is she? What happened to her? Did she suffer? It is our greatest hope that this podcast will bring a renewed focus onto Sarah's case and that someone listening will have a piece of the puzzle that will help return Sarah to her parents. Peter and Sheila and her brother Ella Stair. Even though she was 23 years old, Sarah McDermott was the kind of daughter who always told her parents what time she'd be home. She always took the time to ring so they wouldn't worry. On Wednesday 11 July 1990, Sarah played tennis with friends after work. Her parents expected her home around 10.30pm. Sarah got off the train when it stopped at the Canon railway station at 10.20pm. She was seen by several witnesses walking toward the car park and several people later reported hearing screams coming from that direction. And then Sarah McDermott was gone. It's easy for history to cast Sarah McDermott as the missing girl, but we are not the sum total of our final moments. Before we die, we live. And so before we examine the time following the disappearance of Sarah McDermott, we must look at the time before her time. Because if we don't, we do Sarah and injustice. She lived, she disappeared, she was mourned. And she lives on in the memories of those who love her. And when we tell stories of the missing, For a moment in time, we bring them back. To begin this journey, Sarah's mum, Sheila McDermott, wanted to tell me the story of Sarah's birth in 1966. She hadn't spoken about it widely before, but she felt like it was time to share it. While Sheila tells the story calmly now, over half a century later, one can only imagine the anxiety of giving birth to your first child only to be told there was something wrong. She was born on the 15th of November, and I was just thrilled a bit. She looked just like any newborn baby, and everything went well. She was born at two o'clock in the morning, six o'clock in the morning they told me that Sarah was a little new to see so they would leave her in the nursery and bring her out at nine. I wasn't worried because I were aware of babies being like that, but at nine o'clock they came and the curtains were pulled round, and the doctor came in to see me, and they told me that Sarah wasn't well and that they didn't know what the problem was, but that they were going to have to take her to another hospital because it was a small hospital I had her in, and about half an hour later the ambulance men came with an incubator in my little baby in it, and she was lying on a side looking at me, and I'd had a dream about her when I was expecting her, and everyone laughed when I said that I was worried I'd seen her and that she had a hairlit cuff palette. Well the colour of her hair, the way she was lying was just how I'd seen her in my dream. They went off, and in those days we had to stay six days in bed before we could get out and leave hospital, and so she was six days old before I went to this other hospital to see her, and I had a shock. She was in an incubator, tipped out tubes in every place. They had discovered that she had what they called a pure robin syndrome. She didn't have the hairlit, but she had the cuff palette. She also had a heart condition, and they just kept telling me that she was holding her own. She stopped breathing, they had to incubate her, and she was incubated for three months, and when it came to the fourth month they told me if everything was going good and that was fine, so I got her home with four months, and the reason I'm telling that little bit of a story is as a mother, and with, well I don't know what's happened to Sarah, but over the years, and now I'm older myself, it has become why did that we saw have to suffer when she was born? She gets over everything, she comes off heart medicine when she's five, she's a happy girl that grows up, loves her friends, always loves friends around her. The usual ups and downs that all mums and dads have with children as they're growing up at nothing bad, we were very good family. Sarah suffered, but she fought back and overcame each setback, marking her as a fighter right from the start. After having faced such difficulties with feeding when she was born, as Sarah grew into a little girl, she developed a voracious appetite, it became a family joke. Funnily enough, although she was a problem feeder because of her problem, she loved food, she loved her food, and I can remember she would eat until she would eat, say record, eat, one day I said to her, Sarah, I don't think you could eat any more of that, you've had enough, well she took another bit of speech I think, and then the next thing, she said to me, my mum feeling awfully sick, and I wasn't surprised, but you know, she did go off and she was sick and she came back and she was fine, but it was a standing joke in the family, you used to watch her, she loved her food, and I'm talking about when she was 78, 9, 10, you go out for a meal with my pimps, let's say, and the said it was a standing joke, the pork chop bone would be there, and it would be stripped, and I used to say, I never liked to be stuck in a desert island with that one, all of it would be left to be a pair of boots. Two years after Sarah was born, Peter and Sheila welcomed a son into their family. Like Sarah, Alistair too was born with Pierre Robyn syndrome, and like Sarah, he had to spend a couple of months in hospital after he was born. When it was finally time to bring him home, Peter and Sheila remember taking little Sarah to the hospital to collect him. It was the same baby unit, and they remembered Sarah from when she was there, and she came running in, Peter was coming behind with the carricot to collect Alistair and myself to take him home, and one of the nurses said to her, "Hello, Sarah, who have you come to collect today, my brother?" "My brother." And I can honestly, this is not put on because she's missing or anything, I never ever had to worry about her being jealous, she was never jealous of him, she just loved him, and one day she gave me a fright, and I had Alistair, we had a lounge in the front, you were in the police force at that time, and it was a police house, and it was really a lovely one. And I had a lounge that I could keep if anyone came and wanted to sit without toys and everything, and then I used what they'd have, like a family room, at the back, but I had him in the front room in the prime of sleep, and he woke up and I heard him, and I was just in the middle of wet hands or something, and I'm shouting to this little baby, although he could answer me, "I'll be there in a minute, Alistair, you know, I'll be up there in a minute, Alistair," and he stopped crying, I thought, "That's fine, next thing, half, half, half, half, half." Here's herself, coming through, carrying this bit, oh, and he's looking up at her, grinning, grinning, grinning, and oh, I didn't want to tell her off. She thought she was doing a good thing, brinning, cheering for me, and I ran, "Oh, I said Sarah, I'll tell you, Alistair, thank you very much," and I got him, and she was so excited that she carried him through, but she was. Peter McDermott's brother, Sarah's uncle Doug, said that he would be thrilled to write something for Sarah for the podcast, but he wouldn't be able to read it, because even after 30 years, it would be beyond difficult to speak those words out loud. Instead, I asked Peter McDermott if he would read the letter. I'm not sure if it was any easier for Peter to do it, but he did it anyway. My earliest memory of Sarah was in Mentor Magna, at her Granny Bond's cottage, when she was a baby in arms. Anna, as a child, had a fine dorset accent, even after living in Scotland in the early 1970s for a couple of years. On one occasion, Granny McDermott and I had taken the two children down to Urban to see two old and much-lovered aunties. On the way back home late in the day, Sarah stood up in the back of the car between the two front seats, watching the headlight clear in the road ahead, and announced in a broad mental accent, "We're in the bloody dark now. We were in no doubt that the swear word came from our daddy. She was a determined we last. Some would say Theron, a good Scottish word for an obstinate. A characteristic to be admired in my opinion." Half a world away from Scotland, the McDermott's move to Australia tells Phil to be exact. Phil is in Queensland, around 1,300 kilometres north of Brisbane. With its tropical climate, it was a very different place to the one the McDermott had left. We came out originally in 1973, 1974, 1975, and we lived in changeful, and we had a wonderful life there, it was really great. In Townsville, Sarah and Alistair were enrolled in the local school, and the McDermott family met Jenny Carr and Donna McMahon, who were teachers there. Like so many people I spoke to for this podcast, Jenny and Donna were so taken by the McDermott But they have remained lifelong friends, even though the McDermott's only stayed in Townsville for four years. Jenny Carr remembers the time well. There was the mid-70s. It was teaching at primary school in Townsville. It was a music teacher. There was a class teacher who brought her to me and introduced her as a little Scottish girl. Then she brought her parents when they came up to school and then she brought them and introduced them. From that day on we were really very close friends for where we always have been. While they lived in Townsville, we saw them daily, we socialised, we partied, we drank, we did all the things that you do when you're young. They were just wonderful parents. So from Jenny's point of view, what was little ceramic dermat like as a primary school student? She was just delightful. She was musical. She had a very pretty voice. She was learning the violin and she had a great ear for music and she practised really hard. She was quite small for age. I don't think she was ever very tall. But very strong personality and not subtle in any way. She was very straight, very truthful. And she had an amazing sense of humour like with both her mum and dad too. But different types of sense of humour they've got and she had a sort of blend of the two. Teaching at the same school, Donna McMahon taught Sarah the violin. Since the lessons were one to one, Donna got to know the strong world little Scottish girl. She was a person who bucket was always full. You would never talk about Sarah's bucket being half empty or half full. It was full. And she gave all wind whatever she was doing whether it was sport, whether it was music, you know, whether it was in social interaction or whatever. She was an amazing young woman. Sarah made a lifelong friend in Townsville. A neighbourhood girl nicknamed Noni. I met Sarah when I think I would have been about eleven and Sarah was nine. And they moved into the house diagonally behind us. And we just seemed to click as friends. We spent a lot of time on our bikes just riding around the streets. This was 30 years ago when you could do that quite safely. Up to the top of one of the hills and ride down Helter Scalter, I'm not sure whether Peter and Sheila want to know about those things. But just childhood fun. We went to the pool. We used to just do things together. We would be in her room and just listen to records. Noni recalled those days playing in the sun with her newfound friend. She was very feisty. I can remember we always, like we always got on very well. I would say she used to like to play rugby in the backyard. And always inevitably ended up with her tackling her brother. And then she wasn't the best of sports. I don't think in that regard. For the McDermott's, the idyllic days in Townsville didn't last forever. A family business back in the UK, backened them home. Peter's family back home had a charter in business and his dad wanted to go out of it. So Peter decided he would go back and take over from his dad. So we went back to Britain. While Sarah was excited about going home to see her granny and Uncle Dougie, her friend Noni was upset to lose her. I was very devastated when they decided to return back to Scotland. But we kept in touch for them, just matters. And then when I started working, I would bring Sarah occasionally. It was very occasionally, obviously, from Australia over there. Unfortunately, the family business Peter had gone to work in wasn't the success he'd hoped for. While they wanted to move back to Australia, the McDermott's decided they wouldn't move back till their children were older. And we couldn't come back straight away because both the children then were in high school and you can't move them when they're in high school. And so that was fine and all the time Sarah was in right from year one till she left school 18. She was in the Gallic choir and she just loved that. And she also had started learning the violin in Townsville before we went back. So that continued on. She enjoyed that. Sarah's friend Noni went over to visit the McDermott's. I saved up enough money to go home and visit. That was a holiday that I will always remember as probably one of the best holidays in my lifetime. I stayed with them and Sarah and I lied to the push bikes and used to ride around close by or just go up to the shops there or just go down to the river that was not far from where they were living and just spend time together. Because of the move to Queensland in 1974, then the move back to the UK in 1978, then back to Australia in 1987. Sarah's brother Alistair thinks perhaps this is why he and Sarah developed the closeness they did. Moving overseas removed access to long-term friends so the only long-term friends Sarah and Alistair had were each other. Where we were kids Sarah and I were close as a brother and a sister, but that closeness was represented in doing things together. So I think, and I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing partly because we moved around a bit as kids from the UK to Australia. And I think that shifting around probably, I think we were close anyway, but I think that added to the closeness and not in the form of always hugging each other. It was more just hanging out together. When we were young we would play games in the house together and do different things as well as playing our own games. And then when we were older and sort of teenage years we would play tennis together and we did that back in the UK and we did it when we arrived back in Australia. The loss of Sarah has never dulled for any of the McDermott's. All they have now are memories perhaps sharpened by that loss. When Sarah's parents were at work she easily stepped into the role of boss of the house where her brother Alistair was concerned. Sarah could be relied on to see if Sheila was off to work in Scotland and when I went to high school. No, remember, he was going to go for a sharp for the second day running and Sarah says, "You're not going to school in that chat, get it open for a clean one up." I was tickled pink off, she goes out the stairs. What sort of sister was she? She sounds a bit motherly and a bit bossy. Yes, absolutely, very motherly. Peter's younger brother Doug remembers an idyllic childhood for the McDermott children. Peter reads his memories. I bought a box of pup. Sarah and Alistair came with me down to Glasgow to collect the wee dog from the kennels. And a very happy two hours on the way home and the back seat of the car, nothing the new baby. That was typical. Sarah was just such a loving and kind regiddle all humbly. A perfect example was when she was around 19 or 20. She and Granny McDermott were a great house, notwithstanding a 50-year-old gap. When Sarah returned to the UK, she met a new friend called Maria Broly, the two bonded as schoolgirls over their shared love of music. I first met Sarah at high school in 1980. We had very similar interests in music and we performed together in a school choir. We used to have great fun going away on trips with the Gallic choir at the school to different parts of Scotland. And that's when Sarah's personality really came out because she was quite a fun-loving giggle-y girl. All this giggle and all this full of fun never took herself too seriously. And we were best friends right through high school. And I know that circumstances were different. We'd probably still be best friends today. Sarah and Maria joined the Gallic choir and toured around performing. But it wasn't just Gallic music that Sarah loved. She quickly became a connoisseur of the top 40 charts. She loved wham and the erythmics most of all. There was a disco she loved to go to and for William, where we grew up, called William. and she loved down things particularly to the Ured Mix and she was a big wham fan. Sarah finished high school at 18 and enrolled in college, while she and Maria went off in different career directions, they still kept in touch. When the rest school at 18, Sarah and I still kept in touch, she went off to college and Aberdeen to study travel and tourism and we used to pour each other but in those days it was lots of laterating. At college in Aberdeen, Sarah met her new roommate Caroline Lyons. The two went out a lot during that year, they went to see desperately seeking Susan and loved it and even tried to copy the fashion of the movie, the tights, the singlets, the Rarar skirts, which in the Aberdeen winter needed to be layered with warmer things on top. Caroline has kept a diary since she was about six or seven, she offered to look back through her diaries before we spoke. Going back through the diary, I pinpointed the day when I first met Sarah and I wrote down everything that we did to be quite an emotional experience. Like a lot of Sarah's friends, Caroline embraced the opportunity to take that trip down memory lane. To move forward after such a tragedy means that we sometimes have to put our memories in a box and close the lid, it's how we survive. When we do look back after years pass, we can see our memories in a different light as we grow older the lens we look through changes. This past week is the first time I've gone back over every single day, from the second of September 1985 until June the 10th, 1986, where we think about it, it's the first time I've gone through every day and very, very emotional experience. Peter and Sheila McDermott are lovely people. I suspect that part of the reason police took Sarah's disappearance so seriously was that she clearly came from a really nice family. When the family unit is strong, it is less likely someone might take flight from it. Caroline spent time with the McDermott's in Scotland when she and Sarah were roommates. I asked her what she remembered of the family back then. Funny, kind, Sheila's got a beautiful accent and then Pete was so different with his very broad Scottish accent. Always cracking jokes. Sarah was just like him, funny, warm, loving, kind. They took us out for dinner, paid for everything. They cooked dinner in their home, just such lovely people and they seemed to be so happy to meet me. Peter and Sheila loved spending time with Sarah's friends as much as they loved spending time with the McDermott family. Their small family extended open arms to everyone, and McDermott's didn't want to move while their kids were in high school and the minute LSDF finished, they made plans to return to Australia. Not Queensland in the north this time, but Victoria in the south. Given the friendship that developed between Sarah and her roommate Caroline, it's not surprising that when the McDermott's started talking about moving back to Australia, Caroline planned to visit them there. Towards the end of my time with Sarah, her parents were starting to talk about going back to Australia. And I can pinpoint almost exactly the first time I heard about Australia as a country, and this was in the few months before neighbours took Britain by storm because they'd everybody loved Australia, and you can imagine, I always tell people, imagine sitting at four o'clock in the afternoon, it's dark, it's snowing, you turn on the telly, and there's sunshine, because beyond time, happy people, very attractive, I'm one of a generation of backpackers, which what I originally was, who saw Australia like that for the first time, and that's what made me come here. I had seen that with Sarah, she pulled out the photos, then it came very clear to me when I looked back through my diaries, her and now, playing on the beach, age about, I don't know, six, seven, eight, that kind of age, blond, tanned, swimmers, big blue sky, it just looked great, and I think that probably triggered my first introduction to Australia as a place as a country that I might like to visit one day. So, when the McDermott's left for Australia, Caroline had a firm plan to visit. The two friends settled on a date for her to come over, October 1990. The girls could have no way of knowing that by then, Sarah would be gone. But as much as Sarah was looking forward to coming back to Australia, the childhood memories she had from Townsville were very different to arriving in Melbourne as an adult. She hit a bit of a funk and her family noticed her normally happy disposition fade. Sheila had a talk to Sarah about her dark mood and Sarah broke down. It was like a well overflowing. She was missing her friends in Scotland. But then one day she came in and she said, "I've got an idea," and I said, "What's that?" I think she says, "If I go back over to Scotland for a holiday at Christmas time," she said, "I can bring grandma back with me," and Douglas Peters' brother. He always went to Japan on business and then he used to come to Melbourne to have a holiday with us and then fly back to the UK, so all we said, "That would be lovely." And then she said to Alice, "You come with me," and of course he was a uni student and he says, "Well, I can't afford it," and she said, "Don't worry about that, I'll pay your fair." Sarah's uncle Dougie remembered their trip fondly, Peter McDermott reads from the memory that Doug composed - "Having returned to Australia two years earlier, Sarah hatched a plan with her wee brother, that the two of them would come out to Scotland, stay with Grand for a few weeks over Christmas and New Year, and then escort her back to Australia for a holiday. Sarah stayed with Grand in her small retirement cottage. Outpatting with her old school friends almost every night, Grand would wait up for her and the two of them, I'm told, would blather into the wee small hours. They were as thick as thieves and I never did find out what the disgusted during these long late night giddly chats. But they loved each other for bits and had an exceptional bond." After the visit back to Scotland, Sarah seemed to settle down once she returned to Melbourne. First Douglas came at his time and then they went back and from then on, Sarah started making lovely, lovely friends here. Once Sarah established a wider friendship group, she was determined to take her brother Elastair along with her. Sarah would drive him everywhere. She would be going to Anna's on the Saturday night and she would say, "Anna says that you're to come as well, Elastair," because he would say, "No, I'm not going." She says, "Anna says you're to come as well." As well as having the travel bug, the McDermott kids were sporty. They left their hockey when they were in primary, they played, she played hockey, yes, and then of course she was playing, she liked playing tennis and that's what she'd been doing the day that it was after work, they always went every Wednesday. And like every decision made in a convergence of things that come together when someone disappears, Sarah McDermott's decision to play tennis every Wednesday night with her workmates would put her in the path of someone who would take her from her family forever. Once the McDermott settled in Melbourne, they first moved to Pasco Vale. Peter and Sheila remember when Sarah got her first grown-up job. She never liked maths. I know. The laugh was, she ended up working with. She were with C.E. Hease and then she ended up as finance clerk. And we laughed. She hated arithmetic and maths, but she was fine, she was happy as well. Happy as Larry and she had a lovely lot of friends there. C.E. Hease would play an important part in Sarah's life. She met lots of new friends there, and started to establish her life as a working adult. Her friend Anna Tarantino remembers meeting Sarah at the same job interview. They hit it off immediately. Sarah and I first met and we were at the same job interview. It's the heat underwriting and insurance. It was a really posh place because I think it was at the high of hotel and colon street. I think they were office on the 37th floor. That was a really beautiful because it had a fantastic view of the city. We were both sitting in the same waiting office. I remember that we started looking at each other and we were waiting. You know, at the age, it seemed like age, because probably we were both very nervous. I could immediately tell that she was very shy. I was too, I guess, but not as much as she was. We started talking and I think because she said, "Oh my God, I need a cigarette because she had this bad habit of smoking." I said, "Oh, I don't know if you can smoke here. I just want to ask someone." Anna was a little shocked about the smoking. In her Italian family, smoking was frowned upon. Sarah and Anna both had their interviews for the job. I remember that she had a very good, we got along really well because we started laughing. You know, for no reasons and all that sort of stuff. So at the start, we were a bit looking at each other saying, "Oh, I hope I'll get the job." And she was probably thinking the same thing. But in the end, we started saying, "Oh, hopefully they take us both on." And she said, "Oh, girls, I've got some good news. Maybe they want to take the both of you on because they like the both of you." And so we were really happy because we just started our friendship from that day on till the day that she disappeared. We were always together. Peter and Sheila remember when Sarah confessed her bad habit to them. Sheila was sorry for her daughter. Peter, on the other hand, was just relieved that the bad habit wasn't anything worse than cigarettes. I was in the kitchen and Sarah came out to me and she says, "Mom, I've got something to tell you." And I thought, "Oh my grief. What, what?" She says, "I've got a bad habit." And I said, "Bad habit, what?" She says, "I'm smoking." And I said to her, "Or Sarah." I said, "I feel so sorry for you that you started that." But I said, "I can't say anything to you because we were smokers then." You see? Friends from our childhood are a cherished and irreplaceable commodity. We knew each other when we were awkward teams and we formed as people in front of each other's eyes. Our values, our hopes and our dreams meld together in a connection stronger than steel. It is why when we can't see each other for ages, we pick up where we left off when we meet again. Sarah was no different, but sometimes the distance between her and her old friends bothered her and got her down. Her parents noticed and finally she less sat her down and asked her what was wrong. She just looked at me and she just burst into tears. And she said, "You don't know how unhappy I am." And I sat on the bed, we sat both sat down on the bed and I said, "What do you mean you're not happy?" Well then of course it all started flowing out. And it was the best thing that although it was not nice, it was best thing I did. Because once she had broken that burst into tears and we sat there, I said, "Why didn't you tell me you know that we can talk about things?" And it all came out then. And what it was, I think she'd had these memories from Townsville. And then she had come back and you forget that place has changed and this was Melbourne. She was known adult, she was working, it wasn't all the fun that you have as a kid. Sarah hinted at the way she was feeling in a letter to her friend back in Scotland, Maria Broly. Maria has kept the letter and it's moving to hear these words that Sarah wrote. The letter was written on the 7th of March 1988. Hi, how's it going? It's so much for me saying that I'll write more letters this year. It's a better late than never. Thanks for the little cheering up letter from yourself and Maria. I think I pulled myself together a bit since then. I just got really depressed at that stage because it had been almost a year since we left and I miss you a lot like hell sometimes. Especially you. It's just that all my friends are from work and they've obviously got all their own friends from school and that's when I feel totally lost. I've got two best friends in this world, you and Noni, and unfortunately you are 12,000 miles away and she's 2,000 miles away. Oh well, say lovey. Anyway, I must stop moaning every time I reach out to you. You'll be getting quite sick of it. I'm suffering slightly today as I was sunbathing yesterday and my face caught a little burnt. I'm trying to get my tan up as I'm going off to town until I'm holiday on the 18th. I don't want to look any whiter than I have to coming from Melbourne. I'm really looking forward to it as I haven't been there since the day we started travelling back to Britain nearly 10 years ago. I've just done a cyclone in Townsville so it would be absolutely hot. I'm staying with Noni and Paul for the week and then Jenny and Donna, my music teachers who are now family friends. The best part about this trip is that I'm flying on my own for the first time in my life. If I'm lucky I'll have some gorgeous hanks sitting next to me. Guess who I'm going to see on Friday night? Cliff Richard, anything to keep my mum happy so it'll be good for a laugh if nothing else. Needless to say, my love life is non-existent as usual. Although George is trying to pair me up with a guy from work just because he gave me a bunch of red roses for my birthday. She'll be the death of me. As you can see, I've remembered the photos this time so have a good laugh at them. Take care. Take a day to your mum and dad for me. Plus everyone else. Lots of love. Seda. And as the letters suggest, Sarah was stoic about her situation. Once she relaxed into her new adult life, her parents could see that she just wanted to be settled and happy. She just wanted like so many youngsters she wanted. She was at this stage for a happy life just an easy going. I feel the job and the money and the frames. It's about to join the tennis down in Franklin because they had one in North Franklin. Peter and Sheila have always been close to Sarah's friends and many of those friendships continue to this day. If they hadn't day off work, they would often go into town to meet their daughter at the pub or the cafe downstairs at her work. Sarah would say, "Come into the city and we'll have a meal in the evening." She worked in the Collins place and they were high rise, they were up on 37th floor. On the ground floor was Hugo's, the pub. A little pub. Sarah's workmates, Angela, Corn and Sonia, remembered meeting Peter and Sheila at Hugo's bar for afterwork drinks. But they were lovely because they were very, very friendly people. Going down to Hugo, so remember Peter and Sheila would come and have coffee or they'd meet up with them after work or maybe at lunch. So what were the McDermott family like in those carefree days before their daughter was taken? Angela, Corn and Sonia, reminisce. Sarah always spoke highly of her mum and dad at the time. It wasn't like a normal mother and daughter relationship. I'm sure she understood that they brought her here for a better life. So she understood that even though she didn't have her friends. I'm not sure why, but before I started researching this podcast, I always thought that Sarah McDermott was tall. Maybe she looks tall in pictures. So it was a surprise to me when people started to talk about how little she was. 153 centimetres or five foot tall in the old measure. Her friend Sonia remembers the nickname that she and Sarah got at the bar near their work. There is one story I do remember. So there was Sarah myself and I'm not a very tall person, sort of like five, one and a half. And we were all sort of same height. So there was myself and Sarah and was it Anna? And the three of us walked in one after the other and these guys at the bar just turned around and said, "Oh look, the munchkins are coming in and there was a running joke with us." Sarah's friend Caroline Lyons was so excited about her visit to Australia. She and Sarah were going to travel around and go into state. On Monday, the 22nd of January 1990, Sarah missed a train at the Flindestreet railway station. She passed the time. until the next one, writing a letter to Caroline. The letter is especially poignant because all the plans she had made for Caroline's visit in October wouldn't come to pass. By July, Sarah had vanished. Dear Caroline, sorry I took so long today. Anyway, what's new and how are you? At the moment I'm sitting in North Melbourne railway station, waiting for my train home after work. I'm decidedly cranky as the one I was supposed to get has been cancelled and I have to wait half an hour for the next one. At least it's unshining. By the end of this week, I will be the proud owner of a little red Honda Civic, provided I don't have to spend too much extra to get a few mechanic jobs done to him. All being well, I'll be sipping around in that and in around Melbourne when you come over. I'm so wrapped you're coming over. I'm planning to take about a month's leave while you're here so we can travel interstate. Sydney, Brisbane or wherever you want. Sydney is fantastic. I've been there twice briefly since I saw you. I would also love to see Townsville again but we'll see. Mum and Dad have just bought a house, pens the new dress, on the other side of the city near the beach. It looks like a little Spanish villa. I met Steffi Graff a couple of weeks ago. She was sitting in this Italian restaurant down where we worked so I went up to her and asked for a couple of autographs. The girls at work reckon I was checking out but I didn't and I went straight up to her as I thought it would be my first and probably my only hopper gym see. I'll be writing in the near future, I know it's your birthday soon. I'll try and send some photos too so until then take care. Lots of love, Sarah. The new house that Sarah referred to in her letter was in Sky Road in Frankston. The woman they had bought the house from gave Sarah some advice about which railway station to catch the train from. She looked at Sarah. She said, "All the time I've lived here, I've always used Canada." She says, "Don't use Frankston because Frankston's got an underpass and sometimes it's not always the best place to be." So she said, "That's why I've always used Canada and I find that a good station." So that's what we used was Canada. And so the McDermott settled into their new house in Frankston and Sarah took position of her little red car and each day she parked it at the Canada railway station and caught the train to work. Her brother Alistair was enrolled in uni in the city and she often drove him to the station with her in the mornings. But work days are longer than uni days and they made their way home separately. Two months before Sarah disappeared, her beloved uncle Douglas came from Scotland for a visit. Douglas wrote about the memory which Peter McDermott reads for him. In May 1990, I visited Australia briefly on route to business in Japan. I'm so glad that I did. Little did I know that it was the last time I was to see Sarah. The shy we get off had blossomed into a beautiful mature and self-adjured young lady. She had bought a little red nissen of which she was very proud and for my visit she'd taken two days of work to turn me around places of interest near Melbourne a great honor for me because it was something she wouldn't normally have done otherwise. I cannot tell you now where we went but they are cherish days for me. The morning of my departure on that last visit Sarah came into my room before going to work. To give me a farewell kiss and to say goodbye she was in tears as she left the very last time I saw. It's beyond difficult for me to speak about Sarah even after all each year. Our memory and her love will stay with me ever more. Podcast makers are creators of story. We weave the threads that people share into a pattern that makes the best sense. People come to us and tell us things that they've kept largely to themselves for years. They are not provable and rarely satisfy the laws of evidence or burden of proof but some threads are worth mentioning because they add a layer to the story that may not have been considered. And if one woman tells a story of being followed after she got off the train at canonok in 1990 perhaps other women will come forward with similar stories that will help us weave closer to the truth. Around May or June in 1990 something happened to a local woman called Carolyn McAllister that may or may not be related to what happened to Sarah in the July. Carolyn contacted me on a different matter entirely. I'd mentioned a relative of hers in my book once a copper about legendary Melbourne cop Brian the Skull Murphy. We got chatting over Messenger and in one message she wrote that she had come close to being a victim of the Frankston serial killer Paul Denja who killed three women in 1993. I asked her what happened and she told me her story. Now there is no evidence beyond a gut feeling that the man in this story was Paul Denja but whether it was Denja or not her experience does show that there was a man in the area at the time possibly targeting young women on their own at night who got off the train at canonok railway station. Carolyn was at university on the other side of town in Bandora and lived near the campus during the week. Each Thursday she would return to her parents house for the weekend. She would catch the train home. As you listen to Carolyn remember this is about a month before Sarah disappeared. I'd get off at canonok station it would have been after seven and it was winter so it was definitely dark. I would have still been 18 and so I got off the train and walked across the platform and over the walkway down to the other side and I'd walk along through the back streets there up to Bruce Street which was off Claude Street. As you walk along Bruce Street it then becomes Lawner Street and there's a reserve there and I was walking on that side of the road where the reserve was. I was carrying my backpack that had all my university books in it and I also had a small suitcase because I'd bring home clothes and wash them on the weekend. So I was walking along there and I could hear footsteps behind me. I looked back and I could see a guy in the distance and he was maybe a hundred and 150 metres away. Maybe more but definitely I could see it was the outline of male figure. I was quite aware that I was hearing the footsteps. They were sort of quickening and they were getting closer so I quickened as I was walking past the reserve because I just didn't feel at all safe then. As I quickened my pace so I was hearing the footsteps getting closer and that was when I started to feel really quite scared. So I swung my bag with my clothes in front of me so I could hold them closer and I pretty much started running as quickly as I could with the backpack on my back and also carrying the suitcase in front of me and so I was running to the end of that and then it turned left and into Hadley Street and I knew I wanted to get up to Clow Street which was at the end of Hadley Street and so I just kept moving it would have been I guess about a hundred metres or so and I was running by this stage. I was normally a runner but I certainly ran that night and I ran because I thought if I get to Clow Street there's lights all along there, there's cars going along there but it's just busier and my aim was to get to the survey which was at that stage. It was food plus on the corner of Clow Street and Franks and Daniel and Road. As Carolyn told me about being followed, hearing the man get closer and making her run from him, it was a chilling reminder of the words the judge said as he sentenced Paul Daniel. He said, "For many you are the fear that quickens their steps as they walk home." After a desperate sprint, Carolyn made it to the server station and dashed inside. She moved through the server station shop to the payphone at the back as she called her dad and tried to catch her breath and asked him to come and get her. She saw the man. It's saying that he was looking for me after I went into the shop. I'm not sure that he saw me ducking there but he was there looking around. He was still walking and looking and he was still travelling along Franks and Daniel on Road. He was going north and quite determinedly as he was walking. So I stayed there and I knew there was a public phone there. And I rang my dad and said, "Look, I think somebody's following me. Can you come and pick me up?" So he came round and he picked me up and we drove along the service road, which was in front of the Nilex factory. And the Nilex factory in those days, there was only a short fence, it would have only been waist high, there was pipes, sort of a pipe fence. And it was all bushes along that area right up until you hit Madden straight. So we couldn't see him even though we were looking for him. And I would have thought that I would have seen him there or even further along as we got to Madden straight and turned in, but he wasn't there either. And he wasn't in Madden straight, there was just nobody walking around. I offered wondered where he was, you know, where did he go? And I do wonder whether or not maybe he was in the back of that Christian church that was on the corner there. He could have been in behind the building because there was a car park through there that you could walk and there was bush behind there, but I guess I just don't know. The Christian church, Carolyn, is referring to, was the new life Christian centre. It was on the corner of Madden street and Franksden Denning on road. It was this exact location three years later that serial killer Paul Denja would leave his second victim, Debbie Frames, abandoned car parked right in front of it. Denja was quite casual when he mentioned Madden street in his interview. He doesn't say that the Christian centre is, in fact, his place of worship. He had a back Madden street, why was a Madden street? Wasn't too close, wasn't too far from home. It's worth mentioning another coincidence here. The Food Plus server station, Carolyn Ren II, was the same place where Mordavict and Michele Brown was last seen in March 1992. It was perhaps even the same phone that Carolyn used to call her dad from. That two years later, Michele would call her mum to ask to be picked up. Not from the server station, but from the Franksden railway station. By the time Michele's mum arrived, Michele wasn't at the train station, although people later reported hearing screams near there. Michele's mum then drove to the Food Plus, but her daughter was gone. Looking back, if it was Paul Denja, I think that might have been his plan was actually to get me into that area because it's quite isolated. There were no houses close to that area. We had the houses further past Madden street and across the road on Franksden Daning on Road, but certainly around there, there were no houses at all. After this terrifying experience, Carolyn didn't call the police, most women don't. Nothing had actually happened, but despite her strong gut feeling and the terror of having to take flight from a man following her down dark streets, matching his pace to hers, what would she have to say? I heard footsteps and a guy was following me. And if she did, there was very little the police could do. They might drive around the area and take a look, but without a proper description of the man, what was the point? Carolyn just put the experience behind her and stopped getting off the train at Kananok railway station, instead she got off at Seiford and her parents picked her up. Now, back to Sarah. Before that fateful night in July 1990, Sarah was living her best life. She planned to travel, she was independent, she was earning her own money, and while she joked to friends about finding a boyfriend, it wasn't something she wanted to rush into. Despite the matchmaking attempts from friends at work, this is the way her friend Maria saw it. Sarah had been playing tennis on a Wednesday night after work for around four or five months. She rarely missed a session, but at the end of June and early July, she missed two weeks in a row. The first Wednesday, she met her friend Anna for drinks. Anna was heading overseas on an extended holiday and Sarah wanted to say goodbye. I remember the night before I went on holiday, we went out for a drink, it was in this place in the city. And that night she seemed a bit not sad, but she had something on her mind and I'd say, "What's the matter?" And she said, "No, nothing, nothing." I don't know if she was upset because I was going on holiday, but I don't think so. Maybe there was something on her mind and she wanted to tell me. I remember she gave me a little patting in there and he was in a suitcase in the package and had written on it, please look after me. When Anna described Sarah's melancholy mood that night, it reminded me of a story I'd heard when I was writing the Frankston murder's book. Serial killer Paul Danie's last victim, Natalie Russell, experienced something similar a couple of weeks before she died. She had gone around to visit her boyfriend and sat down in his lounge room and suddenly burst into tears. After crying and shaking uncontrollably, Natalie was later at a loss to explain why she'd cried, there was no reason. Afterwards, Natalie's mother, Carmel, told me that she wondered whether Natalie somehow knew she didn't have long. I don't mean to sound melodramatic, but maybe this kind of thing has an echo or a foreboding. The week before the final night was the busy one. On Wednesday the 4th of July, Sarah's brother Alistair turned 21, the McDermott's celebrated with a family dinner. And on that final weekend, the family did what families did back in the 1990s when gender roles were more clearly defined. The boys did a bit of tinkering on Sarah's car or Sarah and her mom claimed the house. And on Sunday before she was abducted on the Wednesday, I always remember she loved music, we always had music on and the Alistair and Peter were working on her car because she had never bothered with Car until we moved to Frankston in the January, into our own home. And she then said she would get a car, so even though she'd had a license, we were so near all the public transport before she never, she wasn't one that was dying to get a car, but she said I'll get a car, which was not the best thing as it turned out. But anyway, she got the car and that afternoon we had music going and Elton Jones, I always remember sacrifice and I loved that tune and that was played. And then I said to Sarah, they're outside Sarah, they won't hear, I said would you play that one again for me? So I just love that one. So when I hear that one, that one really is just, you know. Of course, Sheila would have no inkling that a song about sacrifice and two hearts living into separate worlds would come to have such devastating meaning for her in just a few short days. For the McDermott family, the minutes were ticking slowly by until they ran out completely. Coming up in the next episode of searching for Sarah McDermott. And then I followed the trail of blood drips to a nearby bush area, I found some blood on concrete curving and I could see it was still, it was in a bush area to the western side of the car park and I could see what appeared to be heel drag marks across the grass, birds that lead to a little bush area. I followed that in there and I found more blood that was still fairly fresh. Well, I think it was obviously the blood changes your whole perspective about what's happening and there was quite obvious that where the blood had been located there were drag marks. So it was suspected at that stage that either a lifeless or unconscious body had been dragged to an area, neither car.