Speaker 1this episode we're taking you inside the case of janine vaughn in december 2001 janine was last seen on cctv getting into a small red car in bathurst and then she vanished without a trace
Speaker 2there were significant flaws in the early investigation potential witnesses that were missed and crucial evidence may have been lost forever a knife
Speaker 3that was found a couple of days after janine's disappearance that had hair and blood on it and somehow it ended up into the miscellaneous box and was destroyed destroyed destroyed so it's gone janine's
Speaker 1family has spent the past 25 years wondering if her murder could have been solved if not for all these serious
Speaker 4failures we're desperate and we're sick and tired of being stopped everything's a dead end
Speaker 1they believe someone knows something and that new tech could reveal what's hidden on the cctv tape and capture her final movements i hear
Speaker 4it every night on that cctv footage i listen to that
Speaker 2every day wow on the train
Speaker 4to work on the train on the way
Speaker 2home because that's the last time that's it you're going to hear a voice that's the last thing you have of her i'm forensic scientist and criminologist dr xanthi weston i'm criminal
Speaker 1psychologist tim watson munro welcome back to another episode of motive and method adam and kylie um thanks so much for joining us today with the podcast uh it's been a long day for you and we're very grateful uh for your time um can you tell us a bit about the background to your sister janine just for our listeners
Speaker 4yeah so she was very beautiful um she was absolutely amazing sister to grow up with um she had left our hometown of musselbrook three years before 2001 before she disappeared right um with her boyfriend they broke up and she stayed and um yeah she went out with her friends one night and um yeah just all turned
Speaker 1sorry where did she stay after she left musselbrook in bathurst right yep that's where she went missing
Speaker 2from and this is 2001 correct december 2001 so she's living in bathurst went out with her friends
Speaker 3yep just like she normally would have every every week yeah maybe twice three times a week yeah you know it was just a normal like you do back in those days she was 31 so she was you know a single woman full of life and energy full of life full of energy just out on a night out um somewhere during the night she had um her handbag was misplaced so she she felt she'd put it down and um someone had taken it um so from where was she
Speaker 1at a club just on the dance floor
Speaker 3yeah at the tavern yeah so that obviously sent her into a bit of a spiral of panic find it yeah you know my phone's in there keys in there to get into my house anyway so she just sort of um looked around once the lights come back on and um at that point it was half past three uh when everybody was shuffled out of the door and and once they they couldn't find it um and you know the guys have been on the door all night they want to go home the staff want to go home the managers want to go home you know it's three in the morning you know so they were all keen to lock up and go you know so she was quite frustrated with that situation as well and we only know this because we can clearly see her on the cct footage and that's from from the nightclub yeah so we can see inside of the foyer outside of the foyer and um as you can see up and down the street so just a little bit and that was the last time she was seen yeah so there's four cameras of that location so um we've listened over and over and there's many conversations that can still be heard without even trying to analyze it but the police have obviously analyzed that they did once yeah um back in 2007 oh things have
Speaker 2changed a lot since
Speaker 3then yeah and then a couple of years ago we put it back to our detectives to say look you know can you please try and do something with it um new technology technology they just went to a local video recording place and not much nothing happened yeah it didn't help didn't
Speaker 1help but you then brought in other experts right so we've obviously
Speaker 3contacted uh brian from over in the states and he is uh definitely on board with helping us
Speaker 1he's very credentialed and very experienced i heard his evidence today
Speaker 2you gave evidence today speaking about your sister at the inquiry uh into missing and murdered and he gave he gave evidence alongside you as to potentially what he may be able to do and he's done a lot of work yeah in this area audio visual enhancement yes so
Speaker 3on the video itself on the cct footage that we do have we actually have a a flash of light that sort of comes down does a u-turn and um pulls up so you can see that flash of light so that we can actually see the vehicle in the car so we can see the car so it's headlights but it's the tiniest of little dots right in the top corner of the screen and you think that's the car that she got we think that it's definitely has to be a car because
Speaker 4yeah it's been yes it's been analyzed so it
Speaker 3drives up does a u-turn and comes back and stops for about 25 seconds long enough for something to get in long enough for someone to say hey it's you know raining you
Speaker 1want to ride you want to ride
Speaker 3and if it's somebody that she knew she's clearly got in with somebody that she knows because i i just don't believe that she would have got it with somebody she
Speaker 1didn't know no and there was a bit of a huge development today wasn't there with the police saying that they were prepared to hand over this evidence to your expert in the u.s i think that's a major breakthrough yeah hopefully 100 and now they've said it so
Speaker 3it's on record enhance it by the
Speaker 1way they can't go back
Speaker 3with that now so i mean obviously they've said things in the past too so we won't um get our hopes up too much but i think it would be
Speaker 2difficult for them to back out of
Speaker 3that now the papers now too so oh good right okay yeah okay
Speaker 2there's
Speaker 3definitely no going so
Speaker 2aside from the cctv which you're hoping now is going to be enhanced through expertise in the u.s because you've got international assistance now yeah excellent assistance from from which we did
Speaker 3have that a couple of years ago when we spoke to to our detectives as well which we told them about um and they decided that they'd just go in-house again right um so it's not because we haven't been trying either how did
Speaker 1you get onto this guy because he's so credentialed
Speaker 3obviously he's the guy that was from the johnny dip case yes so once that all sort of went out um it was through our documentary that they reached out to him right yeah you've got a lot of powerful
Speaker 1people backing you hundred percent yeah which must give you a degree of comfort notwithstanding huge tragedy no
Speaker 2no you've in essence been reinvestigating your sister's case haven't you absolutely and so how has that been for you now for all these years you know it's a pretty long time now that you've been trying to find out what happened and who's
Speaker 1responsible 25 years and you know it's been 25 almost 25
Speaker 2years yeah it has and
Speaker 3it's quarter of a century we were talking about that today and it's sort of it's one of those things that we feel very we go through life feeling quite numb yeah um we you know we show emotion where we need to show emotion we can be strong where we need to be strong uh we throw a lot of things into our lives um so we don't have time to think yeah um and we just get on it's it's it's like another job for me but it
Speaker 1never leaves you it doesn't leave you and the
Speaker 2emotion was on display today as well like i could feel it in the room no that wasn't a bad thing it needed to be like you know i think that that carries power and for everyone sitting there we all felt that and i think that's really important because this is emotional it is important and i think everyone in that room needed to feel that and obviously the police were watching because when they gave their evidence this afternoon they referred back so i was like that's interesting they're watching remotely because they didn't want to hear that and i think it's important to be able to feel that emotion is really really powerful and and certainly i think that was you know something that would have really resonated with people today but you know 25 years later it is obviously still really and i think you looked at me didn't you and went it's still raw you
Speaker 3can feel that raw yeah and it is because we don't feel it's been 25 years like yesterday yeah you know we still see photos of her every day we look at her yeah um look at something we're investigating we're listening like adam said you know we're we've got the voice every day we hear it
Speaker 4every day i hear it every night on that cctv footage well you listen to that every night wow on the train to work on the train on the way home because
Speaker 2that's the last time that's it you're going to hear her voice that's the last thing you have of her you know when you just
Speaker 4yeah heartbreaking actually so to me her voice is still young she arrives at the hotel and she's still
Speaker 3happy yeah and
Speaker 4then yeah you just hear
Speaker 1this voice and
Speaker 4yeah
Speaker 1i'd imagine your grief is amplified by the short comings of the investigation yes yes well
Speaker 4we our case went downhill very early on so the anger has been there for very very very many years
Speaker 3yeah so that's like for me it's half my life yeah
Speaker 2and
Speaker 1they're not knowing
Speaker 2and they're not knowing ambiguous loss yeah so what was your key message today then we're asking all the families all the contributors this because they came with you know with a mission in mind because that wasn't an easy thing to do to sit there today it was obviously very draining emotionally but you did that with a reason so why why did you want to speak today and put your voices on record we're
Speaker 4We're desperate and we're sick and tired of being stopped. Everything's a dead end. We can't progress any further. We've got to investigate ourselves, but we need the police to do anything serious and we can't get anywhere because they don't let us and they won't let us.
Speaker 1It's a common theme. We went to the first, in fact, we gave evidence of the first hearing in Barrel. We went up to Grafton and now today in Sydney. The consistent theme is this sort of obfuscation, stonewalling, disempowering the families and so on. So I hear you.
Speaker 2Yeah. So there was a coronal inquest into your sister's case.
Speaker 3What came out of that? So we were pretty well blindsided when the inquiry came out because we had never been into anything like that before. So we. We were in the hope that, you know, the persons of interest, we knew they were going to be there, they're all going to be standing there, they're all going to tell us their truth.
Speaker 2So there are persons of interest in this case that we're not going to name for legal reasons. That's right, yes.
Speaker 3Nobody's been charged. So the three persons of interest was all there, brought to. all got to stand on the stand. Compelled to speak? Yeah, they all didn't have to speak. They all just used the.
Speaker 1Well, it adopted the fifth, did they?
Speaker 3Correct. So it was very deflating. So you were expecting answers? Yes, yes. And we were very confused.
Speaker 4We remember walking out like the police took us aside and we were like, what, what, what, what? What is this happening? And they're like, oh, we're not here for questions,
Speaker 1we're just here to wrap it up.
Speaker 2Yeah. Oh, God, that's what they said to you?
Speaker 1Yeah. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
Speaker 2And this isn't the first time you've spoken or, you know, the shortcomings have been talked about in this case. Can you tell us about the shortcomings? The Police Integrity Commission. Yes, yeah, and what some of those shortcomings and outcomes were? That. That. That. That. The police officer had
Speaker 3nothing to do with the disappearance.
Speaker 2So there was a police officer who was potentially a person of interest and they just went.
Speaker 3Hence why the PIC was brought in to the initial investigation. Yeah, OK. And they just went, nothing to see? Yeah, nothing, nothing, yeah.
Speaker 1But wasn't there some suggestion that evidence was destroyed?
Speaker 3Or vanished? That was. Yes. Or vanished. That was real. So that was definitely real, yeah. And so what was that evidence in this case? So there was a knife that was found a couple of days after Janine's disappearance that had hair and blood on it.
Speaker 1Right. But not forensically examined?
Speaker 3Not forensically examined. It was brought into Bathurst Police Station and bagged ready to send off to be analysed. And somehow it ended up into the miscellaneous box and was destroyed. Contaminated, yeah. Yeah. Destroyed. So it was gone. There's no coming back from that. They don't even. And we did not find that out until the court hearing. Really? They neglected to tell us that as well.
Speaker 1That's mind-boggling. But I must say, it's not the first time we've heard situations like this. You wonder what's driving that.
Speaker 2And that's not. It's not the only
Speaker 3evidence that has somehow. So there was a lot of. There was up to seven statements where one police officer's name was redacted, I suppose you'd say, from their statements, even though they said that they know that they mentioned that person's name. And there was no consequences to any of that as well. There was also a knife on the. Another person of interest that they confiscated from him, which that never got analysed either.
Speaker 2So how does this feel as family, knowing that the answers could have been there all the time? They could have been there on that evidence that's now been destroyed. They could have been there in those witness statements.
Speaker 1Yep. Wasn't there a woman 12 days prior who named a person of interest for an alleged sexual assault, but she wasn't trusted as she seemed, quote, mentally unwell? Yeah. I don't know the basis. Unreliable, I think.
Speaker 3Unreliable, yeah. So it was at that time, you know, you sort of think, well, the name has come across, has gone into the system, and then you would think that when these persons of interest was then uploaded into the system for Janine's case, it'd be a red flag. 100%. But the computer systems didn't connect with one another. Oh, so frustrating. And then by the time it did connect, that person has passed away.
Speaker 2So again, evidence lost in that case system.
Speaker 1And opportunities lost.
Speaker 2And opportunities lost, yes. So you don't know who that person was talking about? No, no, we still don't know that. And there's no statement?
Speaker 3No. Not that we have read, not that we have seen, or we don't know, yeah, we have no evidence that that even has been lodged into Janine's case.
Speaker 2So where does that leave you then? You know, because potentially if this case had been handled differently 25 years ago, almost, almost, you know, a couple of months' time. Yeah, we wouldn't be sitting here. We wouldn't be sitting here. You would have had answers. Your lives may have been very different. Obviously, you'd still have lost your sister, and that was always going to be a tragedy to you. But you wouldn't have had to spend 25 years.
Speaker 3We could have had justice by now because there could have been DNA from, you know, look, it could have been an animal's blood and hair. Yeah, we don't know that. We don't know that. Might not. But it could have been Janine's blood and hair and the DNA of fingerprints and all of what could have just solved the case 25 years ago.
Speaker 2Yeah. Somebody could have been. You could have been in prison for this. That's right. At least you would have had answers, and you wouldn't have had to spend 25 years investigating your own sister's disappearance.
Speaker 1Yeah. I'd imagine it's also engendered a lot of mistrust in the police. Yes. And ongoing issues with the police. But it's not only the police.
Speaker 3It's our everyday life. Like, I find it very hard to trust people within my own circles. You know, I just have lost all faith in humanity. The system and humanity. And the system, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah. Well, it's a huge. It's a huge kind of loss, isn't it? And I guess the way it's been handled would reinforce those misgivings that you've had for so long now, really.
Speaker 2You had some pretty negative experiences with police generally across the years, though, haven't you? Like, providing information and then going back on that. Back and forth.
Speaker 3But it's not only the information that frustrated us. It was the handling and the moving around of police officers. Yeah. Was that more for moving around, do you think? Yeah. Look, you know, and once again, we feel sometimes it was due to, did he poke the bear too much? Right. And he's been moved on.
Speaker 2So somebody's asking awkward questions. Too many questions, yeah. So they get moved off the case.
Speaker 3Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. We just have. That's just our doubt. That's just our paranoia. I don't know. That's our suspicion. Yes. That's our, okay, so did he find something and then he's moved on? Once trust is gone. Yeah. That's it. It's really hard to come back. It is, yeah.
Speaker 1But you said today that there was an ex-officer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. An officer who said he knew where the body was. Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Speaker 3So that was pretty, pretty out there, to be honest. It was just. Oh, very confronting. It was very confronting and at that time it was just, yeah, phone call out of the blue to say, look, I know where your sister is and I know where she is. And then obviously we had the conversation and, you know, Adam and I were ready to go and dig up the location straight away. Well, then you get.
Speaker 4We went there.
Speaker 3We went there.
Speaker 2And what was the site like? Was it possible? It was just an empty block. Right. So it could legitimately have been where her remains had been interred or.
Speaker 4Yeah. And there were plans in place for it to be built on very soon. Right. The pigs were in the ground.
Speaker 3The for sale signs up waiting for somebody to buy that block of land to put a. Time is now. Commercial block. Yeah. It's all over. It's like a homemaker's centre out there now. Oh, so it's been built now. So it's completely built now. Well, that's why you can't get there now, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we had a complete. We had a complete free block of land that was. So if you're going to dig it up, that's true. If you're going to dig it up, you're going to do it now. And we went to the detectives. We go and do our job. We could have got a bulldozer out there and got somebody to dig it up. Scan it. You could have scanned it.
Speaker 2Yeah. GPR. We did. We did do it. Oh, you did?
Speaker 3Yes. We did all of that. And they put little markers. And when he. And he knew. He didn't know what he was looking for.
Speaker 2Anomalies is what he would have found.
Speaker 3He has no idea what we've told him to go. We just need to see if there's anything under this ground that you can. You can tell us. And where these little pins with little flags, it was in this big oblong. Block. Block. Like a car. A car. Of where the ground had been moved. Right. Okay. So for us, we just went, well, that's good enough evidence for us to then, you know, take this to the police. We gave them everything and.
Speaker 1They said there wasn't enough evidence to do the dig.
Speaker 3So the. And I mean, I don't know whether he went out there with his own. I don't know whether he went out there with his own ground penetration people. I don't know because we don't get those. We don't get anything from what they've done.
Speaker 1But that, again, speaks to the issue that we're all trying to drive home. There needs to be better protocol, structure and process, early days, so that you know who to contact. You know to get the geographic profilers in and all the rest of it. And I say, great respect to you. I mean, you're naive when it comes to these things. Look, it's completely. And you're reliant on the expertise of others. A hundred percent. And if you don't know where to go, you're all at sea, correct?
Speaker 3Yeah. Yeah. So from that, it just turned out that, yeah, obviously there was not enough evidence for them to warrant to go out and dig it up.
Speaker 2See, you've got two things there. You've got somebody saying this is a site. She's, I guess, buried there. Is that what you were told? Right. Then you've got somebody taking ground penetrating radar out there. And just for our listeners, viewers, what that does is scan the ground, send a radar down, and it won't show. It's not a CSI. It won't show, like, a shape of a body or money. It can find all sorts of things. What it shows is an anomaly, and it picks up the different oxygenation levels, etc. in the soil and therefore you get a soil that's been disturbed yes so you've got a rectangle that's been disturbed it's been disturbed in an area where you've been told nothing else disturbed around that
Speaker 3area just this about the size
Speaker 2of a car about the size of a car a machine potentially has dug a hole and then it's been filled in again correct yeah okay yeah so
Speaker 1adam and it's a difficult question to ask but in 2020 the police said that they'd come to the end of their inquiries how did that make you feel we
Speaker 4were very upset that day because we came to sydney and met with the detective and he told us that um he pretty much said we've run out of money wow
Speaker 3that was it without saying we've run out of money we've run out of resources we've run out of you know we
Speaker 4can't there's no team there's nobody working yeah we can't can't if you give me something i will look into it but from now done done
Speaker 3and he has everything that we have that comes through we sift through because we don't want to send everything obviously um we send through and he will look into everything that i have sent him so
Speaker 2has your trust been a little bit like reinforced by the fact that this officer obviously
Speaker 3is is following up yes i i really get along with it our officer um i have no apart from the fact that he does not like to speak in relation to anything that goes on within janine's case yeah they won't do he won't do he won't do no um apart from that i i get on well with him but it still
Speaker 1leaves you at a dead end doesn't it it is it
Speaker 3is that block all the time of okay here's some information i'm giving you the information surely you can give me you want something back you want something
Speaker 2reciprocal yeah because you must get tips all the time right all the time people yeah and you're going to get i'm warning you're going to get a lot more soon as you do more promotion well
Speaker 1to keep the awareness alive and you know the inflection of time people who know things who may have been too intimidated back then to come forward may find the courage to do so now and obviously
Speaker 3that goes back to your previous question when you're saying what did what was our outcome today and it is exactly that you know dad adam ran dad a couple of days ago and said look you know maybe we should put this forth with the immunity and he pretty much just said yep can't hurt mate yeah give it a go what have you got to lose 25 years later that's right you know he's sitting in a nursing home and yeah he wants to know what happened to his daughter and we're exhausted yeah yeah emotionally
Speaker 2exhausted yeah yeah
Speaker 3somebody can
Speaker 4definitely call in anonymously tell us where she is yeah um yeah and you want the million dollars if they want the million bucks then tell us who you are you would gladly see that oh my god i would
Speaker 2love to give it 100 because you asked for something quite specific didn't you that immunity for somebody who come forward and disclose you know where janine is or who may be responsible except the perpetrator you made that real clear yes that the immunity should not be for them no definitely because we
Speaker 4know from talking to so many people men and women that have been scared over the last 25 years they don't want to talk to them still like last year even this year even people still haven't been interviewed they don't want to go to the police they don't want to go on the record it's very quiet but
Speaker 3what do you do with that then yeah no that we just have to keep
Speaker 4the relationship going for as long as we can because they can trust us yeah so they can only trust us so far so now we have to trust that homicide will take it into consideration and you know we can get this um immunity out there that they can feel safe enough to come forward so you'll talk today about
Speaker 2wanting more resources because you you've built a relationship with the officer you're working with now but resources are clearly an issue that's something that's come up
Speaker 3again yeah and obviously that's what's been brought up in every single person's case yes you know and we were talking about it not long after you know everything was just cleared up there today you know even if us as family members have access to um different portals with in the police force if they come up with some sort of new portal for the families to be able to put information in that automatically links to that person's case yeah
Speaker 1and technology is developing all the time as you said in your evidence yes it's a different ball game now and we speak about it often uh on our podcast
Speaker 3somebody out there listening can create an app that'd be amazing like give your information it goes through privately and off you go because
Speaker 2adam that's something you spoke about specific today communication and
Speaker 1transparency yeah so
Speaker 2can you tell us a little bit more about what you would want to see in that space how that could
Speaker 4have helped you so very early on we just went months and months and months without any information because we just trusted that the police were doing their job we didn't know what a missing person's family was meant to do so they were telling us your mum and dad are here you guys just stay home and go to work and life must go on and you know as the weeks turn into months and months into years oh do you want to be happy you know she wouldn't want you to be you know so you kind of then fall into the trap of being forced to live this life when you really wanted to be more proactive and doing something but we we didn't we weren't
Speaker 1we've heard this so many times by the way yeah where people trusted the police and i'm not having a go at the police but this is what they say uh they trusted the police for years on occasions before they realized that in fact nothing had been done the file hadn't been open
Speaker 4our mum used to get clean the lounge room and bake fucking cookies and i used to say mum don't make anything today you know you don't have to do nothing for them you know the anger to the cops hit me very very early because i know that they weren't doing everything well for us for us yeah and you're the and that was today today i believe it was just janine help find me i'm ready yeah yeah
Speaker 2you're her voice i
Speaker 4was the voice
Speaker 2today so adam if what would you be your message then if someone out there knows something you know maybe they're going to listen to this that's our hope yeah you know that we can keep this front and center what would be your message
Speaker 4just come forward right now and you know do it put you out your misery yes we're ready and you're a long time janine's
Speaker 2ready janine is ready and
Speaker 4no matter what no matter where she is or what you know scenario you're holding on to it doesn't matter you know you're you are allowed to be sad for this as well adam
Speaker 1when you spoke at the end you made a statement you read from a statement it was very powerful touching and compelling i wonder if you could read it to us
Speaker 4now yeah sure mate there is a unique pain in watching life continue without janine birthdays milestones ordinary family moments they all go on but always with a space where janine should be the absence does not fade it becomes part of who you are and with time that pain has only grown more urgent we've already lost our mother at age 61 without her ever getting answers about what happened to her daughter that is something no parent should have to endure our father is now nearing his 80s and we live with that very fear that he too may not see resolution in his lifetime the uncertainty the waiting the not knowing it's not just grief it's a form of ongoing torture that has been carried by our entire family for almost 25 years unfortunately for us and many of these missing persons cases families feel like they've had to step into roles that they were never meant to take on advocates investigators and voices for our loved ones i can speak only on behalf of our case but it is felt like the system stepped back and we were left to carry that responsibility ourselves the painful truth is that we are the last people the police want to share their information with yet we're the ones searching for janine we're not trained or qualified criminologists and we are aware of the contamination due to our search for answers but after 25 years what are we supposed to do we can't sit and do nothing we need these answers over the past years every piece of new or compelling evidence big or small that has been presented to us has been passed on to our detectives running the case these have come in by numerous letters phone calls emails facebook posts and anonymous tips we understand the police can't reveal all the outcomes of every investigative avenue however we are often left wondering if the information was ever taken seriously due to the lot the loss of the trust of in the police however we want to acknowledge that the detectives who have worked hard on our sister's case that we are grateful to them on a closing note it's obvious to us that many murders could be solved with more resources that can only come from more funding from the government this is not just a police problem but a
Speaker 1government one thank you adam and kylie for joining us thank you it's been a pleasure and we hope that this podcast helps you in some way
Speaker 2yeah thank you yeah absolutely And if there's anything we can do to help.
Speaker 1We're a phone call away.
Speaker 2Yeah. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Australia's Killer Secrets. I'm Tim Watson-Monroe.
Speaker 2And I'm Dr Xanthi Weston. And we will be back next week.
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