"Exploring the unsolved & unexplained at the heart of a nation".
This is an instalment in an original investigation series into the unresolved disappearances and deaths of a number of young women in the orbit of the Australian Capital Territory from the early 1970s.
The first season of the podcast in which it will ultimately be featured is to be launched on December 8, 2020.
In the face of varying degrees of accuracy in online forums, my work is entirely based on primary sources including families, friends, witnesses, court records, police statements, coronial inquests, as well as historical articles and archival material.
Names have been omitted in the interests of privacy and to avoid any opportunity for the potential to prejudice a case should a trial arise.
“To our dear Lizzie, who is a constant reminder of how crazy the world is but also of how gentle it can be. Sadly missed by your loving family.”
The Canberra Times
Personal Notices
June 13, 1981.
It was the most ominous of dates for what unfolded.
Friday the 13th of June, 1980: Elizabeth Herfort, just 18, left a Canberra bar alone after an evening socialising with friends.
Soon after, a person “matching her description” was seen by passers-by seeking a lift along Commonwealth Avenue as it heads south from the civic centre towards Capital Hill, which eight years later would be adorned with Australia’s new Parliament House.
A female standing near the back of a vehicle stopped along the thoroughfare, in the company a man wearing a “distinctive hat”, is one account relayed to police.
Whether Elizabeth or not, in the four decades since she has never been seen or heard from again.
According to her family, some still living locally, it’s a soul-burdening hurt that never subsides.
“It’s not true that time heals all pain. It just gets kind of suppressed by all the other noise of life - but it’s always there”.
****
The petite girl with the elfin face and straight, light-brown hair that fell below her shoulders had only been back in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) a short while.
One of four children, Elizabeth - Liz to her familiars - had been been born in Malaysia during a posting of her RAAF Squadron Leader father. After the family’s return to Australia, Canberra became home in 1970. On the breakdown of her parent’s marriage almost three years later, Liz remained living there with her mother.
Blue-eyed and quietly-spoken with just the slightest Scottish lilt thanks to her maternal ancestry, Liz stood just 160cm tall. Outdoorsy and free-spirited, she was a good athlete - a swimmer, squash player and former ACT-representative softball pitcher.
In the memory of her younger brother - his 16th birthday the day police arrived on the doorstep of the coastal home where he lived with his dad - Liz “was the softest and sweetest person I knew. She had an enormous empathy for people, animals and the environment”.
He recalls the “spiritual” - and somewhat self-conscious - teenage Liz teaching him about palmistry.
“She was a bit concerned that her life line didn’t go for very long, assuming it was an age thing and would grow as she got older”.
Canberra in 1980 was in many ways, also growing up. Having been ignored and overlooked for so long, it was only from the late 1950s that it started to fully inhabit its status.
Over some 20 years there appeared numerous cultural and civic icons by which it would become known: among them, a Lake named for the man who’d won a competition to design the capital back in 1911, Walter Burley Griffin; a National Library of “Classical style stripped of ornamentation”; and the monolithic “bush-hammered” concrete and glass High Court.
At this juncture, the ACT was finally settling into being the government town it was always envisioned to be. Fast becoming a place of burgeoning numbers of servants of the public, all necessary to aid in the smooth running of a country in entirety, with a budding commercial centre and speedily-developing suburban satellite cities. Socially it had airs of refinement and aspirations of sophistication.
A 1972 government promotional piece declared it:
“A centre for the nation to make its laws, honour the great, welcome important overseas dignitaries and provide a suitable venue for national and international seminars and conferences …
Canberra is all of these, and is also a place for people to live”.
Not all glitz and glamour, though - an inevitable seedier side shaded by that shiny veneer, and problematic pockets to interfere with lofty ideals.
Just one, as attested on the front page of The Canberra Times that June day which would see Liz also become a headline: a “sharp increase in the ACT jobless”, the capital burdened with one of the highest rates in the country of adolescents unable to find work.
By then two years out of school, Liz was among those who struggled to find ongoing employment. After a short gig at the Hermitage Restaurant in the Woden Plaza, she and her long-term, slightly older boyfriend travelled as far as Queensland searching out seasonal jobs picking fruit.
Home for a visit, she was staying with her mum, southside of the city.
The young couple had their share of relationship difficulties but some time apart saw things between them resettled.
Only the week before, Liz had successfully obtained her driver’s licence, her intention to rejoin him in the Sunshine State before the end of the month. The dream was to save enough to buy some land to build a home on the picturesque North Coast of NSW.
Reaffirming his commitment, her boyfriend had called her that day. On finding she’d already headed out, he promised he’d be in touch on Sunday evening.
Although Liz was cash-strapped, her last few dollars withdrawn from her bank account earlier in the day, she was in “good spirits” when her mother saw her last, just before 1pm.
A host of plans for the long weekend - in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s 54th birthday. Having agreed to catch up with two female friends that Friday, Liz had also organised to get together with her older sister the following evening. The public holiday Monday would be a chance for a celebratory bonfire with her social circle.
And so, filled with thoughts of all of those tomorrows, she unconcernedly made her way to the Union Bar at almost the centre of the campus of the Australian National University, tucked close by Canberra’s CBD.
****
It was a small group that gathered that mid-afternoon, playing pool and sharing a few jugs of beer between them.
Known to “come out of her shell a bit more” when she had a drink, according to those who knew her best, Liz would then often become more “talkative and friendly”.
In a conversation with one of the other girls about her upcoming arrangements, they’d made jokes that given it was Friday the 13th, both of them “hoped that nothing would happen to us” before the night was through.
As 9pm approached, confirmed in witness statements, only Liz and a male she’d recently been introduced to by a friend they had in common, remained.
Preparing to leave, he’d testify he asked if she had any transport. Vaguely indicating she’d catch the bus, as this was how he was returning to his own suburb of Red Hill, between Canberra and Woden - where he’d arrive by 9.30pm - he presumed they’d walk over to the nearby Civic Interchange together.
When he emerged after a brief bathroom-break, she was gone.
Passing through the University grounds to the bus stop on his own, he didn’t see her again - unaware it would remain that way for them all.
****
Friday, June 13, 1980, was a typically Canberran winter’s day: crisp blue skies and a slight, south-east breeze.
Still, the maximum temperature reached only 12 degrees and mid-June nights there are known to quickly descend below minus. Given Liz had been wearing dark blue denim jeans, cuffed at the bottom, a long-sleeved pale-green checked blouse, dark brown mohair pullover with a white-patterned horizontal band and a pair of two-tone brown runners, she wouldn’t have wanted to be outside for long.
For all its progress, in what was still a “bush capital”, buses were few at night. Liz was also likely short of the fare.
Friday’s for Canberra means late night shopping until nine o'clock; the route along which she seemingly made her way was one many would use to head home to their various suburbs radiating out from the city centre.
More common in a different era, she must have felt it safe to hitch a ride to her mother’s home in Pearce in the Woden Valley, less than a 15 minute drive away.
The next morning though, Liz wasn’t curled up in bed in her old room as her mum was expecting.
Knowing it was out of character - if ever she made changes to her plans, she always phoned to convey them - as the family tried to keep themselves together, the process of calling all known to them commenced.
With it rapidly becoming clear no one had seen Liz since heading off into their own lives the night before, it was time to inform the Woden Police.
“We just knew in our hearts that something wasn’t right”.
****
“No trace found of missing Canberra girl”.
The first headline: Tuesday, June 17, 1980, page three of The Canberra Times.
“None of her personal belongings had been found”, from the gold sleeper earrings she always wore, on this occasion with “Mother-of-Pearl birds or drops” attached, to her “tan, leather shoulder-bag with a round flap and hand-leather tooling on the front”.
Inside this had been the ephemera of many a young woman of a similar age and disposition: her new ACT licence; air and train concession passes issued from her alma mater, Narrabundah College; a small, round Chinese satin brocade purse; an aqua-coloured hair brush; a white disposable cigarette lighter courtesy of the Southern Cross Club; a packet of Winfield Blue cigarettes; a small bottle of Egyptian Maid perfume; and a packet of tissues.
Friends and family continued to insist it was completely unlike Liz not to be in touch. She’d made no mention of doing anything but making her way home, wanting an early night in order to write some cards to friends and family.
The following day, a potential sighting speculated on in the press.
Alleged to have been in the company of another young female and male "playing with a shopping trolley" in the University grounds, close by the easily-identified, circular-shaped Haydon-Allen building.
Not far from the Union Bar, the lecture theatre was potentially en route to the bus Interchange. The report placed the activity at 9.20pm: a girl “whom partly answered the description of Miss Herfort".
It appeared one of a handful of false starts.
Almost two weeks and no progress.
Frogmen submerged themselves in the depths of the Lake at Canberra’s heart. It wasn’t the first time since the artificial construct’s inauguration in 1964 - and it wouldn’t be the last. On this occasion, it revealed nothing.
Areas surrounding the ACT were also scoured in what police declared the “largest [search] undertaken by the force in Canberra”.
Locations included the dense pine forest that encroaches on the Memorial to the 1940 Air Disaster in which 10 were killed, just east of the capital’s airport.
Nine years earlier, the isolated spot had kept hidden for close to three months the body of 20-year-old receptionist Keren Rowland. A case itself still unsolved, there subsequently arose fears of “a possible connection” to this latest concerning scenario.
Re-enactments of the fateful night, including the personally gruelling involvement of Liz’s sister similarly attired and retracing her sibling’s movements, hoping to jog people’s recollections.
Leading to more red herrings sucking up valuable resources.
There was seemingly not a single concrete clue to be had.
****
Precious time slipping by and the promise of a timely resolution slipping away.
Frustrations and increasingly distressed questions filling the void.
In the middle of a city of then some 223,000, a nation’s capital admired for its serene nature and cultivated appearance and inclinations, how could one of its residents simply vanish in almost full view without explanation?
A predator in their midst or an opportunistic chance encounter?
A number of people believing they may have seen Liz - and yet, despite the central, highly visible location, no one could categorically attest to her final movements.
One of the first potential sightings was shortly after 9pm, at the point where Canberra’s main street, Northbourne Avenue, merges at its top with Vernon Circle.
Just before the angular Canberra Theatre, where it sits to the left opposite City Hill - about a 10-minute walk from the University bar and not far from the Canberra City Police Station - a motorbike rider, having finished work helping run the well-known merry-go-round in the commercial centre, rode past the spot.
Still living in Canberra, he asserts that “traffic was fairly heavy” and his view was fleeting.
Nonetheless, he’d noticed a young woman “with hair past her shoulders” in blue jeans, who “appeared to be wearing a dark coloured coat” standing at the side of the road.
He subsequently believes he was inaccurate in his original advice to police in that the point he first identified was “roughly 100 metres ahead of where I actually saw her”.
“I didn’t talk or stop. I wasn’t sure it was Liz, I only saw her from behind. I just put two and two together after the fact,” he says today.
In another quirk revealing how small a place Canberra remained, after the missing person reports emerged, he realised he’d known the woman the city was searching for - they’d been at school together and Liz a friend of his twin sister.
It would prove just one of a number of surprising connections.
A local taxi-driver would provide the most definite account that it was Liz seen in this vicinity.
In a ten-minute window somewhere from 9.15pm to 9.25pm, he noticed a female he estimated to be 18-years-old attempting to flag down a lift. He believed the clothing she was wearing was “very similar if not identical” to that ascribed to Liz, and on seeing a photo of her, that it was “an exact likeness”.
No other woman would present herself to claim a potential case of mistaken identity.
As outlined in the court records, another man came forward within the first few days to inform police he’d given a female - “very young, possibly of an age where she may have been a first year university student, short, slim and attractive with long brown hair” - a brief lift on the night.
He’d pulled over further around Vernon Circle, just past the Theatre. By his own admission, it was a second thought - he “wasn’t going to stop except that it was cold” and having himself done some “hitchhiking in the past”, he had. Initially he’d suggest this may have been as late as 10pm, but was uncertain as to the precise timeframe.
Driving along Commonwealth Avenue and crossing the bridge over Lake Burley Griffin, he’d estimate they’d be in each other’s company no more than a few minutes.
Reaching Coronation Drive, within view of the just commenced rise of the new home for the Australian Parliament, he stopped at the traffic lights to take the road right to the Lake-hugging suburb of Yarralumla.
To the left of this primary intersection is the seven-storied Treasury building with its various wings, and the rose gardens of what in 1988 became “Old Parliament House”. On the opposite side of the road, the more than 250-roomed Hyatt Hotel and the British High Commission.
At this point, his passenger let herself out of his Renault sedan.
He’d describe her in his statement as “chirpy and talkative”, and that she’d told him she was a uni student.
When shown photos of Liz, the driver would indicate that “apart from the hair, which … was the same length but darker, and the cheekbones, he did not believe it was the same woman”.
More than a fortnight after the increasingly mysterious disappearance - June 28 - another motorist would finally present to the authorities an account that appeared to support the previous sightings.
Revealed in the media as a former Queensland police officer for a short period, he’d initially state that on that Friday the 13th, he’d taken a drive to “unwind after studying” for a forthcoming exam and to “freshen … up after consuming a few beers at lunch time”.
Sometime between 9.15pm and 9.45pm, as he approached the same lights previously indicated by the other driver, those marking the Commonwealth Avenue-Coronation Drive intersection, a car was pulled over, blocking the left lane.
Forced to change into the middle lane of the carriageway as a result, he saw a man and a woman standing at the rear of the stationary “dark red or maroon-coloured” vehicle, their silhouettes caught in the glow of its tail-lights.
His impression was that the male figure, distinguishable only for a “dark coloured hat with a narrow brim and a high crown” of the sort “that bookmakers and horse trainers wear at the races”, was “acting aggressively towards a woman”.
He could not, however, articulate what action specifically led him to form this opinion.
Concluding it was in likelihood “some sort of domestic argument” that was not his business, he decided against intervening.
As he drove on, with the thought about whether he’d “done the right thing” playing on his mind, he stopped to note down the number plate. He also scribbled what he believed may have been the make of the vehicle: “A Renault R12”.
The scrap of paper on which he wrote it remained stashed in his console, he distracted from the local news by his impending examination. A much-later conversation with a work colleague about the missing girl prompted him on the possibility of a connection with what he said he'd witnessed.
As attested to in the public record, the registration details he’d present to police would lead to a 1972 Fiat 130 sedan owned by a 38-year-old clerk living in the southern suburb of Kambah.
Making no argument that he was the owner, he similarly disclosed he was known to wear a “pork pie hat”: round, with a turned-up brim and flat crown, akin to those made popular by comedian Buster Keaton and Walter White in Breaking Bad.
The now suspect admitted he was home alone on that mid-June date, having taken the day off work to attend a dental appointment. He was also adamant the seemingly identified vehicle, to which no one else had access, was garaged all night from approximately 6.45pm.
He denied being in the location at the salient time or of “any involvement in or knowledge of the disappearance of Elizabeth Herfort”.
A 10 to 20-minute long phone call at some point after 8pm to a woman he’d met through an introduction agency back in March was verified: she would recall the time as she'd mention her concern that her son was watching "The Incredible Hulk" on Channel 7. The show ran for the hour.
He’d also make clear it would have taken him 30 minutes to reach the spot where the sighting was made.
According to his police statement:
"I would be travelling on the inbound carriageway of Commonwealth Avenue, requiring me to sight the girl on the opposite side ... then do a U-turn and accost her”.
"I would have no purpose in travelling towards Civic at that hour. I have never been one to drive the streets just for something to do, and on the night in question I had no occasion to go out”.
On forensic examinations of the car and his house, the only hint of an unaccounted for element was a sanitary napkin wrapper of a kind used by Liz.
A common brand, the eventual explanation proffered was that it may have belonged to his wife or step-daughters - who’d left the family home more than six months before. Found in a bin pushed behind the toilet, he’d declare it was one he didn’t use.
Publicly labelled “Harry the Hat”, he obliged to numerous police requests for interviews, without legal representation. He also willingly submitted himself for an hypnosis session - his recalled movements on the day matching that conveyed to the authorities. So too, a psychiatric observation, the details of which were originally suppressed for privacy purposes and which did not result in any charge or prosecution.
He’d later seek a new start away from a conjecturing Canberra, according to investigators, leaving “unresolved questions” in his wake and inevitably remaining on their radar.
****
Almost precisely one month after Liz’s disappearance, on the evening of July 12, a Saturday, two young female nurses’ aides nonchalantly left a Western Sydney pub.
For an undetermined period before 7pm that night, best friends Gillian Jamieson and Deborah Balken were seen with a man “wearing a large-brimmed black cowboy hat” in the back bar of the Parramatta Tollgate Hotel in Church Street.
Another friend they were living with later received a call from Deborah saying the pair had met up with former workmates of Gillian’s, describing one as “the gardener fellow”. They’d decided to take up the offer of a ride to a party in coastal Wollongong, about an hour and a half away.
The 20-year-olds have never been heard from again.
An offer of $100,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction has thus far failed to produce anything of substance.
In 2006, the Deputy State Coroner named four persons of interest in relation to their “probable deaths”. On this short list was the now dead Ivan Milat (1944-2019), by then convicted of seven murders of young backpackers. At the time of Deborah and Gillian’s seeming abduction, Milat was working only a few kilometres away for the then Department of Main Roads.
Milat’s name would also emerge in the case of Elizabeth Herfort.
****
As leads dried up, so did media attention on Liz’s plight.
Eyes and emotions were further diverted when just over two months after the unaccounted for events on a calm night in Canberra, another unexplained disappearance some 2,600 kilometres away engulfed the nation.
Azaria Chamberlain, born June 11, 1980, was proclaimed by her parents, Lindy and Michael, to have been taken by a dingo while the family camped nearby the monolithic rock, Uluru. Eventually Lindy would be found guilty of her murder. Serving more than three years in prison, evidence uncovered by chance saw her life sentence overturned in one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history.
With focus and resources directed elsewhere, for Liz's family, hope ebbing as speedily as the years were passing. Half a decade flashing by with no word - from Liz or anyone with any clue. Even the inducement of a $30,000 reward not enough to flush out more than what was already known.
In 1988, the case was highlighted as part of a crime prevention campaign, Operation Turnaround, launched in an effort to unearth anything relating to a variety of outstanding local matters.
And still all leads led nowhere.
Although no body, or even a hint of one, was reclaimed, in late 1993, the ACT Coroner and Chief Magistrate ordered an inquest into Liz Herfort’s “suspected death” - the first time this occurred in Canberra following changes to the ACT legal process.
Newspaper notices consistently appeared Australia-wide; any person knowing anything that might assist encouraged to contact the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The result was a more than year-long delay to follow up another suspect and a new line of inquiry.
****
“Dreams and ‘shocking’ admissions”;
The Canberra Times page three headline, August 29, 1995.
The inquest was finally, formally recommenced.
The Coroner would lift suppression orders “in the interest of an open public hearing”, allowing full access by “the general public, the press, the media and other interested parties including witnesses”.
Previously unheard assertions and speculations abounded.
A former school friend of Liz made an official submission on how she’d been beleaguered by a series of dreams revealing the teenager “was lying peacefully at the bottom of a dry creek bed”.
“The creek ran along the right hand side at a slight angle. There was heavy erosion on the banks and the banks were about a metre high. In the top left hand side was a very small white cottage or building. It was made of fibro and had one small wooden framed window with a curtain on it which faced the direction of the creek”.
“The surrounding paddock was very barren. There were a couple of Scotch Thistle bushes growing but much like an overgrazed shoot paddock. On the left … I believe there was a dirt road, but there were small Eucalypts growing that obscured it from view”.
“I know that this place I’ve described is somewhere near Canberra … I think, but am not absolutely sure, that is is somewhere on or near Madura [sic] Road, the road that runs from the Federal Highway to the Airport".
“I realise it is up to you how you treat this information … but it comes to you in truth … The experience of putting down on paper what I have ‘seen’ has been very difficult and disturbing and was not done lightly”.
By the 1990s, Majura Road was only just being upgraded from a basic rural road on the north-eastern outskirts of the capital to a carriageway catering for higher traffic volumes.
While a specific location was unable to be identified, the general area was searched - to no avail.
The description did though, bear similarities to the unsolved murder of yet another local woman.
“Attractive” mother of three, Mary Ann Bertram, was last seen on the evening of Sunday, March 31, 1974, a week before her 28th birthday. She’d left the family home in the suburb of Farrer - also in the southern ACT area of Woden Valley (diagonally opposite Pearce). She didn’t return.
Four days later, Mary was discovered “hidden behind a fallen tree on the Sutton Road” - it slightly further east of, and parallel to, Majura Road.
She was naked and had been strangled. NSW Police confirm that to date, no charges have ever been laid.
The legal proceedings for Liz's case would also prompt other, more bizarre communications.
One, an envelope containing a newspaper clipping with a sheet of paper inscribed with: “Was she a Satanic Victim” [sic] in red marker. Not a hint of a fingerprint.
More significantly, two men who would themselves have been teenagers at the time Liz went missing were interviewed about information they’d previously shared potentially implicating them.
It was alleged by a former partner of one that he had, on a number of occasions, relayed quite specific - though not always accurate - suggestions about the abduction of a young woman in Canberra in “the early 1980s”.
This included the woman being held captive for a period before the subsequent disposal of her body - in “water somewhere between Canberra and Bateman’s Bay” on the South Coast.
During a police interview, he’d advise that the story had in fact come from another man previously known to him.
The record notes that the second man would admit to investigating officers that he “sometimes told outlandish stories to people to shock them as a form of practical joke”. In this instance, “he had made the story up”, the first time he “had used a real life event as the basis of his claims”.
A mutual acquaintance of both of them confirmed that the second party “did, on occasions, make up what he described as sick stories”.
Doubts arose about the veracity of the accounts. Along with discrepancies in dates, furnished details proved inaccurate: while the first man identified a Kingston unit in which the second man had lived, at the time of Liz’s disappearance, it hadn’t yet been built.
There also arose vague if inconclusive connections between these parties and some of the other witnesses, in former school and work settings. Even now though, Canberra is regularly a place of a mere two degrees of separation.
Eventually, this angle of investigation would also falter into nothingness.
****
“Harry the Hat” too, appeared on the stand, having always advised of his willingness to do so.
He’d take the opportunity to protest a “set-up” by the apparent witness who’d taken down his registration plate number that night, alleging the possibility for it to be in conjunction with a female neighbour with whom there had been issues.
“Harry’s” testimony detailed a near-miss car accident with a “red coloured Valiant Charger sedan” he believed to be owned by the one-time police officer, at Belconnen Mall the day after Liz vanished. While no words were exchanged, his assertion was that this was perhaps grounds for “an ulterior motive in implicating” him.
The other party had no recollection of such an incident. There was also a denial of any links to or conspiracy with the neighbour.
A month or so after being re-questioned in February, 2017, that witness died unexpectedly.
Adding to the mounting difficulties in trying to unearth answers, the inquest revealed that “all the forensic evidence in this case” had at some point “been lost”.
Among this were items collected from the Herfort home and a variety of photographs. In particular, the requested evidence list noted: a photo of "a discarded sanitary pad near the Canberra Sailing Club", one of an alleged grave site on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin that was dismissed as "no more than a dumped pile of earth fill", and "a suspect grave site" in the middle of a Tuggeranong suburb on the southern most edges of the ACT's borders.
More certain after 15 years was that there was never any attempt at accessing “any form of social security benefit, Medicare card, passport, driver’s licence or car registration” in Liz’s name.
Her dental records had also been distributed to match against previously located unidentified human remains. They have to date, yielded nothing.
Unsurprisingly, there’d be no conclusive outcome. The official findings were that while Liz “was most likely dead, probably as a result of foul play … there was not enough evidence to commit anyone to trial”.
The Coroner would note: “The disappearance of Elizabeth Herfort remains a mystery”.
****
According to sources, Ivan Milat was interviewed.
Certainly he was known to frequent the region. There are still locals who agree he was a regular patron at the Hotel Queanbeyan on the NSW side of the border with the ACT, at least during the period he worked with the Department of Main Roads.
Questions involved both his movements and vehicles he owned, including a lime-green Valiant Charger sedan he’d bought in 1974 after trading in a “mid-sixties maroon Holden”.
Two years after his 1994 arrest for the abduction and murder of seven young hitchhikers, police released the names of 15 people who had similarly disappeared after apparently seeking lifts from strangers, to be re-examined in light of Milat’s conviction.
Elizabeth Herfort was on that list.
****
The Herfort family were "naturally disappointed” with the inconclusive outcome of the 1995 proceedings.
"Our need to learn the fate of Liz and the provision for justice to [be] dealt to her abductor were the primary objectives we had hoped for of this inquest, but most important to us was the hope for Liz's resting place to be uncovered so she could at last be buried with respect and dignity where her family and friends could visit in love," they would say in an issued statement.
Four decades on and those hopes have continued to be dashed.
****
In 1984, on July 28, as if by yet another act of dark magic, 17-year-old Megan Mulquiney literally vanished in broad daylight, having just finished work at the Big W store inside the Woden Plaza.
“Two missing girls”;
The Canberra Times, February 22, 1985.
Despite chilling echoes - among them that Megan was also of slim build, with longish, dark hair that she wore loose - and while jointly reported about, it was suggested there was “no apparent connection between the two disappearances”.
However, an attempted abduction of another 17-year-old girl from nearby Mawson only three months after Megan went missing, was raised.
A blonde man in his mid-20’s had forced the girl into his NSW-registered car telling her “he wanted her to know Jesus”. Driving her around Canberra for just over an hour, she’d managed to escape at an intersection on Parkes Way, close to the ANU. No arrest was apparently ever made.
Not mentioned in that account, less than two weeks prior, another 17-year-old female was kidnapped at knifepoint in a Woden carpark.
Driven in her own vehicle 30-minutes away towards the westerly Uriarra Forest on the edge of the Brindabella National Park, she was subjected to an assault of a most traumatic nature, the kind that damages physically, emotionally and psychologically.
At its end, the perpetrator calmly drove her back to Lyons - the suburb virtually opposite the Woden Plaza.
[NB: In 1984, there were six reported rapes in the ACT - five of them were solved].
The 23-year-old attacker was arrested the next day at the Cotter Reserve, not far from the crime scene, where he’d been living in a tent.
When the police arrived, there’d been no attempt to hide the stolen car.
Routinely in trouble with the law - described in a 1982 court hearing for drink-driving as “well in the grip of grog” and a “drunken maniac” - he was handed down a 14-year prison term for rape, abduction and robbery with violence.
He’d serve three years, paroled in 1988.
Within a year of his release, there’d be another three years for the attempted abduction of a woman in Tasmania, followed up with a 10-year stint for aggravated assault and rape.
It was later highlighted in the media that his victims bore physical resemblances: “young, with child-like features, petite builds, shoulder-length hair”.
That same serial offender would be called to appear at the 2009 inquest into Megan Mulquiney’s disappearance.
Having confessed to each of the other crimes of which he was accused, he’d profess his innocence in these circumstances: “I swear that on my children. I have children of my own.”
In that case too, a conclusive outcome has remained out of reach, no trial ever staged. If there was a chance he knew more than he revealed, the primary suspect took it to his grave, dying in mid-2018.
****
Towards the end of 1984, an in-depth article in The Canberra Times by police reporter Philip Castle, revealed Liz’s mother had a vision of her daughter around a year after she was lost to them.
The older woman woke to Liz telling her, “I’m happy, Mum … I’m alright, Mum”.
Other loved ones agree they’ve had similar experiences.
Liz’s youngest brother is now a middle-aged grandfather who's face is a map of the underlying grief he's lived with for so long. He talks fondly of the sister who'd playfully tease him but would also spend hours "mucking about" with him.
"We used to have a cassette recorder, with which we would play out being a news reporter or gameshow hosts," he says with just the slightest hitch in his voice.
"And I remember playing shopkeeper using an old writing bureau that was in the hallway as a prop for the shop, and cut paper up to use as money, we’d borrow some of the copper coins that Dad would leave on his bedroom dressing table. Liz was always the shopkeeper and I the customer. We would entertain ourselves for hours this way".
Those familial ties further strengthened in front of a loungeroom TV set.
"We all watched the ABC series called Bellbird. No matter where you were in the house, you’d hear the call, most often from Liz, 'BELLL-BIIRD”, and we would all religiously sit down together and watch it".
The animal-lover also had a special bond with the family dog, Meischa, who’d always slept at the foot of her bed.
“Often when Liz would call home, she’d talk to Meischa on the other end of the phone,” he recalls.
“Eventually every time the phone rang, Meischa would knock it off the hook and whimper into it, expecting it to be Liz”.
“I remember a dream I had not long after Liz disappeared, where the phone rang and Meischa got to it before me, whimpering as usual. When I picked up the receiver, a voice said, ‘is mum there?’ When I asked, ‘is that you, Liz?’, she simply repeated, ‘is mum there? I need to speak with her’. I was so relieved to hear her voice, I immediately called out to mum”.
“Of course, it was only a dream”.
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On September 3, 2020, Liz would have turned 59.
For her family, and too many others that have faced similar trauma, the anguish of not knowing never recedes.
Liz’s brother still talks of walking through the underbelly of Parliament House where it now sits astride Capital Hill, towering over where it was she may last have stood, and wondering if there might be any chance that she could be there beneath his feet.
“Whenever I went through the ‘cathedral', the huge area underneath Parliament House - its construction just begun at that moment in time - the idea would come to me unbidden. Thoughts like that, they’re always there, always tucked away in same far recess of your mind. You can’t help but wonder,” he says plaintively.
Forty years has inevitably involved numerous working parts, from witnesses to potential witnesses, suspects, those following the leads and a public who’s interest is usually only piqued when the annual National Missing Persons Week rolls around.
“There’s probably been 15 or 20 officers that have been involved over all these years,” acknowledges the youngest Herfort.
“While the commitment to and interest in finding answers remains, it’s hard to maintain consistency. Although difficult for our family to keep going around in what seems endless circles, we know that if there’s any chance to achieve a resolution, it’s only by bringing it to people’s attention that it may yet happen”.
“We know Liz isn’t coming home. That’s our reality. But our hope is for some outcome, some justice”.
“If you know anything or know anyone who does, please come forward and help us find the answers we so desperately seek”.
Without the chance for the Herforts to lay their beloved daughter, sister and friend to rest, all that’s left to show for lives so disrupted is a small plaque largely unseen on an ordinary, urban grass verge almost at the very heart of a nation’s capital:
“In loving memory of Elizabeth Herfort, last seen here 13 June 1980, 18 years old. Sadly missed and always loved and remembered by her family and friends”.
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Next time:
Of the other cases involving similar disappearances and deaths of young women within the orbit of the Australian National Capital, one is among the longest unsolved crimes in its history: the 1971 murder of 20-year-old Keren Rowland.
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Thank you to family members, witnesses, friends and those involved with all of these cases over almost 50 years for their input, assistance and contributions. If you have any information of any kind, please contact Crimestoppers, or feel free to contact me directly.
For more on the unsolved, unexplained and unknown in the orbit of the Australian Capital, also see my capitalcrimefiles.com.au website which features my new podcast.