Amanda
ROBINSON Age at time of disappearance: 14 years - DOB - 1965 Build: Unknown Height: 160 cm Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown Distinguishing Features/Other: Circumstances:
Amanda Robinson attended a high school dance at Gateshead in Newcastle
NSW on 20 April 1979 and
caught a bus to Swansea.
She was
last seen walking along Lake Road, Swansea NSW on 21 April
1979. She has not been seen since. There are grave fears for her safety.
05/07/02 LtoR, Anne Robinson (mum of
Amanda Robinson) & Beth Leen (mum of Leanne Goodall) at the Inquest into the
disappearance of three girls Robyn Hickie, Leanne Goodall & Amanda Robinson from
the Newcastle area 20 years ago. At Toronto court. Pix Gary Graham
*Editor's note - yes, I know I shouldn't be using this copyrighted photo
so if the owner would like to donate the original copy to the website, I will be
most grateful!
Coroner blasts 'extraordinary' inquiries into missing
women
By Ellen Connolly - SMH July 4 2002
The State Coroner, John Abernethy, lashed out yesterday at the handling of
the original investigations into three missing women, saying it was
extraordinary that leads were never followed up, statements never taken and
detectives taken off the unsolved cases.
He said he could not understand why it had taken 23 years for the
disappearances - presumed murders - to be referred to a coroner.
Nor could he understand how the investigations were "shut down" and had
"died" within a year of the women going missing.
Leanne Goodall, 20, Robyn Hickie, 18, and Amanda
Robinson, 14, disappeared between December 1978 and April 1979 while
waiting for or getting off buses at bus stops on the Pacific Highway in
Newcastle. In the case of Ms Goodall, a formal investigation was never launched.
At the inquest yesterday, Mr Abernethy asked Norm Sheather, who was in
charge of Newcastle district detectives at the time, why the Goodall
disappearance was never looked at by a detective.
"I don't know. It should have been," said Mr Sheather, now retired.
Mr Sheather also could not give a reason why further lines of inquiry were
never followed up in relation to Amanda Robinson and Ms Hickie and why the
investigations had "died" by the end of 1979.
In a dramatic outburst, Mr Abernethy said detectives should have analysed
the cases after two years and, given they were unsolved and resources had been
withdrawn, referred them to a coroner.
Mr Abernethy: "Could I suggest that no-one, you nor anybody else, did that
analysis and these cases just slipped through the cracks?"
Mr Sheather: "Well, that's the way it appears."
Mr Abernethy: "What I want to ascertain is whether these cases are just
because of the system or the leadership of criminal investigations in those
days. Nothing was done to finish them off, one way or the other."
Mr Sheather said his position was "virtually administration," and it was
the responsibility of the then divisional officer, Mervyn Squires, who
supervised the detectives.
Mr Abernethy said he found it "incredibly difficult" to accept that as
head of Newcastle region detectives Mr Sheather was not responsible for
overseeing the investigation.
Mr Abernethy: "You are suggesting on oath the buck stopped with Sergeant
Squires?"
Mr Sheather later conceded he was responsible for ensuring the integrity
of the investigation and the allocation of resources, and it was up to him or
Sergeant Squires to refer the matters to the coroner.
He did not know why two detectives who were sent from Sydney to
investigate the Amanda Robinson abduction were recalled after just two weeks.
The inquest continues.
No peaceful rest
July 5 2002 - SMH
Today, State Coroner John Abernethy delivers his findings on the disappearances
of three young women from Newcastle 23 years ago. But it is unlikely he will be
able to provide any answers to the grieving parents. Ellen Connolly writes.
The decades of torment are etched in the faces of the parents. They have aged
- perhaps quicker than most - while the images of their daughters, Amanda, Robyn
and Leanne, have remained frozen in time. Eternal youth.
Their torment has deepened in the past year as the last glimmer of hope - in the
form of a coronial inquest - has provided few answers. "At the start of the
inquest we thought there might be a good outcome but I now know there will be no
crucial findings. They won't be solved," Jim Hickie, whose daughter Robyn
vanished in 1979, said this week.
Six
suspects, including backpacker killer Ivan Milat, have given evidence at the
inquest. And while police have their "hunches" over who was responsible there is
no concrete evidence. What has become clear, however, are the major flaws and
"gross incompetence" of the original police investigation. It seems that there
was never much hope of finding what happened to their children. How could there
have been?
Leanne Goodall, 20, last seen alive at the Star Hotel, Newcastle, on December
30, 1978, was treated by police as a runaway. No formal investigation was ever
carried out. Not one detective looked at her case.
Robyn Hickie, 18, who went missing on April 7, 1979, after arranging to meet a
netball team-mate at the Belmont Hotel, was labelled by police as "a known
hitchhiker". Her disappearance earned a few weeks of intense investigation, but
she was regarded as another runaway and only two statements were taken.
The
disappearance of Amanda Robinson, 14, who vanished 13 days later on her way home
to Swansea after a school dance, was taken more seriously. Because of her age
two homicide detectives from Sydney were sent to Belmont to investigate. But
after two weeks they were recalled. They gave local detectives several lines of
inquiry to follow up. It was never done.
The
homicide detectives told the inquest this week they were sent to concentrate
"exclusively" on Amanda's case and so did not examine the possible connections
with Robyn's disappearance two weeks earlier.
Words such as "unstructured and largely dysfunctional", "lazy police work" and
"direction-less" were among the descriptions used in court to capture the police
effort. And it is likely these will be reflected in Abernethy's findings today.
The
coroner has already voiced some criticism of the investigation, or lack thereof,
saying this week it was extraordinary that records were not kept, statements
never taken and the investigation shut down within a year of the three going
missing. He could not understand why it had taken 23 years for the matter to be
referred to a coroner. He said the records before the inquest were so inadequate
that "it's all guesswork".
It
was not until 20 years after the three went missing that the first major
investigation began with the formation of Strikeforce Fenwick.
In
his criticisms of the original police investigation, Detective Superintendent
Ron Smith, head of Fenwick, told the inquest last year that police should have
treated the disappearances as suspected homicides. Instead they were treated as
runaways. Investigators failed to consider a serial killer, he said.
While there was no direct link, the three went missing within four months of
each other while waiting at bus stops or alighting from buses near their homes
on the Pacific Highway. They were all young females, they went missing on a
Saturday and their bodies have never been found, despite extensive searches in
recent years.
One
of the prime suspects is Milat, who worked on road crews and lived in the area
at the time. "Personally I have very strong suspicions of Milat in these
matters," Inspector Wayne Gordon, deputy commander of Fenwick, told the inquest.
Milat had been staying at various hotels in the vicinity of the Pacific Highway,
or in or near the suburbs where the three disappeared. Police searched the sand
mine site at Belmont because it was near a motel where Milat stayed at the same
time. They found gun pellets and empty cartridge cases during a search for a
grave thought to contain the body of one of the three.
When Milat gave evidence last year, amid a large security presence, he said he
had picked up about 15 hitchhikers but not in the Hunter. "I had nothing to do
with whatever happened to their children. I can look at them people, right in
the eye, and say, 'I had absolutely nothing to do with your children going
missing'," he told the court.
A
man testified that he had seen Milat at the Belmont hotel the night before Robyn
disappeared. There was evidence Milat had boasted to an associate that there
were body pits and grave sites all over the Hunter.
Another suspect who gave evidence was Neville Drinkwater. He was questioned two
weeks after Amanda disappeared. Aged 19 at the time, he had some unusual sexual
habits, and when police arrested him they found scissors in the glovebox of his
car, as well as tape and pornographic magazines. He was reinterviewed last week
over inconsistencies in his version of where he was on the night Amanda
vanished.
Convicted rapist Kelvin John Macey was questioned over Robyn's disappearance. He
was jailed for seven years after he raped a hitchhiker after picking her up on
the Pacific Highway, Belmont, on June 20, 1979. He denied any knowledge of
Robyn's disappearance.
Since the four-year reinvestigation began, 51 sites have been searched in the
Hunter. More than 120 witnesses gave evidence at the inquest.
Robyn Hickie's father is grateful for the intensive police work during the past
four years but believes it came too late. "There was no hope from the start
because they didn't put the effort in when Robyn went missing. First of all they
wanted to believe that our daughter was a runaway."
Hickie, whose life has been consumed by his daughter's disappearance, is
"convinced" he knows who killed Robyn but the evidence, particularly without a
body, is not strong enough.
He
expects Abernethy will find today that the three were abducted and murdered by
an unknown person/s. And then, Hickie says, the torment will continue.
"Our daughters' cases will lie in the police records. Unless someone comes up
with a confession, nothing will happen. That's the truth in the matter."
Ivan Milat a prime suspect again
By
Les Kennedy - SMH May 22, 2006
IVAN MILAT is expected to be named today as a prime suspect in the
disappearance 26 years ago of two Sydney nurses - the third time since his
1996 conviction for the murders of seven backpackers that he has featured as a
"person of interest" at a coroner's inquest.
A deputy state coroner,
Carl Milovanovich, will hear police evidence about the women, Gillian Jamieson
and Deborah Balken, last seen at a Parramatta hotel in 1980.
Milat was previously named at inquests into the disappearance of young
women and couples from the North Shore and the Hunter dating back to the late
1970s. Unlike on those occasions, Milat, 60, will not be given a day out of
Goulburn's high-security Supermax prison to give evidence.
The parents and other relatives of the two nurses are expected to attend
the day-long hearing at the Westmead Coroner's Court. Detectives are expected
to detail for the first time undisclosed information on police efforts to find
the women, who were both 20 when they disappeared.
In 2001 Milat angrily denied at an inquest at Toronto Local Court that
he was responsible for the disappearances of Robyn Hickie, 17,
Amanda Robinson, 14, and Leanne Goodall, 20, all
from Newcastle, who vanished separately in the Hunter in 1978 and 1979.
In August he was named by police at an inquest before Mr Milovanovich as
the person most likely to have killed the Berowra schoolgirl Michelle Pope,
18, and her boyfriend, Stephen Lapthorne, 21, who vanished along with their
green van from northern Sydney in August 1978. Neither the vehicle nor their
bodies have been found.
For the past three years a team of Parramatta detectives has re-examined
the disappearances of Ms Balken and Ms Jamieson. They were last seen with a
man wearing a floppy black cowboy hat in a back bar of the Tollgate Hotel in
Church Street, Parramatta, at 7.30pm on June 12, 1980.
Detectives interviewed Milat a year ago inside the Supermax prison,
where he is serving a life sentence for the abduction, stabbing and shooting
murders of five women and two men in the Belanglo State Forest in the Southern
Highlands between 1978 and 1992.
Milat, who was working in 1980 at the Granville depot of the then
Department of Main Roads, is understood to have been interviewed about his
movements and vehicles he owned, including a lime green Valiant Charger sedan.
As in previous investigations into other missing women or couples in
which Milat has featured since 2001, police have been frustrated by the fact
that no bodies have been found.
Decades of suspended grief for loved ones
THE similarities should have astounded investigators.All lived in the
Eastlakes area, all were young and attractive and all went missing within
four months of each other, snatched at night while alone.Vanished into thin
air.But it took decades before the disappearances of Leanne Goodall, Robyn
Hickie and Amanda Robinson were taken seriously as abduction and murders,
let alone whether they could even be linked.Today marks the 30th anniversary
of Amanda Robinson's disappearance, the last of the three missing girls
cases that have become to represent all that is evil about the Hunter
Region.The 14-year-old was last seen about 400 metres from her home in Lake
Road, Swansea on April 21, 1979.She had been to a school dance at Gateshead
with friends.Her disappearance came 13 days after Robyn Hickie, 18, went
missing after being last seen on the Pacific Highway at Belmont.Several
months earlier, on December 30, 1978, Leanne Goodall, 20, was last seen
alive at the Star Hotel after earlier being dropped off at Muswellbrook by
her brother to catch a train.The three women had never met, but their
stories would become intertwined as a crack police unit, Strike Force
Fenwick, was set up in the late 1990s.Their families have also become
close.The mothers of Amanda and Leanne, Anne Robinson and Beth Leen, have
stood side-by-side many times pleading with the public to help find their
children.They find some solace in the fact that each knows how the other is
feeling.But 30 years down the track, the lack of answers still haunts
them.They cannot grieve at a gravesite.Their hearts still skip a beat every
time there are reports of remains being found.'We still celebrate her
birthday, we all get together," Mrs Leen said."You think of it all year but
that is a day when we all get together."And when a body turns up you really
think, you are sort of waiting and wondering."And they are still waiting and
wondering when they can find their girls and give them some sort of
peace.Information can be forwarded to Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.