David Lee ROBINSON
David Lee ROBINSON
DOB - 1963
Build:
Thin
Height: 164 cm
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Distinguishing Features/Other:
Has a moustache and scarring on his upper body.
Circumstances: On the evening of May
3rd 1995, David Lee Robinson, left the Darwin Hospital
NT wearing dark blue pyjamas and carrying a white blanket.
Family and friends have been looking for David, but have
had no contact with him since that time and there are
grave concerns held for his safety.
TIME is running out for Helen Robinson to find out what happened to her youngest son, David, who vanished without a trace in Darwin almost twenty years ago.
HELEN Robinson will be 73 this week and time is running out for her to find out what happened to her son, David, who vanished without a trace in Darwin almost 20 years ago.
David Robinson, then 32, had been admitted to Royal Darwin Hospital after sustaining a head injury.
He discharged himself, still wearing pyjamas, on May 23 1995 and has never been seen or heard from again.
Mrs Robinson, along with her three other children, have never given up trying to find out what happened to the “baby of the family”.
Mrs Robinson and her two sons live in Charters Towers in Queensland and all three of them are battling serious health conditions.
David’s sister, Christine Kennedy from Townsville, said they were racing the clock for the family to be reunited.
“It’s been 19 years, it’s a long time, they put out a poster every year and we have never ever had anyone come forward with any clues,” she said.
“He lived in Darwin for quite a while and was well-known around town … it’s just strange he was never even seen again. It has devastated our mum.”
Not a day goes by that Mrs Robinson doesn’t grieve for her “baby”.
“It’s really upsetting, we’re a close family … we just can’t understand how he could vanish like that,” she said.
“We love David … we’re still grieving for him.”
After seeing the NT News story about a skull found on Wagait Beach at Mandorah in September the family decided to contact the paper to renew calls for information. They still hold hope David is alive.
“Clairvoyants keep telling us he is still alive but that he doesn’t know who he is, which would make sense because of the head injury; they say he’s over water,” she said.
“My daughter, mother and me have all been to different clairvoyants and they all said virtually the same thing: it’s given us hope that David is out there and he needs our help to find him.”
Since his disappearance, David has not accessed any of his bank accounts or collected any mail.
If you have any information on David Robinson, please contact Crime Stoppers anonymously on 1800 333 000.
Haunted by the unknown and stuck in limbo as mystery takes toll on families
Sunday Territorian, March 15, 2015 - Tamara Howie
With nothing but a white blanket and in his dark blue pyjamas, David Lee Robinson walked out of the Darwin Hospital on May 3, 1995 and disappeared into the dark, dry evening. It was a head injury that landed David in hospital. How the 32-year-old was injured and why he checked himself out is a mystery to his family who have been searching for answers ever since.
“We thought, well, he’s going to turn up, he’s just gone walkabout,” said his sister Christine Kennedy. “You don’t think that will be the last time you see him.” With the 20th anniversary of his disappearance bearing down on his family, time is running out. “It gets worse every day. My mother and two brothers are very sick and all their days are numbered. “They probably won’t get that chance to get reunited with David before they pass away,” Christine said.
While the leads ran out for police, David’s family have never stopped looking for him. His mother Helen sends handwritten notes to the missing persons unit, the hospital, the media, anyone she thinks will be able to help. “Mum was also a war baby so she knew her mum but not her dad. She spent the first half of her life looking for her dad and second half looking for her son. She feels guilty as a mother because she hasn’t been able to find her baby boy.”
Police, clairvoyants, dreams – his family has followed any lead that has come to them. This has often created more questions than answers. There’s a grim reality of unpredictable emotions when unidentified bodies or human remains are found. Skeletal remains were found near the Royal Darwin Hospital in 2004. “We thought that’s it, that had to be David,” Christine said. “When they said ‘no, it’s not’, it stirs up all these other emotions. There’s that hope, and even if we found him dead, it’s closure. But also guilt. Not a day goes by where we don’t think of him.” More recently, in September 2014 skulls were discovered in Mandorah. Another glimmer of hope. Another emotional dead end.
A clairvoyant told the family he is still alive, living as someone else. “She said the only way he’ll connect with us is if we go to him and tell him who we are. “She said he’s across the water, we always thought that means the ocean, maybe Mandorah or Tiwi. “Then my mum’s brother’s eldest daughter said to go look in Kununurra, she said she saw it in a dream.” Christine and her mother Helen searched high and low for David in Kununurra. The only lead the pair could not chase were the rumours of the man living on Kelly’s knob. Who was he? Had David returned to where he grew up, only to become a local legend, cast away on a mountain?
Another lead came from a childhood friend of one of Christine’s brothers living in Esperance. He said there was a “bloke up town who looked just like (their) father”. This bloke who was not of a sound state of mind, but was able to tell the family friend details of David’s childhood that the family had not told the media. He said David was in a mental institution in WA. “He wouldn’t let us take any pictures or talk to him on the phone,” said Christine, confident she would recognise her brother’s soft-spoken voice. “I’ve still got that doubt in the back of my mind. “How did he know where David lived as a child?” This led Christine to a Western Australian database, covering all the medical centres in the region. She had no idea this type of database existed. The lack of resources was a common difficulty for families struggling to deal with the sudden disappearance of a loved one. “It’s frustrating, if we knew then what we know now, we might have found him.”
