Steven James GOLDSMITH
Steven James GOLDSMITH
Steve and his parents, Lesley and Dave on an Australian holiday. It was this visit that led to Steven moving to Australia permanently. Above right - one of Steve's tattoos.
*Click here for the Missing Persons Unit TV show featuring Steve
| D.O.B: | 1972 |
| Height: | 175 cm |
| Complexion: | Fair |
| Eye Colour: | Brown |
| Hair Colour: | Ginger |
| Build: | Medium |
| Tattoo(s)/Marks: | Tattoos on both upper arms and on one shoulder blade. Has a slight limp when walking. |
| Last seen: |
At his residence, New Farm, Brisbane on or about 10 July 2000.
When his
friends did not hear from him in the following three weeks they reported
him missing. Steven was employed as a tree surgeon in Toowoomba.
He enjoyed fishing and camping.
Steven is originally from the UK and will have a British accent. His nickname is "Goldie". He walks with a limp due to an accident falling from a tree while he was working. Steve's tattoos are of an eagle and a skull with top hat and Jessica Rabbit. There was an anonymous call made to Brisbane police about Steve's disappearance shortly after he went missing - please, please if that was you, please call them again and let them know any more info that you have. We don't need to know who you are, just where Steven is. Steve, if you're reading this, I am in contact with your Mum and Dad every day and can pass on any message from you, it is breaking their hearts not to know where you are. If you don't want to talk to them, talk to me instead. Please, please, just let me tell them you're alive.
|
If anyone has any info at all about Steve's disappearance, PLEASE call
Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000
ASP General News (Australia)
10-03-2000
The parents of a missing British man have made a desperate plea for their
son to call
home, almost three months after he mysteriously disappeared in Brisbane.
Tree surgeon STEVEN JAMES GOLDSMITH was last seen by friends on July 5, and on
security
cameras withdrawing cash from automatic tellers in Brisbane's west and
inner-city on July
10.
His parents DAVID and LESLEY, who flew to Australia from England to launch a
nationwide
public appeal to find their son, today said he had effectively vanished.
The 28-year-old red head was given Australian ...
(sorry, that's all I could find of this article!)
Posted - ABC
A British family searching for their son who disappeared four-and-a-half years ago says they are glad they have travelled to Toowoomba.
David and Lesley Goldsmith say son Steven worked as an arborist on the Darling Downs after his arrival in Australia in 1995.
He was 28 when he went missing from his home in New Farm in July 2000.
David Goldsmith says their visit to Toowoomba gave them the opportunity to meet his close friends.
"Having spoken to both his friends we feel a bit more positive about Steven," he said.
"One of the problems that the police have was whether Steven was just an ordinary guy or whether he had some sort of alternative life in Fortitude Valley.
"I think we're far more positive now having spoken to his friends from Toowoomba that he was really quite a normal sort of guy."
LAST Tuesday, on the day he turned 38, Steven Goldsmith ate, drank and celebrated with the people he loves.
Or that is what his family can only hope happened.
Steven went missing 10 years ago and, with the anguish of another anniversary, his parents David and Lesley Goldsmith are launching a desperate bid to finally shed some light on his disappearance.The British migrant was working in Toowoomba when he said goodbye to friends and vanished on July 6, 2000.
A professional aborist who moved to Australia in 1996, the last definite sighting of Steven was on camera at an ATM in outer Brisbane, three days after he left Toowoomba.
The Goldsmiths will travel from Oxford, England, later this year to speak with police and again raise the profile of their son's case.
They will visit Toowoomba where they will talk with Steven's friends and meet with Nicole Morris, who runs the Australian Missing Persons' Register.
“Nicole has been a tower of strength to us since we made our first contact with her over four years ago,” Steven's father David Goldsmith, in his first Australian interview in almost five years, told The Chronicle.
Mr Goldsmith admitted the lack of a breakthrough in the case had taken a heavy toll on the family.
“He has completely disappeared,” he said.
“There has never been any positive response to media publicity and, while there have been a couple of reports to police, the informants were not found to be reliable.
“We hope that it being the 10th anniversary maybe just someone, somewhere will come forward with some new information.”
In October 2007, a Coroner's report concluded Steven was “dead, although I am unable to make any finding as to the circumstances of his death”.
While difficult to accept, Mr Goldsmith said knowing his son, he agreed it was unlikely Steven was still alive.
“We have no idea whether he's dead or alive but in view of the fact that he always contacted us by phone or letter very regularly we can only assume that something untoward has happened to him,” he said.
The Goldsmiths will visit Australia in October.
A FLICKER of hope has shone on the case of a missing Toowoomba man after almost a decade shrouded in darkness.
In the week of the 10th anniversary of Steven Goldsmith’s mysterious disappearance, a Toowoomba health worker has made an anonymous phone call claiming to know the whereabouts of the 38-year-old.
She told The Chronicle she had met Steven in Normanton, where he was homeless.
The call was the first regarding the case since the months immediately proceeding Steven’s July 2000 disappearance.
It came a fortnight after The Chronicle published the first interview in four years with Steven’s father David Goldsmith, in which he revealed a trip to Australia from England was being planned in another desperate bid to locate his son.
Nicole Morris, the creator of the Australian Missing Persons Registrar, hailed the anonymous phone call as a long-awaited breakthrough in the case.
“This phone call is exactly what I want the anniversary to bring forth,” she said.
Ms Morris said she expected Steven’s family to take solace from the phone call considering it had been more than a decade since they had seen their son.
“It’s one of those milestones where you have to ask how can it be 10 years.” Ms Morris said.
“But it’s just not right.
“Ten years is an atrocious amount of time for (the family) to wait.”
Toowoomba CIB have forwarded the information from the anonymous caller to Normanton district police to be investigated.
Steven was living and working in Toowoomba as an aborist when he said goodbye to friends and vanished on July 6, 2000.
The last confirmed sighting of the British migrant was at an ATM in an outer Brisbane suburb three days after he left Toowoomba.
In October 2007, a coroner’s report concluded Steven was “dead, although I am unable to make any finding as to the circumstances of his death”.
Disappearance triggers decade of torment
Tim Lockett fought back tears as he pinned a missing person poster to a tree in New Farm.
Mr Lockett's friend, fellow Englishman Steven James Goldsmith, who he first met in Hampshire, went missing from his Sydney Street apartment in July 2000 and has not been heard from since.
Days after visiting a friend in Toowoomba on July 6, Mr Goldsmith failed to appear for a doctor's appointment in Brisbane and his car was found locked in his New Farm garage.
According to police none of his personal items or clothes were missing but no trace was left of the 28-year-old.
When Mr Lockett and his family travelled to Australia from England earlier this month he decided to put up the posters in the New Farm area in the hope of gathering information which could help close the book on his friend's disappearance.
"There's not a clue, there's not a sign or a hint or anything," he said.
"No body has ever been found.
"It's just incredibly frustrating because you want to believe he's alive but all the signs point to the fact that he is not. But you can't give a send off or a memorial or anything because you just never know for certain [what has happened to him]."
Nicole Morris of australianmissingpersonsregister.com has been following the case for more than five years and has experienced the terrible effect Mr Goldsmith's disappearance has had on his parents in England.
Their ongoing anguish has been made worse by several unconfirmed sightings of their son.
"We had a woman who called the Toowoomba Chronicle anonymously two months ago and said she thought she had seen Steven in Normanton," she said.
"We chased that up but we could not find any evidence of him at all living there.
"It's a very small community with a very large aboriginal population so you would think a red-headed englishman with a limp would stand out but nothing ever came of that."
"And just after he went missing someone came forward anonymously and said that he had been murdered and his body had been put into a shopping trolley and pushed into the Brisbane River. Police sent divers down but nothing was ever found."
Following the 10-year anniversary of Mr Goldsmith's disappearance this year his parents provided Queensland police with a statement urging their son to contact them.
“Steve it is 10 years since we last heard from you," the statement read. "If you are able to contact us we would love to hear from you and to know that you are safe and well. We think of you constantly and miss you very much as does Ian and all your friends here in the UK and in Australia. Lots of love, Mum and Dad.”
Mr Lockett said he was hopeful someone would come forward with information which would put an end to his friend's parents' pain.
"There are people out there who know what happened to him and no one's come forward and that's pretty hard to swallow," he said.
"Hopefully someone knows something and they are now 10 years older, they may have a family of their own and they'd understand now how his parents are feeling."
He said he was still haunted by the disappearance of the friend he first met when he was 10 years old.
"You walk around everywhere and see someone with ginger hair walking towards you and you do a doubletake and check them out," he said.
"You carry it around with you everyday."
At the time of his disappearance Steven was 28 years old.
He is around 175cm tall, has red hair and freckles and a fair complexion.
Steven has several tattoos, including an eagle on his shoulder blade, and walks with a slight limp (as the result of a work accident in 1997).
If you have information on the disappearance on Steven James Goldsmith you can contact Crime Stoppers anonymously on 1800 333 000.
FOR 17 years Dave and Lesley Goldsmith have waited for their son Steven to walk back through the door.
While the initial trauma of his disappearance left wounds that not even time will heal, the family is standing strong, vowing to never give up their search for Steven.
In July 2000 the British-born Toowoomba arborist went missing, having last been seen in Brisbane.
Mr Goldsmith, then 28 at the time, spent the majority of 1999 alternating between stints living in Toowoomba and Brisbane while working in the Garden City as a tree surgeon.
Six weeks after moving from Toowoomba into a New Farm apartment he vanished.
A mystery phone call and CCTV footage of a $3000 ATM withdrawal, later deposited onto his credit card the night of his vanishing, are the only clues left behind from his puzzling evanescence.
The phone call, made to Brisbane police shortly after his family inquired about his whereabouts, amounted to nothing.
Now, almost two decades since Steven last made contact with his family, his parents are appealing to the public for any new information.
The hardest part is not knowing and wondering where he is and what has happened," his mother, Lesley Goldsmith said.
"Not receiving the regular cheeky phone calls took a lot of getting used to and when we missed a call we always wondered whether it was Steve trying to get in touch."
Lesley maintains a strenuous link to her son - a Facebook page dedicated to helping find the now 45-year-old.
Posts on birthdays, Christmas and other major milestones clog the page's feed but it doesn't make the days, months or years in his absence any easier for his family.
"We now attempt to get on with life as best we can but, of course, he is always in our thoughts," Ms Goldsmith said.
In the years since 2000 the family has made numerous trips to Australia from their Sussex home, taking part in press conferences and media appearances that only added to the heartbreak that set in the day they had to clean out their son's Brisbane living quarters.
"As you can imagine that (his apartment) was heartbreaking," Ms Goldsmith said.
When asked whether the family has ever contemplated giving up, Ms Goldsmith is firm in her answer.
"No, never," she said.
"We live our lives in hope but feel it is rather doubtful after all these years."
The family is hoping that anyone with any information in relation to Steven Goldsmith's whereabouts will finally step forward, urging them to contact Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.
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Steve's mum Lesley would like to send this message
directly to her son, who she misses terribly. Steven's parents have
travelled to Australia from their home in the UK several times to search
for their son.
"Hi Steve
If you (or someone who knows you) are able to read this, we hope you
are well and happy.
We think of you all the time and miss you very much. We'd love to hear
that your're OK and if you're still climbing trees! If you
don't want to contact us direct perhaps you'd rather send a message
through Nicole on this website.
All our love from
Mum, Dad and Ian
plus your friends in Australia and the UK who often ask for news of
you. "