Shocking small town murder: what happened to Janine Vaughan? | Under Investigation

tonight it's december 2001. a young woman walks out of a nightclub at around 3 45 a.m in the new south wales town of baphist steps into a red car and is never seen again [Music] the disappearance and probable murder of 31 year old janine thorne is one of australia's more troubling unsolved crimes but what's also disconcerting about this case is how the investigation by police was derailed first by an extraordinary campaign of small town gossip rumors that just grew on rumors and then by the police integrity commission the police watched on the tragedy of it is that such drastically wrong actions have derailed the murder investigation that was on track tonight we'll look at how it all went wrong almost from the moment janine vaughan walked out into the street that rainy night nearly 20 years ago i find this quite compelling to see because this is the last time we see her alive sometimes sit at home and i wonder what have i missed have i missed something good evening i'm liz hayes and this is under investigation joining me to peel back the layers of this case is former detective gary jubilan a 30-year plus veteran of the new south wales police force who has seen it all from the front line of the tactical response group through to high-profile cases like the disappearance of william tyrell a predator looking to abduct someone and murdered someone i'd suggest that wouldn't be their first offense former deputy commissioner nick caldus one of the highest-ranking police officers in australia who has worked for the united nations and scotland yard that was very unequivocal i have to say he is a legitimate suspect professor richard kemp a global expert in forensic psychology and a specialist in understanding eyewitness evidence people who engage in stalking behavior often very close to the victim and mel pollard former owner of the metro tavern in bathurst the tavern you owned was called what it had been called the dirty tab and the stab and tavern and that was the last place janine vaughan was seen alive thank you all very much for joining us i'm going to start with you garrett dublin what is it about this case when there's there's been a murder or a disappearance in a town uh like bathurst people need answers and we're now 20 years down the track when someone's been murdered or disappears in circumstances like this it's not forgotten yeah what do you think nick the whole town i think was look is still looking for answers trying to work out is someone among us perhaps responsible for this do they walk among us rich i reckon that's probably what affects a small country town it's i mean it's it's not someone you don't know it's probably somebody you do know or know someone who knows that person yeah i think that's what's clear in this case that it is a small town and there must also be the the haunting fear for people in the community that it's someone close to them [Music] in 1998 janine vaughan moves to the new south wales country town of baphist with her boyfriend phil evans [Music] for the couple it's the beginning of a new life together and according to phil and her friends it's the start of a happy chapter for janine funny loud energetic love sports loved people that loved her she was sensitive and a really good friend she worked at my um sister sandwich shop janine's time at the shop was fun she was very diligent always willing to help janine was just a popular um would love to have a good time i suppose and she sit with a cigarette in one hand and her jd and the other with the feet up on the bogey and basically you know just you could hear her from miles away she would be laughing and singing she loved to sing definitely had a lot of friends yeah close friends too [Music] but within three short years the life janine had hoped for had crumbled her relationship with phil ended her days began to turn into long nights of socializing and in the early hours of the december morning after a big night out janine stepped into a small red car with an unknown driver and disappeared that was the last time she's seen alive it is a crime that has haunted bathurst ever since a crime like that in a town like bathurst is going to leave a lasting effect on that town and the the all of the community i'm sure share that pain at the time of janine's disappearance mal pollard's metro tavern was one of a number of nightclubs in bathurst with a colorful reputation mal i don't know how to say this but the tavern you owned was called what the metro nightclub no end and and now it had been called the dirty tab um and the stab and tablet i'm just trying to get to reality of this place where janine bourne went missing look i think when you're looking at a murder you've got to look at the environment in which this person was last seen so obviously it's relevant to uh to this case because that's where we know that janine was last seen she broke up from her boyfriend she started going out with a younger crew if you like yeah you know and because of that that younger crew just the the way that they're going to live their lifestyle she's going to be out and about and drinking and not not not at home so that's the type of thing we look at with victimology so you look at the person and the way the person lives their life i think it would be fair to say and not disrespectful to janine at that particular time in her life when she disappeared it was a rather unsettled period in her life on what would be the last night she was seen alive janine arrived at the metro tavern with her friends juanita and jordan it was the early hours of december 7th 2001. at 2 30 she arrived on the cctv time she turned up with jordan and juanita and um they were there for about an hour and 10 minutes yeah well we have that cctv footage should we look at it and you can absolutely explain to us uh a little of what we're seeing uh so as you can see we've got janine's arriving she's one on the right yeah and she's obviously in really good dumb spirits she's given everyone a stamp right well janine was inside having a drink we know that there was a woman outside who reports that she was approached by a man who tried to entice her into his car it was a 41 year old woman lynette borland and she reports that she was very frightened and she ran to the local service station and very clear about what she had had happened to her look i hold a lot of weight on that being related to uh janine's disappearance because the description of the uh the person that was following this woman and trying to get this woman into the car a male a large male a small red car so i think the weight that could place on that incident is very high given the fact that it was reported straight away at the time coming up it's this tragedy that you can watch unfolding you see a little light go left to right above the time at 3 52 she gets in i find this quite compelling to see because this is the last time we see her alive that's next on under investigation the disappearance and probable murder of 31 year old jeanine vaughan in the new south wales country town of bathurst nearly 20 years ago is one of the more disturbing mysteries in australia's criminal history to understand the crime it helps to understand bathurst to outsiders it's a university country town whose piece is broken one weekend a year by the hell of race cars in the baptist 1000 on mount panorama but in the 1990s and 2000s bathist had a very dark side of violence drugs and a reputation for sexual assaults of young women one of the toughest bars in town was the metro tavern owned at the time by mal pollard when we took it over it had a terrible reputation and in the first six months we barred 300 people from there i know of personally know of four rapes in in the late 90s and early 2000s yeah i think there was a couple of crimes that stood out obviously janine's one but there was a young lady coming home from the metro tavern and she was grabbed by a bloke uh at knifepoint dragged in the bushes and raped a very violent uh sexual assault it does leave a a feeling about the town that it's a toxic mix where things could happen i imagine uh richard this plays with the psyche of the town yes i'm sure that's right and i suspect if you dig a little deeper into any town and any city in any district you will find a huge undercurrent of unreported sexual violence that's a terrible truth that it's going on and not being reported i'd like us to hear from a young woman who talked about that time we were scared all the time girls were raped i've even heard stories many many stories of you know young girls being dragged into cars i myself got attacked when i was 15. um i got stalked and i got a knife put to my throat the tunnels became a way of me of escaping all that and i just didn't feel at ease walking around the streets of bathurst so the stormwater drains were my little safety net no one could see me no one knew i was there and it was my hiding spot were you aware of those storm tunnels and were you aware that young women were using them as a a way to safely get home or to move about no not at all it's actually quite a shocking thing to realize that that we didn't know that at the time it's the early hours of december 7 2001. janine vaughn is ending a long night of drinking at the metro tavern in bathurst known locally as the dirty tab at the same time outside a man in a small red car attempts to convince 41 year old lynette borland to get into his vehicle frightened she runs to a nearby service station and reports the incident to police not long after janine and her friends juanita and jordan leave the tavern i find this quite compelling to see because this is the last time we see her alive this is the first time this cctv video of janine's last moments has been aired in full and that's jordan that comes out stands and looks and walks away janine stops and then kisses a man named mark wright someone asked if it was a peck but a sort of that's six or seven seconds is not a peck and when we listen to the audio when mark wright gets is getting in the taxi the man he doesn't know yeah we don't know what was said beforehand but he says promise so the assumption is promise you're coming back to sort of um promise means at least something like oh you will see each other again maybe outside the tavern janine seems annoyed by her friends juanita and jordan arguing thank you [Music] jeanine returns and the argument continues um she's how can i say this nicely is she inebriated i think on the balance of probabilities that's probably the case could answer nick the sound of a voice she sounds more inebriated than the actual her movements like she doesn't stagger or stumble and she walks off and when she does walk off she's quite determined and sets off at quite a good pace the night for janine has been complicated because she's lost her handbag not knowing it had been placed out of sight for safe keeping it would be later argued that was all part of a plot to abduct her [Music] coincidences occur you get strange correlations and i think the trouble is when we're trying to seek an explanation for something we assume that they must be related and it can just be that these were two unrelated events yeah exactly it certainly would have had something to do with her state of mind and not having the keys to the house she may have been more inclined to get in the car with someone but it was originally suggested that the handbag was hidden but when we watch the cctv it's not hidden it's just placed behind the board and then not found at the end of the night we hear her she gets very angry about this bag and she gets very angry about juenita her friend and jordan frustrated janine says she's going back to drink at the ox nightclub from the metro tavern the ox is just a five minute walk away and why do you make a bit gary she's cut a few drinks she wants to go on well the observation i make is the person that's a person whose night hadn't wasn't over and then you'll see her walking off and you'll see her the way in which she uses her arms almost it's it's like well she's had enough and very soon afterwards the car arrives yeah it's at 3 52. see there's jordan and juanita just going out of shot there so that's quite a long time behind in a moment you see a little little light go left to right above the time and appear to do a u-turn and then pull up behind her and the door opens and she gets in it's this tragedy that you can watch unfolding as all these circumstances fall into place which are gonna end up putting her away where she ends the night it's a terrible terrible thing to watch the car janine gets into becomes a pivotal piece of the puzzle and identifying it from cctv footage was a job given to newcastle professor john fryer an expert in photographic analysis i was contacted by the new south wales police detective benjamin hopper and ben showed me a video and said in that video there's a motor car moving from left to right on the top of the screen could i enhance that vehicle to see it better because it's very very small and hard to see when looking at the video at around 3 51 a.m janine mary bourne is seen to walk in the frame number two up george street towards keppel street she crosses the road and is therefore on the side where the park is at 3 52 a vehicle comes along keppel street it does a u-turn and one presumes picks her up my research would indicate that it is a small vehicle it would have a wheelbase somewhere in the range 2.4 to 2.55 meters uh it's most likely red i believe but could be another color which reflected the same as red does under those conditions at night you're nodding richard uh i think it's a pretty impressive piece of work the car and in particular its colour would become the one and only piece of evidence police have and dictates the course of the rest of the investigation professor frye's analysis could not be 100 certain that the car was read so information from eyewitnesses was critical there were four people who reported they saw a small red car including janine's friends juanita and jordan despite their distance from it and the rain we've got two people following janine all saying it's a red car if those are genuinely for independent witnesses who all spontaneously reported that the car was red then that's a really impressive piece of evidence however if they have communicated with each other and i'm not suggesting anything intentional if they've talked to each other if they've been affected by each other's information then in fact having four people telling the same thing is not any more impressive than having just one person telling you that things gary you've been there yeah you walked that yeah territory do you think those witness eyewitnesses can be reliable i i think i think so it's certainly physically possible for them to see the the type of detail they they described the red car seen by witnesses matches the one described by a 41 year old woman lynette borland who earlier that same night and near the tavern reported she had been intimidated by a man trying to lure her into his vehicle i think the best evidence is the young woman who where where there's an attempted abduction because i think there's i think there's good evidence that she went directly to the to the filling station and reported 100 red car and i think that you know we have the most reliable eyewitness evidence is stuff that's reported very quickly immediately after the event before forgetting occurs she spontaneously said it's red it probably was yeah i'm not a skeptical about the color leaving aside the professor's um research um i think particularly ms borland is very reliable and i'd be comfortable to say the chances are it was a red car apart from the car's color the biggest question that would later drive the police investigation and haunt janine's family and friends was did she get into the car willingly did she know her killer coming up the car appears to be stopped for between 25 and 27 seconds that tells me there was some conversation took place that convinced her to get in but there were three persons of interest ultimately in the end a very detailed confession that added to the investigation in a powerful way as well sure that's next on under investigation it's the early hours of december 7 2001. janine vaughan has left bathurst's metro tavern somewhere inside she has lost her handbag she's intoxicated frustrated and it's raining she leaves telling her friends juanita and jordan that she's going to the ox nightclub for another drink what bonita and jordan witness next is crucial to the investigation an approaching red car stops and after a short conversation janine willingly it seems gets in i think the point that was made though that her friends were following her and they were thought they were going to the same location i think is quite powerful it suggests that they would be paying more attention than your average eyewitness would be i don't think there's any doubt about that in the years since her disappearance janine's family and friends have sworn she must have known the driver the family's adamant she would never have gotten into a car and her friends she would never got into a car unless she knew the person and that added to the investigation in a in a powerful way as well sure i think it goes towards everything we discussed in relation to her frame of mind losing her handbag being cranky not knowing how she's going to get into her house not desperate but it's raining she's miserable basically because of the weather um swore a little bit before she left the pub all of that would lead to her perhaps doing something that she may not have normally done getting into a car someone says get out of the rain come with me i'll i'll take you wherever you're going uh she hops in the car appears to be stopped for between 25 and 27 seconds if she knew the person and just jumped straight in then yeah she would know them i think mel should have been a detective that's very perceptive seriously that that is a really important point it wasn't an instant get in the car there was a gap of perhaps 20 25 seconds that tells me there was some conversation took place that convinced me to get in it was an instant to our experts mal pollard's analysis of the cctv tape from the metro tavern is new evidence whatever was said by the driver of the red car during those 20 odd seconds seemed to convince jeanine to get into the car just before 4am that december night she is reported missing the following morning when she fails to turn up at work bathurst police begin what is initially a missing person's investigation it's perhaps why a potential murder weapon a knife found discarded openly on the driveway of a nursing home just a few days later is never kept as evidence and will eventually be lost there was a knife that was handed in a couple of days after janine was reported having disappeared this knife apparently had blood and hair on it it was found a couple of days after the event uh it got lost how how does that happen do you want me to take this one thanks very much look i would say before gary launches um mistakes happened and clearly that was a mistake and perhaps a costly one but police are human beings the fellow who fought with it was handed in to probably could have done more and then the system should have allowed for it to have been handled differently but obviously it wasn't i think it's a breakdown of a system a system that's uh and i'm defending the police here early days in in an investigation the more difficult it is and the wider you cast the net the more information that comes in it's not making excuses it's saying a mistake happened there were three persons of interest ultimately in the end they might have been not uh any longer persons of interest if that knife had been found to be used with janine and none of their dna was on there well the unfortunate part is we'll never know um one would assume i put the homicide investigator's hat on and think well if someone's gone to the trouble of abducting someone disposing of someone's body but they leave the leave the murder weapon in a public place like that it doesn't quite equate but we'll never know it right well um using the red car as the primary evidence bathurst detectives including an officer named brad hosmans set about investigating and two persons of interest were identified the first was a local pharmacist 38 year old andrew jones a single man who worked in the same shopping complex as janine vaughn and who owned a small red car their second person of interest was dennis briggs a man with a history of mental illness requiring medication who also owned a small red car but dennis briggs raised the temperature if you will of the investigation when a number of people alleged he confessed to raping and murdering janine briggs denied ever making the confession but one of those who claims to have heard briggs tell his story was a security guard at mel pollard's metro tavern he was security um at the hotel and he's the guy that was sitting in the door on the door in those videos that you saw right and he had heard of this confession yeah he he actually said that he heard dennis telling someone and not with just ah yeah i killed janine vaughn it's a very detailed um confession when someone confesses what usually makes them decide to do that well uh confession of course is a good thing it's false confession which is the concern sometimes because it's a it's an attention-seeking mechanism and you suddenly become the focus of attention so as i'm sure you know in all high profile cases you get people coming forward and making entirely implausible uh confession yeah i don't understand the science or the the reason behind people why they do make false confessions but i've seen it and it does occur yes because he was incredibly detailed he even stated how many times he stabbed and that was to me yeah i know it and i also went to the location is it white rock where he said i went there now that's a double-edged sword too because it would be a a place where you could dispose of a body if you abducted someone from bathurst but also would be if you're making up a story it sounds believable what we do know is that shortly after janine's disappearance he detailed his car and changed the seats sold it shaved his head shaved his head and this is delving right out of my area of expertise but like he's got a mental uh sort of bipolar so how that manifests itself well in fact i think he said he was off his medication and uh he simply says he didn't murder or abduct janine and he didn't tell this confession either and dennis briggs told police anything he may have claimed was due to him being off his medication i think we have to be a little uh dubious about the about the confession um as we say there are there are reasons why people make false confessions and if you want to tell a good story it's a great story to tell that's the answer yeah i think that is the answer the thing any homicide investigator would look for is details of the murder or the crime scene or the victim that only the murderer would know and preferably if those details had not been in the media and we didn't see any of that there was nothing that he said that had not come out in the media that would tell you that he he knew something that only the murderer would know coming up there appears to have been an anonymous complaint rumors that just grew on rumors well suddenly they were investigating a policeman and their eyes are taken off the ball and investigating what happened to janine they clearly made a mess of this that's next on under investigation bathurst police struggled to find evidence to help their investigation into the disappearance of janine vaughn one person dennis briggs became a person of interest when friends claimed he'd confessed to murdering janine briggs however denied making any such confessions but police still focusing on their one lead a small red car janine was seen to get into found a second person of interest [Music] well the second person of interest was andrew jones who owned a small red car and regularly saw janine as the pharmacist in the same shopping centre where she worked jones was also in charge of a dormitory at the co-educational boarding school scots college on the outskirts of bathurst where he lived on school grounds but he also kept an apartment in bathurst um gary you've looked closely at this case can you understand why he's a person of interest oh most definitely most definitely um i i see a number of what i call red flags or indicators andrew jones was a 38 year old man pharmacist he chose to reside at the school where he wasn't getting financial benefit he was getting a meal and he had to in pay off for that had to work with some of the kids at the school coaching teams and different things there is information that he also had an apartment in bathurst which i find unusual why would you have an apartment in bathurst and then two kilometers away live at the school with 38 years of age escape the kids to escape well okay the reason reasonable assumption why doesn't he just live in town then other things about andrew jones of interest to me first time he spoke to uh police uh was a matter of weeks after after the investigation and my understanding is the report it was a local police officer and the report was that uh he was cooperative nothing uh nothing of concern concern here and basically satisfied everything and it also said in the document that uh his car was searched then some i think it was four weeks after janine's disappearance was spoken to by homicide detectives then the situation changed that uh that he was asked to provide um dna which he declined to do which is his right they asked to search his car which he declined and which is his right again and to take a photo on the night janine disappeared he said he was around seeing his minister he was a religious man and spent a couple of hours there then went home he has no one that can corroborate that he was at home at the school the whole time and he can't remember what he did the next day because he had that that day off so all those things i'm interested in why someone that's clearly you know supportive of the fact that if this girl has been abducted we want to solve it why he chose not to have his dna taken and photo and uh and car search he might have been starting to feel uncomfortable like hang on this i'm getting a bit of undue uh attention most definitely most definitely and i i cannot understand that but we're talking about the crime and abduction of a girl that uh yeah surely that will help the police find it because they won't waste time looking at me andrew jones was a member of his local anglican community and his pastor david coy saw jones on the night of janine's disappearance i'd like you to listen to his pastor the man who who vouches for him david coy some people might say that andrew was awkward lots of us are awkward in different sorts of ways and uh being awkward is not a criminal offence the sort of person who might do that kind of evil and it really seems to have been an incredibly wicked thing that's happened to jeanine born they can't cover up who they are that was very unequivocal perhaps not what i i thought i was going to hear what were you expecting if he was going to defend him to say i just don't think it's him i don't think he's capable of doing something like this and i know him well i didn't get that um i have to say he's a legitimate suspect andrew jones has always strenuously denied having anything to do with jeanine's disappearance but while police identified him and dennis briggs as persons of interest in the case small town gossips soon had police looking at a new suspect the former deputy mayor of bathurst brad hosmans who was also a senior detective involved in the investigation became a third person of interest at the start there was no mention of rhode hazem's but three or four months into the investigation the rumors started to appear and it all started from one particular taxi driver who repeated ad nauseam to all his customers like everyone that got in the cabin and i know 10 or 12 people personally that he told and he told them that brad was seen talking to jeanine in the minutes before she disappeared now it's just not true you've seen the video there's only four people approach her none of them are brad hosens brad hosemans is nowhere to be seen town suspicions grew partly because detective hosmans was charged after an incident of alleged sexual assault at a party at the baptist golf club hosmans was found not guilty but a reputation as a ladies man lingered he did not own a red car and there was no evidence of any kind that brad hostman's had a romantic interest in janine but still the rumors of his involvement in her disappearance spread through the town tell a few people and it moved out and out and out until suddenly the rumors became brad's mom had a red car brad's mom's car was burnt out neither of those things are true either and from there it became brad sent the flowers brad sent the chocolates and there's been no real evidence of those things yeah in the absence of answers that is where it's fertile ground for the imagination yep and i think nature abhors a vacuum so where there is a gap in information real information um sometimes people make it up i think that's that is the nature of conspiracy theories that they believe despite the evidence aren't they that and as i say i think because they serve a purpose it's um it's it's an it helps explain what otherwise a very distressing situation that that a member of your community has been murdered appalling circumstances and yet you can't find the solution well here's something that explains that there was not any shred of evidence was there and and there was a thorough investigation as to whether he had any contact that's the point liz regardless of whether they're rumors or not there's clearly a line of investigation that would have to be followed up and followed up thoroughly now despite that extensive uh investigation conducted specifically on that line of inquiry no evidence was forthcoming and i think that's very telling i think we can sit comfortably with the fact that uh yeah as mal pointed out it's rumors it just grew on rumors i think one explanation of what's going on here is that he's a convenient suspect his possible involvement explains a failure for the investigation to advance any further and so he's a good suspect and so then i think once people have them in mind it would be very easy to start to misremember things and to incorporate details into their memories which just didn't occur coming up there's no closure the body's never been found okay now you've started me liz this is the sad part about what happens here they seem legit but it's just frightening they're preying on vulnerable people a terrible terrible situation that's next on under investigation the police investigation into janine vaughan's disappearance in 2001 drags on for four years without an arrest senior bathurst detective brad hosmans is investigated and cleared of any involvement in the crime but with his reputation in tatters he leaves the police force in 2003. in june 2005 an anonymous letter is sent to police again alleging hosemann's guilt there appears to have been an anonymous complaint alleging that brad hosemans had committed the murder and that police were covering it up essentially remarkably the police integrity commission the police watchdog body took the anonymous complaint seriously and launched an investigation this hearing is concerned with aspects of the police investigation the commission held public hearings putting bathurst police under the spotlight and distracting from the murder investigation regrettably they became convinced that there was some truth to that allegation they decided to background brief the media they decided to hold public hearings and they advertised them quite widely and off they went from there now a town the size of bathurst to drag all these stuff a lot of it was unsubstantiated allegations into the open before they'd actually checked that it was true or not predictably it fell over when they had the hearings well suddenly they were investigating a policeman and their eyes are presumably taken off the ball and investigating what happened to janine i i'd agree with you 100. perhaps the most indefensible act by the police integrity commission was accepting the testimony of a protected witness named ra-1 who came forward five years after janine's disappearance ra1 gave bombshell evidence claiming she'd seen janine held hostage and highly distressed in a small red car driven by brad hosemans five years later took to give that evidence yeah the most cursory check of this would have blown it out um i'm not casting aspersions much about the proficiency of investigators of the police integrity commission that they clearly made a mess of this the witness ra1 claimed to be able to identify the red car because it was the same model as her sons unfortunately and to the embarrassment of the commission the witness's alleged sighting was made months before her son bought his car you said an interesting thing you said people come to believe their lies but yet they still know they're lying if people repeatedly tell a lie they do believe that that account is more plausible than they did before they started engaging that lie but yet they also ultimately know that they may not be telling the truth after nearly six months the police integrity commission hearings concluded in november 2006 its findings were damning of the police investigation and made a number of recommendations including sacking the then head of the homicide squad paul jacobs but those findings would later be heavily criticized by both the then police commissioner andrew scipione and the commission's own inspector peter moss qc who was particularly scathing in his assessment in the end the police investigation into janine's murder had been totally distracted and the town's former deputy mayor and former detective brad hosmans had left town for good unfortunately the police integrity commission declined um to apologize or to retract their findings or anything else but the damage that was done both to hosmans and the police who were involved in the matter is incalculable you can't fix it but this swallowed up an enormous amount of time and money with resources i mean yeah and where was this in the investigation into janine i mean this is this is the tragedy of it is that such drastically wrong actions by a government department have derailed the murder investigation that was on track and was hopefully going somewhere apart from the damage to the individuals i feel for the victim's family and their all her loved ones because they've had to put up with all these allegations the the fact that there's no closure the fact that the body's never been found i can understand also that the family has gone away going well i don't believe anyone anymore that's what the family must almost be saying i think the family have totally lost faith in everybody not just the police in the witnesses in the people that have tried to help them they've alienated themselves to a certain extent from a number of people that tried to help them i mean i've witnessed it firsthand well can i come to the family they clearly feel they have to conduct their own investigations a member of the family posted this just recently it's a very clear question it's adam vaughan it's janine's brother says mr husbands please tell us where you were the night of the sixth in the morning of the seventh of december once and for all clear your name i don't know how many times someone can be cleared i also understand that he's obviously in pain and that's what he's lashing out and he's grieving he's seriously grieving [Music] while family and friends continue to ask questions about who they fear has taken janine the investigation has failed to move very far forward [Music] it does though attract self-styled psychics who often involve themselves in unsolved cases this is the sad part about what happens here is they're preying on vulnerable people i've seen too many murder investigations where the bodies haven't been recovered and people like that ingratiate themselves in the investigation and it plays havoc that the parents or the loved ones go out and will be actually be digging digging around there in my experience in homicide i've never had a psychic that's helped solve a crime other than that i haven't got a real strong view i had someone contact me on facebook on the help find your name born page and asked me a series of questions and i was prepared to help them and then later on they tell me oh i'm a psychic working with janine's family so suddenly they've got all this detail that i've given them that they can go to the families oh yeah this this this this up to happen so so they seem legit but it's just frightening in general i try and see the best in people and try and assume that they're being said i love about you richard and i have to say the psychics pushed me to the limits on that one there's there's some research on people who take this kind of approach as you say they collect information they're very good at picking up all sorts of subtle cues from other people and things they're told and there have been some studies of looking at whether they can contribute to solving cases and the answer is they can't it's as simple as that if you were a member of janine vaughn's family all of this this is nearly 20 years and this has just been going on and on and on um how do they deal with that i can't imagine a terrible terrible situation um the uncertainty the doubt and particularly the suspicion of people living in your community people you might know personally might be responsible it must be terrible to deal with that um thank goodness i cannot imagine how awful that is i feel very deeply for them nearly 20 years on janine vaughn's case remains unsolved it was always believed she would only have stepped into the mysterious red car outside the metro tavern with someone she knew but our analysis of the cctv video shows that maybe that wasn't true and perhaps a stranger did convince her to get in the car appears to be stopped for between 25 and 27 seconds that tells me there was some conversation took place and convinced her to get in it wasn't instant we know janine was not the first woman targeted that night a little earlier another woman lynette borland reported she too was approached near the tavern by a man in a red car look i hold a lot of weight on that being related to janine's disappearance unfortunately lynette ballen died without ever identifying the driver that night there still remains only two persons of interest in janine's disappearance local pharmacist andrew jones and dennis briggs who allegedly confessed to janine's rape and murder it's a very detailed confession but briggs who suffered a mental illness has always denied making any confession and despite being persons of interest there is simply not enough evidence to suggest that either jones or briggs were involved in janine's disappearance [Music] perhaps any hope police had in cracking the case was dashed after the public hearings held by the police integrity commission which might have destroyed the community's confidence in the investigation team such drastically wrong actions have derailed the murder investigation that was on track [Music] two years ago a one million dollar reward was offered for information to solve the case it's hoped that after hearing our experts tonight someone somewhere still holding a 20-year secret will come forward you sometimes sit at home and i wonder what sort of person and what have i missed have i missed something i should have seen what should we take from this particular case it's terrible what's happened to janine vaughn it's terrible that her family are going through this dreadful grief absolutely sympathize with that and those who are propelling those conspiracy theories whether it's psychics or otherwise it's and you know it's been said before it's incredibly selfish they're looking for their own self aggrandizement and they're preying on vulnerable grieving families who have every reason to want closure for the death of their loved one i can imagine the day when this case is resolved i mean the impact on bathurst i mean it'll be a massive relief just to know that a person's been caught and punished and and that janine's family like i said may not be closure but we'll get some answers here i am i'm waiting for you so thank you very much for joining me here this evening and thank you for joining us i'm liz hayes good night hello i'm liz hayes thanks for watching our brand new event series under investigation subscribe to our channel now for more great stories from both under investigation and 60 minutes australia for other exclusive under investigation content visit ninenow.com.eu and the ninenow app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 358,616

Rating: 4.7473421 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, janine vaughn, bathurst, country, town, small, murder, red, car, cctv, last seen, motel, pub, night, missing, disappeared, friends, family, person, suspect, under investigation, experts, panel, mystery, unsolved, cold, case

Id: Xa2a7y3JVIM

Length: 51min 19sec (3079 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021