Please note that some names in this episode have been changed. Additionally, some audio clips are voiced by actors reading from statements or transcripts. On the 30th of March, Easter Saturday, 2002, 18-year-old Niame was last seen leaving in an old hearse belonging to Jason Nicholson, known as Jack, and driving off from a campsite in Gingellic in New South Wales. Jack was arrested six months later in Brisbane when a neighbor responded to screaming and caught him sexually assaulting a young woman. When police took him to the Roma Street transit center to retrieve his backpack and swag from a locker, Jack ran from them and leapt from the top floor of the car park to his death on Roma Street below. In the aftermath of Jack's death, information would emerge about him appearing depressed, taking off without warning, not answering his phone, changing his appearance, drugging women, sexually assaulting multiple women, photographing some of the sexual assaults. There was more, too. Former friends, associates, and partners of Jack came forward with information. An ex-girlfriend of Jack, whom we will call Sky, came forward. She said the relationship was good at times, but it had its dark times. Jack was prone to fits of rage that ruined the relationship.
She described incidents where Jack asked her for sex. If she'd refuse, he would literally kick her out of bed with his foot and then get up and walk out. Sky describes described a number of times where she believes Jack may have drugged her. Jack put something in her drink, and she had recollections of coming in and out of consciousness while being raped by Jack. When she came to her senses, she was lying on her died, and Jack was sexually assaulting her from behind. His deviant behavior had an element of psychological torture. Skye had shared a fear with Jack. She was terrified of people watching her in the shower when they were staying in caravan parks. To her horror, Jack admitted he had been climbing into the roof of their home and watching her shower through the exhaust fan. He used mirrors to look up her nightgown while she was asleep. He would masturbate while spying on her. Skye discovered Jack had made over $1,000 in calls to sex phone lines. She saw it on the phone bill. When she confronted him about it, he said it was okay because he was watching her sleep while he was on the phone to them.
Unfortunately, predators can also have a charming side. Skye said Jack could pull the wool over her eyes. He was very intelligent, a a ladies' man. The incessant lying and the demanding sex drive were the flip side of who he was. He also never showed much emotion. The two smoked cannabis while they were together. Sky described an incident where they were out drinking and Jack wanted to return home to get more cannabis. He got a lift from the pub from a young woman while Sky stayed at the pub. When Jack returned with the young woman, Sky found her crying in the toilets. She told Skye that Jack had groped her and attempted to assault her. Jack denied the allegation. Skye suffered years of abuse, both physical and mental. Jack got violent when Skye moved out once they broke up. He smashed up the place. Aside from revealing a pattern of violence, drugging, sexual assault, and denial of wrongdoing, Skye's narrative contained something else potentially important. She said that one item Jack was never without was, quote, an army-colored extendable shovel. No shovel was found with Jack's belongings when his vehicle was seized by police a week after Naim disappeared.
Sky said that Jack also carried a sewing kit and an expandable baton. There was no mention of any of these items in Jack's belongings when his vehicle was seized by police. Of course, there's no evidence that he was carrying these things when he gave Niam that final ride, but if he was, they were gone by the time the hearse was searched in Dinelequin. Sky story is not the only one. Unfortunately, other ex-partners and friends of Jack tell a similar tale. Another former girlfriend of Jack says that he was jealous and controlling and would constantly accuse of cheating on him.
We'd just be sitting there talking sometimes, and he'd just start saying, You've been fucking all the boys in town, and all this stuff. And I'd just say, You know, whatever. It's not true for a start. Yeah, he used to get quite, not angry or anything, but quite upset about it for no reason. And I used to think that was really stupid. But I thought it It was just Jack being Jack, really. He used to just basically say it. We used to talk and stuff, I'd say, about kids and marriage and things like that. I used to find it very hard because I never told him that I loved him because I basically didn't feel that what we had was love. I knew it was basically a lost relationship. It was more a sex relationship than anything. He used to get really angry that the fact that I wouldn't tell him that I loved him, and he used to always try and make me tell him that I loved him and I wouldn't. And I used to say to Jack, I'm not going to be with you forever. Because I don't see myself being with you forever.
I'm enjoying the moment as it is. And he used to turn around and say, Well, if I can't have you, no one else can. I'll kill you. And he used to always tell me that he take me out in the bush and he'd let me have 10 kids and he'd tie me up. I used to think, he could be capable of it. And it used to scare me sometimes. But then I used to just think, Well, He's never going to do anything to me as girls do.
When they broke up, Jack started stalking her.
He moved down the river, and then, of course, he'd come and see me on the odd occasion, maybe two or three a week in that. Sometimes he'd stay over. And then he came to my cabin one night because a friend of mine came into town who I had not a sexual relationship with, but a friendship. And he came into town and Jack heard that he was here, and he got really jealous, and he was actually listening to him. I was having a conversation. Jack was lying under my cabin in the caravan park. I found him, asked him what he was doing, told him to leave, and then I thought that was it. I didn't want to speak to him after that. And then there was a second time when we were... It was my sister, two friends of mine, myself, and this other guy that was my friend from the past. We were sitting there and watching the TV, and I actually looked out the window because I was having a cigarette and I was blowing the smoke out the window. And I looked and I saw Jack's face. I asked him what the hell he was doing here, and everyone jumped up to look outside, and he was just gone.
And he was actually looking through the window, watching what we were doing. And It was about two days after that that we packed up and left because I thought I wasn't going to have him stalk me or anything like that, watching through my windows. I couldn't have my own privacy, basically.
All these stories were uncovered when the police continued to investigate Jack after he died. All the stories they gathered about Jack made him a very dangerous person for Naim to be with, especially in his car on remote country roads alone. On January 23 of 2003, Detective Steve Rose tracked down Garth and Jack's ex-girlfriend Belinda, who he saw in the days after Niam went missing. Both were interviewed and recorded. This was the second electronically recorded interview Garth gave. The first one was in Denelequine, when Jack was also interviewed in the days after Niam's disappearance. With the Jack now dead, what light could Garth throw on the investigation? Not much, it seemed. Garth maintained that he didn't know anything, and he insisted that Jack had no sexual interest in Niam, despite others feeling that he did, as you heard on previous episodes. One thing Garth was more open with in this second interview was the fact that he did feel Jack was gone a long time on the Easter Saturday he left to Gingellic campground with Naim. And do you remember what time Jack arrived back to Gingellic?
Yeah, he was gone a few hours. I don't remember now what time it was. Right. But yeah, it was I was a little bit anxious to know where he'd been, but not overly. Just interested in knowing what he did, why he was so long that day.
Okay. So what you're saying there is that you thought the return trip was a little bit longer than you expected it to be.
Yeah, I didn't think it had taken that long to drive it about low.
It's unknown why, but Garth didn't raise these concerns about how long Jack was gone for in his first police interview at Dinelequin. He only said it after Jack's death. Garth maintained in this second interview that at no point did Jack give him any indication that he was involved in Niam's disappearance. Yet, we now know Garth rang Jack's ex-girlfriend Belinda to ask if she thought he could have killed Niam. And there was also the erratic behavior, the disappearing, the died hair.
He gave him no indication that he was involved. And I think Garth might have even asked him the question, You sure you haven't done anything wrong, mate? Or something like that. He said, No. Garth, I didn't mind Garth. I thought he was fairly… I interviewed Garth after Jack had died, so he had nothing to conceal if he knew anything like Jack was going to be a threat to him or anything like that. But Garth did the similar life to Jack. He was full of bloody marijuana and heroin and trips and whatever else they get their hands on.
For the first anniversary of Niam's disappearance, her family traveled down to Batlow.
For the first Easter, after she disappeared, we all went down to Batlow and she met together. That was actually the It was the first time that we, other than Kieran and Mom and Dad, it was the first time the rest of us had been down there.
In Tumet, they met with Detective Steve Rose. He and a local cop, Senior Constable Stan Wall, were still working the case. Even though Jack was dead and Garth had no new information to offer, Fannula could see how dedicated Steve was to Niam's case.
He's this ex-rugby league player, like a stereotypical policeman. And he just was so matter of fact about it all, just told us all the facts that he had. And at the end of it all, we all just said thank you. And everyone was filing out of the rooms, quite a small room. It was quite a small room, and I was the last one to get up. I think I probably was a bit teary because understandably. I just remember him looking at me and putting his hand on my shoulder and shaking his head and just going, really sorry, I haven't found a foot yet, mate. And just shook his head. And then that made me cry even more because, I don't know, Blake's crying make me cry more.
A year on, the May family were under no illusions that there would be a happy ending to their story.
Yeah, so that Easter down there was pretty, I don't know, weird. It was actually really bizarre. We stayed in Tumet in a motel, and the day that we arrived, we just arrived. We stopped a few places along the way. We stopped it on Go Cup Road as we drove into town, and Mom and Dad showed us the places where they'd done some searches and stuff. Then we got to the motel, dumped our stuff. And it had been a beautiful blue sky, sunny day, and then suddenly a giant hailstorm hit. And it looked like snow. It was honestly a couple of feet deep by the time it had finished. And the roof of the coals collapsed in town. And it was this just crazy huge storm. And then we were all just to be like, Oh, that's so weird, because the day that we held a memorial for Niam, there was a huge storm during the memorial as well. I don't know. I'm not a particularly spiritual person or anything, but I don't know. If I was a believer in that thing, I think I know who was behind it.
Detective Steve Rose remembers the visit and describes how it was for him.
Look, the whole investigation, it was difficult. It was a difficult investigation from the start to try and conduct a murder investigation without a body. Where do you start? Where do you finish? Where do you place things? All that stuff. Then when you got the family that come down who I developed a relationship with, and Neil was the same age as my daughter, and twelve months after, it was difficult to stand there and talk to the family. Not difficult. I wanted to do that, but you feel a bit empty because you can't really give them anything and you feel like a dickhead. But you just... It's hard to sit there and talk and talk about their missing daughter and all that stuff. In the back of your mind, you're saying, Well, what if? What if? What if? What if? And you're really not giving them any answers at all. To sit there and try and justify what you've done wasn't really… It's probably something I didn't really want to do. So it was difficult. The whole thing has been difficult, really. It took its toll, along with a A lot of other things in the end, but that's just all part of the job.
As a cop, Steve had seen gang violence and drug murders in bigger towns, but Naam's case was different.
You're talking about a girl who's 19 years of age, who's got a whole life ahead of her. She's got five brothers and sisters, nice parents, and a very intelligent girl, all that stuff. You just know that something really bad has happened to her, and you can't determine what it is. It's very frustrating. It wasn't something that's an investigation that went on for six months. It carried on for years, really. Just didn't want to let it go. The cop was written me about winding it up all the time. I didn't want to wind it up because I thought, what am I going to wind it up with? There's nothing to wind up. We don't have a body. And I wanted to keep interests, like media interest and community interest going and all that stuff. If you think of it from a police point of view, that investigation was taking up a lot. It was costing a lot of money. It was taking up a lot of resource. They just wanted to push it to one side and say, That's over. Let's move on. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to push it into a cabinet somewhere and just forget about it until something popped up.
That's any one. That's that investigation. There's probably others like that. I just didn't think it deserved that. It deserved more than that, especially in a small community. You suspect that someone's been murdered in a small community, you want to try and solve it.
Another reason the family's trip to Tumet was important was that it would shine a media spotlight on Naam's case. They hoped to use the anniversary to jog people's memories. One year in the search for Naam became two, became three. Brian and Anne continued their regular trips to Batlo and surrounding areas to search new places and those locations off their maps. Then in 2005, there was talk of an inquest for Néam. In normal life, ideas become actions, but in the world of law and legal processes, the wheels turn slowly. Police reports have to be compiled. Reports have to go to the coroner. The coroner has to make decisions. Dates have to be set. So while talk of an inquest began in 2005, the May family wouldn't walk through the door of the coroner's court until 2012. But that didn't mean the police stopped looking.
A new search was launched today in Bushland, near the Snowy Mountains, in the hope of solving the three-year-old mystery to the disappearance of Neeve May. The 18-year-old has been missing since Easter 2002. Her parents hope this new search might uncover some of her belongings. It's not that we want her property back. It's the fact that any A location of any property is going to help us indicate something about where she may be. More than 60 police and volunteers are combing the area on foot, motorbike, and horseback.
Over three days at the beginning of December 2005, a team of 60 police and volunteers spent the weekend searching in Bushland near Tumet. A review of the case had identified four possible sites where Naim's body or belongings may have been left. This search was also featured on an episode of Missing Persons Unit, a TV show that featured missing persons cases and appealed for the public to help. The episode of the Missing Persons Unit, which aired in 2005, would years later provide further information, possibly relating to Niam. But this information would not come to light for another 15 years. More on this in a later episode. Instead Instead of being disappointed that nothing was found by the search in December 2005, Anne told the Missing Person Unit TV show that each search allowed them to cross another area off the map. She was patient, she told the cameras. Really patient. She was prepared to wait decades. Like the police, Naim's family put together the timeline so that their searching fit the calculations around just how far Jack could have traveled when he left the campsite at Jin angelic with Niam at around 10:00 AM and returned alone at 04:00 PM.
Up to 6 hours in what was only a three-hour round trip, if he did actually leave her in the unlikely location of Go Cup Road.
They were really pragmatic. Mom said something the other day, only a few weeks ago, that I just floored me because now I think I'm older, I'm more pragmatic. We know that she died, but at the time, if they had said this to me, I just would have been... I don't think I would have taken it very well. But they went down and just drove up and down the area themselves. Mom said it was in drought. All the grass was really short, the cattle had eaten the grass down. So if somebody dumped something quickly, you should be able to see it from the road. So they would just drive along the road, stop, get out, look around, see what they could see. Mom said, I would stand and smell the air. Because she just thought, you can smell dead animals. The fact that she even just thought of that, the thought that you have to try and find your daughter in that way, that just kills me.
For the next Next decade, Anne and Brian May continued their trip south to search for Naim. If any clothing was located in the area by locals, the police would contact the family and send photos to see if they could identify it as belonging to Naam. Naam's friends Jess and Brodie were also contacted at various times to look at clothing. As 2011 moved into 2012, Naim's mom, Anne, documented all emails and correspondence in the lead up to the coronial inquest. Each phone call and a letter brought them closer to the day when all the known information about Naim and her disappearance would be presented to the court. The family did everything they could to help. Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking tasks was to write about Niam's state of mind so the coroner could rule out suicide. That meant that Anne wrote about how positive Niam was about her future. In preparation for going to university, The following year, when she would have to move away from home and to live independently, Niam had acquired a toaster, iron, cutlery, crockery, and towels. In her last phone call, she was very excited about seeing Fannula, and she had some special gifts in her backpack for Fennula and her niece Isabella.
All acts of a young woman ready and excited to embark on her future. When the inquest date was finally set, Niam's brother, Kieran, was in Hong Kong. By this time, Steve Rose had left the police force, and Stan Wall was the detective in charge.
I got an email from Mom, just a Howdy Doody family. We're up to this and that, the usual chat. At the end of it, she mentioned that a date had been set for the inquest, and it was March 2012. It would be an officer in charge inquest, so no witnesses called. It would basically be Stan. The coroner has already read all the information. Stan would just read a into the record, and that would be it. After they'd followed up every possible lead they could, they then passed it on to another Homicide Squad to review. Then it got passed to the Cold Case Squad or Unsolved Crimes squad to review. Then once they've followed up any leads or loopholes or anything that they thought Lucens needed tying up, they've then forward it on to the coroner to finalize it. At that stage, Stan and the guys in charge, obviously, were of the belief that They'd done everything they could. They've gone as far as they could, but it was at that stage where they needed to... They were comfortable getting a determination from the coroner.
It's a difficult position for the family to be in. The police have done everything they can, but still, they haven't found Niam.
It's funny. That week in that November, I'd only been in my new trading job for about three, four months. I made a little trading era, trading some South Korean stock, short sale era that afternoon. The South Korean regulators are pretty hard core, and they hate foreigners. You'll do jail time if you stuff up, and they'll make an example of you. It was a trivial amount, but it was an error. I was on my own. My boss had just flown back to Perth. I remember having a heart attack. My heart, literally, my head had chest pains. I couldn't breathe. I was just about doubled over. I called Catherine, whose office happened to be a couple of blocks away, we're both on Queens Road, Central Hong Kong in high rises, and said, I need to see a doctor right now. And I remember looking around the room, and even though I was ready to die, everybody else was just typing away perfectly normally. It was as if I didn't exist. And I had sweaty palms and was just out of it. I walked downstairs and I needed to get fresh air and I could barely breathe. And I walked the two blocks to Central Medical Practice, and I went in there and I explained what had happened.
Catherine had already phoned ahead. They gave me an ECG and check my blood pressure and everything else. And after they'd calmed me down, they sent me to see a psychologist upstairs. And She pointed out, Okay, so what's been going on in your life? And I said, Well, new city, new job, high stress, whatever else. And she said, Look, you're not having a heart attack. You're having a panic attack. I'd never experienced anything like it. It was horrible. And It's a bit like drowning where you're struggling for air and you're panicking and you're flapping around. But on the outside, you look perfectly normal and nobody even notices.
We will be back after a short break. It was the psychologist rather than Kieran who figured out the panic attack might be connected to his sister's inquest. And once that connection was made, he and his sister Catherine headed for home.
And I just Casually mentioned, Oh, yeah, I got an email from mom the other day about this. She said, You don't think that triggered it? Mentioning your sister's death, like missing person's case and an inquest? At the time, no. It was literally one of those subconscious things that was just the work email. You read your emails, and I'll get back to that later. I'll talk to mom later in the week. So that was that.
The inquest began on Tuesday, the sixth of March, 2012, just a couple of weeks shy of a decade since Niam hopped into the hearse with the Jack. Niam's dad, Brian, was glad that the inquest had begun. He knew that the inquest in many ways would be a summary rather than an in-depth examination of the case.
I think in the public gallery, it was probably just our family. Then you had counsel assisting, you had a couple of police, and you had a recorder who took the details down. There was an eight-page, I think, a statement by Sergeant Walsh, which summarized the case and the point at which it reached. But we also knew that there would have been considerable amount of documentary evidence already given to the Deputy coroner because we knew by talking to one of our detective contacts that after six months, there were 1100 pages of evidence, and we assumed as time went on, there'd be more. So They certainly didn't go through 1,100 pages of evidence at the inquest.
It's an interesting point. In the end, the police coronial brief would run to over 2,000 pages. It contains a lot of the information we've shared here about Jack and his treatment of women, his suspicious behavior, the questions around the Go Cup road sightings, the sexual assaults, the suspected drugging of women, Jack's movements before and after Naim disappeared, his arrest, It was the total of a 10-year investigation. But did the coroner get to review all of this? Certainly none of it was mentioned in the court. It was just a single statement read out by a police officer, and Jack's name wasn't mentioned at all. In fact, the content of the police statement read out in court surprised Fannula. It was a curveball. A new theory was raised by police, one Paula had never heard before.
There was another theory as well, which was presented at the inquest, which was a shock to me because all along, so from 2002, I thought that Jack was the perpetrator. Then at the inquest, they presented an alternative theory that she had been dropped off and that somebody else had picked her up and she met with play. They actually described in great detail what they thought had happened. I think my memory of it is flawed because I've spoken to my siblings about it recently, and A couple of them remembered it differently. But either way, whatever it was that they said was incredibly shocking, incredibly graphically detailed. I just remember sitting there going, What? Why is this the first we've heard of this? If you've got all this detail, how have you not arrested somebody? They said that they carried out covert operations and they hadn't been able... They basically said they had this theory that several people had come to them with. They didn't have enough evidence to even get a warrant to perform a search, but they seem to know exactly what property and everything. When people talk about, I guess, the grieving process for a missing persons being so different to any other type of bereavement, they're not kidding.
It is just an absolute roller coaster because you just don't know. Then you think you know and you learn to move forward. Then you find out something else and you go, Oh, well, hang on a minute. That doesn't fit with what I've got used to believing. So now I have to think about that and it brings things back up again. Yeah, it's pretty full on.
The possibility firstared to the family at the inquest was that Niam might have been taken onto a property owned by an organized crime group.
What comes to mind was they'd said that she was violently, sexually assaulted, and her body was burnt, and it was on private property. So it was at a campfire or something, which implies that it was at night. And even though they read, we haven't been able to get a copy of any of this from the coroner, by the way. They'd mentioned that they wanted to come out and talk to the family together before the inquest and talk about what was going to be said. And they did their best to warn us and said, Look, there's some pretty graphic detail and some graphic descriptions of what may have happened.
My memory is all of us sitting around in the lounge room at Mom and Dad's, and I remember them… It was the first time I'd heard that there was an alternative theory, that it wasn't Jack. But I remember them speaking a bit vaguely along the lines of that they couldn't say much because there was an ongoing investigation and that thing. But my main memory is when I sat in the courtroom just being completely shocked by how graphic his description of whatever had that actually happened was, and also being shocked that whatever they had warned us of the day before had not even remotely prepared me for that.
Could Jack have been connected to other dubious characters?
I'd been told that the bikis had some property on Go Cup Road. So again, private property in the vicinity of where she was allegedly last seen, or at least where the Hearst driver had said he had been, presumably because someone could come forward and ID the Hearst as having been on that road at about that time.
So were you of the belief that there was a connection between Jack and these people on the I woke up road because I feel like I have a recollection that that was the impression I had, that I'd been led to believe. And then when I spoke to Stan earlier this year, he said, no, they're completely unrelated. The two theories are completely unrelated. So the fact that Jack was a small-time drug dealer or whatever had nothing to do, or as far as I know, had nothing to do with that. So I'm like, what are the chances that you have a small-time drug dealer who has a history of assaulting people drop somebody off on the very road that some other horrible people seem to be and do something horrible.
It's completely unrelated, but it's just really bad luck. He obviously left town with no money to his name and ended up basically a dead broke scumbag If he was a serious drug dealer, he wasn't very good.
When Finaula spoke to retired Detective Steve Rose about the bikey theory, he was surprised it had been raised at the inquest.
He was shocked. He was like, What? Basically, I told him what I remembered had been said, and he was just like, Oh, yeah. There was rumors that the bikeies were involved, like around town, but nah, he couldn't believe it. He's still very strongly of the opinion that it was Jack. Well, let's face it. He doesn't even think she made it to Go Cup Road. He said to me the other... I spoke to him recently, and he sent me a photo of the local paper from recently, and he's like, Oh, that just pisses me off. Why do they keep saying Go Cut Road?
The fact that this alternate theory was given weight at the inquest rather than the theory that Jack Nicholson killed Niam is a puzzle. The statement read aloud at the inquest detailing this alternative theory wasn't provided as part of the coronial brief. In amongst the 2,000 pages of the coronial brief, there is only one three-page statement about this alternative theory. It is vague, full of hearsay, and the person making the statement admits they were on drugs when hearing this alleged involvement of bikis. The person telling them the story about the alleged involvement of the bikis was also on drugs. It's not a very convincing statement.
And then ever since then, that's what's led me to being here, is I felt like if they knew that much information, wherever they were talking about how had there never been any searches there, how had there never been any arrests, I was just so confused as to why this completely opposite theory was posed.
Fennula recently spoke to an investigating officer about this alternate theory.
He said, Oh, yeah, but we did overt and covert operations, and if anything, that's probably established that wasn't the case. My reaction to that was, Well, hold up. You read that out in the formal inquest. If you don't think that's the case, I feel like there should have been some update somewhere.
In the decade since, it is not a theory that has led anywhere. Based on FNULA's conversation, it appears it is no longer an active line of inquiry. When we As we were doing this podcast and appealed for information, a few emails trickled in mentioning the possible involvement of bikis and local criminal elements. But we have found no evidence to suggest these were anything more than rumor. When we tried to track down the source and ask questions, our investigations went nowhere. We came to this case with an open mind and wanted to talk to anyone who had information. We tried to follow up alternate theories away from Jack, but they just weren't there, and this is why he became the focus for this series. What are the chances that Niam went from the company of Jack, a known serial predator, into the company of a second predator in the same day? Before a crime is committed, everyone acts normally. After a crime is committed, the offender, the guilty one, will often behave differently to others around him. This This is called post-defense behavior or post-defense conduct. Of all the people connected to Niam, Jack's behavior after she went missing is revealing, and it begins almost from the moment he returns to gingelic without her.
He offers a woman a joint, and she was later found passed out in the toilets in the pub. He later creeps into the room of sleeping teenage girls and holds the hand of one. People describe his behavior as different, more paranoid. He disappeared for days and then returned with diet hair, which altered his appearance. He washed his clothes, cleaned his hearse, and wiped down his CDs with methylated spirits. He drugged several women, raped several women, and photographed some of these rapes. And while all of this was occurring, he had failed to comply with his bail, failed to attend court, and was wanted on warrants again. So it is surprising that these behaviors were not raised in court, but instead, a random unsupported theory about bikis was. Detective Steve Rose admitted that the rumor mill started up immediately after Niam was reported missing and muddied the waters.
Look, to be honest with you, there was so many different versions of what may have happened. People talking to one another. I heard this, and I heard that. That's what threw the investigation into a bit of a spin, and it also prolonged our investigation, too. There was a lot of hearsay stuff out there. Bikies were involved, all that thing. People from left field doing something wrong. She was fed to the pigs, all this stuff.
When you were on the case, that's not something that you were actively investigating?
No. I'm pretty sure the information was there, but I suspect that someone spoke to them. I really don't know, to be honest with you. I really didn't give it a great deal of, personally, I didn't give it a great deal of respect, that information, because I just didn't... I was totally focused, I must admit, on Jack Nicholson or Jason Nicholson, and I was quite certain that he was responsible for a death. You got to look at every bit of information that comes in, but I'm sure we investigated to a certain extent that involvement, and obviously they denied it. I just find it really... When you compare what we knew about Jack, his profile, his activities on the day, what he said when he got back, the way he reacted when he got back to Gingellic, what he did when he left Gingellic, cleaned the car, and then went to whatever house that was, left the party, didn't turn up for another day or two, tied his hair, went down to Brisbane and did to the girl what he did there. Compare that with someone pouring up on the side of the road, dragging someone in the car with a backpack and then feeding it to the pigs.
I don't know, it just doesn't work for me. You'd come up with all those theories, but highly unlikely that it was just a random thing of bad luck that happened to him. He knew what he was doing and he planned it. I got no doubt about that.
Do you think it was premeditated?
When I say premeditated, probably from the morning. I don't know what can overcome someone when they decide to kill someone. I've never really done it. I thought I'd been it anyway. No, but I don't know. Obviously, if you look into the reasons for sexual assault and things like that, it's not for sexual gratification. It's all about power, all that stuff. I guess when it comes down to killing somebody, that's the ultimate gratification. You get out wanting to overpower someone or establish your power, whichever way you look at it.
Or it could have been accidental.
Could have been. During. Yeah, it could have been. It could have been. He could have drugged her, as you say, with a drink or something, or She may have been struggling and carrying on. She would have. He may have grabbed her by the throat. If she put up a decent fight, he's going to tighten the squeeze.
She was a fighter, for sure.
Yeah. It's all speculation, but still.
When the inquest concluded, Niam's family were left with no answers. The official coronial finding was that Niam May was deceased, a victim of homicide by person or persons unknown, cause of death unknown, at or near Tumet on March 30 or 31st, 2002. Because there was no direct evidence that Jack Nicholson was responsible, he was not named in the inquest. After all this time, what does Detective Steve Rose think happened?
What do I think happened? I think Jack drove Liam from Chinjilik to Tumperumbah. I don't think she even got the Batlo. My suspicion is that she went missing in the Lole Hill type area. If you're traveling from Tumperumbah to Batlo, either left hand side of the road or the right-hand side of the road, which is down towards Blouhring. I don't think it was in... I just suspect it was the left hand side of the road. I don't know what makes me think that, but it's a fairly dense bushland in there, a lot of tracks, a lot of forestry work, all that stuff. It's quite easy to be concealed in there. And then a lot of people getting around there on a weekend.
There is no evidence Naim or Jack went anywhere near Go Cup Road that day. But the theory lingers, and it is not helpful.
Look, even today, they still refer to Niem's disappearance going missing on the Go Cup Road, which is really sad. And I've tried over the years, even when I was in the to stop that from happening, but it's just on record now. So any media person looks up Niem's file, finds it, and that's how they run with it. So with that, everyone starts thinking about the Go Cup road, and the focus doesn't necessarily should be there. It should be anywhere between gingelic and there, really.
There's been a few times where they've sent photos to us and said, Do these look familiar? People have found old clothes down in mineshafts and that stuff. Did anything ever come in that you'd thought, Yeah, this seems?
Initially, there was. I don't think they were Neiams clothing, but I can't remember what it was. I think your mother had a look at them and discarded them. No, they're not Neiams. But that was very early in the piece. People had, to their credit, every time they found something at the time, and it was going, it was good, but it's lost its flavor, its intensity as time went on. And that's how I feel now. The first thing I thought about after the bushfires was now, I thought, a lot of that country's burnt now. They're going to be pushing down trees and all that stuff. The media should be getting back in the open and say, Listen, if you find a bloody blue backpack or this or that, report it to the police. Don't touch it, but report it. Because people, 18 years They're not going to know. They might have been maybe five or six years of age at the time, and now they're driving bulldozers and excavators and all that stuff.
But it doesn't matter how bleak the situation seems. Naim's family will never give up trying to find her. While the passing years make it harder, they will never stop hoping that someone out there knows something that could help. They just have to find them. On the next episode of Missing Nahum. Went off to the side and could see this bit of an opening.
Sure enough, there was this bit of freshly dug up ground.
It would have been five, maybe six foot long.
And what did it look like to you?
It looked like a grave.
Women Jack dated in the past come forward with some disturbing stories about the way he treated them. These things include threats to kill, stalking, and rape. Two detectives continue to work Niamh’s case as the inquest is finally heard.
https://missingniamh.com