Detectives believe ‘one or more parties’ involved in disappearance of Samantha Murphy

Police have revealed they doubt missing mum Samantha Murphy is still alive as they investigate whether her body may have been moved from the area where she vanished.

In the most significant development since the Ballarat East woman went for a morning run and never came home, missing persons detectives said they now believe “one or more parties” were involved in her disappearance.

The last known image of Samantha Murphy.

Dozens of officers spent Friday sifting through bush at Mount Clear, about six kilometres from where Murphy was last seen, after mobile phone data pointed detectives to the area.

Hundreds of residents concerned for the mother of three will press ahead with their own search on Saturday.

Acting Superintendent Mark Hatt said they had ruled out Murphy being involved in a medical incident or leaving of her own accord, conceding it was doubtful she was still alive.

“Unfortunately, given the time and the fact that we’ve found no trace, we do have severe concerns [and we] are very doubtful that she’s still alive.”

Hatt said investigators had established Murphy left her house on February 4 and made it to the Woowookarung Regional Park, formerly known as Canadian State Forest, for her run.

He said the Mount Clear area searched on Friday was pinpointed by “intelligence derived from phone data”.

Detectives combed the area, which had been searched in the past, looking for smaller objects that could reveal clues about Murphy’s movements.

Hatt said police were probing the possibility her body had been moved from the area.

“That is certainly the scenario that we’re looking into,” he said.

Hatt said Murphy’s husband Mick was not a suspect in her disappearance. “We have a number of people that we are speaking to and I can say that the family have been absolutely fantastic in co-operating with police.”

Responding to a question about whether police were probing anyone else related to the family, he said: “We’re looking into a number of people from information we’ve received. Everyone in relation to Samantha is a person of interest in our investigation. We’re speaking to everyone that was in her life.”

Hatt was philosophical about the mystery of Murphy’s whereabouts, saying it’s rare for people to simply vanish into thin air.

“Particularly in the current technological age, where we’ve got mobile phones and CCTV and the like, it is a bit of a mystery,” he told radio station 3AW.

The renewed police search effort follows a huge turnout from Ballarat residents who scoured the thick scrub of Woowookarung and beyond in the days after Murphy’s disappearance. Emergency services scaled back their search for Murphy on February 9.

Organiser Tori Baxter said up to 300 volunteers were expected to help scour bushland and property near where Murphy had last been seen.

She said the plan was to cover a wide area, provided their search wasn’t hampering fire crews’ efforts or putting people at risk.

Police retrieved what looks like tree sap in their search for Murphy on Friday.Credit: Eddie Jim

While specialist detectives had shifted their search efforts to Mount Clear, Baxter said the large volunteer effort would split into small groups to comb through designated areas in and around Ballarat.

Despite police’s warning the missing persons squad was now likely looking for a body, Baxter said the Ballarat volunteers remained hopeful.

“There isn’t anyone out there who wouldn’t want to find Sam alive,” Baxter said. “I don’t believe everyone’s given up hope at all.”

Detectives from across crime command, specialist units and local police have joined the search.

The missing persons squad is working closely with local police, while additional experienced detectives from several Victoria Police units have also joined the search.

Part of that search involves detectives reviewing about 12,000 hours of CCTV footage and following up more than 500 pieces of information.

Police can track a phone through “pings” – signals sent from a phone to a cell tower to establish a connection – according to criminal law firm Furstenberg Law.

By analysing the signals sent and received by a phone, police can determine its location.

However, this method is not as precise as GPS tracking and may only give an approximate location of a phone.

This week Mick Murphy told The Age the family was praying for good news as a group of more than 100 people called out for volunteers willing to comb designated areas of Ballarat more than two weeks after his wife vanished.

He said the family welcomed anything that could keep the investigation going and Samantha at the forefront of peoples’ minds.

“I just thank them for all their efforts and time that they’re putting into the search for Sam,” he said. “We’re just looking forward to some good news.”

The SES and the Country Fire Authority have withdrawn their volunteers from the search, which had focused on Woowookarung as well as surrounding bush and paddocks.

Earlier, Victoria Police said it was working to access additional data from Murphy’s phone and smartwatch, as well as monitoring her devices to learn more about her movements in the days before her disappearance.

The last known sighting of Murphy was on CCTV outside her home after telling loved ones she was going for a 14-kilometre run on nearby trails.

Murphy’s family reported her disappearance to police when she failed to attend a brunch later that day.

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