Sally Greenham went missing in 1987.
When Sally Greenham’s husband told friends and family in 1987 that she had suddenly left him one day and that he didn’t know where she was, they had no reason not to believe him.
It wasn’t until five years later that she was even reported missing, with police then discovering she had not contacted anyone in that time, touched bank accounts, lodged a tax return, made a social security claim, or changed her name by deed poll.
Nearly 40 years after her disappearance, little has ever been made public about Sally, her life, or the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. She remains on the national missing persons list.
No one has seen or heard from her, and the question of what happened all those years ago has gone unanswered.
But a WAtoday investigation can reveal that much of Sally’s small circle of friends and family – and even the police who investigated her disappearance – believe she was murdered. And they want her case reopened.
“She was a quiet sort of person, very lovely, very kind,” said one of Sally’s friends, Margaret McEvoy.
Sally was 38 years old when she disappeared (not 28 as stated by Crime Stoppers and other official missing persons websites). She had been married to Jeff Greenham for 14 years but could not have children, although Jeff had been married before and had two daughters with his former wife.
The couple lived first in Bunbury and then on a property in a small rural town called Bootenal, about 15 kilometres south of Geraldton.
The property was home to a small old church, which they slowly renovated into a family home after purchasing it in 1978.
Sally worked part-time in an administrative role at the Catholic college and in the early 1980s enrolled in a dressmaking course at the local tech college, where she first met McEvoy.
The two became firm friends and McEvoy had first-hand experience of Sally and Jeff’s relationship.
Sally and Jeff Greenham renovated and lived in this converted church near Geraldton. It is the site where many believe Sally was buried.
“She was very co-dependent on him,” McEvoy told WAtoday.
“He would come to the tech class, drive her there and then stand at the back of the classroom and watch the whole thing and then drive her home.
“She would want to speak to me, but she would have to run it past him first.
“It was very odd.”
Margaret stated that she never saw Jeff be aggressive or “nasty” towards Sally, but he did “treat her like a little girl all the time”.
“She used to dress like a little old-fashioned girl,” McEvoy said.
“And she never had any money. We would go to the canteen and get a cup of tea after class, and she would never come and always said she didn’t bring any money that day.”
By the time Sally went missing, Jeff was on a disability pension, having previously worked as a carpenter and farm hand before an injury put him out of work.
McEvoy didn’t suspect him to be involved in Sally’s disappearance at first.
“I never felt uneasy with him and I never thought, ‘There’s more to you than meets the eye’, until later on,” she said.
How the disappearance was investigated
Former WA Police detective Ron Carey was on the major crime squad in 1992, when he was in Bunbury speaking to a couple about an unrelated matter.
“The woman said to me, ‘Actually, while you’re here, could I get some help from you about something?’” Carey told WAtoday.
Ron Carey investigated the disappearance of Sally Greenham.Credit: Phil Hickey
“They were concerned about [Sally] going missing and the woman had gone to Bunbury Police before, to alert them, but they didn’t do anything about it.
“She wanted to report her as a missing person, but they didn’t even take a report.”
Carey, now retired, also led the investigation into the 1988 disappearance of Julie Cutler.
It was just a few years later when he and his team looked into what happened to Sally.
Carey said after hearing the woman’s concerns, he spoke to Jeff and was immediately suspicious.
“We were able to disprove everything he told us,” Carey said, revealing police interviewed Jeff “two or three times” over his wife’s disappearance.
“We found he lied about a number of things.”
Carey said he wanted to charge Jeff then.
“The Crown prosecutor said we could take him to trial but would be unlikely to get a conviction without a body,” he recalls.
A search was then ordered of the couple’s Bootenal property, which employed the use of ground-penetrating radar technology to see if they could find Sally’s remains.
A few days into the search, Carey got a phone call.
“An officer from Kalamunda called me and said, ‘You’re looking into Jeff Greenham aren’t you?’ and I said, ‘Yes’,” Carey said.
“He then told me they’d just found his body in a car in the forest.”
Jeff had driven his diesel four-wheel drive down to Scarborough while police were searching his property looking for his wife.
He traded the vehicle in for a petrol model, before driving into the bush and taking his own life on the fifth anniversary of Sally’s disappearance.
He didn’t leave a note.
“The fact he took his own life in the way that he did, I’m satisfied that he killed her, and he didn’t know how to talk about it,” Carey said.
The search for Sally was suspended after Carey got that call.
“After that we went back over what we had,” he said.
Sally’s sister Elizabeth spoke to The West Australian in January 1997 about her disappearance.
“I considered going back out there with the radar guy because it was hit-and-miss, and it was a tough site to search because there were so many rocks and boulders there.
“But in those days, regrettably, we moved on to other things.”
Carey said he was convinced Jeff killed Sally and buried her body on the property. And he believed she was still there.
“I don’t think he would have taken her body off that property,” he said.
Carey said newer ground probing technology would have better luck.
But he said the case would only be reopened if new information about her disappearance was brought forward.
“We did everything humanly possible to find out where she had gone,” he said.
A Supreme Court judge decides whether Jeff killed Sally
In 1996, nearly 10 years after Sally’s disappearance and four years after Jeff’s suicide, what happened to Sally was probed by a Supreme Court judge in Perth.
Court documents unearthed by WAtoday reveal that the Public Trustee asked the Supreme Court to make a finding over couple’s estates, given the administration of their wills was contingent on who died first.
It’s the closest Sally’s case has ever got to an inquest.
Justice Tony Templeman presided over the matter and used Carey and the major crime squad’s investigation notes to determine whether Jeff had killed Sally.
The case contained witness statements collected by Carey and his team, including a statement from a lady at the college that Sally worked at who noticed “a significant change in her moods” towards the time she disappeared.
“She became somewhat quieter – indeed glum,” Philomena Wendt reported.
A neighbour of the couple – Eric Whale – also provided a statement that he had heard the couple talking in “raised voices” and claimed he had seen “Sally put Jeff down” a few times.
In his ruling, Templeman confirmed Jeff had lied about giving Sally $25,000 for her share of the property before she left.
He also said Jeff’s account of dropping Sally in Perth was “quite inconsistent”, telling some people Sally had gone to live with her father and others that she was with a friend.
The court document also stated Jeff admitted to forging Sally’s signature on a bank withdrawal slip so he could access tax return funds she had deposited into an account held in her name only.
Despite that, Templeman declared on the evidence before him that Jeff had not killed Sally.
“The evidence against Jeffery is purely circumstantial,” he said.
“If the tensions within the marriage reached the point where Sally suddenly decided to leave Jeffery and start a new life, it is not impossible that she managed to disappear.
“I do not think Jeffery’s suicide should be regarded as an admission of
guilt. It could be viewed with equal justification as the desperate act of an
innocent man who believed that he was likely to be convicted of a crime which he had not committed.”
After that, Sally’s sister Elizabeth Farrar told The West Australian that her little sister “disappeared off the face of the earth”, and was scathing of the response by authorities.
“I find it astonishing that it took five years for the police to start investigating her disappearance,” she said.
“Then the coroner wouldn’t hold an inquest because he was not convinced she was dead. Now the Supreme Court has refused to make a finding that she was murdered.
“No one would imagine in their wildest dreams that his injustice would occur.”
Since Sally’s sister Elizabeth has now passed away, McEvoy has advocated on her behalf.
“We just want to find her,” she said.
“She deserves that. She deserves to be laid to rest properly and for the truth to be out there.”
National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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