Natasha Ryan death: Candid 2008 interview exposes inner demons of ‘girl in cupboard’

It was clear Natasha Ryan was going to be struggling with demons, writes Angela Mollard as she recounts her interview with “the girl in the cupboard”.

Looking back, it was clear Natasha Ryan was always going to be struggling with demons.

“If you cut yourself there’s always going to be a scar there,” she told me during a series of interviews leading up to her wedding in September 2008.

“I’m scarred inside, it’s there and it’s always going to be there.”

Whatever had caused that scarring will now go with her to the grave. The young woman who had been dubbed “the girl in the cupboard” when she was found crouching in a wardrobe after going missing for five years is now dead, her body found at the Rockhampton golf course yesterday. There are no suspicious circumstances.

I probably spent more time with Ryan than any other journalist. I chatted with her for hours in the lead up to her wedding and partied the night away with her and husband Scott Black when they married at Ferns Hideaway in Byfield, Central Queensland.

I asked her not once, not twice but several times what had been so bad that she’d had to stay hidden.

“I didn’t feel safe,” she told me.

“I know the reasons why I did it but they will stay with me. I was protecting myself, I wasn’t safe or happy and I needed to get away from that situation.”

Qld former missing person Natasha Ryan with mother Jenny in May 2003.

For years I’ve wondered what was so terrible, so unmanageable that Ryan had to hide away, causing unimaginable pain to her family. Indeed, just a few weeks ago I asked her former agent Max Markson whether she’d consider an interview to mark her 40th birthday last month.

Two decades and four children later perhaps she might be willing to talk and reflect upon what had happened during those long years of concealment? No, Markson told me, she wouldn’t.

As Ryan’s family – including Black and their four children aged from 20 downwards – mourn Ryan’s loss, I dearly hope they have at least some understanding of what has led to her sad death.

Because for all her secrets, the young woman I met was not a cowering, frightened bird but a strong-willed character who bristled at any suggestion her hiding was a case of adolescent angst getting out of hand.

Scott Black outside Rockhampton Court.

“That makes me furious,” she raged to me. “I didn’t wake up one morning and think I’m going to run away today just for the hell of it. I considered all my options.”

Likewise, Ryan dismissed speculation that the issue was with her father or stepfather but back in 2008 she did say the issues she was dealing with had not been fully resolved.

“They come up every now and again,” she said quietly as we sat at the kitchen table.

But there was a determination to move on from her decision in 1998 when, aged 14, she ran away from home to be with her 21-year-old boyfriend Scott Black. She was presumed to have been murdered by serial killer and rapist Leonard John Fraser but following a tip-off to police she was found hiding in a cupboard at Black’s home in 2003.

In 2005 Black pleaded guilty to perjury and was jailed for 12 months for telling police he didn’t know where she was. By 2008, however, she was moving on with life.

“Being a mother, I have to get up and go on,” she told me. “It’s the best feeling being a mum, it’s so rewarding.”

Natasha Ryan, then 23, pictured in the carpark of DFO factory outlet complex near Brisbane Airport.

Becoming a mum had helped Ryan better understand what she’d put her own family, including her mum Jenny Kerwin, through.

“I regret so much all the hurt that I put my family through but I needed to do what I did,” she explained. “If I had stayed I don’t think I would have been a very stable person. I’d have been withdrawn and uncomfortable in life.”

None of us can know how Ryan and Black’s relationship developed over the years but they seemed genuinely happy as they said their vows.

I was reporting their wedding for a magazine because they knew there was interest in their story even if some members of the public remained furious that they had wasted police resources.

A taxi driver who took me to the airport after our interview muttered accusingly about her after he spotted her waving me off after our interview.

Back then the way Ryan described her relationship with Black sounded deeply attuned. In today’s vernacular we might call it co-dependent.

“He’s a gentle giant and we are so connected and bonded,” she told me. “If I’m having a bad day he’ll be feeling sick as well. We really feel each other’s emotions and it’s mind-blowing that we’re so in tune.”

Indeed, as Black slipped a wedding band engraved with the words “Happy Days Always” on Ryan’s finger it seemed this troubled woman could finally forget her past.

Clearly, that wasn’t to be.

My heart goes out to her children.