Premier Chris Minns rejects calls for inquiry into cold cases after revealation of 64 women who vanished

Premier Chris Minns has rejected a fresh inquiry into the disappearance or murder of more than 60 women in NSW. He argued police were already well-equipped to solve the cases.

A call for a special commission of inquiry into more than 60 unsolved homicides and disappearances of women along the state’s north coast has been rejected by Premier Chris Minns amid suggestions a new police Task Force be set up to investigate the unsolved cases.

The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday revealed a list of more than 60 women who had been brutally murdered or mysteriously vanished between Newcastle and Byron Bay over a 30-year-period between 1977 and 2009. At the time police had suspected that some of the cases, particularly those around the Newcastle area could be linked.

Calls on Tuesday from Upper House MP Jeremy Buckingham for a Special Commission of Inquiry into the unsolved cases were rejected by the Premier who said he believed the police could solve them within their normal duties.

“We’ve got a cold case unit within NSW police, we’ve got incredibly committed homicide squad detectives whose business it is to investigate this information and if it is provided I promise you they will conduct a full investigation,” he said.

“Now if that parliament decides to go down a different route we’ll respond to that.”

Mr Buckingham received a briefing on north coast cases on Tuesday afternoon in a meeting with Police Minister Yasmin Catley and Deputy Commissioner David Hudson.

It is understood in the briefing Mr Hudson had discussed the existence of possible links between some unsolved disappearances in the Newcastle region.

Police in the 1998 had set up taskforce Fenwick to investigate connections between the disappearances of around 20 young people in the greater Newcastle region within a 20-year period. The taskforce shut up shop in 2003 with many cases left unsolved. In 2019 strike force Arapaima was set up to investigate the disappearances of Robyn Hickie and Amanda Robinson in 1979 and Gordana Kotevski in 1994 from the Newcastle area.

Many of the other missing and murdered women were investigated by a series of other strike forces, with investigations turning up no culprits.

Both NSW Upper House MP Rod Roberts and Mr Buckingham said there needed to be a new taskforce established to oversee investigations on the vast numbers of unsolved homicides and disappearances on the north coast.

“There’s no way all those task forces were talking with each other or sharing information at the time,” Mr Roberts said.

“There needs to be another task force established to look at these all over again.”

A NSW Police spokesperson said recent changes to the way police handled unsolved cases could see major breakthroughs in the future.

Unsolved cases will now be required to be reviewed every two years as part of changes implemented last month after a damning report into historical LGTBIQ hate crimes found many cases had not been properly investigated.

“A number of factors are considered when deciding to reinvestigate a matter, including – but not limited to – evidence and documentation availability, forensic opportunities and the resultant solvability,” the spokesperson said.