Western Australia offers up to $500,000 rewards for information to solve 361 missing persons cases

One Australian state has offered up huge sums of money in a “first time” effort to help solve hundreds of missing persons cases.

Western Australia has announced it will pay up to $500,000 for information that helps solve hundreds of active missing persons cases across the state.

On Saturday, Police Minister Paul Papalia announced the reward scheme — marking the first time in the State’s history a payout is on offer for missing persons.

“Families of missing people not only have to live with incredible trauma and loss but with the ‘not knowing’,” he said.

“This new reward provides half a million reasons for someone in the community with vital information to come forward.

“Each of these unsolved cases are just as important as the next and any detail, no matter how small, could be the key to solving them.”

The new reward scheme was announced by Paul Papalia. Picture: NewsWire /Philip Gostelow

There are currently 361 long-term missing persons cases in Western Australia, categorised as someone that hasn’t been seen for 90 days with no indications of criminality.

These include open cases going back more than 70 years.

The reward scheme will roll out in early January with WA Police planning to launch a dedicated missing persons website.

According to Crime Stoppers, police across Australia receive about 38,000 missing persons reports each year with most found within a short period of time.

About 2,600 individuals remain missing.

Mr Papalia said the new reward was separated to the up $1 million payout on offer for several historical homicides and suspicious disappearances.

“Our government and the WA Police Force is committed to helping find answers for loved ones of long-term missing people,” he said.

The WA government announcement highlights the disappearances of six Indigenous men from communities in the State’s north in recent years.

Wesley Lockyer is one of six Indigenous men to vanish in recent years from northern Western Australia. Picture: Supplied/ Facebook.

The move comes just two weeks after families of the six men gathered outside Parliament House to draw attention to the spate.

“Wesley has been missing for almost two years in the northern town of Port Headland,” Wesley Lockyer’s mother Joanne Taylor said on November 27.

“The WA Police at the South Headland police station have hypothesised that he walked off from his home with no evidence of criminality … people just do not vanish and disappear off the face of the earth.

After three months of pain and anxiety Wesley’s case proceeded to sit in a dusty room at the missing person unit.

This has led us to believe WAPOL and the WA state government have neglected, dismissed and abandoned our family.”

WA member for the Kimberley Divina D’Anna said the government would provide the WA Police Force with the necessary tools to find answers.

“I can’t even begin to imagine how these families feel, not knowing what happened to their loved ones and what the future holds,” she said.

Originally published as Western Australia offers up to $500,000 rewards for information to solve 361 missing persons cases