Strike Force Arapaima: Woman tells of her ordeal on Swansea-bound bus after Robyn Hickie and Amanda Robinson disappeared

A woman has spoken for the first time about her ordeal on a bus on the same route two teenagers disappeared from more than 40 years ago.

Joanne Valeri was just a teenager on her way for dinner at her grandmother’s when the bus driver failed to drop her off at her stop, turned the lights off in the empty vehicle and told her something she has never forgotten.

“I am the driver who dropped those girls off,’’ he told the then 15-year-old Joanne.

“I was really scared.’’

Ms Valeri, now aged 56, has spoken for the first time about the ordeal on the Charlestown to Swansea service about a year after local teenagers Robyn Hickie and Amanda Robinson vanished in 1979.

Joanne Valeri has told of an experience with a bus driver on the same route as missing Lake Macquarie girls Robyn Hickie and Amanda Robinson.

Robyn, 18, was last seen at a bus stop on the Pacific Highway at Belmont North on April 7 and Amanda, 14, was last seen as she walked home after getting off a bus at Swansea a fortnight later.

Police have long suspected both girls were murdered, with Strike Force Arapaima being established almost three years to re-examine their disappearances.

Investigators strongly believe both girls were the victim of a serial killer who was roaming parts of Newcastle and Lake Macquarie in the 1970s and early 1980s.

They have interviewed the bus driver who had dropped Amanda off at Swansea after she caught the service from a school dance at Gateshead late on April 20.

He has been cleared of any involvement in the disappearances.

Amanda Robinson (left) and Robyn Hickie disappeared within a fortnight of each other in 1979.

There is also no concrete evidence Robyn ever boarded a bus even though she was last seen at the bus stop.

She was planning on heading to a Belmont pub to meet up with friends and was known to have stopped hitchhiking after an incident interstate.

Robyn Hickie.

However, detectives also suspect she may have been picked up by someone known to her.

What is known is there were several bus drivers at a scouts fundraiser at the former Swansea Workers Club, which was ending at the same time Amanda would have been walking past when she vanished.

It included local bus driver and scout leader George Cecil, who was convicted of possessing horrific child abuse material and died in 2015.

There were also at least two other bus drivers at that fundraiser who have since been convicted of child sex offences.

All were known to drive the route through the Eastlakes area down to Swansea.

None of the bus drivers have faced any charges relating to the Hickie and Robinson investigations.

There have been two significant searches at a former scout camp at Nords Wharf for the remains of the missing girls. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Peter Lorimer.

“I remember it clearly,” Ms Valeri told The Newcastle News.

“I was only 15 and I was catching the bus down to Swansea Heads to my grandmother’s house.

“I was the only one on the bus and the driver said to me: “Are you getting off here by yourself?”

“I told him my sister was supposed to be picking me up and he said: “There is no one here”.

“He turned the lights off inside the bus and said: “I was the one who dropped those girls off and I don’t want to leave you here” and just kept driving.

“It was only when my sister saw the bus leave and the lights go off that she followed.

“I told him my sister was behind us and he let me out.”

Although she grew up in Lake Macquarie, Ms Valeri now lives in rural NSW and was unaware of the latest investigation until recently.

She will be giving a statement to Strike Force Arapaima detectives.