Vivienne Cameron: New twist in Phillip Island murder of Beth Barnard
When the brutal murder of Beth Barnard rocked Phillip Island, it was concluded suspected killer Vivienne Cameron jumped to her death off a bridge, despite no body being found. Now questions have been raised about whether she did it, and how she vanished.
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When the brutal murder of Beth Barnar d rocked the Phillip Island community in 1986, it was concluded that suspected killer Vivienne Cameron jumped to her death off the San Remo Bridge despite her body never being found.
Now 34 years on, a 10-part Casefile podcast series called The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron, explores whether Vivienne actually murdered Beth Barnard and how she vanished without a trace.
The podcast is hosted by author Vikki Petraitis who wrote the 1993 book The Phillip Island Murder that explored the death of the young mistress who was having an affair with her married boss Fergus Cameron.
In the podcast series, Ms Petraitis interviewed new people connected to the case including friends of the Camerons, friends of Beth Barnard, original homicide detective Rory O’Connor and local Phillip Island police officer Peter McHenry.
Ms Petraitis said many people have questioned whether a woman could be responsible for such a brutality.
“Women killing women as a crime is rare,” Ms Petraitis said.
But Mr O’Connor said that a woman could have committed the crime and “unless Vivienne Cameron magically reappears, we will never know for certain what happened on the night”.
“At this particular stage … we know that Vivienne was [at Beth’s house] and she had a pretty good motive to do what she did,” Mr O’Connor said.
“You could point at a lot of other people … all evidence we got at the moment points to Vivienne and nobody can clear that up because we can’t talk to Vivienne.”
Ms Petraitis said that people have been critical of the police investigation over the years because there wasn’t a conclusion set in stone and Vivienne was never located.
“It’s important to understand the police went to great lengths to explore every avenue. It just didn’t help,” she said.
One of the most interesting accounts comes from Vivienne’s friend, Glenda Frost, who received a phone call at 10am on September 23, 1986 from Vivienne.
The call came five hours after Vivienne’s Land Cruiser was spotted and she was presumed to have died.
Ms Frost knows it was Vivienne and remembers the conversation they had, which included a talk about sewing patterns.
She also remembers hearing voices in the background.
Ms Petraitis said detectives dismissed Ms Frost’s claims of a phone call taking place with Vivienne.
Police Search and Rescue Squad Jeff Frost said authorities searched mud flats and beaches on island for other evidence that may have washed up but they found nothing.
Mr Frost maintains if there was a body his team would have found it.
“We searched every centimetre according to the correct procedure and it just wasn’t there,” Mr Frost said.
Despite Coroner BJ Maher concluding in 1988 that Vivienne “is dead and that she leapt from the bridge into the water and I further find the deceased contributed to the cause of (Barnard’s) death”, it was never tried in court.
There are many theories about the vanishing of Vivienne and some of these include that she’s in New Zealand or France and buried on the island under a shed or buried under the Phillip Island racetrack.
“She has to be somewhere, she couldn’t have just disappeared,” a friend of Vivienne’s said.
“The memory of the horror has never really gone away and the feeling we still don’t know what happened to Vivienne Cameron sits poorly with us,” another said.
“The community has never really come to terms with the violence and the unresolved feeling about the whole night.”
The full 10 episodes of The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron can be listened on Spotify now.
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