Cold case: Michelle Buckingham’s family finally discover the truth

SHEPPARTON teenager Michelle Buckingham was stabbed to death more than thirty years ago when three men entered a blood-pact to murder her after she rebuffed their advances.

Police plea for help to solve the 30-year-old Shepparton cold case homicide of Michelle Buckingham. Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles from the Homicide Squad said he believed Michelle was picked up in a green early 1970s Holden HQ sedan on the night she went missing. Police have released an image of a vehicle similar to the one that Michelle is believed to have been picked up in on the night of her death.

SHEPPARTON teenager Michelle Buckingham was stabbed to death more than thirty years ago when three men entered a blood-pact to murder her after she rebuffed their advances, her family has finally been told.

Steven James Bradley, a former Shepparton man now in his 50s, appeared at the town's magistrates'court charged with her murder for the first day of a three day committal hearing.

The 16-year-old's murder has hung over the town since 1983 when her body was found dumped beside a rural road.

Rumours of bikie involvement have swept the town, while others have already been accused of the murder.

But it was not until legendary cold case investigator Ron Iddles sent a text last year to Norman Gribble, Bradley's brother-in-law, that a major breakthrough came.

The text led to a clandestine meeting between the pair at a football field where Mr Gribble revealed a dark family secret: Bradley had allegedly confessed to the murder the morning after Ms Buckingham disappeared.

Mr Gribble today told the Shepparton magistrates' court he kept the alleged confession secret because he didn't want to destroy his family, but had finally come forward to give Ms Buckingham's family closure.

"Him and a couple of other blokes were supposed to went and stabbed Michelle..... That's what he told me," Mr Gribble told the court. "The guys picked up Michelle from a caravan park and drove her to the Pine Lodge Pub. They put the hard word on her. She wouldn't put out so they continued. They stabbed her."

"One said to the other. 'We all have to do it, that way we can't point fingers." Mr Gribble said he saw blood on Bradley's hand, and he crawled in to a foetal position after confessing.

Mr Gribble's belated evidence has caused angst in he Bradley family, who clashed outside court earlier today.