The disappearance of the 10-year-old boy with pearly white teeth, dark brown eyes and brown hair, resulted in the early death of his mother and his siblings have had a spiralling battle with substance abuse.

Bernie Pholi, Bradford’s older brother, spoke with the Advertiser about the day his young brother declared he was going to Newtown after he and his sister Anita refused.

“We couldn’t borrow any money off anyone here, we just moved here,” Mr Pholi said.

“I didn’t want to go, it was Boxing Day. I was playing with my toys.

“And then she asked Bradford and Bradford goes ‘I’ll go for you mum’.”

Mr Pholi said he pleaded with his brother not to leave the family home at 51 Warwick Rd, Dundas Valley, but little could be done to stop him.

“I felt guilty so I jumped over the fence five minutes later to go after him,” he said.

“He was gone, he was already gone.”

THE PHOLI FAMILY

ANITA and Bernie have their own demons to fight.

Both are known to police and have been in and out of hospital, drug rehabs and prison — they say their lives changed when Brad left that day.

“Me and my sister have never been the same since,” Mr Pholi said.

“It’s destroyed our lives. My mum died earlier from that ... two years she went looking for him. Up and down. She used to go up and down The Cross, down the City. She used to go looking for him, two nights, every time she got paid a pension. She’d be down there two full nights, going in pubs showing his photos. From Kings Cross to Newtown and back again, all over the place.”

In the 36 years since Bradford Pholi vanished, investigations, searches and possible sightings of the 10-year-old have left his siblings resentful of NSW Police.

One of the reasons behind a series of snide comments about the justice system, was due to a lack in support by police during the initial days of Bradford’s disappearance.

Anita Pholi revealed police only conducted searches along one of the possible routes the young boy could have taken the day he disappeared.

The Pholi family had run the path hundreds of times in the three months they lived in Dundas before Bradford vanished.

Ms Pholi said the siblings would either take Mobbs Lane to Midson Rd before turning onto Hillview Rd where the station is, or take Terry Rd all the way to Hillview Rd and onto Eastwood Station.

“They didn’t check other roads,” she said. “He could have went a different way.”

The Pholi family also raised theories around a possible abduction of their brother, suggesting a scenario involving a paedophile ring.

INVESTIGATIONS UNRAVEL

SEVERAL officers from Eastwood Police were involved in the investigation surrounding the disappearance of Bradford Pholi.

However, during a 2009 inquest held by Former Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanovich, it was revealed several detectives had no recollection of the case.

Former senior sergeant Graham Kinross’s statement revealed he had “no independent memory of a missing person, Bradford Warner Pholi”, while sergeants Neville Bulley and Graham Thomas said the same.

Senior Sergeant John Tripp said inquiries were made after a station assistant who knew Bradford, saw the boy board a train at Eastwood Station on Boxing Day 1982.

Juvenile crime squad detective Gary Scott’s statement supported the Pholi family’s theory of a paedophile ring.

“Although we hadn’t heard anything following our various circulations and publicity of the missing boy, we received information about a sighting of him in a pin ball parlour in Kings Cross,” Det Scott said.

“During our investigation we received information from a group known as ‘street kids’, suggesting that runaways were procured by paedophiles and kept as slaves.

“It was also suggested that these runaways were sold as slaves through a network in Newcastle, Wollongong, Brisbane and Melbourne.”

Det Scott said an operation was conducted to seek information surrounding the network, however, it was considered the lives of those involved were “placed in considerable danger” and the operation was stopped.

“The operative was sent into an area of Kings Cross and Oxford St posing as a paedophile,” he said. “The operative would then go into clubs in that area and attempt to meet with other paedophiles to gather intelligence about that network.”

CLAIMS OF ABUSE

Bradford’s mother, Lorna Sue Pholi had a rap sheet longer than many career criminals.

Offences included burglary, assault and malicious injury — relating to an offence where she tried to stab a taxi driver because he knocked back her advances.

The level of abuse the mother handed down on her children was also a key aspect of the case built by Ermington Detective Inspector Darren Newman.

“In my opinion, if alive today, Lorna Susan Pholi would be considered a person of interest in relation to the disappearance of Bradford Warner Pholi,” Det Insp Newman said.

Neighbour Robyn Yates revealed a series of events that corroborate the abuse towards all of the Pholi siblings.

“I saw Sue (Lorna) throw the fish tank towards where Brad was standing and it smashed in the middle of the road,” Ms Yates said. “I saw the fish tank shatter with glass going everywhere.”

Marilyn Cox, the woman Bradford was travelling to see on Boxing Day, 1982, said in a statement to police his mother burnt his bed.

“I heard this from Sue, she was boasting about burning Brad’s bed, saying words like ‘I’ll teach the little bastard a lesson’,” Ms Cox said.

“I remember after Brad’s disappearance, Sue called me and said she was happy that she only had the two of them, Anita and Bernie.

“She was glad she didn’t have Brad.”

Family friend Keith McNamara was 13 at the time of Bradford’s disappearance and claimed to have witnessed abuse by the mother who “loved to drink”.

“Sometimes I would see her aggressive,” Mr McNamara said in his police statement.

“By aggressive I mean she that she would be verbally aggressive towards her family and she would throw things at them.”

Despite several claims of abuse, Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanovich ruled out Lorna Pholi’s involvement in the disappearance of her son.

“I do believe it should be publicly stated, that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Lorna Pholi was in anyway involved in the disappearance or suspected death of her son Bradford Pholi,” he said.

MILOVANOVICH SPEAKS

The case has also stayed with the coroner tasked with figuring out the most likely outcome of young Brad’s disappearance.

After 27 years the question of missing person Bradford Pholi was presented to Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanovich, now an acting magistrate.

Mr Milovanovich said despite the inquest 10 years ago, he remembered Brad, or more fittingly, he remembered his sister Anita.

“Anita was very uptight and upset about the police investigation,” Mr Milovanovich said.

“She wasn’t happy about how the family had been treated, I think her views were not a direct criticism of the police but of the systemic system that existed at the time.”

Unwilling to criticise the first investigation, Mr Milovanovich said the evidence presented stated that the Pholi family had tried to make a missing persons report on the night Bradford left home in Dundas, but were told they needed to wait a full 24 hours before they could claim him as officially missing.

“When children disappear the alarm bells should be ringing a lot louder, people prey on young children, we know that. We know there are paedophiles and sex offenders,” he said.

“The matter should have been given more priority.”

Mr Milovanovich’s final ruling after four days of evidence was that Bradford had died, either on the day he went missing or some time after. His final statement pointed clearly to how missing person cases were handled in 1982.

“Should a child of 10 years go missing today, in circumstances similar to those of Bradford’s, the matter would be reported as a suspected death, if not immediately, certainly no later than 12 months,” his statement read.

“In 98 per cent of missing person cases the people turn up in 24 or 48 hours or it’s resolved in a very short time, they find remains or a suicide note.”

It’s that other percentage that is reported to the coroner.

“When Bradford went missing there wasn’t a system of reporting these matters to a central agency.”

A working party was established in 2003 for missing persons. Chaired by state coroners and police commissioners and forensic services, the party pushes “cold cases” through the system.

Mr Milovanovich said the case of Bradford’s and so many like it, gave him the inspiration to centralise missing persons based out of Parramatta, and to update the protocol.

“When someone goes missing what we agreed on was that ante-mortem DNA would be acquired by police. That means police would come to the home and get some DNA from hair or a toothbrush that can later be linked to any unidentified bodies at the mortuary.”

Looking back on the case, Mr Milovanovich said the question of “if” Bradford is alive is clear.

“It’s hard to almost impossible to disappear these days … If Bradford was alive and living as a homeless young man for years on the streets it would be impossible for him not to have any identity, if he wanted social security he would have to have a bank account and he would in some way be in the system … when there is no smoking gun or bloody trail anything is speculative, in this case a child disappeared and whether it was misadventure, he fell in a creek, or foul play I believe that it is likely he is dead.”

EXPERIENCE LOST IN SYDNEY

EPISODE 1: The Lime Green Van

A YOUNG man climbs into his lime green Bedford van in the dead of night to drive his girlfriend home - no one has seen them since.

EPISODE II: The Disappearance at Dawn

TIEMUZHEN Chalaer was a lover of music — this may have been what sparked his enthusiasm for an unregistered party deep in the bush — little did he know, it would cost him his life.

Lost in Sydney: The Series

Episode III — The Boy on Boxing Day

Produced and presented by Jake McCallum and Mary Anne Taouk

jake.mccallum@news.com.au - maryanne.taouk@news.com.au

Audio and editorial support by David Wood

Artwork by Daniel Murphy

Editing by Stacy Thomas