Ballarat residents react to Samantha Murphy case: ‘I just really feel for her family, and for everyone’
After the shock and horror of the dramatic developments in the Samantha Murphy case, it’s hoped there can be some closure for the grieving family.
Police & Courts
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The unmarked police SUV, trailing a line of media cars, rolled into the Murphy residence, at East Ballarat, at 1.45pm on Thursday.
There were no lights, no sirens, nor, indeed, any outward clue of the significance of the message that detectives were about to deliver.
It had been 32 days since Michael’s wife, Samantha, had disappeared. What had followed, in an odd absence of investigative markers, was lots of ill-founded speculation.
News had now emerged of the arrest of a man the previous morning.
The fresh information offered new contexts to old questions. Who was responsible? What the hell had happened?
Two detectives in suits got out of the SUV and greeted Murphy near the front door. They went inside and offered to provide some of those elusive answers.
Michael Murphy is a figure of working man ordinariness in shorts and T-shirt. He had arrived home earlier with his daughter, to kick off his boots at the front door and offer a wave to the unwelcome scrutiny at the front gate.
He had approached the journalists soon afterwards, to say he was relieved about the arrest. He would talk, he said, when it was time to talk.
Ballarat Mayor Des Hudson, meanwhile, had urged locals to avoid chatter about the case.
He nodded to the singular truth. “Everyone has been asking. The question has been: ‘Where is Samantha Murphy?’,” he said.
He pointed out how much unthinking hurt – much of it online – could be spread in the shifting seas of malicious gossip.
Locals were “better than that”, Hudson said.
“The different stories that have been swirling around, people adding to and people speculating,” he began.
“It would just be really hurtful for the family to hear some of these (rumours) at a time when they are obviously highly stressed, highly sensitive, highly emotional.”
Speaking from his driveway, Ballarat local Colin McCurdy spoke of the arrest – the first major development in what had been a closed case.
“If they charge him, obviously, that speculation is put to bed,” he said.
“If he’s done it, then it’s closure for the family. That’s the main thing.”
As Murphy now sat inside his sandstone home with the detectives, his parents turned up at the sprawling property.
They, too, would hear first what the rest of us would soon be told – that the 22-year-old man who had been arrested had now been charged with Samantha Murphy’s murder.
The unyielding clarity of the message – that the 51-year-old mum was dead, killed on the day she disappeared on February 4 – would offer anchors to a storyline that had, at times, been untethered by ignorance and gossip.
The detectives left. And Murphy again trudged up his driveway to the journalists, to allude to the difficulties of presenting a dignified face in the confused adrenaline of the past weeks.
A man had been charged, he said – he wasn’t sure with what.
Tears welled as he reiterated that his family was trying to present a “brave face”.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton would give a few more details in a press conference about 90 minutes later.
Police would allege that Sam Murphy died at Mount Clear, in a deliberate act carried out by a sole person.
There was no hint of any accomplices, he said.
Those who sought answers to what had happened, and why, would have to bow to court processes.
Patton would not speak much about the evidence or investigative tools used by police, though he did refer to the “ping” of Samantha’s phone, which had served as a lonely starting point for understanding in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, at Mount Clear, resident Dylan Ross channelled wider community feeling by expressing his shock and horror.
He said some news, albeit so tragic, was better than none, in a compassionate nod to the Murphy family.
The firefighter, 32, addressed the rumours.
“Any sort of speculation and theories that people come up with, they can run wild very quickly, especially in a smaller area like Ballarat where everyone seems to know everyone,” he said.
“I’m glad some of that speculation can start to disappear.”
Another local, Helen Kennedy, said the past month of speculation had been “dreadful”.
“I just really feel for her family, and for everyone. Hopefully, they can have some closure,” she said.
Hudson spoke of the outpouring of love and support, both from Ballarat and the wider nation, as community volunteers announced that a vigil for Samantha would be held at the Eureka Stockade Memorial Park on Friday evening.
He thanked “troops on the ground”, especially the CFA and SES, who had given so many hours to searching bushland.
A former police officer, Hudson said: “With these types of investigations, it takes time to be thorough, to check and to be able to put the pieces of the jigsaw together.”
And he reiterated a notion that had sometimes got lost in the past month.
“Please be kind,” he said, to a grieving family.
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