Inside the Missing Person’s Squad: the unit with a record of giving grieving families closure

It has been more than six weeks since Ballarat mum Samantha Murphy was last seen, but the unit tasked with finding her has an enviable success record when faced with some unenviable tasks.

Police this week searched a new area as they try to find missing mum Samantha Murphy’s body.

Fresh police intelligence has led detectives to a renewed search area as they try to hone in on Samantha Murphy’s body.

Those missing persons squad investigators, if successful in finding Ms Murphy this week, will add another notch to their belts.

The MPS usually has a pretty decent track record when it comes to finding a body.

They often work with very few clues but, especially in recent times, have been able to provide some sort of closure to grieving families.

Police launched a new search in Buninyong for the body of missing woman Samantha Murphy, six weeks after she was last seen alive. Picture: Joe Armao

But after more than six weeks since Samantha Murphy was seen alive, the MPS has been working feverishly to find any trace of the Ballarat East mother — so far to no avail.

It would seem the accused murderer, Patrick Orren Stephenson, 22, has so far maintained his right to silence since his arrest on March 6.

But the MPS has built an enviable record of success in recent years when faced with some unenviable tasks.

They are motivated by two key factors.

They want to return the bodies to families of the missing and finding a body is a key element in securing a conviction against whoever is responsible.

“There’s no grief like the grief of someone just disappearing and no one knows anything,” one seasoned MPS detective said.

Police used dogs in the new search for Samantha Murphy. Picture: Joe Armao

They successfully found the remains of slain woman Maryam Hamka after she disappeared for more than two years.

MPS detectives descended on the Mornington Peninsula where they found Ms Hamka’s remains after she went missing in Brunswick on April 10 of 2021.

Maryam’s sister said the moment those officers knocked on her front door to deliver the news “devastated” her family.

“We all sat around, me, my sister, my mum and my kids, when they (police) said they had found some human remains that they were hoping to be my sister Maryam’s and they had confirmed that it was,” she told the Herald Sun at the time.

“My family is pretty devastated to be honest. It feels so surreal now.”

One of the missing persons squad’s most high-profile cases was that of missing campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay.

The pair went missing in the rugged Wonnangatta area in the state’s High Country, sparking the biggest missing persons case in Victorian history.

Almost two years later, and after searching the unforgiving terrain in the bush, the remains of the campers were found in a tiny area, Grant, near Dargo.

Another tick to the MPS.

One of the more grim and painstaking cases overseen by the MPS was the search for Ju “Kelly” Zhang’s body, who was stabbed to death in her Epping home in February of 2021.

Her jealous boyfriend later admitted to murdering the then 33-year-old mother inside her home before dumping her body in a wheelie bin.

Samantha Murphy was last seen going for a run more than six weeks ago. Picture: Mark Stewart

Superintendent Mark Hatt from Crime Command has been leading the search for missing woman Samantha Murphy Picture: Brendan Beckett

The MPS crew tracked that wheelie bin and began searching through piles of rubbish at the Wollert tip – finding Ms Zhang’s body four months after she was killed.

Closer to Ballarat, those detectives found the remains of a Ballarat mother who had been killed and dumped in a mine shaft in Snake Valley in 2020.

Kobie Parfitt, a 43-year-old, was bashed and killed in her Hickman St home before she was dumped in the 12m deep mine shaft and reported missing three months later.

Specific phone data from Brendon Prestage, who helped move the body to the hole in the ground, led MPS detectives to a 1.8km stretch along Pittong-Snake Valley Rd.

They found her body and made arrests in relation to the killing.