Somebody knows what happened to Gordana

GORDANA Kotevski, a carefree teenager, left a shopping mall to walk home and then vanished. It’s one of Australia’s most baffling cases.

Gordana Kotevski went missing in Newcastle in 1994. She’s never been found.

FOR teenagers who grew up in the suburbs of Newcastle, Thursday night at Charlestown Square was the place to hang out.

The mall afforded a rare chance to stay out after dark in the relatively safe confides of a secure centre, and to mingle with kids from neighbouring schools without parents worrying about underage drinking.

Gordana Kotevski, a 16-year-old from nearby Cardiff, was one of many teenagers hanging out at Charlestown Square on the night of November 24, 1994.

She spent time with school friends, went clothes shopping, and left the mall at 8:30pm to walk the 500 metres to her aunt’s Powell Street house. She was never seen again.

The mystery of what happened to Gordana Kotevski has never been solved.

At 8:45pm that night, Gordana’s aunt, Sonia Simonovic heard female screams outside her door, and muffled male voices. She looked down her driveway and saw a white Toyota HiLux speeding off towards the nearby Pacific Highway. She put it out of her mind.

By 9:30pm, when Gordana still hadn’t arrived home, Simonovic walked outside, and found a torn plastic shopping bag. It contained a brand-new item of clothing, a pair of socks, and her niece’s wallet. There had clearly been a struggle.

Gordana Kotevski was abducted 22 years ago this month, and detectives are no closer to finding a suspect.

It’s one of the most baffling missing person cases the state has seen in the past 50 years.

A huge police operation at the time failed to reveal anything, while a hundreds-strong search of the area mobilised by the tight-knit Macedonian community was just as fruitless.

A strike force was set up in 1998 to investigate the disappearances of roughly 20 young females from the Newcastle region over a two decade stretch. To date, Kotevski’s case remains the most frustratingly elusive. But there were those who saw what happened.

Clive Small is a former detective and Assistant Commissioner of the NSW Police. He put together Strike Force Fenwick, to investigate the aforementioned disappearances.

At the time of assembling the cases, it was thought that Ivan Milat could have been involved in some of the disappearances, as he lived and worked in the region for a period in the late ‘70s. Although this was quickly ruled out in the case of Kotevski, there were witnesses.

“She was seen leaving the Charlestown [Square] area,” Small tells news.com.au, “she was seen on the street, near the house she was going to, and she was abducted off the street by two young blokes.”

Audrey Barnard was a 67-year old Charlestown resident, who had been recently widowed at the time of Gordana’s disappearance. She was driving in her neighbourhood that same November evening when at around 9pm she passed a Toyota HiLux with “two athletic young men” standing at the boot.

Years passed before she was aware that she had potentially seen an abduction in action, and it was only when detectives from Strike Force Fenwick contacted her in 1998 that she put the pieces together.

“I am certain of the make of vehicle, because my husband had only recently died and he had a Toyota HiLux which he used on our farm,” Mrs Barnard told Toronto Court during an inquest in November, 2002.

“I saw two figures standing at the rear. They were half turned towards each other and they were moving their arms about in an animated fashion.”

A white Toyota Hilux similar to the one police believe was used in the abduction of Gordana.

On top of this sighting, Mrs Barnard believes she saw Gordana moments earlier, walking with the same plastic shopping bag found ripped apart outside her aunt’s house. Barnard’s description of the young girl is heartbreaking, considering her fate shortly after.

“I was drawn to her because she was so attractive,” Barnard told the court. “She had a shopping bag and she was walking with that spring in her step like the world was wonderful.”

During the same hearing State Coroner John Abernethy urged Barnard to undergo forensic hypnosis, in an attempt to pry further memories from her mind. Barnard reluctantly agreed — “I do not like giving my mind over to somebody”, she stated at the time — and along with five other potential witnesses, she underwent hypnosis. Sadly, this did not help.

Small says that a major flaw in the initial investigation was revealed when the members of Strike Force Fenwick were collating all the unsolved case files, and records from the cold case files.

“One of the problems with her case,” Small explained, “was the potential exhibits, some of the property that was seized in her matter, had been handed back to the family, or destroyed prior to the investigation being as thorough as it should have been.”

Small noted that the State Coroner “had a fair bit to say about this”, as it no doubt hampered the case.

“When we came on ten years later, it certainly made things difficult,” said Small.

Former detective Clive Small worked on the case, and believes there were major flaws in the initial investigation.

It is believed that Gordana knew at least one of her attackers, and was afraid of him.

During the November 2002 inquest, her sister, Karolina Jagurinoski, told of a phone call she received from her frightened younger sister a fortnight prior to her disappearance.

“Gordana said there was this fellow bothering her at work, hanging around and bugging her and she didn’t like him. She didn’t know him. I think he just saw her at the deli once and got carried away with her.”

Gordana nicknamed the guy “The Spook” and was forced to quit her part-time job out of fear of him. Nobody has been able to pinpoint just who The Spook is.

The case was reopened again in 2009 after fresh evidence was received by the police. They remained tight-lipped as to the nature of the information, but it was another dead end.

After eight months, the Unsolved Homicide Squad closed the case yet again, admitting there wasn’t enough new evidence to continue. A partial fingerprint may hold the key to this investigation, but police haven’t been able to match it.

Gordana would be 38 years old today. Her case remains unsolved, but somewhere, somebody knows what happened.

If you have any information concerning this case, please contact the National Missing Persons Unit — 1800 000 634 — or Charlestown Police Station on 02 4942 9999.