‘Shell-shocked’: Where is Aussie mum Sam Murphy?

Questions haunt any examination of this tragedy. Why haven’t Sam Murphy’s remains been found? How was she killed? The biggest question is this – why was she killed, on a morning jog, allegedly by a young man she had never met?

Of all the sad stories of Samantha Murphy’s death, perhaps the saddest has Mick Murphy getting into his ute to scour bushland, alone, for hours on end, in the hope of a clue.

He knows his wife is dead. But where did she go?

The answer to Sam’s whereabouts has defied many searches, including Mick Murphy’s sometimes daily ritual. Over the past 12 months, strangers to the family have volunteered their time, over and over, because they are so moved by the family’s plight.

Questions haunt any examination of this tragedy. Why haven’t Sam Murphy’s remains been found? How was she killed? The biggest question is this – why was she killed, on a morning jog, allegedly by a young man she had never met?

As one well-placed local puts it: “The town has moved on, I guess, but at the same time it hasn’t, because no one knows what happened.”

Missing mum and wife woman Samantha Murphy. Picture: Mark Stewart

Mick and Sam Murphy. Picture: Supplied

Mick’s own family, his aunt and uncle, were first to raise speculation about a random stalker. They were guessing at the time, in the time-bending days and weeks after Sam was last sighted, on CCTV, tying up a doggie poo bag.

She went running early that day, her phone and watch fully charged, to avoid the blazing heat of the day ahead, then disappeared.

Ballarat was engulfed by the puzzle. Then mayor, Des Hudson, appealed for calm, amid a growing number of stories of inexplicable violence against women in Ballarat.

But a near absence of answers heightened the disquiet. Everyone had a theory about Sam Murphy. And almost everyone was wrong.

The Murphys were trapped in a vortex, not only of loss, but also of malice and innuendo. Mick Murphy was yelled at on the street from a passing car. The most difficult elements of the saturation coverage? The rumours and the gossip.

If there were faint faultlines in his family, and most families have them, they had nothing to do with Sam Murphy’s loss.

Mick Murphy had been calm at a first press conference, five days into the unfolding tragedy. He spoke off the cuff, in a Quiksilver T-shirt, in a first show of stoicism which has since run deeply.

Yet in those early days, his everyday poise was not what the doubters demanded. They identified clues in his demeanour which were not there.

There was chatter about bikies, and dreadfully unfair aspersions made when Mick Murphy was photographed smiling with a police officer.

He spared himself the outrages of social media. He later described himself as the “first suspect” at that time, in a role he wished on no one.

Ballarat community members hold a vigil at the Eureka Stockade Memorial Park for missing woman Samantha Murphy, after 22-year-old local Patrick Stephenson was charged with her murder. Picture: Mark Stewart

About three weeks after Murphy disappeared, police described the Murphy family’s co-operation as “absolutely fantastic”, in responding to repeated questions asking whether Mick Murphy was a “suspect”.

He kicked off his work boots at the front door of his East Ballarat home each afternoon. He kept his composure, even offering waves of acknowledgment to the journalists he wished would not materialise at his front gate.

In fevered imagination (even though the police answer to the “suspect” question had been “no”), Mick Murphy seemed suspicious, and no facts turned up in those first weeks to temper such misplaced excesses.

The family’s presented front, in fact, matched the bigger truth of ordinariness, of decent people who had worked hard to make good, of a wife and a mother whose winning identity was wrapped up in her children.

Paula Heenan, who met Murphy through their kids’ shared involvement with the Ballarat Centre of Music and the Arts, described her friend to the Herald Sun as “vibrant” and “bubbly”.

“Running is definitely her thing at the moment,” Ms Heenan said last March. “She would often, even when she dropped the kids off here, she’d (go) for a run while she was waiting for them.”

Mick Murphy speaks at a Candle light march in Ballarat to honour the women who have recently lost their lives to violence in the Ballarat area. Picture: Brendan Beckett

People liked Sam Murphy. She projected fun and care. On her last night, she and Mick went out for dinner, for the first time in ages, with neighbours. It’s thought she raised her plans to run a marathon, locally, in a few months’ time.

She had a brunch the next morning. Her phone was dead when Mick called her a few hours after she set out for her run. He called the police, confused, and forest searches began later that day.

Mick Murphy has since been forced to assume parenting roles that once had naturally fallen to Sam. He also shields his three kids from unwelcome scrutiny, and navigates incessant media requests to speak publicly about his unenviable lot.

He returned to work at the family’s car smash repairs business after some months.

A Christmas, a wedding anniversary and birthdays have been shrouded in limbo.

He finds some relief in a morning walk at the lake.

Mick Murphy spoke of his lone searches in a TV interview last April. They helped clear his mind, he said. He hoped that his family might one day have somewhere to visit to remember Sam.

“I don’t know the guy, but people around town see him out and about,” says the local. “He’s actually a very friendly guy. You’ve got to feel for him and his family.”

Mick Murphy has been a remarkably sensible – and patient – victim of crime. He is a cautionary tale in unfair conclusions. He has faced barrages of questions from journalists, some polite, some not, yet has rarely lost his temper.

His ruddy features flare red when he gets wound up, such as the day when a man was charged with his wife’s murder, and he was overcome with so many conflicting emotions.

Last April, after the charges were laid, but answers remained painfully scarce, he spoke at a rally to end violence against women.

Mick Murphy hadn’t planned to address a crowd of about 1000, but he wanted to express his thanks for the care of the community. “I’m doing OK, and I need to be strong for the kids and everyone around me as well,” he said.

Police on horseback join a search in an area around Enfield State park in Victoria for the body of Samantha Murphy. Picture: NewsWire /pool / David Crosling

Months after Murphy’s disappearance, Mick changed his Facebook status from “married” to “widowed”. Yet “closure”, that intangible abstraction which means little to the bereaved, is not imminent.

There can be no proper farewell for Samantha Murphy in the absence of her body. Someone who has of late met some family members uses a single word to describe them – “shell-shocked”.

There will be some answers in the coming murder trial of Patrick Orren Stephenson, likely this year, in what will double as another test for Ballarat. Mick Murphy will be there, no doubt wearing a jacket and a glare.

Sam Murphy’s mobile phone was fished from a dam in Buninyong by police last May. Its data might provide answers to how and where.

But “where is she?”, as opposed to “where was she?” appears unlikely to be settled.

There have been countless bushland searches in response to this or that information. Let’s hope, for the Murphy family, that there need not be countless more.

Originally published as ‘Shell-shocked’: Where is Aussie mum Sam Murphy?