Gone but never forgotten – horrific killing of Queensland man Shaun Barker featured in new novel
Among the nearly 200,000 followers of Australia’s biggest online missing persons network was a young woman who one day found herself in the midst of her own tragedy.
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Among the nearly 200,000 followers of Australia’s biggest online missing persons network was a young woman who one day found herself in the midst of her own tragedy.
“Hi Nic,” the woman, Sheridan, wrote to Queensland woman Nicole Morris, founder of the Australian Missing Persons Register.
“I’m in a pickle and wanted to please ask your advice. My brother Shaun [Barker] has been missing for nearly two weeks now. I’ve tried his phone, his Facebook, his friends, his ex-partner (they have a child) and no-one has heard from him.”
What followed was a missing persons inquiry that led to a horrific murder trial – but a lasting friendship between the two women.
The Gold Coast man’s horrific death is detailed in Ms Morris’ second book, Missing, not because the exposure might help find Shaun – whose body was found dismembered and burnt – but because his sister wants him to be remembered and hopes his story will help other families.
“There’s a lot of people who follow the page and think it will never ever happen to them,” Ms Morris said.
“Never in a million years would they think that … my sister, my brother, is going to become a missing person.
“And then suddenly her entire world is completely turned upside down.”
The advice Ms Morris would give Sheridan proved invaluable, including that she should stress to police that her 33-year-old brother’s disappearance was out of character and that he never would have let Christmas go by without contacting his young daughter.
Shaun Barker, an effortless A-student who’d dreamt of being a pilot, went on to become an IT professional and father to a little girl.
But he also had an addictive personality and yearned for more money, more success.
By 2013, when he disappeared, he was selling – and using – drugs and was in debt to the wrong people.
A missing persons investigation would later become a murder inquiry and in April 2014, two forestry workers discovered a partially burned skull.
Horrifically, police initially assumed the skull would belong to another man, George Gerbic, whose torso had been found on fire in the same area, near Gympie, months earlier.
Instead, they later identified it as belonging to Shaun.
“Two days before my wedding was when his skull was found,” Sheridan told Ms Morris while being interviewed for her book.
“They didn’t want to tell me. I found out on my honeymoon that my brother had been killed. I still remember them sitting on my lounge and telling us. My mum’s actually quite deaf, so she didn’t hear them … the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life is tell my mum that my brother had been killed. I actually had to get rid of my lounge; every time I looked at it, I saw the police officer sitting on it, so I gave it away to charity. I couldn’t stand it being in my house.”
In October 2014, police arrested three men – Stephen Armitage, his son Matthew Armitage and their associate William Dean – and charged them with murder, interfering with a corpse, torture and deprivation of liberty.
The court would hear Shaun died a brutal, violent and terrifying death, most likely over a drug debt.
He was beaten with golf clubs, possibly had his fingers cut off and was shoved into an Esky while his killers filled it with water.
Later, he was taken to a forest where he was tied to a tree and honey put on his genitalia to encourage ants.
The Armitages and Dean were eventually convicted of murder but that was downgraded to manslaughter on appeal. Their convictions for torture were overturned.
Ms Morris said Sheridan was really happy to have Shaun’s case highlighted in her book in the hope it might resonate with or even help other families.
“She gets nothing out of it. Her brother, his remains have mostly been found. The men have been convicted. There’s nothing more for her to gain,” she said.
“She did that purely to help others in the same situation.”
Ms Morris set up the Australian Missing Persons Register in 2005 because at the time there was no public national database where people could find information on missing persons.
Her Facebook page is followed by nearly 200,000 and her posts on missing people have led to some being found by astute members of the public.
On various occasions she has been contacted by police services around Australia to ask for her help in getting information to the public.
She is a previous recipient of the Queensland Pride of Australia award for community spirit and the Gold National Pride of Australia award.
She said her two books on missing persons cases, Vanished and Missing, help give families one more avenue to ensure their loved one is not forgotten, no matter how much time has passed since their disappearance.
“The families get to a point where they say what more can we do to find our missing person? We can’t keep physically searching for them,” Ms Morris said.
“This is one more thing I can do for them. A book is a very permanent thing.
“Those people will be remembered and the appeals are still being made. It brings them some comfort, I think.”
Missing can be found in bookstores or purchased online through the AMPR website or Facebook page.
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