Three NT families reunited with loved ones following DNA breakthroughs

A Darwin woman was just six years old when her father vanished. Now a major technological advance has provided her family, and two others, some answers.

NT Police said said over the past nine months three families had been reunited with their lost loved ones following positive DNA matches. Picture: AFP

A Darwin man walked out of his home one morning and never returned, leaving his heartbroken six-year-old daughter waiting decades for answers.

Now 33 years old, the Northern Suburbs woman has been reunited with her father’s remains following a bittersweet police breakthrough on his 1996 missing person’s case.

Detective Senior Constable Joanne Linklater said over the past nine months three families had been reunited with their lost loved ones following positive DNA matches.

The Missing Persons Unit member got teary as she recalled to “emotional” reunions with families given some closure after decades of ambiguity.

Constable Linklater said the Northern Suburbs man’s remains were discovered in 2005, when three people out pig hunting spotted bone fragments near the Elizabeth River Bridge.

But she said in the mid-2000s, DNA technology was not at a stage where they could extract a sample.

“In 2021 when the Australian Federal Police DNA project was started, they were one of the first samples that was sent down,” she said.

“We went to the family and obtained some DNA samples from them — it turned out to be a match.”

The Australian Federal Police are using new technology in DNA testing called Massively Parallel Sequencing (MPS) which can provide predictions for visual traits people including gender, biogeographical ancestry, and eye colour.. Picture: AFP

“We were all in tears when we went out to the family. I still get tears talking about it now.”

“For them now to have a place to go to, they just said it was unbelievable for them.”

Constable Linklater said another positive DNA match allowed the remains of Owen Ryder to finally return to his Central Australian home, 24 years after he vanished near Ntaria, Hermannsburg.

Eight years after Mr Ryder left his Kwala Outstation home, unidentified human remains were found in a nearby paddock in 2007.

Constable Linklater there was always a suspicion it was Mr Ryder, but it was only when they could extract his DNA and find a match that his bones “can be finally laid to rest”.

It took a quarter of a century for police to identify the body an Aboriginal man found in a creek bed near Darwin Airport in March 1997.

At the time police suspected about three months earlier — around Christmas time — he fell into a rocky creek bed and fatally hit his head.

“But we were never able to identify who that person was,” Constable Linklater said.

It took decades for a DNA match to reunite him with his Tiwi Islands family, who kept waiting for their loved one to return from his ill-fated Darwin Christmas shopping trip.

“He had an accident and they never saw him again,” Constable Linklater said.

“His family did not know why he hadn’t returned, and continued to inquire about him when travelling throughout the state.

“For them to have closure and some understanding that ‘no, he hadn’t left them’ — that’s invaluable for them.”

Cold Case taskforce detective sergeant Toby Wilson said when all that was left of a person’s life was “a few bones” finding their family and providing them with any answers was cathartic.

NT Police Cold Case Taskforce Detective sergeant Toby Wilson calls for the families of missing persons to provide DNA samples for Missing Person’s Week.

“You can only imagine what a family goes through for years and years of not knowing where this beloved family member is, not knowing anything else about it,” Sergeant Wilson said.

“That can really help the family to grieve and also say goodbye.”

Sergeant Wilson said these reunions were the culmination of hundreds of hours of work, but it was hoped a new DNA campaign will produce more answers for Territory families.

Constable Linklater said one of the focuses for this year’s Missing Person’s Week was collecting DNA samples.

“We’re really trying to do that with some urgency considering how long term some of these jobs are,” she said.

“We need to ensure we can get to family members, while there’s still some around.”

The oldest missing persons case was Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda, a Yolngu cultural leader who vanished into thin air in 1934, but Constable Linklater said there were 170 other Territory missing persons cases and 64 involved unidentified human remains.

She said the police records were not perfect — particularly pre-Cyclone Tracy — and there could be more unsolved cases out there.

Constable Linklater said DNA kits were available at every NT police station in the hopes a simple cheek swab could bring another family some closure.

“It might not give us a result now, but in 20, 10 years time when DNA technology has increased again, we might get matches then,” she said.