The Missing Australia podcast: Warren Meyer’s wife Zee wants closure for her family

Warren Meyer disappeared on a hike more than a decade ago and when his family searched for him, it’s what they didn’t find on the track that was most chilling. Listen to The Missing Australia podcast.

Zee Meyer knows the torment of what happened to her husband Warren “won’t stop with me passing”.

She knows her children and grandchildren won’t rest until they find out what happened to their dad and grandfather who vanished while out on a bushwalk.

Warren Meyer, 57, was well prepared for the 10km trek at the base of the Yarra Ranges National Park in Victoria on March 23, 2008.

Having trekked for more than 30 years, he was no stranger to bushland.

It should have been an easy four-hour trek that day before he met up with his wife and friends for lunch.

But when he failed to return – or call his wife to say he was running late – she instinctively knew something was wrong.

Zee Meyer doesn’t want future generations of her family not knowing what happened to her husband Warren Meyer. Picture Andrew Tauber

“It was extraordinary. It was so out of character. I’d hiked with him for 31 years and we had done walks around the state,” Mrs Meyer said told The Missing Australia podcast.

Despite his body and possessions – including a backpack and mobile phone – never being found, a coronial inquest provided the family with no answers, with Coroner John Olle finding in 2017 he could not determine Mr Meyer’s date, cause and location of death.

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Theories surrounding Mr Meyer’s disappearance included a mental health patient being in the area at the time, as well as a witness reporting hearing the sound of semiautomatic gunfire coming from the bush.

“You see enough hit and runs to know that people will actually panic and get rid of the evidence because they’re in an area you are not allowed to shoot,” Mrs Meyer said.

After the initial search was called off, the family scoured the bushland he’d been walking in themselves every weekend for two years until the deadly Black Saturday bushfires tore through the area in 2009.

Warren Meyer was last seen near Healesville in March 2008. Picture: Australian Federal Police.

Former Victorian police detective-turned-private investigator Valentine Smith was recently joined by nearly two dozen of Mr Meyer’s family and friends as they searched the bushland with the help of cadaver dog Billie-Jo and her handler Julie Cowan.

“There was a substantial amount of what was reported as out of control shooting from semiautomatic or … what sounded like semi automatic rifles coming from an area where Warren was expected to have walked into on that particular morning,” Mr Smith said.

Warren and Zee Meyer on their wedding day.

Extensive searches failed to find Mr Meyer.

“If he was shot, which I’m saying he probably was, then we should have found him, which would indicate that his body has been interfered with after what may have been an accident [but has] probably turned into a criminal offence.”

The search didn’t find anything significant, but Mr Smith has vowed to return.

Despite the passing of time, Mrs Meyer said the family won’t rest until they get answers.

“My children … I really suffer for them because I know they’ve got decades of this if we do not get answers,” Mrs Meyer told podcast host Meni Caroutas.

“And then, of course, my grandchildren and I follow cases where grandchildren are trying to find answers after 60 years and they’re feeling it just as much as their parents did. So, no, it doesn’t stop and won’t stop,” she said.

A cadaver dog was used to help hunt for Warren Meyer's remains.

“I think that would really take this tightness out of my chest that I have all the time. And I can say we’ve brought him home.

“Whether we could solve what’s happened to him, that’s secondary. It’s this need to bring him home. And that’s what all these families of the missing have this need. It’s a human need. We all have that wanting to close things out”.

Originally published as The Missing Australia podcast: Warren Meyer’s wife Zee wants closure for her family