Sally Greenham went missing in 1987.
The family of a WA woman feared murdered by her husband nearly 40 years ago has been asked to provide DNA samples to police in a bid to solve the mystery about what happened to her and have called for her case to be reinvestigated.
Sally Greenham was 38 years old when she disappeared without trace in 1987.
She was not reported missing until five years later; friends and family initially believing her husband Jeff Greenham when he said she had left him and moved out of the state.
But, as reported by WAtoday last month, that belief deteriorated when Sally was found to have contacted no one, hadn’t worked, touched bank accounts or lodged a tax return, made a social security claim, or changed her name by deed poll.
Her disappearance was first investigated in 1992 and police immediately suspected her husband had killed her. They took cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar technology to the couples’ property, 15 kilometres south of Geraldton, to try and find Sally’s remains, believing he had buried her there.
During that search, Jeff drove to Perth and took his own life.
The now-retired detective who worked on the case, Ron Carey, told WAtoday he was “satisfied that [Jeff] killed her, and he didn’t know how to talk about it”.
At that point, police stopped looking for Sally, but her case has never been closed, no coronial inquiry has ever been conducted into her disappearance and she remains on missing persons list.
Sally’s friends and remaining members of her family want that changed.
“It has always been the opinion of my late mother, my brother and I, that Jeff Greenham is directly responsible for Sally’s death,” Annastacia Parker, Sally’s niece said.
Annastacia and her brother are Sally’s last remaining living relatives. Sally’s mother died 10 years before she disappeared, her father has since passed away, and in 2014 her only sibling, Elizabeth, also died.
Sally and Jeff Greenham before she disappeared in 1987.
Elizabeth had campaigned on her sister’s behalf to try and get to the truth of what happened to her, but died before ever finding out.
Sally had no children.
Now, WA Police have requested DNA from Annastacia and her brother, telling WAtoday that Sally’s disappearance “remains an open and ongoing investigation by the special crime squad”.
Annastacia, together with Sally’s remaining close friends, want police to re-examine the property where the couple used to live to try and find Sally’s remains and lay her to rest.
“My family never felt easy around Jeff Greenham,” Annastacia said.
“He was always telling our mum, Elizabeth, that Sally was ‘mad’. Particularly insensitive as Sally and Elizabeth’s mother was admitted to Heathcote Psych Unit and in 1973 committed suicide.”
Sally and Jeff Greenham renovated and lived in this converted church near Geraldton. It is the site where many believe Sally was buried.
Annastacia claimed her mother stopped visiting her sister because of Jeff’s behaviour toward her.
“Jeff Greenham behaved in a manner towards me that made Elizabeth uncomfortable and this resulted in us not visiting Sally very much,” she said.
She added that the family believed Jeff “played” on Sally’s “fragmented and disrupted family background”.
Was Sally in domestic violence relationship?
Psychologist Donna Stambulich has examined what we know about Sally’s life and disappearance.
“Statistics consistently demonstrate that women are at highest risk of being murdered when attempting to leave abusive relationships,” she said.
Whether Sally was in an abusive relationship, or not, is unclear. But we do know that both Jeff and Sally were extremely private people with few friends or visitors.
Two people they probably saw more than anyone were close neighbours Eric and Marie Wale, who provided statements to police during their initial investigation.
Eric Wale, now almost 84, does not recall ever feeling like Sally was downtrodden.
“People get these opinions, they’re just guessing and surmising, but Sally was more dominant than she was made out to be,” he said.
“She would sometimes leave Jeff a big list of things to do about the place. And he would more take more notice of her than the other way around.”
The Wales would invite the Greenhams over often for tea, Eric said, and after Sally’s disappearance, they befriended Jeff because he was lonely.
Eric said he felt Sally “was a bit strange sometimes”.
Sally Greenham has been missing since 1987.
“She wouldn’t want visitors so she would get Jeff to put a notice at the gate to stop anyone going there,” he said.
“They were very private people.”
Stambulich says perpetrators of intimate partner homicide do not always display obvious violence or aggression to others.
“Research consistently shows that many domestic homicide perpetrators present differently in public than in private,” she said.
“This phenomenon is often called the ‘Jekyll and Hyde effect’ in domestic violence literature.”
She added that the term “coercive control” wasn’t widely used in the 1980s and that domestic violence at that time was more focused on physical violence “with less emphasis on psychological control”.
‘I never touched that woman’
According to the police who investigated Sally’s disappearance in 1987, her husband repeatedly denied any involvement.
A Supreme Court judge, charged with deciding how to divulge Sally and Jeff’s wills in 1997, stated that Jeff’s suicide could not be taken as an admission of guilt.
“It could be viewed with equal justification as the desperate act of an innocent man who believed that he was likely to be convicted of a crime which he had not committed,” Justice Tony Templeman said after examining detectives’ notes and witness statements from the 1992 investigation.
“We were questioned by police when they were investigating and were told not to talk to him about it,” Wale said.
“But of course, everyone was discussing it at the time. I never asked, but he said to me, ‘I never touched that woman’.
“We were surprised the police thought he had killed her.”
The couple were just some of the many people who believed Jeff’s story about dropping Sally off in Perth after she told him their marriage was over.
That story, however, was noted by police to have changed repeatedly, with Jeff giving slightly different versions each time he was asked.
“What I found was that they were just normal neighbours,” Wale said, before adding that Jeff sold he and his wife personal items belonging to Sally after she disappeared.
Asked if he thought it was unusual that Sally would leave behind items such as family antiques, jewellery that belonged to her mother and other pieces of sentimental value, Wale said he didn’t think much of it at the time.
“As far as we were aware, she hadn’t gone missing, she had just left him, so we thought she just hadn’t taken those things with her,” he said.
A spokesperson for Police Minister Reece Whitby said WA Police continued to investigate any unsolved missing persons cases until someone was charged, or the case was solved.
“In December, the Cook government announced a new reward of up to $500,000 for any information that solves long-term missing persons cases in Western Australia,” he said.
“There is also a separate $1 million incentive to help solve several historical unsolved homicides and suspicious disappearances.
“These significant rewards reflect the Western Australian Police and state government’s commitment to finding missing people and answers for their families.”
WA’s new Attorney-General Tony Buti declined to comment on Sally’s case.
“WA Police will never give up, and investigators remain committed to finding answers for Sally’s loved ones,” a WA Police spokesperson said.
Anyone with information in relation to Sally’s disappearance around 21 August 1987 is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or report online via www.crimestopperswa.org.au.
Further Information regarding the investigation into the disappearance of Sally Greenham can be found on the Crime Stoppers website via this link: https://www.crimestopperswa.com.au/open-cases/missing-suspicious-sally-beatrix-greenham-bootenhal-wa/.
Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.
National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).