Families tormented by grief, united by hope

The families of Janine Vaughan and Michelle Bright have spent two decades tortured by the unsolved murders of their daughters.

Kylie Spelde in Muswellbrook, NSW, where she keeps a room honouring the memory of her sister Janine Vaughan. Picture: Milan Scepanovic

The families of Janine Vaughan and Michelle Bright are united by an unenviable bond, having spent two decades tortured by the unsolved murders of their precious daughters just three years and a short stretch of highway apart.

Loraine Bright was still reeling from the abduction, rape and ruthless murder of her 17-year-old daughter Michelle following a night out at a friend’s birthday party in the town of Gulgong in February 1999 when she landed a job at the Muswellbrook RSL and befriended staffer Kylie Spelde.

Janine Vaughan

Months later, their lives became forever intertwined when Kylie’s sister, Janine, was also abducted and murdered after a night out with friends, in the university city of Bathurst in December 2001, her body never to be found.

For the past 19 years, the two families have offered each other hope in their quest to bring the girls’ mystery killers to justice. Kylie says it has never been more keenly felt than this week.

A day after NSW posted a $1m reward for information, a former neighbour the Bright family had known for years, Craig Henry Rumsby, was arrested and charged with her murder.

“It was the first thing I read when I got up this morning and I just thought it was amazing,” Kylie says. “It gives everyone involved in a cold case renewed hope that they can be solved.

“My Dad was on the phone to Loraine a couple of days ago offering her encouragement after the $1m reward was announced and to see how she is going.

“They have formed a close relationship over the years and will call to see how each other is doing and how everything is going. We’re so excited for Loraine and her family. She’s always been ­really good to us. Even though they found Michelle and were able to lay her to rest, to have someone we knew, who was also going through the same thing as us, that unknowing of what’s going on and not knowing who’s done it, was really important.

“Who knows what tomorrow will bring but right now, even though our $1m reward was posted last March and didn’t have the same sort of outcome, this gives me a lot of new hope.

“Someone out there knows what happened to Janine and I’m waiting for that person to come forward. Put the money aside for a moment even, do it for yourself, get it off your chest, and come forward. We need you.”

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Kylie says she has also been buoyed by the support she has received following the launch of a new podcast by The Australian dedicated to trying to help solve her sister’s murder.

Michelle Bright

The Night Driver series delves into the murky details surrounding Janine’s disappearance shortly before 4am after a late-night of drinking and dancing with friends at Bathurst’s Metro Tavern.

She was last seen getting into a red car with an unknown driver and has not been heard from since. Successive police investi­gations and a coronial inquest have failed to reveal the identity of the mystery driver or uncover ­Janine’s final resting place.

The Bright and Vaughan families have not been the only ones searching for answers, with a string of young women disappearing in the area in separate incidents around the same time.

Teenager Jessica Small and Michelle Mills, 39, were also abducted and murdered between 1997 and 2001 in the region, about three hours’ drive west of Sydney. As with Janine, their bodies have never been found and their killers remain unknown.

Jessica and her friend Vanessa Conlan had been thumbing a ride outside a video game arcade, Amuse Me, a few hundred metres from where Janine disappeared, in October 1997 when they got into a white car with a man they did not know.

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The 15-year-olds asked him to drop them at a friend’s house a short drive out of town. As he drove them, he asked if they had enjoyed playing pool and video-gaming at Amuse Me. Clearly, he had been watching them.

After heading in the direction of their friend’s home for a while, he then slowed and stopped by a wire fence on a dark stretch of road. As his hands went to Van­essa’s throat, she screamed in terror, and Jessica opened the car’s back door in a bid to escape.

When the driver turned around to try to restrain Jessica, Vanessa wrestled free from his stranglehold and bolted from the car, running ahead of Jessica as the girls made for a nearby house.

Jessica Small

Michelle Mills

Fay Connors remembers opening her door to a trembling teenager after Vanessa banged repeatedly on it. She was alone.

Jessica had been caught by their abductor in the moments after fleeing the car and has not been seen since. Instead of mounting a manhunt for the missing teen and her kidnapper, police drove around with a traumatised Vanessa to see whether she could spot the white car.

In 2013, the deputy state coroner for NSW found Jessica had been abducted and murdered and was sharply critical of the failures of police to properly investigate her disappearance.

Jessica’s mother, Ricki Small, has been tormented by her unknown fate. “I hope things were over for her quickly,” she told Nine’s Allison Langdon in 2014. “My head’s entertaining ideas of her being locked up for days or held for days or tortured. I hate to go there. It’s a very dark place.”

Then there is Michelle Mills. She was last seen in Mudgee in June 2000, not far from the town of Gulgong where Michelle Bright was abducted. She was reported missing in August that year by concerned family. Police believe she was also murdered.

Two girls, aged 17 and 15, and two women, 31 and 39, all murdered in four years from 1997 in a region with historically low ­female murder rates. Only one body — that of Michelle Bright — has been recovered and only one accused killer has been charged.

The others are still out there.

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