Family plea over mum ‘Anna’ Jenkins’ death in Malaysia

The distraught family of an Adelaide woman who vanished after a suspected murder in Penang is pleading with Malaysian authorities to reopen the investigation into her mysterious and brutal death.

‘Anna’ Jenkins.

The distraught family of an Adelaide woman who vanished after a suspected murder in Penang is pleading with Malaysian authorities to reopen the investigation into her mysterious and brutal death.

Married mother-of-two Annapuranee “Anna” Jenkins was a ­devoutly Christian woman who returned to her birthplace in 2017 to visit her ailing mother in Penang.

The 65-year-old disappeared in George Town after catching an Uber following a dental appointment en route to her mother’s aged-care home.

Her Adelaide-based son Greg Jenkins has made more than 30 trips to Malaysia since her death and has returned again this week before Friday’s judgment by the Coroners Court in Penang into his mother’s death.

The hearing has been marred by delays and the rescheduling or non-appearance of key witnesses. It also compounded the devastation of the Jenkins family with baseless claims being levelled by police that Mrs Jenkins may have been involved in drugs or decided to vanish to get away from domestic violence.

Mr Jenkins was further distressed when last month the presiding judge said the findings of the coronial inquest would not be made in open court but that a copy would be forwarded to the family.

The judge has since agreed to deliver the findings with Mr Jenkins present, but he said he still feared the process so far suggested the hearing risked being a whitewash.

“The key thing that we want is for Malaysia to hold a proper investigation into Mum’s death and actually do it properly the way they should have done the first time,” Mr Jenkins said.

“All we want is for them to take the investigation seriously. They still have an opportunity to issue a stop-work order at the building site where Mum’s remains were found, and go in and find more remains and piece together what actually happened.”

While Mr Jenkins will be supported by the Australian High Commission, which will send a representative to the hearing, he said his mother’s case had ­exposed an inconsistency in the availability of legal aid for Australian families whose loved ones come to grief overseas.

“If Mum had been facing 20 years jail in an overseas prison we would have got support,” he said.

“Instead we have an innocent woman being murdered in a foreign country and we don’t meet any criteria for any support, be it victims of crime, legal aid or counselling.”

Mr Jenkins has had limited support all along from Malaysian authorities, even enduring the nightmare of searching the site where his mother disappeared and finding her personal effects and physical remains.

He found her purse, rosary beads and crucifix, her favourite lollies, a Clare Country Club pen, and bone remains in the form of spine and skull fragments at the construction site of an up-market $107m apartment complex in George Town last year.

Malaysian police did not want to investigate the case at all in the first instance, saying missing persons cases were family matters.

They subsequently declared the case closed after a scant investigation amid suspicions they did not want to embarrass the apartment developers by revealing a body had been found at the site.

Mr Jenkins will be joined in Penang this Friday by SA Best MP and former investigative journalist Frank Pangallo, who has been championing his case.

“Sadly, the entire investigation by the Royal Malaysian Police into Anna Jenkins’ disappearance and suspected murder has been a farce from the very day she vanished without trace – something in itself that should have raised alarm bells as it was completely out of character for the devoted churchgoing wife, mother and grandmother,” Mr Pangallo told The Australian.

“I totally support Greg and his family’s call to have his mum’s case reopened and reinvestigated with the involvement of the full force of the SA Police.”

While Foreign Minister Penny Wong has expressed support for the Jenkins family and said she was monitoring the coronial case, Mr Pangallo said he believed the federal government should have done more.

“The Australian government is also complicit in this as it has refused to initiate any genuine action to bring about pressure on the Malaysian government to properly investigate Anna’s presumed murder,” he said.

“Let’s not forget this is a South Australian grandmother, an elderly Australian citizen who the family rightly believes was murdered on foreign soil, and our own government has done nothing except to provide some consular support to her.”