‘I still love her, and miss her every single day’

Hunter Valley miner Rod Eather still lives in the home he shared with his young wife, Janine Vaughan, 25 years ago.

I blame 100 per cent on myself,’ says Rod Eather, with his dog Sheeba, near the home he shared with murdered wife Janine in Muswellbrook, NSW. Picture: Milan Scepanovic

Rod Eather still lives in the home he shared with his young wife, ­Janine Vaughan, 25 years ago.

The Hunter Valley miner cannot bring himself to walk away from the memories it contains, both the good and the bad.

Those of the idealistic couple who fell in love straight out of school and married young; the dark latter years as their relationship began to unravel; and the day he learned of her abduction and murder three hours’ drive away after a night out with friends, her body never to be found.

“Janine is still a very big part of this place. It’s just for myself, the way that I feel,” Rod tells

The Night Driver, a new investigative podcast that is dedicated to helping track Janine’s killer.

“For me sitting in the position I’m in now, nearly 52 years of age, she’s the only woman I’ve really loved. But at the time you don’t know these things. There’s never a day goes by that I don’t think about Janine.”

Athol, Nancy, Ian and Jenny Vaughan at the wedding of Janine Vaughan to Rod Eather in 1992 at the Anglican Church in Muswellbrook, NSW.

Her death, in particular, plays heavily on his mind.

“Whatever has happened to Janine obviously has nothing to do with myself but the fact that we separated, I do — I blame 100 per cent on myself for sure,” he says.

“I still love the woman, we just weren’t in love at the time, you know, we, we fell apart.

“When we first met it was fantastic. I couldn’t believe that someone like Janine felt the way she did about me. And I absolutely adored her as well,” he says.

“We were seeing each other for four years before we got ­married and we were married for four years. We just knew we were so compatible with each other — the conversations, the openness, the love.

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A Hedley Thomas podcast on the disappearance and murder of Janine Vaughan in 2001. Janine was last seen getting into a red car at around 2am after leaving a local night club.

“When it started to go downhill, this was where I blame myself because we, Janine, was wanting to settle down.

“We were looking at having kids. And I believe that we married too young. Like I blame myself for it all absolutely — I was still out wanting to party with my friends and have the best of both worlds basically.

“I really wish that because she’s still the love of my life, and I miss her dearly, but I really wish that we had met further down in life, like I could have got that out of my system so to speak and been a better person that I know I am for her.

“Same as my parents and family absolutely adored Janine, like everyone loved Janine.

“If I’d been a better person at the time and we stayed together, Janine would be still sitting in this lounge room.”

Instead, Janine left their child hometown of Muswellbrook in 1998, following her new boyfriend, electrician Phil Evans, to Bathurst, in the NSW central tablelands, where she hoped to start a new life.

• READ MORE: The Night Driver — the new podcast from the investigative journalist who brought you The Teacher’s Pet

While that relationship did not work out, the move to the rural university city, three hours west of Sydney, did. She developed a close circle of friends, landed a good job managing a menswear store and decided to stay.

The 31-year-old had been out drinking and dancing with some of those friends at the city’s popular Metro Tavern nightclub in early December 2001 when her short life came to a close.

Security vision from the night shows Janine clearly upset as she left the venue with her friends, Jordan Morris and Wonita Murphy, at 3.50am.

She had lost her handbag, along with it her ID, mobile phone and house keys, as well as the keys to the clothing store she was due to open in about five hours.

It was found later that morning by the tavern’s cleaner, Greg Brodie, who tells The Night Driver he believes the bag had been hidden deliberately.

Rather than go home, the trio resolved to head to The Oxford pub up the street, Janine striding ahead in the pre-dawn rain as Jordan and Wonita, then dating, trailed behind squabbling over a domestic issue.

Then she made an unexpected decision. She got in a red car with an unknown driver and vanished.

Successive police strike forces, a coronial inquest, a Police Integrity Commission inquest and even a $1m reward have provided little illumination. The identity of the driver is masked in mystery, as is Janine’s final resting place.

Like all who knew her best, Rod maintains there is no way ­Janine would have got in a car with someone she did not know.

For him, that makes her murder all the more perplexing.

“She was just such a beautiful soul. The only real enemies that she had were people that were just jealous of her,” he says. “It’s just so wrong that someone so beautiful can have this happen to her.”

If you know anything about the disappearance of Janine Vaughan, contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at [e-mail]