Cops call in ‘mobile phone sniffer dogs’ in hunt for Ballarat mum’s body

It’s been 45 days since the Ballarat mum left her home for a Sunday morning jog and vanished.

Police search in Buninyong for the body of missing woman Samantha Murphy. Picture: Joe Armao/NCA NewsWire

Victorian detectives have called in Australian Federal Police specialist tech-sniffing dogs in the search for Samantha Murphy’s body.

Chief Commissioner Shane Patton revealed on Thursday morning that AFP dogs trained to smell SIM cards in mobile phones are being used as a fresh search of rugged bush continues today around Buninyong.

“We’ll be going to a different location but we will also use assistance from the Australian Federal Police today in technical detection dogs,” Mr Patton told ABC.

“We don’t have the capacity — we are trying to get that capability — to run a dog that can detect a SIM from a mobile phone and that type of thing. “We still haven’t recovered her phone and her watch. We’ll use all those specialist skills.”

It’s been 45 days since Samantha Murphy left her Ballarat East home for a Sunday morning jog and vanished.

Much has happened, including the laying of a murder charge against a 22-year-old man, in the six weeks since she was last seen on February 4.

But there are still more questions than answers about the fate of the mother, including the most heartbreaking fact of all – that her remains have not been found.

After police charged Patrick Stephenson with her murder earlier this month, Victoria’s top cop Shane Patton promised the community and the Murphy family that the priority for detectives was to now find her body.

On Wednesday, police descended on rugged bushland near Buninyong, about 14km from the Murphy family’s Ballarat East home. The search site is only a few kilometres from where the man charged over her death was house sitting when he was arrested.

“While someone has been charged in relation to Samantha’s disappearance, we remain committed to doing everything we can to locate her and return her to her family,” Acting Superintendent Mark Hatt, Crime Command, said. “Since Samantha’s disappearance, extensive searches have been conducted in the Ballarat area and today we will focus on an area of bushland known as the Buninyong Bushland Reserve.

“We will have a range of specialist resources involved, however, as we are searching for Samantha’s body, we ask that members of the public do not try and join today’s search.

“Hopefully today’s search will benefit the investigation or provide further avenues of inquiry for police. We will also look at further searches in the Ballarat area as the investigation progresses.”

Investigators from the Search and Rescue Squad, Mounted Branch, Dog Squad, Public Order Response Team and motorcyclists from Road Policing Command, as well as local police from Western Region, joined the search on Wednesday.

The Buninyong Bushland ­Reserve is typical of the terrain where this tragedy has been playing out: rugged, dense, steep hills, deep ­gullies, crisscrossed with dirt tracks and dotted with abandoned mine shafts.

Skirkas Rd snakes up a hill towards the ground zero of the new search. The pavement runs out quickly and becomes a dirt track.

Looking at maps of the areas so far searched by police – the Canadian Forest, Mount Clear and now the Buninyong Bush Reserve – doesn’t provide any real indication of just how vast the areas of interest are.

The bushland is so dense in parts that all you can see is scrub and trees and stumps.

Around 3pm, the police packed away their trail bikes and called off the search without finding the remains of Ms Murphy.

Mr Stephenson, who is not ­believed to have been assisting police with the investigation, is due to appear at Ballarat Magistrates’ Court on August 8.