‘Someone must know something’
It is a seemingly simple question: if Janine Vaughan knew the man who abducted and murdered her, why is he so difficult to catch?
It is a seemingly simple question: if Janine Vaughan knew the man who abducted and murdered her, why is he so difficult to catch?
It has weighed heavily on those closest to Janine for decades, particularly her best friend, Rebecca Howell. She says the answer lies in the nature of life in a country town where everyone knows everyone else: anyone could be the killer.
“I run into people down the street I may have not seen for many years, and people will say, ‘Oh, have you heard anything about Janine?’ ” Rebecca tells The Night Driver, a podcast by The Australian dedicated to help solving Janine’s murder. “And it’s always ticking over in the back of my head, ‘Do you know something? Are you just sussing me out on what we know?’
It has been two decades since the young clothing store assistant was last seen getting into a red car a little before 4am following a late night out with friends at Bathurst’s Metro Tavern on December 7, 2001, before vanishing; never to be heard from again.
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Despite repeated investigations, her body has never been found and the driver never identified, though those who knew her best maintain she would never have got in a car with a stranger.
“I keep telling the police this every time we got through this: It’s someone she knows,” Rebecca says. “Not necessarily someone she knows well … Janine was a very friendly person so it may have been someone she had met through the shop or maybe a friend of a friend.”
Like most people in the country town three hours’ west of Sydney, Rebecca has heard vicious rumours that former local detective Brad Hosemans was behind Janine’s murder. In the weeks before she went missing, the 31-year-old had been telling family and friends — Rebecca included — that Hosemans had been showering her with unwanted attention.
“Many people ask me about the whole Brad Hosemans thing,” Rebecca says. “But to my knowledge, I was never aware she went out on a date with him, that he sent her flowers or any of that.
“I feel sorry for him because he’s basically been forced out of town. Being such a small, close-knit town, people will get on the bandwagon.”
• READ MORE : The Night Driver — the new podcast from the investigative journalist who brought you The Teacher’s Pet
For his part, Hosemans has always denied any involvement in Janine’s disappearance or even having actually met her.
Yet the community’s preoccupation with him was so strong the homicide squad working the case subjected him to a “thorough investigation” before ruling him out as a suspect in January 2003.
An internal report by squad boss Paul Jacob offered one possible explanation as to why Janine had been telling people Hosemans was pursuing her.
“Janine Vaughan has allegedly previously manufactured issues which she has reported to friends and police — the stalking, the flowers, the threatening letters,” he wrote. “It is reported by Janine’s former sister in law that Janine is a drama queen who simply made these things up.”
The remark refers to complaints Janine made about being targeted by a creepy, anonymous admirer after moving to Bathurst with boyfriend Phil Evans in 1998.
His sister, Jenine Evans, had told police of her suspicions that the stalking incidents were not what they seemed.
Despite her misgivings about Hosemans’s treatment, Rebecca remains baffled by suggestions Janine invented such stories. “I don’t believe she had the need to exaggerate because there were plenty of blokes out there thought she was attractive,” she says.
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