The Night Driver podcast: ‘Bathurst closed ranks against us’, says John Tate

When John Tate first arrived in Bathurst tasked with solving the scandal-riddled mystery surrounding Janine Vaughan, he found the most perplexing part was that no one would talk to him.

Bathurst mayor Bobby Bourke near where Janine vanished. Picture: Jane Dempster

When John Tate first arrived in the historic gold rush town of Bathurst tasked with solving the scandal-riddled mystery surrounding the abduction and almost certain murder of Janine Vaughan, he found the most perplexing part of the investigation was that no one would talk to him.

The former detective inspector had been sent in, with a dedicated team of Sydney homicide investigators, in October 2006 to reinvestigate the 31-year-old’s death and mop up the damage caused by an earlier NSW police strike force, known as Toko.

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Rumours were rife in the town that a local detective, Brad Hosemans, had been somehow responsible for her disappearance after a night out with friends in Bathurst in early December 2001, only for his crime to be covered up by his mates on the force.

The speculation had been fuelled by a high-profile inquiry by the state’s now defunct Police Integrity Commission in mid-2006 that had exposed serious flaws in the initial investigation.

While Hosemans was cleared of any and has always vigorously denied having any involvement in Janine’s disappearance, the public hearings created serious misgivings in the local community regarding the official handling of the case.

“It was extremely difficult arriving in Bathurst five years after she had gone missing to find that trust was gone and that no one would talk to us,” Tate tells The Night Driver podcast series re-examining Janine’s case. “It’s was extremely difficult, we were there to try to solve a murder and people just wouldn’t talk to us or let us in on what had been happening around her disappearance. It was very frustrating.”

It was just one line of inquiry in an investigation and, by the time their investigation wrapped up in 2008, they had looked at about 170 potential persons of interest.

“We got that down to 47 suspects,” Tate says. “And we kept working on those names. Eventually, we worked it down to 10 names, 10 persons of interest, and we presented that list to the coronial inquest and they decided on the three people they wanted to focus on.”

Janine was last seen getting in a small red car with an unknown driver at 3.47am not long after leaving the town’s Metro Tavern and heading to another nearby hotel. Despite successive investigations, her body has never been found and the identity of the car’s driver has remained a mystery.

While Tate retired from the force in 2008 after the strike force wound down, the unsolved murder mystery still weighs heavily on his mind and he has become an avid follower of The Night Driver podcast, which has released an episode a week since early August and has consistently topped the iTunes charts in Australia.

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

He believes the new leads and information generated by the ­series could prove invaluable in solving the mystery: “There’s been a lot of information come forward … but you only need one piece of information to be right and it could help solve the case.”

The town’s mayor, Bobby Bourke, says the crime spurred on the council to try to ensure something like that could never again happen in the wide, tree-lined streets of the country town’s central business district.

In the years that followed ­Janine’s disappearance, he says, the council devoted funding to upgrading and extending the CCTV camera and street lighting network throughout the town.

“Look, you go back nearly 20 years now, and the cameras weren’t that good,” he tells The Night Driver podcast series.

“There was cameras around where she went missing, but it was still dark. Machattie Park was also very dark and we didn’t have much lighting in there at the time.

“So we now have 19 camera through the CBD and we have improved the lighting.”