The Night Driver podcast: Friends suspected Janine Vaughan’s ‘creepy stalker’ was her invention

Some of Janine Vaughan’s friends ­harboured doubts about whether she had invented the menacing episodes herself.

Janine Vaughan.

As Janine Vaughan’s friends ­rallied to support her while she felt threatened by a stalker, some of them harboured doubts about whether she had invented the menacing episodes herself.

Even her boyfriend’s sister, Jen­ine Evans, initially had her suspicions but said she did what she could to help Janine after she confided she had been receiving disturbing messages and phone calls from a creepy admirer.

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“As each threatening incident occurred, I dealt with it,” she told a coronial inquest into Janine’s disappearance. “I took these situ­ations seriously, whether it be notes, telephone calls, a break and entry, underwear left on her car.

“She always became quite emotional and fearful and afraid. She would cry. She would become depressed. She would want to ­vacate the home and come and stay with a family member.

“It affected her work and affected her general functioning just on a day-to-day basis.”

In spite of her evident distress, Jenine Evans questioned the timing of the stalking incidents, which mostly occurred when her brother was on the road for work and ­Janine was at home alone.

“I felt sorry for her because she was so disturbed,” she told police after Janine went missing.

“I never believed that the incidents had occurred. We helped her because she was my brother’s girlfriend and I felt obligated to help her when he was away.

“When Janine was working for me, she told me that she’d received several harassing telephone calls. These calls would happen when she was in the shop by herself. The calls seemed to panic her.

“I did not believe that Janine was receiving those harassing phone calls. The main reason I didn’t believe her was the fact that no one was ever there when she received the calls and the fact that we pursued every avenue to find the caller and didn’t.

“I thought she just wanted another drama. She was a bit of a drama queen. She showed me (a) note, it was handwritten in blue ink on an exercise book page.

“Janine was frightened over receiving the note, particularly because Phillip was away at the time. At this point, I did not believe what was happening to Janine. My fiancé and I thought she was setting the scenes up herself.”

Janine told friends she was targeted by a stalker not long after moving to Bathurst, in the NSW central tablelands, with Phil Evans in 1998, leaving her family and failed first marriage behind, three hours away, in the town of Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter.

Creepy notes had started turning up at the home the young ­couple shared and were left under the windscreen wiper of Janine’s car during her trips into town.

“Don’t be scared of me. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to get to know you. I will be in touch,” one handwritten missive read.

As the stalker became ever more brazen, Janine received a note warning her to “get rid of” her boyfriend and the couple’s home was twice broken into, with jewellery stolen and Phil’s tools strewn about their garage.

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It was not just Jenine Evans who privately questioned the timing of the stalking episodes.

The Night Driver podcast, which is re-examining the events surrounding Janine Vaughan’s death, has talked to a number of her friends who say they had wondered whether she fabricated the stalker to convince Phil he needed to stay home to protect her — but her abduction and murder has since put an end to these rumours.

Janine vanished after a late night out with friends at Bathurst’s Metro Tavern in early December 2001. The 31-year-old was last seen getting into a red car after leaving the venue with friends shortly before 4am. Despite successive investigations, the identity of the driver and her final resting place remain a mystery.

Janine’s doctor in Bathurst, Anne Gilroy, believed the intimidatory stalking was very real and thought the young clothing store manager was so troubled by the incidents, she made note of it during a consultation in August 2000.

“I remember her as being an exceptionally attractive woman,” Dr Gilroy told Police Integrity Commission investigators following Janine’s abduction. “She was very, very anxious and shaky and she said she was being stalked.”