The Night Driver podcast: ‘I hope Janine Vaughan’s proud of how I live my life’, says sister Kylie Spelde

When Janine Vaughan vanished from the streets of her country town after a night out with friends, her family’s innocence disappeared along with her.

‘Focused on my family’ … Janine Vaughan’s brother Rodney with wife Kristy and their children Sapphire and Zane in Muswellbrook, NSW. Picture: Milan Scepanovic

When Janine Vaughan vanished from the streets of her country town after a night out with friends, her family’s innocence disappeared along with her.

In the two decades that have followed the 31-year-old’s abduction and presumed murder, her sister Kylie Spelde and brother Adam Vaughan have become increasingly obsessed with trying to track down her killer.

The siblings devote much of their free time to searching for ­Janine’s remains in the scrub surrounding Bathurst, in the NSW central tablelands, and meeting with a cabal of shadowy characters who they hope might help them crack the case.

■ Subscribers of The Australian will be able to hear The Night Driver podcast before the rest of the nation, exclusively in The Australian app. Episode four is live now. Subscribe to The Australian here, and download the app via: Apple App Store | Google Play Store

Her other brother, Rodney Vaughan, has taken another tack when it comes to dealing with the enduring mystery surrounding his sister’s death.

“I sort of just made a decision at some point after she went missing. It’s like, ‘Nah, I’m going to concentrate on myself — she’s dead, that’s it’,” he tells The Australian’s investigative podcast The Night Driver, which is re-­examining her disappearance.

“What can I do about it? I’m not going to waste my effort, time, ruin my life or whatever. I’m getting on with my life.

“I don’t know if it’s the right ­decision but it’s a decision that I made earlier on that I was going to focus on my own family — settle down, become a family man and go down that path.

“I’ve seen what it’s done to Kylie and Adam and Mum and Dad. I’ve seen how it’s changed their life big time and I was pretty determined that I didn’t want it to change my life or wreck my life.”

Janine had been enjoying a night out in Bathurst, three hours west of Sydney, when she vanished shortly before 4am on Friday December 7, 2001.

She had just left the rural university town’s late-night Metro Tavern and was walking to another nearby hotel through the predawn rain when a small red car pulled up behind her in the street.

She silently got in the car and was never seen again.

Despite successive investigations, the identity of the car’s driver remains a mystery and her body has never been found.

In March last year, homicide detectives announced a $1m reward for information leading to Janine’s killer.

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

While he knows they are doing their best, Rodney has distanced himself from the police and their investigation. “I made a decision really early on that I didn’t really want a part of what the police were doing,” he says.

“Like, they’d come and say, ‘Yeah, we want to talk to youse, there’s a bit of an update’. It’s like an alarm goes off on their phone and they go, ‘Oh, better go and talk to Janine’s family again and say we’re still looking’.

“They have to revisit each case, however many cases there are. Hundreds and hundreds of cases.

“They have to spend a certain amount of time on each one but they have to do that for everyone’s family.”

Rodney’s decision to shun the case is the only way he knows how to cope with what has happened to his family.

He quit drinking after realising he was losing his way in alcohol and built a career as a senior engineer at a coalmine in NSW’s Hunter Valley.

Outside of work, his life revolves around his wife Kristy and their children, Sapphire and Zane.

But Janine is never far from his mind. “I feel guilty that I haven’t done enough,” he says. “I sort of think I’m a smart guy, I should have been able to work it out ­myself — but I haven’t even tried really because I know once I go down the rabbit burrow, it’s very hard to get out.

“I’m all about my family and my life and my career and doing the best I can in life. That’s just the way I’ve dealt with it.

“I just hope that sort of makes Janine proud, the way I sort of conduct my life. I hope Janine can understand that. I hope she’s not looking down saying ‘Why haven’t you tried?’”