The Night Driver podcast: The town that drove a detective away

Most former detectives are burdened by one unsolved case. For Brad Hosemans, it is the murder of Janine Vaughan.

Former detective Brad Hosemans. Picture: Adam Yip

Most former detectives are burdened by one unsolved case they wish they could have cracked. For Brad Hosemans, it is the abduction and murder of Janine Vaughan — not least because many people in the country town they once shared believe he did it.

The unfounded claims contributed to Hosemans being dumped from the investigation into ­Janine’s disappearance after she vanished following a night out at Bathurst’s Metro Tavern with friends in early December 2001, and also drove his decision to leave the NSW town behind.

He has spent the past 19 years simultaneously denying any involvement in Janine’s abduction or murder while refusing to discuss her case publicly.

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

His critics and accusers have described him as a man brimful of arrogance and swagger.

This might have been how he presented in Bathurst while deputy mayor and the investigations manager at the district police station ­before things started to go awry, but when he meets The Night Driver — a podcast by The Australian dedicated to unravelling the details surrounding ­Janine’s death — he is apprehensive. He wants to help catch her killer.

“Nobody besides the Vaughan family and myself want an outcome and an offender arrested for this more than what I do,” he says.

“It’s not just my mental welfare, my wellbeing, that’s on my mind — you know, that’s a big driving factor — but there’s another one that’s equally important to me … and that is consideration to the Vaughan family as well.

“They’ve gone through a hell of a lot; they don’t know where a loved family member of theirs is. They don’t have an outcome, they don’t have an answer, and I have strong sympathy towards that family in that regard.

“All those feelings that I was having before, 18, 19 years ago, are starting to resurface and the anxiety within me is getting stronger. The publicity that something like (The Night Driver) is likely to generate means that I’m going to have to cope with that again.

“If I can go through some pain and we can get that result, and something comes forward which helps the police arrest the offender, it’s all going to be worth it.”

He says that 19 years of being accused of murder and corruption will change your character and your outlook.

Abduction and murder victim Janine Vaughan.

“When you’re going through this sort of process and it’s something that’s out of your hands, you keep telling yourself often that you’ll be all right,” he says.

“When this started for me, I was within that (police) environment, that’s what I used to do for a living. But it doesn’t prepare you for what it’s like on the other side.

“As many times as you take comfort in the fact that you haven’t done anything, and then you rely on that, you still have these dark moments where your mind just wanders to ‘what if?’ and ‘how did I end up here? And what’s the outcome going to be? Am I going to be all right? Am I mentally going to survive this?’

“When you’re in a small town … you have no anonymity, so every day you’re going through this, the impact on you mentally and to another extent physically is immense. It really takes some reckoning to deal with it. It hits you really hard.

“I’d wake up in the morning, 3 o’clock in the morning, for no reason because sleeping was difficult. Your eyes would fling open, you’d be instantly awake. You’d have this sense of dread. Before your feet hit the floor, it’s on your mind. You’re thinking about it. ‘How did I end up in this? This is so wrong.’ ”

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

Despite Hosemans’s deference for Janine’s family and their loss, the feeling has not always been mutual — and still changes from week to week.

Her younger sister, Kylie Spelde, still remembers the first time she met Hosemans at Bathurst police station about three weeks after Janine had gone missing.

The outgoing young blonde had last been seen getting in a red car with an unknown driver after leaving the Metro Tavern shortly before 4am on December 7, 2001, and Kylie was checking in to see if there had been any breakthroughs in the investigation.

“When I first went into the police station and I was told that this is Brad Hosemans, the conversation went, ‘Oh, hi. Obviously, I’m Kylie. Janine’s sister. You knew my sister,’ ” she says.

“He said, ‘No, I’ve never met her.’ And that’s exactly how he said it to me. ‘No, I’ve never met her.’ And I just sat there thinking, ‘OK, that’s, you know, not what I had heard from my mum.’ ”

Hosemans could not know it at the time but this comment by him had a significant impact on Kylie and the rest of Janine’s family.

It would sow confusion and then mistrust because Janine had spent the weeks leading up to her disappearance telling family and friends that Hosemans was pursuing her in a way that suggested they had at least met each other.

“You know Janine had come home in that November and said to Mum, ‘Oh, just my luck. This guy’s interested in me and he’s the police officer,’ ” Kylie says.

“I already had that knowledge in my head of this person. So when they introduced me to him, it was him pretty much saying straight to my face, ‘No, I’d never met her.’ ”

While Hosesmans has never denied knowing who Janine was, he has always maintained they never actually spoke or had any interaction with each other.

Both a high-profile coronial inquest and a public Police Integrity Commission probe would support his claim, finding there was no evidence to suggest Hosemans was involved in Janine’s disappearance or that they had ever met.

Still, his outright denial did not sit well with Janine’s family, and her father, Ian, immediately went to see the boss of the homicide squad to demand Hosemans be taken off the investigation.

“I said, ‘He shouldn’t be on this case; I want him off. I want him off,’ ” he tells The Night Driver.

There was no pushback by police and Hosemans was gone, his withdrawal from the case fuelling speculation around town that he was responsible. Even former friends, such as Nicole Nolan, became convinced he was the killer.

“I have terrible guilt,” she tells The Night Driver. “I said to him, ‘Janine is single. Why don’t you ask her out?’ And now she’s gone. I’ll feel bad about that for the rest of my life. I do keep her in my prayers and say that I’m sorry I ever mentioned to ask her out.

“Things have gone astray, really wrong, from the beginning. His name was mentioned in the beginning. Why did he then investigate the case? Why did he investigate then? That’s not right. And that makes me feel sad and sick.”

Suggesting Hosemans is innocent does not go down well with many in Bathurst, particularly when it comes from the police. Brad Taylor knows from experience the former detec­tive’s accusers take it as proof of a cover-up.

He used to work alongside ­Hosemans at Bathurst’s police station and is one of the few people to openly stand by him.

“The bloke got run out of town. It was just relentless. He could have been handing out money, and people, they wouldn’t have bloody taken it off him,” he says.

“Not too many people that have stuck up for the bloke but that’s just what your mates do, you stick up for each other. The dramas and the crap that he’s been put through, it has changed him. You can only be stoic for so long.”

Taylor is dismissive of the murder allegations against Hosemans and the idea the town’s cops were in on an elaborate conspiracy to protect him, describing both accusations as equally ridiculous.

“If that was the case, could you imagine how many people must have been involved in that to make that a plausible scenario? And the levels of people that must’ve been involved?” he says.

“If you’re one of these people that thinks the Earth’s flat, well, you just keep thinking it’s flat, it doesn’t matter what you hear or what evidence you get, you go, ‘Oh the Earth’s still flat.’ ”

Having spent so much time fixated on Hosemans during the past two decades, Janine’s sister Kylie ultimately hopes he still has some role to play in solving the mystery, perhaps as someone who just might be able to crack the case.

“We were always talking to (police) about Hosemans because Hosemans’ name was always brought up. People would say, ‘It’s that copper, it has to be that copper,’ ” she tells The Night Driver.

“So many people were so out to get him that they missed so much of what evidence could have still been there and leads they may have had because everyone was so focused on this police officer.”

As for Hosemans, the betrayal he feels by the town he dedicated his life to serving has left a scar that might never fade.

“I was a deputy mayor contributing to my community and doing a really good job for my community and trying to make it a better place,” he says.

“Either putting shitheads in jail or trying to get parks and swings (put in) and everything else that councillors do. Then you’ve got to sit here and try and defend yourself down the track because some dickhead thinks, ‘Oh yeah, Hosemans did it.’

“At the end of it, you just think, ‘F..k me. Was it worth it?’ ”