New Somewhere Someone Knows Something book features murder case of Rhianna Barreau
A new book to be released next week features a chat with the former detective on the notorious Rhianna Barreau disappearance. And he’s aired a chilling theory and issued a final plea.
Retired South Australian homicide detective Allen Arthur had an instinct, a nagging feeling, whenever he thought about the disappearance of 12-year-old Adelaide schoolgirl Rhianna Barreau.
From the beginning, he’d known this wasn’t just a case of a lost child. It was something darker.
His gut instinct told him that the answer to Rhianna’s disappearance could be found within arm’s reach of where the schoolgirl lived.
Was it someone who also lived in her neighbourhood? Or was it a friend or someone who knew Rhianna?
Wednesday, 7 October 1992 began like any other in the quiet Adelaide suburb of Morphett Vale.
The air was filled with the subtle scents of spring, and for Rhianna, who was on school holidays, it should have been be a day filled with simple joys.
There was one thing on her mind: she needed to buy a Christmas card for her pen pal.
Rhianna’s mother, Paula, kissed her goodbye and left to attend a course she was completing at a local TAFE, with plans to meet up again for lunch at the local shopping centre Colonnades. It was to be an ordinary mother-and-daughter outing, and one that would allow Rhianna to buy that special Christmas card.
Rhianna was planning to catch the bus to the shops, but in a twist of fate, the local bus drivers were on strike that day.
However, the Reynella newsagency was a mere kilometre away, so the bright girl who loved listening to ‘Love Shack’ by the B52s decided to walk there and pick a card.
There was nothing risky in her outing. She left in broad daylight, in a safe neighbourhood, and the round trip would take no more than 30 minutes.
But when her mother returned home that afternoon around 4pm, the house at 47 Wakefield Avenue, Morphett Vale, was empty.
The television was on, and the Christmas card Rhianna had been so desperate to buy was lying on the dining table, still in its paper bag from the newsagency.
The only things missing were Rhianna’s set of house keys and Rhianna herself.
Thinking her daughter might have gone to a friend’s place, Paula called around to see if anyone had seen her, but no one had.
Paula hadn’t been concerned when Rhianna hadn’t turned up for lunch – it was school holidays and there was a bus strike – but now she started to feel worried.
She went door to door in the neighbourhood, asking if anyone had seen the 12-year-old, but Rhianna was nowhere to be found.
Panic set in, and at 6pm that evening Paula went to the local police station, frantic with worry, and reported her daughter missing.
Within 48 hours, the young girl’s disappearance had been declared a major crime. Veteran homicide squad detective Allen Arthur was put in charge of the investigation.
‘ONLY HER ABDUCTOR KNOWS’
Allen and I were sitting at the dining table in his house, nestled behind sand dunes on the south coast of Adelaide.
Allen was 83 years old, but there was still fight in the old cop and a burning desire to see justice for Rhianna and her family after decades of not knowing what had happened to her.
“Rhianna Barreau sticks in my mind,” he said, his voice quavering.
“I travel in the area where she was living, and I keep looking at the paddocks and thinking, I wonder which paddock she might be in? It’s probably one of the most terrible investigations I was involved in, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to solve it.”
In the first couple of days of the investigation, Allen had been able to construct a timeline of Rhianna’s last known movements on the day she went missing, based on witness reports.
At 10.30am she left her home, likely heading to the Reynella Shopping Centre.
Records showed she bought a card at the newsagency at 11.19am.
Later, around midday, she was seen taking a shortcut through the grounds of two local schools: Morphett Vale High and Stanvac Primary.
Witnesses told police they saw her carrying a small bag, which was presumed to contain the Christmas card she’d just bought.
That card was found on the dining room table in her home, proving she returned to her house. But what happened next is a mystery that only her abductor knows.
At the time, the city of Adelaide was grappling with devastating floods, stretching police and other emergency services, but Allen remembered that every available resource was mobilised to search for the 12-year-old.
The investigation involved more than 70 police and volunteers, who combed through dumps, landfill and bushland for any trace of the young girl.
Among those on the ground searching was Rhianna’s father, Leon, desperate to find his daughter yet weighed down by the terrible reality that she might be gone forever.
He made an appeal during a local news interview, his words heavy with resignation.
“What I would really like is to have a policeman knock on our door and say that we will get her back in one piece, but the reality of that, I think as everybody knows, is fairly insignificant.”
Police searched backyards, parks and creeks and door-knocked the whole neighbourhood, interviewing anyone who might have seen or heard something. But there was no sign of Rhianna.
In a city notorious for child abductions, the spectre of past unsolved missing children’s cases loomed large: the Beaumont children in 1966, the Family Murders in the 1970s and 1980s, and the abduction of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon from Adelaide Oval in 1973.
Paula clung to the hope that her daughter might return, that it was all some terrible mistake. “Please come forward,” Paula pleaded through tears on the nightly news. “I just want my daughter back. It’s not the same at home.”
The pressure on police was immense. They worked tirelessly to solve the case, following up more than 1600 tip-offs from the public.
They set up a mannequin at the shopping centre where Rhianna had been meant to meet her mum for lunch.
It was dressed in the same clothes Rhianna had worn on the day she vanished. They even had Rhianna’s friend, Danielle, dress as Rhianna and retrace the missing girl’s last known steps.
It must have been a heart-wrenching sight, watching this young girl who had just lost her best friend bravely walk the same path her friend had taken, hoping it would yield some clue.
Police also tried to track down a suspicious car witnesses had reported seeing in the area, a white Holden Torana with Victorian number plates.
Toranas were a popular mid-sized muscle car at the time. Police released details of the car to the public and were inundated with reported sightings.
Despite a nationwide search, neither the car nor its driver was ever found.
‘SOMEONE LIVING NEARBY’
“We did everything we could,” Allen lamented. “We were working 17 hours a day and it went on and on until we had to take a break. Every phone call we received we analysed, every comment was rehashed, just in case the person responsible was making a phone call [to throw the cops off the trail], but nothing came of it.”
Another tip came from a payphone, the caller reporting he had found a set of keys in a driveway matching the description of the keys Rhianna had with her when she went missing. But the witness claimed that by the time he returned to retrieve the keys they were gone.
The more Allen probed, the more he became convinced that Rhianna had been taken. “Someone close,” he told me. “Someone living nearby.”
Allen believes that someone had been watching her, someone who saw an opportunity and acted upon it.
“She was on her own, walking her suburban street,” he surmised, “and going by pictures of her at that age, she was an attractive young child, and without any doubt in my mind, someone saw that she was attractive and decided to take advantage.
“They’re just garbage people,” he said, shaking. “The problem is they don’t look any different from most people. They target their victim, and then they strike.”
“Do you think there’s a chance that Rhianna could still be alive?” I asked Allen.
“I don’t think so, no, no, I’m sorry. I wish I could say she is, but it’s very hard to keep someone locked away for more than 30 years. My feeling is that the person or persons responsible for her disappearance would have used her and then killed her.”
‘PICK THE DAMN PHONE UP’
Allen Arthur is now nearing the end of his life, but he has one wish he wants to fulfil, one last critical investigation to solve.
He must find out what happened to the bright-eyed girl who went shopping then disappeared without a trace.
He knows the chances are slim, but he holds on to the hope that someone, somewhere, knows something, perhaps a piece of information that has been kept secret for decades, or a memory that might unlock the truth.
Over the years relationships may have soured or twisted, loyalties may have unravelled, and it might now be time to do the right thing. Do you remember being told something by a partner or hearing a workmate or friend say something while drunk that has always stuck in the back of your mind as being odd or disturbing?
It may seem like nothing, but it could be the missing piece of the puzzle that helps to solve Rhianna’s disappearance.
It’s so long ago that there is every chance that whoever is responsible for snatching her is dead.
But just in case they are alive and are reading this book, I have a message for them.
You may have got away with your heinous crime for more than 30 years, but don’t think the police have given up on catching you.
Rhianna’s case is still an active investigation, and one day the authorities will knock on your door and haul your perverted self off to jail.
There’s a $1 million reward on offer for anyone who comes forward with information that leads to the conviction of the person or persons responsible for Rhianna Barreau’s disappearance.
Allen Arthur has this heartfelt plea.
“Pick the damn phone up. Ring major crime. I plead to people with information that might assist the police, to pick up the phone. Make the move, please, I beg you.”
This is an edited extract from Someone Somewhere Knows Something by Meni Caroutas, due to be published by HarperCollins on July 2.
Originally published as New Somewhere Someone Knows Something book features murder case of Rhianna Barreau
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