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#truecrime + #history Exploring the unsolved & unexplained at the heart of a nation. Season 1 - Keren Rowland: The 50-year mystery. Over half a century, within the orbit of the Australian capital, Canberra, there have been multiple mysterious disappearances and murders specifically of young women. Each remains unsolved. Many of them bear chillingly similar hallmarks to each other, heightening the gnawing dread: could any of them be linked in the most insidious manner? This podcast is an original, in-depth investigation into all of the cases. Someone out there knows the truth. This is the chance to discover it.
Capital Crime Files - Prelude
Created & hosted by journalist, history investigator & author, Nichole Overall.
It’s a scenario urban legends are built upon: a young woman drives alone along a deserted, darkened stretch of road under a moonless sky. Suddenly, unexpectedly, her car stutters to a halt. She allows it to coast off the bitumen onto the verge. Close by, she can make out the gentle ebb of murky water where it touches the lake shore.
Otherwise, all is still.
No phones, no petrol station and literally, nobody.
Turning off George Harrison warbling from the radio that he really wants to see you, Lord, she can't quite fathom how she could be out of fuel.
Sitting there in gloom broken only by two small orbs feebly projected from the front of her Mini Minor, she ponders her limited options.
Seemingly in response, lights appear through the rear window. They blink as they draw nearer - until she realises she’s closing her eyes each time she exhales.
A dark, bulky vehicle she finds difficult to identify, glides past. It’s strangely quiet for the size. At first she thinks it’s not going to stop. Then, jerkily, it pulls over. She’s sure the slight tremor creeping from the tiny hairs at the base of her neck down her spine is relief.
As the car idles in front of her, the solitary silhouette she can just make out sitting in the driver’s seat is unmoved.
Squinting through her windscreen into the distance beyond, a faint, sunrise-like tinge indicates the city centre. She feels it might be near enough for her to walk. The darkness is close now though; heavily settled. The absence of street lights conceals the way forward and back.
It might not be safe to remain out here.
She takes a deep breath, surprised at the slight tang of pine needles that greets her, given huddled to the right of this road are an assortment of primarily gum trees with their peppermint scent.
Noticing her own headlights are still aglow, she kills them. Hesitantly reaches for her handbag from the otherwise empty passenger's side.
Stepping out of the car, she self-consciously pulls down the hem of her above-the knee, patterned dress; draws her cardigan more tightly about her. Pats her up-styled hair for which she'd given two hours of her day for a hairdresser to fuss over. Over-dressed only if not on your way to a party.
Fumbling with the keys - her shivering must be the dampness of the night air even though autumn is a month away - eventually she hears the soft click of the button locks popping into place.
Tentatively approaching the other vehicle, hunched in the inkiness like some monsterish spider, its only illumination, the faint reddish sheen of a dashboard light.
Startled by a sudden movement within, she wonders if it's a second figure - or only shadows jumping.
Almost there, she thinks she can faintly hear the tail-end of that song by the ex-Beatle, at the top of the charts for almost four weeks now, that she was listening to before. Surely it's been more than three minutes.
Catching what seems the faintest whiff of tobacco – menthol perhaps, but she's no expert. A twinge of concern that in her condition she shouldn't be in a confined space filled with cigarette smoke.
Before she can decide, another set of headlights flicker behind.
Like a nocturnal animal, she's caught.
The couple in this latest arrival can’t be sure if the hazy figure they think they spot turns back towards them or not.
By the time they’re close enough to illuminate the scene more fully, there’s no one and nothing there.
And this is no urban legend.
****
I’m Nichole Overall, social history investigator and author, and this is Capital Crime Files - exploring the unsolved & unexplained at the heart of a nation.
“The Australian capital is beautiful and is largely without problems that blight most other cities”.
Canberra Past, Present and Future.
Australian Government Publishing Services, 1972.
Canberra, heart of the Australian Commonwealth, the seat of government and a postcard-perfect capital.
A mindfully crafted, artfully constructed, modernist city of manicured streets and suburban serenity nestled in a bushland setting.
Its 2,280 kilometre squared radius – described by some as a misshapen ear – carved out of the south-eastern corner of First State, NSW; deliberately positioned some three hours from Sydney, seven hours from Melbourne and less than two to make the South Coast.
With a population of less than half-a-million in the year 2020, since its 1913 inception, violent crime has remained relatively uncommon.
Not though, unknown.
The first murder ever tried in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) was in 1932: a 25-year-old unemployed sheet metal worker, Bertram Porter, accused of poisoning his 11-month old son after his wife left him for another man.
By the middle of its sixth decade, the capital was rudely awakened with potentially its most shocking: the still unsolved abduction and heinously cruel murder of six-year-old Allan Redston in 1966.
There’s also been at least one local case of rape where the perpetrator, an ex-serviceman, was sentenced to hang. [link]
And then there’s the string of unsolved disappearances and deaths of young women within the orbit of the capital.
In its overall history, and sadly in line with other telling statistics, female victims of violent crime outnumber males.
Of the ten individuals on the current ACT Missing Persons list, seven are women who fit a quite distinct profile.
Of its six unsolved homicides nominated as under investigation, three involve women also of a particular demographic.
One of those so listed ranks as close to Canberra's most enduring unsolved mystery.
On a fine February evening in a Canberra within living memory, Keren Rowland, a 20-year-old receptionist, is on her way to meet up with friends.
She doesn’t arrive.
Her white Mini Minor is found abandoned - though locked - by the edge of the Lake around which the city is set.
She is never seen alive again.
Almost 50 years on, the who, what and why remain unanswered.
The chillingly similar hallmarks it bears to other regional cases that have occurred since heightens the gnawing dread.
Is there a possibility any of them might be linked in the most insidious fashion?
Among those on this unenviable list, 28-year-old “attractive” mother of three, Mary Bertram. On a Sunday afternoon in 1974, Mary left home never to return. Her naked, strangled body would be found in scrub on the capital's outskirts. No one has ever been charged.
A decade later, 17-year-old Megan Mulquiney vanished in broad daylight after her shift at a busy suburban shopping plaza. Her fate is still unknown.
And there are others.
What follows is an in-depth, original investigation into each of these disturbing situations.
My long-held interest is one of concern, empathy and maddening questions.
In a still relatively small place, many of those connected are personally known to me. In the same vein though more disturbing, what are the chances of having crossed paths with a faceless, nameless perpetrator – or perpetrators?
Theories, conjecture and various urban myths have inevitably arisen. Unsurprisingly, most stray widely from the often much harsher facts.
I’ve interviewed still grieving families and friends, their tragic losses and the lack of a resolution a never-ending, soul-burdening hurt.
I’ve tracked down witnesses and located those with memories of the times and events as they unfolded.
I’ve obtained court records, police statements, autopsy reports and coronial inquests.
I’ve combed historical articles and archival material.
And of course, I’ve compared it all to the speculation that’s proliferated with the arrival of an online, often anonymous world.
Jigsaw puzzles with pieces scattered by the passing of not just years but decades. Assembled to provide a more complete, accurate picture, for the first time.
Some names have been omitted or changed in the interests of privacy and to avoid any opportunity for the potential to prejudice a case should justice be served.
While my aim is to hopefully unearth a memory, a clue or a link that might reinvigorate and encourage reinvestigation, at the least, it’s also to honour the memories of those so lost and to fully impart the stories of lives and promise cut short.
Each of the tragedies has weighed heavily on the generally wholesome capital over all this time.
Someone out there knows the truth. This is the chance to discover it.
©Nichole Overall 2021