Last Seen Katoomba 04 | The Best Friend's Boyfriend

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This podcast contains some strong language and descriptions of violence.

In the months before she disappeared, Belinda Peasley talked about being afraid.

And in the inquest into her disappearance, one name kept coming up.

Belinda spoke to docs workers about Jeremy and the fact that he was violent and destroyed things in her house.

Oh, well, she rang asking me to come up there that Jeremy Douglas was smashing the house up and he was going to kill her.

So far in this podcast we've heard about four of the six persons of interest in Belinda's case.

In this episode we look at Jeremy Douglas, Heidi's former boyfriend, a man Belinda said she was afraid of.

Amanda described at Belinda's inquest as someone with a reputation for being volatile and violent.

Jeremy has a very short temper.

I call Jeremy the mask manipulator.

Now why did you leave the Blue Mountains?

I was scared of Jeremy.

Had he threatened you in the past?

Yes.

I remember Jeremy coming in a red jag to Belle's house, made a few threats.

I'm Gina McEwen and this is Unravel.

In the last few months of Belinda's life, Jeremy Douglas was hanging around at her place, and Belinda didn't like it.

One person she confided in around this time was Joe Ravisi.

Mr.

Ravisi, I ask you to speak slowly and clearly.

Everything you say will be recorded.

What's your full name?

Joseph John Ravisi.

Joe remembers when he and Belinda became friends.

It was a rainy day in Katoomba and he spotted Belinda walking on her way back from the shops.

She was struggling to juggle her son Cody in one arm and shopping bags in the other.

Joe stopped and asked if Belinda wanted to lift home.

She agreed and from then on they were friends.

Because you know I did have a soft spot for Belinda and for Cody and she was a single mum.

Sitting at Belinda's inquest, Joe appears tense.

He swings in his chair from side to side as he remembers when he warned Belinda not to tell people people about the money she'd inherited.

Problem is, she told everyone she got an inheritance.

So I said, it's a silly thing you shouldn't have told anyone.

That's why you get a lot of hangers on.

You know, they hang on, they try and get a piece of your pie.

Joe says he used to hang out at Belinda's house and remembers people coming and going, often staying over or using it as a place to crash.

He saw the house becoming more chaotic.

She just didn't like the whole situation where like people just rocked around there, did their thing.

It was pretty much a drop-in centre and you know for a lot of people she got associated with in the wrong crowd.

To some extent Joe was a part of that wrong crowd Belinda associated with.

Joe says he mainly used speed around this time and he says Belinda was mainly into speed as well.

In fact he said she hated heroin.

even though she used it.

How do you know she hated using heroin?

Because she told me.

She didn't like the idea of heroin altogether.

But

if that's so, did she tell you why she did use heroin from time to time?

Mainly because if she was awake,

couldn't sleep, she would use heroin to

come down

if she was wired for a few days or whatever.

And did she ever obtain drugs from Jeremy, do you know?

Yes.

What kind of drugs?

Just be.

That I know of.

In In an interview with police, Jeremy denied selling drugs to Belinda or even using drugs with her.

And he denied ever asking her for money.

But Joe Ravisi says that some people were trying to get money out of her.

And did she tell you that people were hassling her to

give them money?

Yeah, buy drugs.

Or buy drugs for them.

And did she tell you that she did that, that she was buying drugs for people?

Well, she was buying drugs and shouting.

Everyone there, so she was getting people to get the drugs and then she was giving it to whoever.

Word of that kind of generosity would have likely spread pretty quickly among a small community of drug users.

But records show in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, just six months after moving to Katoomba, that 30 odd thousand left over from her inheritance was basically gone.

Joe's evidence was that Belinda had become worried about people potentially getting hold of what little she had left.

She was

worried about her key card quite a bit.

What did she say about it?

She was being stolen?

She's worried about being stolen.

By whom?

Or by just anyone in general.

People she didn't trust.

So she was concerned that the people in her house were trying to get money from her, is that right?

That's right, yeah.

Joe says Belinda was done with how these people treated her and her place.

She was quite sick of this.

A lot of people were just dropping in and using her place as she referred to.

Feels like my place is a public toilet.

She said I was sick of it.

Yeah, sick of people just coming over and

using drugs and then, you know.

And did she tell you if she was sick of particular people coming over?

Yes.

And who were they?

Jeremy.

It was Jeremy and the guy we're calling Luke, another person of interest whose real name we've beeped.

That's who Joe says used to come around to Belinda's house.

You've already heard Heidi in the last episode describe how Jeremy would come looking for her at Belinda's place.

I just remember him bashing on the door and Belinda telling him to go away.

When Jeremy did come in, Belinda made it known that she didn't want him there.

Did you ever hear Belinda say to Jeremy, I don't want you around in my house?

Yes.

And what did Jeremy say?

I'm not sure.

But you're saying Jeremy disrespected that wish.

How did he indicate to you that he disrespected Belinda's wish that she didn't want to come around in the house?

By not leaving the house.

He would just come and go because he was a very disrespectful person.

So there are stories involving Jeremy and sometimes Luke coming around to Belinda's house when they weren't welcome.

At the inquest, Luke denied standing over Belinda.

and he denied ever going to Belinda's house with Jeremy.

But there's one particular incident that sticks in Joe Ravisi's mind and he remembers it because it's the last time he ever spoke to Belinda.

It was a conversation he says they had over text message.

And then she said, I've got to go, someone's at the door.

I said, okay, who is it?

Call me back when

they're gone or whatever.

And she goes, oh,

those people are back.

Like, you know, they're at the door.

And I said, oh, yeah, who is it?

And he said, oh, Jeremy,

they're at the door.

I said, oh, okay.

No worries.

I'll

talk to you later.

And then that was it.

Joe doesn't remember exactly when this text conversation happened, but he thinks it was around the time Belinda disappeared.

By the time Joe told this story to police, the text were gone.

So we don't know for sure when that conversation happened.

About two years after this, Joe heard a story about what might have happened to Belinda.

A story he eventually told police, and as a result, he got harassed in the lead up to Belinda's inquest.

Doesn't matter what you say you're assisting police, right, trying to get clarity for the family, closure for the family, but you get tarnished as a dog.

I get whistled at walking down the street.

I get threatened.

The story he told police is one that you heard in our last episode.

It's the story told at the inquest that involved Jeremy, Luke, Heidi and Belinda in a car around the time Belinda disappeared.

According to the story, things started getting ugly and Heidi was so scared that she jumped out at a stop sign and ran.

At the inquest, both Heidi and Luke denied this ever happened.

But Joe heard this story from the same person you did, Carla Priestley.

What did Carla Priestley tell you about that?

Well,

yeah, what happened?

She said

she was around at her place, and

Heidi rocked up, all

erratic,

in a state, and

said something about they were in in Jeremy's jag

and

they were with

and they had Belinda in the car and

Heidi jumped out and took off.

And did Carla tell you anything about what Heidi had said had happened in the car?

No.

No, just that Heidi jumped out because she freaked out for some reason.

Joe started dating Carla in the early 2000s, a couple of years after Belinda vanished.

Joe says when he heard this story, he remembered that last text message conversation he'd had with Belinda.

Didn't you connect the information that Carla had been told by Heidi and the text messages you got on your mobile phone?

And I was like, oh, Jesus,

you know, wow, this is full on, you know?

What was full on?

It was basically the penny dropped, you know.

What do you mean by the penny dropped?

Well, the penny dropped.

All the dots sort of connected a little bit and I was like, Jesus, what do I do?

He knew the information might be important, but he didn't want to be the one to tell police.

I mean, I know it's a bit of information, but there is

a,

like,

if you speak up

against anyone, you know, whether it be allegations or fact,

you know, you get marked.

You get called a dog.

You get threatened.

And is that the reason you didn't tell the the police about that mobile?

Later, Joe changed his mind and decided to go to the police.

And he believes that's why he ended up being harassed before he took the stand at Belinda's inquest.

Around the time Belinda disappeared, Jeremy Douglas was known to drive a red jag.

And in the days after she vanished, a red jag was spotted parked right outside her house.

Belinda's neighbor at the time, Ian Griffiths, says the car was hard to miss as it blocked him getting into his place.

I spoke with Ian on Belinda's street, just outside where he used to live.

The red jag was always parked here in front of this driveway

and it was quite annoying because it had blocked my turn into the

into my back gate.

The police investigation established that Jeremy Douglas was the owner of this red jag.

They found out that he got the car 11 days before Belinda disappeared.

So why was the jag parked outside Belinda's house in the days after she disappeared?

In the house right next to Belinda lived an older lady named Ray Morris.

There was no dividing fence between hers and Belinda's, so Ray had a clear sightline to everything that was going on.

Within days of Belinda going missing, Ray saw some people in a flash red car taking items from the house.

Ray's story lined up with what Heidi told the inquest, that Jeremy had told her he was going to Belinda's house to steal things.

He was talking about, oh I'm going to go and steal Belinda's washing machine, I will try and talk him out of it.

And he would just be like, oh

it doesn't matter, it's gone anyway or whatever.

I'm just going to go and take it and I would say no please don't take it.

You don't know that.

In statements to police, Jeremy has denied taking anything from Belinda's house.

He told police he remembers going to the house to help Heidi move her stuff out, and he thought this might have been after Belinda disappeared.

But Heidi says he did steal Belinda's stuff, and not just the washing machine.

She says he also took the fridge and freezer.

To Heidi, it seemed like Jeremy knew Belinda wasn't coming back.

Because he always used to talk about her like she was gone.

Whenever I would talk to him about her, he would be like constantly saying, well, she's not coming back, we'll just go and steal a washing machine.

I used to think, how the fuck do you know that?

How do you know she's not coming back?

Within 12 days of Belinda disappearing, Jeremy sold his jag.

Many years later, it was repossessed and forensically examined by police, but as far as I can tell, nothing was found.

Among the thousands of documents at the coroner's court that make up the brief of evidence for Belinda's inquest, I found an interesting story about Jeremy Douglas.

A story about a human skull.

It's laid out in the statement of Detective Diane Earhart.

For a short period of time, Jeremy apparently had hold of a human skull.

Several witnesses cited Jeremy with the skull, and a witness we've chosen not to name said Jeremy referred to this skull as his girlfriend.

And several people told detectives that Jeremy would talk about how he'd blow smoke into the mouth of the skull.

One witness told a detective that Jeremy had found the skull when he was ferreting around under the Katoomba Masonic Centre, just off the main highway through the Blue Mountains.

The cops did a sweep underneath the Masonic Centre, and two officers, who happened to be Masons themselves, attended the scene.

One of these officers later provided a statement saying things like human bones were traditionally used in Freemason rituals, but they said the Masons no longer use real human bones in their ceremonies.

Along with the skull, police found two femur bones from different people under the Masonic Centre.

Exactly who these bones belong to remains a mystery.

Someone who knew Jeremy surrendered the skull to police.

The police determined that the skull was not Belinda's.

Now, that story might make Jeremy seem like a guy who has a dark sense of humor.

But as the inquest heard, he was dangerous and violent towards women.

The lead investigator's notes from Belinda's inquest describe Jeremy as extremely, quote, untruthful, unreliable, and violent towards the women he assumes ownership over.

Because of this, the police considered a scenario that Jeremy and Belinda might have had some kind of intimate history, which could have made him become controlling of Belinda.

This possibility was raised by Heidi Wales, who told police, quote, I think that's why she hated his guts.

Heidi went on to say to the investigator that if Jeremy had slept with Belinda, he might treat her differently afterwards because, quote, he's very possessive, he thinks he owns you.

At the inquest, lawyer Phil Strickland raised the theory with Heidi as she was giving evidence.

Did you have a belief, or did you know that Belinda had ever had sex with Jeremy Douglas?

I don't know, I wondered, but and why did you wonder?

Because of the arguments that they had.

Yes, go on.

I didn't, you know, it was just a thought I had

once or twice.

What were the arguments they had that made you think that they'd had sex together?

I guess sometimes

maybe

Jeremy trying to

control or manipulate situations maybe

made me kind of think and

please it was I would only would only thought it once or twice I never said it to anybody else I don't know if I said anything to Belinda about it.

There's no solid evidence to suggest Belinda and Jeremy ever had that kind of relationship but we do know that Jeremy has a history of being violent and short-tempered with his partners.

Sarah Morford knows this firsthand.

She had a relationship with Jeremy between 2004 and 2006, and they have a daughter together.

Sarah's pale with lip piercings and long black hair.

As Sarah's called to give evidence and takes her seat in the stand, she sits defiantly as Jeremy watches on, just meters away across the room.

And I have to warn you, the things she's about to describe are quite disturbing.

Jeremy has a very short temper.

The nature of the relationship, I guess we just.

Let me think.

Well, I guess I can list the acts of violence.

When I was three months pregnant with our daughter, he got upset because he lost something and it ended in a situation where he held me down on the bed and punched me in the face.

I guess there was another time he held my head down on the kitchen table

because I told him to find his own socks.

There was another time I was forced to barricade myself in the bedroom because he was throwing knives.

It emerges over the course of Belinda's inquest that these patterns have played out between Jeremy and most of his exes.

All of them describing a petty argument followed by a terrifying outburst of rage.

Well, the first time was the punch in the face.

The second was the throat strangling at seven months pregnant.

The next one was I refused him entry into the house, so he tried to kick the door in.

I was really scared.

By which time our baby was little and she was only eight weeks old.

And he came around the side of the house and he was trying to smash down the side of the

side door and rattle.

I don't know, it was pretty frightening because Jeremy can be pretty intense.

Another of Jeremy's ex-girlfriends appeared at the inquest.

As she gives evidence, Renata Harper seems more worn, tired, and nervous than Sarah.

Renata and Jeremy were together from 2008 for two or three years, but then she left town.

Now, why did you leave the Blue Mountains?

Because

I was scared of Jeremy.

And why were you scared of Jeremy?

Well, I was just scared of it.

Is that because he had

assaulted you in the past?

Yes.

Had he threatened you in the past?

Yes.

Are you okay to continue?

You're like a bit of a break.

We're okay.

You took an AVR out against him, is that right?

Yes, I did.

And

has he ever threatened to strangle you?

Yes.

Has he ever threatened to kill you?

Yes.

And did you take those threats seriously?

Yes.

Why do you think I moved?

I lived here for 13 years.

When Renata and Jeremy were together, Renata remembers him saying something chilling about Belinda.

It was a conversation they had walking up to Katoomba Hospital to to get a dose of methadone.

They were walking along a route they often took that went past Katoomba Tip.

Were there occasions in when Jeremy said something about Belinda during those walks?

Yes, he said

when we passed a certain area, he said that he felt that Belinda's body was in the bush.

Renata says Jeremy said this to her at least three times during their relationship.

And which particular area did he say that?

Just passed the tip.

He had a bad feeling that she's there, that her body was there.

That's what he said?

Yeah.

Did he ever tell you

why

he believed or felt that the body was in that particular place?

No, he didn't tell me, he just felt it.

He didn't tell me why.

What did you say to him?

Well I said well if you think she's there why don't you go to the police and tell them?

And what did he say to that?

Well he said the police wouldn't believe me.

Eventually police spoke to Renata and she told them about Jeremy's bad feeling.

His feeling that Belinda's body was at Katoomba tip.

A police officer made a record of what Renata said.

But then about two years later, when this is read back to Renata at Belinda's inquest while Jeremy's in the courtroom, Renata denies saying a bunch of the things that the police wrote down.

He has recorded in his statement that you said to him, yeah, the girl they put at the tip at Katoomba.

That's not true.

And that he he then said, What was that?

And you said, The girl that Jeremy and his mate put at the tip?

That's not true.

I did not say that.

I did not say that.

That is not true.

Has Jeremy ever told you that

he

was the person, or he and a mate of his was the person?

No.

Who put...

I've got to finish the question.

Who put Belinda

at the tip or in a block of land near the tip?

No.

This isn't the only time Jeremy's reportedly told a story involving Belinda and Katoomba Tip.

The lead investigator in Belinda's case said in her summary for the brief of evidence that over the years, Jeremy Douglas has tried to deflect any possible involvement in Belinda's death.

by suggesting a number of people were responsible.

One of those people Jeremy suggested was involved was a local man from the Blue Mountains.

The scenario was that on the night Belinda disappeared, Belinda had gotten a ride on the back of this man's motorbike, fell off, hit her head, and he disposed of her body somewhere near Katoomba Tip.

The theory was investigated by police and the man spoken to, but he was never even considered a person of interest in Belinda's case.

The lead investigator noted in her summary to the inquest that Jeremy appears to have been the one who started and perpetuated the rumor.

The investigator said that over the course of her investigation, Jeremy's come up with theories about at least four people who could be responsible for Belinda's disappearance or death.

Detective Earhart concludes in her summary statement ahead of the inquest that it's her opinion that, quote, there was a significant likelihood that Jeremy Douglas had direct or indirect involvement in the disappearance of Belinda Peasley.

At Belinda's inquest, Jeremy Douglas sat only a few meters away from Belinda's family.

As the inquest progressed, more and more evidence emerged raising suspicions about Jeremy's potential involvement in Belinda's disappearance.

After 15 long years and two police investigations, Belinda's family and friends thought there might finally be some answers.

And after hearing all the evidence about Jeremy at the inquest, the family wanted to hear what he had to say.

When Jeremy was called to give evidence, he stalked towards the witness box.

On the video recording, there's barely a sound as he walks towards the front of the courtroom.

Silence, please.

Do you swear by Almighty God that the evidence you shall give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Have a seat.

Please state your full name.

Jeremy Ward Douglas.

But any hope of hearing from Jeremy was quickly shut down.

I understand that you wish to exercise your right to object in accordance with with section 61 of the Coroners Act to answering any questions concerning that matter.

Jeremy didn't give evidence at the inquest.

Counsel assisting the coroner, Phil Strickland, explains why this decision was made.

In my opinion, the coroner's decision not to compel Jeremy Douglas to give evidence was the correct one because the coroner

thought that if new evidence was discovered either after Jeremy gave evidence or

after the inquest finished

there's new evidence against Jeremy Douglas which led to him being charged and then later prosecuted for murder or manslaughter

then by compelling him to give evidence that would had the real potential to contaminate the criminal trial.

This means that if new evidence emerged during the inquest that incriminated Jeremy, it would risk being unusable if there was a criminal trial after the inquest.

We've tried to get in touch with Jeremy to put questions to him, but we haven't gotten a response.

In the evidence at the inquest, we heard Jeremy was a violent drug user with a macabre sense of humour.

But none of these things are conclusive evidence in themselves that Jeremy was involved in Belinda's disappearance.

In the end, the coroner found the available evidence to be inconclusive, but he did say that the evidence raised some considerable suspicion as to the possibility of Jeremy, Heidi and Luke having knowledge and or involvement in Belinda Peasley's disappearance and or death.

Next, on the final episode in this season of Unravel, we meet the man we're calling Luke, the other person who allegedly came knocking on Belinda's door with Jeremy.

And when Luke was called to the stand, unlike Jeremy, he didn't stay silent.

Why don't you just charge me with murder and we'll go to a fucking trial and I'll have a solicitor and we'll take it from there.

If you think I've done something wrong, charge me with murder.

Go on, do it.

Do you have the balls to fucking charge me with something or leave me alone?

Get every episode of Unravel by downloading the ABC Listen app or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

If you know anything about this case, get in touch by emailing unraveled truecrime at abc.net.au.

And if this episode has raised any issues for you, please contact your family and domestic violence support services.

In Australia, for confidential counselling and support, you can contact the National Helpline for Family and Domestic Violence.

1-800-RESPECT, 1-800-737-732.

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