Barrenjoey Road 02 | Suspicious Minds

This is an ABC podcast.

If you haven't heard episode one of Baron Joey Road, go back and start with that.

Also, a warning.

From here on in, this podcast goes to some dark places.

When Trudy Adams disappeared from the side of Baron Joey Road in 1978,

local police quickly realised that they needed backup.

Just a few days after she was reported missing, missing, a homicide detective in the centre of Sydney got the call.

Yes, well, we were in the office at the old CIB, I think it was in Smith Street, and we were told there was a missing female on the northern beaches.

Gary Matthews is tall and friendly.

Like a lot of detectives back then, he was a smoker with a moustache.

He's still got the moustache.

I was sent over there to go over and assist

the local police and virtually take charge of the initial investigations.

In his entire career, Gary Matthews only worked on three cases that remain unsolved.

This is one of them.

But as he drove north in 1978 to start his investigation,

he had no idea how tough this case would be to crack or what sort of a world he was about to enter.

Yeah, I didn't know much about the northern beaches, so I wasn't up to date with the local culture at all.

I soon learnt, of course.

It was more a village atmosphere still over there around the Avalon Newport area.

That's how I found it to be.

And everybody sort of knew everybody.

As he started to investigate, he quickly realised that Trudy was not just a missing person.

My initial thoughts were, I mean,

there was no reason why she would leave home.

There's no reason why she hadn't turned up.

My views were at the time this was a murder.

That's right from the very beginning.

Virtually from the beginning.

This is Unravel Season 2, Baron Joey Road.

I'm Ruby Jones and I'm trying to find out what happened to Trudy Adams.

40 years ago, in the middle of the night, Trudy left a surf club on the northern beaches.

Trudy's boyfriend Steve said he saw her hitch a ride on Baron Joey Road.

But when police started investigating, they began to get suspicious about Steve.

He was the last person to see her.

Number one,

another point was that they had had an argument.

Within just a few days of Trudy disappearing, Steve Norris became a person of interest.

I'm on my way to meet Steve Norris.

He was her boyfriend at the time,

but I know from talking to Trudy's friends that they were in the process of breaking up, so he was pretty much her ex-boyfriend.

The breakup wasn't his idea.

He seems to have been really devoted to Trudy.

He doesn't live on the northern beaches anymore.

He's moved further north up the New South Wales coast.

And he's agreed to meet up with me and

tell me what he saw on the night that Trudy disappeared.

Steve Norris lives alone on a big block of land.

When I arrive, he comes out and greets me in front of the garage with a firm handshake.

He's blonde and he's dressed real casual, just a t-shirt, shorts and thongs.

And right next to us are some vintage motorbikes that he's been working on.

Yeah, a couple of old bikes, 55 Triumph.

How's it going here?

It goes good.

Yeah.

He goes nice.

Yeah, she's a thumper.

We walk through his house to his living room and as we sit down, I look around.

And I realise that the whole place is filled with 70s memorabilia.

When we used to go to concerts, Santana or somebody's playing in town, it would be $10 for the ticket, $10 for the bottle of Plonk and $10 for the budder stick.

I remember that clearly.

And you go and have a great time and you'd all drive home,

which you could in those days.

Yeah.

But no, it was all good fun.

It was a good area.

That's just unfortunate.

Steve so far has been pretty laid back and welcoming and chatty.

As we start talking about Trudy and that time, his tone becomes not exactly distant but matter of fact.

So what was what

place was your relationship in when she disappeared?

Well we sort of broken up but yet we were still on you know fairly good terms and I spoke to her that night at the surf club.

So we were fine.

It wasn't a nasty thing.

It was just a yeah we were just finishing.

The night that Trudy disappeared, Steve says he asked her for a dance and she said no.

Steve has always said their conversation was pretty friendly.

But the police at the time, like Detective Gary Matthews, got the idea that it was an argument.

It was definitely, that's my interpretation, my recollection of it was definitely an argument.

That's why she stormed off.

And he

then went looking for her.

So do you remember if it was him that said that there'd been an argument or who said it?

Oh, I'm quite sure he didn't deny it.

I've always believed there was an argument.

The media ran hard with what police said.

And this story about Trudy and Steve having a fight was everywhere.

Trudy left the dance after having an argument with her boyfriend and ran to nearby middle.

She'd been to a dance with two girlfriends and a boyfriend and left at about 11.30 after an argument.

I can see how they probably thought there was an argument, but there wasn't.

Look, I asked her for a dance.

She didn't, she said no, she's pretty right.

I don't remember there ever being any real words of any sort.

Steve says this was the last time he ever spoke to Trudy.

About 15 minutes later, just after midnight, Trudy decided to leave the surf club.

Steve says he saw Trudy walking away.

I looked around and couldn't see Trudy around and I don't, I just remember being at the top of the stairs where there's a window and that's when I looked out and saw her walking across the car park, which is quite a big car park, Newport Car Park.

Steve decides to follow Trudy.

She's just headstrong, out there, bang.

I'm hitching.

It's like, mate, what are you doing?

I'll hitch with you, you know.

But if I'm around, I'll always try to hitch with her, sort of thing.

And again, that's when I, at night, that's why I probably did that.

By the time I'd gotten down to the bottom of the stairs, she was pretty much on the road hitching.

And that's where I saw a car, like I say, virtually straight away.

I picked her up.

Otherwise, I would have got to her.

40 years on, Steve says his memory of that car is crystal clear.

Still today, I can almost just see it.

And it was just a standard panel van, Holden Panel van, which was an HQ sort of thing.

I could even see the tail lights and I saw that it didn't have windows in the side so it almost looked like a trady type one.

Rough looking, wasn't flashy.

Because on the northern beaches you see Sandman panel vans, all the flash.

This was just a standard.

So I could see all that and I can still see it today.

And it was a beigey colour.

At this point, Steve says he wasn't overly worried, just a bit concerned about Trudy hitching on her own.

He says he wants to make sure that she's okay, that she gets home safe.

So he stands in the same spot that she's just vanished from and sticks out his thumb.

Firstly Institute, I got picked up, I don't know, not that much longer.

This story is backed up by the guy who picked Steve up.

The pair head up Baron Joey Road through the Bilgola Bends, which is the name the locals use for the winding section of road that heads uphill towards the tip of the the peninsula.

There's scrub on one side and there's a steep drop to the ocean on the other side of the road.

And the drive is short.

Within 10 minutes they reach Avalon, which is where Trudy lives.

So yeah he dropped me off in Avalon near the crossroads.

I think he lived up Little Avalon, so he's chucked the right.

I dropped me off there and I just walked through Dunbar Park up Central Road where Trudy's mum and dad, where Trudy lived.

When he arrives, Connie, Trudy's mum, is still awake.

Trudy had asked her to wait up, but she hasn't arrived home.

Connie was up, yep.

I don't think, I don't remember, we talked briefly.

I think I might have even sat there for five or ten minutes with her.

And I think I just said, look, she's probably stopped at a friend's place on the way home, but.

Connie died 11 years after Trudy disappeared.

But Connie's account of that night matched up with Steve's,

with one exception.

She said Steve told her that it was a green combivan that Trudy got into, whereas Steve has always maintained that it was a beige panel van.

This goes on to cause a whole lot of confusion.

We'll come back to it in a later episode.

But that night, Steve tells Connie that Trudy has probably just gone to a friend's place.

He asks her for a cigarette.

and then he's on his way.

I was staying at my parents' place at Bungan Beach at the time, so I must have just made my way.

way.

I don't remember going back to the surf club dance after that.

So I just made my way home from Avalon back to Bungan.

The next day, Steve is at the birthday barbecue, the barbecue that Trudy really wanted to go to.

She didn't show up.

And then the shit hit the fan, as I'd call it, because phone calls are being made and all of a sudden Trudy hasn't come home yet.

Something's not right.

And then at that point, did you sort of start to realise that you might have been the last person to to see her?

Yeah, well, yes.

Yeah, I would have thought that straight away because I did see her get in that car.

As the days go by and Trudy doesn't turn up, Things aren't looking good for Steve.

His girlfriend has disappeared.

It turns out that he was the last person to see her.

No one else remembers that beige panel van.

So police are really sus and they begin to wonder,

could Steve, Trudy's devoted ex-boyfriend,

be involved in her disappearance?

Within a few days, Steve becomes a person of interest.

He was the last person to see her.

It was number one.

Another point was that they had had an argument.

So you would always sort of look close to home first.

There's a huge percentage of the murders that are committed are either close to home or they're associated.

And he finds himself being hauled into the police station over and over again.

I would have been pulled in for about four or five interviews and sometimes two o'clock in the morning they'd ring me up and say, Can you come in?

We need another statement.

So they wanted statement after statement after statement.

What sorts of things were they asking you to go over?

Oh, look, I can't remember, but they'd obviously just try to rev you up a little bit, argument types, things.

And we'd had probably a couple of arguments maybe in the two or three months before that.

So that will all get brought up.

And so there was always the good cop, bad cop type of thing where they just try to trip you up a little bit or something.

So police wanted to know about any arguments that the couple had had.

They'd been asking about whether there was a fight on the night that Trudy disappeared.

And then Steve told them about another argument, which had happened the week before.

Steve says now that he doesn't remember what started it.

I can't remember too much, but I remember it wasn't very pretty.

And so maybe I'm getting annoyed that we're breaking up or maybe, or she was, I was, I don't remember, but I just remember being around the back of her house and having a bit of an argument there.

It became so heated that Trudy's dad had to intervene.

He was known to everyone by his nickname, Edge.

Now, I remember Edge, I think, had asked me to leave.

And Edge said, look, Steve, I think you better go.

And I remember to leave him.

So, yeah, that was obviously a bit of a heated sort of argument.

Yeah.

As police do interview after interview with Steve, going over these so-called fights and asking him about the night that Trudy disappeared, they're struggling to come up with anything new.

Steve's story stays the same no matter how many different ways they ask him the questions.

I got annoyed a couple of times with certain police officers who thought, well, you're the coolest weight we've ever come across.

And they were sure it was me.

But again, it didn't bother me because I know I didn't and

I'll do everything I possibly can.

Steve keeps his call throughout these interviews, and eventually, police decide he doesn't have anything to hide.

You know, when a

person's being evasive or otherwise, he was trying to be helpful as much as possible.

He came across to me as a decent young kid, and I could find nothing that he said that was wrong.

While I was speaking with Steve at his house, I kept expecting to see glimpses of anger or frustration.

I thought that he would be pissed off that he had been a police suspect, and I thought that

he would be angry that people thought that he was capable of something as awful as murdering your girlfriend.

But I didn't see any of that really.

He came across as a really laid-back kind of a guy and I think that he'd made a conscious decision not to allow this to rile him up.

I don't know why, maybe I'm just that sort of person but it just not once did I get annoyed that people were saying or thinking.

Later down the track, even 15 years later and not that long ago, somebody's, oh, the murderer, they call me or something like this.

Well, I had to ring that book up and put him in his place because it's like, mate, you don't do that sort of shit.

You just don't say that.

And it's part of the reason that you have always been so happy to talk about it and, you know, open to doing media is because you feel that you know people know like you know that you're a suspect and so you want to be open so that people aren't suspicious.

Don't even think like that.

I don't think like that at all.

I do it for that reason.

I actually do it for Trudy.

I do it for her parents.

I do it for all her close friends.

That's the only reason I do it.

But I don't ever do it to try and let people know that it wasn't me or I don't care if they want to think that that's their problem.

It's not my problem.

They've got to live with that.

I'm fine with it.

As I'm leaving, Steve mentions that he actually has a whole stack of documents relating to Trudy's case.

They've been sitting in his shed for years, since 2011.

As someone who appeared at the inquest into Trudy's death, he was given a copy of all the evidence.

He digs out the documents and gives them to me.

All the interviews, all the minutes, all the everything pretty much in there.

Have you had a look through?

I've had a bit of a look through.

It's not exactly good reading for me, but it's not, you know, but I've had a look through, yeah.

But they were at a friend's place.

He was just looking after them for me.

Well, can we take them out and have a look?

These documents have never been made public before, and I was completely taken aback that he had them.

Some of them date back to the very day that Trudy was reported missing, and they show me exactly what the police were doing and thinking at every step of their investigation.

And for the next steps of my investigation, these documents are vital.

Back home in Sydney, I decide to drive up to the northern beaches.

I want to introduce myself to some people in the community,

see who remembers Trudy and put the word out that I'm looking into the case.

While I'm at the Baron Joey High School car park, looking over Avalon Beach, I get talking to this guy.

He's an old school surfer type, ponytail, tan.

He tells me that he actually arranged the surf club party on the night that Trudy went missing.

I actually organised the dance party that night at the surf club.

It was,

I can't remember if it was a Friday or Saturday night, but

it was

for the Boardwriters Club

and just a fundraiser.

And what sort of a night was it?

What sort of a party was it?

Oh, it was a great night.

And so how well did you know Trudy?

Very well, yeah.

She was in our group.

She was one of the girls that, you know, really

was just part of

our little group.

Peter doesn't remember seeing Trudy that night at the party, but they used to hang out in the same circles.

We just hung around the beach and went to parties, lots of parties.

We all knew each other.

It was a big local contingent of kids that grew up around here and

we all just used to party together, you know.

He says before Trudy disappeared, the group of friends they were really just all kids.

And up here on the northern beaches, they felt like they had this unlimited freedom.

It was

like the 60s in America, but we were doing it here in the 70s.

So it was, um,

yeah, as I say, a lot of partying,

a lot of recreational drugs,

you know.

But it wasn't sinister.

It wasn't like

organised crime or anything like that.

It was just a bunch of local surfers that used to just

bring in a bag of Buddhist sticks from overseas occasionally and everyone would know about it.

So it was all relatively harmless in that sense.

But after Trudy disappeared, police started to question how harmless the drug scene on the northern beaches really was.

There's something I've found in the original police files that Steve gave to me.

A document that shows police were investigating a link between Trudy and a known drug dealer.

It seems Trudy's name and phone number had been found in this drug dealer's diary.

I mean, that's weird, right?

Why would Trudy's name be there?

And the dealer, well, what he was known for was importing more than 16 kilos of Buddha sticks.

I think that's a lot of Buddha sticks.

I don't know, but that's what they used to call marijuana.

The dealer imported these Buddha sticks from Bali.

And you might remember, Trudy was planning a trip to Bali before she went missing.

So after she disappeared, people began to wonder if there was a connection and her mum Connie became convinced that there was.

Trudy, Connie claims, might have been killed because she refused to be a drug courier on a soon-to-be-taken trip to Bali.

I decided that she knew too much.

I asked Detective Gary Matthews about this drug runner theory.

And he told me that back in 78, he asked the Narcotics Bureau to look into it.

Gary wanted to know if Trudy's name had come up during any of their inquiries into drug trafficking.

He says he got on to a guy there called Mark Standon.

Standon told him that there was nothing in it.

No, there was no information.

When I say involved in drugs, I suppose

99% of the young ones over there were probably smoking pot and

so forth, but we're talking about serious offences.

Nothing like that came to light.

Gary says he ended up completely discounting the drug meal theory.

Oh, look, I think it was complete rumour.

Unfortunately, with inquiries like this,

you get all sorts of rumours that she left home because of her family.

She left home because of a boyfriend.

Everyone's trying to help, but

it's not firm information.

The police were struggling to find a reason why anyone would want to harm Trudy.

The short answer was that no one would.

They didn't think that she was caught up in anything heavy.

She was just a normal teenager enjoying her life.

The more I look at this case, the more I think that Trudy was probably killed by someone who she didn't know.

One of the biggest clues pointing in that direction came just days after Trudy disappeared.

It came in the form of a disturbing phone call.

It's 4.05 on the afternoon of Thursday, 29th of June.

Trudy's been gone for five days.

The phone rings at Trudy's house, and Trudy's mum, Connie, picks up.

The voice on the line is male and deep.

He says,

The body is halfway up Monaval Road.

He hangs up.

We don't know where the call came from or for what reason.

It was a most unusual sort of call, not one that would usually be made by an active criminal.

Ten minutes later, 4.15,

a male, deep voice, calls Monaval police station.

He says, The girl is dead.

It was an accident.

She's halfway up Monaval Road.

Unfortunately,

they hung up before you could find out more about it, but

it could have been made by the offender to throw us off the scent, or it could have been someone who had had genuine pangs of

guilt and all

remorse and wanted us to find the body.

So we took that as a lead.

Police are convinced the telephone calls were not from a sadistic hoaxer.

The caller indicated that he'd murdered Trudy and dumped her body off Monavale Road.

Acting on the latest information, they set up up a field headquarters on Mona Vale Road.

These phone calls change everything.

Police begin working on the theory that the caller was either there when something happened to Trudy or knows who was.

They take it extremely seriously.

And now they're looking for a body.

They launch a huge search.

Extra help is called for.

Police cadets arrive and the community rallies.

It's the biggest search in New South Wales history at the time.

The search began mid-morning off the Mona Vale Road at Terry Hills.

Ahead lay 150 square kilometres of thick bush reserve.

Mona Vale Road meets Barranjoy Road at the base of the peninsula.

It takes you inland away from the northern beaches.

It's surrounded by dense scrub.

100 police combed through bushland either side of the road, a 15 kilometre stretch.

They were joined by Council Rangers.

But by nightfall, there was still no sign of the Avalon teenager, so the search search will continue tomorrow.

I want to see the area that was searched for myself because I want to get a sense of the challenge that police were up against.

and just how thick the scrub really is.

So I've come out here with a former member of the homicide team.

Well I was thinking if we're in the bush don't wear shorts.

My wife said no.

Alan Herman coordinated the search for Trudy.

He decided which parts of the bush they would be going through each day.

We would line up along the roadway on Monaval Road and then move into the bush probably about

two meters apart

in the first line and then behind them was a similar line of personnel between the gaps of the two personnel in front.

It's real Australian bush.

It's tough and dry and difficult to walk through.

And there's so much of it.

The National Park stretches for 150 square kilometres.

That's almost three times the area of Sydney Harbour.

Police only searched a fraction of that though.

They prioritised areas of the park that could be reached by car.

And they searched in stages, doing sweeps along fire trails and bush tracks and near waterways.

It's needle in a haystack kind of stuff, looking for disturbed dirt, jewellery, anything that might have been dropped in the bush.

We did find

some clothing, bits and pieces of clothing.

Having in mind, once again, it was a bush and people would have a tendency to dump stuff in there.

We took possession of that clothing, took it back and showed Trudy's parents, but unfortunately nothing was identified that would tie us up with

Trudy.

Out there searching as well was Steve and Trudy's dad Edge.

Again, both the teenager's father and boyfriend were helping police even when the hunt switched to a section of thick bush off the Wedges Parkway.

You can actually see Steve in the news footage from that time as he joins the search.

He hasn't changed that much in 40 years.

He looks younger, obviously.

Longer hair, bit of a mullet.

He looks like your stereotypical blonde surfer.

He's just 22,

scouring the bush for his missing girlfriend.

And still searching was Trudy's boyfriend, Steve Norris.

I just hope that she's

got her somewhere.

That's the main thing.

I just hope we don't find anything at all, really.

How long have you been searching now?

About

over a week, a little over a week.

Today, Steve remembers picking Trudy's dad up every morning and making their way out to the scrub.

I was searching with him day in, day out.

I was there at his door when he said, 7 o'clock we're going, bang, we go at 7 o'clock.

They would spend the whole day looking.

I remember the police and the police academy.

They had their police academy guys in long lines searching.

But Edge and I would do quite a bit by ourselves and there were certain places that we felt maybe hadn't been searched.

We'd go look there, but just in the hope you'd see or find something.

Yeah.

Police were appealing for information through the media.

They were hoping that someone out there knew something.

Or even that the person who made the phone call might call back again and give them some more information.

But as the days passed, there was no call back

and there was no body found.

Trudy's friends and family were starting to get really desperate.

Trudy's mum Connie made a public plea for help.

If she is there,

lying out there, dead, I'd like to be able to bury her.

And

anyone can bury a dog, let alone a human being.

And he must be a Christian, at least.

If he said it was an accident, well, all right, but please come forward or anyone that may have been with him at the time.

While this search is underway, a woman comes forward with an allegation:

something that happened to her while hitchhiking on Baron Joey Road.

She tells police that a car with two men had pulled up.

The men had a gun.

They took her to bushland.

She could hear power lines crackling overhead

and the sound of water nearby.

The men raped her.

Then they took her name and address, told her not to say anything or they'd be back.

This had happened a couple of months earlier, but she was too scared to tell anyone

until Trudy disappeared.

A few days later,

another woman comes forward to police.

Then another.

And another.

In the next episode of Unravel, we explore evidence of a serial rapist on the northern beaches.

The seven rapes, all carried out by two men, all took place in the thick bush inland from the northern beaches.

The rapes were of such maniacal brutality that even now the police have refused to reveal details on or off the record.