This is an ABC podcast.

If you haven't heard episode one of Baran 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 realized that they needed backup.

Just a few days after she was reported missing, a homicide detective in the center 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 that it 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 mustache.

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 the

around the Avalon Newport area that that's how I found it to be. And everybody sort of knew everybody.

...