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On September 20, 1992, New South Wales police officers gathered under the Eucalyptus trees in the rugged depths of Balangolo State Forest, establishing the crime scene in what appeared to be a double homicide.

The gravesite was located a significant distance from the Hume Highway, branching off from the motorway down a bumpy red dust road, bordered by 30 metre high pine trees.

Once the kilometres of pine plantations reached an end, the terrain transformed into dense bushland, intersected by a series of narrow fire trails.

This area was only accessible on foot or via vehicles designed specifically to go off road, meaning the killer had gone to great lengths to take his victims off track and likely owned or had access to a four-wheel drive.

Items of clothing and jejury found in proximity to the bodies indicated there was a strong chance one of the victims was Joanne Walters, the 22-year-old Welsh backpacker who was last seen leaving Sydney's Kings Cross District five months earlier.

If this initial conjecture proved accurate, it raised the strong possibility that the second victim could be Joanne's travelling companion, 21-year-old English backpacker Caroline Clark.

Both women had disappeared in April 1992. After telling friends and a family they planned on hitchhiking Sia from Sydney towards Victoria, before making their way up to Western Australia to commence fruit picking work.

Efforts to locate the two missing women at the time they vanished were unsuccessful. Not a single trace of either Joanne or Caroline was ever found.

Given their heavily decomposed state, the human remains couldn't be identified until further forensic testing was conducted.

With thousands of missing people in Australia at the time, police were hesitant to draw any immediate conclusions.

A police spokesperson fronted the media, saying,

Police aren't ruling out anything at this stage and will be looking at all avenues to try to identify the bodies. There is nothing at this stage to suggest that it is Joanne and Caroline.

But of course, we will be looking at missing persons files to try to find something.

Two days later, on September 22, dental records provided by the parents of Joanne and Caroline confirmed the remains uncovered in Belangelo were indeed at their daughters.

Joanne's father, Ray Walters, told the media,

We are naturally terribly upset. You can't imagine what we have gone through.

This sentiment was shared by Caroline's father, Ian Clark, who said,

Caroline was looking for a change of direction and hoped the trip would be a good way of seeing the world.

But in doing so, she saw the darker side of human nature.

Forensic experts determined Joanne and Caroline's remains had been in Belangelo since April, meaning the pair were killed shortly after they went missing.

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