Samantha Murphy Ballarat * Patrick Orren Stephenson Charged With Murder

Remove this Banner Ad

Here are the crime board rules of engagement. Please read them.

Importantly, 'sub judice' means that a case is under consideration by the courts. 'Sub judice contempt' can occur if information is published that may be prejudicial to the court proceedings.

Don't spread baseless rumours or state as fact that which is opinion, please.

A degree of respect in all discussion across this board is expected.

Rules - Updated Crime Board Rules - READ BEFORE POSTING

General Information The BigFooty Crime board is a community that fosters discussion on current and past crimes, some which have social and media notoriety, that attracts the attention of public opinion and discussion on such matters. Please read these rules very carefully, both the Big Footy...
www.bigfooty.com www.bigfooty.com

The Murder of Rebecca Young - Ballarat

The Murder of Hannah McGuire - Ballarat * Lachie Young charged



Allegedly
 
Last edited:
Kurve said:
If one of mine had gone for a solo run in the bush and they were an hour late with their phone turned off, I'd be off looking leaving instructions for someone to call the police and wait until they got there.
Click to expand...
Totally agree. Would be an immediate reaction to go looking.
 
BFew said:
Four weeks on, and they are only now going to start looking at the phone data of all those in the area?

Either it takes way too long to get this info from the telco companies, and/or: they are under-resourced, have a directive or Policy not to put resources into looking at this kind of info until someone is missing for at least 4 weeks, or they have already begun looking at it and are just watching for the reaction of potential suspects to it being reported in the media that they are only now going to start looking at this data.

'Investigators to use new tactic in search for Ballarat mother-of-three Samantha Murphy who disappeared one month ago'​

'March 4, 2024 - 10:00AM'

'Investigators looking into the disappearance of Samantha Murphy will use mobile phone tower data to pinpoint the movements of individuals in the area on February 4, the day the mother-of-three disappeared.

Police will harvest phone data from the Ballarat area before conducting background tests in a bid to gain a fresh insight into what happened to Ms Murphy.
...
fears Ms Murphy’s mobile phone battery had run out after six days'
Click to expand...
Red herring, they’ve had the data for a while. For me they’re trying to flush someone out, I genuinely believe they don’t have a lot right now
 
FTY1 said:
www.abc.net.au

Former detective warns volunteer searchers may be hurting police investigation into Samantha Murphy

Volunteers have been desperately searching for missing mother Samantha Murphy but their efforts could unfortunately be hampering the police, a former detective tells 7.30.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au

A former neighbour said the alarm was called because Sam's phone was turned off. They knew she was in trouble. They have a former neighbour, a communications expert and a retired detective in their article.

"All I know is that she was due to come back for brunch, and [her husband] Mick has called Sam and her phone was off and her phone's never off. So after that, he put out the alert."
Click to expand...

Kurve said:
If one of mine had gone for a solo run in the bush and they were an hour late with their phone turned off, I'd be off looking leaving instructions for someone to call the police and wait until they got there.
Iwonder said:
Totally agree. Would be an immediate reaction to go looking.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
If there was already a known threat to her that the husband knew about his actions of not heading out to look for her are not at all surprising.
Don't forget he had at least one minor in the house (12 year old son that is known about & possibly other family). Unless he was going to cause major panic within the family, bundling son in car to race out looking and who would be at home if she came home in the meantime.

No doubt the advice to husband on reporting to the Police and stating concerns (with or without known threat) would be to stay right there and not head out the door looking.
Once you have rung the Police with your concerns & report an issue they take over and would advise accordingly.
So I think there is a very good chance that that was their initial advice and that the Police were on their way to the home to get further info (recent photo etc).

And in the meantime you (husband) are calling every possible contact to see if they have seen her or had contact.
Or if there was a known threat to wife by someone known to the husband (family member?) maybe there were police instructions to ring them to see what was said.

Speculating as to why the husband didn't head straight out the door immediately can be easily explained by the above.
We don't know what the instructions the Police made to him at the time were but my guess is it was to stay put.
It was known that husband was out later that afternoon looking along with family and friends.
 

Log in to remove this ad.

Pamcake1 said:
If there was already a known threat to her that the husband knew about his actions of not heading out to look for her are not at all surprising.
Don't forget he had at least one minor in the house (12 year old son that is known about & possibly other family). Unless he was going to cause major panic within the family, bundling son in car to race out looking and who would be at home if she came home in the meantime.

No doubt the advice to husband on reporting to the Police and stating concerns (with or without known threat) would be to stay right there and not head out the door looking.
Once you have rung the Police with your concerns & report an issue they take over and would advise accordingly.
So I think there is a very good chance that that was their initial advice and that the Police were on their way to the home to get further info (recent photo etc).

And in the meantime you (husband) are calling every possible contact to see if they have seen her or had contact.
Or if there was a known threat to wife by someone known to the husband (family member?) maybe there were police instructions to ring them to see what was said.

Speculating as to why the husband didn't head straight out the door immediately can be easily explained by the above.
We don't know what the instructions the Police made to him at the time were but my guess is it was to stay put.
It was known that husband was out later that afternoon looking along with family and friends.
Click to expand...
Yes, I think given the relative maturity of the victim in this case, the family would assume that SM would be taking reasonable actions to look after herself, would not have got lost, would have sought help or made contact if she was accidentally hurt or delayed. Would not have just gone somewhere on a whim without contacting anyone. She was a responsible person who would probably not be an hour late for an appointment without good reason. They might give her say, half an hour before becoming concerned. They might then start trying to contact her, and if her phone was off or not answering might try one or two close contacts, check the house ... maybe a friend's house. Then ring the police, which is what they did.

If it was a child or elderly or irresponsible / unreliable person, or someone with drug or mental issues they might go looking on their own first before contacting police.

I think the very quick decision to call police indicates the family suspected foul play.
 
Percel said:
Red herring, they’ve had the data for a while. For me they’re trying to flush someone out, I genuinely believe they don’t have a lot right now
Click to expand...
Do we actually know how long police have had the data?
They cannot just acquire it instantly. It requires a court order.
And to get a court order requires evidence that a crime has been committed. They can't just go to a judge on a 'hunch' and request access to what is personal, private, and sometimes confidential information.
They might have got access to SM's phone data in a matter of days, but they would need some evidence linking a third party to a suspected crime to get access to that person's phone records.
Then it's a further step to get access to all tower data in the area over a time period - I don't know what criteria would be involved in getting all this data, but I would presume it is subject to some legal provisions which protect personal, private and confidential information. The judge would weigh up 'public interest' in this case, I assume?
 
Pamcake1 said:
If there was already a known threat to her that the husband knew about his actions of not heading out to look for her are not at all surprising.
Don't forget he had at least one minor in the house (12 year old son that is known about & possibly other family). Unless he was going to cause major panic within the family, bundling son in car to race out looking and who would be at home if she came home in the meantime.

No doubt the advice to husband on reporting to the Police and stating concerns (with or without known threat) would be to stay right there and not head out the door looking.
Once you have rung the Police with your concerns & report an issue they take over and would advise accordingly.
So I think there is a very good chance that that was their initial advice and that the Police were on their way to the home to get further info (recent photo etc).

And in the meantime you (husband) are calling every possible contact to see if they have seen her or had contact.
Or if there was a known threat to wife by someone known to the husband (family member?) maybe there were police instructions to ring them to see what was said.

Speculating as to why the husband didn't head straight out the door immediately can be easily explained by the above.
We don't know what the instructions the Police made to him at the time were but my guess is it was to stay put.
It was known that husband was out later that afternoon looking along with family and friends.
Click to expand...

I'm not criticising the husband as not across the full details, how many were in the house, where this brunch was supposed to be or even if it was him that rang the police.

If there was already a known threat, it's even more urgent someone go look for her straight away. In those circumstances, I'm out the door. Wild horses ...
 
Awakening said:
I can’t recall the names in this American case, but a male murdered another male and the perp didn’t take his phone with him.

The police had a bunch of evidence against him that got a conviction but one of the things the police did was go back over the past 12 months and show the perp never left his house without his phone except the time he murdered a guy.
Click to expand...

So what we've learned here is establish a pattern of leaving your house without your phone, so it's not weird when you do it and go do some murdering.

Also, train for a marathon so if you're out of the house for 3 - 5 hours without a phone, it's not unusual.
 
Pamcake1 said:
If there was already a known threat to her that the husband knew about his actions of not heading out to look for her are not at all surprising.
Don't forget he had at least one minor in the house (12 year old son that is known about & possibly other family). Unless he was going to cause major panic within the family, bundling son in car to race out looking and who would be at home if she came home in the meantime.

No doubt the advice to husband on reporting to the Police and stating concerns (with or without known threat) would be to stay right there and not head out the door looking.
Once you have rung the Police with your concerns & report an issue they take over and would advise accordingly.
So I think there is a very good chance that that was their initial advice and that the Police were on their way to the home to get further info (recent photo etc).

And in the meantime you (husband) are calling every possible contact to see if they have seen her or had contact.
Or if there was a known threat to wife by someone known to the husband (family member?) maybe there were police instructions to ring them to see what was said.

Speculating as to why the husband didn't head straight out the door immediately can be easily explained by the above.
We don't know what the instructions the Police made to him at the time were but my guess is it was to stay put.
It was known that husband was out later that afternoon looking along with family and friends.
Click to expand...
We don’t know that he didn’t go looking for sure but as for a known threat we don’t know that neither.
I personally would think it’s more dramatic to ring the police than go for a drive first and see where someone might be, talking to a neighbour, had a fall...yes the phone was allegedly switched off but it would be a natural reaction to go looking and I think the first thing the police would ask is ‘where have you looked,’ because it makes no sense to not look when you know where they’re supposed to be.
 
Kurve said:
That would look like premeditation in these circumstances but there's other tech that people aren't always aware of in watches and GPS in vehicles.

They're going to get any cars going in or out too at some points on CCTV, check back to who was driving them, if they have phones and what their phones were doing, on or off. Do they have criminal history? Is there a connection to Samantha? etc.
Click to expand...

These devices / vehicles receive GPS signals only. They do not transmit. Impossible to track passive GPS devices. A car with a built in sim card is different (ie Teslas). They can be tracked. I am not aware whether on those sorts of vehicles cellular data activity can be disabled.
 
Kurve said:
I'm not criticising the husband as not across the full details, how many were in the house, where this brunch was supposed to be or even if it was him that rang the police.

If there was already a known threat, it's even more urgent someone go look for her straight away. In those circumstances, I'm out the door. Wild horses ...
Click to expand...
Yes, I understand you're not criticising him and my post isn't saying that you would, as I know you enough to know you wouldn't unless you had a reason.
Most would be bolting out the gate before even opening it I agree.

My point of my post is to think about why is it so that that didn't happen.
The answers possible...conjecture.

My obvious guess is that it is because of what we don't know, the piece of the puzzle that is definitely missing that could easily explain why this didn't happen (background issues that we are possibly aware existed but remain unknown as fact as yet).
Or possibly because of Police instructions.

Something that makes it all look suspicious to people, if they don't think beyond or look behind the presented facts.
Who's to know here that immediate searches weren't enacted by family and friends straight away just not the husband.
That is what I think more than likely happened but I like you and everyone else don't know exact details, so it is just conjecture as well.
 
Zidane98 said:
These devices / vehicles receive GPS signals only. They do not transmit. Impossible to track passive GPS devices. A car with a built in sim card is different (ie Teslas). They can be tracked. I am not aware whether on those sorts of vehicles cellular data activity can be disabled.
Click to expand...

So when a car is stolen, how do you find it with GPS tech? Pretty sure this can be done.
 
Kurve said:
So when a car is stolen, how do you find it with GPS tech? Pretty sure this can be done.
Click to expand...

You may be referring to GPS tracking devices which is completely separate to the GPS system in a vehicle.


These send a regular signal of the vehicle's GPS location at regular intervals when within mobile phone reception. These are installed by owners on high value vehicles, classics etc that cannot easily be replaced if stolen.


The inbuilt GPS system in most vehicles (apart from the ones that have a sim card and transmit data) cannot be used to track a vehicle's location. They do not transmit a signal. Same as the GPS receiver on your smart phone. Smart phones can only receive a GPS signal, not transmit one. Should you be lost in the middle of nowhere with zero cell reception you cannot be tracked via your phone's GPS receiver.


With the exception of the latest Iphone which now has an emergency GPS position transmitter I believe.
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

31550 said:
When would they have had time to look? The police were called around 11am I think? She had not been missing very long.
Click to expand...
My thoughts only:

She planned a short run because she had the 11am function/ gathering / brunch to attend
She planned to be home by 9am in order to get ready and to get to function by 11am
When she wasn’t home by around 9.30am, Mick called her - phone off.
(How he knew it was off I’m not sure- perhaps it diverted immediately if Switched Off, instead of waiting to be answered via Call Waiting alert )
And he probably tried a few times over a 5 or 10 min time frame.
Uncle Allan said ‘she never switched her phone off’ and neighbour / friend has said the same thing.
So phone off would’ve been concerning for MM.
I would think he jumped in vehicle and went for a drive to look for her along the roads / tracks of areas that he thought she may’ve gone on a short run.
Couldn’t find her, still phone off, got home & not there, friends hadn’t seen or heard from her, by this time it’s nearly 11am.
He rang Police and reported her missing
He rang her father and told him Sam was missing and they wouldn’t be at the 11am do.
 
shorsky said:
My thoughts only:

She planned a short run because she had the 11am function/ gathering / brunch to attend
She planned to be home by 9am in order to get ready and to get to function by 11am
When she wasn’t home by around 9.30am, Mick called her - phone off.
(How he knew it was off I’m not sure- perhaps it diverted immediately if Switched Off, instead of waiting to be answered via Call Waiting alert )
And he probably tried a few times over a 5 or 10 min time frame.
Uncle Allan said ‘she never switched her phone off’ and neighbour / friend has said the same thing.
So phone off would’ve been concerning for MM.
I would think he jumped in vehicle and went for a drive to look for her along the roads / tracks of areas that he thought she may’ve gone on a short run.
Couldn’t find her, still phone off, got home & not there, friends hadn’t seen or heard from her, by this time it’s nearly 11am.
He rang Police and reported her missing
He rang her father and told him Sam was missing and they wouldn’t be at the 11am do.
Click to expand...
I thought it was one of the friends who phoned after 11am to ask where she was? Maybe that was misreported.

Edited to add: "Murphy, 51, was last seen on Sunday, 4 February when she left her Ballarat East home at about 7am. She had told friends she was planning a 14-kilometre run through the nearby Woowookarung regional park. Her family sounded the alarm when she did not attend a brunch at 11am."
www.theguardian.com

Missing Ballarat woman Samantha Murphy’s disappearance ‘suspicious’ and ‘unusual’, police say

Commissioner says there are ‘some suspicions’ in case of 51-year-old, but doesn’t know whether foul play was involved
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Last edited:
shorsky said:
My thoughts only:

She planned a short run because she had the 11am function/ gathering / brunch to attend
She planned to be home by 9am in order to get ready and to get to function by 11am
When she wasn’t home by around 9.30am, Mick called her - phone off.
(How he knew it was off I’m not sure- perhaps it diverted immediately if Switched Off, instead of waiting to be answered via Call Waiting alert )
And he probably tried a few times over a 5 or 10 min time frame.
Uncle Allan said ‘she never switched her phone off’ and neighbour / friend has said the same thing.
So phone off would’ve been concerning for MM.
I would think he jumped in vehicle and went for a drive to look for her along the roads / tracks of areas that he thought she may’ve gone on a short run.
Couldn’t find her, still phone off, got home & not there, friends hadn’t seen or heard from her, by this time it’s nearly 11am.
He rang Police and reported her missing
He rang her father and told him Sam was missing and they wouldn’t be at the 11am do.
Click to expand...
Pretty good summary. You have more detail than I thought was public/official/verified, but it all sounds right. Is this from verified sources?
Either way, if MM has rung police after (1) searching her running route and finding no trace , and (2) noting the phone being switched off as unusual, and (3) knowing her unexplained lateness is totally out of character, this surely indicates foul play? If she was lost, or had an accident, or otherwise innocently delayed, then not ALL of the above 3 conditions would be true, right?
 
31550 said:
Pretty good summary. You have more detail than I thought was public/official/verified, but it all sounds right. Is this from verified sources?
Either way, if MM has rung police after (1) searching her running route and finding no trace , and (2) noting the phone being switched off as unusual, and (3) knowing her unexplained lateness is totally out of character, this surely indicates foul play? If she was lost, or had an accident, or otherwise innocently delayed, then not ALL of the above 3 conditions would be true, right?
Click to expand...

There remains the possibility that she was killed by a vehicle accidentally. Guilty party seeing that there were no witnesses bundles her into a car and buried her elsewhere far away.

If that scenario or similar played out the evidence would likeky be found in the phone data.
 
shorsky said:
My thoughts only:

She planned a short run because she had the 11am function/ gathering / brunch to attend
She planned to be home by 9am in order to get ready and to get to function by 11am
When she wasn’t home by around 9.30am, Mick called her - phone off.
(How he knew it was off I’m not sure- perhaps it diverted immediately if Switched Off, instead of waiting to be answered via Call Waiting alert )
And he probably tried a few times over a 5 or 10 min time frame.
Uncle Allan said ‘she never switched her phone off’ and neighbour / friend has said the same thing.
So phone off would’ve been concerning for MM.
I would think he jumped in vehicle and went for a drive to look for her along the roads / tracks of areas that he thought she may’ve gone on a short run.
Couldn’t find her, still phone off, got home & not there, friends hadn’t seen or heard from her, by this time it’s nearly 11am.
He rang Police and reported her missing
He rang her father and told him Sam was missing and they wouldn’t be at the 11am do.
Click to expand...
Would be the most logical sequence.
 
Did anyone see the current affair show where the reporter talked to the neighbour? He acted like he had no idea Sam was missing although her husband mowed his lawn. Didn’t ask the neighbours if they’d seen her?
 
Zidane98 said:
There remains the possibility that she was killed by a vehicle accidentally. Guilty party seeing that there were no witnesses bundles her into a car and buried her elsewhere far away.

If that scenario or similar played out the evidence would likeky be found in the phone data.
Click to expand...
If it was an accident, why bundle her into the car? Why not just drive off? Moving and burying the body makes the crime much worse, and increases the risk of being caught.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

rdhopkins2
Hannah McGuire - Another Senseless Ballarat Murder * Lachie Young charged
2
Replies
46
Views
3K
BFew
BFew
Kurve
Current Murder/suicide Rebecca Young - Ballarat
Replies
4
Views
577
Bostonian
Bostonian
BFew
Current Murder of Luke Davies & Jesse Baird AFL Goal Umpire & ex Ch 10 Presenter * Stalker Cop Charged
39 40 41 42 43
Replies
1K
Views
35K
Pamcake1
Pamcake1
CD Xbow
Leongatha Mushroom Deaths - VIC *Erin Patterson charged with 3 counts of murder & 2 attempts
28 29 30 31 32
Replies
787
Views
49K
Run n Spread
R
Kurve
Current Mother & Son Murdered at Martial Arts Centre & Father Murdered at Another Location
Replies
15
Views
1K
Krusty Crab
K
Kurve
Current Olympian Melissa Hoskins husband charged with her death
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
138
Views
9K
Kurve
Kurve
Kurve
Current Undercover police fed an autistic 13yo fixation with ISIS then charged him with terror offences
2
Replies
25
Views
1K
Carn The Berries
C

Remove this Banner Ad

Back
Top