7 minute read
The long road home
Editorial: Danielle Ford
Photography: Danielle Ford and supplied
While two Victorian detectives were preparing to fly to Western Australia in a bid to find a lead on a 30-plus-year missing person case, they had no clue that a breakthrough was mere days away.
Little did they know that, at the same time, police from South Australia were uploading information to a national database that would crack the investigation wide open.
It was early in 1986 when then-35-year-old Robert Mather was last seen by his family.
In April of that year, he moved from Morwell to Perth to start a new job after his military career ended due to a knee injury he sustained during service.
In September, he spoke to his mother on the phone, telling her he was heading home to pick up a compensation cheque from the army.
Turning down an offer of a plane ticket, he told his mother he’d make his own way back and that he would see her in a week or so.
This would be the last time he was ever heard from or that anyone would know his location — until 2021.
Robert’s missing person case sat unsolved, with next to no leads, for 34 years before Latrobe Crime Investigation Unit Detective Sergeant Mick Van Der Heyden and Detective Senior Constable Michael Fowler picked it up in 2021.
“I was doing admin work and came across the case in our system and saw there wasn’t much recent activity on it,” Det Sgt Van Der Heyden said.
“Both Michael and I had done stints with the Missing Persons Squad and have a passion for these types of cases, so we decided to look into it.”
Over the years, very little progress had been made on the case, with Robert’s daughter Haley Mather explaining that they would get a routine contact from police every five years or so, but nothing ever panned out.
“I knew a missing person case report had been filed because over the years we’d get an occasional enquiry from different police, but nothing ever came of it,” Ms Mather said.
“I remember the day when Mick and Michael first contacted me about the case, and I recall thinking I didn’t have much hope that anything would come of their queries.”
However, like a dog with a bone, the two detectives were looking at any and every avenue they could to uncover some sort of lead.
“We took familial DNA samples from all of Robert’s known relatives, we spoke to as many people who knew him as we could and we contacted the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to get a hold of any of Robert’s medical records they might have,” Det Sen Const Fowler said.
“Because these records were more than three decades old, this enquiry ended up being a far longer process than we anticipated, because it required ADF employees to manually search through thousands of physical records.”
About eight months after they submitted the request, the ADF sent through Robert’s full intake medical record, including dental records, which were then uploaded to the National Missing Persons and Victim System (NMPVS).
The NMPVS is a national platform for state and territory police and forensic examiners to search and compare long-term missing persons against unidentified human remains.
“From his stints with the Missing Persons Squad, Michael knew just how significant dental records can be, as — along with fingerprints — they are the only completely unique identifiers of a person,” Det Sgt Van Der Heyden said.
“So when we got those records, we contacted the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine to help us put them in the NMPVS on the off chance there was a match.”
While the pair had been waiting for the ADF to provide Robert’s medical records, they had also been following another avenue –Robert’s roommate in Perth.
Thinking that the roommate might have been the last person to see Robert alive, the detectives had built a business case for a trip to Western Australia to follow this hunch.
“We were looking at all possible scenarios at this point, asking ourselves ‘Could it have been a homicide and he is buried under their house in Perth?’,” Det Sen Const Fowler said.
“We had actually received approval from our bosses to travel over there about three days before we got a notification through the NMPVS that the dental records were a possible match with unidentified remains from another state.”
While the pair had been right to turn their investigative attention interstate, it wasn’t Western Australia that held the answers to Robert’s disappearance.
Back in 2018, South Australia Police launched Operation Persevere, a project to roll out a new approach to investigating long-term missing persons and managing unidentified human remains.
As part of this operation, all unidentified human remains were audited and, across the span of two years, they were added to the NMPVS.
In a case of chance timing, about a week after the Victorian detectives had Robert’s dental records added to the NMPVS, South Australia Police added records of an unidentified human skull.
South Australia Police Missing Persons Investigation Section Senior Constable Trevor Schneider said the skull and other human remains had been found in 1995 by a farmer while moving sheep between properties.
“They were under a tree in the middle of roadside scrub about 100 meters from the Eyre Highway, 10km outside of Ceduna — a town on the west coast of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula,” Sen Const Schneider said.
“Initial enquiries were made when the remains were found but nothing came of it, and they had remained unidentified.”
After receiving initial notification of the possible match, further tests were conducted, and it was confirmed in May 2021 that the remains did indeed belong to Robert Mather.
“Due to the location of the remains and how they were found – resting against a tree in the shade – we believe that Robert was hitchhiking back to Victoria and took a break along the way and succumbed to the elements,” Det Sgt Van Der Heyden said.
“It’s sad to think of his life ending in that way but it was a huge relief to have been able to find some answers and be able to bring a little bit of closure to his family.”
Robert’s family was able to have his remains returned to Victoria and, in November 2021, they gave him a burial and proper farewell to his life.
It was closure that was much needed for Robert’s family, particularly his daughter Haley.
She said the outcome of this case had changed her life in ways she couldn’t have imagined.
“To spend my whole life not knowing what happened to my dad or where he ended up to then find out that he actually died heading home to us — it’s really hard to put into words how that impacted me,” she said.
“I’ve had a mix of feelings about my dad and what happened to him for so many years and while we still don’t know exactly how his life ended, we at least have answers about where he was.
“If it weren’t for Michael and Mick’s determination to get answers for us, that wouldn’t be the case, and that’s something I’ll never be able to thank them enough for.”
