Was Debbie one of Milat’s victims?
Family’s 36-year ordeal haunted by thoughts of monster
THE family of a teenager who vanished without trace almost 36 years ago fear she was a victim of one of Australia’s worst serial killers.
Debbie Marie Ashby was last seen on October 7, 1987 when she left her family home in Leumeah in Sydney’s west – a 10-minute drive from where Ivan Milat lived when he was arrested for the backpacker killings.
Milat was convicted of seven murders, but detectives have long suspected there were more victims buried in the Belanglo State Forest.
Mary Ashby is one of those who fears Milat could be responsible for daughter Debbie’s disappearance.
“Do you think Debbie could be buried somewhere out there in Belanglo?” former police officer turned investigative journalist Meni Caroutas asks Mrs Ashby in the first episode of News Corp podcast The Missing. “Yes, definitely,” Mrs Ashby replies.
Mrs Ashby always clung to hope her daughter would return home; she kept the same phone number, held on to her clothes for decades, and never stopped searching.
But when Milat’s victims began to be discovered, a chill ran through her.
“I thought there was a possibility she had run away. As time went on I started to think something had happened to her, then they started finding all the bodies in the forest, and I was convinced they’d find her. I was convinced of it,” she tells the podcast.
Debbie’s sister, Hayley Farmer, believes it is a “highly likely scenario” – one she hoped wasn’t true. “I think we know Ivan Milat was probably active in his serial killings before those first bodies were found,” Ms Farmer said. “And it’s just the likelihood he could have been passing through Leumeah … it’s not one that I would really want to find out was correct, because then we would know that something horrific happened to her, but unfortunately it is a possibility.”
It’s a theory police have not
been able to rule out.
Detective Inspector Ritchie Sim, of the NSW Missing Persons Registry, said Milat could have been responsible, but there was no evidence to suggest he was.
“Do I personally think Ivan Milat, no, I don’t. Is it possible? Yes,” he said.
In the mid-1980s Milat began working as a surface sprayer on NSW roads, which meant he travelled all over the state, including the Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley and the NSW South Coast. Coworkers said he would often disappear by himself overnight on away jobs.