Hello everyone, and welcome back to Scary Interesting. In this video, we're gonna go over two more incredibly creepy cases of people disappearing. The first is simply a complete mystery despite a continent-wide search.
And the second, although it's sort of solved, it's far more disturbing. You'll see what I mean, and as always, viewer discretion is advised. [intro music] Before we get into the video, I have something I want to tell you all about.
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In many respects, Conor and Sheila Dwyer were the typical Irish couple. They worked hard, minded their own business, and did their best to provide for their sons. And by the early 90s, they were looking forward to spending their golden years relaxing, traveling, and enjoying one another's company— at least, that was the plan.
Friends and family members described Conor and Sheila Dwyer as pleasant, upstanding, and hardworking people who generally kept to themselves. Conor was a good-natured, practical joker and jack of all trades, and over the years, he was a cabbie, a plumber, and a handyman, and he regularly worked as a chauffeur for a wealthy German businessman who visited the area frequently. On the other hand, Sheila was a polite and reserved homemaker who doted on their sons, Gerry and Conor Jr.
, and kept the house immaculately clean and well-kept. As far as anyone knew, the Dwyers were happily married and didn't have any financial problems, and they lived in a small home on Chapel Hill in County Cork. But by the early 90s, Gerry and Conor Jr.
were grown and living in England. At about 9:30 am on Tuesday, April 30th, 1991, 62-year-old Conor and 61-year-old Sheila walked to a funeral at St. Patrick's Church near their home.
Few words were spoken between the attendees, but the Conors exchanged brief pleasantries with a couple of neighbors before taking their seats. To people attending, the Dwyers weren't acting strangely, they didn't seem to be avoiding anyone, and they weren't in the least bit agitated. After the service, a woman named Catherine saw them walking away from the church back toward their home on Chapel Hill.
According to Sheila's sisters, Maisie and Nellie as well, nothing seemed to be wrong when they spoke to her the following day by phone. This is important because they'd been inseparable since childhood, and Sheila's sister knew her better than anyone else. Maisie and Nellie then tried to contact her multiple times over the next few weeks, but neither she nor Conor ever answered the phone.
Even so, this wasn't initially alarming because they often went on last-minute trips that sometimes lasted a week or more. At the same time though, they usually told friends and family members where they were going and when they'd be back. So Maisie and Nellie eventually got worried when they still hadn't heard from Sheila or Conor three weeks later.
They then called Gerry and Conor Jr. in England to see if they knew where their parents were, but they said they were also worried because they hadn't seen or heard from them in some time. This was the last straw for Maisie, and she called the Irish Police, or Garda, to report them missing on Wednesday, May 22nd, 1991.
After the call, officers promptly drove to the Dwyer home and politely knocked on the front door. But when nobody answered, they forced their way in to make sure everything was okay. As it typically was, the home was orderly and spotless.
The beds were carefully made, and nothing of value seemed to be missing, but the Dwyers were nowhere to be found. There was also no blood, no bodies, or any sign that there had been a struggle or a burglary. The Dwyer's passports were even home, and officers found $1,000 in cash stashed in the kitchen.
And in fact, other than the Dwyer's themselves, the only thing that was absent was their white Toyota Cressida. Officers then questioned Conor and Sheila's friends, neighbors, and family members to see if they could shed any light on where the couple went, but no one knew anything. According to them, the Dwyers weren't drinkers, drug users, gamblers, or anything else out of the ordinary.
As far as they knew, they also didn't have any enemies or shady business dealings in their past that might account for their disappearance. And at that point, it actually wasn't even clear that they disappeared at all. As retirees and empty nesters, they could have set out on a spur-of-the-moment trip.
But, again, it wasn't like them to leave without telling anyone, or to stay away from home so long. Unfortunately though, the case would end up going cold from the very beginning because the Garda had absolutely no leads to follow up on. Even so, they interviewed tons of acquaintances, conducted exhaustive ground and air searches, and even dragged a number of lakes and rivers in the area—one of which was the River Blackwater.
But, unfortunately, not a single clue was ever found. Investigators even checked ferry and airline records to see if the Dwyers had left the island by boat or air. But again, their names didn't appear on any manifest.
In addition, nobody recalled dealing with the couple matched in the description, driving a Toyota Cresta, and even more tellingly, there was no activity on their bank accounts after the disappearance. As is often the case in unexplained disappearances though, the Garda and Interpol received tips about possible sightings in Ireland, England, France, and Germany. The alleged German sightings were particularly promising because Conor's well-known association with the wealthy businessmen.
These were unfortunately never substantiated though, and for some time, the case went cold again. But, a few years later, a woman named Mary O'Dowd told the Garda an even more compelling story. Mary lived in the town of Ballyvolane, and according to her, she and her son, Thomas, were delayed at the airport in France in the summer of 1991.
This was just a few months after the Dwyers went missing, but Mary and Thomas didn't know about the case at the time. As the waiting area filled up, she asked her son to give his seat out to an older woman traveling with a man who she assumed was her husband. The woman then gladly took Thomas' seat while the man walked to a nearby kiosk to buy a newspaper.
As this was happening, Mary noticed that the woman was wearing a scarf and had more than her fair share of powder on her face. The man was wearing a tan overcoat and odd rubber rain boots, and even more suspiciously, he never took his eyes off the woman on his way to or back from the newspaper stand. Mary wasn't really sure what was going on, but it seemed to her that the woman may have been trying to hide her identity, and the man kept looking at her to prevent her from speaking to anyone nearby.
Then when the man came back with the newspaper, he said something to her, and they both left abruptly. After this strange encounter, Mary O'Dowd forgot all about it until 1993 when she saw the Dwyer case featured on an episode of Crimecall produced by Ireland's National Broadcasting Channel. She was so sure it was the Dwyers she saw at the airport in France that she called the Garda.
During a later interview with investigators and Sheila's sister, Maisie, she described exactly what the man and woman were wearing. And according to Maisie, these descriptions matched items of clothes that were missing when she was allowed to search her sister's home shortly after the disappearance. The Garda then followed up on the tip and passed the information along to Interpol and the French authorities, but again, nothing ever came of it.
And despite the case being covered on numerous television and radio programs in Ireland and England, investigators never made any meaningful headway. After the Dwyers disappeared, as often happens, rumors spread wildly about the couple's fate. Like for example, one rumor surfaced that Conor had gone missing on his own a few years earlier and that he returned more than a year later with no word as to where he'd been.
Some other members of the community claimed that Conor and Sheila disappeared intentionally and that they left their passports and the $1,000 to throw investigators off their trail. There were even rumors that the couple decided to mutually "end things", but nobody could explain what would motivate them to grow through with this in the first place. It was also even alleged that Conor had somehow gotten tangled up in the local drug trade shortly before the couple's disappearance.
But maybe the most likely theory was that the Dwyers suffered similar fates to a 53-year-old man named William, or "Billy" Fennessy who went missing 13 months before they vanished. On the evening of March 31st, 1990, he failed to show up at the home he shared with his wife, Noreen, just a few miles from the Dwyers' house. Billy was an ex-undertaker who was active in local politics, and on the day in question, he was out driving his car.
His wife, Noreen, then reported him missing a few days later and told investigators she had no idea where he was. Billy was declared legally dead in 1997 after a number of unsuccessful searches, and by then, nobody thought the case would ever be solved. But, in 2013, a local search and rescue organization was conducting a routine training dive in the River Blackwater.
On their dive, they came across a rusty, silt-covered car with human remains inside, in approximately 12 feet of water. The vehicle was then eventually recovered, and a DNA test proved that the body belonged to Billy Fennessy. Investigators couldn't determine exactly how the vehicle ended up in the river, but it's been suggested that Billy may have fallen asleep at the wheel, swerved to avoid an animal, or had a stroke or a heart attack.
Whatever the case, some locals and investigators thought that there was a good chance that Conor and Sheila Dwyer, and their white Toyota Cresta, may also be in the River Blackwater. However, the river was searched shortly after the Dwyers' disappearance, and again, after Billy Fennessy was discovered, but nothing was ever found. This isn't particularly surprising since it's known for its deep, dark holes that are often referred to as "kitchen sinks".
And with regular storms and tons of silt and debris, there's no telling where the vehicle could have ended up, or how deep they may have been buried, if they did end up in the river. And so, that is sort of where the case is today. According to the Dwyers' son, Conor Jr.
, he can't remember anyone ever not liking his parents or having any grudge against them whatsoever, and understandably, that's exactly what made the case even more perplexing than it already was. Interestingly, during an interview years later, he said that he thought his mom and dad were still alive, and they might actually resurface one day. He never elaborated on where he thought they were or why they disappeared in the first place, though.
So, to this day, Conor and Sheila are still officially missing. Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees were often described as the perfect couple. The two met in a nightclub in 1996 when they were 24 and 23 respectively, and from the moment they locked eyes, they were almost inseparable.
The couple moved in together about a year after dating and were frequent attendees at music festivals, and they loved playing tennis together any chance they got. What really ignited their passion for life though was traveling, and in November of 2000, they left their home in Brighton, England for the trip of a lifetime. The couple began their extended vacation in Asia, backpacking their way through Nepal, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia, taking in the continent's culture, food, and nightlife as they went.
After that, in early 2001, they secured a working holiday visa for Australia and arrived in Sydney on January 16th. They then spent several months there before buying a Volkswagen Kombi van for a road trip that would take them all across the country. Now, while their respective families encouraged and supported the long, multi-continent trip so far, there was a bit of apprehension about the couple's Australian leg of the journey.
This is because, in the previous decade, give or take a few years, there had been a series of strange and tragic incidents in Australia. Like, for example, seven young backpackers were the victims of an Australian serial offender between 1989 and 1993. There was also a large shooting in the Australian state of Tasmania that resulted in 35 deaths in 1996.
More recently, there was also a fire that was intentionally set, that killed 15 people at a backpackers hostel in June of 2000 in Childers, Queensland. Despite these incidents though, Peter and Joanne saw no reason to worry about their safety, and they did their best to reassure their families that they'd be just fine. So finally, on June 25th, they departed Sydney and began travelling along Australia's southern coast, visiting the cities of Canberra, Melbourne, and Adelaide.
From Adelaide, they began the most adventurous portion of their journey around Australia, hopping on the Stuart Highway with the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory as their next intended destination. The Stuart Highway is one of Australia's major roadways and cuts directly through the middle of the mainland, running from Port Augusta in South Australia, and ending in Darwin on the North Coast. It spans an incredible 1,700 miles, or 2,700 kilometers, which is just more than half the distance of a drive from LA to New York City.
And prior to 2007, there weren't even posted speed limits on the Northern Territory section of the Stuart Highway, but Peter and Joanne were in no hurry, so the drive would take them an estimated 31 hours to complete. At about the halfway point of their trip up Stuart Highway was the town of Alice Springs. And somewhere between there and Barrow Creek to the north, the couple stopped off at a roadhouse to eat.
When they finished their meal, they paid their check and took off in their van around 7:30 on the evening of July 14th, heading north. Immediately after pulling out of the roadhouse parking lot, Peter noticed a white sport utility vehicle behind him. For miles, the van followed behind them, and after a while, Peter was sure the driver was gonna pass them and continue on his way.
After all, with no speed limits, it wasn't uncommon to be overtaken. And sure enough, the van eventually put its turn signal on, but instead of going past Peter, the driver kept pace with him in the opposite lane. Peter then turned his head to make eye contact with whoever was behind the wheel, and he saw a man in his early 40s with a mustache.
He was signaling to Peter frantically, trying to get him to pull over. Once Peter realized that the man was trying to tell him something about their van, he slowed down and pulled onto the shoulder. The man then pulled over in front of them, and Peter and the other driver exited their vehicles and met.
The driver seemed kind as he told Peter about sparks and smoke coming from the tailpipe of their van. This was certainly news to Peter who hadn't noticed anything in his rearview mirror, but it was obviously worth checking out. He then told Joanne to jump in the driver's seat, and the two men walked to the back of the van.
On Peter's signal, he wanted Joanne to rev the engine so he could see for himself what was going on, but before that came, Joanne heard a loud blast from behind the van. She then snapped her head around to look through the back window and see what it was, thinking for a brief moment that the noise came from the van. But a moment later, the source of the sound became clear.
At the driver's side window was the other driver with a silver revolver in his hand pointed directly at Joanne. He then ordered her back into the passenger seat and her hands behind her back so he could slap a homemade pair of handcuffs onto her wrists. In her shock, Joanne was initially cooperative, but she realized the man also wanted to bind her ankles together and tape her mouth shut, so she started to fight back.
The man then pulled her out of the driver's side door and dragged her to his van, and then forced her through the open window leading to the back bed which was covered with a canopy. After she landed head first in the van, the driver left his vehicle and returned to the area behind the van. While he was doing this, Joanne was looking for any way out.
She was terrified of what might happen if she allowed the man to take her somewhere, so while he wasn't looking, she slipped out of the back after finding a space between the canopy and the bed. Once she was back on the shoulder of the road, with her hands still cuffed behind her back, Joanne bolted away from the road and hid under some bushes. After the driver was finished with whatever he was doing behind the Kombi, he returned to his vehicle and immediately noticed that Joanne was missing.
With his dog and a flashlight, he then began to search the area around the roadside for Joanne. And during this, both the dog and the driver then passed closely by her three times without noticing Joanne. And before long, he returned to his vehicle and took off.
However, fearing that this was just a ploy to get her to come out of her hiding place, Joanna remained in the bushes for the next five hours, doing her best to remain calm and still in the extreme darkness. Finally, at about half past midnight, Joanna emerged from the brush and made her way back to the roadside. And despite how desolate the Stuart Highway is at that time of the night, eventually, she spotted a large truck coming down the road and she ran toward it.
Once the driver saw her, he pulled right over and she got into the truck where she became hysterical as she rattled off what happened. The truck driver then took her back to the roadhouse near Barrow Creek where police were called. Around 1:30 am, the phone rang at the Alice Springs Police Department, and officers and detectives quickly made their way to the roadhouse.
Because they had to drive almost 200 miles to reach it, it was after 4 in the morning before they arrived. But either way, immediately upon getting there, they had Joanne direct them to the area where she evaded the man. While some of the officers searched and gathered evidence, detectives talked to Joanne to get a statement on what happened.
Simultaneously, those checking out the scene found some signs of the earlier incident, namely a pool of blood that appeared to be located where the van once sat on the side of the road. The Kombi, however, was no longer where Peter had parked it. At some point, it had been driven more than 250 feet into the brush like the gunman returned to the scene to hide it.
At around 7 am, police finally began a manhunt for the person responsible based on Joanne's description of him, although authorities knew right away that this was going to be difficult. Of around 200,000 people living in the Northern Territory, the details Joanne gave police about the gunman matched about 10,000 residents. And that's only if the perpetrator was living in the Northern Territory at all.
In fact, everything down to the utility vehicle she described was common in that Australian state. Even still, by 8 o'clock that morning, roadblocks had been set up, but this was more than 12 hours after the incident took place. The man could have been almost anywhere by then.
As this was all happening, reports of the incident started getting out in Australia and then internationally. In England, Joanne's mother was watching the news when the story was mentioned without any names of those involved being given, and immediately, she knew it had to be Joanne and Peter. Both of Joanne's parents then rushed to the nearest police station to see if they could get any more information on the case, and sadly, Joanne's mother's gut feeling was correct.
In the days that followed, Joanne's father and members of Peter's family would travel to Australia to be closer to the investigation. At the crime scene, police conducted extensive searches of the area and even brought in aboriginal trackers to see what they could find. And strangely, it was found that there was only one set of footprints in the desert around the area where the incident took place, and they all belonged to Joanne.
At least that's what the police told the media. And because of this, as often happens with high-profile cases, reporters ran with every possible detail and update, quickly sensationalizing the case, and horrifyingly, Joanne was then placed right in their crosshairs. At first, people marveled at her story of escape, but as time went on without any new developments, Joanne's account of the events on the night of July 14th were put into question.
Soon, Joanne was treated in the public eye similarly to another Australian woman named Lindy Chamberlain. Lindy Chamberlain is the famous "dingo ape my baby" woman who claimed that a dingo had taken her baby from a tent during a camping trip. Media and the public alike then accused her of murder in the face of lack of supporting evidence, and she was eventually charged.
Thankfully, she was eventually found not guilty of everything, but it's obviously one of the worst situations a person could find themself in. In addition, not particularly helpful to Joanne's cause was her silence and distrust of the media because she refused to speak to reporters for the first few weeks after Peter's disappearance. She eventually agreed to do one interview, but this wouldn't be a press conference.
Instead, she'd sit down with one reporter who would ask her questions that she had vetted ahead of the conversation. And unfortunately, even with that being the case, Joanne answered just three of the fourteen approved questions. Speculation ran rampant afterward, and people began to question how the man's dog didn't find her, why there was only one set of footprints, and how her description of the truck was unlikely.
In truth, however, Joanne said that the man's dog was either a red or blue heeler, which is not a breed known for its sniffing capabilities. As far as the tracks go, police maintained that there was only one set of footprints, but when one of the aboriginal trackers was interviewed, he told reporters that they also found the man's footprints, backing up Joanne's claims. Her story about being shoved into the back bed of the van through the forward cabin, however, remained in doubt for a while because this wasn't a common feature of trucks.
It took police some time to learn that the interior setup Joanne described was actually available in certain Nissan and Jeep models, but she reported that the van was a Toyota. Obviously, given the circumstances, she could have easily been mistaken in the darkness and panic. As this cloud of suspicion grew over Joanne though, police turned their focus to the one piece of evidence that might be the key to cracking the entire case.
On the shirt Joanne was wearing that night was a spot of blood that didn't belong to her or Peter. A cross check of this DNA profile was then done, but no match was found, so police had to rely on old-fashioned methods to narrow down the suspects. They then started with owners of vehicles that matched Joanne's statements, and also 36 different men who were reported by anonymous callers.
During this part of the investigation, police came across a man named Bradley John Murdock, who only loosely seemed to fit Joanne's physical description of the man. He was Caucasian and in his early 40s, but not much else matched him. And so, after questioning, he was released without a DNA sample being taken.
Interestingly though, Bradley wasn't exactly a law-abiding citizen. He was known to be a drug runner and often traveled the Stuart Highway, but the most alarming detail from his past was an earlier charge of kidnapping. In a separate investigation, when police caught one of Bradley's drug-related accomplices, the man would go on to claim that it was Bradley who perpetrated the crime on the side of the Stuart Highway.
Police then got a DNA sample from Bradley's brother, and comparing it to the profile obtained from blood on Joanne's shirt, police were certain they had found the gunman. Bradley was then arrested and arraigned on multiple charges, including Peter's murder. He would plead not guilty on October 17th, 2005; his trial got underway in Darwin before the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory.
As the trial wore on, the prosecution's case was damning for Bradley. Joanne testified and identified Bradley as the man, but what was ultimately the deciding factor was the DNA evidence. Traces of his DNA were found on the homemade handcuffs used on Joanne's wrists, and that spot of blood on her t-shirt was confirmed to be Bradley's.
In response, the defense argued that the DNA evidence was contaminated, and while there were some samples that were proven to be corrupted, the blood on Joanne's shirt was not. To explain this, the defense claimed that the blood transfer occurred when both the couple and Bradley were at the roadhouse at the same time. Bradley said that he had stopped in the same restaurant to get chicken for him and his dog, but when he was jailed, he had to have a specialty diet devoid of chicken because he was so allergic to it.
And this obviously contradicted his story about that night in July of 2001. In the end, the trial would go on to last 2 months before the case was handed over to the jury, but deliberations took just 8 hours. Bradley was unanimously found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 28 years.
He has maintained his innocence since his conviction, and thus has refused to tell authorities where Peter is. As of this video, Peter's body is still missing. If you made it this far, thanks so much for watching.
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Anyways, thanks again, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.
