AN Adelaide nurse is haunted by what she is convinced were the desperate screams of Daniel Sheppard being abducted outside her home — and bewildered by the lack of interest shown by police officers investigating his 1995 disappearance.
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Nurse believes she overheard the abduction of Daniel Sheppard on the night he vanished without a trace
Exclusive — Andrew DowdellSunday Mail (SA)
August 12, 2018 11:05AM
AN Adelaide nurse is “haunted” by what she believes were the desperate screams of Daniel Sheppard being abducted outside her home early on New Year’s Day, 1995.
Carol, who did not want her surname published, said she was bewildered and frustrated by the lack of interest shown by uniformed police and homicide detectives, despite the incident happening 10 minutes after he was last seen, and a two-minute walk from his home.
“In my heart I know it was Daniel. Over the years it has really haunted me at times,” she said. “Why have I just never been listened to? Particularly when the police were going after other leads, I just thought they were totally barking up the wrong tree.”
Now in her early 50s, she told the
Sunday Mail she would never forget the commotion on Jane Flaxman Court about 4.45am, after she woke to attend to her sick young daughter.
“I’d heard someone screaming along the lines of ‘I don’t need a lift’ and ‘f … off, f … off’ and it sounded distressed, but then there was nothing but a bit of a muffled noise,” she said.
Startled and alarmed, Carol went outside and sat on a stool, where she had a view of the street and the large, “square-shaped” car which was similar to a Holden Statesman or Ford Falcon.
Jane Flaxman Court in West Lakes, where Carol heard what she is convinced was the abduction of Daniel Sheppard. Credit: News Corp Australia, Tom Huntley
She was surprised to see one man in the driver’s seat with nobody in the front passenger seat.
“I thought that was odd, then I saw the car had no lights on and thought that’s weird, why haven’t they got their lights on?” she said.
At the time Carol thought the figure in the middle of the rear seat was a female, but learned later that Daniel was small with long wavy blonde hair.
“All of this happened within a minute and it just didn’t feel right and I just couldn’t process it and went to my husband and said ‘something really weird has just happened in our street’,” she said.
“He reminded me that it’s New Year’s Day and everyone is drunk and people are doing stupid things. But something just didn’t sit right and I rang Port Adelaide police station after I got up around mid-morning.”
Accepting the initial disinterest, Carol again contacted police when Daniel was declared missing and received a call back from a detective.
“They spoke to me over the phone but they never came and saw me, never came and saw where I was saying these things happened, which surprised me,” she said.
Then in the early 2000s, she received a phone call out of the blue from a detective, who wanted her to recount her story.
“I remember him saying he’d been so caught up in the Snowtown case that this had taken a back seat,” she said.
Carol said she believed her information would finally be taken seriously when the detective allegedly told her “I think you are probably pretty spot on with what you thought happened to Daniel”.
Carol said she had spent years “pulling my hair out” as a 2005 Coroner’s Inquest passed without her evidence ever being made public or delved into by police.
Carol said she agonised for years on whether to contact the Sheppard family with her story, before contacting their Facebook page Missing Person Daniel Sheppard several months ago.
Carol’s meeting with the Sheppards left her “just overwhelmed by what they live with for so many years, it would be your worst nightmare not knowing”.
While happy her story was finally public and that police had confirmed that she had reported the incident before Daniel was even noticed missing, Carol said it was “really scary too”.
“I have been a little bit creeped out today, the people who did these terrible things are still out there and they know exactly what happened,” she said.
“I just hope someone, even on their deathbed, has the conscience one day to say they do know what happened, and give the family some closure.”
Family just wants answers
DANIEL Sheppard’s relatives have spent 23 years agonising over what cruel fate befell him in the hour before sunrise on New Year’s Day 1995. They have been resigned to the likelihood his death will be another unsolved case with more questions than answers.
But after police confirmed a West Lakes woman had reported a violent incident outside her home at the time Daniel vanished, there is one question they say can be answered.
“The question we have is why wasn’t this released in the media and why wasn’t there a re-enactment,” Daniel’s nephew David Sheppard said. “And why didn’t we know about it?”
The family, including Daniel’s elderly mother Pat and his twin brother Michael, have endured the double blow of never receiving answers amid a litany of “insulting” theories. These included the 19-year-old being killed by members of the occult, a homosexual gang, or drug dealers over a debt.
But in 23 years, the Sheppard family have been unaware of evidence which backs their initial suspicions that he was abducted by strangers as he walked home from a night out with friends.
The Sheppard family were pessimistic when a woman called Carol messaged the Facebook page Missing Person Daniel Sheppard several months ago.
“When we first read it we thought ‘oh, here we go again’,” he said.
“But we double-checked it on the record, and the detectives over the years have spoken to her and it checked out.”
On Thursday, the police officer leading a cold case review confirmed that detectives had interviewed Carol soon after the disappearance — adding to the family’s anguish, as they now believe police could have squandered their best chance to solve the case.
“If it is true, those people in that car could have been trying to get other people that night and someone might have said ‘I remember that car or those people’ — you never know,” Mr Sheppard said.
Despite their frustration at only hearing of the report via Facebook — and then by asking police this week — the family said they hoped a cold case investigation launched three years ago could finally give answers.
Sergeant Simon May has been appointed to lead the renewed probe.
One of Daniel’s five older sisters, Denise Scarborough, said a series of detectives assigned to the case over the years.
“The first detective running the case was called Weeding and he had an offsider, a bit later on Weeding was transferred somewhere else,” she said.
“Then the detective Stapleton came on, and then Stapleton left and I thought ‘oh well, who is handling the case?’ and if you wanted to know anything I wouldn’t have known who to speak to until Simon was put on.”
Mr Sheppard said the family was hopeful that Sgt May would bring a fresh focus to the case.
“He contacted Daniel’s mother in 2015 to have a meeting with her and we went there and met him … it was a good meeting,” he said. “He’s done everything I guess you could ask, the only thing is this information. I guess he wasn’t in charge then, but we still wanted to know about this now.”
Carol’s call to police before Daniel was missing boosts the family’s long-held view that he fell prey to sex predators on the 12-minute walk home.
“The scenario I picture in my head is they have seen him walking and somewhere between the (train) station and his house approached him in the car and possibly said something like ‘happy New Year, do you want a lift?” Mr Sheppard said.
“This whole scenario, from the location to the time, it all adds up and it is a red flag.”
Mr Sheppard said when the Snowtown serial killing victims were found in barrels in 1999, they expected Daniel to be among the victims but another infamous Adelaide case had been in their minds for years.
“It has a lot of similarities to The Family as well, they were the stunts they pulled off, targeting young men and Daniel only looked about 16,” he said.
“It’s mind-blowing isn’t it? There is nothing about it in the Coroner’s inquest either, so it was a big shock,” Ms Scarborough said. “All of it adds up, the time fits in perfectly and we have always known he was taken. He knew what he was doing and was going straight home, but he never made it.”
