Casefile Presents: Spotify Series

Episode 1: 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan was reported missing after a night out with friends. Detective Inspector Steve Fulcher was the lead investigator. CCTV cameras showed her getting into an unidentified vehicle and then she was gone. 

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When 22 year old Sian O’Callaghan went missing, Detective Steve Fulcher arrested a suspect who offered to lead them to her body. The suspect then asked, ‘Do you want another one?’  What would you have done?

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Episode 9: When the Melbourne lockdown is over, Vikki finally gets to take a closer look at the retarding basin.

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Episode 8: When a missing person isn’t found, it forever haunts those left behind.

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Episode 7: When Kananook local, Steve, was a teenager, he tripped over a bag buried in mud that could hold a vital clue.

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Episode 6: Three years after Sarah went missing, the Frankston serial killer took the lives of three young women. Is there a connection to Sarah?

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Episode 5: Jodi Jones had killed before. In the days after Sarah MacDiarmid vanished, she began telling people she was responsible.

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Episode 4: After calling for help from the public, police begin to piece together Sarah’s movements on the night she disappeared.

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Episode 3: When Sarah’s worried family report her missing, police find blood near her car in the station carpark. The search for her begins.

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Episode 2: On Wednesday 11 July 1990, Sarah played tennis with some friends after work, then caught the train home to the Kananook railway station. She never makes it home.

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Episode 1: In 1990, Sarah MacDiarmid was a young woman starting out in life. She had a good job. She was making new friends after her family moved from Scotland to Melbourne.

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Searching for Sarah MacDiarmid takes a close look at Sarah's disappearance in July 1990 from the Kananook railway station. Author Vikki Petraitis interviews family, friends, and lead investigators to try and find out what happened to Sarah. Available November 15th 2021.

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Episode 10: We go over our own thoughts and conclusions regarding the mysterious disappearances at Rustler Park.

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Episode 9: We head to Rustler Park again, as a surprising discovery in a remote cliffside years after Janet disappeared leads to even more questions.

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Episode 8: We explore the phenomenon of people going missing from National Parks as well as Ranger Paul Fugate’s disappearance from the Chiricahua Mountains in 1980. This forty-year-old mystery still gains nationwide attention.

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Episode 7: Only three months after Janet disappears, Rustler Park becomes the scene of yet another mysterious event.

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Episode 6: Janet’s family sets the record straight and a mysterious new figure enters the investigation.

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Episode 5: We speak with acclaimed criminal behavioral analyst Laura Richards about the different hypotheses surrounding Janet’s disappearance.

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Episode 4: The search for Janet quickly turns into a missing person investigation, as too many details are simply not adding up.

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Episode 3: The mysterious events of Friday, June 19th 2015, when Janet suddenly vanishes without a trace.

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Episode 2: In 1988 Janet was just 17 years old when a tragic event changed the course of her life.

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Episode 1: In the small town of Portal, AZ the community is abuzz with rumors regarding the recent disappearance of a woman from the nearby Chiricahua Mountains.

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When a woman disappeared mysteriously while camping with her family in a national forest, it prompted the question of whether her case was connected to others that happened nearby. Why are national parks the scene of so many missing persons cases?

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Ever imagined what it would be like to fake your own death and start all over again? You wouldn't be the first. There's a name for it: Pseudocide.

Pseudocide is also the name of a new Spotify exclusive from Casefile Presents. In this series, nothing is quite as it seems. Shadowy Russian operatives threaten the life of a dissident, a blood-soaked car is found abandoned at curbside, and a bomb explodes in a quiet Sydney suburb. Prankster clashes with a conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, a forbidden love sparks escape to the other side of the world, and revenge inspires secrets and lies.

All episodes of Pseudocide are available to binge now, for free, only on Spotify. Check out the full series now at spoti.fi/Pseudocide, and be sure to hit the follow button.

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Episode 10: Vivienne Cameron vanishes on the night Beth Barnard is killed. The case isn’t talked about openly. Talking is how we process trauma, but in the aftermath, the murder is not a subject open to discussion.

Whispers and theories are exchanged behind closed doors. Soon, the official investigation is over and both cases have gone to inquest and people go on with their lives. The talking stills and Vivienne vanishes metaphorically as well as physically.

When the book on the case comes out in 1993, locals begin talking again. A man comes forward with information he has kept to himself for eight years. Is it another piece of the puzzle? Or another irrelevant fact?

After all these years, people who loved Vivienne and Beth would like answers to the many questions that remain. As one friend on the Island said, ‘The memory of the horror has never really gone away and the feeling that we still don’t know what happened to Vivienne Cameron sits poorly with us.’ They just want to know the truth.

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Episode 6: Every contact leaves a trace, or so Lochard’s principle of exchange would have us believe.

Police examine the forensic evidence. The crime scene examiners work on three locations: Beth’s house, the Cameron house, and the Land Cruiser.

Blood is found at the scene of the murder. Police forensic experts also find blood at the Cameron house – not surprising considering Fergus had presented the previous evening with injuries that required stitches. But there’s a problem. No blood is found in the Land Cruiser. Whoever killed Beth would be covered in blood.

If Vivienne did drive the Land Cruiser to the scene of the murder, then to the bridge, surely there would be transference from the murder scene to the vehicle. But there isn’t. Bit by bit, the evidence starts to tell a different story.

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Episode 9: A case isn’t just about scientific evidence. It is about piecing together a story that makes sense with the evidence.

Building a case is about interrogating the stories of people on the periphery. It is about asking the question: does this make sense? over and over. And when two people say opposing things, it is about deciding whose story to believe when both can’t be true.

Does the evidence suggest Vivienne Cameron did what she has been accused of? A year after Vivienne’s inquest, there is another vicious attack on a woman on Phillip Island, a friend of Vivienne’s. This victim fights back and manages to escape her attacker. Is there a connection? We never find out because the culprit is never caught. But people wonder.

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Episode 5: News of the murder spreads. People are in shock. No one can believe the culprit could be a popular Island mum. The news just does not equate to the Vivienne Cameron that people know.

She is the one who brings the casserole and bottle of wine when friends are feeling down. She is one who takes horse riding lessons so she can fit in better on the farm. She is the one who works tirelessly at the Community House to support other Island women. The quiet one. The awkward one. How can this have happened?

But outside of the immediate family, there is one local woman who is especially horrified when she hears the news. Hours after police suspect Vivienne jumped from the Phillip Island bridge to her death, Glenda Frost gets a phone call from the missing woman.

The conversation is about a gift Vivienne is organising as a retirement present for a friend. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except at that exact time, police are searching for her as a prime suspect in a murder case.

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Episode 8: Once the evidence is analysed, detectives use it to piece together the story. The big question is: does it match the accounts?

Piece by piece, each item of evidence is examined. Even though in 1986, when DNA is not in the tool kit of investigators, scientists easily differentiate between those who bled on the night of the murder.

Naturally, they find Beth’s blood at the scene of her murder. Police also find three drops of blood on the path outside Beth’s back door which is A-type blood – the same blood type as Vivienne Cameron.

During the examination of the Cameron house, Fergus’s blood is found on a couple of items, but the same A-type blood appears on many items examined by police. When and how this got there is not explained.

Even with all the unexplained aspects of the crime scene, the Coroner makes a very specific finding at Beth’s inquest, a year after the murder. He is unequivocal in his conclusions – he finds that Vivienne Cameron contributed to the cause of death of Beth Barnard.

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Episode 7: When the Camerons’ Land Cruiser is found near the Phillip Island bridge, the possibility has to be considered that Vivienne jumped to her death.

The vehicle is closer to a bus stop than the bridge so the police also have to consider the possibility that Vivienne has fled the Island by some other means.

Police divers spend days searching under the bridge, confident that if Vivienne jumped, they would find some trace of her – glasses, a scarf, a boot. But they find nothing.

A search of the railing finds no break in the salt crust to suggest someone went over the edge. As the search by land, sea, and air intensifies for the missing Vivienne Cameron, others in her family give statements to police. A picture emerges of a woman driven to jealous rages.

The only problem is that the emerging picture is very different to the woman locals know and are fond of. Can the kind, sensitive, unflappable earth mother at the same time be a murderous woman, hell-bent on revenging her husband’s infidelity by slaughtering her rival?

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Episode 3: The next morning, Vivienne is nowhere to be found. A friend contacts the Camerons and says Vivienne had called her in the middle of the night and asked her to come and collect the two young Cameron children from their beds.

They haven’t heard back from Vivienne. She’s not answering her phone and they want to know what to do with the children. With his wife missing, Fergus is upset and immediately worried for the safety of his girlfriend. He urges his brother Donald and his brother-in-law Ian to check on Beth Barnard. They drive across the Island to her house. Her back door is ajar and the two men find Beth’s body on the floor of her bedroom. She has been brutally murdered.

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Episode 1: Before the dead and the vanished, we start with the living. Who were Vivienne Cameron and Beth Barnard before history cast them together as murderer and victim?

Vivienne Cameron was a 35-year-old woman trying to fit into life on Phillip Island. Having married into a prominent family, she did her best to make her way in the small close-knit community that didn’t always welcome outsiders. Her marriage to farmer Fergus Cameron had been happy in the beginning, but with arrival on the Island of the young attractive Beth Barnard, 23, it wasn’t long before Vivienne noticed a distance between her and her husband. And it wasn’t long before locals – and eventually Vivienne – noticed telltale signs of an affair between Fergus and Beth.

Some say Vivienne planned to leave her unfaithful husband while other friends paint a sadder picture of a woman desperate to save her marriage. Vivienne lost weight, coloured her hair, and went to marriage guidance. Her own father had left the family when she was 8 years old. It was the last thing she wanted her own two young sons to experience. 

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Episode 4: After Beth’s body is discovered, the police converge on her farmhouse in Rhyll. The story quickly emerges. Fergus’s affair. The fight between Vivienne and Fergus the previous evening. The middle-of-the-night phone call to collect the Cameron children. And ultimately, the murder of the woman Fergus had been having a secret affair with.

To add to the macabre, when detectives uncover the body, they see the killer has carved a huge letter A into the dead woman’s chest and stomach. The first question for police is: where is Vivienne Cameron? Both she and the family’s Land Cruiser are missing.

The hunt for Vivienne intensifies. Only after the police have driven past it all day is the Land Cruiser discovered late afternoon by Vivienne’s sister-in-law. It had been abandoned near the Phillip Island bridge.

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Episode 2: On their last day, the two women move closer to the events that will seal their fate. An ordinary day that would be otherwise long be forgotten but for its tragic ending.

Friends of the two women recall glimpses of Vivienne and Beth. Vivienne sitting at the desk at the Community House, looking out the window. Beth meeting a friend and talking over her problems – chief of which is the affair with Fergus Cameron. It is going nowhere. Beth sees no future in their relationship continuing the way things are. It is time for an ultimatum.

When Fergus is late home from work that night, Vivienne knows he has been with her. The next thing, Fergus and Vivienne arrive at the local hospital. Fergus is bleeding from a number of wounds but neither he nor his wife will say how he got them. Fergus would later tell police that he and Vivienne returned from the hospital, discussed ending their marriage, then she drove him up the road to stay at his sister’s house.

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The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron delves into the Phillip Island murder of Beth Barnard & disappearance of Vivienne Cameron. Author Vikki Petraitis takes you back to Phillip Island to understand – what really happened that night… and where is Vivienne?

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