The heartbroken husband of missing mother-of-three Samantha Murphy has spoken out two weeks after his wife’s disappearance.
Murphy, 51, left her home on Eureka Street in East Ballarat, northwest of Melbourne, to go jogging at Woowookarung Regional Park shortly after 7am on February 4 and has not been seen since.
On Monday, her husband Mick Murphy sent a message to Australia.
“We want Sam home please,” he told 7News.
Murphy told the outlet that his family is “doing the best we can under the circumstances.”
Samantha Murphy disappeared without a trace on February 4
Samantha Murphy’s husband, Mick Murphy
He had previously told people to speak up if they knew anything about the missing mother of three.
‘People just don’t disappear into thin air. “Someone has to know something,” he told reporters Thursday.
Last week, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said the search for Murphy had reached a new stage.
“It is certainly unusual that we have not been able to locate any trace of her or any other evidence during that period of time,” he said.
“It’s suspicious, whether that means there’s foul play involved or not I don’t know, but obviously detectives are investigating a matter where a woman has been missing for a significant period of time.”
Detectives from Victoria Police’s Missing Persons Unit attended Murphy’s property on Wednesday morning.
Detectives spent more than an hour inside before leaving.
The East Ballarat property is at the center of the investigation. It is where Ms Murphy was last seen on February 4, while she was out for a morning run.
Part of the investigation, now called Operation Primus, will see detectives trawl through Ms Murphy’s computers and devices in the hope of finding clues.
Ms Murphy’s husband Mick, who continues to be supported by family members, is understood to be co-operating with the specialist unit, attached to Victoria Police’s Homicide Squad.
Daily Mail Australia is not suggesting Murphy had anything to do with his wife’s disappearance.
Last Thursday, her uncle and aunt, Allan and Janice Robson, told Daily Mail Australia they suspected their beloved niece of committing a crime.
It’s like he’s disappeared from the face of the Earth. There’s nothing,” Mrs Robson said.
‘I’d say someone would have been watching her. I can’t think of it as anything else.
They are both baffled by the mystery of his phone and say he would not have ventured as far from his house as the place where police believe his cell phone last “pinged” with a tower.
Last week, State Emergency Services volunteers and police searched the bush in an area between Canadian Plantation and Yankee Flat Road, about 15 kilometers from Murphy’s home, where they believe his phone was turned off.
“She never turned that phone off… that phone was always on,” Mr Robson said.
Ms Robson said the police had not provided any information about the investigation other than what was already known to the general public.
‘Any information they (the police) have will stay with them. “They don’t want to scare anyone,” Robson said.
Robson said she asked her brother, Murphy’s father, John Robson, if he knew of any reason his daughter might have disappeared, but he had no answers.
Robson said his niece was financially secure and wondered if someone could have hurt her in a robbery gone wrong.
“Mick had so many cars he couldn’t fit them in his garage,” he said.
“I don’t think he’s an opportunist,” Mrs. Robson said.
‘I think it was someone who has been harassing her. Someone she didn’t even know was harassing her.
Mrs Robson suggested that anyone who knew her niece knew she was a creature of habit when it came to exercise.
“She used to go running in the morning,” he said.
“It normally goes 20 kilometers,” Robson said.
“But he had to meet someone in Ballarat at 10am, so he only did 10 kilometres.”
The elderly couple said Murphy was an intelligent and caring person who had the ability to defend himself if someone tried to harm him.
“She would have put up a very good fight,” Allan said.
And I think if she suspected something, I don’t think she would stop there. She was a runner. “She would have left that area,” Mrs Robson said.
The couple said Murphy was familiar with the terrain and would have known if anyone unusual had been lurking on the routes she ran on in the days before her disappearance.
“She’s there so often she would have bumped into something,” Mrs Robson said.
With police effectively abandoning the search for Ms Murphy less than a week after it began, the couple are afraid to believe she is already dead.
‘You would think the (search) dogs would have been able to detect his scent. That’s what they do. “They should have been able to tell where she was in those woods,” Mrs Robson said.