The mysterious disappearance of an 18-year-old who disappeared more than two decades ago is explored once again in a new podcast.
Niamh Maye, from Armidale in northern New South Wales, Australia, had been picking fruit during her gap year in various orchards around Batlow in March 2002.
The teenager had told her mother she was heading to her sister’s house in Sydney and was planning to travel to Armidale with her sister Fionnuala and brother Kieron to spend the Easter weekend with her family.
However, he never reached Sydney. She was last seen leaving a campsite in Jingellic with fellow fruit picker Jason ‘Jack’ Nicklason, who offered to give her a lift in his black HT Holden hearse to the regional town of Tumut.
However, Jack said he dropped her off on the side of Gocup Road, saying she apparently wanted to hitchhike to save money at a bus fair. He was the last known person to see her alive and the main suspect in the investigation, but he died after escaping from prison.
Now, 22 years after Niamh disappeared, a new 12-part series from the Casefile Missing Niamh podcast has delved into the details of her case.
Niamh Maye, from Armidale, northern New South Wales, Australia, disappeared after leaving a camp in 2002.
She was booked to take a bus north from Batlow to Cootamundra and then a train to Sydney, where her friend Joel was waiting for her at the Batlow bus stop so she could say goodbye, but she never arrived and her ticket was never used.
Niamh was carrying a backpack with her clothes, camera, camping equipment and cooking utensils. None of the items have ever been found.
Niamh’s brother Kieron traveled to Batlow to look for his sister and managed to contact Jack by phone.
He said: “I told him Niamh was missing, it’s been seven days, he was as calm and collected as a cucumber, if you had been told that one of your friends, who you had last seen a week ago, was now missing.” . , you would be shocked, worried, surprised, there was none of that. It was just super calm.
“That’s the strange thing, there was no excitement, no concern, nothing, she just said I dropped her off in Tumut on Saturday between 1 and 2pm, that I was going to hitchhike to Cootamundra or Gundagai to save money on a bus ticket. countrylink.’
However, what Jack said to Kieron didn’t make any sense because Niamh had already bought her ticket.
Kieron continued: “That doesn’t make any sense, she had a ticket to Batlow, it was already paid for and Batlow is closer than Tumut, why would she try to hitchhike because she’ll miss her connection anyway?”
The teenager had told her mother she was heading to her sister’s house in Sydney and was planning to travel to Armidale with her sister Fionnuala and brother Kieron to spend the Easter weekend with her family. However, she never made it to Sydney.
She was last seen leaving a campsite in Jingellic, with fellow fruit picker Jason ‘Jack’ Nicklason, (pictured) who offered to give her a lift in his black HT Holden hearse to the regional town of Tumut.
Within hours of returning to the Jingellic camp, Jack sold his beloved black hearse (pictured) to a friend.
Although Jack was questioned by police, they released him without charge and told the media that he was not a person of interest.
Detective Steve Rose said: “It was the early stages so we were able to discredit what he said, you have to play your cards quite carefully.” We didn’t want him to go underground because we wanted to keep an eye on him.
When the police began questioning witnesses, many said they saw him return to the camp at 4pm after dropping off Niamh, and Jack also confirmed this time to the police when they questioned him.
However, Jack and Niamh left camp at 10am for what should have been a three-hour round trip, leaving two or three hours unaccounted for.
Jack claimed he took Niamh to Tumut and returned straight to camp without any stops or detours. The police never asked him what he did during the hours he was missing.
Within hours of returning to the Jingellic camp, Jack sold his beloved black hearse to a friend.
However, Jack’s story gained traction when several locals said they saw a woman matching Niamh’s description walking along Gocup Road during Easter.
Jack said he dropped her off on the side of Gocup Road, saying she apparently wanted to hitchhike to save money at a bus fair. He was the last known person to see her alive.
Jack’s story gained traction when several locals said they saw a woman matching Niamh’s description walking along Gocup Road during Easter.
Now, 22 years after Niamh disappeared, a new 12-part series from the Casefile Missing Niamh podcast has delved into the details of her case (pictured as a child).
An extensive land and air search of the 20 kilometer area found no indication that Niamh had ever been there.
Jack went back to picking fruit, but his friends began to notice a change in his behavior.
A friend said: “He didn’t seem as lively as he used to be and actually seemed a bit depressed and withdrawn, Jack never seemed to recover and seemed more quiet and depressed.”
Another friend said: “I noticed a big change in his behaviour, Jack was in a bad mood and his physical appearance changed with his drug abuse.”
Eventually, Jack hitchhiked to Brisbane where he had planned to catch a plane to Darwin the following night, however he told his friends he would be flying to Melbourne.
While waiting for his flight, he crossed paths with 19-year-old Janice and he propositioned her, she said no and continued walking home.
Jack reportedly said, “You’ve got a nice butt, I just thought I’d tell you that.” When Janice told him to leave, he is said to have responded: “You have nice tits too.”
Janice told police he grabbed her breasts, she pushed him away and walked away, but Jack said, “Then I’ll follow you.”
Janice said: ‘I looked back a couple of times but I didn’t see him. I turned right and walked home. I live in apartments on the top floor. I opened the front door, my roommate was not home. I left the front door open, the back door was open too.
The teenager described how they grabbed her from behind at her home and covered her mouth with their hand.
She said he punched her in the face and tried to strangle her with a towel. She said he raped her, despite her attempts to defend herself.
A neighbor noticed the violent attack and Jack fled the house on foot. As luck would have it, a police car drove by and the neighbor stopped them.
The police gave chase and ended up catching Jack hiding in a warehouse. They handcuffed him and took him to a local police station.
Jack was arrested for the violent rape in October 2002. While being escorted without handcuffs to a Brisbane jail cell, he escaped from custody and fell to his death.
Despite extensive investigations over the years, including another publicized effort in 2015, no trace of Niamh has ever been found.
Police said investigations were hampered by the suicide of Jack, a person of interest in her disappearance. There have been no other suspects identified in her disappearance.
A 2012 coroner’s inquest determined that Niamh died in or near Tumut on March 30 or 31.
On what would have been Niamh’s 40th birthday in June 2023, New South Wales Police announced a $250,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of Niamh’s remains, or for information leading to an arrest and conviction. .
However, the mystery of what happened to Niamh was never solved, even more than two decades after she disappeared.