Dear Rachelle - Australia's new true crime obsession
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Here we have Rochelle Childs suiting up for her qualifying stint. Is it going to be a blinder? What if I can't get the fucking helmet on? Language, love it. And this is the beginning lesson. We're going to watch Rochelle go slow. Oh, we're recording now. And here we go. Oh, that's it. It's a sunny day at Wakefield Park Raceway, about a two-hour drive south of Sydney.

Rochelle is wild about cars and she's wearing her favourite sports sunnies and geared up in a racing suit. Her blonde hair's pulled back in a ponytail and she's beaming with excitement. Go, Rochelle. She's moments away from jumping behind the wheel of a hotted-up Holden. Any last words before we go? Yeah. Go, girl.

That driving experience was a gift for her 21st birthday and it's the final recording Rochelle's family has to hold on to.

The death of Rochelle Childs... The 23-year-old disappeared from a pub in Bargo. She planned to meet someone there. Whose burnt body was found on a lonely south coast road. Burnt body was found in bush in Jeroa. She was murdered. The worst thing you could say to any individual is, you're a murderer and you killed my daughter. Rochelle was killed by someone she knew. We'd like to find out who did it and why. Evidence points to a crime cleverly planned, but still the killer wasn't caught. Poor, poor.

My name is Christy Childs and this story is about my beautiful sister, Rochelle Childs. She was violently taken from us when I was just 18. Rochelle was vivacious, hilarious and kind. She was everything to me growing up. My mentor, my protector, my best friend. I looked up to her so much and now I know she's looking down on me.

willing me to find the person who killed her. I'm Ashley Hansen, and this is Dear Rochelle, a podcast about a popular 23-year-old who was adored by her family and friends. Nobody has ever been charged over Rochelle's murder. From True Crime Australia, this is the untold story of Rochelle Charles. Hi. How are you? Nice to see you. Good to see you.

For the past year, I've been working closely with Christy to reinvestigate her sister's murder. We're on a mission to finally expose who killed Rochelle. For more than two decades, Rochelle's family has been fighting for justice. This case should never have been left to run cold. I've been covering crime for over 20 years in Australia and my job as a reporter has taken me around the world. I thought I was prepared for anything.

Until I started investigating this case. The chilling fear that surrounds Rochelle's murder has made this story the most challenging of my career. I've even been warned by former cops to tread very carefully.

Any advice for me following this story? You were suggesting you were going to do... I wouldn't carry that out. I fear for you. Just thought that you should be aware of what you were doing. Sometimes you get lost in your work and you don't realise what you've done until it's too late. Well, as I said to you before, you're poking a bear.

I do take that advice seriously. But while a cold-blooded killer and suspected rapist is walking free, no woman is safe. And I just can't let Rochelle's family down. Our investigation has uncovered damning new evidence. Innocent people who've been too afraid to speak out for decades are breaking their silence for Rochelle. You'll hear from friends and family, investigators and key witnesses who've never spoken before.

Some of the brightest minds from our criminal justice system are helping to reinvestigate her murder. Is it possible the killer threw the investigation so far off course it was impossible to solve? Was he acting alone? Were there darker forces at play? When you're dealing with sex offenders, it takes years of experience to realise how clever they are. Fucking blame on me because I'm in a bike club? My worst fear is that person who killed Rochelle has killed again.

Over the years, police identified nine persons of interest, or POIs, and the coroner comprehensively examined Rochelle's death, which still didn't lead to anyone being charged. But what really gets to the family is the lack of action by police to reopen her case. Here's Christy Child straight after a meeting with the New South Wales Unsolved Homicide Squad in early 2024.

Christy's an assistant principal at a primary school, so you know she's taken notes. He said, I don't know, and I said, so you're not across this case? And he said, no, I'm not. And I said, who is? And he said, no one. I said, so no one in unsolved homicide is across this case? And he said, no. Christy and her mum Anne have been let down so many times. This podcast could be their final shot. Through it all, they've held on tightly to their memories.

She all continues that with completely different personalities. She was just out there more, you know, she was lovely and loud and Christy was just this soft little mouse, really sweet. That's part of her dancing days. She looked up to, Christy looked up to her show, she really did, she thought she was the aunt's pants. They'll find together right up through primary, it was lovely. It was a really good relationship.

My name is Lisa and I was Rachelle's best friend for her entire life.

We owned horses together. You know, we were dancing five days a week when we were young, so that was a lot of time we were spending. We removed a little moving panel in between our fences. You know, we'd jump over the fence to jump in each other's pools and to have her in my life to navigate the good and the tough times. There were some tough times where we grew up in Glenfield, particularly for myself being of a Mediterranean background and I got bullied and

And she was my saving grace. She was amazing. She had a way with people and a way with the bullies and had a lot of power, you know, and she could stop them from hitting me. But she made something that could have been utterly horrific manageable from opening barbed wide fences and helping me run through so I could escape before they caught me to distracting them.

Christy had just turned 18 when she moved in with Rochelle in Bargo, an hour south of the hustle and bustle of Sydney. It's a one-pub town, the kind of place where you run into your neighbour when you pop out to grab the milk. There's a small strip of shops with a bakery, a supermarket and a vet. They were renting a modest three-bedroom brick home on a small farm in town.

If Rochelle wasn't restoring Holden's, she was with her animals on the idyllic six acres. That was her happy place. Rochelle needed the space, mostly for the horses, but she also had a cat and an enormous Australian bulldog named Rolfie. By her early 20s, she was selling used cars at a dealership in Camden, a quaint town about half an hour away from Bargo. One of the biggest perks of Rochelle's job?

a licence to borrow shiny cars off the lot. We had big plans for the weekend and she was supposedly getting a VL SS Group A, otherwise known as a Walkinshaw, because there was one coming into the car yard that her boss had told her about and she was so excited because she got to take it home for...

I believe she was having the Friday off, so she was going to have this walk and chill for four days. So we had big plans about where we were all going to go in this car because it's such a rare, beautiful car that not many people gets to drive around in. So we're all very excited.

My name's Fiona. I knew Rochelle for about two years when we worked at Camden Holden together. I was hired as the receptionist and registrations clerk and she was in used cars. Work was just funny. We'd smoke, we'd have lunch together sometimes. It was just a good place to work. You know, like, I

Locals remember the dealerships used car offers because it was pretty iconic. They did business from inside a refurbished red train carriage.

So my office was in the showroom and to get to the train station you had to walk along a platform. It was a train platform. It was basically as if a train had pulled up. It was an old Red Rattler. Michelle's office was...

you know, not too far in, but it was pretty much there. So did you ever come here and see Rochelle when she was at work? Oh, yeah, yeah. I was here quite often for whatever reason, pick up things, pick her up. Yeah, no, I was here quite often. I used to watch her move the cars around. So here was, you know, all of the used cars. And to watch her move the cars around to get them into the right spot, it was like...

watching a ballet like it was so such precision work she was such a good driver she used to do a kath and kim dance you know the kath dance where kath does the donkey she'd do that going down the platform of camden holden i'd just stand at the showroom just laughing all the way as she'd do a little dance down the platform back to her office fiona lisa rochelle and her little sister christy were a tight crew

until the 7th of June 2001, the Thursday ahead of the long weekend. Here's Christy. I was at mum and dad's house because they were away, so I was at their house. I remember she called me on her way home from work. I was on, you know, when you used to have, like, the second line on the landline. I was on the phone to my best mate from school and I heard the call come through and I said, I'll just answer this quickly. So I jumped over to the other line. PHONE RINGS

That was at exactly 5.15pm on Thursday the 7th of June 2001.

A minute later, it's believed Rochelle flicked a cigarette butt out the window of her blue 1978 Holden Commodore as she drove along the Old Hume Highway through Camden, heading towards her home in Bargo. A council ranger happened to be driving behind her and noted down the day, time and number plate. GV2000. The officer didn't see the driver, but Rochelle was a smoker.

A fine for littering was later issued. But, of course, it would never be paid. Rochelle's exact movements over the following nine hours remain a mystery. In the early hours of Friday morning, security guard Craig Duck is on duty and heading to his next job. He's passing through Seven Mile Beach, 100km south of Bargo, in the coastal town of Jeroa, when he's suddenly compelled to stop. It's a lot like a hell. I'm driving through...

I seen this fire on the right hand side and I've gone in. This is where I don't forget anything because it plays on my mind all the time. I've walked in and I didn't think much of it. I'm trying to kick this fire out and as I'm kicking sand onto it, it's coming back at me feet. I said, "This ain't right." And I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna grab my torch because this is not normal."

At this stage, Rochelle's family and friends have no idea she's even missing.

Fiona recalls cancelling her plans to meet Rochelle that night. We'd organised for these drinks on the Thursday to go and have a drink and I said, I'm not going to go, I've been on the phone all night, I'm just going to go home. And we had that conversation down in the train carriage where anybody could have heard that conversation that the plans had changed, that she was just going straight home. And what was the moment that you realised something was wrong?

We got a phone call from Fiona. It was a Friday morning or around lunchtime and Fi said, I can't get a hold of Rochelle and I don't know where she is. Rochelle's rostered off on the Friday, but she tells Fiona she's going to be popping into work anyway, but she never turns up. The Friday night when I got down to her place,

I'd been trying all day. For her not to have a mobile on was really unusual. And she knew I was coming on the Friday. I can't find her. She's not answering her phone. When I arrived at her house, the lights were all on. Her car's not here. Rolfie hasn't been fed. And the telly was still on. And I went, oh, okay. So I tried to call. And the windows were, like, the blinds were open. I could see. It looked like she'd literally just left us.

It was Friday night that we realised something was seriously wrong because no one had heard from her all day. And that was very unusual. She would talk to multiple people multiple times a day. So to not be able to get a hold of her was very strange. So that's when it started to get real, Friday afternoon.

That night we called police stations, we called all of the hospitals, we travelled around up and down the road to see whether we could find maybe she had an accident. We were just trying anywhere to say, has anything happened? Is there any police stations? You know, like, just frantic. My best friend's missing and I'm really worried. And then the next day I'd printed out posters that said missing and her picture and

I can't even remember where I went, but giving it to everyone in the community. I had a job where I used to cook the barbecue. I had three jobs, but one of them while I was at uni, one of them was to cook the barbecue at the markets on a Saturday morning and she was supposed to come there.

And she was going to bring her friend's daughter, Tanae, with her. So I went there because I thought, well, she said she was going to come. So I just waited for her for hours and hours and hours. And I can't remember the beautiful lady who I worked with there. At about 10 o'clock, she said, you need to call your parents. And that's when I called mum and dad and said, she's missing. I can't find her.

Everyone was just very displaced and Christy rang us on the Saturday and said that I can't find Rochelle. I thought, what do you mean you can't find her? She's somewhere. Maybe she stayed at a friend's place last night. What was that drive like back to Bargo? I don't remember. It was a big blur. We went straight to Bargo and Chris was there. I just remember getting all flies and taking it out to local pubs and places around to see if anyone had seen or...

The search enters its second day and then a breakthrough. On Saturday, the family is told Rochelle was supposed to meet someone at the Bargo Hotel on Thursday night. The pub's almost two kilometres away from her place. It's a typical country pub on the main drag.

Back in 2001, it's painted red and green. Upstairs, you can find a cheap room. Downstairs has a bistro, a sports bar, pokies and a jukebox. Every Thursday is pool competition night and also topless waitress night. So most punters on a Thursday are typically men. I haven't been able to figure out why and why at Bargo Pub...

If she did go there, why did she meet someone there? If it was someone she knew, why didn't she meet them at home? Had you ever gone to the Bargo Hotel with Rochelle? No, never. Never?

Never. I didn't really even know she'd gone. I'd never heard of the Bargo Hotel. If she'd mentioned the Bargo Hotel, it would have been one of the first stops on that Friday night. She would never walk into a new place alone and she would never go and meet someone new alone. She used to drag me around to parties and as soon as she was in there and felt confident, she'd forget I was there. Yeah.

So she was a little shy in that sort of respect. She knew too many people to walk into a place on her own. She didn't have to ever walk anywhere on her own or go anywhere on her own. And she wouldn't go and meet someone that she didn't know. And if she was going to, she wouldn't go alone. While the family's desperately searching for any trace of Rochelle, police are trying to make sense of Craig Duck's shocking discovery at Seven Mile Beach. I don't know what I was going through.

I don't really know. I was just going through, okay, the sort of bengal that flashed up in my eyes. So I knew that. I knew it had to be a female.

The operator asked me a few questions and I was like, well, there's all this noise and there's cars and there's something going on outside. My dog won't stop barking and I can't go to sleep and now I think there's a fire and I don't know what's going on but somebody needs to get down here because we're quite isolated. But then it was a fairly short time after that that I'd started hearing sirens. Next thing you know, the police are coming. Fire brigade had got there. I walked up beside their truck and I said, guys, you can't go in.

This is a crime scene area. My name is Carmen and in 2001 my husband and I were the on-site managers of Setamal Beach Holiday Park which is approximately 500 or so metres from where Rochelle was found. Once the police got there, the officers gone in, I've taken the officer in, shown her

It's a long weekend, I've got three little boys asleep in bed, my dog's going crazy, there's horrible noises outside, something's not right. How big was the fire at this stage? It was confined to one area, but it was quite high.

I can sense my emotions, you know, taking me back to that moment and that sort of fearful moment and not knowing what I was hearing. And I could hear yelling and then I could hear a few sort of, like, awful noises. What was that 20 minutes like for you, standing at this crime scene, knowing what was burning? It was horrific. If I was the last person to ever hear her or...

You know, it was the last place she was ever alive. I feel some sort of connection and I feel so sad for her family. It's so emotional after all this time. Back in Bargo, Rochelle's family and friends are rushing to the local pub where her car's been found parked out the back. We got into the car and I remember sitting in the car and going, there's something wrong. The club block was on upside down.

She had a specific way that she used to put the club block on the handle that people used to point down. She would point up and jam it in the corner of the windscreen and then she'd lock the steering wheel and that wasn't done. It was upside down.

She would sit like hanging back, the sort of cruisy arm and you know, like she'd have the smoke and you know, like, but it wasn't sort of positioned like that. She did used to have a seat really far back, but it was really far back. And I remember looking at the car going, there's something seriously wrong here. She didn't park this here. So I got out of the car and that's when I knew something bad had happened.

Christy and her friends are racking their brains as to who would have driven Rochelle's car anywhere, let alone to the Bargo Hotel. Meanwhile, a murder investigation is well and truly underway at Seven Mile Beach, Jeroa.

At a nearby hospital, a young woman's badly burned body has been formally identified and South Coast detectives are making the hour drive to Bargo. I was at home at Bargo, probably printing out more posters as I was sitting at the computer and I saw the detectives pull up. It was Ivor Davies and Peter Street. They pulled up out the front and got out of the car and walked in and I was hopeful when they walked in. I thought, oh, they've...

found her, they've come to tell us something. And they came inside. I was on the lounge. Christy was sort of over thinking like a piano stool or another lounge. Ivor walked up to me and looked me in the eye and put his left hand on my shoulder and said, your sister's dead. She was murdered. She was found down at Jaroa. When they said that they found Christy,

Someone at Jeroa. My first words were, where the fuck is Jeroa? Where the fuck is Jeroa? What do you mean? I don't know what happened after that. I think I screamed. And Fiona was there. She was hysterical. I couldn't even think. And then I looked up and mum and dad had pulled up out the front and I went, oh, I can't be here for this. So I went out the back. And then, yeah, then I ever told mum and dad.

I was at the house at Bargo. We'd just gotten there and Ivor Davies, her detective, came out to tell us and Christy was still in the house. And we knew something was terribly wrong by this point. It just wasn't Cheryl. She always would ring Chris or always contact us. And when he said it, I said, oh, look, are you sure? Like, what? And yeah, they said she was found on the early hours of Friday morning.

Just the start of the long weekend, yeah, she was dead. How do you even begin to process such devastating news? You can't. You don't know what to do with it. It's just unbelievable this doesn't happen. It was so hard for Christy. It was an awful time, awful. I have goosebumps just thinking about it. It was...

Anyway, I get in my car, I drive home and then I remember I was speaking to a friend of mine, Darren, and then Fiona called and I'm like, oh, that's weird, I'm going to hang up and I'll speak to Fiona and they're like, hey, we found Shell. And I'm like, oh, my God, where the hell is she? You know, with this, oh, I'm going to wring her neck type of thing. And she goes, oh, at hospital. I'm like, oh, OK, which one? And she said, oh, sorry, she... No, Lisa, she's not... She's dead. And I just fell out of the car.

No one was home. And I dragged myself on the floor and somehow got to the front door. And then I remember ringing Anne straight away, Rochelle's mum, and just saying, is it true? She answered and I said, is it true? And she said yes. When you saw Rochelle's face for the first time in the news days later, how did that affect you? I couldn't believe it. I thought, she's only a baby. Why? Why would anyone do that to you? Too well.

Craig Ducker's referring to a photograph he'd seen of Rochelle with her idol, Australian racing legend Peter Brock. That photo was splashed across newspapers and national TV screens as police hunted her killer.

An autopsy couldn't determine Rochelle's cause of death, but it was suspected she was smothered or strangled. At least one of her fingers was also detached. She was found naked from the waist down, leaving detectives convinced she was raped. The first lead investigator into Rochelle's murder was a cop called Ivor Davies. Christy and I headed to meet him back at Giroir, where Craig found Rochelle's body all those years ago.

I'm curious to ask Ivor, how heavily does a case like that weigh on you? You know, some things sit with you, whether it's the one that got away or whether it's a really, really bad one that you can't get out of your head. And a lot of detectives out there have got that. I drive past this road on a regular... And I always look here when I'm driving through and I always wish...

that there had been something else, but she'd left me something else because I wanted closure for the family. And it annoyed me that we never ever got there. And I think of her from time to time. I can't think of anything we would have done different because we'd done everything we could. I'm just sorry I wasn't there to push on. The killer clearly wasn't trying to hide her body. What do you make of that? Well, I think they went to great lengths to hide her body, but it didn't work out. So then it was just...

ad hocly, done in haste, just they've had enough. They must have been driving around with the corpse in their body for, I don't know, hours. And I just think that when this didn't pan out, they've had enough. We're not going to just put a rear torch and get rid of the evidence, let's get out of Dodge. Would you like this case to be reopened? Because right now it's not an active case. Well, I'm hoping, perhaps because of what you're doing, it may inspire some sort of motivation to push on. But I'm absolutely sure in my heart

that we've interviewed the crook. He's in that brief. I feel so indebted to Ivor because I know that he put his heart and soul into it and he's still, even though he doesn't work for the police anymore, he's still summarising and thinking about it and, yeah, he's just beautiful. It was on this day Christy learned more about why this case has haunted him. I didn't know that he was the one that lifted Rochelle out of where she was found. I'd only just found that out. Yeah, that's horrific.

And that would be something I don't think, because that would never leave. You can't unsee that. You can't unfeel that. So, yeah, that's horrible. Rochelle's case was the last murder investigation Ivor Davies would ever work on. In the years that followed, countless more cops would try but fail to solve Rochelle's murder. If we're going to get justice for her family, we need to do something bold.

Well, you've got to think outside the square and really take your blinkers off in these sort of investigations and not be narrow-minded. So I've turned to Damien Loon, a 30-year veteran who's known for cracking cold cases. He was the dogged detective who was vital in the success of my inspiring colleague Hedley Thomas' podcast, The Teacher's Pet.

The teacher's pet was one of Australia's first and most powerful true crime podcasts, which led to the conviction of Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife, Lynn. For decades, he'd gone unpunished.

Well, all the skills that I used through my experience of the investigation into Chris Dawson's homicide of his wife, Lynne, I'm now using those skills to help find out who murdered Rochelle Childs. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is the Tom and Clyde...

I first met Damien at the airport in early 2024 to give him a copy of Rochelle's brief of evidence, a closely guarded police file full of thousands of pieces of information, statements, reports and exhibits. Damien. Hi. How are you? How are you? Ashley Hanson, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Ashley. Thanks for joining the team. I haven't told Anne and Christy yet. They're going to be stoked to just have someone with your experience and expertise on the case. Yeah, no worries.

Oh, here's Damien. Thanks for everyone coming together. So, Christy and Anne, I just want you to meet Damien Loon. I asked Damien a couple of weeks ago if he would help us on Rochelle's case and he didn't hesitate. He said absolutely. That is so cool. That's amazing.

It's lovely to meet you. Long time fan. Well, thanks, Christy and Anne. I know what you guys have gone through over the years and I can't say I know everything I feel for you. And the most important part about what happened to Rochelle is that this matter is solvable. But I can't promise you it'll get that far. I'll tell you what, I have a bloody good go at it.

And why did you say yes to help with this one? I've had so many people have asked me to get on board with matters. I've retired as a police officer. I don't have any powers as a police officer. But this one strikes a memory with me because it was a young person in the prime of her life, like Lynne, had everything to look forward to, held a responsible job, had a loving family, wasn't a risk taker, and yet she's been callously murdered and dumped.

far from her hometown in a seaside suburb of Jeroa, in a bushland grave and burnt. Look, I have no doubt in my mind that this was a sexually motivated attack. Rochelle knew her killer and she trusted him. Can you solve this case? This case is solvable. And there's some way in this brief, the offender's in this brief, he's named in this brief some way. The offender responsible for this crime is still alive.

And there's so much more to unravel on the next episode of Dear Rochelle. Rochelle was placed, was within 360 metres of where Jodie Ephesus' body was located. I started thinking, oh gosh, this is going to be one of those stories like,

Ivan Milat. You've got to join the dots. Are they connected somehow? I had five or six persons of interest. To me, there was a fundamental issue with the investigation. Fucking blame on me? What, because I'm in a bike lot? Have we got a serial killer on our hands or have we got someone that's involved in both homicides?

Dear Rochelle is a multimedia production from True Crime Australia. If you want to be the first to find out what happens next, go to dearochelle.com.au. That's where News Corp Australia subscribers get early access to podcast episodes and breaking news in our live investigation before anybody else.

And you'll also find exclusive videos, interactive evidence, feature articles and more. That's dearachelle.com.au. D-E-A-R-R-A-C-H-E-L-L-E.com.au. If you have any tips or confidential information to share with me, Ashley Hansen, please send an email to dearachelleatnews.com.au.

Our supervising producer and audio editor is Rhys Gunter. Rachel Fountain is executive producer and audio director. Our executive editor is Sarah Blake. Our senior journalist is Patrick Carline. Video editors are Gillian McNally, Owen Yang and Stephen Woods. Picture editors are Jeff Darmanin and Kristy Miller. Senior camera operators are Daniel Andrews and Oscar Vieira.

with sound design by Martin Peralta. Thanks also to Greg Thompson, Eleni Pineris, Shobha Rayo, Faye Gould, Vanessa Graham, Hayley Goddard, Stephen Grice, Charlotte Karp, Tina Coggins and Harry Hughes. Special thanks to the Daily Telegraph editor, Ben English. And dear Rochelle would not be possible without the help and unwavering support of Christy and Anne Childs, Mindy Wicks, Damien Loon and Rochelle's friends.

This podcast series is hosted and investigated by me, Ashley Hansen.