Sarah MacDiarmid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sarah MacDiarmid (born 1967) was a 23-year-old Scottish-Australian woman who disappeared from Kananook station in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 11 July 1990. She is presumed murdered, although no trace of her body has ever been found.

MacDiarmid, who emigrated with her family in 1987 from the Scottish Highlands to Australia, had been playing tennis after work with two friends in what was then known as "Flinders Park" in Batman avenue before walking to Richmond station where they found that they had just missed a Frankston line train.They caught a Korumburra line diesel train ^{[verification needed]} to Caulfield then changed to a Frankston service. MacDiarmid's friends disembarked this train at Bonbeach while she remained, continuing on to Kananook station where her vehicle was parked. She was last seen alighting the train and heading for the poorly-lit car park at approximately 10:20 p.m.

Police suspected foul play based on bloodstains found beside her red 1978 Honda Civic abandoned in the station car park. A 21-day extensive air, sea, and land search with more than 250 police produced no result.

It is often assumed that Paul Denyer, convicted of three murders in the Frankston area in 1993, was responsible for her disappearance. Other theories include suspected attack by homeless drug addicts, although police discount that theory.

The cold case was featured in the first episode of the Australian psychic TV series Sensing Murder, which aired on Network Ten in September 2004. The psychics used by this programme opined that McDiarmid had been murdered and her body thrown into a now-closed rubbish dump on the Mornington Peninsula.