By ANEEKA SIMONIS
REPORTS a teenage girl was grabbed in a failed abduction attempt in Tynong – close to the area her childhood friend’s body was located 35 years ago – sends shivers down Vicki Ferguson’s spine.
The attempt on the 17-year-old teen walking in Tynong in late January opened up fresh pain and memories for the woman still grieving the loss of her friend, Catherine Headland – killed without justice at age 14.
“It’s chilling. I had goose bumps up my arm and my hair stood on the back of my neck,” she recounted, apologising as she choked over her words.
“It freaks me out to know someone has tried to abduct a young girl so close to where my friend was found.”
Catherine Headland’s killer remains at large decades on, with police unable to pin down the murderer, thought to have also killed 18-year-old Ann-Marie Sargent and 73-year-old Bertha Miller found at the Tynong North bush dumping ground on 8 December, 1980.
Ms Ferguson hopes the teen victim grabbed in Tynong earlier this year does not have to endure the same pain she and Catherine’s family have had to withstand knowing the assailant is still out there.
“I just hope they find the person. What that poor young girl would have gone through is terrible,” she said.
“It would have helped us all a lot to have some answers (about Catherine’s murder). There are so many unanswered questions. To have that closure, to know who could have done such a callous thing to those people would be indescribable.”
Police investigating the attempted abduction of the teenage girl walking along Tynong Road in Tynong at 3.30pm on Wednesday 27 January said they only got started on the case in early March, delayed by the distraught state of the teenage victim.
A man, described as being aged in his thirties, slowed his car and pulled up near the girl walking along the road.
He asked her for directions before getting out of the car, grabbing the teen and yelling at her.
She fought him off by kicking him in the leg and escaped to safety by foot.
Police believe the man was driving a Holden, possibly a VN Commodore model, with a significant dent in the front left wheel area at the time of the incident.
Catherine disappeared on 28 August in 1980.
Her body was found a few months later buried in the bush in Tynong North.
It was another two years before the body of Narumol Stephenson, 34, was found on the other side of Brew Road in Tynong.
The killer, or killers, have never been found.
A crowdfunding campaign launched earlier this year has set out to raise enough money for a billboard to re-ignite the community’s memory of the six murder victims in a bid to identify the person or people responsible.
Click here to donate to the campaign.
Anyone with any information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential crime report to www.crimestoppersvic.com.au
