The heartbroken husband of missing mum-of-three Samantha Murphy has spoken out two weeks after his wife’s disappearance.
Ms Murphy, 51, left her home off Eureka Street in East Ballarat, north-west of Melbourne, to go for a run in Woowookarung Regional Park just after 7am on February 4 and has not been seen since.
On Monday, her husband Mick Murphy issued a message to Australia.
‘We want Sam home please,’ he told 7News.
Mr Murphy told the outlet his family are ‘doing the best we can under the circumstances’.
Samantha Murphy vanished 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 vanish into thin air. Someone’s got to know something,’ he told reporters on Thursday.
Last week, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said that the search for Ms Murphy had reached a new stage.
‘It’s certainly unusual when we haven’t been able to locate any trace of her or any other evidence within 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’s been missing for a significant period of time.’
Detectives from Victoria Police’s Missing Persons Unit attended the Murphy property on Wednesday morning.
The detectives spent more than an hour inside before leaving.
The East Ballarat property is at the centre of the investigation. It is the place where Ms Murphy was last seen on February 4, as she embarked on her morning jog.
Part of the investigation – now dubbed 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 specialised unit, which is attached to Victoria Police’s Homicide Squad.
Daily Mail Australia is not suggesting Mr Murphy has anything to do with the disappearance of his wife whatsoever.
The search for Ms Murphy has all but been abandoned
Police released this image of Ms Murphy from the morning she vanished
Last Thursday, her uncle and aunt, Allan and Janice Robson, told Daily Mail Australia they suspected their beloved niece had met with foul play.
‘It’s just like she’s gone off the face of the Earth. There’s nothing,’ Mrs Robson said.
‘I would say that somebody would have been watching her. I can’t think it would be anything else.’
Both are baffled by the mystery of her phone, saying she would not have ventured as far away from her home as the spot where police believe her mobile made its last ‘ping’ with a tower.
State Emergency Services volunteers and police last week searched the bush in an area between the Canadian Plantation and Yankee Flat Road – about 15km from Ms Murphy’s home – where they believe her phone was turned off.
‘She would never switch that phone off… that phone was always hooked up,’ Mr Robson said.
Mrs Robson said police had not been forthcoming with any information about the investigation other than what is already known among the general public.
‘Any information (the police) have they’ll sit on it. They don’t want to spook anyone,’ Mr Robson said.
Mr Robson said he asked his brother – Ms Murphy’s father John Robson – if he knew of any reason why his daughter may have vanished, but he had no answers.
Mr Robson said his niece was financially secure and pondered whether someone may 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 it’s an opportunist,’ Mrs Robson said.
‘I think it’s been someone who has been stalking her. Someone who she didn’t even know was stalking her.’
Mrs Robson suggested anyone who knew her niece knew she was a creature of habit when it came to exercise.
‘She would routinely go for a run in the morning,’ she said.
‘She normally does 20km,’ Mr Robson said.
‘But she had to meet someone in Ballarat at 10am so she only did 10km.’
The elderly couple said Ms Murphy was a clever and careful person who had the ability to defend herself if someone attempted to harm her.
‘She would have put up a bloody good fight,’ Allan said.
‘And I think if she suspected something, I don’t think she’d hang about. She was a runner. She would have got out of that area,’ Mrs Robson said.
The couple said Ms Murphy was familiar with the terrain and would have known if anyone unusual had been lurking about the routes she ran on in the days before she vanished.
‘She’s there that often, she would have came across something,’ Mrs Robson said.
With police effectively abandoning the search for Ms Murphy less than a week after it began, the pair fear they believe she is already dead.
‘You’d think the (search) dogs would have been able to pick up her scent. That’s what they do. They should have been able to pick up where she ran into that forest,’ Mrs Robson said.
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