Dark secrets of so-called ‘murder highway’ uncovered in new true-crime series

The 900-odd kilometre stretch of the Flinders Highway connecting coastal Townsville and the inland mining town of Mount Isa looms large in Australia’s true-crime canon. It’s easy to see why; it’s estimated that the highway accounts for 27 to 30 missing people and unsolved crimes. Between 1970 and 2017, 11 people were murdered or vanished. Most of these murders remain unsolved, and at least one bears compelling links to serial killer Ivan Milat. It’s a harsh and unforgiving terrain, the mythical landscape of Wolf Creek’s Mick Taylor. And even if not all the deaths have been proven to be homicides, they were people who simply vanished, never to be seen again, succumbing to what coroners classify as “death by misadventure”.

Like much in the true-crime domain, the mystery of the murder highway is a whiteboard onto which it’s possible to project all manner of forensic and scientific theories and psychological insights to explain why someone would commit such unfathomable deeds and to speculate why that person came to be there in the first place.

The new four-part series Outback Murder Highway takes up where previous documentaries and books have left off, focusing on four cases where, according to investigative journalist and presenter Amelia Oberhardt, a resolution or new information provides “some form of breakthrough”.

The first episode revisits the unsolved 1972 murders of 18-year-old backpackers Anita Cunningham and Robin Hoinville-Bartram. NSW Legislative Council MP Jeremy Buckingham is so convinced that Ivan Milat – and possible accomplices – was responsible for their deaths (and potentially others in that area), he has called for a parliamentary enquiry.

Also covered in the series is the (also unsolved) 1978 Spear Creek murders involving motorcycle adventurers Karen Edwards, Gordon Twaddle and Timothy Thompson; the 1982 disappearance of 20-year-old Tony Jones (his body has never been found); and the most recent case of 22-year-old Newcastle man Jayden Penno-Tompsett, who was last seen near Charters Towers on New Year’s Eve 2017 after a marathon drug-fuelled drive north. (His body was found in October 2025.)

Some of these cases involve people who have “disappeared” rather than been murdered, but that does not diminish the reasons for re-investigating what happened, Oberhardt believes. “Often people go missing, and nobody either reports them missing or there’s a lack of people fighting for answers,” she says. “A lot of those people that go missing … are people that not a lot of people are there to miss. So they fly under the radar of it being a misadventure or a missing person.”

Forensic archaeologist and criminologist Dr Louise Steding, who provides expert commentary on Outback Murder Highway and has worked with the families of missing persons, has a more trenchant view of why historic cold cases – even those old enough for next-of-kin and potential perpetrators to have passed – should be looked at.

“It’s like a thorn in the side of the justice system,” she says. “It’s justice being seen not to be done. Some of these cases can be solved. It’s also important for the families; it shows no matter how old these cases, people are still working on them.

“What I saw with David Cunningham [brother of Anita Cunningham] and also Mark Jones [brother of Tony Jones], they went through the emotions of frustration and despair, even anger at police. They want to know that people are doing things. They want to know what they’re doing and that they care as well, because they certainly care for their siblings.

“Also, we need to know why the cases weren’t solved; do we still have some flaws in the system, or the approaches or teaching methods? The methodologies move. These are the things I look at.”

It’s significant that many of these murders and disappearances took place in the 1970s. According to Steding, one in 10 people had access to a motor vehicle in the 1950s, but by the 1970s, cars were a way of life. “So it gives these predators a mode of transport.”

The outback was where people went to lose themselves, to embark on adventures, to find work and explore different lifestyles and cultures. Hitchhiking was commonplace, as were prejudices about freedom-era teenagers running wild. Oberhardt believes this may have affected how the police treated cases.

“It’s this free love, 1970s freedom movement, burn the bra, jump in cars, hitchhike. ‘Oh, they’re just rogue teenagers,’” says Oberhardt. “I think [attitudes] did hinder a lot of investigations, not just Robin [Bartram] and Anita [Cunningham], but several others under the guise that people get up and run away. If it were 2025 and two 18-year-olds went missing, that would be all over the news; it would be taken a lot differently.”

To its credit – and unlike many true-crime documentaries – Outback Murder Highway is careful not to exploit the suffering of victims and their next of kin, who participated in the making of the show and candidly reveal what they have endured.

“I think when you involve next of kin or close family members or close friends, you have an opportunity to show the sort of pain and anguish and the reality of what having a missing person or unsolved crime can do to a family,” says Oberhardt.

Oberhardt, whose investigative work has also covered the IVF industry and forced adoption in Australia, says she was initially drawn to “the stories that highways hide”.

She considered a show about another highway, its drug runs, the people who owned hotels and the things they had seen. But the murder highway appealed to her “in more of a human interest way than a salacious crime way”. “This vast, desolate, 900-kilometre stretch of inland dirt road, no CCTV to this day, and the secrets it must hold.”

Outback Murder Highway premieres at 8.30pm on Wednesday, April 22, on Nine (the owner of this masthead) and 9Now.