Abduction survivor makes a heartbreaking plea for her missing best friend | 60 Minutes Australia

our special investigation into the kidnapping of two teenagers 17 years ago Vanessa Conlon and Jessica Small were just 15 years old at the scene on Bathurst Main Street west of Sydney. Both girls were kidnapped in the middle of the night. Vanessa would escape but Jessica hasn't been there. seen for four years the local police did little about the kidnapping of the girls and the alleged murder of Jessica, but almost two decades into this cold case it is finally being solved this is a reunion Vanessa Conlon has waited 17 years for her bond with Fayed Connors was born out of pure terror. and I believed you, honey, I did believe that something very bad had happened, that's okay the last time these two women saw each other.

Vanessa was a terrified teenager who would bang on the front door in the middle of the night if she didn't let him. Me on that night probably would have been yes, it's the night that Vanessa will never forget, she and her

best

friend

Jessica little, both only 15 years old, were kidnapped from the main street of evil, well, Vanessa finally escaped, Jessica, did Have they never seen her since what torments her? What tells you the most about that night, if I'm honest, is that they took her and they didn't take me. That's the hardest thing to experience growing up in Bathurst, a small rural town in the shadow of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.

Jessica Small was a sassy, ​​freckled teenager who loved children and animals and liked and loved us. She was just a normal, happy, healthy young woman with many dreams for almost two decades. Jessica's mother, Ricky Small, has agonized over what she happened to her. Daughter, all I can honestly say, Alison, is that, I hope, I hope things were over for her quickly if I could put it that way, but I can't think of or could have said the time when the IDS was locked up for days or held for days or tortured or I hate going D it's a pretty dark place it's a very dark place it's October 25, 1997 and

best

friend

s Jessica and Vanessa are enjoying a night out at the local amusement hall, they leave around midnight there was a A man who asked about Jessica that night what employers she used to work for there, he actually showed up, he believed all this from the police back in the day and it turns out this man was asking about Jess saying things in the sense that it looks like he's got up to have a good time so the car came here he was driving very slowly he turned around and looked at us he made a u-turn he came here and stopped right down here and you made a decision of a fraction second to get in that car yeah, and it's a decision, I'm sorry for the rest of my mother, he told me there were games of pool and then I played two together and I just said oh yeah, well, well, and I didn't really think at all at that time.

He offered us a ride and we decided to get on, but a few

minutes

into the car trip, the girls started to get nervous. They are on a quiet country road on the outskirts of town and the driver is agitated. I remember driving pretty slowly and you know, it scared me a little bit and I remember looking in the side mirror trying to see Jess in the back seat because I was really starting to get quite worried because I had been looking from side to side and she extended the hand and took his Taking off your seat belt is the moment you realized you were in real trouble, yeah, and he had turned off the car, turned to look at Jessica and said right, come here. and I just looked at him and said no, I don't think so. and he actually put his hand around my throat quite firmly and pushed me back into the seat and I was choking.

It was at that moment that I went to get out of the car. I managed to get the door open and he realized he could grab a hold of Jes so he grabbed my hair and I had to rip my hair out of his hands to get out of the car and we were both running towards the house with the light on and just running and running and running so we both ran and screamed and I could hear her behind me and I could hear him behind me and all I could think about was getting home with the light on someone knocked on my door and sang that she was .

She was just shaking, very scared. I thought she was so scared that she might have even been sick. It was a fake honors door that Vanessa hit. Did it make any sense when you first opened the door? Actually, no, it was very difficult to understand. because all she kept saying was my friend, my friend, I need you to help me find my friend and we didn't realize what had happened so we didn't know where her friend was at that time, the car with Jes It was no longer inside. Fay called. police but showed a surprising lack of interest, it would be the first of many police mistakes.

You'd like to think that if they hadn't believed in putting out more cars and more police, they would have been able to do a little. Furthermore, why do you think the police didn't believe you? I think the beef was Jess and I were, you know, troubled teenagers and we, you know, been in a little trouble and so a man has Jess doing God knows what to him. and you say the police weren't too worried, not even a little bit, they told me outright that I was lying. Jess is not there. I realized that something was very wrong, really a problem, but the police do nothing now, the crucial witness there is like a fear like when a scream happens and an incredible discovery seems like something very suspicious that follows on 60

minutes

Vanessa Conlon and her best friend Jessica Small were just 15 when they were kidnapped from Bathurst's main street and run out of town Vanessa Jessica has never been seen since and no one has been brought to justice, but all of that may be within reach. about to change thanks to crucial new evidence and a witness who saw everything that happened the next minute.

Phonetics, I mean more than cooking them and just flying. She put her arms around my neck and went crazy, which I couldn't just tell by her crying. Something was really, really wrong on the outskirts of Bathurst. Ricky's young daughter, Jessica, is fighting for her life. It's like a fear, like when she can. the scream goes by and you could hear the scream and kamilly the fearless and someone Rob Fitzpatrick lived on the outskirts of town in the early hours of Sunday morning he had just returned home from his cousin's wedding when the car passed by I saw the white car but the figure of a man driving but a hand sticking out of the driver's right side and his shoulder out the window it was like she was just fighting or something or hitting him or something like a panic trying to get out of a car window my best way as trying to get out through the very window of which claims something mystical like that two people arguing and fighting, you know better, jump into houses and that Rob slid along their fence until he was out of sight and arrived 15 or 20 meters from the window. curve was a white Holden Commodore, so did you still hear the screams at this point?

No, the screaming had stopped. I saw him get out of the car, walk around to his trunk and get something out of it. He is kneeling on the seat and approached. the back and he was doing something to look at while I was watching, he just drove off casually, he wasn't even on the off-road part, he was just driving straight up the hill and what's beyond that darkness, there's no a lot out there. If someone could shout as much as they wanted, no one would hear them, they could say that we are the last way out of the city.

When Rob heard that Jessica Small was

missing

, he went straight to the police, but incredibly they were not interested. what he had seen he persisted and came back the next day and this time they reluctantly took his statement just a paragraph but the whole time I had the feeling that he didn't want to take the statement as if he had already decided what was going on do you think they wouldn't Did it matter because they knew Jessica? She was a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Yes, I would say that if my feeling is that she was there, family was much more important in the city.

It would have been a completely different investigation which were crucial moments those first that first day or two for me we have to get to her we have to find her

plea

se help me we have an order and you don't know where to look Where to go I know I'm just praying I guess at that moment He had something smart for Lisbon at work because he had nothing else. Did you think in those first days that she was alive? I guess I tried to imagine that she would be strong enough to escape a situation, but she obviously wasn't eight months after Jessica disappeared and forestry workers stumbled upon a set of girl's underwear, a bottle of bleach, and a blood-covered blanket we called in a thicket about 75 kilometers to the east. of Bathurst, this isolated forest possibly held the most important clue to identifying Jessica's killer, so it was quite horrible, it seemed very suspicious, it was the first thing that crossed the air mine, no one knows this forest better than Glen Christy Johnston, which he has been working on.

Here for 30 years, automatically the first thought was of Jessica. It was at that time. That place was easily visible to anyone passing by. No. And I was in an isolated area. So do you think whoever hid those items must have had some knowledge of the forest? Yes, they should have all the knowledge of how the forest worked. Anyway, it's true that Bathurst police pretty much fired Glen; They didn't even bother to take his statement and that. The possible evidence he found was not a DNA test and, even more shocking, was later destroyed by local police, while Jessica's mother, Ricki Small, is not told anything.

The fact that it was the following year blows my mind. In that forest scratching the earth physically searching for it, do you feel disappointed by the place? I am disgusted, not hurt, angry and the treatment by the police. The Bettis police, like the local detectives who were on the case, were simply bad. It is abhorrent that the case goes cold until it becomes so obvious to a stubborn detective that he is telling the truth. Did you kill Jessica? See, that's what's next on 60 Minutes, when Jessica Small and her best friend Vanessa Conlon were kidnapped in October 1997, they were only 15 years old, but they already had a reputation like Tara, the ways Vanessa managed to escape her attacker, but Jessica has never been seen again since that terrible night.

For years, the local police oscillated between indifference and incompetence colored by the girls' wild reputation, but finally a tenacious detective has narrowed the search. Bathurst is a three-hour drive west of Sydney, where Vanessa Conlon grew up, but this place will always be haunted by the disappearance of her best friend Jessica Small. For 10 years, police showed little interest in the case, then Detective Sergeant Peter Smith of New South Wales Homicide. Squad knocked on her door, she actually said the words to me: I believe you, it was like the weight of the world had just been lifted and I finally had this light that we could get somewhere, there's no point in this girl running around screaming. and obviously terrorizing someone's house in the middle of the night and then people not believing it, it just doesn't make sense given especially now that it's been 1617 years and she's kept up the same story and cooperated over and over and over. time.

It's so obvious that she is telling the truth. Detective Smith inherited a mess of incomplete files and a lack of actual detective work, but a witness who had previously been ignored by the local police pointed out to an employee at the amusement park where the girls had played pool that night, that employee had a strange conversation with a man who matched the description Vanessa gave of her attacker, that an adult mile had been at the fun and asked about Jessica and actually pointed at her and said she looks like she's ready for a good time who is that and then during that conversation he mentioned that he was an employee at the Oberon Lumber Mill and it was at that moment that you realized that you had a pretty solid lead, it was amazing, I just couldn't believe that someone didn't tell him.

He had asked about it before it became such a big deal in 2011. Peter and his team began interviewing 400 men who had worked at the Oberon timber mill in October 1997. Their investigations took them across Australia and as far as the United Kingdom. , eventually narrowed the list down to just two men, Andrew McBride and Craig Robertson, were named as persons of interest in this month's investigation into Jessica's alleged murder. Is there more information or evidence to suggest that Andrew McBride was involved and what is the information about him. McBride had access to a white VK Holden Commodore with holes in the passenger footwell the car the girls get into the night Vanessa sits in the front seat while driving Vanessa notices there are holes in the foot room for the front passenger and which is what you then describe as a white Holden Commodore, which is quite explicit It matches Vanessa and Alison Langdon's description from 60 Minutes perfectly, so I hope to be able to talk to you satisfied aboutthe disappearance of Jessica Small.

Actually, we're trying to have lunch. McBride worked at the Oberon timber mill for about 12 months, but on the day Jessica disappeared. left town without explanation, we now know that while he was here he had a history of predatory behavior towards teenage girls in '97, the year of the kidnapping, he often gave alcohol and marijuana to two 15 year olds he had met through quotes. one of his mothers ended up having sex with one of those girls right after she turned 16 he was 37 did you kidnap Jessica and Vanessa that night oh no I don't mind talking to you about it oh no nothing related to the disappearance of these women? nothing no nothing I have no idea what happened to this young woman the circumstances surrounding it were only made known to me through the police investigation why do you think you are now a person of interest, excuse me, I'm not too sure have made those motions now with my lawyer and through the court I was in Sydney bank deposits and bank statements that they put me elsewhere so that I wouldn't kill Jessica little, no, no, me.

I didn't mean for McBride to say that he has an alibi. Bank records place him in Sydney on the night Jessica disappeared. That is not right. Those bank records put him in Sydney on October 24, which is a Friday. So I put it anywhere on Saturday or Sunday. so he might as well have been in Asteria's bathroom that night yeah there's not enough to prove he was involved and there's nothing to prove he wasn't involved why did you leave town in such a hurry after Jessica disappeared? Your bank statement shows you are in Sydney on Friday Jessica disappeared on Saturday to sit hip-hop through the entire investigation and not knowing if he was the one who took Jess and then hearing all these horrible things she had done before was incredibly frustrating. , did you recognize him to sit down?

I'm here now and I say one hundred percent it's him. I can't do that and that breaks my heart too. The horror of that October night destroyed many lives in the small rural town of Bathurst. Vanessa still blames herself for not returning while Rob Fitzpatrick has struggled with the idea that he may have witnessed the last minutes of Jessica's life. Do you think you could have saved her from her? Yes, I think that

makes

it more difficult. Yeah, I mean, I could have stopped him in front of my house. If now and what I know today I would have stopped that family.

Yes, I think it's one of the hardest things I'm going to live with. Why didn't I do more? It torments you, doesn't it? Yes, I hide it from Jessica's mother. Ricky still has hope that one day he will be able to say goodbye to her daughter and give her the dignity of a proper burial. We haven't found 17 years, I mean, we have Amanda. Do you think you ever will? I wish I had a good one, I think coming from the heart of a mother, you always want to take your child home, your baby home, you deserve whatever she does, I think I knew that Hi, I'm Allyson Langdon, thanks for watching to stay up to date with the latest news from 60 Minutes Australia, make sure If you subscribe to our channel, you can also download the 9 now app to watch full episodes and other exclusive 60 Minutes content.