Samantha Murphy’s husband and ‘everyone’ close to her have been named as persons of interest as police reveal they’re now looking for her body.
Ms Murphy, 51, left her home in Victoria’s Ballarat East to go for a run in the nearby Woowookarung Regional Park at about 7am on February 4.
Despite extensive search efforts, no trace of the missing woman has been found.
Victoria Police Crime Command’s Detective Acting Superintendent Mark Hatt said police would be speaking to her family, friends and work colleagues as part of their ‘open-ended’ investigation.
Superintendent Hatt said while Mick Murphy was not an official suspect, he was a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation.
Police said while Mick Murphy was not an official suspect, he was a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation.
‘We have a number of people that we are speaking to and I can say the family have been absolutely fantastic in co-operating with police,’ he said.
‘At this stage he is not (a suspect). Everyone in relation to Samantha is a person of interest. In our investigation we are speaking to everyone that was in her life.’
In a comment that appeared to suggest Ms Murphy may have been targeted, Superintendent Hatt said: ‘We have no intelligence or evidence to suggest that there’s any risk to anyone else.’
‘We are absolutely looking for her phone, we haven’t yet found that. We are looking for a body. Again, that area has been searched for Samantha herself and we have not found her in that area,’ he said.
Superintendent Hatt said police are ‘certainly’ looking into whether Ms Murphy’s body had been removed from the Mount Clear area after meeting foul play.
‘We do think another party has been involved, whether that be one person or a number of people,’ Superintendent Mark Hatt said.
‘We are keeping an open mind, but believe the most likely scenario is that her disappearance involves one or more parties.’
Superintendent Hatt said police suspect Ms Murphy’s body may have been removed from the area where they are searching.
‘That is certainly a scenario that we are looking into. Based on our elimination process we do think that another party has been involved – whether that be one person or a number of people.’
Superintendent Hatt said detectives had searched Ms Murphy’s home ‘to a certain extent’ as part of its investigation.
‘In relation to our investigation I won’t comment any further,’ he said.
The superintendent said the possibility Ms Murphy had suffered a medical episode had been ruled out and said he was ‘doubtful’ she was still alive.
‘Given extensive and detailed search that has already been undertaken, and the fact no sign of Samantha or her personal belongings has been located, we have ruled out any type of medical incident,’ he told reporters.
‘Unfortunately given the fact we’ve found no trace of her, we do have severe concern and are very doubtful that she is still alive.’
Officers are currently following up more than 500 separate pieces of evidence and sifting through 12,000 hours of CCTV footage.
Superintendent Hatt said questions over the movements of those within the family home in the period Ms Murphy was on that run were difficult to answer.
‘There’s a lot of movements to and from the house during the day and again we’re very, very confident we have tracked all of those movements and we are following up on everything,’ he said.
