As fast friends, Gabriel Jahnke, 19, and Michelle Riley, 16, enjoyed visiting pubs and clubs in and around Brisbane. The upcoming weekend was going to be a special one as the pair had planned to visit the Gold Coast to check out the expanding nightlife of Surfers Paradise and Coolangatta. Both girls were blond and attractive with outgoing personalities. Although they had only known each other for just two months they were excited to spend the weekend away in each other’s company. Recently Jahnke had moved from Goodna into the Riley family home at Annerley, as both girls worked together in the canteen of the Princess Alexandra Hospital at Woolloongabba.
Media reports confirmed that Jahnke and Riley left from the Emperor Street residence at Annerley on Friday 5th October 1973 at about 5.00pm for their weekend jaunt. Family members believed that the pair would hitchhike to the south coast in an effort to save money on transport. Instead eyewitnesses say the girls spent the Friday evening partying in Brisbane. They were then observed at Petrie Bight, near the Brisbane CBD, around 10am on Saturday morning – stepping from a Black and White taxi. Around midday it was believed they hitched a ride from nearby the Story Bridge at Kangaroo Point heading south. What happened on their journey to the Gold Coast would be a matter open to speculation across the next four decades. An unconfirmed sighting had the girls visiting the Wallaby Hotel at Mudgeeraba early that Saturday afternoon. At the Coroner’s Inquest held in 1974 to investigate their demise it was claimed that Jahnke and Riley were sighted by a tick gate operator near Coraki, NSW late on the Saturday afternoon. The man stated he witnessed the girls riding as passengers in a white Holden Panel van. In what was a sensational piece of evidence at the inquest, he said that one of the girls yelled to him out of the window of the vehicle that they were going to be taken to be raped. What is known is that at some stage over weekend of the 6th & 7th October 1973 the girls disappeared, and no further communication was had between the pair and their families, or their friends back in Brisbane.
Exactly one week later, on Saturday 13th October, the body of Gabriele Jahnke was discovered down an 8-metre embankment, in long grass, on the southbound side of the Pacific Highway (M1) at Ormeau. Her decomposed remains were found by two children and it appeared the body was most likely thrown from the roadside. Police thought that Jahnke had been deceased for a week. She was wearing a black caftan-style dress with a flowery Asian design across the top and black bra. Jahnke was naked from the waist down – with her underwear missing. It looked likely she had been sexually assaulted. Her cause of death were skull fractures and trauma due to a blunt force instrument.
Then on Tuesday 23rd October, Michelle Riley’s remains were found 12 metres off the northbound lane of the Mount Tamborine Highway (today Waterford-Tamborine Road) – approximately 6km south of Logan Village. The cause of death was determined to be a fractured skull. Newspaper reports stated that her skivvy had been pulled up around her neck exposing a floral bra, with the lower half of her body completely naked. Branches were placed over Riley’s body in a makeshift fashion. The area in which the body was discovered was considered to be rural without any homes within the immediate vicinity. The distance between the Jahnke and Riley body dump sites was a mere 20 kilometres. Chief of the South Brisbane CIB Inspector Jack Ryan was quick to propose that both girls were killed by a lone assailant who had detailed knowledge of some of the less travelled roads of the Gold Coast Hinterland.
In what had been a nightmarish time for the Rosewarne family, Margie was finally laid to rest on Thursday 28th May 1976 at Allambe Garden of Memories at Nerang (now Allambe Memorial Park) after a Requiem Mass at St Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church in Surfers Paradise. Plainclothes police were present at the Mass interacting with mourners on the off-chance that the killer may have attanded the service. It is believed police filmed the 300 strong gathering as they departed the Mass, which could be potentially used later to identify persons of interest in the investigation. Outside of the church, whilst maintaining a low profile, police surveyed passing motor vehicles on the Gold Coast Highway and recorded the number plates of cars that slowed to rubberneck the service.
Inside the church, the tragic passing of Margie had left emotions raw. In delivering his eulogy Reverend Father J. Shannon asked those in attendance to pray for “divine intervention” to assist law enforcement in finding Margie’s killer. He spoke passionately about the circumstances of Margie’s untimely death and being “plucked from this life in all her youthful womanly beauty”. He went further in his praise for Margie, as a former student of St Vincent’s Convent School and that she had fought her attacker prior to her premature death – rather than become a victim of sexual assault. Father Shannon added assuredly that Margie was “willing to surrender her life into the hands of God … rather than sully her soul into immorality. We are all very proud of her”.
For the Gold Coast community, this was no longer just an unsolved homicide. The trauma of Margaret Rosewarne murder evolved into a dark cloud hanging over the growing region – filling it with anxiety and fear. Would police be able to catch the “Hitchhiker Killer” before he struck again? In theorising about the background of the unidentified assailant, the police were quick to call him a “sadistic maniac” and “a modern-day Jack The Ripper”. One senior officer proposed that the murderer had “a very twisted mind – probably bent with hard drugs”. Snr Sgt Redmond seemed to agree with this possibility, stating that Rosewarne’s killer may be a “crazed dope fiend who could snap at any time and kill again”.
By today’s standards of homicide inquiries, these types of broad, emotive descriptions of an unknown offender appeared to only create hysteria in the populace – and at worst, misdirect the investigation. So who was the “Hitchhiker Killer”? From what we know today about offender profiling the following characteristics of the killer could be surmised:
• He has a “type” of victim – female, blond, attractive – aged late teens to early 20s;
• Cruises local roads and highways from the Gold Coast to Brisbane – extensively hunting for potential victims. Has good local knowledge of Gold Coast roads;
• Drives a well-maintained van or station wagon with tinted windows or curtains – with a “kill kit” on-board to render his victim/s compliant;
• Experiences a psycho-sexual thrill from abducting his victims;
• Over time his sadomasochistic fantasy would evolve and likely become more detailed
• For instance, he may have hoped to keep victims complying and alive for longer periods of time post-abduction – as his modus operandi (MO) becomes more refined with greater experience;
• May of kept “trophies” (items) from his victims so as to be able repeatedly re-live his fantasy
well in the future.
Laid-back and trusting would best describe the Gold Coast of the 1970’s. Of course, hitchhiking would appear to be a behaviour that relies on the trust and best intentions of total strangers. It was a commonplace on the roads and highways of Australia’s east coast at that time. For most part, drivers were happy to oblige those who were “thumbing” a ride – particularly if the potential passengers were female. Mums regularly warned their daughters about the perils involved in the activity. Nonetheless young adults full of confidence saw it as a cheap and efficient way to navigate to variety of destinations which fit their social schedules. For many it was accepted as a way to express individual freedom and non-conformity to social mores. By 1973, following the Jahnke-Riley slayings, the Queensland Government State Parliamentary Committee recommended that fines be adopted into law as a deterrent to the activity. The penalties would target those persons hitchhiking and those driver’s offering lifts. These recommendations were not passed within parliament due to bans of this type not being able to be practically policed.
The week following Margie’s disappearance, local police sought the assistance of the public and media with the lunch-time re-enactment of a female hitchhiker – close to the spot on the Gold Coast Highway that she was last sighted. Investigators were hopeful the re-enactment could refresh the memories of passers-by from the night of 5th May 1976. Local policewoman Pat Hennigan was dressed in an outfit similar to that worn by Margie and situated on the side of the road outside of the El Dorado Motel. Shockingly within a half hour Constable Hennigan was propositioned with 16 offers of a lift. She would tell the Gold Coast Bulletin that she was caught off-guard by the number of offers she received from eager motorists. “The drivers who pulled up were men and they said things like ‘Hop in here darling’. One stopped and called me a stupid bitch, but the others were just eager to get me in the car. If that’s how they carry on in broad daylight, what would they be like at nine o’clock at night?”, pondered the policewoman.
In the aftermath of the Margie’s murder in 1976, the Police Minister Max Hodges strongly lobbied for hitchhiking to be outlawed in the sunshine state. “It is taboo and should not be tolerated”, he stated. “When a ban was suggested previously (in 1973) it raised such a hue and cry that it would be an infringement of civil liberties, that it was dropped”. Despite the pushback to changes to the law within the community the State Education Department, in conjunction with Queensland Police, intended to launch a youth awareness campaign within schools to outline the dangers of hitchhiking. A public safety film “Rule of Thumb” had been purchased from the United States by the State Health Council and would be distributed widely for student viewing by the Police Crime Prevention Unit.
“Where there is hope … there is life” – Anne Frank. Recent advances in DNA technologies have changed the way homicide cold cases are being investigated. The use of DNA phenotyping, as successfully developed by Parabon Nanolabs Snapshot Technology located in Reston, Virginia in the United States, is the process of predicting appearance and possible bio-geographic ancestry from an unidentified DNA sample. Previously DNA could only be utilised to directly match a DNA sample to a person of interest or suspect already on police radar. With DNA phenotyping, also known as “molecular photofitting”, the DNA sample is used to create an observable “predictive” picture or DNA sketch of the person – including key physical attributes such as eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, freckling and to a lesser degree face shape. This computer-generated sketch allows law enforcement to generate leads in unsolved murder investigations where there are no active suspects.
An even more powerful investigative tool exists for police with the emergence of genetic genealogy. In a breakthrough for this science, genetic genealogy was utilised to apprehend Joseph James DeAngelo Jnr aka the Golden State Killer in April 2018. DeAngelo was a previously unknown offender who terrorised California households over a 13-year period in the 1970s and 1980s with a prolific series of unsolved burglaries, rapes and murders. So how does genetic genealogy work? Scientists compare DNA of an unknown suspect from a crime scene with voluntarily submitted DNA profiles (i.e. uploaded single nucleotide polymorphism “SNP” profiles) found in public genealogical databases, such as GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA. With some luck, a distant relative is found and the process of further archival investigation and forensic genealogy is undertaken to create a broad family tree – and hopefully identify a viable suspect with the use of the specific case data and information. It is thought that 30 million people have uploaded their DNA to genealogy databases worldwide in the past decade.
Foreseeably there are some evolving privacy concerns around the use of genetic genealogy by law enforcement. In particular, the lack of formal oversight for police when uploading a DNA sample into genealogical databases and the idea that users of these databases may inadvertently involve themselves in criminal investigations dealing with serious crimes. Recently the GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA databases have required member users to tick an “opt in” function to allow police in the United States to access their genetic information for investigative purposes. Other genealogy websites such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe have gone further to protect user’s privacy by stating their client data would not be able to accessed by law enforcement without an enforceable warrant.
Even so, as of April 2019, Parabons Nanolabs genealogy tools have led to 49 suspect identifications, approximately 1000 renewed investigations and 17 confirmed arrests. With these new crime fighting tools great optimism exists to bring closure to the coldest of cold cases. By late 2016, when addressing the benefits of these emerging DNA technologies, Inspector Scott McLaren from the Queensland Police Service DNA Management Section, was positive about its place in future investigations of serious crime. “(At) Queensland Police, we pride ourselves that we’re at the forefront of forensic science, so we are continually looking for this stuff”, he enthusiastically stated.
“In Our Hearts Forever” is inscribed on the plaque at the grave of Margaret Rosetta Rosewarne at Allambe Memorial Park at Nerang. The burial plot sits in the Roman Catholic section of the cemetery, not more than 20 metres from the footpath of busy Nerang-Broadbeach Road. This modest resting place belies the unforeseeable tragedy that unfolded nearly five decaded ago and which bought fear to a small part of the world. Time has not healed us, nor has it provided answers. The loss of a loved one never truly leaves the mind of those left behind. Instead it becomes a melancholy which raises its head during quiet times to remind them of the darkness that exists in the world. The seventies were a time period when the unfettered expression of emotion and unburdening of feelings were not encouraged for most part. Attempting to make sense of why a daughter’s or a sister’s life and their limitless potential was cut short by an evil presence pushes the mind to venture to this dark place – over and over again. And within this nightmare, lurks a monster who will menace, until those responsible for justice bring it out into the light – so it will reveal itself to us.
