Show Notes
On the night of Friday 26 February 1971, twenty-year-old dental nurse Keren Ellen Rowland attended the Royal Canberra Show. She bought a silver bracelet as a gift for a friend, left the showgrounds, and ran out of petrol on Parkes Way, a quiet stretch of road through the parkland beside Lake Burley Griffin. A witness saw her walking toward a dark-coloured sedan with New South Wales plates, already parked on the verge ahead of her. She was reported missing by midnight. Her remains were found eighty days later in the Fairbairn Pine Plantation, near the Air Disaster Memorial on the city's southeastern fringe. The bracelet was not there. Fifty-four years later, no one has ever been charged with her murder. Her case remains officially open. In this episode of Strewth, we trace the full story of Keren's disappearance and death, from the investigation led by Detective-Inspector Reg Kennedy in 1971, through the startling near-confession of 1973 that came to nothing, to the shadow cast by serial killer Ivan Milat, and the 2020 cold case revival that brought new witnesses forward after half a century of silence. Sources Overall, Nichole. Capital Crime Files, Season 1 (Keren Rowland). Podcast. capitalcrimefiles.podbean.com. Gribbin, Mark. "In a lonely place beneath the pines, a fresh search in a 49-year-old murder mystery." The Canberra Times, 9 December 2020. canberratimes.com.au "For Nichole, Keren's murder is getting personal." Canberra CityNews, December 2020. citynews.com.au "Police hunt forest for bracelet in Keren Rowland case." Canberra Daily / Canberra Weekly, December 2020. canberraweekly.com.au "Was Canberra murder victim Keren Rowland one of Ivan Milat's earliest victims?" Knowledia. news.knowledia.com Title Music: by Jesse Frank from Pixabay Strewth Social Media Links: https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us: [email protected]
More from Strewth - Australian True Crime and Mystery Podcast
The Unsolved Disappearance of Bevin and Brad Simmonds
What happened to Harold Holt? On a Sunday in December 1967, the Prime Minister of Australia went for a swim off a beach near Portsea and never came out. More than three hundred people searched the water for him, and no trace of his body was ever found. Fifty-eight years later, depending on who you ask, Harold Holt drowned, was killed by the CIA, ran off with his lover, or was dragged under by Chinese frogmen and carried away to Beijing in a submarine. In this episode of Strewth we work through the theories, from the frankly ridiculous to the one a coroner finally signed off on in 2005, and ask why a man who had nearly drowned off that same beach seven months earlier swam straight back out past the breakers. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact me - [email protected] Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: National Archives of Australia. Harold Holt's disappearance, Fact sheet 144. https://www.naa.gov.au/help-your-research/fact-sheets/harold-holts-disappearance
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