The family members of missing people and unsolved murder victims have told an inquiry of police failures and lost opportunities to deliver them answers.
The first hearing of the NSW parliamentary inquiry into long-term missing persons and unsolved murder cases is under way in Bowral on Thursday.
Serial killer Ivan Milat is being examined as a possible culprit in some of the cases.
The brother and cousins of murdered Canberra woman Keren Rowland, who was 20 years old and five months pregnant when she was killed in February 1971, spoke of their frustrations in trying to gain access to evidence.
"We have and will continue to search for answers but we're finding it incredibly difficult to get the same support and help from the investigating authorities," Ms Rowlands' brother Steve Rowland told the committee.
Ms Rowland disappeared on February 26, after spending the evening at the Canberra Show.
It is believed Milat might have murdered Keren, whose body was found in a pine plantation outside Canberra, similar to Belanglo State Forest where the confirmed victims of the killer were found.
He was charged with a rape that occurred shortly after Keren went missing, but was later acquitted.
Mr Rowland, said the family was finding it difficult to get support from investigating authorities.
When the family decided to look into the matter themselves, he said what they found was "devastating": police had very little or no information, notes or evidence from the time of Keren's death.
Hugh Hughes, a retired police officer from the UK and the husband of Keren's cousin, said the family had tried to obtain documents related to the case but were blocked by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
The inquiry also heard that exhibits and forensic material had been lost, and the AFP had no record of a purported confession letter that was discovered in the 1990s.
Mr Rowland and Mr Hughes questioned whether police were covering up incompetence or something more.
He theorised Milat abducted Keren to commit sexual offences, but she put up a fight and he killed her.
Dr Andrea Hughes, Keren's cousin, told the inquiry there were six opportunities when Milat could have been stopped.
Mr Hughes called for police to be upfront and transparent about any mistakes in their investigations.
"It means the current organisation and its people trying to cover up errors they made in the past. Unfortunately, as it stands today, I can't rule that out," Mr Hughes said.
"Police need to learn to be open, honest, and transparent and own mistakes ... the families deserve better, Australia deserves better."
Kevin Docherty, the twin brother of Kay Docherty who vanished aged 16 from Warilla in July 1979 with her friend Toni Cavanagh, gave evidence.
Mr Docherty said he did not hear from police for 30 years, until detectives knocked on his door to tell him they had been assigned to Kay's case.
He described how his mother kept impeccable records of the enquiries she'd made with churches, cults and community groups over the years in the search for her daughter.
Mr Docherty also spoke of the people who had come forward to him as witnesses, due to what he said was police inaction.
"We had to play detectives ourselves," Mr Docherty said.
He said a number of witnesses had contacted police and Crime Stoppers, but nothing was done.
Mr Docherty also told the inquiry that police lost one of two letters purportedly sent by Kay in the two weeks after her disappearance, although he did not believe she had written them.
Retired police officer Jeff Dakers was the constable on duty when Kay was reported missing, and he has since helped Mr Docherty find answers.
Mr Dakers told the inquiry that it was "very frustrating" that police were "sitting on their hands" after a witness identified possible location of interest in the sand dunes at Primbee.
Mr Dakers said a witness later described to him seeing two girls screaming "he's going to kill us" and a man he later identified as serial killer Ivan Milat.
The same witness said he later saw the man at the same sand dunes with a shovel, and a shed in that area with a floor covered in blood.
"You don't have to be a junior detective to work this stuff out," Mr Dakers said.
Ricki Nash, the brother of Cheryl Grimmer, told the inquiry that his family had, for more than 50 years, lived with the consequences of failures that never should have happened.
Mr Nash said he believed that if police had done their job when Cheryl disappeared, his family would have known what happened to her long ago.
He questioned why police had made public a ransom note they believed to be genuine two days before the ransom was to be collected, turning what should have been a controlled operation into a "public spectacle".
Fourteen months after Cheryl's disappearance, a 17-year-old boy since code-named Mercury made a confession to the abduction and murder of the toddler.
Mr Nash said vital leads were not followed and the area Mercury identified as the place he left Cheryl's body was not properly searched.
The Grimmer family was also not told of the confession and only learnt of it decades later.
Mercury was charged with Cheryl's murder in 2017 but the trial was abandoned because his confession was deemed inadmissible, in accordance with more recent legislation.
This is something Paul Grimmer, another of Cheryl's brothers, said he wanted changed.
Mr Grimmer said the family did not hear from police between the 1970s and 2016.
He said the family also had received no response to its calls for the police to follow other leads of inquiry after the Director of Public Prosecutions discontinued its case against Mercury in 2019.
The hearing continues.
- with AAP
