Locals describe Pitt Town, a historical village on the outskirts of Sydney, as a close-knit community where nothing much happens.
Farmers worked their paddocks on tractors on Tuesday afternoon. Tradespeople enjoyed knock-off beers at the local pub. Horses and cattle stood under the shade of trees in the heat.
It could have been any late summer afternoon. But off a remote section of Pitt Town Bottoms Road, police swarmed what had become a major crime scene.
Detectives searching for kidnapped Sydney man Chris Baghsarian, 85, had found human remains on Tuesday morning. The road remained shut to traffic that afternoon, with officers occasionally turning back cars and waving away reporters.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Baghsarian had mistakenly been abducted from his North Ryde home 11 days earlier on Friday 13 February by men who reportedly intended to target a relative of a man linked to a well-known Sydney crime family.
His body was likely dumped off Pitt Town Bottoms Road the next day, remaining undiscovered since then.
One woman who runs a Pitt Town business on the road where the remains were found says she’s “in shock” after officers arrived en masse.
She hasn’t been interviewed by police, but says security camera footage on her property has been accessed.
“We’re usually dealing with floods, not anything like this,” says the woman, who has asked not to be named.
“The worst crimes I’ve seen are the occasional robberies. It’s definitely the topic of conversation today and will be something everyone will talk about for a while to come.
“We’re close-knit and easygoing here. People who are down here have usually been here for generations. It’s usually such a laid-back area, just farmland. It’s just a little bit unreal.”
Another local who farms on the same road passes the crime scene “multiple times a day”. He’s never seen anything strange.
Talking from atop his tractor, he says: “Nothing like this ever happens here.”
“Maybe that’s why [the perpetrators] chose it, because of how quiet it is,” he says. “We really feel for the family and the victim, I’m sure they’ll be hurting today.”
At the strip of shops in Pitt Town, businesses have signs in their windows declaring it a “neighbourhood watch area” and urging people to report anything suspicious.
One woman, Ellen, with her shopping in hand, says there’s rarely any police presence. The township has a “real village sort of atmosphere”.
New South Wales police have said forensic evidence linked to Baghsarian was found in a burned-out car that was torched in Westmead on Monday 16 February. That car also contained evidence linked to an abandoned and derelict property in Dural where it was believed Baghsarian was briefly held.
Det Acting Supt Andrew Marks said on Tuesday that the car, a grey Toyota Corolla, was seen in Glenorie, just north of Dural, on the evening of Saturday 14 February – the day after Baghsarian was kidnapped.
Shortly afterwards, it was driven to Pitt Town Bottoms Road, where the 85-year-old’s body was found this week. It was then seen in Westmead later that night but not set alight until two days later – on Monday 16 February.
Marks said on Tuesday that Baghsarian’s family was deeply upset and asked for privacy.
“We will endeavour and use every resource that we have to identify those responsible and bring them before the courts,” he told reporters. “We’re all outraged this could happen to an innocent man.”
A week earlier, Marks had said: “This is not a typical crime. The offenders have got the wrong person. They were intending to take somebody but … they have kidnapped the wrong person.”
Marks said at the time that Baghsarian’s family hadn’t received any ransom. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the family of the intended target had instead, and it was $50m.
As the hunt for the perpetrators continues, so too does the suffering of Baghsarian’s family, who said in their only public statement a week ago that they’d been “living through a nightmare we never thought possible”.
Baghsarian was alone in his house, wearing a flannelette shirt and grey pants, when he was taken and bundled into a dark-coloured SUV in the early hours of 13 February.
Video and images circulated throughout Sydney’s underworld, and obtained by media outlets, would later show him in the same pyjamas he had on when he was captured, now tied up and hurt in the rundown Dural property.
Marks pleaded with the media on Tuesday not to release the harrowing vision for the sake of his loved ones.
“We are struggling to make sense of the fact that he has been taken,” Baghsarian’s family said in their statement.
“Chris is a devoted father, brother, uncle, and grandfather. He is deeply loved, gentle, and the kindest person we know – someone who would never hurt a fly.”
On Wednesday morning, NSW police said detectives had arrested two men in relation to the alleged kidnapping and murder of the 85-year-old.
