The Bowraville Murders

Between September 1990 and January 1991, three Aboriginal children disappeared from the same small community on the New South Wales Mid North Coast. Colleen Walker-Craig was sixteen, Evelyn Greenup was four and Clinton Speedy-Duroux was sixteen. The remains of Evelyn and Clinton were later found; Colleen has never been located. The cases became inseparable from questions about institutional racism, fragmented police work and whether the children received the urgent protection that any missing child deserved.

A concise timeline

1. September 13, 1990
   Colleen Walker-Craig disappears

   The sixteen-year-old is last seen in Bowraville. She remains missing.

2. October 4, 1990
   Evelyn Greenup disappears

   The four-year-old vanishes from a home in the same community.

3. January 31, 1991
   Clinton Speedy-Duroux disappears

   The sixteen-year-old is last seen after a gathering in Bowraville.

4. 1991
   Evelyn and Clinton are found

   Their remains are located in bushland. Colleen is not found.

5. 1994 and 2006
   Separate trials end in acquittals

   One man is tried separately in relation to two children and acquitted.

6. 2014
   Parliamentary inquiry reports

   A New South Wales committee examines the investigations and families’ experience.

7. 2016–2018
   Retrial applications fail

   Prosecutors seek a joint retrial under amended law, but courts do not permit it.

8. 2020–2021
   Rewards rise to $1 million

   Police offers a separate reward for information in each child’s case.

Three children from one community

Colleen was last seen on September 13, 1990, after attending a gathering in Bowraville. Her family reported her missing. Early assumptions that she had left voluntarily delayed the kind of immediate, coordinated response now expected in a child-disappearance inquiry. Some of her clothing was later recovered near the Nambucca River, but her body has not been found.

Four-year-old Evelyn disappeared from a Bowraville home on October 4. Clinton vanished after another gathering on January 31, 1991. Their remains were found in bushland outside town in 1991. The three children knew one another and disappeared within a narrow geographic area, yet early police work treated the incidents too separately and did not adequately preserve every scene or account.

Early failures and unequal treatment

Family members described dismissive assumptions that the teenagers had gone walkabout, a term whose use reflected racial stereotypes rather than evidence. Communication with relatives was poor, lines of inquiry were not combined quickly enough and the community’s distrust of police deepened. Later reviews and the parliamentary inquiry documented how those failures harmed both the investigation and the families.

The cases reveal why the first hours of a missing-child report matter. Delay can erase memories, allow locations to change and reduce the chance of recovering trace evidence. Once Evelyn and Clinton were found, investigators had to reconstruct months of movements and conversations that should have been treated as connected earlier.

Trials, acquittals and double jeopardy

A man was tried in separate proceedings for two murders and acquitted. Australian law protects an acquitted person from repeated prosecution, subject to narrow statutory exceptions for genuinely new and compelling evidence. After New South Wales changed its double-jeopardy law, prosecutors sought to put evidence from the cases together in a new trial. The courts rejected that application.

This archive does not name the acquitted person or describe him as the killer. The legal record matters: suspicion, even long-standing police suspicion, is not a conviction. The failure to obtain a retrial also does not erase original investigative shortcomings or the families’ right to continue seeking lawful answers.

Family advocacy and current status

Relatives of Colleen, Evelyn and Clinton travelled repeatedly to Sydney and Canberra, met officials, addressed inquiries and kept the children’s names in public view. Their campaign contributed to formal review, public apologies and renewed rewards. It also made Bowraville a national example of how racism can affect which victims are believed, searched for and remembered.

New South Wales Police continues to offer up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible in each case. Colleen’s location remains a central unanswered question. Reliable information should be provided directly to police or Crime Stoppers rather than circulated as an online accusation.