When Julie Ann Garciacelay disappeared in Melbourne 50 years ago, there was no such thing as a missing persons unit, let alone National Missing Persons Week in Australia.
It seems that, as far as police at the time were concerned, the 19-year-old American – here on a kind of ‘working holiday’ – somehow just dropped out of sight. Maybe she was even on her way home to California, without telling her family.
Five decades later, we know that wasn’t the case. Julie Garciacelay hasn’t been seen since the first night in July, 1975 when three men visited her at the apartment she shared with her older sister in North Melbourne, and her body has never been recovered.
Several days shy of her 20th birthday, she just vanished.
Never a high profile case for police or media – and without family and friends in Melbourne to keep pressing for answers – her disappearance slipped off the radar for nearly 30 years, when senior detectives looked into it again. No charges came from that second inquiry.
But in 2018, the Victorian Coroner decided the young American was “deceased (and) that, despite there being no evidence as to the exact circumstances and cause of Ms Garciacelay’s death, (it) was the result of homicide.
“Despite extensive criminal investigation conducted by Victoria Police, no person or persons have been conclusively identified, to date, as being responsible for (her) death.”
For Ruth Garciacelay, the teenager’s mother, it has been a distressing test of endurance. In the new podcast Casefile Presents: Julie’s Gone, the 93-year-old likens her experience to those who have lost people through war.
“When this happened to me, as time went on and the wars we’ve been in, a lot of men are killed in action and their people never find out how they died. That got me to thinking about ‘missing in action’ (and) the parents who have to live with this. It happened to so many. And I know what it feels like.”
Loren O’Keeffe, founder and CEO of The Missed Foundation, says this sense of ‘not knowing’ is something most are not good at processing. “You hope that they will just come home safe and well and life will go back to normal,” she tells Casefile Presents.
“And then, as the months turn into years and then perhaps decades, you just hope that one day, you’re going to have resolutions so that you can die at peace and that the burden isn’t passed down through the next generations of your family – because the not knowing, it’s not a natural part of life to not know.
“Human beings aren’t great with uncertainty in any sort of context. But this is a very special type of torment”.
Ruth Garciacelay describes “a traumatised family” after Julie’s disappearance. “There is no family left anymore”, she says softly. “The family’s gone”.
When she was told that her daughter was missing, Ruth couldn’t make sense of it. “I thought Julie was with a friend or something, because (she) wasn’t the type to do things like that. She wasn’t a kid that took off and got involved with friends, or drinking, or whatever was going on.
“Julie wasn’t that way. If she was going someplace, she let you know. And I thought ‘well, she’s got to come back’. I never dreamed, what parent dreams of anything like this?”
Perhaps this question – as much as our shared inability to handle uncertainty – could be the core of the global popularity of the ‘true crime’ genre: books, documentaries, films and podcasts that focus on those who never come home.
No one really contemplates anything so chilling occurring in their own lives. But can we make some sense of it, when it happens in the lives of others? Do we hope for justice in the most disturbing cases?
Ruth Garciacelay came to Australia twice, hoping to help search for her daughter. On the second visit, she even confronted one of the men who’d been with Julie the night she disappeared. He was in Pentridge Prison at the time.
“I made up my mind I needed to talk to (him) in prison. I said to myself ‘he’s got three daughters and I’m the mother of three daughters’. So I did (go to see him). And I asked him ‘what did you do? Please tell me what you did with my daughter’.”
His answer was inscrutable. She says he took his finger and went across his neck “…like you would cut into somebody’s throat. And he said ‘go higher, go higher.’
‘Go higher for what, what am I looking for?’ And he again went across his throat: ‘go higher’.”
She has never been able to decipher what he meant by either the phrase or gesture.
According to the National Missing Persons Co-Ordination Centre of the Australian Federal Police, “an estimated 50,000 people are reported missing to police each year – that’s over 150 missing events a day. Over 99% of people are located.”
So Julie Garciacelay is part of that tiny percentage of those still lost. Fifty years on, is it too late for justice for her, too late for her mother to find a certain peace?
When a plaque was laid for the young American at St John’s Lutheran Church in Southbank last year, Detective Senior Sergeant Tony Combridge – then with Victoria’s Missing Persons Squad – told The Age that “now is the time to do the right thing and come forward”.
“After so long, friendships falter and allegiances change. There may be people out there who are now in a position to come forward and speak to police to provide answers for Julie’s loved ones”.
He’s right, of course. Let’s hope this new podcast about Julie Garciacelay’s vanishing can convince someone to do so – perhaps as part of National Missing Persons Week 2025.