Outback Murder Highway: The Disappearance Of Tony Jones
5/6/202626 min
In the early '80s a young hitchhiker vanished off the Flinders Highway - despite a mysterious tip-off in the mail, a killer’s confession, and growing rumours around one outback town, the truth remains hidden.
In this third episode for Outback Murder Highway, Tim, Xanthe and investigative journalist Amelia Oberhardt unpack the unsolved disappearance of 20-year-old Tony Jones who was on his way to meet his brother in Mt Isa but never arrived.
You can watch the Outback Murder Highway TV documentary series 8.30pm Wednesday on Channel 9 from April 22 to May 13.
Or watch anytime here - on 9Now.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAmelia Oberhardt· Guest0:00
[tense music] 11 people murdered or missing on one 900-kilometer stretch of road. This is Australia's biggest cluster of unsolved murders. I'm Amelia Robehart, and I'm an investigative journalist from Queensland.
Tim Watson-Munro· Host0:25
I'm criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro.
Xanthe Mallett· Host0:28
And I'm forensic criminologist Dr. Xanthe Weston. Welcome to this Motive & Method special series for Outback Murder Highway. Welcome back to the third episode in our special edition of Motive & Method for the series Outback Murder Highway with Amelia, who's joined us again.
Amelia Oberhardt· Guest0:51
Thank you for having me once again. Excited to be here.
Xanthe Mallett· Host0:53
Yeah, great to have you back, um, to talk us through the third investigation that you undertook for this series. So can you tell us a little bit about the case you covered in ep three?
Amelia Oberhardt· Guest1:03
Well, this one jumps us into a different decade. So the last murders we covered were the Spear Creek killings- Mm-hmm ... in 1978, and this sort of jumps us a little forward to 1982 and the disappearance of Anthony or Tony Jones. He was a 19-year-old hitchhiker, so very similar to- Mm-hmm ... the last couple of cases we've been discussing, and hitchhiking in the early 1980s is still an acceptable and somewhat safe, uh, form of travel. So in May of 1982,