The question of what happened to Belinda Williams is one of Ballarat's longest standing mysteries. Ms Williams would have been 56 this year, but she is forever 36, as her life was tragically cut short 20 years ago next week.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Many questions surrounding the circumstances of Ms Williams' brutal death and why somebody would take the life of a doting and dedicated mother that cold, winter's night still remain, with the mystery long baffling the Ballarat community.
Grief
For two decades, Ms Williams' mother, Shirley Macey, has strenuously tried to ascertain why somebody would take her daughter's life and leave her granddaughter without a mother.
And now, 20 years later and still without answers, she is again appealing for anybody with information, no matter how trivial it seems, to contact police.
There has been grief everyday for the past 20 years. To think somebody has been out there living their lives while ours have been put on hold has been awful.
- Shirley Macey
"These should have been the best years of my life but they have been the absolute worst. I just need to keep going to have this solved so I can find peace."
With the pain of her loss still raw all these years later, she recalls how lonely and isolating it has been, especially as people have avoided talking to her about her daughter.
"It has been so hard and it has been lonely because people don't want to talk about it. When I go to the supermarket, people see me and dart across to a different aisle so they don't have to face me. I started doing my grocery shopping in the middle of the night," she said.
"But then there is the kindness of strangers. Some people have come up to me, that I don't know, and say they don't know what to say, but that they are thinking of me. So in a way, people I don't know have sustained me."
Missing
The last time Ms Williams was seen alive was June 25, 1999 - a Friday night - after she entertained two girlfriends at her newly rented Buninyong home.
She hugged her girlfriends goodnight around 9.30pm, before changing into a nightgown and preparing to tuck her six-year-old daughter into bed.
And like she did each night, she crawled into bed with Mietta and read her fairy tales until she fell asleep.
SEE A TIMELINE OF EVENTS BELOW
It is known that she phoned a number of people afterwards, but what else happened that night remains a mystery.
When Mietta woke at 9am the following morning, her best friend - her mother - had vanished from their Elizabeth street home without a trace.
So the young girl rang her father, David Coventry, who also lived in Buninyong. He spent the morning searching for Ms Williams, before reporting her missing that afternoon.
Her disappearance was perplexing - the doors to the house were locked, no items, including her keys and handbag, were missing from the house and the clothes she had changed out of the previous evening were still on the bathroom floor.
Search
Smythesdale police responded to the initial call that Ms Williams was missing and with family members, the group conducted a thorough search of the house, outbuildings and surrounding bushland.
The following afternoon, Sunday, an extensive air and ground search began.
Ms Williams' friends and family - who knew something was wrong, she would not have left her daughter by herself - joined police and 25 State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers, trawling through bushland looking for any sign of the missing mother.
A police helicopter was called to assist with the 40 hectare search, covering Union Jack Reserve. The search covered difficult terrain through rugged bushland littered with dozens of uncapped mine shafts, so the search was abandoned at dusk due to visibility issues.
Another intensive search, that Wednesday, June 30 - five days after she was last seen - saw a team of 50 SES volunteers, police, the missing persons unit, horses and trail bikes, combing through 80 hectares of bushland while police door knocked around the area.
The following day, it was announced that the homicide squad had taken over the investigation.
Discovery
Ms Williams' body was discovered by bushwalkers on July 6, some seven kilometres from her home. She was lying in scrub and bracken down a hill off the Mt Buninyong Access road, still dressed in her nightgown, about 1-kilometre up the mountain.
The bushwalkers - a male and female - were prompted to look down the hill after seeing something suspicious on the road. Mt Buninyong had not been included in the police search area.
Ms Williams' murder shocked the Ballarat community, particularly due to her daughter being in the house at the time she is believed to have been murdered.
She was remembered as a vivacious and bubbly human being at a memorial service on Monday, July 12 at the Buninyong Holy Trinity Church. She was farewelled in a grand horse-drawn carriage.
Investigation
Police investigators have always maintained that the person who killed Ms Williams was known to her and lived in the Ballarat area.
Detective Ron Iddles OAM, known as Australia's greatest detective, told The Courier every piece of information was valuable in solving cold cases.
"At the end of the day, it's about getting back-to-basics in the community. Most crimes are solved by talking to people," he said. "Advances in DNA can help but it's only part of the equation. I say they're only aides to investigating. There is always someone in the community who knows."
In 2015, homicide squad detectives announced a $1 million reward for information leading to a break in the Belinda Williams case.
That reward remains in place and investigators continue to appeal to anyone with information about who may be responsible to come forward. If you know something, contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.