A phone has been found in farmland near Ballarat during a renewed search for the body of missing woman Samantha Murphy, in the biggest breakthrough in the high-profile case since a man was charged with her murder.
Television cameras captured police closely inspecting a dam along Buninyong-Mt Mercer Road on Wednesday afternoon, a few kilometres south of where the 51-year-old mother’s phone last pinged when she disappeared on a run in February.
Crime scene officers soon arrived at the property after a sniffer dog drew police to the dam’s banks. A television camera captured a pair of officers then donning masks, laying down a yellow evidence marker and photographing a phone. Shortly after 4pm, a police diver entered the dam.
A police source, speaking anonymously owing to the sensitivity of the investigation, was confident the phone was Murphy’s. Australian Federal Police technology sniffer dogs were brought in from interstate for the targeted search.
Victoria Police confirmed “some items of interest” had been found, but didn’t specify a phone was among them. However, television cameras clearly capture a phone being inspected.
“The area has been cordoned off, and those items will now be forensically tested,” police said in a statement. “At this stage, we are not providing further information about the items until that testing has been completed.”
The discovery of the phone could assist investigators looking for Murphy’s body, by providing detailed location data about her final movements.
Near the dam where the phone was found, a yellow digger was captured on camera excavating a nature strip and bushes adjacent to a quiet country road. Two people used tools to dig among thick scrub on the roadside. Later on Wednesday afternoon, the digger moved across a paddock to excavate near the dam’s edge.