Samantha Murphy mystery is starting to unravel

Whether it works or not, a mud-splattered phone found at a dam could finally help solve the mysterious disappearance of Samantha Murphy almost four months to the day after she vanished.

On Wednesday, Victoria Police search crews were seen celebrating after finding the mobile phone at the water’s edge on farmland.

The location is close to where Ms Murphy’s phone last made contact with a nearby tower in the Buninyong region before going silent. 

It’s understood detectives believe the discovery could be the key breakthrough they’ve been needing in the long-running search for Ms Murphy’s body. 

The dam sits about 15km from Ballarat East where Ms Murphy was last seen when she took off on her last run on February 4.

The phone is believed to have been submerged in the dam since February 4 – the very day police allege Patrick Orren Stephenson, 22, murdered Ms Murphy while she was out on a Sunday jog. 

Daily Mail Australia was told this week Missing Persons Unit detectives had been suspicious of the dam soon after taking charge of the investigation, questioning its owner just weeks later. 

Police would not return until early May when they asked the owner again if he would mind police entering his property. 

Three weeks passed before Wednesday’s search turned up the phone. 

The dam had been at its lowest since the heat of summer in December.  

The owner of the dam, who wished to remain anonymous, suggested police had no specific information the phone had been discarded there. 

‘They started all the way down the other end of the road and worked their way up,’ he told Daily Mail Australia. 

‘As far as I know one of the sniffer dogs found it. A tech dog.’

The location of the dam sits just around the corner from the Durham Lead Nature Conservation Reserve, which search crews descended upon on April 12. 

Back then, police had also focused their search within the Enfield State Park, 30km south of Ballarat, and about 5km from the Durham reserve. 

The Durham nature reserve is just south of Buninyong where Ms Murphy’s phone was last detected by mobile phone towers at 5pm on the day she vanished.

The location of the phone firms-up the police theory Ms Murphy’s killer likely dumped it in the dam before heading into the Durham reserve to dispose of her body. 

Search crews are expected to again venture out into the thick terrain over the coming weeks as forensic technicians work to extract data from the muddy phone. 

The phone could contain information ranging from an indication to the actual location Ms Murphy died to video footage or images of her last moments alive. 

While extracting data from a waterlogged phone is difficult, it is not impossible given the right amount of experience and financial backing. 

It is understood Victoria Police will spare no expense to extract what they can from the phone, including possibly sending it overseas to international experts in the field. 

‘Chop-off’ analysis has traditionally been chosen as an effective data recovery method for damaged devices, including water-damaged phones.

In a paper titled ‘Forensic Analysis of Water Damaged Mobile Devices’ published by the Netherlands Forensic Institute, experts say recovery of data is very much possible.

But it comes not without difficulty. 

‘It needs to be noted that longer submersion time creates more metal corrosion, which makes device recovery processes much more difficult,’ the paper stated.  

‘If handled properly, and appropriate procedures are conducted at a forensic lab, there is a high chance of restoring the water damaged mobile device to operating status to conduct successful forensic data recovery.’

If the phone is a more recent model, it could even be ‘waterproof’, meaning it is  hermetically sealed so it could be used in water. 

But that usually doesn’t mean for months on end in a muddy dam. 

Whatever can or can’t be extracted from the phone will likely see search crews return to the nearby scrub to resume the hunt for Ms Murphy’s body. 

In April, Victoria Police brought in specialist cadaver dogs from New South Wales to scour the bush in dense forest spanning a vast stretch of countryside. 

It was the first time search crews used the highly-trained cadaver dogs, brought in from NSW Police, since the investigation was launched.

They are specially trained to be able to sniff out humans remains and corpses, even under extreme conditions.

Police on trail bikes have also been used to help cover the wide area of the increasingly desperate search for Ms Murphy’s remains, more than eight weeks after she vanished.

Officers had previously made unsuccessful search efforts at Buninyong Bushland Reserve in March.

It remains unclear what new information triggered the fresh search on Wednesday.

In March, detectives charged Stephenson with Ms Murphy’s murder, alleging he killed her at Mount Clear on the day she went missing.

Stephenson is the son of Orren Stephenson, who played 15 AFL games for Geelong and Richmond between 2012 and 2014.

It is understood Stephenson has refused to cooperate with police and disclose what they allege he knows about the location of Ms Murphy’s body.  

Missing Persons Unit Detective Acting Superintendent Mark Hatt has assured the community his detectives will never stop searching for Ms Murphy’s body.

‘I want to assure those in the Ballarat community that police remain focused on doing everything we can to return Samantha to her family,’ he said previously.

Anyone with any information about Ms Murphy’s disappearance is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.