By Wayne Flower and Ashley Nickel For Daily Mail Australia and Blair Jackson For Nca Newswire
11:18 03 Jun 2024, updated 12:14 03 Jun 2024
Samantha Murphy’s phone is undamaged and working perfectly after it was found in a dam near Ballarat.
Victoria Police search crews incredibly discovered Ms Murphy’s phone in the mud on the water’s edge at Buninyong, about 19km from her Ballarat home – where she was last seen four months ago on February 4.
The device, protected by a teal-covered case, was found by a specialist sniffer dog – who was cuddled shortly after the groundbreaking find.
It was revealed on Monday the phone is reportedly in near-perfect condition.
It’s understood detectives hope the phone will give valuable insight into Ms Murphy’s final movements and lead to the discovery of her body.
Cybersecurity expert Nigel Phair said results from the forensic tests could lead to a major breakthrough.
‘The physical properties of the phone will obviously be damaged but what’s behind it, those ones and zeros of data, will be retrievable,’ he said.
‘This is the game changer for the investigation.’
The device was found close to where it last made contact with a nearby tower in the Buninyong region before going silent.
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.
Ms Murphy was last seen leaving her Eureka St house in Ballarat about 7am to go for a 14km run through the nearby Woowookarung Regional Park.
Police believed she had reached the Mount Clear area, adjacent to the park, about an hour after leaving home, but had not been seen or heard from since departing.
Subsequent searches by police and volunteers have failed to locate any trace of the missing mum.
In February, a huge group of volunteers combed through bushland after gathering at Ballarat’s Eureka Stockade Memorial Park – some bringing metal detectors and even a sniffer dog.
Later that month, police launched a targeted search of Buninyong Bushland Reserve involving a range of specialist units including mounted officers, dog squad and motorcyclists.
The search area was highlighted in ‘intelligence derived from a number of sources,’ a police spokesperson said at the time.
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.
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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.
There’s also the possibility Ms Murphy’s phone may have been ‘waterproof’ if it was a newer model.
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.
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.
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.
The alleged murderer has since hired Paul Galbally from Melbourne-based law firm Galbally O’Bryan.
Mr Galbally represented the late Catholic Cardinal George Pell, who had his conviction for historic child abuse charges overturned by the High Court.
He has previously said he is not uncomfortable acting for individuals accused of the most serious crimes.
‘You either have a disposition or a personality that can deal with this work or you don’t,’ he said in a 2009 interview.
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.