There’s a long, straight stretch of the Stuart Highway that cuts through the Northern Territory outback like a blade – the 700 kilometre run between Katherine and Tennant Creek.
Out here, time can play tricks on travellers.
Each lonely roadhouse or rest area can seem separated by hours, punctuated only by termite mounds, cattle station fencing, or the rush of a road train as it thuds past in the opposite lane.
It was from here, in this sparse patch of Australia, that the saga of a missing man and his red kelpie captivated the nation, and the world, with a tale that seemed drawn from a far-fetched movie.
The story of a man who left the pub one evening and never returned.
The tiny outback town with a population of 10 or so people, where everybody had an axe to grind, but nobody was saying anything.
It’s been nearly seven years since Paddy Moriarty disappeared from Larrimah without a trace; and despite a years-long police investigation, an explosive coronial inquest, a book, a podcast, a documentary, a fictional dramatisation and countless news articles, it’s a mystery which has so far yielded no concrete truths.
This week, a surprise announcement was released which harboured a sobering reality: any answers about the case are no closer to emerging, and there’s no saying they ever will.
‘Insufficient evidence’
The photo appeared just before Christmas in 2017, attached to a police media release.
Grizzled and grinning, a beer in his hand and a dog by his side, a 70-year-old man had gone missing from his outback home in Larrimah.
Since the police investigation’s early weeks, NT police have sustained that it’s highly likely Mr Moriarty was murdered, and his body disposed of somewhere in the vast outback.
However that prospect was never proven, and the larrikin’s body was never located.
In a rare media release on Wednesday, the NT’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) laid bare the future of the Paddy Moriarty case in just two sentences.
“The DPP has determined that there is insufficient evidence to make out a charge against any person in relation to the disappearance of Paddy Moriarty,” the statement read.
“No further comment will be provided by the DPP at this time.”
It came two years after the disappearance was referred to the DPP by the NT coroner, who at the end of the inquiry shared his belief that Mr Moriarty had been killed.
“In my opinion Paddy was killed in the context of and likely due to the ongoing feud he had with his nearest neighbours,” the coroner’s 2022 findings read.
This bad blood has been well-documented.
The pie shop owner who lived across from Mr Moriarty, Fran Hodgetts, and her live-in gardener, Owen Laurie, had historical gripes with their neighbour’s aggressive antics.
There were poisoned garden beds, dead kangaroo corpses thrown over their fence, and harsh words shared.
However, the pair have always vehemently denied their involvement in the disappearance, and now the DPP has conceded there’s not enough proof to convey any wrongdoing.
The DPP refused to answer further questions this week – requests were stonewalled.
But from the DPP’s silence, a number of uncomfortable questions grow louder.
Police investigation to carry on
In the coronial inquest, which was split into two halves in 2018 and 2022, police played audio which detectives alleged was of Mr Laurie, singing of how he “killerated” Mr Moriarty with a claw hammer.
Mr Laurie denied it was him singing on the secretly recorded tapes.
So why, considering the context, was this inadmissible as hard evidence for prosecutors?
And what of the myriad searches of properties in Larrimah and interviews with the town’s handful of long-standing residents?
Of those 10 or so residents, at least two have passed away since Mr Moriarty vanished.
NT police were this week asked if the DPP’s decision pointed to the initial investigation into the matter having been to some degree mishandled.
Police wouldn’t be drawn on this accusation.
But neither have detectives ever given up on finding out the truth about what happened, with a police media spokesperson this week confirming the case remains active.
“The police investigation is ongoing, and we encourage the public to report any relevant information,” the spokesperson said.
The police also confirmed that a $250,000 reward is still on offer for whoever divulges the shred of information that finally leads to closure in this case.
What has always made the Moriarty case vastly more mysterious than others is not just that the man went missing, but that he hardly seemed to exist to begin with – a man with no real family, no real ties to the earth except his dog, Kellie, and his tumbledown home along the Stuart Highway. No trace.
In making its announcement this week, the DPP has left Mr Moriarty to enter a grim pantheon of enduring outback Australian mysteries – like the disappearance and murder of backpacker Peter Falconio in 2001 – that without a body may never truly be resolved.