They found it half-submerged in black water, tangled in reeds like it had been trying to crawl out.
At 7:42 a.m. yesterday, a police diver surfaced in the murky depths of the old White Swan Reservoir, raised one gloved hand, and simply said: “Got something.” What he held up stopped every officer on the bank dead in their tracks. Within minutes the entire 12-hectare site was locked down as a major crime scene, helicopters thumped overhead, and seasoned detectives (some who have worked the state’s worst murders) turned away to hide the fact they were crying.
Because the object wasn’t just evidence. It was Samantha Murphy’s.
Almost two years after the 51-year-old mother-of-three vanished mid-run on that scorching February morning in 2024, police are no longer treating her disappearance as a missing person case. Senior sources inside Victoria Police have confirmed to this reporter, off the record and with shaking voices: “We’re working a homicide now. No question.”
The item that flipped the entire investigation? Samantha’s bright coral running top (the exact one she was wearing in the last known CCTV image, waving to a neighbour as she left her Eureka Street home at 6:58 a.m. on February 4). The shirt was knotted around a heavy concrete block, weighed down like rubbish someone desperately wanted to stay hidden forever. Worse: forensic officers on site say it bears “obvious staining consistent with blood” and what appear to be defensive slash marks.
One detective, 28 years on the job, was overheard telling a colleague: “It was still screaming her name. You could feel it.”
The reservoir, 11 kilometres south-east of Ballarat East, had been searched twice before (once by air, once with boats and side-scan sonar) and dismissed. But new intelligence received in late November forced police to drain a remote northern arm of the dam. As the water dropped metre by metre, the unthinkable revealed itself.
By midday yesterday, the Missing Persons Squad had been formally disbanded and replaced with the Homicide Squad. Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Wozniak, a man not known for emotion, addressed the media with a face like stone: “An item of clothing positively identified as belonging to Samantha Murphy has been located. The area is now a crime scene. We believe Samantha met with foul play. That is all I will say at this stage.”
He didn’t need to say more. The concrete block did the talking.
For the Murphy family, the discovery is confirmation of the nightmare they have lived every single day for 669 days. Mick Murphy, Samantha’s husband of 27 years, collapsed in his driveway when detectives arrived at 9:15 a.m. Neighbours say he had to be helped inside by his sons. A single text sent from daughter Jess’s phone to a family group chat simply read: “They found her top. It’s over.”
But it’s not over. Not even close.
Investigators are now frantically trying to establish how the shirt ended up in water that was supposedly searched years ago. Theories swirling inside Russell Street headquarters include:
The item was moved recently by a panicked offender after police announced a $1 million reward in October.
It was missed in earlier searches because it was hidden inside a submerged car tyre filled with rocks.
Or, most chillingly, the killer held onto the clothing as a trophy before dumping it when heat on the case intensified.
Cadaver dogs brought to the reservoir yesterday morning hit strongly on a patch of recently disturbed earth 40 metres from the water’s edge. Excavation begins at first light tomorrow. No one is saying the word “body” on camera, but every officer on site knows what they’re looking for.
The shift in tone from police is staggering. For 22 months they maintained the public line that Samantha could still be alive. Behind the scenes, many suspected murder but lacked the evidence to say it publicly. That changed the moment that coral fabric broke the surface.
Ballarat itself feels different today. The main street is quieter. People speak in whispers. At the Buninyong bakery where Samantha used to buy vanilla slices every Friday, the owner has placed a single coral ribbon on the door and closed for the day. “She was one of us,” the owner said, voice cracking. “Now we know someone took her from us.”
And someone did. Police refuse to name suspects publicly, but locals know who has been hauled in for questioning multiple times: Patrick Leo Stephenson, 23, the son of a prominent Ballarat family, charged earlier this year with unrelated serious assaults and known to have been obsessed with true-crime cases involving missing women. Stephenson’s white Toyota Hilux was captured on dashcam footage less than 800 metres from Samantha’s running route on the morning she vanished. He has always denied any involvement.
Whether Stephenson will be charged now rests on what forensics can pull from that bloodied, waterlogged shirt. Scientists at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine are working through the night. Early indications are promising: the cold water may have preserved DNA like a time capsule.
For Mick, Jess, Lachlan and Emma Murphy, the agony of not knowing is being replaced by a different kind of pain: knowing. But with it comes something they haven’t had in almost two years.
As one family friend told me outside their home last night, holding back tears: “They can bury hope now. But they finally get to bury her, too. And then they get to bury whoever did this.”
The reservoir lights burned all night. The concrete block sits in an evidence vault. And that coral running top (once bright with life, now dark with death) waits silently to tell the rest of Samantha’s story.
Ballarat is holding its breath for the next chapter. And this time, it won’t be a disappearance.
It will be a reckoning.
