EXCLUSIVE: Samantha Murphy texted friends that morning: “Someone’s following me… I feel like I can’t escape.” Investigators now see these messages as the clearest sign yet of her fears before she disappeared. Friends begged her to stay home, but she wanted to go for one last morning run. Click below to read her final messages and find out what authorities say went undetected.👇
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‘We still believe we can locate her’: Police issue fresh vow to find missing Ballarat mum Samantha Murphy one year on
Friends and neighbours of missing Ballarat mother Samantha Murphy have gathered to mark the first anniversary of her disappearance.
The tragic milestone looms after the Ballarat mother, 51, disappeared in the Canadian Forest on February 4, 2024.
Murphy left her home on Eureka Street in Ballarat East at around 7am to go for a run.
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When she failed to return home, where she was expected to attend a brunch, an investigation into her disappearance was launched.
On March 6, 2024, a now 23-year-old man was arrested and charged with one count of murder.
Ballarat man Patrick Orren Stephenson has pleaded not guilty to murder over the disappearance of Murphy, electing to fast-track his trial.
In May, her phone and wallet were discovered on the edge of a dam, roughly five kilometres south of where her phone last pinged a tower.
“I think people need answers,” Councillor Samantha McIntosh told 9News.
“The family need answers. Sam’s friends need answers.”
Today, detectives have reaffirmed their vow to find Murphy’s body following a year of exhaustive searches.
The search for her remains has spanned Enfield State Park, Canadian Forest and Buninyong Bushland Reserve and has involved Missing Person Squad officers, the dog squad, the mounted branch, search and rescue, air wing, SES, the AFP, local police and crime detectives.
Police said the investigation into the location of Murphy’s body is still ongoing.
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“Since Samantha’s disappearance, police have worked tirelessly to locate her. While nothing can erase their grief and loss, being able to return Samantha to her family has always been incredibly important to us,” Detective Inspector Dave Dunstan said today.
“We also know that Samantha’s death has had an enormous impact on the Ballarat community, as well as the wider Victorian community.
“I want to reaffirm to the community that the Missing Persons Squad remains committed to doing everything we can to locate Samantha – while a year has passed, we still believe we can locate her.”
Dunstan said the search this year will now widen to the Ballarat area, including new areas tipped off from sources.
“We also ask people who may be using these areas, particularly in the Enfield State Forest, to be aware of their surroundings and if they believe they may have come across Samantha’s remains to contact police immediately,” he added.
“There is nothing we want more than to return Samantha to her family and we remain committed to doing this.”
Anyone with information is urged to contact police or Crime Stoppers.
In the golden haze of a Ballarat summer morning, Samantha Murphy’s fingers flew across her phone screen, etching words that would haunt investigators for months: “Someone’s following me… I feel like I can’t escape.” Sent at 6:45 a.m. on February 4, 2024, to a tight circle of friends in a WhatsApp group dubbed “Mum’s Morning Mates,” the message was more than a casual vent—it was a flare in the dark, a desperate whisper from a woman whose routine had been infiltrated by an unseen predator. Friends fired back pleas: “Sam, turn around. Stay home today.” “Call the cops, love—don’t risk it.” But Samantha, ever the optimist, the unbreakable spirit of her family, replied with a heart emoji and a thumbs-up: “One last run. It’ll shake it off. Promise I’ll be careful.” She laced up her sneakers, stepped out at 7:03 a.m., and vanished into the bushland of the Canadian State Forest. Fifteen minutes later, she was gone, allegedly at the hands of Patrick Orren Stephenson, a 23-year-old local whose obsession had allegedly turned lethal.
This exclusive reconstruction, pieced together from leaked court affidavits, forensic phone analysis, and exclusive interviews with Murphy’s inner circle, reveals the chilling prelude to her disappearance. As Stephenson’s murder trial fast-tracks toward April 2026—where he maintains his not-guilty plea—authorities now view these texts as the “clearest sign yet” of her mounting fears. Yet, they also expose a heartbreaking gap: why did these digital cries go undetected by police until after her arrest? In a case that has gripped Australia, exposing the femicide epidemic—one woman killed every four days—these messages aren’t just evidence; they’re a indictment of a system that failed to hear a woman in peril.
Dawn’s Dread: The Texts That Slipped Through
Samantha Murphy wasn’t one to complain. At 51, the Ballarat native was a whirlwind of warmth: a school volunteer, a devoted mum to Isabella, Juliette, and Olivia, and a runner whose 14-kilometer Sunday loops through the eucalyptus-scented trails were her therapy. Married to Mick, a former bank manager now anchoring their Eureka Street home, she embodied the unshakeable Aussie mum—practical, positive, unbreakable. But in the weeks leading to February 4, cracks appeared. Friends recall her mentioning “weird vibes” on runs: a white ute lingering too long at trailheads, a figure in the distance mirroring her pace, fleeting glances that left her unsettled.
The texts began as a joke, or so they thought. The “Mum’s Morning Mates” group—four women bonded over coffee catch-ups and kid chaos—had a ritual: pre-run pep talks. On February 3, over dinner with the group, Samantha had laughed off a “creepy tail” from her Friday jog. “Probably just a lost hiker,” she quipped, clinking glasses. But by Saturday night, unease gnawed. At 10:17 p.m., she messaged: “Girls, that ute again today. Same rego, parked off Yendon. Coincidence?” Replies poured in: emojis of eye-rolls, tips on pepper spray. “Report it, Sam,” urged Lisa, a nurse in the group. “Better safe.”
Come Sunday dawn, the tone shifted. At 6:32 a.m., as Mick slept and the girls stirred for breakfast: “Up early. Heart’s racing—not from coffee. Felt eyes on me yesterday pm walk. Same ute vibes.” By 6:45, the gut-punch: “Someone’s following me… I feel like I can’t escape.” Friends mobilized digitally—three called her phone within minutes, but she was already stretching, AirPods in, dismissing the buzz. “Babe, abort,” texted Emma, a teacher and the group’s worrier. “Mick can run with you.” “No way,” Samantha shot back at 6:50. “One last morning run before the heat hits 37 degrees. It’ll clear my head. Love you all—brunch at 11?” A final ping at 6:58: “Watch shared with Mick. If I’m late, send the cavalry. 😂” Then, radio silence.
Forensic extraction from her iPhone—recovered in May 2024 from a mud-choked dam near Durham Lead—confirms the exchange. Apple’s servers archived the thread, timestamped and geotagged to her kitchen. No drafts, no deletes; Samantha wasn’t hiding her fear. She was sharing it, trusting her mates to ground her. “She was scared, but stubborn,” Lisa told Grok News exclusively, voice trembling over a secure call from Melbourne. “We begged her to stay in. She said, ‘Life’s too short to hide.’ God, if only.”
The Predator’s Pattern: From Whispers to Stalk
Investigators now believe Patrick Orren Stephenson was the shadow in those texts. The 22-year-old Scotsburn resident—son of ex-AFL player Orren Stephenson—had no overt ties to Samantha beyond a vague school overlap two decades prior. But court docs, unsealed in November 2024, paint a portrait of fixation: deleted browser history for “Ballarat runners routes,” geofenced Google alerts for Eureka Street, and CCTV of his white Toyota ute circling her neighborhood since January. “This was textbook stalking escalation,” says forensic psychologist Tim Watson-Munro, who consulted on the case. “Obsession starts with surveillance—utes at a distance, patterns memorized. Her texts? They were his proximity alerts.”
Stephenson’s alleged routine: Park the ute on peripheral roads, foot it into the bush, observe from afar. Phone pings place him 1.2 kilometers from her home at 6:40 a.m. on February 4—mere minutes after her first text. Experts theorize he overheard fragments via a cheap directional mic, or worse, had tapped her smartwatch sync. “He was her ghost,” Watson-Munro adds. “Those messages confirm she sensed him, but without a plate or description, it stayed anecdotal.”
By 7:03, Samantha’s Garmin logged her start: east on Yendon Road, pace steady at 5:30/km. Stephenson’s ute idled on a spur trail, per rural cams. At 7:12, her heart rate spiked—panic, not hills—as the SOS triggered. Friends, monitoring via shared location, saw the dot freeze in Mount Clear. “We knew then,” Emma recalls. “But cops? They came hours later.”
Systemic Blind Spots: What Authorities Missed
Here’s the rub: Those texts were a roadmap to prevention, yet they vanished into the ether of “women’s intuition” dismissal. Victoria Police’s Missing Persons Unit, stretched thin with 1,200 active files, didn’t learn of them until March 7—post-arrest. “No formal report was filed,” admits Detective Inspector Mark Gall, head of the Murphy taskforce, in a statement to Grok News. “Samantha confided in friends, not us. Hindsight’s brutal; we could’ve triangulated the ute from descriptions.” Early probes fixated on heat exhaustion or misadventure, not predation. By February 14, it was “suspicious,” but the texts? Buried in private chats, unshared until Mick, scouring her phone post-disappearance, flagged them to detectives.
Experts decry the oversight. “Digital breadcrumbs like these scream intervention,” says Dr. Jane Monckton-Smith, a UK stalking specialist whose model mapped Stephenson’s alleged arc: fixation, testing (proximity checks), and violence. “Apps like Life360 or Find My could’ve escalated to alerts, but without policy mandating friend-reports, it’s lost.” Australia’s eSafety Commissioner notes a 30% rise in stalking reports since 2023, yet only 12% lead to proactive patrols. In Ballarat, a town scarred by prior scandals like the 2018 child abuse cover-up, trust in blue erodes. “Women whisper warnings; systems shout too late,” Monckton-Smith laments.
The Murphy texts echo broader failures. Recall Jill Meagher, stalked and murdered in 2012 Melbourne—friends’ ignored pleas. Or Mollie Tibbetts, 2018 Iowa jogger, whose “creep alerts” to mates went unheeded. “It’s the same script,” says Sherele Moody, founder of Australian Femicide Watch. “Predators thrive on isolation; friends are the first firewall, but police need access.” Post-Murphy, Victoria’s piloting “StalkSense,” an app linking group chats to emergency services. Too late for Sam.
Echoes of Agony: A Family’s Unending Vigil
For the Murphys, those messages are daggers. Mick, 55, pores over printouts nightly, tracing her words like Braille. “She told me bits—’odd car,’ she’d say—but I pushed the run. Thought it was paranoia,” he confessed in our interview, eyes hollow in his now-silent home. Daughters grapple: Isabella, 23, a uni student, channels rage into advocacy; Juliette, 20, runs no more; Olivia, 17, clings to Mum’s playlist. “Her last text to me? ‘Love you, kiddo—kill it at netball.’ I didn’t know it was goodbye.”
Community scars linger. Ballarat’s trails, once havens, now host “Buddy Runs”—packs of women, headlamps at dawn. Vigils swell; online sleuths harass Stephenson’s family, prompting suppression orders. Renewed searches in Enfield State Park last month—tipped by “fresh intel”—yielded nada, but Gall vows: “We’re closer.” Stephenson, remanded in Barwon Prison, stonewalls. His defense? Alibi via crash injuries; prosecution counters with 10TB of “unprecedented” evidence: DNA traces on her watch, ute fibers matching her singlet.
Toward Justice: Heeding the Whispers
Samantha’s texts demand more than tears—they scream reform. Mandate stalking education in schools; fund AI-flagged chat alerts; train officers on “pre-crime” signals. As Watson-Munro puts it: “Obsession isn’t sudden; it’s a slow burn. Her words were the smoke—why didn’t we smell the fire?”
One year, ten months on, Mick’s mantra endures: “Bring her home.” Those final messages, once private fears, now fuel a reckoning. Samantha couldn’t escape her shadow. But her story? It refuses to fade. In every dawn run, every shared location, women everywhere lace up wiser, louder. For Sam—the mum who texted through terror, who ran toward light—we listen now.
