 The small town of Bathurst in New South Wales is rarely interesting. Being a small college town, when the students are at school or gone for the holidays, the town falls eerily silent. But this wasn't true during the holiday season of 2001. Jeanine Vaughn was a local shopkeeper who was known all throughout the town. So when she vanished without a trace on the evening of December 7th, the entire town waited on the edge of their seats to find out what had happened to her. Jeanine was last seen stepping into a small red car, but after this she was never seen again. The police force were hot on her trail, taking action the moment she was reported missing. But that's when a few people started to suspect that investigators may have known a lot more than they were letting on, and one of their own detectives may just be responsible. Cold turkey may be great on sandwiches, but sometimes it's not the greatest way to break bad habits. I'm not saying you need to go through some mind-altering trip through the jungle to cleanse your thoughts. I'm just talking about today's sponsor, Fume. Not every aspect of a bad habit is wrong. So why not just remove the bad parts of your habit? Fume is an innovative award-winning device that does just that. Instead of using complicated electronics, Fume is a completely natural flavored air device. Fume is an easy way to replace your bad habit with something good. Something that's free to enjoy without all the negative consequences. The Fume device comes with an adjustable airflow dial that's specifically designed with moving parts and magnets, making it great for fidgeting if the need arises. Now, I'll admit I was a bit skeptical about Fume at first. I didn't fully understand it, and I didn't really know what to expect. But I was incredibly shocked by the flavor the first time I tried it. They're super smooth and downright enjoyable. My personal favorite is the crisp mint. The entire feel of Fume is great. It's evenly weighted, perfectly balanced, and it's great to just sit and fiddle with. I didn't even realize it at the time, but I was sitting here fiddling with it the entire time I was writing this video. Stopping is something that we all put off because it's hard. But switching to Fume is easy, enjoyable, and even fun. Fume has served over 150,000 customers and has thousands of success stories, and there's no reason that can't be you. Join Fume in accelerating humanity's breakup from destructive habits by picking up the journey pack today. And to tryfume.com slash truecrime. Or scan the QR code and use code TRUECRIME to get 10% off when you get the journey pack today. The Fume Solano just launched on November 6th, and you can upgrade your journey pack to the Solano to enjoy the premium walnut barrel and Onyx black-coated mouthpiece that has a smoother finish and still get 10% off. That's TRYFUM.COM and use the code TRUECRIME to save an additional 10% off your order today. Fume for sponsoring today's video. Janine Vaughn grew up in New South Wales' Hunter Valley region. Janine had a largely happy childhood, but she certainly had a few struggles as well. She lived in a household filled with various members of her extended family. But even with all these people around, there were still times that she felt alone. See, Janine's mother had stepped out of the picture when she was quite young. The circumstances surrounding this are unclear, but one source indicates that her mother abandoned her shortly after she was born, leaving her to be raised by other members of her family. By the time she was a young adult, she decided to move to Bathurst with her boyfriend. The two lived in Bathurst for quite some time together, but their relationship eventually broke down. At this point, Janine had already made a home for herself here, so rather than head back to Hunter Valley, she opted to stay in the area of Bathurst, making a really solid life for herself. Janine soon found a job at an Ed Harry menswear store, selling suits, pants, pretty much everything a businessman could need. She was the manager of the store and seems to have taken great pride in her work. Even though Janine had left many of her friends and family members behind in Hunter Valley, she'd found a close-knit group of friends in Bathurst as well, so she wasn't really missing out on much in terms of her social life. Janine's best friend, Rebecca, was always around when she needed someone, and two were virtually inseparable. Rebecca remembers Janine as being a fun, easy-going person who was super outgoing. Rebecca says that Janine was always there for anyone who needed a friend, and she loved taking care of other people. She was also a very social person and looked for any excuse to head out into the town to have a good time. On top of all this, Rebecca says that Janine was also a very careful person. Even though she loved meeting new people and making new friends, she always kept her wits about her and kept people at a safe distance until she felt that she could truly trust them. For Rebecca, this made things all the more bizarre when she learned from investigators that Janine had vanished after getting into a car with someone she'd never met before. According to Rebecca, there was a 0% chance Janine would have done this. She claimed that she and Janine shared all of their friends. Janine didn't have a single acquaintance or friend that Rebecca wasn't fully aware of. To her, Janine would have never entered a car with someone she didn't know. And according to Rebecca, this means that whoever took Janine on that warm December evening, she knew them. It was December 6, 2001. Janine had met up with two of her close friends to head out into the town and spend the evening at one of the bars and bathrooms. Her friends were Jordan Morris and Juanita Murphy, who appeared to have been dating at the time. The three spent the evening at the Metro Tavern, also known as the Metro Night Club. They spent the entirety of the evening here, carrying over their affairs into the early morning hours of December 7, finally leaving the bar at about 3.45 am. CCTV footage from the evening showed that shortly before leaving the bar, Jordan and Juanita had gotten into an argument. While this was going on, Janine had lost her handbag and was desperately searching for it. She never did find her bag, but the three decided to leave the bar anyway. Several hours later, her bag was found by a member of the cleaning crew. When her bag was investigated later on, it was found to have contained her cell phone, keys, money and identification. So Janine would have been virtually helpless without it. After they left the Metro Tavern, the three decided to head toward the Oxford Hotel nearby, planning to have one final round of drinks before calling it a night or a morning at this point. It seems that Janine was growing tired of hearing the couple bickering all the time because, according to police, Janine was walking about 40 meters ahead of the couple as they made their way toward the hotel. They all made their way onto Keppel Street, and that's when Jordan and Juanita noticed a car up ahead. The car suddenly popped a U-turn and pulled up alongside Janine. The grainy CCTV footage shows that the car had stopped for about 27 seconds before Janine agreed to get inside. Multiple witnesses at the time remember that the car was red, but that's about all they could say with any certainty. A few sources claim that the car was also a Mazda, but it's unclear how they came to this assumption, though police are accepting this information as likely factual. Investigators have supplied a reconstruction image of the vehicle they believe to be a close match to the one that Janine was seen getting into, but this reconstruction looks more like a BMW than a Mazda, if you ask me. Janine's friends were rather obviously confused by her sudden decision to hop into a car that evening. But one thing I haven't seen anyone else report on is the fact that it was raining very heavily that night. As the three left the bar, it was merely a drizzle, but at the time that Janine got into the car, it was pouring. Janine's family and friends, Rebecca specifically, says that there's no chance she would have gotten into that car if she didn't know the person who was driving. But what we have to keep in mind is that when people are desperate for help, for example, if it's pouring down rain and they have no ride, they can do some rather unusual things. To top this off, not only was it pouring down rain, but Janine and her friends had been at a bar for hours upon hours that night. It's safe to assume that she was probably pretty drunk, so I don't personally find it too crazy to believe that Janine may have gotten into a vehicle with someone she wasn't familiar with that night. When Janine rode off with this unknown individual that evening, her friends didn't bother reporting her to the police. After all, they were operating under the assumption that she likely knew this person. Because of this, alarms weren't raised until hours later when Janine failed to show up to her store later that morning. After she was reported missing, everyone in the town began to fear the worst. Not because Janine was a fairly vulnerable young woman who was kidnapped under highly suspicious circumstances, but because of something much worse. See, in the weeks leading up to Janine's disappearance, the town of Bathurst was already on edge. A series of unusual and unsettling crimes have been taking place over the last few weeks, and police were beginning to fear that they may have a much bigger problem on their hands, and a serial attacker may have been lurking the streets. To say that Janine Vaughn vanished without a trace would be the understatement of the century. Janine left behind zero evidence, the very definition of nothing. In all seriousness, she may as well have been abducted by aliens because there wasn't even the slightest inkling of where she may have gone. One interesting bit of information that makes this case all the more suspicious is according to the cleaner who found Janine's purse, the purse appeared to have been deliberately hidden. The cleaner says that when they found the purse, it had been forcefully wedged into a corner and was being covered up by a couple of bags of chips. Whoever put the purse here didn't want it to be found. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a total of three police forces investigated her disappearance, including the Strike Force Toco, the Mountain Baton PD, and Toco 2. Toco 2 is still actively investigating the case, but they've still largely come up empty-handed even after all this time. When speaking with various officers and police departments who were assigned the case, they all say that the case was contaminated and doomed from the start. One officer reported at the beginning of the investigation that resources were plentiful and they felt optimistic that they would be able to get to the bottom of this relatively quickly. With CCTV evidence and various witness reports collected during the beginning stages of the investigation, things were looking up. But as time passed by, resources quickly needed to be allocated to other investigations, leading Janine's case to run cold sooner than anyone had hoped. By 2005, the case had begun to fall apart. This is because of an investigation into the potential involvement of a local police detective. This detective had a romantic interest in Janine and showed this shortly before she went missing. But he was also the lead investigator in her disappearance, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. One of the most crucial pieces of evidence in this case is Janine's diary. In her diary, she repeatedly wrote about a detective by the name of Mr. Hosbens. Janine claims that Mr. Hosbens was stalking her and refused to leave her alone. He was very obviously interested in her, but the feeling was not mutual. It's assumed that Janine made this known to Mr. Hosbens, but he simply wasn't getting the message or didn't care. Multiple investigations helped to clear this detective's name. But rather mysteriously, the diary that implicated this detective in the first place has miraculously vanished from evidence archives, which is pretty fishy, if you ask me. By 2006, an alternative task force was established to help continue the investigation into Janine's disappearance. And this new task force pulled the case away from the desk of Mr. Hosbens, who again was the lead investigator into a case that he was also the primary suspect for. Finally giving this case a fair shot at actually being solved. This new task force announced that they were closing in on a person of interest, but this person has never been named publicly. It was around the same time that the Sydney Morning Herald, the simple news and media company, made a heroic effort to try to help push the case along, assigning their own team of investigators to push for answers and try to bring this case to a close. An investigator for this newly established force explained that when he was handed the case, it was incredibly contaminated. He said that they needed to go back and re-interview many of the witnesses and informants from years ago, but that their statements were largely unhelpful, presumably because the public's opinion on the case in the years since the crime unfolded had now swayed people's memories and perceptions about what had really taken place that evening. By 2009, the state coroner had announced that she feared the trail for Janine had completely gone cold and she feared the criminal may never be caught, as too much time had passed since the incident. A total of three people of interest were privately named, but each of these people insisted they were innocent and officers didn't have nearly enough evidence to accuse any of the three of them for any sort of involvement. But that's when the Sydney Herald made a groundbreaking discovery that may just help bring this case to a close. The Sydney Morning Herald was given access to a total of 47 people of interest who investigators believe may somehow be involved with the case. The Herald was able to hone in on one person in particular, who seems to have had a very strange connection to Janine's disappearance. According to the Herald, they were able to track down dozens of people who knew this man personally, including his friends, family, and people that had worked with him in the past. More specifically, they were interested in people who had visited his home around the time that Janine had vanished. Two of the witnesses that detectives spoke with had very vivid memories of what had taken place all those years ago, and they specifically recalled visiting his home between late 2001 and 2002, just months after Janine had vanished. Each of these witnesses requested that their identities remain anonymous and rightfully so. One of these individuals recalled an incredibly strong, quote, horrendous odor coming from an indoor area of the suspect's home. He claimed that this terrible smell lasted for several weeks before it finally began to fade. The witness remembers the time that he entered the home and says that he distinctly remembers claiming that the place smelled awful. He also remembers a very specific sound, which he described as sounding like a beehive. He says that there was a lot of buzzing and considering this man used to live on a farm, he felt that it suggested the presence of a dead animal. But in his mind, he felt that the sheer number of bees or bugs that would be required to make such a loud noise would have been far more than the number that would have been interested in any animal. He believed something had died here and it was quite large, maybe even the size of a human. The witness also recalls seeing a note that had been attached to the suspect's fridge, a note that he found very unusual but the contents of this note have not been made public, as the Herald fears that it may hinder their investigation. They've since passed the contents of this note onto professional investigators. The second witness that the Herald spoke to remembers visiting the suspect's house around 2002 and she doesn't remember any particularly offensive smell but she does remember the loud buzzing sounds. Worse yet, she witnessed the bugs firsthand. She says that she saw an incredibly unusual number of bugs that were interested in one particular area of the home. She says that this area of the home was quote, insanely full of bugs that she described as either bees or wasps. She says that none of the insects were flying though but they were crawling around on the ground and hundreds of them were lying there dead. She says that after sweeping them up, she would come back and hundreds more would have appeared. The one says that this infestation lasted for several months. When speaking to a forensic biologist, the Herald says that they were led to believe that these insects were most likely hoverflies which can often be found at the site of decomposition. She also said that these bugs closely resembled bees or wasps but it was at this point that the case truly took a turn that in all honesty, blew me away. The Herald looked back through various property records and they came across a man who owned this property back in the 1980s and he had outlined the rough location of a cellar that had since been closed up. This was found on a floor plan that the man had created many years ago. He mentioned that when he purchased the home, a cellar could have been accessed by opening up a hatch or a trap door as he called it. He said that he used the cellar to store renovation supplies when he was carrying out the work on the home. When the work was completed, he said that he felt as though the trap door was a hazard so he decided to close it up permanently eliminating access to the cellar entirely. But the cellar was still completely intact underneath the subfloor. The cellar was never filled in. The Herald says that they passed this information on to investigators but the detectives refused to comment on whether or not they'd followed up on this new lead. But rather interestingly, several of the witnesses that the Sydney Herald had spoken to said that they were contacted by investigators within a few weeks after the Herald reported this information to them. So this leads us to one big question here. Who was the owner of this house when Jeanine went missing and who could possibly be responsible? Well, the truth may be stranger than fiction. If you remember, the Sydney Morning Herald announced that they were handed a list of 47 total people of interest. Well, one of these people was none other than the lead investigator in Jeanine's case as mentioned a moment ago. This man was Detective Brad Hosemanns. Brad was interviewed at length regarding Jeanine's disappearance after it was found that he had a romantic interest in her in the weeks leading up to her sudden disappearance. One witness claimed to have actually seen Jeanine with Brad on the night that Jeanine vanished. But that's not all. See, the witness didn't spot the two having a friendly conversation. Instead, the witness claimed to have seen Jeanine bound and gagged in the back of Brad's car. Brad claimed that he had no idea what had happened to Jeanine. To top this off, he claimed he wasn't even in Bathurst at the time that she vanished. He claimed to be in Newcastle. But police very quickly found evidence that proved otherwise. In fact, he was in Bathurst when Jeanine vanished. He explained this away by claiming that he had traveled multiple times around this time period and must have simply been mistaken. Hosemanns has repeatedly denied any involvement in Jeanine's disappearance, but many people simply aren't buying this story. About four years after Jeanine had disappeared, the New South Wales police received an anonymous letter that insisted that Detective Hosemanns was behind the crime. But the letter was unable to provide any irrefutable evidence that this was true. Another detective says that this letter suggested local police were covering up the crime to help protect one of their own, but there just wasn't enough evidence to back this up. There have been many eyes on Detective Hosemanns ever since he was first suspected of involvement in this case, but there's truthfully no solid evidence against him, and we have no reason to believe he may have been this mysterious person of interest. Well, except for one small footnote that I found while investigating this case. One article I came across referenced an investigation that was carried out at Brad Hosemann's home. This article detailed how a team of investigators arrived at his home and drilled through the concrete floor at Brad's home. There were no other details about this investigation that were mentioned, but this begs the question. Why would detectives have wanted to look underneath the floor of his home? This is just my personal theory, but is it possible that there may have been a cellar hidden underneath the floor? Maybe even the cellar that was uncovered by the Sydney Herald. Obviously, the person of interest was never named by the Sydney Morning Herald, but this just seems too specific to not be the case. Though let me be clear, there is no proof that Brad Hosemanns is responsible for this. After all, the drilling investigation allegedly didn't find anything beneath his flooring that implicated him in the case, though I've not been able to confirm when this drilling took place. So it is entirely possible that if it was Brad Hosemanns' home that had the hidden cellar and Janine's body was somehow placed down there, well, it may have already been eliminated by the hundreds of bugs by the time investigators looked for it, but again, that's just my personal input. One thing about this unknown person of interest that's incredibly interesting and can't be overlooked is that nearly all of his former coworkers recalled the man as being remarkably volatile, and you'd never know which version of him you'd be greeted by each day of the week. He was regarded as having zero respect for females, particularly his female coworkers. He was noted on multiple occasions by multiple women as making unwanted sexual advances, just like what happened to Janine, but it doesn't seem like any legal action was ever taken. Several people described him as having a Jekyll and Hyde personality type. When it came to men, he was very well composed, honest and decent, but when women came into the picture, he would shift, coming off as arrogant, mean and downright nasty. He was also described as showing up to work incredibly clean, cut and proper one day, only to show up looking disheveled, sweaty and dirty the next day. Several of his former coworkers recall their time working with him, saying that there were many days when they felt genuinely scared around him. He would often shout angrily at people, particularly females, and many people remarked that he seemed to have some demons buried beneath the surface. One male coworker recalled that he got along very well at the man, but said that he was in constant fighting with women and it certainly made him apprehensive about it. He specifically recalled that when dealing with women, he was quote, a nasty person, no doubt about that. He added the confrontation was real, but he had no explanation about why the man was so mean to his female coworkers. So is this mysterious man detective Brad Hoseman's? Well, maybe. It has been noted by one of the more recent investigative task forces that Brad is, at this very moment, still one of the top three persons of interest. Even though his own police force cleared him of any involvement, that doesn't mean they were honest during their investigation. After all, cops don't rat out other cops and live to tell the tale. That's just common knowledge. But the reason I believe there may be some level of corruption going on in this case is actually tied back to one particular piece of evidence that again, I haven't really seen mentioned in any of the write-ups about this case. See, back in 2001, police collected a knife as a piece of evidence that they strongly believed may have been tied to Janine's possible demise. Very little information is available about this knife, but what's incredibly shocking and supremely fascinating is that the knife was destroyed by police officers back in February of 2002, less than three months after Janine disappeared. And what investigative team was leading the case at the time? Brad Hoseman's. The same team who mysteriously lost the diary that implicated Brad in the first place. Though in all fairness, we don't know for sure whether or not this knife was even related to Janine's case. It's just strongly suspected to have been. In fact, if this knife was involved in the case, it could possibly implicate an entirely new suspect, a man named Dennis Briggs. Dennis knew Janine, but not on a personal level. They went to the same bar quite often, but he claims to have never seen her there. Dennis says he only knew of Janine from the men's wear store where she worked. There was a report that Dennis supposedly confessed to the crime, but this confession was later tossed out after Dennis claims to have been intimidated by the police in order to coerce a false confession. Several other people have spoken out about Dennis over the years, and it's even known that he owned a red car at the time of the crime, but this car was searched and no evidence was found. Dennis remains a person of interest, but there isn't really any real evidence tying into the case. The final person of interest is a man named Andrew Jones, a local pharmacist who owns a red car matching the one seen at the scene of the crime. Andrew's pharmacy was located in the same shopping center as Janine, but he claims to have never known her, though it appears he did know of her. Receipts were found that proved he visited the store where she worked, but dozens of people shop there every day, so it doesn't prove anything. Andrew also bears a bit of a resemblance to the man who was witnessed driving the red car that evening, but the description is also pretty vague, so that's not really conclusive either. Janine's family are still actively pursuing her case, and so are investigators. There's currently a $1 million reward available for any information that brings this case to a close, but Janine's family have completely lost faith in the police force at this point, and who could really blame them? Her family has spoken out as recently as 2023, saying that Janine's father is now in very poor health and more than anything, they wanna bring this case to a close before he inevitably loses his life. So if you have any information regarding what happened to Janine Vaughn, you're urged to contact Crime Stoppers Australia at 1-800-333-000. This case still remains unsolved, but let's hope it doesn't stay that way for much longer. Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of True Crime Stories. If you wanna see more true crime documentaries like this, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe. If you'd like to help support the channel, the best way you can do that is simply by leaving a comment below. Any comment at all. It helps out the channel a lot more than you may realize. If you love the channel and wanna see new episodes several days early, you can do that by clicking the join button below. You can even pick up a True Crime Stories mug like the one you see on the desk behind me from tieknots.com. But with that, my name is Tie Knots, and I'll catch you guys in the next video.