In short: The family of Samantha Murphy, who went missing during her Sunday morning jog, have urged anyone with any information to come forward.
Police are focusing the search on the Ballarat East, Canadian and Mount Helen areas east of Geelong Road.
What’s next?Victoria Police are requesting residents in these areas to check dashcams and CCTV for footage of Ms Murphy from between 7am to 11am on February 4.
The family of a Ballarat woman missing for five days has pleaded for her to “come home soon” as authorities confirm they have not identified any suspicious circumstances in the ongoing search.
Mother-of-three Samantha Murphy, 51, was last seen heading out for her regular morning jog at about 7am on Sunday.
As the search continued into its fifth day, her eldest daughter, Jess Murphy, thanked family and friends for their continuous love and support.
Samantha Murphy is not likely to be alive, police believe. (Supplied: Victoria Police)
“It is helping us to get through, to keep us strong and motivated to keep looking and keep moving forward,” she said.
She said her mum was a strong woman and far too determined to give up.
“I know she is out there,” Jess said.
“Mum we love you so much and we miss you. We need you at home with us. Please come home soon.”
Mick Murphy is not a suspect, police say. (ABC News)
Ms Murphy’s husband, Mick Murphy, thanked everyone in the community who had been helping in the search and offering to support the family.
“The generosity throughout the community has been unbelievable,” he said.
“If we accepted all the food that has been offered to be cooked for us, we wouldn’t have to go to the supermarket for 12 months.”
He also appealed for people to come forward with information and said people did not just vanish into thin air.
“Someone has got to know something,” Mr Murphy said.
Police ‘keeping an open mind’
Police have described Ms Murphy’s disappearance as out of character as she was familiar with the trails she intended to run, and walked or ran in the area daily.
Ballarat police officer Lisa Macdougall said investigators were “keeping an open mind and considering all possibilities” in the ongoing search.
“We are being extremely thorough and methodical with that investigation,” Acting Inspector Macdougall said.
“There are no suspicious circumstances that we’ve identified at this stage”.
Investigators are focusing the search on the Ballarat East, Canadian and Mount Helen areas east of Geelong Road, looking for any sign of Ms Murphy, including her iPhone, Apple Watch or earpods.
CCTV footage ruled out
Police have appealed for anyone with dashcam or CCTV footage from the search areas to come forward.
They have also confirmed the CCTV vision shared on Wednesday did not depict Ms Murphy running and had been ruled out of the investigation.
This occurred after a local resident came forward and identified themselves as the person seen running by a house on Eureka Street about 7:15am.
Victoria Police have confirmed this CCTV image does not depict missing woman Samantha Murphy. (Supplied: Victoria Police)
Previous search areas have included Buninyong, Scotchmans Lead, Black Hill, Brown Hill and Nerrina.
State Emergency Service (SES) incident agency commander Jordan Bush said its volunteers would conduct a roadside search at Yankee Flat Road on Thursday and focus on areas along transmission lines near McCarthy’s Road in the Canadian forest area.
“The search areas we have been given today are areas of interest she could have been running on at the time,” he told ABC Statewide Mornings.
“Honestly in my time with SES, I haven’t seen a larger search area.”
There are a number of search areas around Ballarat. (Datawrapper)
Acting Inspector Macdougall confirmed that disused mine shafts were no longer part of the search.
She said the last confirmed sighting of Ms Murphy was when she left her residence at 7:03am on Sunday, but police were receiving “huge amounts of information” that were informing the search areas.
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Victoria police update reporters on the search for missing Ballarat woman Samantha Murphy. (ABC News)
“We are hopeful and we are continuing to search, which is why we are out there utilising all of our resources to throw everything at the search,” Acting Inspector Macdougall said.
She would not comment on specific details of the investigation, including whether police had obtained further information from Ms Murphy’s phone or watch, which she had on her at the time.
Acting Inspector Macdougall said police would continually assess how long and where to continue the search.
In the tangled underbrush of Enfield State Park, where eucalyptus trees claw at the sky and hidden streams carve silent paths through the Victorian bushland, a glint of silver shattered the fragile hope of a grieving family. “We found something,” a detective’s voice crackled over the radio last Thursday, as specialist teams from Victoria Police’s Missing Persons Squad sifted through mud-choked waters in a renewed bid to locate Samantha Murphy. The 51-year-old mother of three, who vanished without a trace during a routine morning run on February 4, 2024, has haunted Ballarat like a specter for nearly two years. But the item dredged from the streambed—a delicate gold bracelet, caked in silt and time—was no random relic. When forensics gently pried it open, the engraving inside read: “To Sam, Forever Love – M, I & O.” Samantha’s initials, etched alongside those of her children Matthew, Isabella, and Olivia. The family, already shattered, collapsed in devastation upon seeing the proof of her life, now a marker of her absence. “It’s her. It’s really her,” sobbed her husband Mick Murphy, clutching the photo of the woman whose laughter once filled their Eureka Street home. As the trial of her accused killer looms, this find reopens wounds and reignites the desperate quest for closure.
The discovery capped a grueling two-day operation in the rugged park, 30 kilometers south of Ballarat, prompted by “fresh intelligence” from an anonymous tipster. Detectives, joined by SES volunteers and cadaver dogs, combed the area under a relentless summer sun, their boots sinking into the peaty soil near old mine shafts—relics of the gold rush that birthed this goldfields town. Enfield State Park, with its labyrinth of dry creek beds and overgrown trails, has been scoured repeatedly since Murphy’s disappearance: in April 2024, May, September, and now November 2025. Each time, the earth yields scraps—a phone buried in dam mud in June 2024, fibers from running tights in a May bushland sweep—but never the full truth. This bracelet, however, carried the weight of intimacy. Forensic experts at the Victoria Police Forensic Services Centre in Macleod confirmed its authenticity within 48 hours: microscopic scratches matched wear patterns from photos of Murphy wearing it on family hikes, and trace DNA—faint but familial—linked it to her daughter Isabella’s 2023 birthday gift.
Samantha Murphy was the epitome of Ballarat’s resilient spirit: a part-time bookkeeper, avid trail runner, and devoted mum who balanced school runs with 10-kilometer jogs through the Canadian State Forest—known locally as Woowookarung Regional Park. On that fateful Sunday, temperatures soared toward 36°C as she waved goodbye at 7 a.m., captured on grainy CCTV in her maroon singlet and black leggings, earbuds in, Apple Watch synced. GPS data from her watch traced a 7-kilometer loop to Mount Clear before an abrupt “anomaly”—a signal drop at 7:15 a.m., suggesting disturbance or death. She never made brunch with friends. By noon, Mick raised the alarm, sparking a frenzy: helicopters thumped overhead, mounted police traversed ridges, and locals formed human chains through the scrub. “She wouldn’t just vanish,” Mick told The Age that evening. “Sam’s a planner— she’d call if delayed by a snake or a sprained ankle.”
The investigation exploded into a national saga. Within weeks, police declared it “suspicious,” citing phone pings from a Buninyong tower 14 kilometers away and no SOS activation from her smartwatch. By February 23, 2024, detectives suspected foul play by “one or more parties,” ruling out accident or misadventure. Psychics flooded Facebook groups like “Find Samantha Murphy,” peddling visions of shallow graves; Reddit threads dissected dashcam footage of a “runner” who turned out to be a lookalike. Commissioner Shane Patton pleaded for restraint: “Speculation poisons the well.” Yet the void fueled conspiracies—bikie ties, family secrets—until March 6, 2024, when Patrick Orren Stephenson, a 22-year-old tradesman from nearby Scotsburn, was arrested. No prior connection to the Murphys, no motive disclosed, but phone data placed him at Mount Clear that morning. Charged with murder, he allegedly attacked her deliberately in the bush. Stephenson, son of ex-AFL player Orren Stephenson, pleaded not guilty in November 2024; his trial, set for April 2026 in Victoria’s Supreme Court, promises six weeks of harrowing testimony.
For the Murphys, the bracelet’s emergence was a double-edged blade. Handed the item in a sterile Melbourne briefing room last Friday, Mick, 53, and the children—Matthew, 21, Isabella, 19, and Olivia, 17—stared in stunned silence. “It’s the one she never took off,” Isabella whispered, tracing the clasp. Engraved on her 40th birthday by the kids with pocket money from lemonade stands, it symbolized their unbreakable bond. “Forever Love” now mocked their fractured world. Olivia, the youngest, broke first: heaving sobs that echoed the raw grief of their first Christmas without Mum, marked by an empty stocking and a vigil of 500 locals. Mick, a stoic mining engineer, revealed to 9News how the family clings to rituals: Sunday roasts with Sam’s recipes, runs in her favorite trails. “This bracelet… it’s like she’s screaming from the ground, ‘Find me.’ But it hurts knowing she was out there, alone.” Dr. Watson Munro, a trauma psychologist at Monash University, explained the “ambiguous loss”: “It’s mourning without a body, hope laced with horror. This find validates their pain but prolongs the agony—where’s the rest of her?”
Ballarat, a city scarred by its gold-rush ghosts and recent tragedies, reels anew. Once a haven for families drawn to its wide streets and Yarrowee River walks, the town—population 110,000—has grappled with a spike in women’s safety fears post-Murphy. A YouGov poll in February 2025 found 68% of local women altered routines, avoiding solo runs. Nurses Lois Abraham and Norma Shearer, who led volunteer searches, told ABC News: “The bush feels malevolent now—every rustle a reminder.” Mayor Des Hudson echoed at a one-year vigil: “Samantha’s story changed us. We demand justice, not just for her, but for every mum lacing up sneakers at dawn.” The case exposed investigative hurdles: cross-jurisdictional data lags, the vast 1,000-square-kilometer search zones riddled with wombat burrows and abandoned shafts. Yet breakthroughs persist—her phone’s recovery in a dam, now yielding deleted texts; Stephenson’s escorted bushland walks in April and May 2025, where he stonewalled queries.
Stephenson’s defense, led by high-profile barrister Paul Galbally, hints at “alternative narratives”—perhaps an accident, a third party—but prosecutors, armed with an “unprecedented” evidence trove (over 10,000 documents, per August 2024 court filings), eye a conviction. Detective Inspector Dave Dunstan, who spearheaded the streambed dig, vowed: “Nothing erases their loss, but returning Samantha is our north star.” The bracelet, cataloged as Exhibit 47, could corroborate timelines: water erosion suggests submersion post-February 2024, aligning with spring floods that might have carried it downstream from a primary site.
Public fervor mirrors the McCann case’s global grip—hashtags #JusticeForSamantha and #FindSamMurphy trended on X after the find’s leak, amassing 250,000 posts. “Finally, a piece of her soul,” tweeted @BallaratMumWatch, while skeptics decried “media circus” distractions. Online trolls resurfaced, prompting Patton’s renewed call to “let police police.” The Murphy children, thrust into advocacy, launched “Run for Sam” in October 2025—a charity 5K drawing 2,000 runners, funds aiding missing persons tech like drone thermal imaging.
As summer wanes, Enfield’s streams murmur on, indifferent to human sorrow. For Mick, the bracelet is both anchor and albatross: a tangible echo of Sam’s warmth, fueling the fight. “She chose this life—running free, loving fierce,” he said, voice cracking. “We’ll run until we bring her home.” In Ballarat’s shadowed gullies, where gold dust once promised fortune, the hunt endures—not for nuggets, but for a mother’s final rest. The engraving’s promise, “Forever Love,” endures too, a defiant whisper against oblivion.
