Police believe a mother who disappeared 50 years ago was likely killed, but failed to question her allegedly abusive husband before he died, and her family long thought she was still alive.
A coronial inquest into the suspected death of Veronica Green was held on Wednesday after she was last seen aged 38 at her Ardeer home on February 13, 1976.
The coroner’s investigator Allan Wood told the hearing the initial police probe was “deficient” as William “Bill” Green was not formally interviewed after he reported his wife missing.
Detective Sergeant Wood, who took on the cold case in 2007 as part of a historical missing persons taskforce, said he did not believe Veronica took her own life or left her two children.
“I think the most likely outcome is that Veronica met with foul play,” he said.
Outside court, her daughter Penny criticised the entire police investigation and said she didn’t believe her father killed her mother, though she added: “anything’s possible”.
“For 50 years, I honestly believed that she left of her own accord,” Penny said.
“We don’t know what to think now.”
In her closing submissions, counsel assisting the coroner Jessika Syrjanen said Wood’s investigation uncovered allegations Green was violent towards Veronica and had sexually abused other children.
“I also note that Veronica was reportedly aware of Bill’s alleged abuse, and she reportedly threatened to report him to police, which suggests that Bill may have had motive to kill her,” Syrjanen said.
However, she submitted that the available evidence did not reach the required standard of proof to definitively conclude Veronica’s death was a homicide, nor find Green responsible.
He died in 2006.
Penny Green told reporters she was distressed with how police had followed up on reported sightings of her mother.
“We just feel like the Victorian police system has truly let us down,” she said. “This won’t give us closure.”
Penny was 14-years-old when her mother disappeared while her sister, Jacqui, was aged 7.
“We did love our mum, and we’ve missed her, and my boys and my sister’s children have missed her the whole of their lives,” Penny said. “She was beautiful.”
In 2020, detectives dug up the backyard of the Green family’s old home in Melbourne’s west as part of their investigation into Veronica’s disappearance, but found nothing.
Detective Sergeant Wood became emotional on Wednesday when asked to reflect on almost 20 years of investigating the cold case.
“Certainly for Veronica’s family, it’s hard to comprehend what they’ve been through – young girls growing up without their mum,” he said.
Wood told the court that reported sightings of Veronica meant earlier investigations considered she could still be alive, “and potentially the allegations of sexual abuse had not been significantly delved into”.
However, his investigation could not verify any sightings, nor find any proof-of-life records, and her suspected death was eventually reported to the Coroner’s Court in June 2020.
Asked if he was surprised no one ever spoke with Bill Green during the entire investigation before his passing, Wood said: “Simply, yes. He should have been spoken to without a doubt.”
Coroner Ingrid Giles expressed sympathy to Veronica’s family.
“I just want to offer my sincere condolences for the length of the investigation, for being let down by the system for 50 years, and for this process ending up in a courtroom today with such disturbing information,” she said.
The court heard Victoria Police had overhauled their missing persons investigations since Veronica went missing and the probe into her disappearance would likely end differently if it were conducted today.
Inspector Anthony Combridge, however, said Victoria’s missing persons system was still not best practice.
“All other jurisdictions in Australasia have at least some level of centralisation in their missing person investigation capability,” he said. “And Victoria sits effectively in an outlier position where we don’t have that centralised body.”
Combridge said the only disadvantage of a missing persons unit similar to that of NSW was the burden of resourcing it.
Victoria does have a missing persons squad, but Combridge said the current model meant different regions assessed thousands of disappearance reports first before any deemed suspicious were escalated.
He later rejected the suggestion that the current system was unfit-for-purpose and clarified he merely supported more centralisation but couldn’t speak to resourcing priorities.
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