On a construction site beside Botany Bay, a routine
excavation uncovered something that would reopen one of Sydney’s most troubling
cold-case
investigations.
It was October 2, 2007. An excavator operator was
moving sand at Kurnell, south of Sydney, when he noticed something pale in the
machine’s bucket. At first, it was simply an object that did not belong among
the sand. Then he realised what he was looking at: a human shinbone.
Police were called. Work stopped. The site became a
crime scene.
As investigators searched the surrounding ground,
they uncovered more remains. By December, the number of recovered bones had
reached 37. But the discovery created a mystery that would take years to unravel.
The remains did not immediately have a name.
Investigators could not establish how the person had died, when the burial had
taken place or whether all the bones belonged to one individual.
Then, years later, DNA testing connected some of the
remains to a man who had disappeared from Sydney in 1986: Mark Johnston, a
36-year-old model whose family had spent decades searching for answers.
There was another extraordinary connection. A coroner
had already concluded in 1999 that Johnston had been killed by a named
individual: notorious Sydney criminal Arthur Stanley Smith, better known as Neddy Smith.
Yet Smith was never charged over Johnston’s death.
A later inquest reached the same conclusion, but the
central questions remained. What happened on the night Johnston disappeared?
Why did prosecutors decline to proceed in 1999? And how did 37 bones remain
unidentified for so long when a missing-person investigation was already on
record?
The answers reveal a complicated story involving forensic DNA evidence, organised
crime, police corruption allegations and the limits of the criminal justice
system.
The Last Night Mark Johnston Was
Seen
The final known movements of Mark Johnston began on
the evening of September 1, 1986.
Johnston was 36 and worked as a professional model.
His face had appeared in national advertising campaigns, making him
recognisable to people across Sydney. He was also familiar around the pubs and
restaurants of the city’s eastern suburbs.
On that Monday afternoon, he spent time drinking with
friends at the Bellevue Hotel in Paddington. According to the accounts later
considered by investigators, he appeared to be in good spirits.
Before leaving, Johnston told people he had money to
collect. He had also arranged to meet acquaintances for a drive to Palm Beach,
north of Sydney. He said he would take care of one piece of business first and
catch up with them afterward.
He left the pub at approximately 7 p.m.
The next significant point in the timeline was an
address in Dover Heights, where Johnston’s solicitor, Val Bellamy, lived.
Johnston drove there that evening. It was the last location at which
investigators could place him with confidence.
He never reappeared.
His family reported him missing on September 7, six
days after he had left the Bellevue Hotel.
At first, the disappearance might have appeared to be
another missing-person case. But detectives were concerned about the
circumstances surrounding Johnston’s final movements.
Police believed he had connections to people involved
in Sydney’s drug trade. That belief would influence the direction of the
investigation and the way his disappearance was understood for years.
The difficulty was that investigators had no body, no
confirmed cause of death and no physical evidence establishing precisely what
had happened inside the Dover Heights property.
In 1986, those missing pieces created an enormous
obstacle.
Why the Original Investigation
Reached a Dead End
Detectives interviewed people who had been at the
Bellevue Hotel and examined the circumstances surrounding the Dover Heights
address.
They developed a theory about Johnston’s final night,
but the absence of his remains made it difficult to establish a homicide
through conventional forensic evidence.
Modern investigators can draw on tools that were
unavailable in 1986. DNA
profiling, extensive digital records and sophisticated forensic
databases have transformed the way missing-person investigations are conducted.
None of those resources was available to detectives
in the form they exist today.
There were no mobile-phone location records to
reconstruct Johnston’s movements. There was no network of modern surveillance
cameras covering the streets and properties involved. Most importantly, there
was no body from which forensic specialists could determine the cause of death
or examine injuries.
No one was charged.
The investigation remained open, but progress was
limited. Statements and reports accumulated in police files as officers moved
on, retired or became unavailable.
For Johnston’s father, Arthur Johnston, the
disappearance was not something that could simply be filed away.
He spent years pressing authorities to examine the
case more thoroughly. His persistence eventually brought the matter before a
coroner in 1999, more than 12 years after his son vanished.
The 1999 Inquest: A Coroner Names
a Suspect
On May 3, 1999, an inquest into Mark Johnston’s
disappearance and suspected death opened before Deputy State Coroner John
Abernathy.
The proceedings were important because they gave the
evidence gathered over more than a decade a formal public examination.
The coroner reached a significant conclusion.
He formed the opinion that the available evidence was
capable of satisfying a jury beyond reasonable doubt that a known person had
committed an indictable offence in connection with Johnston’s death.
Under the relevant provisions of the New South Wales Coroners Act,
such a finding required the matter to be referred to the Director of Public
Prosecutions rather than allowing the coronial inquest to continue as though it
were a criminal trial.
On May 4, 1999, Abernathy delivered his findings.
He concluded that Johnston had died on September 1,
1986, at Dover Heights. However, because no body had been recovered, the
precise cause of death could not be established.
The coroner’s process then stopped so prosecutors could
consider whether criminal proceedings should follow.
But the next development was not an arrest.
On August 13, 1999, the coroner was informed that the
Director of Public Prosecutions had decided not to take proceedings against
anyone over Johnston’s death.
The decision included the individual named in the
coronial findings.
The reasons for declining prosecution were not made
public in the account of the proceedings.
For Arthur Johnston, the outcome was devastating. He
had spent years trying to secure a formal examination of his son's
disappearance. The inquest had produced a finding about the death and
identified a person considered responsible, but it had not resulted in a
criminal charge.
A crucial distinction remained: a coroner's finding is not a criminal
conviction. The inquest could establish conclusions for
coronial purposes, but it could not determine guilt through a jury trial.
And without a prosecution, the allegations would
remain untested in a criminal court.
Kurnell: The Sand That Held More Than
One Secret
The location where the bones were discovered was not
an ordinary place to find human remains.
Kurnell lies on the southern side of Botany Bay,
around 20 miles from Paddington. It is historically associated with Captain
James Cook’s arrival in 1770, but parts of the area also became known for
industrial activity and sand extraction.
The isolated stretches of land and dunes later became
associated with the disposal of bodies connected to Sydney’s criminal
underworld.
Retired assistant police commissioner John Laycock
discussed the broader criminal environment in an ABC report in 2019. His
comments reflected the concern that powerful figures in the city’s underworld
had operated for years with considerable freedom.
The discovery at Kurnell did not begin with a renewed
search for Johnston.
It happened because construction work was underway
for a major water infrastructure project: the Kurnell desalination plant.
When the excavator operator discovered the first bone
in October 2007, police secured the area and began a more extensive
examination.
The search uncovered ribs, a pelvis, a femur, a
fibula, an ankle bone and a sock containing additional remains. By December,
investigators had recovered 37 bones.
But the discovery did not immediately solve Johnston’s
disappearance.
Forensic specialists first needed to establish how
many individuals were represented among the remains and whether any could be
identified.
That process would take years.
The DNA Breakthrough That Finally
Gave the Bones a Name
The recovered remains were sent for specialist
forensic examination.
In 2009, a United States laboratory, Orchid Cellmark,
obtained a mitochondrial
DNA profile from the material. The profile was entered into the
relevant missing-person DNA database.
Mitochondrial DNA is particularly useful in some
older or degraded remains because it can survive in circumstances where other
genetic material has deteriorated. It is inherited through the maternal line,
meaning comparisons can sometimes be made using biological relatives.
However, the technology has a limitation: a profile
cannot identify someone unless investigators have a suitable reference sample
for comparison.
Initially, no match was established.
The unidentified remains were then considered at a
2013 inquest before Deputy State Coroner P. A. McMahon. The coroner could not
determine the identity of the person, the circumstances of death or the date on
which the remains had been buried.
The case remained unresolved.
There were now two separate investigations containing
information that would eventually prove connected. One concerned Mark Johnston,
missing since 1986. The other concerned the 37 bones recovered from Kurnell.
The breakthrough came when detectives returned to
Johnston’s family.
In 2019, officers working on the Johnston
investigation approached his sister, Diana Devitt Dawson, and requested a cheek
swab.
The sample gave forensic specialists something they
had previously lacked: a close biological relative against whom the
unidentified DNA profile could be compared.
In December 2019, scientists conducted the
comparison.
Forensic biologist Jeremy Watterson reported that the
DNA result was 3,500 times more likely if the remains came from a biological
sibling of Mark Johnston than if they belonged to an unrelated person in the
Australian population.
The finding was a major development.
The remains included bones from both legs, parts of
the pelvis, ankle bones and a jawbone with four teeth still present. Based on
the available evidence, the coroner concluded that the remains were Johnston’s
on the balance of probabilities.
In February 2020, the remains were formally
identified. Police publicly announced the identification the following month.
After more than 33 years, Mark Johnston finally had a
confirmed identity in the forensic record.
But the discovery also revived the question that had
remained unanswered since the 1999 inquest: who had killed him?
Neddy Smith: The Criminal Figure
at the Centre of the Findings
The person named in the 1999 coronial findings was
Arthur Stanley Smith, widely known as Neddy Smith.
Smith was one of the most notorious figures in
Sydney’s criminal history. He had been involved in serious organised crime and
was already serving life sentences for two separate murders when investigators
later revisited Johnston’s case.
The victims in those convictions were Harvey Jones, a
brothel owner killed in 1983, and Ronnie Flavell, a tow-truck driver killed in
1987.
Johnston disappeared in September 1986, between those
two murders.
Smith also had a complicated relationship with
sections of the New South Wales police force.
He had acted as an informant for detective Roger
Rogerson, whose career later became the subject of major criminal and
corruption investigations.
One important episode involved the 1981 shooting of
heroin dealer Warren Lanfranchi by Rogerson in a Chippendale laneway. An
inquest later found that Rogerson had fired while attempting to arrest
Lanfranchi.
Smith subsequently gave a different account of his
own role in events surrounding the shooting. He claimed that he had delivered
Lanfranchi to Rogerson and had received protection in return.
During evidence given to the Independent Commission
Against Corruption, Smith described what he claimed was a system in which he
paid senior detectives and enjoyed practical immunity from prosecution.
These were Smith’s allegations and his account of his
own relationship with police. Rogerson did not accept the broader picture Smith
presented.
Rogerson was later convicted of murder in an
unrelated case, but that conviction does not independently establish Smith’s
claims about the earlier relationship or prove anything about Johnston’s death.
The wider history nevertheless provides important
context for understanding the questions raised by the Johnston investigation.
Smith became a witness in corruption inquiries during
the 1990s. He gave evidence about criminal activity and alleged police misconduct,
and he received immunity for certain offences he admitted to, with murder
excluded.
That distinction mattered.
Smith could provide information about some criminal
activities without receiving the same protection for homicide.
For years, he refused to assist police with a number
of unsolved murder investigations.
And when detectives eventually questioned him about
Mark Johnston, the interview produced little new information.
The Hospital Interview: Two
Questions and a Denial
By 2021, Smith was 76 and his health had deteriorated
significantly.
He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease
decades earlier. According to the later coronial account, his condition had
progressed to the point where his speech was extremely difficult to understand.
Detectives from Strike Force Brompton visited him at
the secure ward of Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick.
The purpose was to ask about Johnston’s disappearance
and the circumstances surrounding the remains discovered at Kurnell.
Investigators believed Smith understood the questions
and was attempting to respond, although much of what he said could not be
clearly understood.
He indicated that he remembered Johnston.
When asked whether he knew what had happened to him,
Smith answered, “No.” He then asked the detective, “Do you?”
He denied any involvement in disposing of Johnston’s
body.
That was the substance of the interview.
The exchange did not provide investigators with a
confession or a new explanation of what had happened at Dover Heights. Smith
maintained his denial.
On September 8, 2021, he died in the prison hospital
at Long Bay.
His death meant that he could never face a criminal
trial over Johnston’s disappearance. It also meant that investigators would
never have another opportunity to question him.
The 37 Bones Belonged to More Than
One Missing Man
The Kurnell discovery had another important
dimension.
The 37 bones did not all belong to Mark Johnston.
Some of the remains were identified as belonging to
Paul Norton, a 31-year-old butcher who disappeared in 1989.
Norton had spent April 9 that year at Leichhardt Oval
with his sons, watching football. He was reported missing five days later.
His blue 1981 Holden Commodore was subsequently found
at a car rental depot at Sydney Airport.
A 1996 inquest concluded that Norton had most likely
been killed and that the motive was connected to the drug trade.
As with Johnston, the identification of Norton's
remains involved the use of familial
DNA evidence.
The two men had disappeared years apart and,
according to police, were not believed to have known each other. Yet their
remains had been buried in the same general area.
The discovery reinforced concerns that the Kurnell
site had been used as a dumping ground for bodies connected to Sydney’s
criminal underworld.
In 2023, Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty said
police believed the location was a known burial ground used by criminals,
including Smith and associates connected to him.
For the families, the identification of remains
brought an answer to one question but did not necessarily explain the full
circumstances of the deaths.
Norton’s family continued to seek answers. His sister
spoke publicly about how many of the siblings had died and how the family still
wanted to understand what had happened.
The Kurnell investigation was therefore not simply a
story about one missing model. It was part of a wider effort to identify people
whose disappearances had remained unresolved for decades.
The 2023 Inquest: A Second Coroner
Reaches a Stark Conclusion
Although the remains had been identified and Smith
had died, authorities still had an opportunity to put further evidence on the
public record.
A third inquest into Johnston’s death was held on
March 8, 2023, at the State Coroner’s Court in Lidcombe.
State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan explained that the
purpose was to consider additional information that had become available since
the earlier proceedings.
Detective Sergeant Peter Davis, the officer in charge
of the investigation, provided brief oral evidence. Statements and
investigative reports were also considered.
By then, many of the people who might have been
questioned about Johnston’s final hours were dead or unavailable.
The coroner reaffirmed the earlier finding about the
date and location of Johnston’s death.
She also made several significant conclusions.
O’Sullivan found that the remains had been buried to
conceal the homicide. She concluded that Johnston had died as a result of a
homicide committed by a known person and identified Arthur Smith as the person
responsible.
However, the precise cause of death remained
undetermined.
The findings represented a major development in the
public record. They also carried an important legal limitation.
A coronial finding does not equal
a criminal conviction.
The coroner was not conducting a criminal trial, and
Smith had never been charged over Johnston’s death. He had denied involvement
when questioned, and no jury had considered the evidence against him.
The 2023 findings therefore did not create a criminal
verdict.
They recorded the coroner’s conclusion based on the
evidence available to the inquiry.
That distinction is essential when describing the
case. Smith was named in coronial findings, but he was never convicted of Mark
Johnston’s murder.
Why Was Neddy Smith Never Charged?
One of the most persistent questions surrounding the
case concerns the decision made in 1999.
The coroner had concluded that the evidence was
capable of satisfying a jury beyond reasonable doubt that a known person had
committed an offence connected with Johnston’s death.
Yet the Director of Public Prosecutions declined to
proceed.
The reasons were not made public in the material
described in the inquest record.
It is therefore not possible to state with certainty
why prosecutors decided against a charge. The absence of a public explanation
has left room for questions, but it does not establish that the decision was
improper.
There is also a fundamental difference between the
responsibilities of a coroner and those of a prosecutor.
A coroner investigates deaths and makes findings
about identity, circumstances and, where possible, cause and manner of death. A
prosecutor must assess whether the available evidence can properly support
criminal proceedings and whether a case should be brought before a court.
Even a strong coronial finding does not automatically
result in a prosecution.
The absence of a body in the original investigation,
the limitations of the available forensic evidence and the age of the case were
all part of the broader investigative challenge. The public record does not
establish which specific considerations determined the prosecution decision.
By the time the third inquest took place, Smith had
been dead for 18 months.
There could be no trial, no cross-examination of the
evidence against him and no jury verdict.
The central allegation would remain a coronial
conclusion rather than a criminal conviction.
A Family’s Search for Answers
Lasted Nearly Four Decades
Mark Johnston was 36 when he disappeared.
His father, Arthur, spent years trying to persuade
authorities to examine the case properly. The 1999 inquest was the result of
that determination, but he did not live to see the identification of his son’s
remains.
By the time DNA finally gave the bones a name, both
Arthur Johnston and Val Bellamy, the solicitor whose Dover Heights home was the
last known location connected to Mark’s movements, had died.
The forensic breakthrough came more than three
decades after the disappearance. The later inquest then placed the coroner’s
conclusion about responsibility back into public view.
For the family, the identification was significant.
It ended the uncertainty about whether the remains belonged to Mark.
But it could not restore the missing details of his
final hours.
No one has established precisely what happened inside
the Dover Heights house. The public record does not provide a complete account
of how Johnston was killed, who may have been present or how the remains were
transported to Kurnell.
Those gaps matter because a case can be considered
resolved in one sense while still containing unanswered questions.
The remains had been identified. The coronial
findings named a person considered responsible. But the criminal justice system
never produced a trial or conviction.
The Questions That Remain
The story of Mark Johnston’s disappearance spans
three inquests, decades of police work and a forensic discovery that began with
one bone in an excavator bucket.
The sequence is extraordinary.
In 1986, Johnston disappeared after leaving a
Paddington pub. In 1999, a coroner concluded that he had died and named a
person considered responsible. In 2007, construction workers uncovered human
remains at Kurnell. In 2019, a DNA comparison linked some of those remains to
Johnston. In 2023, a second coroner reaffirmed the finding that Smith was
responsible.
But the legal outcome never matched the strength of
the language used in the coronial findings.
Smith was not charged with Johnston’s murder. He
denied involvement when detectives interviewed him. Prosecutors had declined
proceedings in 1999, and no criminal court ever tested the allegation.
The case also exposed the importance of connecting
missing-person records with forensic databases. The remains had been recovered
and DNA-profiled years before a comparison with Johnston’s family finally
identified them.
That delay raises difficult questions about how
information was shared, how missing-person investigations were prioritised and
whether earlier family DNA sampling might have produced an answer sooner.
Forensic science eventually gave the 37 bones a name.
A later inquest placed a conclusion about responsibility on the public record.
Yet the final chapter remains incomplete.
Mark Johnston left the Bellevue Hotel on September 1,
1986, expecting to collect money before joining people for a drive north. He
was 36 years old. His family waited decades to learn where he had gone.
The discovery at Kurnell answered one part of that
mystery.
It could not answer everything.
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