An anguished Queensland mum has made an impassioned plea to solve the mystery over what happened to her missing son – revealing she has even sought the help of water diviners, psychics, and Aboriginal trackers to unravel the truth.
Jack McLennan, 27, vanished on October 4 near the Sunshine Coast, leaving behind a hat, shoes and wallet.
Loved ones fear the young man, labourer and personal trainer who was living in Goomeri, near Murgon, may have been met with foul play.
His disappearance sparked a deluge of speculation on local Facebook groups. Now, 10 months after Jack’s disappearance, his devastated mother Kellie Moody took to social media to plead with people to get offline and go and look for her son.
‘I think we owe it to him to get out there and physically search because we can speculate for many more months on the computer, but we really need to get our boots on the ground,’ she said.
Ms. Moody revealed she had been begging for a winter search from Queensland Police, and wants the Ficks Crossing area, where Jack was reportedly last seen, to be combed again.
In the days after Jack went missing, specialist divers searched in and around Ficks Crossing, a fishing and swimming hole, along with ground and aerial search teams.
But their efforts were hampered by spring rainfall.
Jack, who vanished on October 4, is described as 184cm tall with a strong/fit build
Mum Kellie (pictured here in an undated photo) shared desperate pleas for help on social media
Locals are planning to search Ficks Crossing, a fishing and swimming hole, in coming weeks
‘There has been no formal searching done since last year… let’s hope we get another SES search, however I never get my hopes up,’ she said last weekend.
The local community has overwhelmingly responded to her cries for help, with the Sunshine Coast Missing Persons volunteer group planning to launch their own search party in Ficks Crossing within the next two weeks.
They are calling on locals to join a ground search, on a date to be announced, where they would look for any signs of Jack in the Queensland bush ‘until you’re tired’.
Getting increasingly desperate, Ms Moody has cast the net wide for help, including enquiring whether Indigenous trackers from the Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council, ‘who know the area best’, could assist.
She has also consulted with water diviners, who claim to locate groundwater, oil, gemstones and even missing persons using a Y-shaped or two L-shaped sticks.
Scientists consider divining – or dowsing – a pseudoscience.
‘We [have] had people who wanted to divine the area and I’d love that sort of help if we can get it. We are open to everything and anything,’ Ms Moody said.
Police released CCTV from a Murgon liquor store showing Jack on October 4
Jack’s shoes were found at Ficks Crossing
Kellie has asked for water diviners and Indigenous trackers to help locate her boy
Devoted mum Kellie often shares her favourite pictures of Jack to Facebook
‘We’ve had many psychics say that Jack has had an accident and fallen into the water and we’ve had a few that have said he has met with some very dangerous people.
‘Both incidents make us sick and it’s hard to really see into water so we are going to have to think of other options.’
On October 10, police released CCTV showing Jack at a bottle shop on Lamb Street in Murgon at 1.30pm six days earlier on October 4 before getting into a car with a friend.
Hours later he went missing, with one report saying he walked off into the night between 8pm and 10pm near Ficks Crossing, where his mum said he had been enjoying a boys’ getaway.
Jack’s father, Ross McLennan, lives in Tasmania, while his mother lives near Murgon in the South Burnett region.
Ms Moody wants the case moved higher than the local police, and an increase in the reward for information leading to Jack’s discovery.
She has claimed her son met with ‘unsavoury people’ the night he disappeared, but is holding out hope he is still alive.
Friends of the family have claimed police aren’t doing enough to find Jack.
However, Queensland Police defended their search efforts, saying that along with Ficks Crossing in October, the Kinbombi Falls area was searched in February when ‘visibility was good, Jack was not located and nothing of interest was discovered’.
Jack, a well-liked young man, worked as a tradie and a personal trainer
Police searched Kinbombi Falls, near Murgon, in February, with no results
Divers were dispatched to Ficks Crossing, but the search was hampered by heavy rainfall
In April, a sinister theory emerged that his body was dumped at a nearby beauty spot, Kinbombi Falls, 28km east of Murgon.
A friend said a woman had already handed over a recording of her son to police, describing what happened the night when Jack was last seen outside Murgon, 260km northwest of Brisbane.
The recording is believed to state that Jack and three men went to Ficks Crossing, where he mysteriously died. His remains were then apparently taken to Kinbombi Falls.
The Coroner’s Court of Queensland is investigating the disappearance.
Ms Moody thanked Sunshine Coast Missing Persons for organising the upcoming search party, acknowledging it would be ‘in hard territory and not for everyone’.
‘I’ve wanted a couple of huge searches for a long time and I feel this month will be great to get out,’ she said on Sunday.
‘If we can get huge numbers, we can cover a lot of ground. We can all meet and if anyone wants to see where Jack’s items were found, we can show you and you might get a better idea of what has been going on.’
