More than two years since a Sydney woman vanished in a baffling missing persons incident, police are still no closer to finding out what happened, all while the case has taken some bizarre twists and turns.
In October 2021, Kathleen Riethmuller, then 28, vanished, mostly without a trace.
She was last seen wearing a long sleeve denim dress and black flat shoes.
The case was quickly flagged to police after a member of the public found her abandoned backpack on the side of the road in Lane Cove, in Sydney’s north.
Inside the dumped backpack was her passport, birth certificate, and wallet, along with other items like a phone, underwear, and toiletries.
There was also a receipt for two 50cm coils of rope, purchased from Bunnings.
In the following years, some of Ms Riethmuller’s last known movements have been pieced together, but, if anything, these discoveries have raised more questions than answers.
At first authorities thought it was a case of self-harm but now have a different theory, after unearthing some old diary entries from Ms Riethmuller and putting together a timeline of the day she went missing.
At the early stages of their investigation, police spoke to Ms Riethmuller’s mother and learned that the woman, originally from Brisbane, had been feeling isolated during Sydney’s four-month lockdown and had recently lost her job as a data scientist.
They rushed to the bushland nearest to her last known location fearing the worst.
But they found nothing and it’s since emerged Ms Riethmuller travelled all over Sydney that day before disappearing altogether.
First, she appears to have spent the night at a backpackers’ hostel in inner Sydney, at Woolloomooloo, where she was seen on camera lugging a black suitcase and the backpack which would later be abandoned.
A 26-year-old man said he spent the night with Ms Riethmuller there but their encounter was not sexual and he left early in the morning to go to work.
Ms Riethmuller then checked out of the hotel and walked 500m to another hostel, where she made a booking to stay for that night. Staff later told police she seemed “jittery”.
When police searched her unit there was expired and rotting food, indicating she had not stayed there for some time.
Around 11am, while still in Woolloomooloo, Ms Riethmuller went to an ATM and withdrew $2,200 in cash — which was nearly the sum total of all her life savings.
Then she was captured on CCTV at a Bunnings in Artarmon, in Sydney’s north, at 11.40am — where she bought the two lengths of rope.
From there, she appears to have travelled 27 kilometres to the McDonald’s in Parramatta, in Sydney’s western suburbs. She was spotted there close to an hour after her Bunnings visit, at 12.30pm. At this point in time, she still had the backpack.
But somehow, Ms Riethmuller must have trekked it back in to Sydney’s north, in order for her final known location to make sense.
A man has since come forward to reveal that he gave Ms Riethmuller a lift in his car in Riverview, the neighbouring suburb to Lane Cove in Sydney’s lower north shore, around 2.30pm.
It’s during this point in the timeline that Ms Riethmuller must have dumped her backpack on a Lane Cove road.
The man said that Ms Riethmuller was behaving erratically the whole time he was with her.
He said he saw her running through a street in Riverview before she took him up on an offer of a lift.
But bizarrely, she actually jumped out of his car, hurtling headlong into four lanes of traffic, then disappeared into bushland.
Somehow, she was able to rejoin him in the car, where he dropped her off at a North Sydney petrol station.
He later recalled her odd behaviour made him feel she was “running from something” but she assured him she was fine.
This North Sydney petrol station is the last known location of Ms Riethmuller.
In the days before Ms Riethmuller disappeared off the face of the earth, it was discovered she went through a selling blitz on second hard marketplace Gumtree.
Between October 20 and October 22, a Sydney-based Gumtree account set up with her name was listed – with various homewares for sale, worth a total of $410.
The items for sale included a yoga mat, a vintage room divider, a lamp, an easel and a framed mosaic picture but this account along with a Facebook page of hers has since been deactivated.
This, coupled with her strange series of movements on the day she disappeared, has led police to the conclusion that Ms Riethmuller wanted to disappear and start fresh under a fake identity.
In the last half of 2022, police launched a fresh appeal to find Ms Riethmuller, this time directed at Melburnians.
In a press conference in August 2022, Deputy Premier and Minister Police Paul Toole said police believed Ms Riethmuller may have travelled to Melbourne for employment opportunities.
They believe she had started a new life in the Victorian capital after she indicated as much in a journal entry.
However, since the appeal, they still have had no luck tracking her down as she is still listed as a missing person on the database of the Australian Federal Police.
More recently, Detective Sergeant Franklin told Channel 9’s program that Ms Riethmuller’s diary was littered with comments about wanting to “go off the grid” and “remove any trace of her”.
“She made a number of comments about leaving no traces, closing old bank accounts, the need to cover up IP addresses, paying for the records to go, paying things with cash, (having) no friends from before, no one can know a thing,” he said.
“She also made notes in there that she wanted to go to Melbourne. Wants to start a new life.”
Speculating, Detective Sergeant Franklin added: “We know that Kathleen felt isolated and we know that she had a few struggles, perhaps she just wanted to have a clean state, start afresh.
“She could have cut her hair, purchased new identification. She may be out there … working with someone under a different name.”
Ms Riethmuller would be 30 now.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
— With NCA Newswire