Malcolm Naden Ghost Of The Outback

By Scott Hollywood

It was the most wholesome of childhoods: a loving extended family living in the Mid New South Wales town of Dubbo, with kind aunties always ready with a hot meal and a boisterous group of cousins who swam in creeks, camped in the bush and revolved around their beloved grandparents like planets around a sun. Yet even the happiest families can raise a troubled child.

On the run for 7 years, Malcolm Naden Australia's most wanted fugitive. In June 2005, Naden disappeared from his grandparents home in West Dubbo, days before 24 year old Kristy Scholes, the partner of his cousin, was found strangled in a bedroom of the home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Hollywood
• Release date: Apr 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476394251

Scott Hollywood

Born and bred in Sydney Australia. Part time freelancer and entrepreneur who owns a underwear company.

Book preview

Chapter 1 – The Manhunt Begins

The two police constables felt a wave of trepidation as they walked up the path of 215 Bunglegumbie Road. It was early on the morning of Thursday June 23 2005 and the winter chill of the inland New South Wales town of Dubbo made the coppers pull their collars up around their necks as they stood looking in the windows next to the front door of the house. Even though the night was well lit by a full moon the interior of the house was in pitch darkness and from somewhere in the back they could hear the crying of a small child.

One of the constables knocked loudly on the door and announced Police before they decided to try the door and were able to let themselves into the premises. Police had attended the property on the outskirts of Dubbo on the previous day when relatives had found a child wandering in the front yard but hadn’t looked further for the mother. Now she had been missing for a day and they had begun to search in earnest. The house and its occupant were known to police and so with growing concern the constables broke into a locked bedroom and what they found inside sparked one of the longest manhunts for perhaps the wiliest fugitive in Australia’s history. Lying on the floor of the bedroom was the body of Kristy Scholes, the crying child’s mother, and she had been murdered.

The occupant of the house that had attracted the attention of the police was Malcolm John Naden who was a person of interest in the disappearance of his cousin Lateesha Nolan in January 2005. Nolan visited the Bunglegumbie Road house in the evening of Tuesday January 4 when she dropped her children off to be minded by their grandparents. This was not unusual as Lateesha’s extended family often took her kids while she ran errands and as she got into her dark blue Falcon she promised that she would be right back as she was only planning to run down to the shops. Lateesha was never seen again.

When she had been missing for a day it was reported to police and after an extensive search of the area all that turned up was her 1996 Falcon station wagon which was found the next day abandoned in a car park on the Macquarie River four kilometers away, across town. Police immediately suspected foul play and Malcolm Naden who lived in the house where she was last seen was a prime suspect. The investigation of the disappearance of Lateesha Nolan had run into dead ends everywhere and while police suspected that Naden knew more than he was saying the lack of a body had essentially stopped the investigation cold. Six months later when the lifeless body of Kristy Scholes was found in Naden’s bedroom they finally put him under their microscope and the picture that emerged has worried the investigators ever since.

Detectives that examined Naden’s life found that he was a total recluse who by July 2005 refused even to see his family and remained instead holed up in his bedroom from which he went out at night via his window, returning the same way in the early hours of the morning. There was evidence that he had been reading bush craft and survival manuals, encyclopedias and the bible while police also found sketches made by Naden which they won’t disclose the nature of. All of this was beginning to show signs of being a hunt for a dangerous and perhaps mentally unbalanced murderer.

As the investigation into the murder of Kristy Scholes dragged on and the days passed into weeks without a significant lead the story gained momentum in the media. After all, a dangerous killer was on the loose, stealing for his keep and hiding from police who seemed powerless to catch him. As the case became a high profile investigation for the New South Wales police it was assigned more resources and Detective Sergeant Bryne Ruse of the Homicide Squad was put in charge of the investigation but by late August Ruse was quoted as saying that he thought that Naden had fled to Sydney or was living off the land with his knowledge of bush skills. In other words the police were at another dead end- they didn’t have a clue where Naden was and didn’t have a workable plan to find him. They were relying on public support.

***

Malcolm Naden was born in Dubbo on November 5 1973 into a large, extended Australian Aboriginal family. The younger of the two sons of Richard Naden, Malcolm was taught how to survive in the bush from an early age by his father, a gun shearer. Like his brother Jason he learned the crafts of rural Australia that would later sustain him through the long years spent as a fugitive from the law and an outcast from society.

Malcolm Naden didn’t have an easy childhood. He was the difficult child that argued with his father and this resulted in him being sent to live with his grandparents Jack and Flo Nolan at their Bunglegumbie Road house. It must have been apparent that young Malcolm was a troubled boy and when his sister and father finally threw him out of the family home it was under an ominous cloud of suspicion. Perhaps his family had hoped that with his grandfather’s patience and undying faith in Malcolm making up for the isolation that he felt from being on the fringes of even his extended family that he could be steered onto the right track in life. There are no school records available for Naden but from his choice of work when he left school it is safe to assume that he received the average education that is given to Australian Aboriginals- just enough reading and writing skills to get a job doing farm work of some sort. Malcolm was skilled at most of the jobs available in the outback and listed himself as a boner and a skinner by trade, skills that he would later use to feed himself while he remained at large in the New South Wales wilderness.

Long before his cousin Lateesha disappeared in January 2005 Malcolm had become a virtual recluse in his grandfather’s house. His family was no doubt concerned for him but as he was quiet and seemingly harmless they let it go. After all, the only thing that Malcolm was doing while he was locked in his room day and night was reading. He read encyclopedias which would indicate that he never really got the education that he wanted at school, but it also shows