Introducing -What Happened to Zac?

Welcome to a new podcast in this feed. It's called What Happened To...

Each week we will share new stories of long-term missing Australian people. The idea is to bring awareness to these cases. To kick off, we are republishing some of the previous shows we have produced in support of the missing.

In 2019, we told the story of Zac Barnes, an 18-year-old from the Hunter Valley who vanished in November 2016 after getting out of a friend’s car on the way to Thornton train station and running into nearby bushland.

At the time, Zac’s family was still searching for answers. His body had never been found. The questions around what happened that day and what may have happened afterwards remained unresolved.

Now, almost a decade after Zac disappeared, a NSW coronial inquest has found that Zac is most likely deceased and that he died in suspicious circumstances. The coroner was unable to determine the exact manner, cause, or place of his death but recommended the NSW unsolved homicide team take over the investigation.

This re-release revisits the story we first told in What Happened to Zac? with the benefit of the coroner’s findings and the painful clarity they bring. It is a story about a young man who never came home, a family who refused to stop fighting for him, and a case that still demands answers.

Zac’s mum said he “deserves justice and to be found" and that his family deserves answers.

What Happened to Zac? It is the story of a disappearance, a delayed search, years of uncertainty, and a family’s ongoing fight to find out what really happened to Zac Barnes.

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