By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
CATHERINE Linda Headland has been frozen in time for 35 years.
She’s the horse-loving 14-year-old who worked at Fountain Gate in Narre Warren and disappeared on 28 August 1980. Her body was then found a few months later buried in the bush in Tynong North.
This week Vicki Ferguson sat at the Allan Street end of Berwick’s Akoonah Park with a white rose gripped in her hands, next to a memorial in honour of her late childhood friend, Catherine.
She was discovered in the scrub on 8 December 1980 along with the bodies of 18-year-old Ann-Marie Sargent, last seen in Dandenong, and 73-year-old Bertha Miller, last seen in Glen Iris.
It was another two years before the body of Narumol Stephenson, 34, from Northcote, was found on the other side of Brew Road in Tynong.
The killers have never been found.
As the days again close in on another anniversary of Catherine’s disappearance, Vicki continues to hunt for answers to a haunting mystery which long ago became folklore.
“I just want closure – it’s about time that the truth was out,” Vicki said.
“There’s been young girls that never got their licence, they never bought a car, never had a mortgage, never got married, had children, travelled overseas, someone’s taken their life – for what reasons?”
Vicki named her first-born daughter after Catherine, remembered as the happy-go-lucky teenager who grew up in Allan Street in Berwick, a stone’s throw from Vicki’s old home in Cardinia Street.
Vicki and Catherine were among a group of local teens who spent their childhoods exploring the bushland around Akoonah Park, hanging out regularly and riding horses.
Catherine kept her beloved horse, Prince, in a paddock on the other side of Berwick High where all the kids went to school.
Catherine had been working at the Fountain Gate Coles part-time when she left her mates in the afternoon of Thursday 28 August to catch the bus for her first mid-week shift.
She was never seen alive by her friends again.
When a fox hunter stumbled upon her body three months later, Catherine was identified by the leather friendship band she’d worn around her ankle.
Vicki, who was 13 when Catherine disappeared, used to wear one as well, wrapped around her wrist.
Anyone with information should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
