Unresolved missing persons cases create a unique form of grief that prevents families from reaching the final stage of acceptance, as they continuously cycle through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression without closure, highlighting the devastating psychological impact of ambiguous loss on loved ones.
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Ray and Jennie | 7Added:
Details tonight on a twist in the search for a couple missing in the outback.
Jenny Kelllet went missing in the golf fields near Sandstone. Her husband Raymond was found at the bottom of a 12 m abandoned minehaft, but Jenny had disappeared.
>> Any progress is good progress, and obviously the police have been busy with this in the background. Hopefully something comes of it. At this point in time, we're not seeing anything that suggests criminality.
>> Are you serious?
>> Yes.
>> We've only got one side of the story.
>> We find Jenny, we will find out what happened.
>> It just doesn't happen, Andy. That's not normal behavior.
>> Did you deliberately mislead the police about where you went with Ray and Jenny in Sandstone in March 2015?
>> No.
>> It's not like them. They're experienced.
They are not lost. something terrible has happened.
>> I can hear it like it was yesterday. He actually said that's how you make a a lie believable is it's got a grain of truth.
It's easy in stories like these to lose sight of the people at the center of them. They can become abstract characters in a tragic narrative overshadowed by forensic detail, by the mystery, and by the horror.
And in that, we sometimes forget these are real people, people defined by far more than the final chapter of their lives.
Ray and Jenny Keller were a loving couple in the prime of their lives. They loved to laugh. They loved adventure.
They loved their families. and they were deeply in love with each other. The joy they shared lives on through those who knew them and stands as a testament to who they were. Genuine everyday people deeply loved. In this season finale of some kind of closure, we want to take a moment to step away from the details of the case and instead reflect on Ray and Jenny to remember and to celebrate two lives well-lived and well-loved.
In this episode, friends and family share memories and stories of a couple who left a lasting mark on so many.
We begin with Jenny's daughter, Kelly, as she shares some memories of her mom.
There is a question. The interviews always start with the question, if you will.
Tell me about your mother. Tell me a bit about Jenny.
How do you explain a person in a few words?
How do you make it clear who they are to someone who only knows them through a lens of tragedy? What can I say about my mother in a concise, clear manner that builds a picture of who she really was?
The question seems softball, but it's the hardest one to answer. So much feels at stake when I try and answer it. I want to be honest. I want people to see who she really was, but endearing tales need a greater context, which can't be given in a 30-cond sound bite. I seem to fall back on the canned, generic responses that construct a blurry haze of a woman. It isn't incorrect. There are no lies, but it seems so superficial.
Tell me about your mother.
What is there to say? She was mom. The memories blend. Parents are a constancy in our life, a foundational pillar of who we are. It feels easier to define what life was like in her absence rather than determine how much the world was shaped by her presence.
She liked to clean on Saturday mornings.
She would play loud music and sing off key as she flew around the house, flitting from unfinished job to unfinished job like a judy jitty. When share came on, she'd sing extra loud, putting on the share voice to our delight.
Like a bower bird, mom was drawn to certain objects in antiquities, building little nests that sparked joy. There was an old writing bureau she'd purchased when I was very small. Made of dark wood with secret drawers, it was never used for writing, but it was always in the house. As kids, we'd joke about it being a magpie nest where delightful shiny trinkets were collected and stored.
There was always an interesting thing to find in our house. Mom loved the old, the strange, the rusted pieces that told stories of different times.
Tell us a bit about Jenny.
She worked harder than anyone else I've ever known. She never asked how hard or big the job was. She just did it. No complaints. She just rolled up her sleeves and powered along. I have a hazy memory from childhood at a farewell function as she left a job at the local council where she'd worked on the maintenance team. Jenny is the hardest worker I've ever seen. I think she did the work three men would do in a year in half that time. This is paraphrasing. At least a decade ago. The memor only carries so much. I believed it. Mom had something to prove that she was capable that she was worthy. Whether she needed to prove it to others, herself, or something else, I can't say.
When she and Ray started their egg business, they would leave long before the sun crested the hills and often would not be home before it sunk under the horizon. Fencing, bull testing, tailing lambs, helping birth a calf, hay carting, seeding didn't matter. They just did it. Can we start by describing a bit of what your mom was like? She had near boundless empathy and compassion.
When George, a local farming patriarch who mom loved like a father, had a cow die birthing its cuff, mom took it back to our house in town and raised it. Was this legal? Not really. Was mom going to let a baby cow die because the law didn't like the idea of a cow being in the backyard? Absolutely not. Did she cry when she returned the cow to the herd? Of course she did. The calf was long in the line of animals that were loved and protected by mom. Magpies with club foot. Frogs defended from snakes.
Psums left to raise their babies in a nest built in our barbecue. Even though it meant a summer with no barbecue. Dogs adopted. A stray cat held as it passed away. Even spiders were gently classed in her hands to be placed in the garden outside.
People were treated just as gently, even to mom's detriment. Everyone got a second, third, fifth chance. Even when it was clear they would waste it. Even when mom was hurt and burned, the next person would be given the same kindness and love. Mom collected a gaggle of children who were her not her own.
Friends would come to stay and mom was their mom, too. Everyone was loved and hugged and mattered.
What was your mom like?
loved.
We moved around a fair bit, but we were always on farming stations or properties. When Ry was first born, we were on a on a station close to Wuben, so between Wuben and Wtheroo. Um 10 years later we sort of moved more to the wheat belt region. Ray was into to being outside and and all of all of our after school activities and weekend activities were were were on doing adventure, you know, as kids kidlike adventures out outdoors.
So we were always the three of us out in areas like this on the weekends with with a rifle slung over a shoulder and out sort of fossking around. And we we were very much rural country kids. So not we we never lived in any of the towns growing up. We were always on the farm. So we lived lived and worked on the farming properties and and Ray from day one was that's all he wanted to do.
He only wanted to be a a farmer, a rural person. never wanted to move on to the city or anything like that.
We first met um Ray's um parents because they worked on the farm next door. We've known him since 1987 when he um came visiting with his mom and dad and with his wife Lizzy. Um and they were looking for somewhere to live and uh we actually had a spare house on the farm and they became our tenants and friends and part of the family for quite a few years.
>> Yeah. Ray was looking for somewhere to live and we had a house that was suitable for what he needed at the time.
>> Like he was 19 when we met him and um um you know looking for um very cheap rent if not less. Um, you can tell the tale about the the tank if you like.
>> I mean, it was a property we I think recently bought and weren't familiar with what needed doing and Ray took it upon himself to clean out a tank. He um ran a ca a a power cable up to it and we found out later he got electric shock from it and ended up um flat on his back in the mud and and a bit worse for wear but um luckily he got away with it and um you know yeah and then oh eventually they shifted to town which was and then got involved in the church and organizing camps and quite a lot of that as well as shooting. He was loved shooting. He was in the rifle club in Beverly.
>> Um, and could turn his hand to anything like resourceful, responsible, >> and Ray loved the open space and that was what he's familiar with. Um, he liked falling. I think he did a lot more of that later when he had a bit more freedom in town. um >> his involvement with with the with the church like he he I think he taught himself or bass guitar and Lizzy used to play the the the keyboard if anything ever needed um setting up. Ray was always there first and left last, that sort of thing. Um and then I ended up getting myself. Um and and I got Lizzy.
We got identical um keyboards and the next minute Ry presented or both of us he made a a lovely wooden case for Lizzy and for me which I was I found totally overwhelming and I wouldn't say um I mean it wasn't expected but that's the sort of person he was like generous, go the extra mile, all of the above.
>> Yeah. and tell you a story about the him on the header.
>> Nobody like Robert does um contract harvesting.
>> Used to >> used to used to like for for many many many years and um nobody was allowed to drive Robert's header. Nobody >> um you know the neighbors would offer or you know we can give you a handle. We'll we'll do it while you have your lunch.
But Ry was allowed to drive the the header. Um he was that type of guy I guess is the thing. um you know some people you know you watch how they operate and what they do with them you know in within themselves and um anyway he was he was driving I think it was a weekend >> stage >> and um we'd got back earlyish or and I got a phone call I think it was before mobile phones even um he'd got to the stage where he he he wasn't confident doing he got some fairly rough country and he was more worried about the machine or uh looking after the machine and he he said I can't do it. Um, which I thought at the time I wasn't happy because I had to go I went down there and had a go.
And when I got to see what what conditions he was working or trying to work in, I could see why. And yeah, it was hard going. And um, good on him for um pulling the pin when he did because he didn't, you know, he saved probably, you know, quite a bit of time fixing up machines with bent bits of steel and >> and possibly fires, that sort of thing when you >> you know, all that type >> when you scrape something on a rock and set a spark off. So he he was aware of his limitations like >> good on him. Um all the positives would we would we want him as a neighbor? Well yes we've had him as a neighbor even you know 20 years on 30 years on always willing to help.
>> I never heard any you know bad stories about him mucking up or mucking you know bragging something or getting ahead of himself doing whatever he was doing. um would have been a lot of sheep work, which I don't think he was a sheep person, but he would have knuckled down and did it.
>> Just he was always friendly, welcoming.
Um Lizz's funeral, that was the first time I'd seen Ry in a suit and Ry was the the meter and greeter at the at at the door. And um I was surprised, but he he certainly honored um the the mother of his of his children, you know, his first wife did a wonderful job, you know, he he adored his daughters and um family man just wanting to be involved, wanting to be part of Yeah.
>> Yeah. Ray was always ambitious to better himself.
Uh, and I think the farm opportunity came up.
>> That was a that was a joint dream of both Ray and Jenny was to have their own property and that they got the opportunity to do that in Beverly. So, they bought 150 acre property west of of Beverly and and started setting that up to be a semi-sufficient lifestyle for them both. So, they were both married previously. They both had Jenny had three kids and Ray had two kids. Ray's girls were teenagers at the time. Um, and Ray and Jenny met in Beverly. They had the same ideals, you know, they had the same respect and and and wants out of what they wanted out of out of life. Um, and yeah, they did absolutely everything together. You know, I I didn't have a particularly close relationship with Ray and Jenny after they got married, but when they would come to family events, it was you you could see that they were just always, you know, side by side together, never sort of too far apart.
Um, and not in a creepy way, I should say, like in a in a mutual um mutual aspect. I think they they genuinely just adored each other. They they both just wanted nothing more than to be together.
>> Just a a couple of words that come to mind when you think you'd remember your dad.
>> Um outdoors, fun, joking, joking around all the time. Um I think you tried to pull pranks. Some went well, some didn't, you know. Um, but yeah, it's hard to sift through all the memories when you got all the last 10 years of crap in there as well. It's really hard to put into words what it's been like. um uh with Jenny been missing this this long um and even though we we have dad we that we found dad um it still doesn't feel like it it is like the end like because we don't know exactly what happened and where is Jenny it's having one of them back it it's not the end to either um and it is hard knowing she's still out there somewhere.
They should not be apart.
It's It's just not right. They need to be together.
>> Um, what would closure look like for you or at least some sort of closure?
>> Well, I'm not not really sure closure is the right word, but um I would want the truth to be told.
That's what I want. And I want Jenny to be found and at rest with dad. They belong together and they should be together.
>> No, it completely upturns your whole life, you know. It's not like and not to just detract from other you know deaths and but it's it's not like any any nor you know normal um grief or anything like that because it's just ongoing. It's just it's continual and you go through, you know, moments of anger, moments of depression, and moments might last months. I think I was that far removed enough from Ry to be able to keep pushing this side of it and push the police and all that sort of thing. But for for his kids and for Jenny's kids, you know, some they would have to um dissociate from it just to keep going. And then the the ambiguous loss now now after 10 years you sort of can put the puzzle together and but for years you wonder like if she's still alive somewhere is she held against the will you know all that sort of thing. So for for her family in particular and for Ray's daughters because they were obviously connected to Jenny you know you just there's no answer. There's no uh yeah I guess that's it. Yeah, there there's there's no answer and and you're just you're just waiting for one or you're waiting for her to walk in the door or you're waiting for her to be found and and all that sort of thing.
It's there's no there's no way to describe it, I don't think. I don't know that standard grief process, you know, that's it's documented and I like to read that sort of thing so you can understand the emotions and all that sort of thing. But the final stage is is acceptance. And you can't reach that stage. It's it's it's impossible without finding the the person, you know. So you continuously cycle through the rest and you never hit that final stage. It's just you get close to it and then you start again, you know. So it's just a a a continual cycle through through uh the stages of grief. And those are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then you don't get the acceptance.
So you you sit in denial for a little while. Nice little comfy spot there. I spend most of my time in the anger zone.
Um and the bargaining zone because you you think what what else can I do? And you just keep trying new and different options to try and get a resolution.
depression have sat in there for quite some time. Try not to anymore. But you never get to that acceptance. So you start again and you start again.
Raymond the Ram.
One of my earliest memories is of my brother Ray teaching me to ride a bike.
I must have been 5 years old because the timing aligns with when I started pre- primary.
We were living on a farm in eastern wheat belt region at the time around 20ks from one horse country town called Padalan where dad was managing a property for a wealthy city owner. The school bus picked us up on a road that boarded the farm which was about 1 kilometer from our house.
Every morning we would pack our school bags and my two brothers and I would ride off down the road to the bus stop.
My next oldest brother Mal on his bike and Ray dinking me on the back of his.
Then the same ride home minus the weight of our lunchboxes every afternoon. After most probably not very long of this routine, Ray took it upon himself to give me a crash course in the fundamentals of bicycle dynamics, aka the stability of motion, to get this little monkey off his back. This he did one afternoon on the ride home by sitting me on his bike and pushing me off with little warning while running behind yelling, "Keep your head up and keep pedling." Added with his signature cackle of crazed laughter. It was a quick and effective lesson and thereafter we were a convoy of three, although I do recall he still carried my school bag for me.
I'm told this is not the only extracurricular lessons Ry took it upon himself to tune me in early on. Before I reached school age, I was already reading and writing and my math at what was considered grade three level when I entered my first year of school.
It would be pragmatic to acknowledge that Bedallan had a total student population of approximately 80 children all up from pre- primary to grade 7. So that correlation needs to be considered and a factor applied prior to any feeling of pride. Also sobering is the fact that I'm now 40 years on hardly what would be considered an academic success. However, what is evident is that someone was responsible for those earliest of skills and I'm told that someone was Ry.
We had a chalkboard set up at home and for the years before I even began attending school, Ray would come home and run his own strict headmaster-like studies with myself and Mau as his students.
He was so successful in his tutelage that when I finally entered primary school, it was as if a large sea anchor needed to be deployed in order to keep my class on the same curriculum. Before you get a mental picture of a studious family of polo necks and polished shoes, note that this was a very minor part of our after school life. What we really love to do as kids was to run wild and free. And living on a property where the nearest neighbors were a halfhour drive away made this very easy. My fondest memories of early childhood were of when us three boys would jump in the old farm Land Rover and go bush. We would take a rifle and go hunting rabbits, foxes, and other feral animals. or otherwise any number of big brother bush adventures were always on the cards. We were the three amigos all under the age of 13 miles from anywhere like wild feral cats loose in the outback. The first years of my life were entirely this and that my early development. It would be no exaggeration to assume that my sitto stand learning as a toddler was probably carried out in the rear tray of a series 2A landing. Ray was always the driver and Mal and I would stand on the back and act like navigators, banging on the roof and yelling directions like we knew where the hell we were going. Meanwhile, Ray sped along, barely able to see over the steering wheel. Two loose wheels in unison, cackling away to himself in the cab. Everything we did together was hard, sharp, raw, feral, and above all else, fun.
When Ray started high school, he was forced to go to a boarding school since the local town didn't have the numbers to cater for the required senior teachers.
He absolutely hated it and it ended a complete disaster. Within a week, he had started running away and he was often found trekking back to our home, which was over 100 km away. Not long afterward, a kid a couple of years older than him tried to bully him in the cafeteria. So, Ray walked up and punched him directly in the face. It didn't take long before the school thought it best for everyone's sake that he go elsewhere. And he got his wish to come home and go feral in the bush again.
Later that year, Dad ended up taking a job on a farm in a different town which had a district high school. And so there we moved.
Life went back to normal for a while, school for three each day, then outback survival in the afternoons and weekends.
I was turning seven the following year, male 10, and Ray 14.
It wasn't long then, of course, before Ray hit adolescence and other concerns took focus in his life. Ry was forever resourceful no matter what he applied himself to, and he was always tinkering away with some new hobby.
Over his high school summer holidays, he would go and work on our older sister and brother-in-law's property to earn some money for funding. Then he'd come home and work on his projects. One such example was his CB radio station that he put together in his bedroom at home.
It started as a simple setup, but quickly grew into a station to rival a primary repeater base, having built his own aerial tower out of sticks and wire in the shape and size of a three tiered hills hoist. Soon he was sitting up through the night chatting away to people all over the countryside. I can still hear him. Romeo kilo. Romeo kilo.
This is Romeo Kilo. Does anybody copy?
Then someone's voice would join and they'd cackle away together all through the night.
I remember he had various regular buddies, girls his age that he met on the air, so you could go out on a limb and say that he was an early pioneer of online dating, the Romeo of the Midwest.
I now sometimes wonder how life might have turned out differently for Ry had he decided to move on from the country.
He was obviously an intelligent and gifted lad since most of what he did was self-taught. No doubt he could have ventured on with school and technology, but ultimately he wanted nothing other than to work on the land and to stay close to his family, which is what he did for the rest of his life in one form or another from those days on. After I left home and ventured off on my own path, and he by then now with a young family, we didn't see each other so often. But when we did, it was just like the early days, out bush on feral adventures. We were all grown up by then, of course, but otherwise it felt the same for those short times we spent together each year. Unfortunately, our relationship turned sour about 20 years ago due to my disagreement with the way he was handling taking a new direction in his life. Yet, if I was honest with myself, it was a similar direction I too had already undertaken, and in the interest of defining my own selfish boundaries rather than support him, I admonished him for it. It resulted in the ram and I butdding heads after about 13 beers 13 years ago. And that night he made the decision to never speak to me again. While over the last few years some sort of peace had been made. The fact remained that our relationship was not the same as it had been nor how it should have been and now will never be.
Ray died in 2015. How I can only describe it as he became a victim of his own circumstances.
His resourceful nature and abilities in the bush were utilized. Then he was dispatched and dumped down a hole with little more thought than one of the feral animals we once hunted.
To this day, the events leading to his death remain unexplained.
These last 11 years have felt like being set a drift in a rudderless boat without even a sea anchor to brace for the hurricane that we're all now still within.
I have had to focus on that big brother lesson on the stability of motion from many years ago in order to just remain upright.
The best way to prevent yourself from falling over is to keep moving. But I have fallen over more than once despite the motions of time and I have no doubt I will again.
I miss my brother. God, I miss my big brother.
The cheeky Laren with that crazed laugh forever ingrained in my mind like fingernails on that chalkboard from 40 years ago. The truth is I've missed him for 20 years, maybe more. My only solace is that when I look around at the life I have made now, the roots are evident from those earliest of days back when.
I now recognize that although we may have grown in different directions, each of us was always part of the other and will always be.
I like to think that this was Ray's final big brother lesson for me to be able to look back at our beginnings and be truly grateful.
So now I'll try to make up for time loss and attempt to make him proud by living a life well-lived using those advantages that he first gave me.
Raymond the Ram June 1967 to March 2015.
You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. Rest in peace, bro.
What was your mom like?
Loved. Not only by us, but mom and Ray had a circle of friends who adored them.
When they married in 2007, dozens of tough farm men, normally pillars of stoicism and masculinity, openly wept as mom and Ray exchanged vows. Joe, a dear friend of mom, had spent months collecting petals from her rose bushes and drying them out for the wedding.
George, who took them under his wing, helped mom and Ray get a home. Friends like Mark, who dropped everything and rushed out to help when the alarm was raised. like Neil and Amore who without being asked stepped up and took care of the farm while the world crashed down around us. There were so many people who were happy to leap up when the moment came because mom and Ray had always done the same.
I'd like to start by asking you to describe your mom in a few words.
Mom was an artist, a good one. She could paint for hours unaware of the passing of time. Dad had come home from work at times to find mom in the dark, unaware the sun had set, still painting.
Paintings filled the house, were sold at charity auctions, were stacked in corners as the wall space ran out. She would garden, build, create in many forms. The hobby she was building towards next was welding and smithing work, metal sculptures on the artistic horizon.
There was always a project on the go, a new style, a new medium to create in.
paintings were abandoned. Revisited, painted over, started again. One of these pieces hangs on my wall, promised to me as I admired it from afar one year. When a bushfire threatened our house, the first thing I asked Matt, my husband, to grab was the painting. I could replace everything else. The painting, not so much.
Can you tell me about your mom?
It gets harder to separate mom from Ray.
They were such an entwined unit that talking about one without the other feels disingenuous.
I remember the day I figured out Ray really liked mom. It was a late summer afternoon, the kind of warm, dry day that leeched the water from your bones.
Where there was little we could do but fall into a chair and wait for the cool air to come. The golden afternoon light was casting long shadows. But on a concrete verander, that meant very little. Across the road from where we sat was a huge pine tree, the biggest in town. At its apex, a pine cone was growing straight up into the air. Mom pointed it out and Ray grinned. Everyone knew he was about to do something reckless. Reckon I could get it for you, Ray? No. That's dangerous. Before mom could dissuade him, he was off, running across the road and scrambling up the tree. As three kids watched in delight, cheering him on as Mom flitted around, terrified he would fall. Ray made it to the top, the needlethin branches of the top bending over backwards under his weight. He plucked the pine cone and made his way back down, presenting his prize to mom. She tried to look angry with him for doing something stupid, but I could see the shine of delight in both of their eyes.
Tell me about your mother. Tell me a bit about Jenny.
How can I just tell you a bit about her in a meaningful way? How can I tell you who mom was, why she was loved so fiercely by so many people, and why that love still endures today, more than a decade on from her loss?
How can I express the truly devastating white hot grief of her absence that still hits like a freight train after all these years?
I don't think I've figured that out yet.
This is where the story rests for now.
We'll keep sharing any updates here on the podcast feed and online when new information comes to light because this isn't finished. And if the day comes when there are answers, where this moves toward a trial or something closer to resolution, we'll be back and tell that part of the story, too.
But until then, thank you for listening.
If you or anyone you know has information about this case, you can contact us via our Facebook page, The Man in the Hole. It's also important to note that a $2 million reward is currently being offered for information leading to a conviction in this case.
This is one of the largest rewards in Australian history. offering a powerful incentive for anyone with knowledge to come forward. If you have any information related to this case, please contact Crimestoppers on 1800LE300.
Even the smallest details could make a huge difference. That number again, 1 800LE300.
We acknowledge the Badimaya people of the Yamiji nation as the traditional custodians of the lands where this episode was recorded. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging and recognize their enduring connection to this unique and beautiful place. Thank you for listening to some kind of closure. If you found this episode valuable, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It's a quick free way to support the show and it really helps us reach more people.
This is a fully independent production.
If you'd like to support the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Just get in touch via our Facebook page. Lastly, we acknowledge the presumption of innocence for all individuals discussed in this series. Any opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers. Thanks again for listening.
>> We've only got one side of the story.
They were just everyday people.
>> We find Jenny, we will find out what happened >> and the truth will prevail.
>> There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. That's the hope, isn't it?
That that will happen.
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