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What if the witness you've been searching for was there all along?

In this special episode of Sleepers, investigative journalist Bryan Littlely sits down with Nicole Morris, founder of the Australian Missing Persons Register, during National Missing Persons Week.

For 21 years, Nicole has worked to keep Australia's missing visible. Her register contains thousands of long-term missing-person cases, some dating back to the 1930s, and during last year's National Missing Persons Week campaign her Facebook posts reached an extraordinary 45 million people.

Because sometimes keeping a photograph, a name, and a story in front of the public is enough to make somebody remember.

And this conversation proves it.

Bryan and Nicole explore the disappearance of Joanne Butterfield, the importance of listening to the people who actually knew the missing, and why even decades of research don't always produce a simple answer.

Then Nicole tells Bryan about Rhonda State, a 20-year-old mother who disappeared after attending a dance at Camden in 1979.

While researching Rhonda's case, Nicole tracked down a woman who told her she had seen Rhonda getting into a car in the car park.

Nicole asked what she'd told police.

The answer?

She hadn't.

Nobody had ever asked her.

That extraordinary revelation leads to the possibility that Ivan Milat was involved, and raises a much larger question: how much potentially important information can remain hidden, not because somebody deliberately concealed it, but because the right witness was simply never interviewed?

Bryan then brings the conversation home to South Australia and the Sleepers investigation into the 1973 Adelaide Oval disappearance of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon.

The discovery that Alex Bone and his father, Frank, travelled to the football with the Ratcliffe family, and Alex's recollection of being sent to search for the girls, raise significant questions about the accepted timeline.

Nicole immediately recognises the problem.

If the timeline is wrong, were investigators asking witnesses to remember the wrong period?

Along the way, Bryan and Nicole also discuss Susie Ratcliffe, Leave A Light On, and, for the first time on Sleepers, Bryan explains the story behind the words that have become our signature:

#Fight Like Jo.

CRIME SCENE VICTOR HARBOR | 21–23 AUGUST 2026

This episode arrives as Bryan prepares to bring together some of Australia's leading true crime investigators, journalists, authors, podcasters and advocates for the inaugural CRIME SCENE Victor Harbor.

Across three days, Victor Harbor becomes a true crime precinct with live presentations, investigative panels, author appearances, live podcasting and forensic experiences. The 2026 program includes Sally Leydon, Debi Marshall, Derek Pedley, Adam Shand, Suzie Ratcliffe, Max Marten, Bryan Littlely and many more. Part of the proceeds from Crime Scene Victor Harbor supports Leave A Light On Inc.

And Sleepers is going live.

SLEEPERS LIVE

Sunday, 23 August 2026 | 11.00 am

McCracken Country Club – Convention Centre, Victor Harbor

Bryan Littlely and Max Marten take Sleepers out of your podcast app and into the room for a live examination of the cold cases, witnesses and information driving the investigation.

Sometimes somebody sitting in the audience knows something that somebody standing on the stage doesn't.

Come and be part of the conversation.

Crime Scene Victor Harbor 21–23 August 2026. Sleepers Live is 11:00 am Sunday 23 August at McCracken Country Club. Tickets are currently listed at $40, and part of the festival proceeds support Leave A Light On Inc. (crimescenevictor.com.au)

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