E62 | Special | Sydney Unsolved - The Disappearance of Trudie Adams

Just after midnight, an eighteen year old left a dance at the Newport Surf Life Saving Club and walked out to Barrenjoey Road to hitchhike home to Avalon. Her boyfriend watched her get into a light coloured Holden panel van. Nobody has seen Trudie Adams since. In the weeks that followed, around fifteen young women came forward to say they had been abducted at gunpoint on the same road by two men in disguise, driven into the bush and raped. Detectives had a name within months. Nobody has ever been charged, and the coroner who finally heard the case in 2011 found that the person responsible never came to police attention.

IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING

A $250,000 reward offered by the NSW Government stands for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Trudie's suspected death. The case is held by the Unsolved Homicide Team as Strike Force Keldie, and police say they are still working strong lines of inquiry, with inquiries run in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and New Zealand.

Police also want to hear from any woman attacked on the northern beaches who has never reported it. The linked assaults ran from 1971 to 1978 in and around Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, against girls and young women aged 14 to 20.

Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000. You can remain anonymous.

A NSW parliamentary inquiry into unsolved murders and long-term missing persons cases between 1965 and 2010 is sitting now, before Portfolio Committee No. 1. Submissions close 30 October 2026, through the Parliament of NSW website.

A NOTE ON SOURCING

Trudie Adams has never been found and no cause of death has ever been established. There is no body, no scene and no forensic material connected to her. Every forensic detail in this episode belongs to the women who survived the linked assaults.

Neville Tween, named in this episode, was never charged over Trudie Adams or over any of the assaults, denied all of it, gave evidence at the 2011 inquest and died in custody in 2013. No court has made any finding against him in this case. His associate is not named here, because he has never been charged with anything.

Mark Standen has never been charged with anything relating to Trudie Adams or the assaults, and no court or inquiry has found that he protected Neville Tween. The ABC put those allegations to him in 2018 and he denied them at length in writing. His own words are read in the episode. He was released on parole on 1 June 2024.

The 2011 coronial finding o