Keeping Hope Alive: The Search for Bung Siriboon Continues

It's every parent's worst nightmare.  Seeing your child off to school in the morning and never having them return. 

Today's episode of BOLO is an exploration of the still unsolved case of Siriyakorn Bung Siriboon, or as she was known to most people, Bung.

I'm your host, Carla Morgan, and I'll be guiding you through the harrowing events of that fateful day twelve years ago, when Bung's disappearance sent shockwaves through Melbourne's community.

Bung's family continue to hold unwavering hope to find her. Every bit of information counts, if you know something, please says something.  Let's keep the hope alive, and let's bring Bung home.

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Transcript

Carla Morgan: 0:00

On the 2nd of June 2011, Siriyak orn BUng Siriboon put on her school uniform, said goodbye to her mum and breezed out the door, just like she did every morning to walk the short distance from home to school. Most mornings she walked with a friend, but not this day, and on this day she never made it to school and she has never been seen or heard from since. This episode contains content related to child abduction and homicide and is not suitable for children. Today, I'm delving into the missing persons case of , affectionately known as Bung. She was last seen around 8.30am as she left for school. How can a 13 year old schoolgirl literally vanish into thin air? This question has haunted the neighbourhood of Baronia and Bang's family for 12 long and gruelling years. They are still desperate for answers and, until Bang is found, will not give up hope that she may be alive somewhere. I'm Carla Morgan and this is BOLO, a podcast covering cold and active missing persons cases with the aim of helping families bring their loved ones home. Bang was born in Thailand, where she lived with her mother, father and her older sister Pang. Her parents split up when she was very young, so she was mostly raised by her mother, Vanidda, until her mum met an Aussie traveller, Fred Patterson. Fred and Vanita dated for a few years and then, in 2006, in Thailand, they got married. They started a business together, but it didn't go as planned, so Fred returned to Australia to get a job to support the family. In 2008, vanita and the girls moved out to Melbourne, Australia, so they could all be a family together. At this time, Bung was 10 and her sister, Pang, was 17. Fred and Vanita also thought the girls might have more opportunities in the future if they attended school here. Fred had bought a house in Baronia, a suburb in Melbourne's east and Melbourne is the capital city of Victoria in Australia and they all lived together happily until their entire world shattered when Bung disappeared. They lived on Elsie Street, which was very close to Baronia Heights Secondary College, where Bung attended school, and close to where both Fred and Vanita worked. Bung was a great student. She excelled at maths and science and she really loved arts subjects like music, dance and theatre. She also loved K-pop and Justin Bieber, and to everyone who knew her well, she was described as fun and bubbly. She enjoyed school and she was never absent, except for this one cold and drizzly Tuesday in June. On the day she went missing, Fred returned home from work around the same time he did every day. It was morning and Bung was getting herself ready for school. She ate breakfast and she said goodbye to her mum and then she walked out the door. This was around 8.30am and if she had taken her normal route to school she would arrive by 8.40 or 8.45. She was wearing her school uniform, a dark blue zip front school jacket, and she had her school backpack with her. Bung was 154cm tall, thin and of tie appearance. She has brown eyes and she had long dark hair at the time she went missing.

Carla Morgan: 4:28

One neighbour a few doors down saw Bung pass by her house. This was on the same street, Elsie Street, and she said Bung was walking towards Anzac Avenue, which is in the direction of her school. This was close to 8.30am or just after, so fits with the timeline of when she left home. Anzac Avenue is an extremely busy road and at that intersection Bung would ordinarily turn right and then make a left onto Harcourt Road and then a final left onto Moncoe Street. Moncoe Street was a dead end, but there was a back gate to the school on this street, so many students entered the school grounds through Moncoe Street. A second witness reported seeing Bung at 8.55am, just 100m from that back gate to the school. However, this second sighting is not one that is widely reported and it hasn't been confirmed by police, as we'll learn later. It also contradicts a sighting by a witness claiming they saw Bung in a car travelling south of Baronia at roughly the same time.

Carla Morgan: 5:46

Everyone at school that day assumed Bung was sick. It definitely wasn't normal for her to be away and at that time there was no school to parent communication if your child was absent for the first class of the day. It is now practised in all schools in Australia that if a child doesn't show up to a class and the school has not been notified of an absence in advance, the parents will be contacted via automated text message or a phone call. The whole point of this is, yes, to combat truism, but also to get an immediate report on children who may have been abducted or had an accident en route to school, so the alarm can be raised early in the day. Taking children on the way to school used to be a surefire way of getting a full day head start for any perpetrator, but not anymore. So in Bung's case.

Carla Morgan: 6:41

It wasn't until she didn't come home from school that afternoon that her parents had the slightest idea that anything was wrong. They were worried as soon as she didn't walk through the door at her normal time, but they kind of brushed it off, thinking she was just running late or doing something else at school. That afternoon At 4pm a friend called to chat to Bung, and that's when they realised she hadn't been at school all day. They tried calling her phone but quickly realised she'd left it at home, as she did most days. So they headed straight to the school to confirm that Bung had not been there at all or that she was not still there somewhere. They were thinking okay, she didn't attend classes, but maybe she spent the day in the library. From the school they went straight to the police station. The police urged them to contact Bung's friends. So they did all that. They called each of the friends that evening and then they went round to each of their houses just to check and double check is she here? Have you seen her? Where can she be? But she wasn't anywhere, which is every parent's worst possible nightmare. The next morning, after a sleepless night and no sign of Bung, they went straight back to the police station to urge them to take action. They also started putting up missing persons posters and scouring the streets looking for her back. By Friday, the media had picked up the story and the community rallied, helping Fred and Vanita put up more posters and conduct searches in the surrounding areas. Fred faced the media as Vanita just couldn't. She was heartbroken and devastated.

Carla Morgan: 8:40

The investigation began and the police pretty quickly ruled out Bung as a runaway. She had no reason to leave. She didn't have a boyfriend, she was a good kid and she was happy. They looked closely at her social media accounts she did have a few, but they detected no suspicious activity or communication with anyone who could have been an online predator. Fred was also looked into very closely for weeks. He was followed, the house was searched from top to bottom and he really welcomed it. He wanted the police to clear him as quickly as possible so that they could focus their efforts on finding out who had Bung and where she was.

Carla Morgan: 9:31

After three weeks of searching the local area, including bushland, questioning locals and looking into sex offenders in the area, police believed that Bung had likely been abducted, and at exactly that time, so three weeks after she went missing, there was a very scary attempted abduction of a 16 year old Caucasian girl from Ringwood East. Ringwood East is a 10 minute drive from Elsie Street, where Bung lived, and the teenager reported that she was walking alongside the road in the afternoon when a man pulled up in a car, approached her from behind and tried to drag her by the arm into his vehicle. She managed to kick and fight and escape and get away from him and hid in some bushes nearby until he took off. The car was a blue sedan and the man was described as being in his 50s or 60s, with grey hair and wearing dark clothing. Then, just a week later, there was another abduction attempt, this time in Baronia as well. The girl was 11 years old and of Asian appearance, and she knew Bung. Panic set in and parents were keeping their children within sights at all times. Sadly, however, it turned out that once police started their investigation, the girl admitted she had made the whole thing up.

Carla Morgan: 11:13

The case pretty much went cold after that and by 2013, so two years later, after police had spoken to thousands of people, received hundreds of calls and tips, they really didn't have any significant leads and the investigation had not progressed, so Bung's case was passed on to the Homicide Squad. Later that year, police revealed that a 24 year old local man had confessed to knocking Bung over in his car and accidentally killing her. He claimed to have left her body in a local reserve. He was arrested, but after a thorough look at the man after searching the reserve, after looking at his car, it proved to be a false confession and he was released.

Carla Morgan: 12:05

One person of interest was convicted sex offender Robert Knight. He was charged with sexual assault of girls in the 80s and 90s and he was released from prison in 2009. He was living just three kilometres from Baronia in Ferntree Gully when Bung disappeared. He was also arrested in 2013 for having over 10,000 child sex abuse images on his computer. He was questioned in relation to Bung's disappearance, but he was later ruled out. He has since died by suicide while he was being held in Melbourne Romand Centre. In 2014, Victoria Police Detectives released a statement announcing a $1 million reward, asking for information and also stating that the Department of Public Prosecutions will also consider granting indemnification from prosecution to any person who provides information as to the identity of the principal offender or offenders in Bung's case.

Carla Morgan: 13:15

A few months later, police released information to the public in the hopes of bringing in more leads and information. So Detective Inspector Michael Hughes said he wanted people to connect the dots between a man and a specific make of car. They told the public that a witness had come forward saying they saw a young girl who looked like Bung around 9am on the morning of her disappearance. She was in the passenger seat of a white 1971-1973 Holden HQ Kingswood station wagon with no rear seats or possibly the seats had been folded down. The driver was a white male in his late 30s to early 40s. He was either bald, balding or with light coloured hair. He had both arms sleeved with tattoos and a large tattoo on the left side of his neck. The car was seen passing the intersection of Kellett's Road and Napoleon Road in a suburb called Rowville between 8.45am and 9am. Now, Rowville is about a 13 minute drive from Bung's home in Baronia. So this timeline fits if the first sighting of Bung at around 8.30 is correct. It does not fit, however, if the second sighting of her near the school gate at around 8.50 is accurate. There were two other witnesses who claimed they saw Bung that day or a girl of similar appearance in a white Holden wagon, but neither of these have been confirmed by police.

Carla Morgan: 14:56

On the fifth anniversary of Bung's disappearance, Fred spoke to the Knox Reader saying 'We still hope and believe she's alive. We have to. It's been long enough. We need information. We want information about our daughter, about our angel. We want to know good or bad. If anyone out there knows anything or suspects anything, come forward and tell the police'. Ten years on, police made another appeal. Detective Leading Senior Constable Justin Tippett said that they receive weekly calls about Bung but nothing has come of any call or any lead. They do have people that they have spoken with and not all of them have been excluded or ruled out. So it seems the police may have won or some people in mind, but don't have enough to pin them for Bung's disappearance and likely murder. Ten years on, police made another appeal. Detective leading Senior Constable Justin Tippett said they receive weekly calls about Bung but nothing has come of any call or any lead. They do have people that they have spoken with and not all of them have been excluded or ruled out. So it seems the police may have won or some people in mind, but they just don't have enough to pin them for Bung's disappearance and likely murder. So as it stands.

Carla Morgan: 16:35

Currently, Bung's case is still open. Her family are still desperate to know where she is. Her mother, Vanidda returned to Thailand long ago because living in Melbourne was too hard for her. But Fred, her stepfather, still remains in the house in Baronia and still gives interviews to the media on significant anniversaries, pleading for answers and information, he has said, 'without evidence of her death. We must cling to hope that she is still alive'.

Carla Morgan: 17:08

In a letter that Vanidda wrote and I found published on the Australian Missing Persons Register, courtesy of the Herald Sun, it says: 'My birthday is coming up and I wish my girl to come back for me. That is all I wish for my birthday present. I just want to know what happened. If you were a mum, try and imagine for me. It has been very hard. Sometimes you have to step back and look at another way to look and walk forward, and I have to do this every day. You would be my birthday present. I need you to be my present, the best present. Please come back. Thank you, every person who prayed for Bung and my family. Thank you so much. Bung would be turning 26 this year.

Carla Morgan: 18:04

It's way past time for her family to bring her home, if you or anyone you know know anything at all. Please contact Police Link on 13 14 44 or call Crime Stoppers on 1800-333-000. Thanks for listening to BOLO. If this episode has brought up feelings for you and you need support, please reach out to Lifeline on 13-11-14. You can connect with me on Insta or TikTok @bolo. pod or email me at bolo. pod@ icloud. com if you have a case you'd like me to cover. There's also a form on my Insta profile that you can fill in. Until next week, stay safe.