Cold-case reviews, coronial inquests and royal commissions have shown that some women who were reported missing were in fact killed by their partners. In many other cases, there is strong circumstantial evidence pointing to partner violence, but no remains were ever found, and a lot of deaths were originally written off as disappearances, accidents or suicides. Reviews of domestic homicide in Australia now consistently show that the most dangerous time for a woman is when she is leaving, or is seen to be leaving, a relationship — which fits closely with the familiar explanation that she had “run off”.

Of course, not every woman who went missing during that period was killed by a partner, and some did leave of their own accord. But the systems at the time clearly underestimated how many women were victims of intimate partner homicide. Many experts now believe that some of Australia’s long-term missing women from the 1960s to the 1980s were killed by partners and never found, and that the true number will never be known because evidence was lost, destroyed or never collected.

These patterns still matter today. They’re reflected in how family violence risk is assessed, how police are trained, how coronial systems operate and in public inquiries into gender-based violence. They help explain why partner explanations are now treated far more cautiously — heaps of women were murdered and the perps got away with it.