Samantha Murphy's husband speaks for the first time about losing her

This is Mick Murphy’s daily labour of love, searching for his wife deep in forest surrounding Ballarat for hours he hunts for any clues, always thinking of his soul mate Samantha. Beautiful lady, hence why we married her. We were married for 26 years and our anniversary was on the 21st of February, so it’s a bit of a hard time when you’re first time that you’ve got your partners up with you. It’s been more than nine weeks since Samantha Murphy went out for a regular jog and never returned, leaving behind three children and a heartbroken husband. For someone so good to be gone out of the community, he’s. Yeah, pretty hard. Yeah, as a as a as a husband. And you know she’s always good to us and good mum for the first time, Mick recounts the morning his life changed forever when he began worrying something bad had happened. I’ll give her a call and. And there was no answer on her phone, went straight to message bank. And that’s what I thought. That’s odd. That’s very odd because she has her phone and her watch fully charged before she leaves. After days of searching turned to weeks, Samantha still hasn’t been found. Her disappearance has shocked people across Australia, but particularly here in Ballarat, where the couple have called home since first meeting at Mick’s favorite pub in nearby Gordon. We were friends for quite a period of time. And then one thing led to another. We we moved in and, you know, and sold one house and renovated another house and sold that. And then Jess come along. She’s down the track. Millie come along. And then Liam popped up and life was really good. And then, yeah, this comes into our lives. He’s a grieving husband. But for weeks after his wife vanished, Mick was also a suspect. I’d had verbal abuse and then social media and all that sort of thing. Not that I go near it, but there’s, you know, it’s pretty confronting. You start second guessing yourself. You know that you’ve done nothing wrong. This whole scenario, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy. 22 year old Patrick Stevenson has no connection to the Murphy family. He was arrested in March and charged with the 51 year old’s murder. Once they told me that they arrested the accused. I was, yeah, a big relief. 9 News has been told he isn’t cooperating with detectives. Mick says he has every faith in those detectives on Samantha’s case. Police admit the search for Samantha is complex. They have hundreds of tips from the public to work through, along with mobile phone data and the vast and difficult terrain they have to look through. Investigators say there is a number of targeted searches planned for the coming weeks. Mick knows the heartache is a life sentence, but he lives in hope that the ongoing search will bring Samantha home. Kind, caring, loyal, Ioffer a help to anyone at any time. So that’s. Yeah. And always smiling and happy and, you know, so that’s just want people to remember Sam, how she was. Angelina Lanturis joins us now from Ballarat. Jill locals are gathering there for a vigil in memory of three murdered women. It is a show of support for the community, for the victims, families. Yes, Alesha women, men and children marched passionately through the streets of Ballarat this evening, all in a memorial of the three women allegedly murdered at the hands of men in Ballarat since February this year. That is Rebecca Young, Hannah McGuire and of course Samantha Murphy. It was quite emotional as they were walking through the streets. It was all completely locked off. I did speak to one of the local councillors a little earlier. Take a listen. Incredibly impressed and proud of our community for turning up in numbers, and I’m hopeful that will be an amazing show of support to family members. Alicia, they truly want to stamp out any violence against women. I have spoken with Mick Murphy this evening. He says he is somewhere in the crowd and he’s really appreciative of everyone’s support, particularly this evening. Alicia, Tom Okay, Julian Lanterus there. Thank you.