Daniel Sheppard, 19, resided on Lord Hobart Way in West Lakes, South Australia. He has a fraternal twin, Michael, and five older sisters who were adults by the time the twins were born. Daniel and Michael lived with their mother, Pat Sheppard. Their father passed away when Daniel and Michael were 15, leaving Pat to finish raising them alone.
At 18, Daniel got a job at a powder-coating factory in Wingfield, which he thoroughly enjoyed, and Michael found employment producing metal parts.
Growing up in West Lakes, a suburb of Adelaide, the boys knew their way around the city and metropolitan area. Daniel did not drive and relied on public transportation to get to Adelaide’s various bars and clubs. He and Michael loved Adelaide’s diverse nightlife.
On New Year’s Eve 1994, Daniel and Michael planned to ring in the new year together with six friends. They started the night with drinks at a friend’s home in Cheltenham between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The group caught the 8:21 p.m. train to Adelaide and boarded the tram to Glenelg. They exited at the Brighton Road stop and walked to Lennie’s Tavern on Anzac Highway. They spent the next several hours drinking and socializing at Lennie’s.
At 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1995, Daniel, Ben Silvani, and Silvani’s girlfriend Desiree Leyton arrived at Rave Nightclub on Hindley Street. Michael and the rest of the group stayed at Lennie’s. He left around 3 a.m. and took a train home alone.
Daniel, Leyton, and Silvani left Rave to go to a nearby pool bar called Empire. The couple left around 3 a.m. Daniel stayed and chatted with Pamela Tanner for about 30 minutes. Tanner later told the police she last saw Daniel at 4 a.m.
After a night of partying, Daniel was ready to go home and headed to Adelaide Railway Station on North Terrace Street to catch a train. Upon arrival, he ran into another group of friends – Ami McNeill, Eliza Noack, Nicole Slabskyj, and Nicholas Wright.
All of them boarded the 4:13 a.m. train to Outer Harbour. Daniel chatted with the girls while Wright sat with other friends. Daniel told the girls he was going home. They exited the train at Alberton. Daniel reached his stop at Port Adelaide Railway Station at 4:35 a.m. and said goodbye to Wright.
Daniel walked down the exit ramp and vanished into oblivion. The walk home should have taken only 10 minutes, but he never made it, and no one has seen him since.
At 4:45 a.m., a witness known only as Carol awoke to attend to her sick daughter. Carol lived near Daniel’s residence.
She told Adelaide’s Sunday Mail in 2018: “I’d heard someone screaming along the lines of ‘I don’t need a lift’ and ‘f … off, f … off’ and it sounded distressed, but then there was nothing but a bit of a muffled noise.”
The screaming startled her, so she stepped outside to investigate. Carol noticed a large “square-shaped” car similar to a Ford Falcon or Holden Statesman. A man sat behind the wheel. There was no one sitting in the front passenger seat, but a person with long blonde hair sat in the middle of the back seat. Carol assumed the passenger was female and thought it was strange that the car’s headlights were off.
Something felt off to Carol, and she wanted to report the incident to the police. However, her husband said the incident probably involved drunks as it was New Year’s morning.
But Carol couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, so she called the Port Adelaide police station mid-morning. Unfortunately, the police seemed disinterested, and Daniel’s family had not yet reported him missing.
Michael arrived home from Lennie’s, and Daniel was not there and assumed his brother was with their friends in Cheltenham.
He later called the friends, but they told him Daniel had gone home. Michael and their mother, Pat Sheppard, knew something had happened to Daniel. If he said he was going home, he would not have changed plans without letting someone know.
Daniel’s family began calling other friends, but no one had seen him. Pat called the police and reported Daniel missing on Jan. 4, 1995.
Police searched extensively for Daniel, but they never found any trace of him. They aggressively questioned all of the friends accompanying Daniel and Michael that night, but they checked out.
Three weeks later, police conducted a televised reenactment of Daniel’s last movements, with Michael donning a blonde wig and portraying Daniel. Police received tips from viewers but nothing substantial.
In April 1995, police raided the homes of several known sex offenders after receiving leads that Daniel had been seen with them. However, the raids were a dead end.
Carol’s strange eyewitness account on New Year’s morning had occurred before Daniel’s family reported him missing. She called the police again after she learned Daniel had disappeared. She was positive the person sitting in the middle seat of the mystery car was not a female; it was Daniel. He had long blonde hair and was small in stature.
A detective immediately called Carol back, but he never questioned her in person, which surprised her.
Years went by before the police contacted her again. A detective working on Daniel’s case in the early 2000s called her and asked her to recount her story.
He told her Daniel’s case had taken a backseat to a high-profile case, the Snowtown Murders – a string of killings between August 1992 and May 1999 in the Adelaide area.
The detective told her she likely witnessed the moment someone had abducted Daniel. Carol believed he would take her information seriously. She became frustrated when a 2005 coroner’s inquest came and went without anyone calling for her testimony.
South Australia’s coroner, Mark Johns, ruled that Daniel was dead and closed the case at the inquest.
In 2018, Carol contacted Daniel’s family when she came across Daniel’s Facebook page they had set up to find him.
At first, the Sheppard family was skeptical of Carol’s account but then checked with the police, who confirmed it. The family was upset that the police never told them about the sighting.
There were a few other sightings of Daniel after he vanished.
A witness said she saw a young man lying and moaning on a sidewalk near the railway station around 5 a.m. on New Year’s Day. However, the man wore a light shirt, and Daniel sported a maroon shirt that night.
A male witness reported that he saw someone matching Daniel’s description walking east along Grand Junction Road in Rosewater between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. However, this location is southeast of Port Adelaide and in the opposite direction of Daniel’s home. The man was positive it was Daniel, but the police could not confirm the sighting.
According to BasicTrendy.com, an acquaintance of Daniel’s thought he saw Daniel in June 1997 at the Norwood Hotel. He called out to the man using Daniel’s nickname, “Cheesy,” and asked what the man had been up to. The man did not respond. Police investigated the sighting but could not confirm the man was Daniel. Furthermore, the man’s girlfriend was present, but she did not see the mystery man. She told police the witness often lied, so his account is questionable.
There have been several theories about Daniel’s disappearance. He was killed by a pedophile ring, a group of skinheads, or drug dealers.
Another theory is that Daniel was a victim of The Family.
“The Family were not an official group, gang, or organization. It was a group of homosexual men and transgender women who formed a network around convicted murderer and sexual sadist Bevan Spencer von Einem, based on the drugging, raping, and sometimes murder of youths and young men. Murdered victims were kept in captivity by the Family for up to five weeks.”
FamilyMurders.com
The group’s name stems from an interview a detective gave on Australia’s “60 Minutes”. He said the police were taking measures “to break up the happy family.”
Bevan Spencer von Einem was convicted for the rape and murder of 15-year-old Richard Kelvin, son of Adelaide newscaster Rob Kelvin, in 1983.
Richard was kept alive for five weeks, during which time he was repeatedly drugged, raped, and tortured until his inevitable death. Beven was the only member of The Family ever convicted.
Bevan Spencer von Einem was named in 1990 by the witness “Mr. B.” as the killer of the Beaumont children in 1966 and Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon in 1973 — all kidnapped from Adelaide. However, police have been unable to make a positive connection, and he is not the only suspect in those cases.
Daniel stood only 5-feet-4-inches tall and looked younger than 19, making him vulnerable to predators. Police investigated all theories but found no evidence supporting any of them. Furthermore, they believe a lone stranger abducted Daniel and that it was “not a targeted attack.”
True Crime Diva’s Thoughts
I agree with the investigators on this one. I think one man, in a moment-of-opportunity crime, abducted Daniel. However, he might not have been the only one involved.
The man probably saw Daniel walking and pulled up alongside him, asking if he wanted a ride before forcing Daniel into his vehicle. I believe Carol did witness his abduction.
I’m not sure what to make of the sighting on Grand Junction Road. If it was Daniel, that leaves many questions, but Daniel’s family said he would never have changed plans without letting them know. So, if he intended to go home that morning, he would have gone home.
What’s interesting about the sighting is that Alan Barnes, a murder victim of The Family, was last seen on Grand Junction Road in 1979.
I do wonder about The Family being connected. Many of the members are still alive today. After Von Einem’s conviction, did the group completely stop their assaults on young men? I doubt it. Once a freak, always a freak.
Some members testified against him in court and received immunity, even after admitting their part in drugging and raping these young men. I can’t imagine they lived crime-free afterward.
Let’s say the witness did see Daniel at the Norwood Hotel in 1997. One can then assume that Daniel was taken by this group or another sex trafficking network and worked out of the hotel.
I’m not convinced the 1997 witness lied. Why would he have lied about seeing Daniel more than two years after he vanished? The sighting means that Daniel was alive for at least two years following his disappearance if the witness told the truth. But what happened to him after that is anybody’s guess.
Honestly, I have no idea what happened to Daniel, but I do not believe he is alive today. He likely died on or shortly after New Year’s Day 1995.
