Many people have tried to forget the events of 1966, some can only speak with bitterness, others still carry the memories of loved ones, and all carry the scars rendered by the horrific acts of the double murderer and rapist, Raymond Edmunds.
There is a galaxy of victims that have fallen in the wake of the former dairy labourer who lived amongst us and successfully evaded prosecution until 1985 when fingerprints brought him undone.
Today, February 26, marks 55 years since the bodies of Garry Heywood and Abina Madill were found in a Murchison East paddock. The two had disappeared after attending a dance at the Shepparton Civic Centre in Welsford St on February 10. A major police search and investigation failed to turn up any witnesses or evidence pointing to the offender, who was living and working on a farm at Ardmona.
His ex-wife would later tell a court she suspected Edmunds was capable of it, but had no evidence.
But the police investigation (dogged by a number of flaws, as a Victorian Police Commissioner was later to acknowledge) focused on a few theories. Among them Abina Madill's friend, Ian Urquart became a suspect.
Mr Urquart's sister, Heather Halsall, recalled that the police called him in to the police station a number of times to grill him over the murders and it soon become knowledge around the town that he was a suspect.
Mrs Halsall recalls the stares and comments directed at the family during the investigation.
He endured months of innuendo and gossip, before deciding to leave the town and find a job in Western Australia.
He eventually found work in Singapore where he died in 1972 as a result of a car accident.
His premature death, well before the police exonerated him and Edmunds was arrested, is a pain that Mrs Halsall still carries with her. She was close to him because their mother had died when Mr Urquart was only four years old and she played a significant role in his upbringing.
The public approbation in 1966 was strong and driven by speculation and an element of fear.
“Everybody had their opinion. We knew there was a murderer living amongst us.
“Remember this was little old, sleepy Shepp. They blamed fruit pickers. The speculation affected a lot of people.”
Mrs Halsall said it was clear to anyone who knew her brother, that he was not capable of such a horrific act. Amongst her treasured diaries, press clippings and photos, is a presentation Bible given to Mr Urquart from the Lemnos Baptist Church Sunday School in 1946.
Edmunds was sentenced to life in prison in 1986 and in 2019 admitted to 10 additional charges including multiple rapes in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, indecent assault and false imprisonment during the 1970s and 1980s.
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