Strange Case of Michelle Pogmore

It has been almost 18 years  since the corpse of 14-year-old Michelle Pogmore was discovered in bushland adjacent to the Town Centre Reserve at Mount Druitt on 22nd February 2004.

A $100,000 reward stays on offer for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those involved in the killing of Michelle.

Michelle Pogmore was a brilliant, happy and intelligent girl who liked to read and lived in a fairy tale world. She made an impression on those she greeted. She played with her two-year-old roommate when in hospital after a bike accident the year before her demise. Numerous police in Mount Druitt and its community outreach programs knew her and were ravaged by her death. Michelle also strived in childhood, spending time hanging out with older youths in Mount Druitt. She was not a runaway; she was dearly adored by her family. But the people she spent time with in Mount Druitt may hold the key to her demise.

An event that may hold indications to her death happened eight weeks before: Michelle was raped. She spent many days in hospital following the attack, with Michelle characterizing the rapist as a man she did not recognize aged between 50 and 60. There's no clue police ever recognized the attacker, but they did examine the incident before Michelle went missing; Michelle was well known to regional police and community services. So many people and organisations attempted to help, but she slipped through the cracks, and somebody murdered her there. 

Michelle's mother, Kathy Nowland, last saw her daughter at their house in Bidwill, near Mount Druitt, on the afternoon of Thursday, February 19 2004. Michelle was in a bad mood after school but illuminated when her mother gave her a new pair of pink and blue running shoes. Michelle proudly donned her new shoes and left home, saying to her mother she was going shopping at Mount Druitt. When she failed to return, Ms Nowland reported her daughter missing. In the early hours of the next morning, Michelle was picked up by CCTV in Mount Druitt, clad in a dark sweatshirt, white track pants and her new shoes.

No one knows where Michelle left after she was seen in the mall or what she did on Friday 20 February.

She must have been glimpsed or spent time with someone, but whoever that was, they've never come ahead. Michelle was seen that evening at a street party in Bidwill, organised to promote a Centrelink youth outreach program. Someone reported on a Facebook page set up by Michelle's mother that Michelle got into an assertion at the party. But after that, nothing. We don't know where Michelle went, or what occurred to her. Who did this to her?

Her corpse was discovered on the morning of Sunday 22 February, near sporting fields at Mount Druitt Town Centre reserve. She was naked from the waist down, her white track pants and loved new shoes missing; they have never been found. Temperatures reached up to 45℃ over the weekend, and Michelle's corpse was too decomposed to establish a cause, time or place of death. A DNA sample was obtained and foresees a match one day. Police investigated, but it was a mammoth task without forensic information or witnesses, and ultimately, the trial went cold. Michelle's family don't blame the police for failing to imprison a suspect; in fact, her mother brings a hamper to Mount Druitt police station every Christmas to say thank you and follow up on any guides.

Those leads have been too few. There's so much we don't know. What occurred to Michelle? Why the wall of silence? Where was she on Friday 20 February 2004? Who saw her at the Bidwill Street party? Who harms her, who left her corpse in the town reserve? Was it someone from the party, someone she knew from hanging out on the streets of Mount Druitt, or a random outsider who came across the susceptible young girl? Was her demise connected to the rape two months before, or was it something else entirely?

The Coroner left open the likelihood that Michelle's death did not involve foul play. But commonsense will tell us that 13-year-old girls don't strip themselves naked from the waist down, somehow dispose of their pants and shoes so as never to be found, and then just lay down and die. If her casualty was an accident of some kind - due to substance use at a party, for example - why was she half-naked? And most importantly, why has no one come forward to alleviate her family's misery at not knowing?

The NSW police recently declared a review of all the state's unsolved killings. Hopefully, Michelle's case can be reexamined. DNA technology is advancing all the time, and a match found for the DNA glimmers her murderer left on her body. Or a high reward, or their conscience, provokes someone who knows something about her demise to come forward with the knowledge police need to make an arrest. Anyone who was keeping silent out of fear they'd get in difficulty for teenage misdeeds needs to come forward now. Michelle has now been gone for longer than she was alive. That's a long time to live with such horrible secrets. Michelle's mother, Kathy Nowland, and father, Gary Pogmore, and everyone else who liked her deserves answers. Most importantly, Michelle has the right to justice. Who did this to a little girl? Someone must know something.