Disappearance Of Helen Munnings

Helen Munnings was a pretty, blonde 20-year-old and unmarried mum of one when she disappeared without a trace on July 23, 2008.

Born and raised in the port city of Burnie on the northwest coast of Tasmania, Helen was close with her mama Karel and three siblings. According to Wikipedia, Burnie is the fourth-largest city in Tasmania but just has about 20,000 citizens.

In 2004, when she was 16, Helen came together with Adam Taylor, who was 30 years old.

They had a sexual encounter the night they met, and Adam says he was heavily drunk at the time. They remained in contact even though Adam was in an affair with a woman named Karolina, with whom he also had a kid.

When Helen turned 17-year-old in March of 2005, Adam Taylor says she became obsessed with him and started to pressure him into having intercourse with her regularly. Adam later explained he only continued sex with her because he was scared that Helen would report him to the authority for their first sexual meeting when she was below the age of approval in Tasmania. Shortly after, Helen was pregnant.

Helen gave birth to a baby boy in 2006, soon after her 18th birthday. Though he originally rejected it, paternity reports verified Adam Taylor was the child’s father. He encouraged his distraught partner Karolina that the baby had been developed during a break in their relationship, and guaranteed he would cut off all connection with Helen other than what was essential for their custody authorization. Still, Adam Taylor purchased a secret, second cell phone so that he could resume the clandestine relationship with Helen. Detailed text messages between the couple were later recovered from the cell phone.

On July 8, 2008, Helen brought a pregnancy test and said to Adam she was again pregnant with his child. Adam has repeatedly rejected that he is the dad of the second child and has told he thinks Helen had been having sex with another man.

On Wednesday, July 28, Adam Taylor came home from the job around 2:45 p.m. to drop off his car and picked up his mother’s truck. His partner Karolina told she saw Adam go in the truck about 3:30 p.m. after putting a saw in the back. Helen left her mum’s home on foot around 4 p.m. with nothing but the clothing on her back and her phone’s SIM card and was picked up by Adam around 4:20 in front of Green’s Hotel on Marine Terrace. A CCTV camera from the Centrelink office second door recorded Helen stepping past the office at 4:16 and then a truck driving by at 4:22. The truck is thought to be the one Adam was driving, and Helen has never been discovered again. She was reported missing by her mother the following day.

Police have questioned hundreds of witnesses, including her family and Adam Taylor, the prime suspect. In a sworn statement to police, Adam Taylor says that on their drive Helen was scare and said to him she’d rather commit suicide than have an abortion. Although it would have been getting dark, he told Helen called for to be dropped off at the coast so that she could take a hike to clear her head; later, he went home. Adam delivered her a text message at 6:08 p.m. that told “Keep your chin up,” but Helen never answered.

In 2008 and 2009, widespread searches were performed in Burnie and the surrounding regions (including waterways), but no hint of Helen has been discovered. In 2009, investigators discovered a bucket of concrete with a rope attached in the water outside Adam Taylor’s residence, near where they kept a windjammer. It looked doubtful, but no forensic evidence was discovered. An inquest was held in 2012 by coroner Robert Pearce, who discovered that Helen had possibly died on or about July 23, 2008, in Burnie. Although testimony was given mentioning to Mr. Taylor's doubtful behavior on the day Helen vanished, no decision has been found. “No finding can be made about how or why she died, or whether any person participated to the cause of her death,” said Mr. Pearce. Helen’s family is sure she met with foul play, most likely at the hands of Adam Taylor.

It’s pretty obvious to me who had the motive and chance to get rid of Helen Munnings: Adam Taylor. But now, almost a decade after she disappeared, no new proof has come to light. Adam Taylor looks like to want people to believe she committed suicide, but her corpse has never been found. What do you believe happened to Helen Munnings, and where is she now?