For nine years, Karen Gudelj was told her son probably just ran off and got lost. She never believed that story. In 2025, a coroner finally agreed with her.
A Night That Ended in the Dark
On the evening of November 13, 2016, 18-year-old Zac Barnes — an apprentice bricklayer from the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales — was out with friends, having spent the day drinking and, by his own account to people who saw him, using drugs. He'd been planning to meet his brother Cody that night to celebrate Cody's 21st birthday. He never made it.
Around 7:41 p.m., while traveling in a car with two friends along Haussman Drive in Thornton, near Maitland, Zac became distressed and asked the driver to pull over. He got out and ran north into nearby bushland.
That was the last confirmed sighting of him. He hasn't used his phone, his bank accounts, his Medicare card, or any social media since.
A Search That Came Too Late
Zac's friends looked for him that night without success. His mother reported him missing to police the next day. What followed, according to evidence later presented at his inquest, was a response that should have moved faster than it did.
A coordinated, multi-agency search — involving police dogs, helicopters, the Rural Fire Service, and the State Emergency Service — wasn't conducted until eight days after Zac disappeared. A senior reviewing officer from the NSW Missing Persons Registry later told the inquest plainly that, given the circumstances of how Zac vanished, a major search should have been launched immediately rather than over a week later. He found that standard procedures simply weren't followed as closely as they should have been.
Zac's family didn't wait for police to catch up. His mother, Karen Gudelj, organized her own search parties — at one point coordinating nearly 200 volunteers combing the same bushland his friends said he'd run toward. They never found him there, or anywhere else.
Questions That Never Got Answered
For years, the only account of what happened came from the two friends who were in the car with Zac that night. Both later declined to continue cooperating with the family's efforts to understand what happened, which Gudelj found difficult to reconcile — these were, by her account, people who'd called Zac a close friend.
Rumors circulated early on that Zac may have owed someone money or made "foolish mistakes" in the period before he disappeared — speculation Gudelj firmly pushed back against, stating publicly that the person involved had actually cooperated helpfully with police and wasn't connected to anything sinister.
Zac had three identifying tattoos, including a prominent VB logo on his calf, which made it notable that not a single credible sighting of him was ever reported anywhere in Australia in the years that followed, despite his mother's continued public appeals for information.
A Coronial Inquest, Finally
Pressure from the family eventually led to a formal coronial inquest, which opened in Sydney in July 2023 — nearly seven years after Zac vanished. Over three days, the inquest examined his movements and state of mind in the lead-up to his disappearance, the adequacy of the original police response, and whether any new evidence could shed light on what actually happened.
Karen Gudelj testified about who her son had been — a "little protector" as a toddler, someone who'd once hoped to become a doctor before his grades slipped in high school and he found his footing as an apprentice bricklayer instead. She told the court she believed, in her heart, that her son was no longer alive, but that she needed the formal answers a coroner could provide.
The inquest didn't conclude there. Formal findings were delayed for nearly two years while a newly formed police strike force — established in late 2023 and based out of Maitland — spent twelve months reviewing the case from the ground up, taking fresh statements, re-examining electronic records, and running updated DNA comparisons against the state database. None of it identified Zac's remains or produced a clear breakthrough, but it added three additional volumes of evidence to the case file.
The Finding That Changed Everything
On July 15, 2025, Deputy State Coroner Carmel Forbes delivered her ruling: the evidence, taken as a whole, supported the conclusion that Zac died shortly after he was last seen — and that the circumstances of his death were suspicious. She referred the matter directly to the NSW Unsolved Homicide Team, opening the door to a criminal investigation that hadn't formally existed before.
This is a significant shift. For nearly a decade, Zac's case sat in the more ambiguous space of a missing persons investigation. A formal coronial finding of suspicious death, paired with a referral to homicide detectives, is a meaningfully different and more serious classification — one that keeps the case actively open rather than quietly shelved.
Forbes was direct in her remarks to the family at the close of the inquest: "I acknowledge the painful and persistent uncertainty felt by them in not knowing what happened to Zac and the anguish in not being able to give him a proper burial and farewell." She expressed hope that further evidence might still surface.
Karen Gudelj's own statement afterward was simple and unwavering: "He's constantly in the thoughts of many and never forgotten. A young man with the world at his feet, never given an opportunity to live out his dreams. He's been missed so much and we all miss him dearly."
Where Things Stand Now
As of the most recent reporting, Zac Barnes's remains have never been located, and no one has been charged in connection with his disappearance. The case is now in the hands of the NSW Unsolved Homicide Team, a meaningful escalation from where it sat for the better part of nine years.
If you have any information related to Zac Barnes's disappearance, you're encouraged to contact NSW Police Force on 131 444 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Sources
Inquest into the disappearance and suspected death of Zac Barnes — NSW Coroners Court (official findings) https://coroners.nsw.gov.au/documents/findings/2025/Inquest_into_the_disappearance_and_suspected_death_of_Zac_Barnes.pdf
Zac Barnes' suspicious disappearance referred to Unsolved Homicide Team — Newcastle Herald https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/9016453/zac-barnes-suspicious-disappearance-referred-to-unsolved-homicide-team/
Inquest into 2016 disappearance of Zac Barnes resumes after two-year break — Newcastle Herald https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/9013659/inquest-into-2016-disappearance-of-zac-barnes-resumes-after-two-year-break/
Inquest opens into disappearance and suspected death of Metford's Zac Erin Barnes — Newcastle Herald https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/8272630/inquest-opens-six-years-after-loving-son-brother-friend-zac-barnes-vanished/
Mum's sad plea after teen son vanished into bushland six years ago — Yahoo News Australia https://au.news.yahoo.com/mums-sad-plea-after-teen-son-vanished-into-bushland-six-years-ago-073001937.html