Toward the end of June 1998, articles about Annabel Strzelecki.s disappearance began appearing in Australian newspapers. The media coverage was generally sympathetic, and interviews with Annabel.s friends remained a central feature. Three major themes were articulated:

the representation of Annabel Strzelecki as a .Filipino bride,. her portrayal as a devoted mother, and shifting images of Jim Strzelecki and their marital relationship, depending on whether his perspective or that of Annabel.s friends was presented.

of her close friends, Lillian Lane, said: .She was a wonderful mother and

started toward the end of last year when .Annabel began to express herself

.. [Mrs. Lane said,] .She was the sort of woman who was totally devoted

to her children.and I don.t believe she would consider taking them away..

(Haran 1998, 17) [emphasis added]

Annabel . struggled against the odds to build a home . .She was very

gentle and a good mum . She tried to be happy for the children,. [friends

said] . Strzelecki was hard on Annabel. He resented her having outside

friends and would . [order] her home to cook his lunch. He seemed to

regard her as being there to do his bidding and she was entirely reliant on

him for money . Strzelecki said publicly after Annabel disappeared that

. the marriage was not happy and he did not want her back. (Debelle

1998, 7) [emphasis added]

Debelle (1998) is describing relations of abuse. However, like Haran (1998), she stops short of actually naming Strzelecki.s behavior as domestic violence.

In her Northern Argus article, Hannagan (1998) does not even refer to Strzelecki.s violence. While Annabel is again depicted as a good mother and wife, Jim Strzelecki is represented as a kind and considerate husband:

even though there was a great age difference . She used to say he was kind

children back home on a holiday this year.. (Hannagan 1998, 1) [emphasis

Jim.s violence is again hidden in Pudney.s (2000) report in the Advertiser about Strzelecki.s suicide. Two years after disappearing, Annabel Strzelecki remains a bride:

2000, 11) [emphasis added]

Although Haran (1998), Debelle (1998), and Pudney (2000) portray Annabel Strzelecki as a .Filipino bride,. they also undermine the notion. All three refer to the length of her marriage. Annabel was not a newly married woman or a woman about to marry, whom we commonly refer to as brides. She had been married for nine years and can hardly be called a bride. The reporting here raises several questions. First, when does a Filipina cease to be a bride? Other women in similar situations are not described in the same way, and after marriage men are not referred to as grooms. Second, why do journalists persist in labeling Filipino women as brides when they do not fit the description? Third, how does a single event come to define a woman.s entire existence? Annabel.s life had a richness and significance beyond meeting her husband through an advertisement, a form of what is popularly called the .mail-order bride. trade. The term stigmatizes Filipino women, and the women themselves find the word offensive. Moreover, there is no corresponding term for the men who meet Filipino women through introduction agencies and advertisements. Journalists did not label Jim Strzelecki a .mail-order groom..

Olive and Charles shared Annabel.s story with me. They were the first people to meet Annabel when she arrived in Clare, and they helped her adjust to life in a new country. The three became good friends. Given their close relationship, journalists sought to interview Olive and Charles about Annabel.s disappearance. One of the most glaring aspects of Annabel.s relationship with Jim Strzelecki was the forty-four-year age difference. The age disparity was a key feature of the media reportage. A situation in which a sixty-threeyear- old man can go to the Philippines and marry a nineteen-year-old woman indicates profound power inequalities of sexism, racism, and class. To understand why Annabel married Jim, it is necessary to grasp the hardship of her life in an impoverished peasant family in rural Philippines and how a .kind. foreign man promised her a better life. Annabel desired the happiness she thought would come from establishing her own family away from the insecurities of her daily life.

Olive explains,

Because she.s the youngest in the family they used to ask her to help them

look after the children so they can go to work . [W]hen I ask her, .Why

did you have to marry him? He.s too old for you. You are too young for

him .. [S]he said, .Well this is my life .. She has a big family, that the

sisters and brothers have their children, and she just used to look after

them and they were not giving her anything . [W]hen this man came along

. he bought her clothes and bag . She.s young, but then this man showed

to her everything that he could in the Philippines, his fineness, his

generosity . I remember Annabel telling me, .Oh he.s like a millionaire

there. He.s giving money to everyone .. But I can tell that Annabel has

married him not for his money . All I can see on her is to raise her children

and be happy with her husband. (August 1999)

Newspaper images of Annabel as simply a young .mail-order bride. who married an elderly Australian man fail to capture Annabel.s dreams and longings for love in a caring marriage. They do not provide a nuanced account of Annabel.s life. While Annabel Strzelecki saw her .better life. as finding happiness in a loving family with her husband and children, Jim Strzelecki.s idea of a better life was a wife who would obey him absolutely and attend to his every need. Charles makes this clear:

[R]estricted life Annabel got out here. It was very restricted doing

everything . She had to conform to his beliefs and his ways . It was quite

obvious she never had any say in anything. (August 1999)

For example, Jim Strzelecki believed that televisions and telephones emitted poisonous rays, and he refused to have these appliances in the house. He thus denied Annabel and their children access to modes of communication that most Australians take for granted. Olive and Charles described the extreme abuse Annabel experienced in her marriage. Although they reveal a long history of domestic violence, they did not name it as such. This failure to name domestic violence was also a feature of the media reporting. In some cases,   Strzelecki.s violence was invisible. Hannagan (1998) further misrepresented Annabel.s relationship with Jim Strzelecki by misquoting Olive. Olive told me she did not say that Annabel had said her husband was kind and generous and had agreed she could take the children to the Philippines for a holiday. Violence was a large part of Annabel Strzelecki.s life with Jim Strzelecki. While it is central to her story, violence does not feature strongly in newspaper accounts of Annabel.s disappearance. It is absent, silenced. By not identifying or downplaying this violence, even sympathetic journalists misrepresented the reality of Annabel.s life. According to Charles and Olive, Jim Strzelecki was cruel and domineering. He tried to control Annabel.s every move. Annabel.s suffering was enormous:

Charles: He would expect her . to walk into Clare and walk back out

again . and they.d walk from the caravan park to Clare, which is . three,

four kilometers.

Olive: With a baby.

Further, Jim Strzelecki dominated Annabel.s interactions with their children. He did not allow her to make important decisions regarding them. His cruel treatment of their children and his refusal to permit Annabel a say in their upbringing were an increasing source of conflict in their marriage. Strzelecki saw any challenge to the harsh rules he imposed on his family as a threat to his authority, as Olive recounts:

She tried to avoid argument all the time . she preferred to be quiet. But

then as the children were growing older and needing more, like playing

outside with other children . attending parties also of other children so

they could enjoy their [childhood], and playing with toys . he disliked it

. Annabel told me, .It.s [my daughter.s] birthday yesterday .. So I

bought some books . and a teddy bear . And I gave each two dollars also,

and [Annabel.s children] were so happy. And Annabel was happy. After

that I could see Annabel was always very unhappy. And they had an

argument. [He] came to see me, .I don.t want you to give any gifts to my

children . I don.t want you to give them books or toys . I will be the one

to choose the books that my children will read .. He said to me, .Don.t

try to destroy my marriage.. (August 1999)

Charles: Annabel wanted to go back to visit the Philippines. And he would

let her go initially but she had to leave the two children behind. This is .

an insurance .

Olive: [Annabel.s mother] . advised her . not to leave . the kids because

of his . relationship with his children [from the previous marriage]. So

Annabel was very . determined to take the two kids . she even went to

this Australian friend to help her file an application for a passport for

the little girl. (August 1999)

Annabel Strzelecki.s stand against her husband was unsuccessful. She disappeared before she could take her children back to see their relations in the Philippines.

As part of his violent regime, Jim Strzelecki subjected his wife to social and emotional abuse. He made Annabel constantly accountable for her movements and tried to isolate her from friends. Strzelecki played psychological mind games in his attempts to confine Annabel in their house. He went to extreme lengths to make Annabel feel guilty for wanting contact with other people:

Charles: Another time she came here . and Jim walked in the back door

. He said, .I wanna be with you. I might die any minute and I want you

to be there when I die.. No reason in the wide, wide world why he should

die, but these are the things he used to say.

Olive: Yeah, because she asked permission to go out. And he said okay.

But after that, when she got home, they fought. He would disagree again

of that .

Charles: [H]e . collapsed one night on the floor . after a while he just

jumped up. He.d only feigned it. What he wanted to do was to find out

Annabel.s reaction; if it was for real life, just what would she do? This is

the type of thing he would do. (August 1999)

Despite her husband.s abuse, Annabel established a wide network of friends. This contact gave her the courage to challenge his authority in an attempt to improve her life and the lives of her children. As Annabel struggled to do something about her oppression, Strzelecki.s violence intensified as he tried to maintain his control over her:

Charles: He couldn.t make friends and he more or less wouldn.t let her

have friends . this is probably her downfall when she started seeing a little

bit more to life than what she.d been putting up with .

Olive: Well she was looking for a better life, to have a real family life in

bringing up her children . I even told Jim before, .If you choose the books

that your children read and you want everything to be done within your

own principle, what is the role of your wife then?. So those are the reasons

why Annabel was having problems already with him. He never gave her

freedom to choose. Never gave her freedom to decide for her children.

Suspect in missing wife case commits suicide

The Advertiser on June 20, 2000 reported that Wlodzimierz Strzelecki, 73, who was known as Jim, was found dead in his home at Clare, South Australia. He apparently took his own life.

His wife, Annabel Sabellano Strzelecki, has not been seen since she supposedly left home in the early hours of June 6, 1998. Her disappearance is being treated as a major crime.

After Mrs Strzelecki disappeared, her husband told police she had left with a man and a woman he had never met before that night. But friends insisted she would never have left her young children. The couple had lived in the Clare, South Australia area since 1989. They married in the Philippines when Annabel was 19 years old and Strzelecki, a former opal miner, was 63.

According to the newspaper, Mr Strzelecki said publicly he was not sorry she had gone. During an interview with The Advertiser he said, "No, I'm not upset. Do you expect me to be the grieving husband? It was not a happy marriage."

The officer in charge of the Major Crime Investigation Branch, Acting Superintendent Bill Prior, said that despite Mr Strzelecki's suicide, the inquiry into Annabel's disappearance and suspected murder would continue but he could not comment on specific details of the case. "He [Strzelecki] was one person we spoke to during the investigation," he said. "It [Mr Strzelecki's death] does not change the fact that we still need to find her."

Police reporter, Jeremy Pudney, of The Advertiser wrote that Mrs Strzelecki withdrew a small amount of cash from a bank the day before she vanished but never touched the account again. Police searched for her body in waterways and disused mine shafts throughout the area, in a camping spot near Port Augusta and in the couple's backyard. A van hired by Strzelecki in the same month that Annabel disappeared, in which he travelled some 1,500 km, was impounded by the police and tested for forensic evidence.

A husband confesses to murdering his wife, then takes his own life

Major Crime detectives believe the body of missing Clare mother Annabel Strzelecki lies in bushland north of Port Augusta — where her husband buried her.

Major Crime case officer Detective Brevet Sergeant Rebecca Rayner said detectives were corroborating the information the Polish immigrant revealed when he killed himself.

Sadly, Mr Strzelecki never left a suicide note confessing his crime — or where he had disposed of his wife’s remains. With the only suspect in the case dead, detectives are turning their efforts on locating Ms Strzelecki’s remains to return them to her family.

“He was the only identified person of interest so the investigation as such has been suspended, but we want to recover Annabel’s remains,’’ Det Bvt Sgt Rayner said.

“He told one friend what he had done, so there may be others he told. We are also seeking any information concerning his movements at or around the time she disappeared.

“At the time Annabel had two small children, who unfortunately today do not know where their mother is. They have a lot of unanswered questions and are unable to lay her to rest.’’

Rachael, now 25, still has fond memories of her mother despite the passage of almost 21 years.

She remembers her “kind and comforting presence’’, someone who would often sneak lollies in her and Richard’s school lunch boxes.

Rachael said she had thought about what had happened to her mother “every day’’ since her father had simply said her mother “had gone to Moomba to work’’ and vanished.

“It weighs on my mind constantly,’’ she said. “It has been really difficult to grieve without any sort of explanation, we have had to cope in our own way, rather than in a healthy way.’’

Rachael urged anyone who may have been told by her father where he buried her mother to come forward.

“Please, just say what you can — there is nothing to lose at this point. It would mean the world to us,’’ she said.

“It would give us closure. It would be like closing a book.’’

Ms Strzelecki was the second Filipino wife Jim had taken since he migrated to Australia in 1949.

He had five children from his first marriage which ended when his wife left him.

“He had multiple relationships with ladies from the Philippines,’’ Det Bvt Sgt Rayner said.

Annabel Sabellano left her family’s Filipino coconut plantation in 1989 when she was aged just 19.

She had been liaising with Mr Strzelecki, who was then aged 63, through a penpal group and they married in the Philippines, with her parents’ blessing, before she arrived in Clare.

Their marriage produced Richard and Rachael, who were later taken in by one of Mr Strzelecki’s daughter’s from his first failed marriage.

Annabel had a small circle of friends, who were also Filipino migrants and resided at Clare with their husbands. They told police they had last seen her on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 3.

Mr Strzelecki told detectives he last saw her on Friday, June 5, when he said she left with an unknown man and a woman. When interviewed he said the marriage was unhappy but he denied murdering her.

“He gave some details about the marriage and that she had been planning to move out,’’ Det Bvt Sgt Rayner said.

When detectives discovered he had rented a van shortly after she was last seen, he simply said he “needed some time away’’ and had driven north to Port Augusta and a location at Carriewerloo station.

“A lot of investigational work was put into tracing the route he took and substantiating his story,’’ Det Bvt Sgt Rayner said.

“His story revolved around him moving the family after Annabel left on June 5. He said he needed a few days away after Annabel left and said he drove to Tent Hill where he said he once worked.

“He gave a version of events on which roads he took, where he stayed and said he burnt some rubbish there.’’

Despite exhaustive searches of several locations at Tent Hill, nothing of significance was located.

Investigations discovered Mr Strzelecki booked into the Augusta Hotel on Sunday, June 14, but somewhat curiously, he did not stay in the room he had booked for that night. “It could have been an attempt to create an alibi to place himself there at a certain point in time,’’ Det Bvt Sgt Rayner said.

Several months after his wife vanished, Mr Strzelecki told The Advertiser he did not know where she was.

“No, I’m not upset. Do you expect me to be the grieving husband?’’ he said.

Detectives believe it is possible there may be people in the Clare community who may still have knowledge that could assist in locating Ms Strzelecki’s remains, although they may well be elderly now.

A short time before his suicide Mr Strzelecki confided in a male friend they had a troubled relationship and that he had killed his wife and had “disposed of her in the far-north and no one would find her’’.

“We’d like to hear from anyone else he may have confided in,’’ Det Bvt Sgt Rayner said.

A reward of up to $200,000 is available for anyone who provides information that leads to Ms Strzelecki’s remains being recovered.