Case File 016-035: The Greyson Search

Incident Overview

On 28 July 2018, Louise Elizabeth Jeffries attended Hobart Police Station to report her brother, Jamie Nigel Greyson, as a missing person. Jamie, aged thirty-four, had been uncontactable for several days. His mobile phone was unreachable, his regular pattern of communication with Louise had ceased without explanation, and his partner Luke Smith had offered accounts of Jamie's whereabouts that Louise found inconsistent and unconvincing.

Louise simultaneously reported her son Kain Thomas Jeffries as missing — a separate case file (022-067) was opened for that investigation. The two disappearances were operationally linked from the outset, sharing a common address of interest and a common person of interest in Luke Smith, but were maintained as distinct investigations reflecting the different circumstances and timelines of each disappearance.

The Jamie Greyson case was assigned to Detectives Karl Jenkins and Sarah Lahey of Southern Division's Criminal Investigation Branch. It remains unsolved. Jamie Greyson has not been seen or heard from since approximately late July 2018. The precise date of his disappearance has never been established.

The Missing Person

Jamie Nigel Greyson was born on 18 December 1983 at Royal Hobart Hospital, the youngest surviving child of Peter Greyson, a lawyer, and Nola Greyson, a nurse. His older sister Louise, born in 1971, was twelve years his senior. A younger sister, Sarah, died in childhood in 1995.

Jamie's upbringing was marked by frequent relocation. The family moved from Tasmania to Elizabeth, South Australia in 1989, then to Brisbane, Queensland in 1992. Jamie completed his schooling in Brisbane before undertaking a Certificate III in Individual Support (Aged Care) through a Brisbane TAFE. He worked in various aged care facilities throughout the city during his twenties, developing a professional reputation for compassionate, reliable care.

In 2008, Jamie relocated to Tasmania, securing a position as an aged care nurse at Vaucluse Nursing Home in Lindisfarne. His employer described him as one of their most valued staff members — dependable, capable, and possessed of a natural empathy that made him exceptionally effective with residents and families. He had not taken unplanned leave at any point during his employment. His colleagues reported no indication of personal difficulties, no mention of plans to travel, and no change in demeanour in the weeks preceding his disappearance.

Jamie had been in a relationship with Luke Nathaniel Smith since 2008. The couple resided together at a property in Berriedale. They owned two Shih Tzu dogs, Henri and Duke.

Jamie had no criminal record, no history of substance abuse, and no known debts. His financial records showed regular income from Vaucluse, modest expenditure patterns, and no history of unusual transactions — with one significant exception that emerged during the investigation.

The Timeline Problem

The Jamie Greyson case is complicated from its outset by a fundamental uncertainty: the date of his disappearance is not known.

Unlike the other cases consolidated under Operation Vanished, in which the disappearance could be fixed to a specific date through witness observation, phone records, or known movements, Jamie Greyson's vanishing occurred within a window of time that the investigation was never able to narrow with precision.

What is known is this: Jamie maintained regular phone contact with his sister Louise, typically calling every few days. At some point in the week preceding 28 July, these calls ceased. Louise's subsequent attempts to reach Jamie by phone went to voicemail. Text messages received no reply. The phone was not transmitting — either switched off, destroyed, or in a location without network coverage.

Louise's initial response was concern rather than alarm. She contacted Luke Smith, seeking explanation. Luke told her that Jamie had gone to Melbourne to take a break from their relationship. The explanation was specific enough to sound plausible but vague enough to resist verification — no departure date was provided, no return date suggested, no flight or accommodation details offered.

The investigation subsequently established that Jamie had not boarded any flight departing Tasmania in the relevant period. He had not been recorded on any Spirit of Tasmania sailing. His passport had not been used. No airline, bus company, or transport operator could confirm his presence as a passenger on any service leaving the state. The Melbourne explanation, offered independently by both Luke Smith and later by Gladys Cramer, was unsupported by any evidence and contradicted by the physical evidence that was available.

Jamie's employer, Vaucluse Nursing Home, confirmed that Jamie had not attended work, requested leave, or made contact with the facility since approximately 23 July. His failure to appear for rostered shifts without notice was entirely out of character — in a decade of employment, Jamie had never missed a shift without prior arrangement. The facility had attempted to contact him without success and had been on the verge of escalating their concern to welfare authorities when Louise's police report was filed.

The Financial Anomaly

Jamie Greyson's bank records, obtained by investigators on 28 July, revealed a pattern of activity that significantly altered the investigation's assessment of Luke Smith's involvement.

Regular income deposits from Vaucluse continued on their scheduled cycle. Regular direct debits for rent, utilities, and subscriptions continued to process. Routine expenditure — groceries, fuel, incidental purchases — showed normal patterns through approximately 22-23 July, then ceased entirely.

Against this backdrop of normality, a single transaction stood out: a large cash withdrawal from Jamie's account made at an ATM after the point at which Jamie appeared to have already disappeared. The amount was substantially larger than any previous withdrawal in the account's history.

CCTV footage from the ATM confirmed that the person conducting the withdrawal was not Jamie Greyson. It was Luke Smith.

Further review of CCTV from the same day showed Smith attending a bank branch in person to withdraw a considerable sum from his own account. He then proceeded to the ATM where he accessed Jamie's account. The sequence — his own funds first, then Jamie's — suggested premeditation rather than impulse, a person methodically gathering cash from every available source.

The withdrawals raised immediate questions. How Smith obtained access to Jamie's account — whether Jamie had shared his PIN during their relationship, whether Smith had acquired the details by other means — could not be determined without interviewing Smith, which was never achieved. The purpose of the combined withdrawals was never established. The cash was never traced. Whether the funds were used for travel, to pay a third party, to finance activities connected to the broader pattern of disappearances, or for some other purpose remains unknown.

For investigators, the footage eliminated the ambiguity that a withdrawal in Jamie's name might have carried. This was not a missing person accessing his own funds in preparation for voluntary departure. This was the person of interest in that missing person's case accessing the missing person's bank account after the missing person had ceased all other activity. The distinction was significant — it represented the strongest direct evidence connecting Luke Smith to the circumstances of Jamie's disappearance, falling short of proof of harm but establishing beyond reasonable doubt that Smith had acted upon Jamie's absence rather than merely witnessed it.

The evidence was documented and included in the Person of Interest report compiled on 1 August. It was not, however, sufficient on its own to support an arrest warrant — unauthorised access to a partner's bank account, while criminal, did not establish that Smith was responsible for Jamie's disappearance, only that he had exploited it. The investigation required Smith's testimony to progress further. That testimony was never obtained.

Louise's Visit to the Property

Before reporting to police, Louise Jeffries drove to the Berriedale address on the morning of 27 July — the day after she had sent her son Kain to check on Jamie, and the day after Kain himself failed to return.

Luke Smith answered the door. He told Louise that Jamie was in Melbourne, taking a break from their relationship. He told her that Kain had never arrived at the property.

Louise observed Jamie's vehicle parked in the driveway. The presence of the car at a property whose occupant claimed Jamie was interstate was, for Louise, irreconcilable with Luke's account. She did not observe either of Jamie's dogs at the property. She did not observe Kain's vehicle.

Louise spent a further day attempting to reach both Jamie and Kain before attending Hobart Police Station on the morning of 28 July.

The Berriedale Address

The Berriedale property — the residence Jamie shared with Luke Smith — occupied a central position across multiple investigations during the July-August 2018 period.

Police attended the property on multiple occasions. Luke Smith was never present at any of these visits. His sustained absence from his own residence during a period when he was a person of interest in linked missing persons investigations was noted but did not, without additional evidence, provide grounds for forced entry.

On one occasion, officers who had followed a vehicle registered to Jamie Greyson observed Gladys Cramer driving the car to the Berriedale address. Cramer's operation of a missing person's vehicle raised immediate investigative concern and provided the basis for an interview at the property.

Cramer stated that the situation surrounding Jamie's absence was "all a misunderstanding" and that Jamie was safe. She stated that Luke was in Melbourne, taking a break from the relationship. Investigators noted the inversion: Luke had told Louise that Jamie was in Melbourne; Cramer told police that Luke was in Melbourne. Each account placed a different person interstate, and neither could be verified.

Cramer stated she had no knowledge of Kain Jeffries' visit to the property or his current whereabouts.

Jamie's vehicle — which Louise had observed at the property on 26 July and which Cramer had been observed driving — subsequently disappeared. It was never recovered. Its removal from the record added another vanished item to a case already defined by things that could not be found.

During attendance at the property, officers observed details that warranted documentation — the interior condition, the absence of the dogs, the presence of items inconsistent with a household whose occupant was merely travelling interstate. A formal surveillance operation conducted by Detective Jenkins on 29 July documented additional observations, including an accumulation of black garbage bags within the property and reports from a neighbour of visits by an unidentified woman.

The Berriedale property was subsequently destroyed by arson. The fire eliminated whatever forensic evidence the house might have yielded. Whether the arson was connected to the disappearances or coincidental has not been determined.

Gladys Cramer

Gladys Cramer's involvement in the Greyson investigation extended beyond the single encounter at the Berriedale property.

Cramer was first encountered during a traffic stop on 29 July, when officers observed a vehicle registered to Jamie Greyson being driven erratically through Glenorchy. The driver was identified as Cramer rather than the registered owner — a circumstance that immediately connected her to the missing persons investigation.

Cramer's subsequent interview at the Berriedale property produced the "all a misunderstanding" assurance documented above. Her possession of Jamie's vehicle was not satisfactorily explained. Her knowledge of the property's layout and contents suggested familiarity that extended beyond casual acquaintance, though the nature and duration of her association with Luke Smith and/or Jamie Greyson was not established.

Cramer's vehicle — a blue 2016 Toyota Corolla Hatch — was later found abandoned near the Myrtle Forest Walking Trail in Collinsvale following a pursuit. Evidence recovered from the vehicle and surrounding area was documented but did not directly advance the Greyson investigation.

Cramer was connected to multiple incidents during the July-August 2018 period, including the suspected manslaughter of Detective Sarah Lahey on 8 August 2018. She was arrested, charged, and placed on bail. She did not comply with bail conditions and has not been seen since.

Luke Smith

Luke Smith was never formally interviewed by police in connection with the disappearance of Jamie Greyson.

Smith was identified as a person of interest from the moment Louise filed her report. As Jamie's partner and the sole occupant of the shared residence, his account of Jamie's movements was central to any investigation. His claim that Jamie was in Melbourne was contradicted by Jamie's vehicle remaining at the property and by the absence of any evidence that Jamie had left Tasmania.

Smith was not at the Berriedale property during any police attendance. His movements during late July 2018 were largely undocumented. A Person of Interest report compiled on 1 August identified Smith's name in connection with multiple disappearances reported during the same period — not only Jamie Greyson, but also Nial Triffett and Adrian Pafistis, both of whom had connections to Smith through phone records, appointments, or business dealings.

On 2 August 2018, Smith was reportedly sighted at Jeffries Manor, Granton. Detective Karl Jenkins attended to confront Smith. Both men disappeared during the encounter, under circumstances documented in a separate case file.

Smith has never been located, interviewed, or charged.

The Dogs

A detail that recurred in Louise Jeffries' reports and that investigators noted without being able to resolve: Jamie's two Shih Tzu dogs, Henri and Duke, were not at the Berriedale property during any police visit or during Louise's own attendance on 27 July.

Jamie was devoted to the dogs. Colleagues at Vaucluse confirmed he spoke about them frequently, kept photographs of them at work, and arranged his schedule around their care needs. Louise described the dogs as central to Jamie's daily life and stated that Jamie would not have left them unattended or surrendered them to another person's care without making arrangements she would have been informed of.

Luke Smith, in his conversation with Louise, did not account for the dogs' absence. Gladys Cramer, when asked about the dogs during her interview at the property, stated they were "being looked after" but did not specify by whom or where.

Henri and Duke have not been located. Their absence from the Berriedale property — like the cash withdrawal, like the Melbourne story, like the car that appeared and disappeared — represents another element of the case that suggests deliberate arrangement rather than spontaneous departure, without providing sufficient evidence to establish what the arrangement was or who made it.

Connection to Operation Vanished

The Greyson case was among the first to be consolidated under the Operation Vanished designation. Jamie's disappearance predated the formal cluster — he was already missing when Louise reported him on 28 July — but his case shared the geographic proximity, the evidentiary void, and the connection to Luke Smith that characterised the broader pattern.

The Person of Interest report on Luke Smith, compiled on 1 August, identified his name across the Greyson, Triffett, and Pafistis investigations. Phone records, business dealings, and witness accounts from separate cases independently pointed to the same individual. The convergence confirmed what Detective Jenkins had suspected since the Triffett report on 29 July: the cases were not coincidental. Something — or someone — connected them.

That the connecting figure was Jamie Greyson's own partner added a dimension to the Greyson case that the other investigations did not share. In the Triffett, Owen, and Pafistis cases, Luke Smith was an external figure — a name on a phone record, a client in a diary. In Jamie's case, Luke Smith was the person who shared his home, his bed, his daily life. Whatever Smith's involvement in the broader pattern, its implications for Jamie were more intimate and more troubling than for any other missing person in the cluster.

Current Status

The case remains open under the Operation Vanished cold case review framework. Annual reviews have not produced new evidence or new leads. Luke Smith and Gladys Cramer, the two individuals most likely to possess relevant information, remain missing. The Berriedale property no longer exists. Jamie's vehicle was never recovered.

Vaucluse Nursing Home held Jamie's position for three months before filling it. Residents who had been in his care were informed only that he was no longer available. Several families wrote letters to the facility asking after him. The letters were forwarded to Louise, who could not answer them. She was dead before some of them arrived.

Louise Jeffries was killed at Jeffries Manor on 11 August 2018, during the incident subsequently designated the Jeffries Manor Massacre. She was forty-seven years old. The circumstances of her death are documented in a separate investigation.

The person who reported Jamie missing, who drove to the Berriedale property and confronted Luke Smith, who provided the most detailed account of Jamie's communication patterns and the timeline of his silence, who sat in Hobart Police Station and insisted that something was wrong when the evidence was still ambiguous enough to permit doubt — that person did not survive long enough to see the investigation reach its first annual review.

Jamie's father, Peter Greyson, was informed of his disappearance and interviewed by police. He could not provide information about Jamie's movements in late July. Peter, by then in declining health, attended the police station with the assistance of a carer. He provided a statement confirming that Jamie had not contacted her in the relevant period, which was not unusual — their communication was infrequent at the best of times. Peter has not maintained regular contact with the cold case review team.

Jamie Nigel Greyson is classified as a missing person. He was thirty-four years old. He was an aged care nurse who was good at his job and gentle with people who needed gentleness. He rang his sister every few days because that was what they did. Sometime in late July 2018, the calls stopped. Nine days after the detective investigating his disappearance vanished, and six days before the investigation lost its lead witness to violence at the same property that had already consumed her son, her daughter-in-law, and her unborn grandchild, the calls had already been silent for weeks. Nobody who loved Jamie enough to keep asking is left to ask.