Case File 019-054: Fences and Missing Links

Incident Overview

On 29 July 2018, Jenny Alexandra Triffett attended Hobart Police Station to report her husband, Nial Phillip Triffett, as a missing person. Nial, aged thirty-two, had left the family home in Fern Tree on the morning of 28 July to meet a prospective client for his fencing business and had not returned. His mobile phone was intermittently unreachable, his work vehicle was missing, and a text message received from his phone the previous evening had been dismissed by Jenny as inconsistent with Nial's manner of communication.

Jenny had contacted police by telephone the previous evening, 28 July. Officers Langley and Cribthorpe attended the Fern Tree residence, took a preliminary statement, and assessed the situation as not meeting the threshold for immediate missing persons investigation — a determination influenced by the text message received during their visit, which they interpreted as evidence of voluntary absence. Jenny's attendance at the station the following morning represented a formal escalation of her concerns.

The case was assigned to Detective Glen Crosswell of Southern Division's Criminal Investigation Branch. Detectives Karl Jenkins and Sarah Lahey, already engaged in linked missing persons investigations (Case Files 016-035 and 022-067), provided investigative support when the Triffett case was identified as operationally connected to their existing caseload.

The case remains unsolved. Nial Triffett has not been seen or heard from since the morning of 28 July 2018.

The Missing Person

Nial Phillip Triffett was born on 12 March 1986 in Hobart, Tasmania. He was a self-employed fencing contractor operating under the business name Triffett Fencing Solutions, a firm he had established and built through personal reputation and quality of workmanship. By mid-2018, the business had earned a strong reputation in the greater Hobart area, though it was experiencing financial difficulties — a combination of seasonal fluctuations in demand and accumulating tax obligations that had placed increasing strain on cash flow.

Nial was married to Jenny Alexandra Triffett, née Hodgman, a drama teacher at St. Michael's Collegiate School. The couple resided in Fern Tree, a residential suburb on the lower slopes of kunanyi/Mount Wellington, with their son Samuel "Sammy" Phillip Triffett, born 24 October 2014, who was three years old at the time of his father's disappearance. The family also owned a Dalmatian named Buffy.

Nial had no criminal record, no history of substance abuse, and no prior history of unexplained absence. His financial difficulties, while genuine, were of the kind common to small business operators and did not suggest circumstances that would prompt flight or voluntary disappearance. Colleagues and clients described him as reliable, skilled, and committed to his work. Friends and family described a devoted husband and father whose life centred on Jenny and Sammy.

The Morning of 28 July

The events of 28 July 2018 as reported by Jenny Triffett are as follows.

Nial received a phone call early that morning. Jenny, who was in the house at the time, did not hear the content of the call but observed that Nial appeared agitated or preoccupied afterwards. She saw him staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror with an expression she interpreted as uncertainty about whether to attend the meeting.

Nial told Jenny he was going to meet a potential client — possibly a past client — about a fencing job. He indicated he would return within a few hours. He departed the Fern Tree residence in his work vehicle, a forest green 2015 Ford Ranger utility sign-written with Triffett Fencing Solutions branding, registration G42-7NP.

He did not return.

Jenny's account also referenced a phone call received by Nial the previous evening, 27 July, which she described as leaving him tense and distracted. The investigation subsequently determined that the two calls originated from different numbers. The evening call of 27 July was traced to a source unrelated to the persons of interest in the broader Operation Vanished investigation. The morning call of 28 July was traced to a number associated with Luke Smith — a name that, by the time this connection was established, had already appeared in two other active missing persons investigations.

The Afternoon and Evening of 28 July

Jenny Triffett reported that she took an afternoon nap on 28 July, leaving Sammy in the house. When she woke, she discovered Sammy outside in the backyard unattended. The family's Dalmatian, Buffy, was no longer at the property. When asked, Sammy stated that "a man" had taken the dog.

Jenny also observed that Nial's home office — a workspace within the Fern Tree residence — appeared to have been disturbed. Items were not where she expected them to be, though she could not identify whether anything specific had been taken.

Nial's work vehicle was not at the property. His phone, when called, alternated between ringing without answer and going directly to voicemail.

The combination of Nial's failure to return, the missing dog, the disturbed office, and Sammy's account of a man at the property prompted Jenny to contact police by telephone on the evening of 28 July.

The Initial Police Attendance

Officers Langley and Cribthorpe of Southern Division responded to Jenny's call and attended the Fern Tree residence on the evening of 28 July.

The officers took a preliminary statement from Jenny, during which she recounted the morning's events, Nial's failure to return, the missing dog, and the disturbed office. Jenny's mother, Rowena Hodgman, was present at the property providing childcare assistance.

The officers' assessment of the situation was shaped by several factors: the relatively short duration of Nial's absence (less than twelve hours), the absence of evidence suggesting violence or coercion, and the nature of his departure (voluntary, to attend a business meeting). The line of questioning, as Jenny subsequently reported, included inquiries about the state of the couple's relationship and their intimate life — questions that Jenny interpreted as reflecting an assumption that Nial's absence might be voluntary and personal rather than involuntary.

During the officers' attendance, a text message was received on Jenny's phone from Nial's number. The message read: "I'll be home late. Don't wait up for me. Nial."

Jenny immediately stated that the message had not been written by Nial. She cited the tone, the phrasing, and specific details of the message's construction — including the use of a full stop after his name — as inconsistent with her husband's established communication habits. The officers noted her objection but assessed the message as reducing the likelihood that Nial's absence was involuntary.

The officers departed without initiating a formal missing persons investigation. Officer Cribthorpe suggested that if Nial had not returned by the following afternoon, Jenny should attend the station to file a formal report.

From an institutional perspective, the text message cannot be attributed with certainty. It was sent from Nial's phone number, but the investigation was never able to confirm whether Nial himself composed and sent the message, whether another person with access to his phone sent it, or whether the message was composed under duress. The timing — arriving precisely while police officers were present, at the moment when Jenny's report was being assessed — was noted by subsequent investigators as either coincidental or suggestive of monitoring.

The Formal Report — 29 July

Jenny Triffett attended Hobart Police Station the following morning. She encountered initial resistance at the front desk, where the duty receptionist — Linda Triffett, Nial's sister and Jenny's sister-in-law — was aware of the previous evening's text message and initially echoed the earlier officers' assessment that Nial's absence did not warrant a formal report.

Detective Karl Jenkins, present in the station, intervened and took Jenny's statement personally. Jenkins, already carrying the Greyson and Jeffries investigations, recognised elements in Jenny's account that echoed patterns he was tracking across his existing cases — a person who left to meet someone and didn't return, a phone that went silent, a text message that arrived at a convenient moment to deflect concern.

Jenkins requested Nial's phone records. When the records identified Luke Smith's number as the source of the morning call on 28 July, the Triffett case became operationally linked to the Greyson and Jeffries investigations. The name that had appeared in those cases as the person of interest — the missing man's partner, the man who was never at home when police called — now appeared in a third case, this time as the last known person to have contacted the missing man before his disappearance.

The Vehicle

A Be On The Lookout alert was issued for Nial's 2015 Ford Ranger on 29 July. The vehicle, sign-written with Triffett Fencing Solutions branding and bearing registration G42-7NP, was distinctive and would have been readily identifiable.

The vehicle was last confirmed in the Mount Nelson area on 28 July — a detail established through a combination of CCTV review and witness sighting. Mount Nelson is a residential suburb on Hobart's southern fringe, approximately fifteen minutes' drive from Fern Tree. Its presence in that area was consistent with Nial travelling to a client meeting, though no specific address or client in Mount Nelson was identified through the investigation.

The vehicle was not recovered. Despite the BOLO alert, statewide circulation of the registration details, and the vehicle's distinctive sign-writing, it was not sighted after 28 July. It was not found abandoned, not identified in any impound facility, and not located through any subsequent investigation. Like every other vehicle associated with the Operation Vanished cases, it vanished as completely as its owner.

Buffy

The disappearance of the family's Dalmatian, Buffy, from the Fern Tree property on 28 July introduced an element to the case that conventional investigation could not readily accommodate.

Jenny's account placed Buffy at the property when Nial left that morning. By the time Jenny woke from her afternoon nap, the dog was gone. Sammy, aged three, stated that "a man" had taken Buffy. The reliability of a three-year-old's account is inherently limited, but the statement was documented and considered alongside the other evidence.

The dog's disappearance, combined with the disturbed home office and Sammy's account of a visitor, suggested that someone attended the Fern Tree property during the afternoon of 28 July — after Nial's departure and while Jenny was asleep. Whether this person was Nial returning briefly, Luke Smith, Gladys Cramer, or an unidentified third party could not be determined.

Buffy was never recovered. No sighting of the dog was reported.

The Disturbed Office

Jenny reported that Nial's home office appeared to have been disturbed during the afternoon of 28 July. She could not specify what, if anything, had been removed, only that the arrangement of items did not match her expectations.

Forensic examination of the office was not conducted during the initial police attendance on 28 July, as no formal investigation had yet been opened. By the time the case was formally assigned following Jenny's 29 July report, the evidentiary value of the scene had been compromised by the passage of time and routine use of the residence.

The nature of the disturbance — whether it represented a search conducted by an intruder, items removed by Nial himself before or after his departure, or simply a reorganisation that Jenny hadn't been aware of — was never established. The office contained business records for Triffett Fencing Solutions, and investigators speculated that financial documentation or client records may have been the target of any search, though this remained conjecture.

Connection to Operation Vanished

The identification of Luke Smith's phone number in Nial Triffett's call records on the morning of 28 July represented a pivotal moment in the broader investigation that would become Operation Vanished.

Until that point, the Greyson and Jeffries cases had been linked to each other through family connection and a shared address of interest, but their connection to any wider pattern was suspected rather than confirmed. The appearance of Luke Smith's name in the Triffett investigation — as the last person known to have called Nial before his disappearance — established the first concrete evidentiary link between the Greyson-Jeffries cases and a disappearance involving an unrelated individual.

For Detective Jenkins, who had been tracking Luke Smith as a person of interest since Louise Jeffries' report on 28 July, the connection was the confirmation he had been seeking. Smith's name was now associated with three missing persons across two separate investigations. The pattern was no longer speculative.

The Triffett case was subsequently consolidated under the Operation Vanished designation when the coordinated investigation was established on 1 August.

Jenny and Sammy Triffett

On 4 August 2018, Jenny and Sammy Triffett were reported missing from the Fern Tree residence. The circumstances of their disappearance — occurring seven days after Nial's, from the same property — added the case to the growing constellation of linked disappearances that Operation Vanished was struggling to contain.

Jenny's mother, Rowena Hodgman, reported the disappearance. Jenny had not attended work, had not contacted family, and was not reachable by phone. Sammy was not at the property. The family's vehicle — separate from Nial's work ute — was subsequently not recovered.

The disappearance of Jenny and Sammy transformed the Triffett case from a single missing person investigation into a whole-family disappearance. The evidentiary and emotional implications were severe: the reporting party in the original investigation had herself become a missing person, removing the investigation's most detailed witness and most motivated advocate.

Jenny Triffett has not been seen since 4 August 2018. Sammy Triffett has not been seen since 4 August 2018.

Current Status

The case remains open under the Operation Vanished cold case review framework. No new evidence has emerged since the investigation's active phase concluded in late 2018. Luke Smith, whose phone number provided the only confirmed connection between Nial Triffett and the broader pattern of disappearances, has not been located.

Nial's work vehicle was never recovered. Buffy was never found. The text message sent from Nial's phone on the evening of 28 July was never attributed to a confirmed sender. The person who visited the Fern Tree property that afternoon — if Sammy's account is accurate — was never identified.

Rowena Hodgman lost her daughter, her son-in-law, and her grandson within the space of a week. She reported Jenny and Sammy's disappearance with the same station that had sent officers to Jenny's house five days earlier and told her to wait and see. The officers who attended that evening were not negligent — their assessment, given the information available at the time, was within the bounds of standard procedure. But procedure, in this case, cost the investigation twelve hours it did not have, and the family it was designed to protect was gone before anyone recognised what they were dealing with.

Nial Phillip Triffett is classified as a missing person. He was thirty-two years old. He built fences for a living, and he was good at it. He left home on the morning of 28 July 2018 to meet a client who might help save his struggling business. His wife kissed him goodbye. His three-year-old son was playing in the house. His dog was in the yard. By evening, the dog was gone. By the next week, so were his wife and son. The client he went to meet has never been identified to the investigation's satisfaction, and the phone number that called him that morning belongs to a man who vanished five days later from a property on the other side of the city, taking every answer with him.