Buried Secrets: The Tragedy of Jodie Larcombe

Thirty-seven years on, a father still searches, a mother died grieving, and justice remains heartbreakingly incomplete

Jodie Maree Larcombe was 21 years old when she disappeared on December 22, 1987. That’s the polite, legal way of saying it. But “disappeared” doesn’t begin to do it justice. She was abducted. Taken. Vanished. One minute she was on her way to drop off Christmas presents in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg, and the next, she was gone. Her family never saw her again. Her parents didn’t get a phone call. Her friends never got their gifts. And the world would soon learn that Jodie hadn’t simply “gone missing”—she had become the victim of one of the most evil and gut-wrenching murders in Victorian history.

Jodie wasn’t a wild child. She wasn’t into anything shady. She was just a kind-hearted, down-to-earth young woman. On that summer day in '87, her plan was innocent and simple: see some friends, spread a bit of cheer, and get home for the holidays. She was last seen near Bell Street, Coburg. Then—nothing. A blank space. The kind that families never recover from.

What followed was agony. Her family launched a desperate campaign for answers. Posters, news interviews, door-knocking, begging for information. Every day that passed without a lead felt like a century. Her father, Ken Larcombe, became a man with one mission: find out what happened to his daughter. He pushed through years of silence, grief, and frustration. Jodie’s mother, Dorothy, tried to hold it together, but the weight of it all slowly crushed her. As the years ticked by, and no answers came, the emotional toll began to tear at the seams of their lives.

Then, seven years later, there was a break in the case.

In June 1994, police arrested a man named Daryl Francis Suckling. And the moment they brought him in, things started falling into place—horribly, terrifyingly so. Suckling was already known to authorities, a deeply disturbed individual with a long rap sheet and even longer list of red flags. When police searched his property, they made a chilling discovery: Jodie’s belongings. Her clothes. Her dental plate. Items she was wearing when she disappeared. The message was loud and clear—Jodie Larcombe had died a violent, terrifying death at the hands of a sadistic predator.

But it got worse.

While in prison, Suckling made a stomach-turning confession to a fellow inmate. Not only did he admit to murdering Jodie, he bragged about mutilating her. He talked about dismembering her body, keeping trophies, even planning to wear parts of her as jewelry. It wasn’t just murder—it was depravity on a level that defies comprehension. That confession became key in his conviction. In 1996, he was sentenced to life behind bars. No parole. No mercy. But still—no body.

For all their efforts, Jodie’s family never got the one thing they truly wanted: to bring her home. Suckling, in true monster fashion, refused to reveal where he’d hidden her body. He maintained his sick grip on the Larcombe family by withholding that final truth. Even as he rotted in prison, he clung to control. That’s what predators like him do—they manipulate, they withhold, and they never give closure.

Years passed. The case went cold, but the pain never did. Ken Larcombe fought to keep Jodie’s memory in the public eye, begging the system not to forget her. Meanwhile, Suckling taunted the world with cryptic statements. He hinted he might talk. He dropped vague locations. He threw out cruel red herrings. And worst of all, he tried to use Jodie’s remains as leverage—angling for more privileges or possible leniency in return for disclosing where she was buried. To Ken Larcombe, that was the final insult.

In 2021, a fresh tip reignited hope. Suckling told police that he may have buried Jodie in bushland near Mourquong, just across the New South Wales border from Mildura. It was remote, thick with scrub, a needle-in-a-haystack kind of area. Police launched a major search. Specialist units combed the land. Cadaver dogs sniffed every patch of dirt. They pulled up the earth and scoured every inch. For days, it looked like a breakthrough might finally come.

But once again—nothing. No bones. No clothing. No trace.

Suckling died a few months later, in September 2021, in prison at the age of 85. A death from natural causes, sure—but let’s not pretend it was peaceful. He died the way he lived: a coward to the end, taking the truth with him to the grave. The secrets he held were his final act of violence. Jodie’s father, Ken, described it perfectly. Suckling didn’t just kill Jodie—he stole the ending. He left the book unfinished. And now, with his death, the chapter is likely closed forever.

The damage didn’t stop there. Dorothy Larcombe, Jodie’s mother, was haunted by the loss for decades. The horror of knowing your daughter is gone, brutally murdered, and still not being able to bury her? It’s a type of torment that most of us will never understand. In time, Dorothy took her own life—yet another victim of Suckling’s cruelty. She died carrying the ache of not knowing. Of not being able to say goodbye.

Ken, now in his older years, remains the rock. He built a small roadside memorial in the Mourquong area. It’s not much—some flowers, a plaque, a few tokens of remembrance—but it’s all he has. That stretch of road has become his place to connect with his daughter. It’s where he goes to talk to her, to remember her laugh, to feel like she’s still near. And still, after all these years, he holds out a sliver of hope that someone might stumble across something—anything—that will finally bring her home.

But that hope is dimming. With Suckling gone, the last person who knew the full truth is no longer breathing. And unless fate intervenes, Jodie Larcombe may remain one of Australia’s most haunting cold cases—one with a name, a face, a grieving family, but no resting place.

This isn’t just a story about a murder. It’s a story about trauma that never ends. It’s about the failures of a justice system that couldn’t deliver full closure. It’s about a family shattered. And it’s about a girl who deserved so much more than to become a statistic.

Jodie Larcombe should be here today. She should have had the chance to build a life, to grow old, to be surrounded by people who loved her. Instead, she’s a memory, a roadside shrine, a whisper in the wind of the Australian bushland. And her killer? He got to die in a bed. Jodie didn’t even get a burial.

So if you’re reading this, don’t let it end here. Say her name. Share her story. Keep the memory of Jodie alive—not as a victim, but as a daughter, a friend, a person who mattered.

Because as long as people remember her, as long as her story is told, then Daryl Suckling didn’t win.