Former detective’s verdict on Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez’s mystery disappearance
But that’s the nightmare Vinciane Delforge has lived for the past three years, ever since her son Theo Hayez vanished without a trace.
“I really thought Australia was a safe destination, because there are so many young people travelling to Australia,” she said.
Hayez, 18, was backpacking around Australia on the trip of a lifetime when he disappeared on a night out in Byron Bay in 2019.
Speaking publicly for the first time on 60 Minutes, Delforge said it was completely out of character for her son, who was just days away from coming home to Belgium.
“He was very happy. He was also looking forward to coming back home to see his family again,” she told reporter Tara Brown.
There have been many theories about what might have happened to Hayez but with no sign of him since, all that speculation has gone nowhere.
‘I would be treating it as suspicious circumstances’
Local police believe he died in a tragic accident while trying to climb a headland alone in the middle of the night, but Delforge isn’t convinced.
“He told me that he would be extremely careful, that he would always calculate the risks. He would never jump off a cliff,” she said.
“I couldn’t believe that he would have been alone, walking on this trail in the bush all by himself.”
Having examined the latest evidence in Hayez’s disappearance, former homicide detective Gary Jubelin agrees.
“I would be treating it as suspicious circumstances,” he said.
In a special investigation, Jubelin used critical GPS data from the young man’s phone to retrace his confounding final steps leading up to his disappearance.
The digital trail showed Hayez heading back towards his hostel after being kicked out of a bar that night, until he made a strange stop at some local cricket nets.
“I keep coming back to the reasons why he might spend seven minutes here,” Jubelin said.
“And I can’t for the life of me think other than he’s speaking to someone.”
It’s there where it seems Hayez’s plans drastically changed, as the 18-year-old began heading toward a beach in the opposite direction from his accommodation.
‘If you want to go on living, there is a time when you need to stop’
The unusual and difficult path he took to get there was too precise to stumble across, leading Jubelin to believe he was led there.
“I choose my words carefully. The evidence that’s presented, that I’ve had access to, is suggestive of the fact that he was in company with someone,” Jubelin said.
That someone may know what really happened to Hayez, with the last GPS data showing him simply sitting on the beach.
And while Jubelin is confident Hayez didn’t commit suicide or intentionally disappear, he also refused to rule out misadventure.
“It could still be an accident. It could be something happened, that he ran away from the people,” Jubelin said.
“You can’t discount anything.”
The findings of a coronial inquest into Hayez’s death will be handed down in the coming days, but his mother isn’t holding out hope for any real answers.
While she is desperate to know where her son is, she has also sadly realised she may have to stop looking, for her own sake.
“If you want to go on living, there is a time when you need to stop,” Delforge told 60 Minutes.
“There will always be sadness ’til the very end of our life, ’til the last day of our life, but it is maybe healthy to stop searching.”
