The Body in the Bag:Will Matheson·Lyndsay van Blanken

Will Matheson was a cellist in Sydney, and from 2001 he dated Lyndsay van Blanken. When she ended the relationship in September 2003, he refused to accept it. For the next two months he followed her and kept appearing where she was.

On November 24, 2003, security cameras recorded Lyndsay leaving Bondi Junction railway station. It was the last time anyone saw her alive. Matheson strangled her with plastic cable ties he had linked together, then hid her body in a storage room inside an apartment building in Queens Park, zipped into a cricket equipment bag. He had bought the bag two days earlier, a detail that pointed to planning rather than a sudden loss of control.

Lyndsay was missing for almost seven weeks. On January 10, 2004, residents of the building complained about a smell, and a maintenance worker opened the bag. Matheson was convicted of murder and given a non-parole period of 18 years, and his overall term was later reduced on appeal. The New South Wales State Parole Authority granted him parole in 2023.