Volume 13 · Chapter 8
The Beauty Queen
John Travers, Michael Murdoch, Les Murphy and others
Victim: Anita Cobby
Case at a glance
- When
- February 2, 1986
- Where
- Blacktown and Prospect, Sydney, Australia
- Perpetrator
- John Travers, Michael Murdoch, Michael Murphy, Leslie “Les” Murphy and Gary Murphy
- Victim
- Anita Cobby
- Outcome
- Travers pleaded guilty and the other four were convicted in June 1987; all five sentenced to life, never to be released; Michael Murphy died in prison in 2019
The case
Anita Cobby, born Anita Lynch, was a 26-year-old nurse from Blacktown in Sydney’s western suburbs. In 1979 she had won the Miss Western Suburbs title. On February 2, 1986, after a night out with friends, she took the train home to Blacktown and set off on foot from the station.
At about 10 p.m., as she walked along Newton Road, five men in a stolen car pulled her inside. John Travers, Michael Murdoch and the brothers Michael, Les and Gary Murphy drove her to a paddock in Prospect, where they sexually assaulted and beat her before killing her. Dairy farmer John Reen found her body on February 4. A tip about the stolen car led police to the group. A close family friend of Travers, later known only as Miss X, wore a hidden recorder when she visited him in custody and recorded his account. All five were in custody about three weeks after the murder.
Travers pleaded guilty before trial. After a 45-day trial, on June 10, 1987, a jury convicted the other four; on June 16 Justice Alan Maxwell sentenced all five to life, their files marked never to be released. Michael Murphy died of liver disease at Long Bay jail in February 2019, and Gary Murphy was hospitalized after being assaulted there that June. Anita’s parents, Garry and Grace Lynch, helped found the Homicide Victims’ Support Group.
Read the full story
This case is told in full in True Crime Case Histories, Volume 13 by Jason Neal.
Get Volume 13 on AmazonCase photographs
3 photos
Where it happened
Why this case
“Anita did nothing unusual that night. She caught a train and walked a short way home, as thousands of people do every evening. Her parents turned their grief into a support group for other families of murder victims, and that is the part of this story I most want readers to carry with them.”
— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories
