Oz police in five-hour search of Jill’s home

Police yesterday spent five hours scouring the home shared by missing Irish woman Jill Meagher and her husband Tom as footage emerged showing her walking home from a Melbourne pub before her disappearance.

Forensic teams spent three hours yesterday afternoon in the couple’s apartment in the Brunswick area of the city. They took away six large bags of evidence before returning later for a further two hours and leaving with more bags. Officers had already searched the apartment on Saturday.

When asked about the significance of the searches, the head of the police homicide squad, Detective Inspector John Potter, told reporters: “(Jill’s) husband has been nothing more than co-operative so we can’t read anything into that, this is something that we would normally do.”

The footage, captured on a shop’s CCTV in the early hours of Saturday morning, shows the 29-year-old walking along a road about 100m from the spot where her handbag was discovered on Monday. Officers said they were still deciding how much of the footage could be made public.

Police also revealed that while detectives could have missed the handbag when they initially searched the road, when it was discovered it was in “plain view” and the resident who found it had not seen it previously.

Therefore there are strong suspicions it may have been planted there either late on Sunday night or early Monday morning.

Det Insp Potter said there was no sign of a struggle in the laneway, which has led police to surmise “more and more” that the bag was put there.

The handbag contained Ms Meagher’s credit card, but not her mobile phone, which remains missing and is believed to have run out of battery power or been turned off.

Ms Meagher is thought to have left Melbourne’s Bar Etiquette at approximately 1.30am on Saturday. Her home was only a short walk away. The footage showing her walking between the bar and her home was captured at 1.41am. At approximately 1.45am she rang her brother at her family’s home in Perth to ask about her father who had recently suffered a stroke. That is the last anyone heard from her. It is understood that, in spite of the fact she is believed to have left the bar by the time of the call, male voices could be heard by her brother during the call.

Tom Meagher has said he went looking for his wife at 4am after repeatedly calling her phone. He reported her missing at midday on Saturday.