Mum's agony: The day my daughter disappeared
An Australian mother has opened up about the day her daughter vanished, in an emotional new podcast.
Speaking to New Idea Investigates for the What have you done with her? podcast, Sandi Harvey breaks down as she talks about the disappearance of her 23-year-old daughter Leisl Smith.
‘I do hold on to 2 per cent of hope that she is [alive],’ Sandi tells host Mary-Ann Harris in the heartrending interview.
Listen to the interview here
‘I'm a realist and sometimes being a realist isn't the best thing to be,’ she adds.
Leisl vanished on 19 August 2012. After leaving her Wallarah home on the NSW Central Coast at around lunchtime, CCTV footage showed her at Tuggerah train station – where she parked and walked away from her Honda Accord.
She hasn’t been seen since.
‘You know, it's really hard. I have a friend who I was talking to her baby had died in a fire, in her house. And I said to her, "I feel so sorry for you. That's a tragedy that should never happen." And she just looked at me and said, "Yeah, but Sandi, at least I know where my daughter is,"’ the mum recalled.
‘And I think that's the hardest thing. I travel a fair bit with my partner. And I've been on a fundraising thing for a company and everywhere I go, I look. Just in case. Just something.
‘You just don't know. I put posters out, I try and hand out things, I put posters in my car so if I drive anywhere, people are aware.’
Sandi has a message for the person who knows what happened to Leisl.
‘How they sleep at night, I don't know,’ Sandi said.
‘If they haven't been in contact with the police or Crime Stoppers or me or her father or somebody, how do you sleep at night, knowing that you've got this information that's ripping a family apart, that's inconceivable to me. Absolutely inconceivable.’
For more gripping true crime, subscribe to the New Idea Investigates podcast - available on OMNY and iTunes.
If you have information relating to this case please contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000
