VANESSA Conlan, one of the last people to see Jessica Small alive, yesterday told the inquest into her best friend’s presumed murder that she had never lied to police about what happened on that terrible night.
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Asked by counsel assisting the coroner, Ian Bourke, if she remembered what time she and Jessica set off into town on October 25, 1997 – just hours before Jessica’s disappearance – she said she thought it was probably late in the afternoon.
When Mr Bourke referred Ms Conlan to her first statement made to police immediately after Jessica’s abduction 16 years ago, it said it was 7pm when they left Jessica’s house.
Ms Conlan told the inquest her statement was accurate and to go by what she told police at the time. “I never lied,” she said.
Ms Conlan wiped tears from her eyes as she recalled the early hours of October 26, 1997, when she and Jessica, who were both just teenagers at the time, accepted a lift from a man in a white Holden Commodore.
The girls got into the car in William Street, but Vanessa said by the time they were on Hereford Street, she already felt uneasy.
She said the driver was slowing down and kept looking from side to side.
“I started to feel uneasy, something was not right,” she said.
Ms Conlan said the driver took off his seatbelt and she started to think “we’re in a bit of trouble”.
The inquest heard the driver started to veer off to the side of the road and turned his headlights off before stopping the car.
She said she could see a light on at a house at the end of Hereford Street and asked the driver to drop them off there.
She said she was very nervous, and when the car stopped it was so close to the fence she couldn’t fully open her door.
“My mind was racing. He turned to Jess and said ‘right, come here’, I remember it as clear as day. I said ‘I don’t think so’.”
Fighting back tears, Ms Conlan told the inquest the driver put his hand around her neck, forcing her back hard into the seat.
“Jess opened the door to get out and when she did that, he let go of my throat and reached and grabbed Jess between the seats,” Ms Conlan said.
“I opened my door and he grabbed me by the hair.”
Ms Conlan told the inquest she managed to pull away from the man and got out and ran.
She said she didn’t remember which way Jessica went, but ran as hard as she could to the houses at the end of the street.
She could heard Jessica behind her.
“I could hear her screaming out for help,” she cried.
When she got to a house Ms Conlan said she banged so hard on the window the glass nearly broke. “The man came out but they [Jessica and the car] were gone,” she said.
Mr Bourke put it to Ms Conlan that there were some people who suggested Jessica’s abduction was staged.
Ms Conlan replied: “That’s ridiculous.”
He again asked her if she knew the driver of the car and she replied: “Absolutely not.”
The inquest continues at Bathurst Court House today.
