She Went Out To Buy A Card For Her Pen Pal In 1992, But While The Card Made It Home To Her Kitchen Table, She Vanished Without A Trace
Rhianna Barreau, a 12-year-old girl from Southern Australia, vanished without a trace on October 7, 1992, and her mysterious disappearance continues to puzzle investigators and community members over three decades later.
She grew up in Morphette Vale, a suburb of Adelaide, and that week in October, Rhianna had a school break. So, on the morning of October 7, she was home alone and planned to visit the Colonnades Shopping Centre to buy a Christmas card and mail it to her American pen pal.
Normally, Rhianna would have taken the bus there. However, due to a snap strike, she didn’t have any means of transportation – which forced her to change her plans.
She proceeded to walk to a local newsagent located in Reynella, about one mile away from her home, instead. There, she purchased the Christmas card, walked back to her residence at 47 Wakefield Avenue, and was never seen or heard from again.
When Rhianna’s mother arrived home shortly after 4:00 p.m., there was nobody there. But the television had been left on, records were sitting on the floor, and Rhianna’s Christmas card was inside a shopping bag on the kitchen table.
So, 12:30 p.m. on October 7, 1992, marked the last confirmed sighting of the 12-year-old. Then, two days after her disappearance, homicide detective Allen Arthur took the lead on the investigation of her case.
“From the time I went through the preliminary statements gathered by the two detectives from Major Crime and read all the additional information that was being gathered, I knew something was wrong. I knew she was in trouble,” he recalled.
“At the time, we established that she’d been seen at the shopping center… that she was seen walking through the Morphett Vale school, and we can only assume that she was on her way home with the cards from the shop. After that, there is very, very little.”
Following her disappearance, Rhianna’s parents issued multiple pleas to the public, asking for their help.
South Australia Police – pictured above is Rhianna
“Please come forward. I just want my daughter back. It’s not the same at home,” Paula Barreau, her mother, stated at the time.
“Well, I would really like to have a policeman knock on our door tomorrow morning and say, ‘Here’s your little girl back in one piece,’ but the reality of that, I think, as everybody knows, is fairly insignificant,” said Leon Barreau, Rhianna’s father, who traveled from his Queensland home to aid the search.
Meanwhile, authorities were being inundated with tips from community members. By November 25, 1992, investigators had received 1,600 calls regarding Rhianna’s case.
According to Arthur, a few people claimed to have spotted Rhianna on Acre Avenue. But, authorities eventually deemed that these sightings weren’t associated with her case.
Another tip claimed that Rhianna was actually being held hostage in an apartment located on Anzac Highway in Kurralta Park. After raiding the building, though, authorities found no trace of Rhianna.
Then, investigators thought they hit a breakthrough in the case when they informed the public about one sighting. The witness claimed to have seen a suspicious white Torana that had Victorian plates.
But, yet again, the supposed sighting of this car did not lead police to anymore answers in Rhianna’s case.
“I have some doubts whether it was a white Torana and with Victorian number plates, only because we hadn’t found it and we spent a lot of time looking at white Toranas,” Arthur explained.
Eventually, there were suspicions that Rhianna’s disappearance might have been linked to the infamous Victorian predator known as Mr. Cruel. From 1987 to 1991, he abducted and assaulted at least three young girls. Still, authorities were never able to form a solid connection between Rhianna’s case and the other girls’.
After so many failed leads and dead ends, Arthur also felt that he had to tell Rhianna’s mother the truth.
“I was hesitant to say to her mother that I think she’s been abducted, kidnapped, and taken, but within a couple of weeks, I had to be blunt and say, ‘I think she’s gone,'” he revealed.
So, Rhianna’s parents met with her school principal, Bruce Williams, and shared their concerns about the case, as well as positive memories about the 12-year-old with each other. Then, a few weeks later, Rhianna’s mother, Paula, returned to the school to pick up her daughter’s belongings.
“That was quite a significant event, I think, that Paula had come in to gather up those things and perhaps had left them there for different reasons for several weeks. It was a sort of symbolic event, I think,” Bruce recalled.
He also remembered Rhianna as a hard-working, cooperative, and friendly student known for having a very nice smile.
“She had a close group of friends, but she enjoyed the respect of her classmates and certainly the respect of her class teacher. She just seemed to be a good, solid, quite high-achieving student with a lot of potential, and so she was a real asset to the school,” Bruce said.
However, as time went on with no solid developments in Rhianna’s disappearance, a $100,000 reward for information was offered one month after she vanished. Eventually, this reward even rose to $1 million.
Despite that, her disappearance remains unsolved, and both her loved ones and authorities are continuing to search for answers.
Right now, the South Australian Police Operation Persist is currently leading the investigation into Rhianna’s disappearance and suspected murder.
“The case remains open, and police would urge anyone with information about her disappearance to contact Crime Stoppers,” SA Police stated.
“Police have no significant details to add at this time, but know that even a small piece of information can be of great assistance in cases such as these.”
Rhianna’s case going unsolved still “haunts” Arthur as well, over 20 years after he retired from the force. And without any physical evidence in Rhianna’s case, he believes that someone needs to come forward to fuel a breakthrough.
“Someone out there has some knowledge that could be very, very helpful to the police, and that’s why I say, ‘Pick the damn phone up and give us a call,’ I mean, give Major Crime a call,” he said.
“It’s never too late for someone who’s been sitting on some information but just doesn’t want to get involved with the police. You don’t have to fear the police if you haven’t done anything wrong.”
Rhianna was five foot two, weighed 97 pounds, and had light brown to blonde hair and hazel eyes. She was last seen wearing purple shorts, a green T-shirt with the word “Hypercolour” on the front, and white Lynx sneakers with bright pink tongues.
If you have any information regarding Rhianna’s case, you are urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 1800-333-000.
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