Reunited After 23 Years: How Medicare Helped Gabriel Find His Family

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What happens when someone vanishes and what questions do they leave behind? Insight explores why some might choose to go missing, while also asking what it’s like for those left wondering — families, friends, police. Watch Insight episode Gone Missing Tuesday 22 July at 8.30PM live on SBS on SBS On Demand.

In 1987, Gabriel Nagy left work to meet his wife Pamela for lunch at their home in Maroubra, Sydney. He never made it.

His burnt-out car was later discovered in the inner-city suburb of Redfern, but no body was found inside.

Left behind were Pamela and their two children, who were aged nine and 11 at the time.

Police suspected foul play but, for the next decade, Gabriel’s disappearance remained unsolved.

About 10 years later, then NSW Police senior constable (now sergeant) Georgia Robinson started investigating the Nagy case. She had several theories.

“He could have joined a cult … changed his name … gone abroad … financial trouble … running away from a crime that was unreported,” Robinson told Insight.

She started examining the evidence records and introduced herself to Gabriel’s family.

“They’d given up hope — [it had been] so long. They had resigned themselves to the fact that he’d gone missing and was never going to be located.”

a young woman with long brown hair hugging an older man wearing a green cap with a white rabbit symbol and a red t-shirt standing in front of a brick fence

Georgia discovered medical records that led to Gabriel, who is now deceased. Source: Supplied

Then, more than 20 years after his disappearance — just two weeks before he was due to be declared dead in a coronial inquest — Robinson made a discovery that would lead her straight to Gabriel.

“We did a check on his Medicare records, and it came up with his name.”

Robinson then flew to Mackay to meet Gabriel, who had been taken in by a pastor.

“He had acquired a brain injury … a type of amnesia that [meant] he didn’t really know he had a family.”

No closure

Not all missing person cases result in closure for loved ones.

Growing up together in Port Augusta, South Australia, Wangkangurru, Adnyamathanha, Kuyani and Luritja woman Lavene Ngatokorua was an older sister figure to her cousin’s daughter Karen Williams.

“She was small in stature, but she lit up a room … she was really strong in her thoughts,” Lavene said.

In 1990, at the age of 16, Karen went to Coober Pedy — an opal mining town about 500km north of Port Augusta — to meet and reunite with other family members. This is the last time anyone is recorded to have seen her.

Lavene says that authorities at the time suggested Karen was a runaway teenager. However, this was not normal behaviour for her.

“Her mum was very strict and wanted to know everything of where she went,” Lavene told Insight.

In 2016, more than two decades after Karen disappeared, a man was put on trial and acquitted of her murder.

Neither Karen nor her body has ever been found.

Around 50,000 people go missing each year

Commander Joanne Cameron of the Australian Federal Police says an estimated 50,000 people are reported missing to police in Australia each year.

Most are found quickly, but around 2,700 remain missing for longer than three months, she says, which classifies them as long-term cases.

The reasons for going missing can vary greatly — from misadventure to criminal actions.

“It could be the person has purposefully chosen to take themselves in a direction that their loved ones weren’t aware of,” Cameron told Insight.

Cameron says the common belief you must wait 24 or 72 hours before reporting someone as missing is not true.

“You could be concerned after one hour. You could be concerned after one week … We really need to put to bed that myth that you need to wait 24 hours.”

Cameron says the most important issue police will ask about is whether there’s a concern for the welfare of the missing person.

Lost but found

In 2004, Cornelia Rau went missing from a psychiatric hospital in NSW — but it didn’t immediately trigger panic.

“Our family thought it was a one of her periodic episodes of going missing … but she would always contact us,” Cornelia’s sister Chris told Insight.

“When she didn’t contact us for a period of months, we became very concerned.”

The family called the police and listed her as missing.

a vintage photo from the nineties of two young blonde women sitting together on a couch, the woman on the right has her arm around the other woman's shoulder

Chris (left) and her sister Cornelia, who made international headlines in 2005 when she was found 10 months after going missing. Source: Supplied

Ten months later, in February 2005, she was found in Queensland and was going by another name.

“We found out later that she had been picked up by the Department of Immigration because she refused to give her identity,” Chris said.

Believing she was a backpacker who had overstayed her visa, migration officials charged Cornelia as an unlawful non-citizen.

She was first imprisoned at a maximum-security women’s prison in Brisbane, and then at Baxter Detention Facility in South Australia.

“It was it was sort of shock because nobody expected that,” Chris said.

“We were relieved that she was alive. Nothing else mattered.”

Considering the complex set of factors that contributed to Cornelia’s disappearance, Chris believes it was unlikely she would have been found any sooner, even if there was greater communication between state and territory police forces.

However, this is something that police are currently seeking to do.

Missing persons units in Australia fall under the jurisdiction of states and territories. The National Missing Persons Coordination Centre, which Cameron chairs, aims to improve communication across jurisdictions.

As seen in Gabriel’s case, police are also making use of national databases like Medicare to track missing people across the country.

Robinson says she was “amazingly surprised” to have found Gabriel via Medicare.

“Who would have thought you’d find someone after that long?” she said.

“And also, amazing to be able to tell his family that this is where he’s been all this time.”

‘Give her back to us’

For Lavene, there is still no closure.

She remembers suggesting to Karen’s mother, about 10 years ago, that they hold a memorial to celebrate her life and continue talking about her.

“She said: ‘It’d be like I’d given up on her …'”

Lavene says there is hope that someone out there knows something that might be able to give Karen’s loved ones peace.

“Give her back to us so we can give her the rite of passage in relation to our culture, our faith, our understanding. And that her spirit is not wandering out there — even though it is the land in which she comes from.

“They’ve had her for 35 years. Don’t cheat us.”

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 000. For crisis and mental health support, contact Lifeline (13 11 14), SANE Australia (1800 187 263) or 13Yarn (139 276), a 24/7 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders crisis support line.