‘Buried’: Gus Lamont’s grandmother breaks silence
In an explosive television interview, one of Gus Lamont’s grandmothers has revealed a police theory that she “buried” her own grandchild.
Source: Spotlight
One of Gus Lamont’s grandmothers has revealed a police theory that she “buried” her own grandchild, who has been missing since September.
In an explosive television interview, Josie Murray told Channel Seven’s Spotlight that she was a “main suspect”.
“They think that I buried him, took him out and buried him. That’s all they’ve said so far,” Murray, 75, told the show on Sunday.
“It’s ludicrous. It just doesn’t make sense. Why would you inflict what’s happening to us now?”
South Australian police have publicly stated that someone at Gus’s remote family home was a suspect in his disappearance and likely death.
“We absolutely know we’re innocent” Murray said.
“We know that we couldn’t and didn’t do anything and the hard part obviously is to convince other people of that. There’s no way of completely convincing people.”
She said that being accused of such a crime against her grandchild, “you could not wish a more horrible experience on anyone”.
Josie Murray broke her silence on the Spotlight program. Photo: Seven Network
Murray said she believed four-year-old Gus had been abducted by a stranger.
She told Spotlight she made some unusual observations on the property around the time he disappeared. She said a heavy bedstead on the property appeared to have been moved.
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“A child would not be able to shift it,” she said.
Murray claimed there were also small wheel tracks nearby.
“I saw wheel tracks going down past where the bedstead was and past where the weather station was, and these wheel tracks were small,” she said.
Police have said abduction was highly unlikely given the extremely remote location of the Oak Park station where Gus and his family lived. They have not raised any suspects who were in the area as part of their investigations.
Gus Lamont vanished on his family’s South Australian sheep property. Photo: SA Police
“We haven’t got a body, we haven’t got a live body, we haven’t got a dead body,” Murray said.
“We have no idea quite where he is, but we feel that yes, he has been taken.”
Gus vanished from the family’s homestead in South Australia’s Far North in September 2025.
He was last seen by his other grandmother, Murray’s ex-wife Shannon, playing at the Oak Park Station on September 27.
Murray and Shannon have remained close friends and business partners since Murray’s gender reassignment in 2009.
On February 5, police declared the boy’s disappearance a major crime and said someone living at the remote station – about 300 kilometres north of Adelaide – was a suspect in the case and his likely death.
Murray said she had returned to the homestead about 5.30pm after putting sheep in the paddock.
“We were on the front verandah and Shan said that Gus was just down near what we call the ‘bomb shelter plane’, and when we had a look, [there was] no sign,” she said.
“We said to Shannon, ‘When did you last see him?’. And she said, ‘Five o’clock’. And so in that half‑hour timeframe, he disappeared.”
Creeks and washouts were searched on foot during the latest search of Oak Park Station. Photo: SA Police
Murray said the family looked first in an area where they were building a new cellar and then began searching the property as daylight faded.
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“We were concentrating within probably three‑quarters of a kilometre or a kilometre of the homestead, just searching where the tanks were, the dams, down by the cottage. I think we went to the shearing shed — I’d be surprised if we didn’t.”
“We kept [the search] up until it was getting to the dark stage, and then we went home and went into the kitchen, and I think the question was raised, ‘How soon do we notify the authorities that we might have a missing child?’, and we need to do something about it,” she said.
“I seem to recall it was sometime around eight o’clock that we actually made the call.”
Gus’ disappearance sparked intensive searches spanning almost 500 square kilometres.
Police have confirmed Gus’s grandparents, mother and younger brother were at the property at the time he disappeared. They have emphasised his parents are not suspects.
Detectives also said a family member living at the property had withdrawn co-operation from police.
Both grandparents previously released a statement saying the family had co-operated with the investigation and wanted nothing more than to reunite Gus with his parents.
Josie Murray arrives at the Adelaide Magistrates Court in June. Photo: AAP
Murray recently appeared in Adelaide Magistrates Court on firearms charges.
The court heard she had lived most of her life at Yunta and had gone to St Peter’s College, where she was head prefect.
She met her wife at school, briefly studied law and returned to the country to be a stockman and drover.
The couple had run Oak Park for almost 50 years.
Murray was a licensed builder 25 years ago, had been a marriage celebrant and also a long-time Justice of the Peace.
Prosecutor Tania Stevens told the court police had executed a search warrant at Oak Park on January 15 over an “unrelated matter”.
Inside a passcode-protected strongroom, they found a silencer and several firearms, including one modified to fit the silencer.
Murray had a 2010 conviction for failing to securely store firearms.
That offence arose as a result of a fugitive trespassing on the defendant’s property and stealing an unsecured firearm.
“That person then went on to commit serious offending with the firearm before taking his own life,” she said.
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