Theory #1
Milo got lost and drowned in the creek by his own error

People often assume Milo caused his own death by getting lost and drowning. This is rubbish.

First of all, Milo knew the area like the back of his hand. Even if it was dark and the middle of a storm, he’d have known his way home. Secondly, if he’d have slipped or was injured, he’d have remained close to the path so his parents would find him, not wander 5km out to the creek. Why would he even think to go out that way?

We now know that the cause of his death was blunt force trauma, which some in law enforcement, the media and readers of this website have argued is a result of him knocking his head against the jagged rocks in the creek. However, what many ignore that it is the professional opinion of the coroner that his injury is significantly more compatible with an assault by a blunted weapon.

We also have the sighting of the suspicious car, the sighting of two unknown individuals the night of, the removal and mutilation of his body four and a half years after the fact, and the involvement of Trey Docketty, a possible second victim.

This theory is junk. Let’s move on.

Theory #2
Paul Richards, Mary Richards, or both, killed Milo and conspired to frame Dave Hackett

I won’t spend long on this one. I’ve already established elsewhere that Paul nor Mary would ever do anything like this, and I don’t plan to restate that here.

The most commonly regurgitated idea that Mary was at the shop from 6:04pm to 7pm, and in this time helped Paul murder Milo. The only basis for this absurd notion is the possibility they could be lying, which isn’t exactly evidence.

The other common suggestion is that they waited too long to look for Milo, and didn’t contact the police soon enough. I want you to keep in mind they were distraught and stressed, and it’s not as if police were much help anyway, telling them to wait till morning. If the police hadn’t of said that, maybe Paul and Mary would have found them.

The last element to this is the suggestion that they were trying to frame Dave for the murder by implicating him via his order. But (and despite my objections) Paul stands by the man, which aren’t exactly the actions of someone trying to frame someone.

And no one ever asks why. Why would they kill their only son, and why would they do it in their place of business, in the middle of a busy night?

People like to assume the worst of one another, and that’s the only reason anyone points fingers at the parents. If you’re thinking of sharing anything related to that notion with our contact address, don’t.

Theory #3
Milo was abducted by aliens

I’ve seen this one thrown around, and it’s stupid nonsense. It’s only gotten more popular since the limbs were found, and while I admit that I can’t explain what happened that day, I don’t leap to space aliens. We’re going to logically deduce what happened using facts.

Now that we’ve got the rubbish out of the way, we can begin discussing legitimate theories.

Theory #4
The strange men noticed at the scene are not a coincidence, nor is the unfamiliar car

This theory depends on how much faith you put into the anonymous tip regarding the appearance of the strange men. If we’re to assume it’s true, we would assume they are the owners of the suspicious car – after all, no one else was seen there.

Does this mean the murder was pre-meditated? Were they waiting for Milo in his tracks, familiar with the delivery boy who would take shortcuts through the bush track? But why would anyone have any reason to harm Milo? Maybe they were a couple of creeps who got lucky that night. Milo was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Supposing this is true, why would they return 4 years later to move his body? It couldn’t have been both of them – two peoples tracks would be even harder to just magically disappear. It could explain how it was they operated so quickly, if one abducted and mutilated Trey, and the other returned to the scene of the crime to prepare Milo.

However, there is no clear motive. For all we know, even if these men were here, it could’ve been a coincidence – the suited man being ill-dressed and quick to hide his face is suspicious, though this could have been an instinctual reaction to having a light being shone in his face.

There are too many questions and not enough answers to know for sure

Theory #5
The strange men noticed at the scene are a coincidence, but the unfamiliar car is not

This theory discredits the sighting of the strange men and places a lot of significance on the suspicious car. Remember that this isn’t the kind of place you went to the trouble of driving your car through unless you had a specific reason, and that Marcy was shocked to see a car there at all. It’s not a car fit for the bush either, a 1993 Ford Sedan. It’d get bogged in no time, especially in bad weather. That tells me it’s someone who isn’t from around these parts, or it’s a used car someone bought cheap because they were planning something.

Assuming the driver was waiting for Milo, or ran into him through dumb luck, he may have pretended to have been broken down and used that to lure Milo over. It’s from there he will have either forced Milo into the car or attacked him with the blunt weapon. He then would have eaten the flake out of the fish and chips package, used the aioli dip, and been in the perfect vantage point to throw Milo’s bike off the cliff edge, where we’d later discover it buried in mud.

The motive remains confusing but makes slightly more sense than the previous theory. However, it feels too disorganized and random for the same person to later transport his body to be found.

And no blue 1993 Ford Sedans were seen on the road or identified at any wrecking sites in the metropolitan area, so no one was successfully apprehended as the owner of the vehicle. This makes it a hard theory to pursue further.

Theory #6
Trey was murdered by the same person who murdered Milo; a serial killer

It’s hard to talk at length about Trey because the circumstances around his disappearance are so unknowable but feel it’s worth acknowledging this suggestion. The last person to see him alive was a nurse working at the hospital just before 6pm. Supposing someone had decided to kill for at least the second time after killing Milo years earlier, why did they use such a different method? Why Trey, especially when he was in such a public place? Why did they then immediately travel to the eastern suburbs and move Milo’s body? It’s possible this is an advertisement of how much they can ‘get away with’, so to speak, without being caught.

From what I understand about Trey, his only surviving relatives are his siblings Mark and Lucy, who also refused to offer their DNA for a test, apparently wanting to stay out of whatever he’d “gotten messed up in this time”. However, I can’t find any history of illicit activity to Trey’s name, and the family is uninterested in speaking with me further to elaborate on this sentiment. It is of note that Trey changed his surname from ‘Reynolds’ to the infamous ‘Docketty’ at some point between 2000 and 2002, though it’s unclear why.

His only other blood relative is his nephew, who ran away from home at age seventeen and remains missing to this day. This takes me to my version of this theory.

Theory #7
Trey is the murderer and his wife and siblings know, hence their refusal to participate

This may seem at first nonsensical due to the severing of Trey’s arm and hand, but I want to explore the elements of it that do line up.
His family is extremely unwilling to participate with any kind of investigation that may provide answers on his whereabouts – it’s possible they know his true nature, and would rather not get implicated or exposed as knowing more than they’ve initially let on. Perhaps Trey was the owner of the car, murdered Milo, and got lucky with the storm clearing his tracks? We don’t know where Trey was the night of Milo’s disappearance, though of course we can’t ask him, and it was before the time he met his wife in 2009, so we can’t ask her either (not that she’d probably be of much help).

You may ask how his family would know about his inclinations, to which I offer that his nephew did not disappear, but rather was murdered. I can’t find out much about this nephew – who’s name I understand to be Noel, though records on this were suggestive at best – but can confirm that on the 19th of April, 2004, that he is said to have stolen his father Mark’s car, never to be seen again. It could be argued this is a cover story for the truth; that Trey killed his nephew, and the parents feared what he’d do to them and helped him cover it up.

Or perhaps he kept his nephew somewhere and had severed his arms to use as twisted props for his return in 2012, in order to create the impression that they were Trey’s arms. Though why would he wait so long? It may be why the family are so irrationally cagey about offering DNA samples. An alternative suggestion I’ve heard is that they operated as a unit in killing the nephew, and that for some reason – out of a betrayal or slight – Mark would later succeed in ‘getting rid’ of Trey in 2012.

I don’t think this is a very likely, but should not be dismissed quickly, as it is certainly worth investigating.

Theory #8
Dave Hackett is the murderer

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most likely.

Dave put out the fish & chip order and called up to say Milo hadn’t arrived half an hour later. That’s enough time for Milo to have arrived and Dave to have trapped him in his house. After the phone call, we don’t know what Dave was up to. He may have restricted Milo and started eating his meal, only to be attacked by Milo in an attempt to escape and killed him in retaliation with a blunt weapon. He then would have taken him out to the creek in the storm without being noticed and thrown his bike and the remaining food off the cliff face, as it was right near his house.

Dave would join us in the search the next day, where he let police search his house, but as we now know, Milo’s body wasn’t anywhere near the home. This theory assumes the strange men and car are both a coincidence, and that the car would have left by the time Milo’s bike was tossed. I would add to this the possibility that Dave called in the tip in an attempt to shift blame to these supposed mystery men.

Time and time again I have been asked for his motive, and all I can say is that Dave is short of being an honest man. His wife left him for cheating, and took his kids away from him. Perhaps, in some twisted mad revenge, he wanted to take kids away from someone else? He’d ordered from the fish & chip place plenty of times, and was familiar with Milo’s deliveries. Perhaps it was that he’d finally snapped, or that it was the perfect weather.

Police foolishly let him off the hook because they supposedly didn’t have enough evidence to keep him, and claimed his alibi was to their satisfaction. And ever since the discovery of his body and Trey Docketty’s association, Dave has probably been relieved that eyes aren’t on him anymore. But I’d argue the glove still fits.

Dave could very easily make it down to the creek without much notice by walking directly from his home and remain incognito the whole time. He knows the area, and he would know exactly where he left Milo. Perhaps this was a regular check up on the body gone awry, that meant for some reason he had to quickly move his body, and he couldn’t move it any further before it was discovered anyway. It does not explain the lack of trails, footprints, or fingerprints, but the same could be said of any suspect.

So, where does Trey fit in? Well, it’s unclear, but I’ll say this: Dave's never given up the identity of his mistress.

I would propose the woman he was cheating with leading up to his divorce was Trey’s future wife, Michelle. They’d of course hadn’t met yet, though perhaps after what happened with Milo she left him to go on to meet Trey. Then the day comes that she is giving birth to Trey’s children. Dave, still alone and driven mad by it, snaps again, and murders Trey. How he gets to and from the hospital is unclear, and why he chose to mutilate both their bodies and put them together remains unknown. However, if this is the case, this would be why Michelle wants nothing to do with helping us resolve this horrible ordeal – shame.

I’ve never hid my very strong inclination that Dave is the man responsible, though there’s never been enough strong evidence or police support of him as a serious suspect. To some extent, not everything lines up, but a lot of things do.

This is why this is so important. I feel like there’s a missing piece that’ll tie it all together. I fully acknowledge that could be true of any of the reasonable theories we’ve discussed, but this is the one I expect most to end in us finding the smoking gun.

Theory #9
The Police helped cover it up

With each and every step, the police have failed us. From the moment they became involved, they were dismissive. They didn’t take it seriously, they pointed the finger at Paul and Mary without hesitation. When they finally bothered to get involved, they sent out all of two officers, and picked their rudest and most flippant for the job.

Perhaps if they’d taken it seriously, Milo would still be here today.

That leads me to suggest that they helped the murderer cover it up by providing a lacklustre response. Think about it – why on Earth would they tell us to wait for him to turn up unless they already knew something? Perhaps someone among their ranks was responsible and had made it clear everyone was to toe the line and protect them. Or perhaps this alibi Dave gave them that they’ve never disclosed never really existed – a handshake deal to forget the whole thing.

They were quick to jump on his parents as suspects with little to no patience for alternatives. It felt like they wanted someone to slap a pair of handcuffs on with as little resistance as possible. Thank goodness the community wasn’t going to stand for that, or who knows where we’d be today.

Some of the madness they’ve since floated feels like wild goose chases to keep our noses off the scent. Take for example when they started suggesting that it was a murder by some ritualistic cult, but couldn’t even name one group that it could’ve been. “It was just a group of people who we’ll never catch.” Sure thing. If it is the case that they were never seriously entertaining that nonsense, I’d allege that they’re responsible for the anonymous tip as well.

Though if we’re to assume the tip is real, this may also explain the missing evidence – perhaps they did have officers out there on the night cleaning up after the culprit, stashed his body, but missed the bike. They were dressed oddly formally after all and didn’t want to be seen – of course you wouldn’t if you were supposedly on the side of justice. It could explain why a tipper may want to remain anonymous. Who knows what the police would do if they had their name?

This makes for the most concrete theory regarding Trey’s involvement. A swift and immediate response by police officers moving his body and cleaning up after themselves. We’ve had whispers of Trey getting mixed up in bad stuff, so we’ll assume him an enemy of a corrupt police force. They, for whatever reason they may have had, co-ordinate an effort to illegally escort him from the hospital, drag him out to the wilderness, and murder him. They decide to muddy the waters by putting the blame on the mystery man who killed Milo, by recovering his body and putting it on display. They mutilate the bodies in a way that’s so contradictory to the cause of death it throws everyone of the scent, yet again. Two birds with one stone.

Why would they not just get rid of Milo’s body themselves, earlier? Well, there wasn’t enough time – the storm made it too difficult, and by the next day the search party was too all over the place to get away with it. But then when we didn’t find anything after diving in the creek, it was obvious their work was done. From then on, they’d throw any new leads into the rubbish and dismiss everything as Milo being too dumb to know his way home.

Ever since I started this page, they’ve been down my throat for “interfering with their investigation”. In case they hadn’t noticed, I’ve uncovered a lot more than them on their best day, and actually believed Milo was going to turn up. From the very beginning they assumed he was dead, and I think it’s because they knew all along.


Final Summary

I can't claim to know everything about this case, or what really happened either that night, or the afternoon of July 10th, 2012. Though my suspicion - and it's certainly gotten me in trouble more than enough times - is that the likely solution is somewhere in between theories 8 and 9. I expect it to someday surface that Dave is responsible, and the police aided and abetted him in covering it up. As to the exact whys and hows, I'm not yet sure. My plan has always been, and remains, finding that out.

Of course, no one really knows. If you have any ideas based on the legitimate theories above, please email them to contact@missingmilo.net. If you remain polite and respectful I would be happy to discuss them with you and should they meet my criteria, feature them on the website in more detail. Thank you.