Police want to catch him and locals want him gone. But time is ticking by in the search for alleged killer Malcolm Naden.
The team searching dense and rugged bushland near Nowendoc, in northern NSW, has been expanded to more than 75 tactical ground and support crew, looking for the fugitive police have labelled a “most wanted person”.
Assistant Commissioner Carlene York heads the operation for Naden’s capture.
“At some time it will have to be reduced,” Ms York said of the scale of the operation.
“We can’t keep these numbers up if we don’t locate him.
“Over this next week we’ll be looking at the plan.”
Two PolAir helicopters, sniffer dogs and specialist officers equipped with high-tech camouflage suits and assault rifles are searching an area locals say has a 30km radius.
Police consider Naden an expert bushman who has given them the slip on six previous occasions in the past six years.
He disappeared from his grandparents’ home in west Dubbo in 2005, days before his cousin, 24-year-old mother-of-two Kristy Scholes, was found strangled in his bedroom.
Naden is also suspected to have been involved in the disappearance of another of his cousins, Lateesha Nolan, a few months earlier, and the rape of a 15-year-old schoolgirl.
On the morning of December 7, police were closing on him at a remote campsite near Nowendoc when a shot rang out and an officer took a bullet in the shoulder.
No one saw the shooter, but days later police confirmed they had lifted a fingerprint of Naden’s from the hideout.
Some have compared Naden to notorious bushranger Ned Kelly, who killed three policemen in the late 19th century before he was hanged and immortalised as an Australian icon.
Sydney University’s Professor Richard Waterhouse, an expert in history of Australian popular culture and rural Australia, says the comparison is a long shot, although Naden’s reputation as a survivalist will earn him some regard.
“There will be a sneaking admiration for his bushcraft, but it will also be recognised that he’s a cold-blooded killer,” Professor Waterhouse told AAP.
If police locate Naden and even kill him, he would need another element to be remembered as more than a fugitive.
“To really be turned into a martyr, he needs something a bit more than being a very clever bushman,” Professor Waterhouse said.
“He needs to be associated with some wider cause, in the way that Ned Kelly was seen as the hero of downtrodden selectors.”
Jody, a local woman who works at Nowendoc Trading Post, says Naden has been spotted during the past 12 months.
He was seen on the road from Barrington, 75km to the south, and police raided a hut about a year go but Naden had come and gone, she said.
One local resident had items stolen from his clothesline and others have noticed food missing that they reported to police only recently.
A woman on horseback about two months ago saw Naden run out of a hut and disappear into the bush, Jody said.
Like Professor Waterhouse, she doesn’t think Naden is a hero.
“I think everyone wants to see him caught, because he’s done some pretty terrible things,” she said.
Locals estimate police are searching bushland within a 30km radius of where the officer was wounded.
Paul Luckin, a doctor specialising in survival medicine, is often consulted by police searching for people lost in remote areas.
He said police would have to block Naden’s access to water and food that he steals from properties or animals he kills in the bush.
“People who have very little food to eat can still survive for quite extended periods,” Dr Luckin told AAP from Queensland.
“He would eventually become weaker and less mobile and less able to flee.”
Dr Michael Kennedy, of the University of Western Sydney, was a police detective for 18 years before he entered academia.
He says the pressure is on the police involved in the operation, which is likely to be costing millions.
“You’re either a winner or a loser,” he says.
“You can’t say, ‘We’ve almost found him. Isn’t that good?’
“Naden will either disappear altogether or something will give.”
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