Gus Lamont’s devastated mother Jessica Murray has fled her hideaway home in Adelaide after she moved out of the outback station where her son disappeared.
She had already left her parents’ vast sheep farm homestead near Yunta, South Australia, when detectives revealed on Thursday that they believed Gus is dead.
Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke said they had ruled out the child wandering off or being abducted and now had a prime suspect within the Murray family.
‘A number of inconsistencies and discrepancies’ in statements given to police by family members had triggered the investigation now being considered a ‘major crime’.
Det Supt Fielke stressed the four-year-old’s mum and dad are not suspects in the boy’s disappearance from Oak Park Station, 40km south of Yunta, last September.
In the wake of the revelation, Ms Murray left the sheep station, her childhood home where she lived with parents, mother Shannon and her transgender father, Josie.
She had been staying there temporarily after previously splitting with Gus’s father, Joshua Lamont, before their son’s disappearance.
She moved into her family-owned home in Adelaide, but the Daily Mail can reveal she has now fled that city bolthole too to move in with a friend.
On Monday, a neighbour in the Adelaide street confirmed Ms Murray left over the weekend.
‘Are you looking for Jess?’ said the neighbour. ‘She’s not there. My husband saw her pack up and leave a few days ago.
‘She’s gone to stay with a friend.’
Joshua also lived at the same city home for a time after Gus disappeared, but declined to comment when the Daily Mail approached him there in November.
Another neighbour said they hadn’t seen Joshua for three weeks when he is believed to have moved out.
That coincided with a police raid when a vehicle, a motorbike and electronic equipment were seized from the Murrays’ farmhouse, when the direction of the investigation suddenly changed.
His movements suggest he may have vacated the Adelaide home to make way for Ms Murray to move in with their one-year-old son, Ronnie.
On Tuesday, the Daily Mail revealed Mr Lamont and Ms Murray had split before Gus vanished, with Ms Murray and youngest son Ronnie living with her parents.
A family friend told the Daily Mail their relationship broke down shortly after Ronnie’s birth, but before Gus disappeared.
‘I haven’t seen Josh since Gus’s disappearance happened, and I don’t know where he is now,’ said the local.
‘But Josh and Jessica weren’t together when it happened.’
The friend revealed the couple had never married, as new details of Gus’s mother’s childhood were also revealed for the first time.
Ms Murray has never commented publicly on her son’s disappearance.
But locals say she is shy, quietly spoken, and was rarely seen in the area even before Gus went missing.
Ms Murray grew up in Jamestown, population 1400, where the Murrays once owned a home, two hours’ drive from the sheep station her parents later inherited from Ms Murray’s grandparents Vincent and Clair Pfeiffer.
Publicly available yearbooks at the town’s library showed Jessica attended Jamestown Community School until at least 2002, when she was in year 10.
The source added that Jessica’s biological father Josie – formerly known as Robert and nicknamed ‘Snow’ – began her gender transition while they were living in Jamestown.
Since police attended their property on January 14, both Shannon and Josie have been going about business as usual in South Australia’s Mid North.
Shannon was seen running errands in Jamestown, two hours from Oak Park, last week, while Josie was spotted grabbing a cappuccino and a slice of red velvet cake from a Peterborough cafe in recent days.
While Mr Lamont and Josie and Shannon Murray have all been seen attempting to return to daily life after the loss of Gus, Jessica has not yet been seen in public.
Last week, Det Supt Fielke alleged a family member had stopped assisting their investigation after they were questioned about inconsistencies in their statements.
‘As a result of these inconsistencies, and investigations into them, a person who resides at Oak Park Station has withdrawn their support for police and is no longer cooperating with us,’ he revealed.
‘I can’t give you any more information about the suspect, or where the suspect is, or why that person is a suspect.’
Shannon and Josie Murray both immediately retained separate high-profile defence lawyers in the wake of the explosive claims at the police press conference.
They said they were ‘devastated’ by the police announcement and insisted they were still cooperating with the investigation.
It is not suggested the couple have committed a crime.
Josie Murray has hired Adelaide criminal lawyer Andrew Ey, while Shannon Murray has sought the legal services of Casey Isaacs, also from Adelaide.
Mr Ey is a partner at Mangan Ey & Associates and has been involved in a number of high-profile criminal cases throughout his 15-year career.
Mr Isaacs is from Caldicott + Isaacs law firm and is also the president of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.
The partner confirmed he had been engaged by Shannon, telling The Advertiser: ‘We have been co-operating but we won’t be commenting.’