50-YEAR MYSTERY - 'BRING LYNETTE HOME'

A TWIN SISTER BEGS FOR ANSWERS AS POLICE OFFER $500,000 REWARD

- Michael Crooks

On the day her 15-year-old twin sister vanished from their Sydney neighbourhood in 1972, Liana Stewart felt certain she would never see her again. The twins had been inseparable from birth and on the day Lynette Melbin disappeared, Liana felt an “emptiness” that plagues her to this day.

“It was always just the two of us – we didn’t have many girlfriends because we were always together,” Liana, now 65, tells WHO. “I knew the day that she went missing that she was never coming home.”

Fifty years later, Liana holds new hope for answers – and even better, justice – in her sister’s case. NSW Police recently announced a $500,000 reward for information into the disappearance of Lynette, who vanished from Penrith in western Sydney on June 5, 1972. A 2001 coronial inquest found she “most likely died as a result of undetermined causes” on or around that day.

“It’s our view that we can solve [this],” said the Unsolved Homicide Unit’s Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw. “We do it not for ourselves, we do it for the family.”