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Zac Barnes was an 18-year-old Australian man who climbed out of his friend’s car on the evening of Sunday, November 13, 2016. With only the clothing he wore, he walked toward the bushland, saying he was going to see a friend up the road. Although nearly a decade has passed, this is the last confirmed sighting of Zac.
Although police, as well as his desperate family have continued searching for him, they haven’t found a clue or a trace as to where he went or what happened to him. Not a scrap of his clothing nor his remains have been found & they’re left with only questions. What prompted Zac to suddenly get out of the car? Where did he go? How can someone vanish from a suburban street without a single trace?
Zac Eran Barnes was born on May 22, 1998 as the third of four boys to parents Karen & Ben Barnes in the waterfront city of Gosford, Australia. The family of six lived in Pelaw Main, a suburb of Kurri Kurri which is situated two hours north of Sydney.
Ben & Karen divorced when Zac was very young & in 2007, when Zac was 9-years-old, his mom met & fell in love with Michael Gudelj.
Moving forward, Zac had little to do with his biological father, rarely ever seeing him, so Michael essentially became a father to Zac & his brothers. The boys greatly respected him & according to Michael, Zac was basically his right arm since they went everywhere & did everything together. Karen & Michael had two daughters together & Zac absolutely adored his half-sisters.
The family of eight eventually moved about twenty minutes northeast to Metford where Zac lived until he vanished.
Zac had a close bond with his three older brothers, who often looked out for him as well as his mom who he shared a lot with. Despite their close bond, Karen knew when she needed to be firm with her six children & she never hesitated to enforce rules when necessary.
Zac had been a popular student at Newcastle High School where he played football for West Newcastle & excelled in math. However, by year 10, his grades began to slip & by year 11, he left school altogether in order to focus on becoming an apprentice bricklayer.
At the time of his disappearance in 2016, Zac was employed as a 2nd year apprentice bricklayer in conjunction with completing his related studies at Tighes Hill TAFE.
He had always been an exceptionally outgoing, fun person who was well-liked & surrounded by friends. Although he could be a bit of a wild child, at the core, he was a very kind & caring individual. Between work, school & his social life, he was always on the go, hitting up music festivals or gigs as well as pubs & clubs. At 18-years-old, Zac was able to legally drink alcohol & he was also taking recreational drugs such as ecstacy & LSD.
However, in the weeks & months before he vanished, Zac’s alcohol intake had significantly ramped up as did his drug use. His close friends could see that he was losing control during times when he was using.
Karen believes that her son’s drinking & drug use had a lot to do with the fact that Zac wanted to be that popular social kid. She wants people to know that outside the story of what led to his disappearance, he was a loving son, brother & friend. He was larger than life & his absence has left a gap in the lives of those who loved him.
In March 2016, eight months before he vanished, when Karen & Zac had gotten into a fight, she told her son that she wanted him to start paying rent in order to establish boundaries & responsibilities. Zac suddenly broke down in tears, sobbing in his bedroom, refusing to say what exactly had upset him so badly. He told his mom, I’ve seen stuff, I’ve seen stuff I can’t get out of my head. According to Karen, he felt that if he told her exactly what he meant, he would get them in some sort of trouble.
About two weeks before he disappeared, Zac was supposed to go to the Customs House Hotel in Newcastle to celebrate his brother Cody’s 21st birthday on Saturday, October 29, 2016. Zac planned to go on a pub crawl before the party & he sadly never made it to his brother’s celebration. After the fact, he told Cody that he’d passed out somewhere after drinking too much, something that those who had been with him earlier in the day had confirmed.
On Saturday, November 5, 2016, eight days before he vanished, Zac had a ticket for the This That music festival held at Camp Shortland in Newcastle. In the week leading up to the event, Zac charged $500 to his credit card for 50 ecstasy pills, planning to take some of the pills himself & selling the rest at the concert.
When it came down to it, Zac gave most of the pills to his friends for free so they could all have a good time together. During the concert, it was very clear to his friends that he was under the influence, likely because he had been using ice or crystal meth the night before. They described him as off his head that night.
Zac had told a friend from work that he used ice & based on his mannerisms & the things that he would say, his friend assumed that Zac had increased his use of the drug in the weeks leading up to his disappearance.
On Thursday, November 10, three days before he vanished, Zac asked his mom for $1,200, telling her that he owed someone money & he wasn’t sure how he would repay the debt. He told her that if she gave him the money, he would transfer the balance of his account over to his stepfather.
According to records from the Greater Building Society Bank, $477 was transferred into Michael’s account that same day & then Michael gave his stepson the $1,200 he’d asked for, assuming he was going to use the money to pay off the debt he’d mentioned.
It seemed that Zac had every intention of doing just that since he called his friend Matthew Hindwood, asking if he would come with him the next day to pay the money back.
When Zac overslept on Friday morning, November 11, his mom assured him that she could drive him to work, but she could see how stressed he seemed about potentially making her late for her own job. She assured him it would be fine & as they reached his jobsite in Chisolm, he hurriedly climbed out of the car. Since they were so rushed, Karen didn’t have the chance to hug her son & sadly, this was the last time she ever saw him.
During his lunch break, Zac & his co-workers went to the Regal Hunter Hotel where he ate little to no food, but drank three to four schooners of beer. A schooner is a glass that holds 425 mL/15 oz of beer so Zac drank what was equivalent to about 5 beers that afternoon.
Once back at work, a now intoxicated Zac got into an altercation with a work colleague that got so heated, others had to step in to intervene. This outburst caused him his job & after he was fired, a co-worker offered to drive him home. Rather than going home, he asked to be dropped off at his friend Matt Hindwood’s house, who lived with his girlfriend, Courtney Jones.
Matt recalls coming home on Friday afternoon to find Zac asleep on his porch. He told him about getting fired & Matt could immediately see that his friend wasn’t at all his usual, jovial self. Zac spent much of that weekend at Matt & Courtney’s with another friend, drinking, watching movies & playing Monopoly.
On Saturday, November 12, Courtney had a get together with her friends at the house & one of them could tell that Zac was clearly under the influence of drugs & alcohol. During the gathering, she believes that he & Matt left the party in the car for about 25 minutes.
Although Courtney & Matt had known Zac for nine months after Matt met him at TAFE, they said that his demeanor that weekend was very different from what was typical for him. He was edgy, agitated & very off from his usual self, sometimes upset & crying, drinking more than usual & making concerning comments such as, All I have to do is walk into the bush & take a number of pills & no one will ever find me.
Zac vanished the following day, Sunday, November 13, 2016. According to Courtney, that afternoon they all drove from their house to the train station at Victoria Street in East Maitland. CCTV footage later obtained by police showed Zac entering the station at about 3:45 pm with Matt & Courtney. He was drinking from a large brown bottle that was likely VB (Victoria Bitter) beer.
A neighbor confirmed that Zac had been at Matt & Courtney’s house at 7:20 pm that evening. According to the couple, for whatever reason, things escalated & Zac suddenly became agitated. They tried to calm him down & a short time later, he got into the backseat of Courtney’s car so they could drop him back off at the East Maitland train station. On their way, they stopped at a nearby IGA to buy cigarettes.
When they asked him what was wrong, he told them not to stress & said, don’t f**king worry about me. He went on to say that nobody cared about him & that they didn’t need the added stress.
He asked if they could drop him off at Thornton station instead of East Maitland & while they were driving along Haussman Drive near Tripp Close, Zac became agitated again. He was angry & paranoid, yelling to be let out of the car, growing increasingly aggressive, banging on the windows & shaking the back of Matt’s seat, who sat in the front passenger seat.
They spent the next five minutes in the car, smoking a cigarette & as Zac started to calm down, he told them that he was going to see a friend up the road. According to Matt, Zac gave him a big hug & told him, Don’t stress. I’ll see you tomorrow.
He walked away from the car without his wallet or cell phone, wearing a faded blue sleeveless shirt, blue board shorts & work boots. Zac has three distinct tattoos on his body that would have made it difficult to miss him in the days after he vanished. In addition to two large black tattoos on his chest, the most prominent was a colorful VB beer logo on his right calf.
The street where he walked off is a residential area on one side while the other side has a narrow strip of grass & shrubbery with a large wall beyond. On the other side of the wall are train tracks followed by bushland & then the suburb of Metford where Zac lived with his family.
According to Matt & Courtney, they last saw Zac walking at a fast pace, crossing the street in the direction of the bushland which has been the last reported sighting of Zac. After they did a U-turn & drove past again, they were no longer able to see him anywhere.
Since he lived only one suburb away, Matt knew that Zac had a lot of friends in the area, so he wasn’t overly worried about him, figuring he was walking over to someone’s house as he’d said. On Monday morning, Matt headed to work & didn’t find out that Zac was missing until that afternoon.
According to the What Happened to Zac? podcast, although Zac was rarely ever home during weekends, Karen said that he always came home on Sunday. More often than not, he’d be hungover from partying with friends, but he’d eat something, shower & get ready for the work week.
At about 6 pm that Sunday evening, when Cody called Karen, asking for a ride back to Sydney, he told his mom that Zac still wasn’t back. This was when Karen started to worry since he hadn’t communicated with them all weekend which was unusual. They eventually came to learn that he also hadn’t responded to any of his friend’s messages over the course of that weekend.
During their nearly two hour drive to Sydney, Karen told Cody about the $1,200 she’d lent Zac which was when he became even more concerned about his younger brother. He started sending messages to people Zac often hung out with & he also posted to Facebook. asking if anyone had seen him.
Within an hour, their minds were eased after they were told that Zac was at a house in East Maitland, meaning Matt & Courtney’s. Cody called his friend Bree, asking if she could stop by that house to confirm that he was there.
Bree was happy to help since she’d been concerned about Zac herself after he sent her a random, cryptic Snapchat message at about 1 am on Sunday morning that read, Dead. She asked him if he was okay, but Zac just responded back, f**k no. The messages she sent back to him after that point were never opened.
As soon as she heard from Cody on Sunday evening, Bree immediately hopped into her car & drove over to Matt & Courtney’s house. She’d never met the couple before & as she approached the house, she noticed that all of the blinds were drawn. When she knocked on the door, she waited a few minutes before Zac peeked through the blinds with a scared look on his face & then immediately shut the blinds again.
A few minutes later when Matt answered the door, Bree explained that Karen & Cody were worried since Zac hadn’t come home or communicated with anyone in days. She noticed that Matt seemed hesitant to open the door, but when he finally did, she came into the house to find Zac looking distraught.
He basically told her that she shouldn’t be there, that he didn’t want anyone to see him like this. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she could immediately see that the way he was acting was completely unlike him. She was stunned when he began making hurtful comments, seemingly trying to get her to leave. When she told him she would drive him home, he told her he would bite her face if he got into the car with her.
Bree stood there, completely shocked since all of her previous interactions with Zac had been positive. It was clear she wasn’t getting anywhere with him, so she just reiterated the fact that his mom was worried & to just please let her know where he was, which she could tell he didn’t want to do.
As Zac started to get agitated, he walked toward the door, put his work boots on, went outside & climbed into the back of Matt & Courtney’s car while they followed behind. As Bree continued to try to make sense of the situation, she asked Zac if he would be okay & he assured her he would.
According to Karen, since Zac’s phone was broken, he’d left it at home making it unclear how he’d been able to send Bree the cryptic Snapchat message much earlier that morning. Bree asked either Matt or Courtney if she could get their phone number so she could call to check in on Zac later. Although he had cash on him, Zac had also left his wallet & IDs back at home.
When Bree left, she drove to her friend’s nearby house to calm down & talk about what she’d just gone through. While she was there, she missed two calls from Courtney & when she called her back about 20 minutes later, Courtney told her that Zac had jumped out of their car & ran away.
Since Zac had been acting so erratically, Bree was immediately concerned. She offered to come back to their house to help them look for him & when she arrived, they were waiting for her outside.
Karen & Michael reported their son missing the following day, Monday, November 14, 2016. Although they were most definitely concerned at the time, they were still hopeful & under the assumption that he would eventually turn up.
With Zac missing, they were left with Matt & Courtney’s version of events as to what led to his disappearance. All they knew at that point was that he’d gotten out of Courtney’s car at about 8:30 pm the night before along Haussman Drive.
Karen believes that there are four options as to what became of her son: 1) He voluntarily disappeared. However, had this been the case, she’s convinced that Zac would have come home on Monday morning to get his wallet & other belongings while she & Michael were at work & the kids were at school. 2) An accident. He could have injured himself on his way home or gotten confused, finding himself lost in the bushland since he was under the influence of drugs. However, throughout the years of searching for him, neither his clothing nor remains have been found. 3) Suicide. But again, his remains have never been found. 4) Foul play.
According to Karen, outside of his drug use, her son had not been struggling with his mental health. Although she’s aware that he experimented with drugs during social situations, she is firm on the fact that her son wasn’t a regular user or addicted. However, those who had been spending time with Zac in the weeks before he vanished had noticed that he’d ramped up his drug use.
There were varying reports from Matt & Courtney as to where exactly Zac had gotten out of the car & it wasn’t until days later when investigators were given the exact intersection. In the early days of his disappearance, Karen indicated that the couple had been answering all of her questions, but as time continued on, they no longer wanted to answer them. However, she does believe that they continued to cooperate with investigators.
Despite their efforts to report their son missing, questions later surfaced about the urgency of police response. A risk assessment wasn’t done after Zac went missing which meant that the appropriate resources may not have been utilized & Zac wasn’t searched for immediately. It wasn’t until three days after he went missing when formal searches took place between November 16-21.
According to the coronial inquest into Zac’s disappearance which began in 2023 & concluded in 2025, in November 2016 when Zac went missing, the NSWPF wasn’t as well equipped & resourced in dealing with missing persons. Since that time, a Missing Persons Registry has replaced the Missing Persons Unit & a new risk assessment has been put in place in order to improve outcomes in missing persons cases moving forward.
On Monday afternoon, Zac’s family began searching the area along the street where he’d last been seen. Investigators utilized local media releases as well as social media in hopes of finding him & each tip they received was investigated. The area was canvassed, including the bushland areas, which were searched on foot in parts that were inaccessible by car. Swamps were searched as well as a nearby quarry that was filled with water, although the bottom was never dredged.
Several nearby dams within an old quarry were not secured by fencing at the time Zac disappeared while the area was used as a thoroughfare for people walking between Thornton & Metford. Between March 28-30 2017, police divers searched several dams within that area, but found nothing.
When a cadaver dog was brought in June 2017, about eight months after Zac vanished, no alerts were made & no relevant evidence was found. Bones were found along train tracks on December 10, 2020, but they were later determined to be from an animal.
CCTV footage from local homes & businesses were requested while footage from the Maitland Railway Station was also combed over to determine if Zac had boarded a train. They also looked into hospitals & local mental health units. After Zac climbed out of Matt & Courtney’s car, there was no further activity in his banking, cell phone or social media accounts.
Zac had been a regular user of Facebook & Snapchat, often using these platforms as his main means of communication. The last time he logged onto Facebook was on Friday, November 11, 2016 & the last time he logged into Snapchat was on the day he went missing.
When he vanished, he was an 18-year-old with no financial means or connections, so it’s highly unlikely that he voluntarily disappeared. He had always been very close with his supportive family so it’s also unlikely he would have left without continuing communication. There are no records or proof of any kind to suggest that Zac moved in or out of Australia & the last time he utilized a financial account was three days before he vanished.
In the weeks & months before his disappearance, his alcohol use, drug use & purchase of illegal substances greatly escalated, causing him to go into debt. According to his friends, on the day he vanished, Zac ate a piece of methamphetamine that was 7 millimeters thick & in the shape of a 50 cent coin. His erratic behavior on the day he vanished was consistent with a person feeling paranoid & anxious after using meth.
Despite the fact that his remains have never been found, based on the fact that there is no evidence to support that he’s still alive, the coronial inquest has concluded that Zac is deceased & he likely died on or shortly after November 13, 2016.
Because his body & clothing have never been found, Coroner Forbes cannot make any determinations as to his cause or manner of death. Forbes does believe that evidence suggests that he died under suspicious circumstances & recommends that Zac’s death be referred to the NSW Police Unsolved Homicide Team for ongoing investigation.
According to Karen, after her son vanished, someone broke into their home & stole some things from Zac’s bedroom, likely in an attempt to make it appear that he had taken these items & ran away. However, the person clearly wasn’t familiar with their home or Zac’s belongings since they actually took Cody’s clothing & failed to take Zac’s watch & Converse shoes.
The Barnes family have through ten years of anguish, not knowing where Zac went or what happened to him. They’ve been tormented by the endless scenarios they’ve played out in their minds while Karen refuses to lose hope that they’ll one day have answers.
Four years after Zac disappared, the Barnes family faced another devastating loss in October 2020 when Zac’s younger brother, Liam Barnes, died from suicide at age 19.
It’s Karen’s belief that someone harmed her son. Although she believes that he’s no longer alive, she knows that his remains are out there somewhere. She desperately wants to be able to know where he is & what happened to him. Through the pain of losing two teenage sons over the span of four years, Karen has been determined to one day lay her boys to rest together.
Anyone with information about Zac’s disappearance is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 800-333-000
References:
- Wikipedia: Gosford
- State Coroner’s Court of New South Wales: Inquest into the disappearance & suspected death of Zac Eran Barnes
- News.com.au: Zac Barnes inquest: Witnesses reveal vanished teen’s chilling last words
- News.com.au: Zac Barnes inquest: Teen’s eerie one word message before vanishing
- 9 News: Mum’s plea years after her ‘little protector’ vanished
- Daily Mail: Zac Barnes’ friends reveal his final words before he vanished near Thornton NSW, without a trace: coronial inquest
- Daily Mail: ‘No words to express the pain’: Younger brother of teenager who mysteriously vanished four years ago kills himself aged just 19 leaving his parents heartbroken
- Apple Podcasts: What Happened to Zac? How does someone disappear without a trace?
- ABC News: Hunter Valley teenager Zac Barnes died in suspicious circumstances, coroner finds
