The following is an extract from Vanished: The true stories from families of Australian missing people, by Nicole Morris, available via Big Sky Publishing.
Kay Docherty and Toni Cavanagh lived, in Warilla, in the Illawarra region of NSW. In 1979, when they were 15, Kay and Toni vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. Kevin and Kay Docherty were twins, born five minutes apart in Wollongong Hospital.
‘Kay was scared of the dark,’ says Kevin. ‘Mum was really protective of us; we were allowed to play in the street just as long as she knew where we were, as long as she could see us, as long as she knew the other kids. Mostly we played near our house. Mum didn’t like taking her eye off us.’
Both Kevin and Kay attended Lake Illawarra High School, in the same year as Toni Cavanagh. Mavia Cavanagh is Toni’s stepmother, and she raised Toni and her sister Vicki from when they were very young. ‘Toni was a bubbly sort of person,’ says her friend Tracey. ‘She was very softly spoken but she was always cracking up laughing. She was very happy.’
Kevin was later approached by a woman he’s known for years, who was at school with Kay and Toni. She was also re-interviewed by police to recall what she knew about the girls’ disappearance.
The woman told Kevin that the day they went missing, Toni had gone to all her friends at school, telling them there was a disco on that night in Wollongong, and asking if they wanted to go with her. All the girls told Toni no, they couldn’t go with her, their parents wouldn’t allow them. The woman recalled that Kay was not one of the girls Toni asked. The woman walked home from school with Toni that same afternoon, and Toni asked her to go to the disco. Again, Toni was told no.