CCTV images show missing ABC employee Jill Meagher talking to a man as she was walking home, minutes before her suspicious disappearance.
Melbourne police say the footage shows the 29-year-old woman walking outside a bridal dress shop in Sydney Rd, Brunswick, about 1.40am local time on Saturday.
It shows a man in a blue top walking back and forth on Sydney Rd. He then starts talking to Meagher outside the bridal store at 1.42am to 1.43am.
He then walks off ahead of her and she waits behind for a moment, then continues walking. The images are the last known sighting of the woman before she vanished. Her disappearance has triggered a homicide investigation amid fears she has met with foul play.
Just a step away from the bright lights of Sydney Road in Brunswick, Melbourne, is the lonely, dark spot where Jill Meagher spent the final moments of her life.
The dogleg lane where the 29-year-old was dragged to, assaulted and murdered by Adrian Bayley has no name, and there's nothing there to mark the tragedy.
At 1.45am on a Saturday morning, around the time when Ms Meagher's life was taken, an eerie stillness in the lane's darkest corners is all that remains.
Retracing Jill Meagher's last steps began as a mission to see how a smart and capable young woman could step out onto a well-lit city street for a 700m walk, never to make it home.
The other mission was to see what has changed and whether lone women are any safer on the street today.
The answer lay in that dank little spot where she died, and it is of no comfort.
There is no particular marker of Jill Meagher's murder when news.com.au visits the spot on April 22, just six months before the five year commemoration of her death.
Her brutal murder happened in the early hours of Friday, September 22, 2012, after the Irish-born ABC staffer enjoyed some drinks with friends.
Last Friday, much like that night, the Brunswick Green Hotel on Sydney Road in inner Melbourne was a welcoming space off the busy main thoroughfare.
By 7.30pm, traffic continued to rattle down Sydney Road, the congestion reportedly little different than it was five years ago.
CCTV footage taken from Sydney Road, Brunswick, shows Jill Meagher before she was murdered.
CCTV images show Adrian Bayley on the night that Jill disappeared.
But drinkers inside the pub looked relaxed and jovial, the same sort of mood Jill Meagher's friends had been in after meeting up at the end of their work week.
In 2012, CCTV captured Ms Meagher walking from the ABC's Southbank headquarters with a female colleague at 5.04pm.
She was wearing the same black dress she wore later that evening, pulling on a coat against the 15 degree cool of the early evening.
Ms Meagher was on her way to a gallery to celebrate a colleague's birthday and would make her way to the Brunswick green with three friends at 9pm that night.
Across town, pipe fitter and multiple rapist Adrian Bayley had been caught on CCTV at 7.28pm entering the doors of the Quiet Man Irish Hotel with his girlfriend.
The hotels are more than 4km apart, but had nothing yet to connect Bayley and Ms Meagher.
By 1am last Saturday morning, as the Brunswick Green was preparing to close, people spilled out through the glass doorway and a barman made sure no new customers came through.
It was just before closing time that Jill Meagher and one of the friends she had spent the evening with left the premises to walk to a nearby bar.
CCTV on Sydney Road caught the two passing the adult novelty store near the Brunswick Green before crossing the road to the (now closed) Etiquette Bar.
Last Friday, young people spilt out onto Sydney Road, some buoyed by a few drinks, some maudlin.
Jill Meagher went mssing on 21 September 2012 in Melbourne. Photo / Supplied
A group of three young women stop and speak with news.com.au.
The girls say admit they would not feel safe walking home alone, now.
One of the girls, Nicole, said she "was date-raped by a man last year ... I'd had too many wines, he took me home and f***** me when I was barely conscious".
The girls discuss the perils of being young and female on the streets of a big city, before taking off in the relative safety of each other's company.
After the adult shop, Ms Meagher would have passed a mobile phone repairs shop, the Brunswick Medical Centre, Super Cheap Fabrics and the decades old frontage of EK Fashion.
A bakery and kebab shop is still open, serving young people clearly drunk and still enjoying their evening. The atmosphere is convivial.
Following Ms Meagher's path to Etiquette Bar, which was operating and open five years ago, the street lighting seems ample and the stream of cars are like a safety blanket.
The Etiquette's successor, Vale, has a darkened frontage.
It was here some time after 1am, that Ms Meagher's friend decided he was calling it a night and twice offered to drop her off in a taxi.
At 12.24am, a camera over the bar at the Lounge captured images of an agitated Bayley pacing up and down and holding his phone to his ear. His girlfriend doesn't respond.
Bayley went home to Coburg, where he lived in a granny flat, changed into a blue hoodie and travelled "by unknown means" back in.
This time he went to Sydney Road, Brunswick, known for its throngs of young people in the early hours after Friday night drinks.
Street view across the road from the chemist where Jill Meagher rounded the corner at about 1.38am on September 22, 2012 before she was murdered. Photo / news.com.au
CCTV recorded Jill Meagher passing Chemist Warehouse at 1.34am and then stopping three passers-by, and having a chat with one of them, a woman whom she embraces.
It is at this point on Sydney Road that the busyness of Friday night's aftermath falls away.
At the same time last Saturday morning, security guards sit on the door of the Penny Black Bar ensuring, they tell news.com.au that drunken patrons make it safely off to their homes.
Past the Penny Black and the chemist, the road becomes oddly and suddenly lonely.
Traffic has thinned and the footpaths are virtually empty.
Knowing the terrible events that, four-and-a-half years ago were about to happen, the deserted footpaths take on a sinister cast.
At 1.36am, CCTV catches Ms Meagher passing Crust Pizza. Her pace was reasonably brisk and her gait appeared unaffected by alcohol.
Past a wedding cake shop, Jessicakes, the Smart Skin Clinic and two art supply shops took her to the corner of Ballarat Street, the last cross street before Hope.
Exhibits from the rape trial of Adrian Bayley, who killed Jill Meagher. Photos depict the tattoo on the arm of Adrian Bayley.
She was walking on the left-hand side of Sydney Road travelling north. Across the road is a boarded up pawn brokers' shop and a fenced empty plot.
Stores including quaint old establishments with Greek lettering and a small precinct of bridal and evening wear shops are ahead.
CCTV recorded her walking past the sagging sign of Sam Mihelakos's real estate agency.
Thirty seconds later, Adrian Bayley could be seen striding after her. It was the first footage linking the two.
On this Saturday morning, a couple sits kissing on a small brick fence outside the Brunswick Baptist Church, next to the Asylum Seeker and Refugee Centre.
Just ahead is Mecca Jewellery, a children's clothes shop and a store called The Evening Gown.
Next door is the Soiree and Bomboniere wedding shop ablaze with lights displaying white silk gowns.
The Duchess Boutique where Jill Meagher was stopped by her killer Adrian Bayley moments before he raped and murdered her. Photo / news.com.au
Next to that is the Duchess Boutique. Last Saturday morning the windows are dark, the sequined gowns displayed in the window shimmering briefly in the news.com.au photographer's flash.
It was here that the now infamous vision of Bayley talking to Ms Meagher outside was caught on the boutique's cameras just before 1.38am.
They were a few shops away from the Hope Street corner, and Jill was less than 400m from potential safety.
Last Saturday morning, a lone woman is making her way up this stretch, which apart from news.com.au is abandoned.
Lamplight spills over the middle of the dogleg shaped back lane where Jill Meagher was murdered on September 22, 2012. Photo / news.com.au
From the Duchess Boutique on, Jill Meagher made her final steps alone with Bayley in pursuit.
From the butcher shop next door, it is just 100m to the corner, past Alisha by Kylie J Bridal, an old rug shop, Discount Tools, and a Greek hairdresser.
The second last lit-up shop is John & Evie Baby & Children's Wear which has elaborate silk embroidered christening gowns on display.
Finally on the corner is an old chemist which says in the Greek alphabet the word for Farmakieon, or pharmacy.
In the near distance up the hill glow the lights of the Alashaya Restaurant.
View from Hope Street in Melbourne's Brunswick where Jill Meagher was grabbed and dragged by Adrian Bayley down the cement slope to the flagstones and her death. Photo / news.com.au
But it is into Hope Street that Jill Meagher turned and soon after Bayley grabbed her.
Past the peeling yellow wall of the old pharmacy it is only a few steps to the right of a driveway to reach the lane with no name.
Adrian Bayley was no stranger to dark laneways. He has used dark laneways in the seedy Melbourne suburb of St Kilda in which to rape prostitutes.
This laneway begins as a concrete path which descends down a slope into a flagstones walkway off to the right.
The area down the slope opens up and stretches back into inky corners, littered with rubbish bins and closed in on two sides by high brick factory walls.
On the left side of the lane are the backs of the bridal stores.
Their glittering shop fronts belie the squalid rear exteriors of old tin and wood.
Off in the darkest corner is a deep puddle of water half-filled with bricks and beyond, the slope of a house roof and black trees.
Jill Meagher met her last moments in this back lane behind the shops in the inner Melbourne suburb of Brunswick. Photo / news.com.au
It is nearing 2am and the sky is a light purple.
Adrian Bayley raped Jill Meagher in this spot and then strangled her "with sustained force".
He later told police that he hadn't meant to hurt Ms Meagher, just rape her, and that she had "flipped" him off when she resisted and threatened to call police, so he killed her.
Jill Meagher's body wasn't found until six days later, not at the spot she was killed but dumped 50km away at Gisborne South.
But Bayley left Ms Meagher in this bleak place while he went home, got a shovel and returned to the laneway at 4.22am, placed her in his car boot and left at 4.25am.
Jill's husband posted this tribute in 2014.
It was a miserable place to die, and yet so close to those reassuring street lights.
Notwithstanding Jill Meagher's utter misfortune of time and place, the answer is, yes, it could.
That laneway with its little corner of grass in the inkiest spot where one might presume Bayley dragged Ms Meagher away from the light could be any lane which lies behind a busy Australian street stalked by a psychopath.
