A tourist has reignited theories of a serial killer lurking in Byron Bay after a chilling late night encounter with a stranger.
Sunshine Coast content creator Bodhi Jako shared a video on Sunday recounting his experience with a man he feared could be the ‘Byron Bay Butcher’ – a suspected serial killer believed to be behind dozens of attacks in northern NSW over the past 50 year sat.
The theory that a serial killer has been linked to more than 60 disappearances since the 1970s was put forward by NSW State MLC Jeremy Buckingham in October last year.
He highlighted an “alarming similarity” between 67 murder and missing persons cases between Newcastle and Byron Bay and called for a special investigation.
Mr Jako shared his own nerve-wracking experience with an unknown stalker in mid-2024 on Monday.
‘I was sleeping on the floor at my boyfriend’s house. “A lot of questionable things had happened in the weeks leading up to this night,” he said in a TikTok video.
‘This house belonged to two girls and there were creepy notes and anonymous flowers left on their front door.
“One night they woke up to noises outside their window, and when they opened the curtains, there was a man standing there.
“Super sketchy, super weird.”
Mr Jako claimed the man had returned and might have entered the girls’ house if he had not woken up.
“At about two in the morning I just wake up for no particular reason,” he said.
‘I just woke up, I look to my right and hear a little rustling.
‘There’s a head poking through the curtains in the early hours of the morning, watching.
‘As soon as the man sees me, his head shoots back through the curtains, and that was that.’
Mr. Jako had no doubt that the man he saw had malicious intentions.
“After this, a lot of other creepy things happened and the girls were forced to leave the house,” he said.
Bodhi Jako (pictured) believes he may have come face to face with a suspected serial killer, dubbed the Byron Bay Butcher, in northern NSW
Kayley was so traumatized by a sinister man in gloves that she started mapping unsolved murders
“That man, who stuck his head through the curtain, could be the same man responsible for all the people who are missing.”
Last year, Laura, 37, and Kayley, 28, shared similar stories about their own experiences with a predator.
They were quickly flooded with messages from others who had similar experiences on the state’s north coast.
“This goes back to the 1970s and as recently as last week,” Laura told Daily Mail Australia in October.
‘People tell me such alarming details about things that have happened to them too, sexual assaults, stalking, binge drinking and even give me names.’
Kayley, from Melbourne, sparked the conversation after recalling being stalked by a stranger while on holiday in Byron Bay in August 2024.
‘I walked in along the road [nearby] Suffolk Park towards the beach when a car with a couple in the front slowed down,” she said.
‘The terrified look on their faces as they looked past me made me turn around.
Two women have revealed chilling incidents from the Byron Bay area 15 years apart, sparking a flood of similar stories from others
‘There was a man standing right behind me in a hat, sunglasses and gloves and I have never felt such pure evil in my life.
‘I don’t know what his intentions were towards me, but I just felt like he wasn’t there to rob me.
‘It was just terrible.’
Kayley immediately fled to the safety of the beach where her friends were waiting, but the feeling that she had avoided a sinister fate has stayed with her.
“I just knew something violent was going to happen,” she added.
‘This was broad daylight on a busy street and I couldn’t resist, so I reported it to the police.’
However, Kayley suffered an “exhausting experience” where she was torn between Byron Bay police station and her local police station in Melbourne.
“They both kept telling me to report to the other and that I couldn’t get anywhere,” she said.
After sharing her experiences as a warning to tourists, Kayley was also inundated with messages making disturbing new allegations of similar attacks in recent decades.
“There are brutal sexual attacks, people have escaped kidnapping attempts and I see there are commonalities,” she said.
‘I don’t know how to support these people. “I’m trying to tell them to tell the police, but some people are scared and that’s very worrying.”
A new spotlight came on the cold case murders Laura’s recollection of her own terrifying experience when she hitchhiked with a friend on the three-mile trek from Suffolk Park to their home in nearby Byron Bay in 2008.
Last year, Laura, 37 (pictured), and Kayley, 28, shared similar stories about their own experiences with a predator
A van stopped to give them a lift, but they were alarmed by what they saw inside the vehicle.
“When I got into the man’s van I saw a huge rusty knife on the front seat so I put it on the floor,” she told Daily Mail Australia.
“I didn’t think much of it and asked him why he had the knife.”
The mysterious stranger in his thirties said he was a chef, but Laura immediately felt uncomfortable.
“I knew that knife wasn’t a kitchen knife,” she said. ‘It was huge and rusty.
‘[And when] I asked where he worked, he said he was unemployed.’
Laura and her friend left immediately after pretending to the driver that they had reached their destination.
She said she had almost forgotten the meeting until this week’s revelations about the dozens of unsolved murders in the area.
But Laura now believes she may have also cheated death and has received numerous messages from others with new details of similar cases and incidents.
“I’ve had people give the names of family members they think are involved,” she says.
‘Fathers, ex-partners and comrades. Many are too afraid to go to the police or think the information they have is not enough to proceed.
“But Byron is not the place people think it is. There is a dark and dangerous underbelly.”