The evil stalking the women of Byron – as hundreds speak out about terrifying serial killer they fear is targeting the beachside paradise

Online detectives fear a serial killer is on the loose in paradise after linking dozens of attacks and murders around Byron Bay in northern NSW over the past 50 years.

Laura, 37, and Kayley, 28, – who want to keep their surname secret after chilling online threats – took to social media to reveal how they escaped the clutches of a sinister predator.

But they have since been swamped by others who have suffered similar terror ordeals – as well as grieving relatives who fear their loved ones have been killed in possibly related cases.

“This goes back to the 1970s and as recently as last week,” Laura told Daily Mail Australia.

‘People tell me such alarming details about things that have happened to them too, sexual assaults, stalking, drinking binges and even give me names.’

The shocking revelations come as NSW State MLC Jeremy Buckingham this week called for a special investigation into more than 60 women who were brutally murdered or disappeared on the NSW north coast in unsolved cases.

Police and locals have long suspected there is a link between the cases, spread across Newcastle and Byron, but limited resources have hampered their re-investigation.

Now Melbourne’s Kayley has revealed her own terrifying experience when she was stalked by a disturbing stranger while on holiday in Byron in August this year

Two women have revealed chilling incidents in the Byron Bay area, 15 years apart, that led to a flood. Similar stories from others

‘I walked in along the road [nearby] Suffolk Park towards the beach when a car with a couple in the front slowed down,” she told Daily Mail Australia.

‘The terrified look on their faces as they looked past me made me turn around.

‘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.’

But she said she endured an “exhausting experience” of being shuttled 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.

Kayley vented her frustrations on Tiktok to warn others, weeks before Buckingham raised his concerns in NSW Parliament.

The cases of both Jasmine Morris and Daneeka Nixon are unsolved

Thea Liddle’s belongings were found through a tip to Theo’s business. Her death remains a mystery

But since then, like Laura, she has been inundated with dozens of 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.”

The new spotlight on cold case murders was also activated 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.

A van stopped to give them a lift, but they found a horrifying scene 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.”

But when the mysterious stranger in his thirties said it was because he was a chef, 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.

Laura took to Tiktok to share her close call and was shocked by the messages she subsequently received.

The disappearance of Theo Hayez in Byron remains a mystery despite extensive investigation

Laura warns that Byron Bay has a dark and dangerous underbelly

She said she had almost forgotten the terrifying encounter until this week’s revelations about the dozens of unsolved murders in the area.

But Laura now believes she may have cheated death too, and has received numerous messages from others with new details about 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 move forward.

“But Byron is not the place people think it is. There is a dark and dangerous underbelly.”

The high-profile disappearance of backpacker Theo Hayez in May 2019 is still a mystery five years later.

The Belgian’s last known footage caught him on CCTV leaving local Byron nightclub Cheeky Monkeys, where he looked at his phone as he walked down the road.

Despite an extensive search in which Theo’s family flew in from Brussels to help, the case was never solved.

But in a creepy twist, an anonymous tip in 2021 to a website set up to help find Hayez led a private investigator to a dilapidated squatter’s house in nearby Nimbin.

Inside, they discovered personal belongings of Thea Liddle, a local woman whose skeletal remains had been discovered almost a year earlier.

The circumstances surrounding Liddle’s death remain a mystery.

The same goes for the circumstances surrounding the death of Daneeka Nixon, whose body was found in a dam in April 2006, just days after a rave party at The Channon.

Friends questioned how the 25-year-old, who was a good swimmer and surfer, could have drowned on private property less than an hour from Byron and an autopsy could not determine the cause of death.

And teenager Jasmine Morris, who lived near South Grafton, is one of dozens of unsolved cases plaguing the area.

The 19-year-old has been missing since October 6, 2009 after telling her mother she was going to the pub.

However, an inquest in December 2020 found three persons of interest linked to her death and her case has been referred to the NSW Police Unsolved Homicide Unit for investigation.

But former Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham warns these cases could be just some of 67 possible murders that remain unsolved in the area where he said there was an “alarming similarity”.

He has accused NSW Police of failing victims’ families by failing to properly investigate unsolved cases.

“Some of those were individual incidents, there’s no doubt about that. But many are connected, and there is one perpetrator,” he said.

“It is impossible to imagine that in the area from the North Coast to the Tweed Heads there are 67 individual murderers who have escaped justice.

“Someone has done these things repeatedly.”