GEORGE TOWN – The inquest into the disappearance of Malaysian-born Annapuranee Jenkins has attracted the attention of the South Australian Parliament.
Frank Pangallo, the SA-Best member of the South Australian Legislative Council, said its Parliament will be monitoring the inquest proceedings, which begins today.
“The Malaysian authorities must take note of the serious interest expressed by the Parliament of South Australia in seeking that justice be served to one of our citizens who never returned home safely to her family.”
The inquest is before Penang Sessions Court judge Norsalha Hamza at the court complex here.
She will sit as a coroner, from now to Friday, in a bid to determine what happened to the Aussie grandmother, who leaves behind an ailing husband, two children and two grandchildren.
Jenkins, then aged 67, disappeared on December 13, 2017, during a visit to Penang. She was reportedly last seen at one of the busiest roads on the island – Jalan Scotland.
Later, her partial skeletal remains were found 2km away at a construction site, from where she was last seen.
This is not the first time Pangallo has brought up the Jenkins case. He had moved a motion in SA’s Legislative Council late last year that called on the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to request the Royal Malaysian Police conduct a thorough investigation.
He also hopes to have preliminary discussions with South Australian Police and the Australian Federal Police about any assistance they may be able to provide to their Malaysian counterparts.
“It’s been a difficult four-year process for the Jenkins family to get to this point. It is now up to the Malaysian authorities and the coroner to get to the truth about Mrs Jenkins’ disappearance and her unexplained death, believed to be at the hands of unknown persons.
“The family is hoping the inquest can shed some light into their wife and mother’s final movements and finally bring them some much-needed closure on who is responsible for her death.
“The family is also seeking to have Anna’s remains returned to Adelaide as soon as possible,” he said in a statement today.
Yesterday, Jenkins’ son Greg described the harrowing search for his missing mother, and how years later, it was by some bizarre twist of fate that he himself was the one to stumble upon her bones when the authorities could not find her.
Jenkins was in Penang in 2017 to visit her now late mother at a nursing home here – something she does annually.
She brought along her husband, Frank, a former Royal Australian Air Force serviceman, who had met and married Jenkins while stationed at the RAAF’s airbase in Butterworth in the mid-1970s.
On December 13, 2017, Jenkins caught an Uber from a George Town dentist – where she had just been treated – to visit her mother at a nearby nursing home.
En route to the nursing home, Jenkins is alleged by the driver to have asked him to immediately and randomly stop on a busy road where she allegedly exited the vehicle – never to be seen again.
Her mother C. Mary Anne died at the age of 101 in 2018. – The Vibes, March 28, 2022
