Qld: Natasha. Tell us why (Repeat)
By Ainsley Pavey
BRISBANE, April 18 AAP - Australia's most famous runaway teenager has a lot of explaining to do.
Since turning up alive in the middle of the trial of Leonard John Fraser, the man accusedof her murder, Natasha Ryan has created a storm of intrigue and anger.
She faces possible criminal charges along with her boyfriend, Scott Black, the 26-year-oldmilkman who helped her hide from society for four-and-a-half years.
It is hard to believe how Ms Ryan let her parents, Jenny and Robert, and sister Donna,think she was dead.
Now she has an agent - self-styled promoter Max Markson - who helped cut a deal tosell her story to 60 Minutes for a six-figure sum.
Ms Ryan has been spotted frolicking on the beach for the cameras but is apparentlygetting none of the $200,000 Channel Nine is reputed to have paid for the exclusive rightsto her tale to be aired on April 27.
The money is being paid to Jenny Ryan, but her estranged husband Robert has been leftso confused by his "grasshopper" returning he has branded the deal "atrocious".
Politicians and State Emergency Service workers involved in a search for her body wantMs Ryan to pay back the state for the cost of the investigation and trial.
Details are still being pieced together over Ms Ryan's bizarre hermit-like existence.
She told police she lived almost exclusively indoors, venturing out under the coverof darkness with Mr Black to dip her toes in the ocean a few times.
She taught herself to cook and sew and watched movies and surfed the net behind drawncurtains. When visitors came, Ms Ryan hid in cupboards, sometimes for up to six hours,waiting for them to leave.
She was a troubled teen before running away in July 1998 but she now wants to go to university.
Like many teens, Ms Ryan endured her parents' separation and turned to drugs at thetender age of 14.
The first time she ran away Ms Ryan stayed in a hotel for a few days with Mr Blackwho had once dated her older sister, Donna.
Mr Black was charged later with child stealing but the charge was substituted for obstructinga police investigation when Ms Ryan disappeared a second time on August 31, 1998.
Mr Black was a suspect for her murder before it was pinned on Fraser who "confessed"
to it in jail.
The accused multiple murderer, who is now freed of the charge following last Thursday'srevelation, remains on trial for the murder of three other women.
The police who charged Fraser are facing accusations of mishandling the case afterMs Ryan lived under their noses undetected for so long.
She went as far as Yeppoon, a nearby seaside community, for three years, and when shemoved back to Rockhampton with Mr Black their house was just a suburb from her mother.
The Crime and Misconduct Commission has also entered the fray after revelations MsRyan contacted Kids Help Line, a counselling service, on March 10 this year, asking forher details to be passed on to police.
She gave a false name but told her tale of hiding and of the man facing trial for her murder.
The counsellor took several weeks to report the call to police and a female sergeantwho received the information has admitted to failing to pass it on to homicide detectives.
The bungles have added another twist to an amazing story, with Ms Ryan now being calledto testify at the Brisbane Supreme Court trial where she was one of the victims up untila week ago.
AAP ap/sc/ph/bwl
KEYWORD: NEWSCOPE QLD (NEWS ANALYSIS) REPEATING
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