More than three decades on from the day her whole world changed forever, Jeanette Hill can still remember the policemen coming to her work as vividly as if it was yesterday.
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It was a Monday morning, July 8, 1991.
They were there to inform her, that her daughter Penny, then aged 20, had been discovered unconscious on the side of the Cassilis Road, near Coolah.
"They said that she was found propped up against a gate unconscious," she recalled.
Found with severe head and facial injuries, she was taken to John Hunter Hospital, but never regained consciousness.
"It was one of the toughest times in our lives," Jeanette said of the 13 days sitting by her bedside wondering if they were ever going to see her smile again, hear her laugh again.
She died on Sunday, July 21, 1991, almost two weeks after she was found.
Thirty five years on, Penny's murder remains unsolved, and the unbearable pain for her family endures.
"It's something you never get over, you learn to live with," Jeanette said.
There's not a day that goes by that she doesn't think of her.
"You think, oh well, she'd be such and such an age now and whatever," she said.
Penny had moved from Narrabri only three days earlier for a one-week trial as a nanny to the children of the owner of the Black Stump Motel.
"She was just a country girl that went to do a job that she always loved," Jeanette said.
The subsequent investigation has spanned decades, involved multiple public appeals and seen police travel across the country pursuing leads and evidence.
In 1992, a coronial inquest held in Mudgee returned an open finding on the cause and manner of Penny's death.
Detectives from the State Crime Command's Homicide Squad commenced further investigations into her murder under Strike Force Samdon, before a second coronial inquest was held in 2012, in Tamworth.
It too delivered an open finding and was returned to investigators.
There were "a number of outstanding inquiries" they had been unable to complete before the inquest resumed. They also had new lines of inquiry to pursue resulting from information revealed in the inquest.
With still no arrest for those responsible for Penny's murder, in 2019, on the 28th anniversary of her death, the reward for information was increased to $1 million.
However, to this day, no one has ever been charged.
The investigation is currently under the purview of the Homicide Squad's Unsolved Homicide Team.
"It remains open and is monitored for any new information that may become available to progress the matter," police said in a statement to the Leader.
Jeanette said she does sometimes question whether "there was enough done" in the initial investigation.
"I just think we might have more answers now if there was a little bit more done then," she said.
"I don't know why it wasn't done."
She said sometimes it feels like they are closer to finding the answers they so desperately seek. Other times it seems like they are "that much further away".
The passing years don't help.
"I'd like to think we would get some answers but as time goes on and people get older and pass away and for other reasons and whatever, one never knows whether we'll ever get an answer," Jeanette said.
"[But] I still say to this day there would be people that know what happened."
Why they haven't come forward she doesn't know.
"I know a lot of people don't want to be involved," she said.
All she can cling to is hope.
Each time she hears of a cold case being solved it offers a fresh glimmer. But she also knows that there are some cases that "just don't get solved".
"You always think.. maybe somewhere, someday, somebody will talk," she said.
Even if whoever was involved has died, knowing what happened would give Penny's family some closure at least.
She urged anyone with any information to share what they know.
"If there's anyone out there that knows anything please come forward," she said.
