Nine-year-old Samantha Knight was last seen after school in Bondi. Forty years later, Waverley Cemetery is being considered as the site of a memorial to her, while her remains have never been found.
Her disappearance prompted extensive searches and drew residents across the wider Waverley community into efforts to find her and return her safely to her family.
The search never brought Samantha home.
Samantha disappeared at about 4:15pm on 19 August 1986. Four decades later, the anniversary of her disappearance is being marked alongside plans to investigate a memorial bearing her name at Waverley Cemetery.
The Search That Began In Bondi
Samantha disappeared on the afternoon of 19 August 1986.
She was nine years old, and despite the searches that followed, no trace of her body was found.
The disappearance remained unresolved for years as her family waited without knowing where her remains had been placed.
A criminal case eventually established what had happened to Samantha, but it did not provide her family with a body to bury.
Michael Guider pleaded guilty to her manslaughter and was sentenced in 2002.
A judge found that Guider had taken Samantha to a location and given her sleeping medication, most probably with the intention of taking indecent photographs. She stopped breathing, after which he disposed of her body.
Guider received a 17-year sentence. He had already been jailed for sex offences against 13 children.
A Conviction Without A Grave
The conviction resolved Guider’s criminal responsibility for Samantha’s death, but her remains were never recovered.
That left one of the central parts of the case unchanged for Samantha’s family: there was still no burial and no grave to visit.
Guider died at Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick on 7 September 2024, aged 73, without police having recovered Samantha’s body.
The Missed Foundation describes the experience of families whose missing loved ones are never recovered as ambiguous loss.
Its founding chief executive, Loren O’Keefe, has explained that the absence of certainty and of familiar rituals such as a funeral, burial and visits to a grave can leave grief unresolved. Memorial plaques can provide some families with another place of remembrance.
Forty Years On
The anniversary has now brought Samantha’s memory back into focus across Waverley.
A memorial is being investigated in consultation with her family, with a plaque at the Ivy Wall at Waverley Cemetery among the options under consideration.
The proposal has the support of Samantha’s mother, Tess Knight, and former school friends.
For Bondi, the anniversary reaches back to an ordinary after-school afternoon in 1986 that became the beginning of an extensive search.
Forty years later, Samantha remains without a grave, while the proposed memorial offers the possibility of a dedicated place where her name can be remembered.
Published 25-August-2026
