'Nobody would find it': Mum's chilling warning over Tanja Ebert's disappearance
The grieving mother of a South Australian murder suspect, who shot himself dead, said if he had killed his young wife, no one would ever find her body.
On Wednesday August 16, eight days after Tanja Ebert went missing, Major Crime detectives swarmed the family sheep station and grilled her husband, Michael Burdon, for hours.
He became the primary suspect in her disappearance before he turned a gun on himself outside the Manna Hill homestead.
What followed was a gruelling exploration for Tanja's body on a station that is twice the size of Mt Gambier.
Even with horses, motorbikes, heavy machinery and a mining expert, Mr Burdon's grieving mother, Marlis Burdon, said police would never find the body of her daughter in law.
“He knew the station, every stone on the station,” she told Today Tonight.
“If Michael had hidden the body, nobody would find it."
She is now back home at her waterfront shack on the Eyre Peninsula, but she still struggles to comprehend what has happened in the past four weeks.
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She said she understood there are "crimes of passion" but did not think her son was involved in one.
“I think she might still be there, I think she might have run away," she added.
Ms Burdon said police left the cattle station in disarray after the near week long search concluded.
“Like an invasion, they ripped up roads, they twisted water piping.
"Big machinery was left without fuel and then had to be bled by a mechanic in order for it to be worked again.”
Scrutinising the actions of the officers on the property that day, Ms Burdon is eagerly awaiting the findings as to how her son got his hands on a gun.
"How did he get access to anything?" she asked.
A Commissioner's inquiry was launched immediately after Michael Burdon's death.
