Liz Taylor and her husband Bill were on their way home after a night out in Merimbula when they spotted a car parked on the side of the road, its headlights pointed in their eyes eyes.
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Bill slowed the car as they approached.
Standing by the car were teenagers Nichole Collins, Lauren Barry and their abductors Leslie Camilleri and Lindsay Beckett.
“On our way back up the hill we saw them, and thought it looked like they’d broken down and Bill thought we should stop,” Ms Taylor, who now lives on Queensland’s Magnetic Island, said.
"If one of them had raised their hand we would have stopped."
- Liz Taylor
“Nichole was standing at the boot with one of the blokes and the boot was up, Lauren was a bit away from the car, to the side.
“They all stopped and looked at us as we drove past slowly.”
The couple ran a tourist park in Tathra at the time, and after a long day at work and a night out, Ms Taylor was keen to get home to rest ahead of the upcoming long weekend.
“You think if only. If one of them had raised their hand we would have stopped,” she said.
“I know you can’t turn back time. There’s some times in your life you wish you could turn back the hands of time, and this is one of the few times in my life I’ve wished I could.”
What she saw that night haunted Ms Taylor, the guilt of not stopping was hard to stomach.
“We got a good look at their faces, but we didn’t take much notice,” she said.
“What ifs won’t change the situation at all. It does get to you a bit though.”
The couple shared their information with police, and Ms Taylor was flown to Sydney to help construct an identikit of the suspects.
“The night I was in Sydney was the night a segment aired on the girls on Australia’s Most Wanted,” she said.
Almost a decade later, Ms Taylor came across two young women hitchhiking by themselves, memories of Lauren and Nichole flooded her mind and she stopped to offer them a ride.
“I was leaving Hervey Bay to go back to Brisbane and saw two young girls, one was blonde, one was dark haired. Because I felt guilt for what I’d done I picked them up,” Ms Taylor said.
They remain friends to this day.