Continuing their agonising search for answers, the Hayez family has set up a new website looking4theo.com, amid hopes that it will help uncover new evidence.
"I'm heartbroken by the idea of never seeing my child again, and not knowing what happened," Theo Hayez's mother Vinciane Delforge told Reportages par SBS French podcast.
Mr Hayez, 18 when he vanished, was last seen leaving Cheeky Monkey's bar in Byron Bay at around 11pm on 31 May 2019. According to Ms Delforge, her final exchange with her son was earlier that day. When she couldn't reach him the next day, initially she didn't think it was a cause of concern.
"I thought, 'ok, he's doing something where there is no network coverage'. I started to worry the following day," she said.
Source: AAP
Mr Hayez was reported missing a few days later when staff at Byron Bay's WakeUp! backpacker hostel noticed that he had not checked out of his room. A widespread, painstaking search by police and members of the local community returned no clues.
"One year on, we believe that there is much more to Theo's story than has been brought to light," the family said in a statement published earlier this week. "We must find out what happened to him".
The family is no closer to knowing what led to Mr Hayez's disappearance, but are refusing to give up hope. In the statement, they thanked the public for their support during "a very difficult year" and called on "anyone who might be withholding information" to come forward.
One of the few leads that had emerged was GPS tracking data from Mr Hayez's mobile phone recorded on 1 June 2019; the last signal was detected at Cosy Corner, Tallow Beach, nestled on the southern side of Cape Byron.
A grab from CCTV footage of missing Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez. Source: Supplied
"Thanks to the location data we know that he did not take the main road to the beach," Mr Hayez's godfather Jean-Philippe Pector told SBS French. "He used a secondary entry which is strange...the path he took raises so many questions."
A cap similar to the one Mr Hayez was wearing on the night he went missing was discovered in bushland by the Cape Byron lighthouse in July.
"The DNA results appear to show it was Theo's cap," Mr Pector said. "The problem is we have very little information to fully understand what happened, how to explain his choices."
NSW police formally ended the search for him in September 2019 and the case was referred to the NSW Coroner. But the family has rejected the official police theory that Mr Hayez wandered towards the Byron coastline and fell off the cliffs, insisting that the then 18-year-old was not a risk-taker.
Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez, who vanished in Byron Bay in May 2019. Source: Facebook
According to his family, Mr Hayez was looking forward to returning to Belgium after spending more than six months in Australia on a working holiday visa. He was set to fly home on 13 June 2019 and study for an engineering degree at university in September.
Shortly before the one year anniversary of Mr Hayez's disappearance, his family spoke to SBS French for the new podcast, Reportages par SBS French, featuring exclusive interviews with Mr Hayez's mother and godfather. The podcast re-examines the facts of the case, diving deeper into the unsolved mystery in a bid to understand what occurred that fateful night in Byron Bay, as the family holds high hopes for the missing pieces of the puzzle to emerge.
