Chilling new fears emerge for heartbroken family still hunting their daughter’s killer – after detectives dismissed her death as an accident for years until a coroner ruled it MURDER

EXCLUSIVE

For years, Harmony Bryant’s tragic death was dismissed as a simple car crash, despite her family insisting the evidence proved it was something far more sinister.

Now they fear something even worse. 

Eight years after Harmony died, a coroner finally ruled the 26-year-old had been murdered, but by then the trail had gone cold and the culprit was never traced. 

Now her family have been hit by new heartache over growing concerns their daughter may have been a victim of a suspected serial killer prowling northern NSW.

‘I have been looking at other cases for years and have thought they are similar,’ Harmony’s heartbroken mother Karen Bryant told Daily Mail Australia. 

‘It’s been a very long time now and there are so many of them.’ 

Harmony’s shattered body was found with extensive burns and broken bones near her burnt-out car in bushland at Bonny Hills, south of Port Macquarie on August 16, 2003.

While in intensive care and unable to speak, Harmony had tried to communicate by silently mouthing what had happened to her but without success.

‘The fear in her eyes is something that will never ever leave us,’ mother Karen said at the time. 

Harmony died in hospital a month later without being able to give up her secrets. 

Since then, Karen, from Evans Head, fought tirelessly to have her daughter’s death investigated but faced a brick wall of resistance from local police.

The mum-of-five was convinced Harmony didn’t die in a car accident, but that someone had violently attacked her only daughter and then staged the accident.

She was finally vindicated when a coroner’s inquest in 2011 finally found there could be little doubt Harmony had met with foul play.

The inquest heard Ms Bryant’s car drove off the road while under control and even managed to avoid a tree.

The car was found smouldering in dense scrubland in Bonny Hills.

But her handbag, car keys and traces of her blood were found on a clifftop 600m away.

Deputy State Coroner Malcolm MacPherson told the inquest the system had failed Harmony and her family and offered his sincere sympathy.

He criticised the initial police investigation and recommended the reward for information leading to a conviction be increased to $250,000.

He also referred the investigation to Cold Cases at the State Crime Command, Homicide Squad.

The hunt for her killer has so far proved fruitless though.

But chilling new details of the suspected serial killer terrorising the NSW coast south from the paradise coast of Byron Bay has triggered new fears for Harmony’s family.

Tammy Bryant grew up with her ‘fun and energetic,’ cousin Harmony and forged a close bond with her because of their mere 18-month age gap.

The horrific circumstances that led to her death still etched on her mind today.  

‘I woke up to a phone call from my dad in the early hours of the morning to tell me they found her,’ Tammy told Daily Mail Australia. 

‘It was winter and I just remember thinking she must be cold lying there in the bush.’

The Gold Coast mum hadn’t realised her cousin’s murder was among the many unsolved attacks spanning from Byron to the Central Coast until last week.

But she now has no doubt they are connected, and has spoken out in the hope it may help her family finally get justice and unmask the killer on the loose.

‘That is a lot of people missing or murdered – there has to be links there,’ she said. ‘It’s been a big shock to me.

‘We talk about Harmony a lot and I use her story to warn my own daughter about being safe. 

‘There are too many cases around there and I do think one killer could be responsible for many of them.’

She has blasted detectives for failing the family in the aftermath of Harmony’s death by writing it off as a traffic accident. 

But Taylor lives in hope the killer will be identified one day. 

‘It was bungled from the beginning, all that lost evidence and opportunities for so many years when nobody was working on it,’ she said.

‘But they will slip up one day and tell the wrong person. No one can keep a secret like that forever.’

Harmony’s mother Karen has all but given up hope after decades of trying to uncover the truth of what happened to her child.

‘It doesn’t matter what I say now because it’s never going to happen,’ she admitted.

 ‘I’d love for it to happen. When the inquest ended, my sons sat me down and talked to me about it. 

‘They said mum we have already lost Harmony and our dad, we can’t lose you too, you have to take a step back.’

The family urge anyone with information about Harmony’s death to call Crime Stoppers  1800 333 000.