The Girl in the Wardrobe.


 Natasha Anne Ryan (born 1984), is an Australian woman who disappeared on 31 August 1998 at the age of 14. A local serial killer Leonard Fraser, was later charged with her murder although her body was never found.


In 2003, police received a letter saying that Natasha was alive and also listed the address where she could be reached.


Police raided the location mentioned in the letter and Ryan was found alive in her boyfriend's house hiding in a wardrobe, almost five years after she disappeared and while the trial of the man accused of her murder was underway.


It was discovered that 14-year-old Ryan had left home voluntarily to be with her older boyfriend, Scott Black, a 22-year-old milkman and had been living and hiding in his house for years.


Despite becoming known as "The Girl in the Wardrobe" and the media leading people to believe that Ryan spent most of her time in a closet, it was soon learned that she only used a closet to hide if visitors called to visit her boyfriend. The rest of the time Ryan roamed freely around the house, but always with the curtains drawn. She was also reported to have ventured outside a number of times, but always under the cover of darkness, which included a midnight visit to the beach.


In 2005, a Rockhampton District Court judge sentenced Black to a three-year prison sentence for perjury, with two years suspended.


In 2006, Ryan was found guilty of causing a false police investigation and was fined $1,000.


Ryan and Black married in 2008. Before the wedding, they signed an exclusivity deal with a newspaper worth $200,000.

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