The Disappearance of Donald Mackay

The disappearance and probable murder of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay, from the carpark of the Griffith Hotel on the night of 15 June 1978, was a turning point in the public fight against the illegal drug trade operating in NSW at the time. The media coverage of Mackay’s disappearance and a subsequent Royal Commission publically exposed marijuana cultivation in the Riverina area and shone a light on the men who had organised Mackay’s death, allegedly members of an Italian crime organisation known as the ‘Honoured Society’. More than thirty years after Donald Mackay’s disappearance, this brutal murder of a concerned private citizen still resonates around the country.