
It started off like a typical weekend.
Every second Friday, WIN Television presenter Ross Warren would leave his one-bedroom apartment in Wollongong and travel to Sydney to spend the weekend with friends.
But on a freezing Saturday morning in July 1989, the 24-year-old drove to the headland at Bondi and disappeared. He hasn't been seen since.
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At the time, Warren, a 'closeted' gay man, was staying with one of his friends, Craig Ellis, in Redfern.
On the Friday night, the pair went out to dinner before Warren suggested meeting up with another friend from work at Oxford Street. Warren stayed there until about 2am that morning.
"Then [Warren] got in his car and drove off. He headed towards Bondi, not back to Redfern," Greg Callaghan, host of the Bondi Badlands podcast, told Mamamia's True Crime Conversations.
That night, Warren drove to Fletcher Street, near Marks Park, a known gay beat at the time where people in the area would go to meet up.
He parked his car, "walked down the steps to the cliff-side walkway and was never seen again."
On Sunday, Warren's friend, Ellis, went to Paddington police station to report him missing. He was confused why his friend didn't come home that Saturday night, and knew it was out of character for him to not tell people where he was.
But when he arrived at the station, police told him, 'You've got to wait another day or so before we can really act on this.'
So Ellis and his partner drove down to the headlands to search for answers themselves.
"[They] pulled up, and rather spookily, in Fletcher Street and right ahead of them was [Warren's] car."
The 24-year-old's keys were also found two days after he disappeared on rocks below the cliff top at Marks Park.
The location of his body, however, remains a mystery.
Before his disappearance, Warren was on the cusp of a big break at work and dreamed of moving to Sydney to join a major network as a newsreader or weather presenter.
"He was at an interesting point in his career," Callaghan said.