Elvira Buckingham in a photograph taken shortly after charges were laid over her daughter's death. Credit:Ray Sizer/Shepparton News Change the accents and chuck in some kangaroos, a couple of sharks, a few surfers and a cardinal who won't come home from Rome, and the same story could be told in Australia. There are plenty of men of God who, if there is a hell, should be roasting in it. And there are plenty of cops, politicians and journalists who sat by and either were part of the conspiracy or looked the other way. They fiddled and kids got burned. Here at the open-plan offices of The Age we are fortunate the Naked City suite is close to our investigative unit that has done some wonderful exposes in recent years.

Former top cop Ron Iddles. Credit:Simon Schluter Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie (among others) continue to show that journalism is not just about cheap headlines and expensive dinners on the Fairfax credit card. This is not, however, a story about McKenzie and Baker (they don't need the publicity as they have their own billboards pronouncing they shine lights in dark places, which suggests they moonlight as miners or colon surgeons). Michelle Buckingham. But it is a story about a story, just not one that ran in this publication.

A few years ago homicide Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles​ asked me to join him for a charity fundraiser in Echuca (from memory I wowed the crowd with two Chopper Read anecdotes and one on how Carl Williams was shot in the guts. Classics one and all). A Shepparton News front page reporting the October 1983 murder of Michelle Buckingham. On the way Ron said there was some country reporter who wanted to catch up for some advice from a professional elder. (I am happy to offer life tips such as; 1: Never eat meat with fruit, 2: Never give your Fairfax credit card to a Russian exchange student called Olga and 3: Never answer an email from a lawyer.) An image of slain teen Michelle Buckingham on the front page of the Shepparton News. Credit:generagos

Iddles said her name was Tammy Mills from the Shepparton News and she was, well, a persistent pain in the neck. She kept ringing him about an unsolved murder with a desire to breathe life in a very cold case. Now to open a cold case is an expensive and protracted business – essentially you have to strip the original investigation back to day one and start again. One of the Shepparton News front pages relating to the inquiry into Michelle Buckingham's death. Credit:generagos In the end Iddles relented and, with little confidence, agreed to have a look. It was the murder of Michelle Buckingham, 16, who disappeared in October 1983.

A popular and independent kid she left Shepparton High at 15 and was looking to move out of home into shared accommodation. She was last seen walking towards the Strayleaves Caravan Park on October 21. The investigation was hampered from the start. Her parents, Elvira and Geoff, were divorced and there was some confusion where their daughter was supposed to be staying when she disappeared. This meant she wasn't reported missing until October 28. Her body was found dumped in a roadside drain near Violet Town Road, Kialla East, on November 7. She died of multiple stab wounds. There were false leads and near breakthroughs but eventually the case faded away until Mills decided Michelle deserved more. She contacted Iddles, then head of the cold case unit in Melbourne. Her idea was to bombard Shepparton with the story in the hope someone with inside knowledge would finally come forward.

It was a million to one chance but sometimes long shots actually win. "I kept telling her we didn't have the staff or resources to work on it but she kept calling me and kept asking questions. Eventually I agreed to reopen the case, and that if she wrote about it, any leads would be followed up," he says. And she did, writing a comprehensive series for the Shepparton News in August 2012 that covered the murder, the initial investigation and the aftermath. It was a series that lasted five days – an old-fashioned newspaper campaign without a cat video in sight. (Just weeks earlier she was writing about five runaway sheep that included puns of which she should be deeply ashamed – such is the life of a country reporter). Police received 30 tips but one intrigued Iddles. It was from a man who agreed to meet the veteran detective at the Shepparton East Football Club ground.

The witness had read the series but it was the photo of Michelle's mother, Elvira, on page one that pushed him to speak. His name was Norman Gribble and he would tell Iddles the secret he had kept for decades. Someone he knew had confessed to the murder and that someone was his brother-in-law, Steven Bradley. According to Gribble the day after Michelle was murdered a distressed Bradley confessed he had killed her. Bradley told Gribble he and "mates" Rodney Butler and Trevor Corrigan went to the caravan park where they picked up Michelle.

He said when she refused to have sex the three of them stabbed her to death in his car at the nearby Pine Lodge Hotel car park. Gribble told Iddles he actually bandaged the cut hand of his brother-in-law – an injury he sustained while killing the teenager. At first he wanted to stay in the background but eventually Iddles persuaded Gribble to go on the record. He would become the brave and unshakable witness who helped convict his wife's brother. He was prepared to risk fracturing his own family to help a grieving one. "Without Tammy and Norm Gribble this case was going nowhere," Iddles maintains.

"The bottom line is that if she wasn't passionate and persistent about writing about Michelle and getting us involved it would still be unsolved." At the Echuca charity function I watched Iddles call Tammy from the crowd to tell the locals that because of her work he expected to solve a local mystery. He then held her hand in the air as if she had won a heavyweight fight. But the bout was far from over. Bradley may have been distressed straight after the murder but he was sufficiently composed to cover his tracks. He sold his HQ Holden murder car and left Shepparton to return only rarely. Iddles interviewed Bradley several times and on each occasion his version changed. At one time he admitted to having a repeated nightmare where a blonde girl sat on his chest making it hard for him to breathe. In the dream he carried a knife.

At first he denied, then he couldn't remember and finally told a story that would not be believed by a Supreme Court jury. In May 2014 he was charged, extradited from Brisbane and eventually committed for trial. The publicity, the investigation and the arrest showed the devastated Buckingham family that Michelle had not been forgotten. But days before the trial was to begin Elvira suffered a massive heart attack. She would not live to see her daughter's killer convicted. Butler and Corrigan would give evidence under oath that they weren't involved, claims Supreme Court Justice Robert Osborn specifically dismissed finding, "I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was a killing carried out jointly with Rodney Butler and Trevor Corrigan."

There remains insufficient evidence to charge the two but before they slink back into obscurity to tell their friends and family they are innocent just remember this. The Supreme Court says you did it. It is there on the record. You may think it will go away but it won't. Just like Bradley it will haunt your dreams and as you get older and frailer it will consume you. As part of the plea Bradley was portrayed as a failed worker, failed partner, failed father and a mediocre crook. He found his time in Pentridge Prison particularly "harrowing". He may have wasted his own life, but he stands condemned for taking Michelle's. As Justice Osborn said: "You have never demonstrated any real remorse for the killing or accepted responsibility for what you did."

On December 22 – more than 32 years after Michelle was attacked in a car and repeatedly stabbed in the back – Bradley was sentenced to 27 years with a minimum of 21. He will remain an insignificant man, violent and vindictive, who will only be remembered for his monstrous and cowardly act. Every generation thinks the one before is inflexible and the one that follows is shallow and in a newsroom cynicism can erode optimism like damp rot in winter. The Buckingham case shows the nature of journalism may have changed but the quality has not. (Mills has now moved to Fairfax Media as an ace crime reporter.) So thank you, Tammy, for reminding us that every now and again what we do actually matters.

But if you have read this far you already know that.