A man turned to a friend for help and nervously asked if he could be trusted, not long before a woman disappeared after being seen in his company.
Paul Jones was the last person to see Jessica Jade Zrinski alive before she vanished in suspicious circumstances on or shortly after November 29, 2022.
About 9am, surveillance footage captured the 30-year-old sitting in the passenger seat of the Horsley Park man's Holden Commodore at a petrol station in the NSW Blue Mountains.
The "vibrant, lively, compassionate" woman was never seen or heard from again.
Her disappearance was probed in an inquest held earlier in 2026, which heard testimony from several witnesses, including Mr Jones.
In findings published on Friday, coroner David O'Neil found the pair spent a significant amount of time together from 10pm on November 28 to 4.15pm the next day.
But when investigating police met Mr Jones at his Prestons workplace and searched his caravan in Horsley Park in January 2023, he denied knowledge of Ms Zrinski
"I don't know her, mate," he said when shown a photo of Ms Zrinski.
Mr Jones said he picked up a woman and gave her money but she wasn't the person in the photo.
Coroner O'Neil labelled his attempts to explain the story during the inquest as completely unconvincing.
He rejected Mr Jones' testimony that he didn't recall any events during the time he was accompanied by Ms Zrinski, calling him an "unimpressive witness".
"His lack of memory seems to relate only to 28 and 29 November," the coroner found.
The inquest was told Mr Jones called a friend less than an hour before Ms Zrinski was last pictured on CCTV.
The friend testified Mr Jones had sounded nervous and drug-affected when he said: "Hey cuz, I am coming your way. I need help. Can I trust you?"
He said Mr Jones indicated he needed to get rid of something and needed help to move something before asking: "Are you with me cuz? Can I trust you?"
When the friend asked Mr Jones if he was "cooked", he responded affirmatively that he had "been on it".
But the coroner rejected arguments that Mr Jones had been affected by drugs to the extent they impacted his memory, noting he had behaved normally in interactions captured on CCTV and worked early on November 30.
A conversation Mr Jones had with a relative - in which he said he had "f***ed up" and was "in trouble" - strongly suggested he did remember the events of the two days, Coroner O'Neil found.
He noted Mr Jones left NSW soon after police conducted a search warrant on his house and travelled with "great haste" to visit relatives in Bunbury, Western Australia.
He soon after travelled to see more family in Queensland.
"It was, to say the least, extremely disappointing to the family that Mr Jones did not shed any light at all on events after Jessica left the Ampol service station ... in his company," Coroner O'Neil said.
He declared Ms Zrinski dead and referred the matter to the unsolved homicide team for ongoing investigation and review.
The 30-year-old was described by her mother as trusting, friendly, and "beautiful inside and out".
A $500,000 reward for information remains on offer.