Posted by 
A jury has found a western Sydney truck driver guilty of murdering schoolgirl Michelle Bright 24 years after she vanished following a friend's birthday party in the close-knit town of Gulgong in the NSW's Central West.
Michelle's mother Loraine and family hugged and clapped inside Dubbo courthouse upon hearing the verdict, which came after two weeks of deliberation.
Craig Henry Rumsby kept quiet for more than two decades before confessing to undercover officers in 2020 that he had a sexual interest in her and suffocated her about a kilometre from her home on Barneys Reef Road.
But the now 56-year-old denied any involvement in the Year 11 student's death following his arrest, after confessing earlier in the night to the cold case murder.
After stepping out of a police paddy wagon in handcuffs outside Mudgee police station in August 2020, Rumsby was asked by 9News if he had murdered Michelle, to which he replied, "No."
When asked if he had anything to say to her family, he replied: "I've known her mum for ages."
The 17-year-old vanished after friends dropped her outside a Gulgong pub following a birthday party in February 1999.
The teenager's partially naked body was discovered in long grass three days later.
https://twitter.com/tiffgenders/status/1674580986397601794
Michelle's mother and family have spent 20 years begging for answers including at a press conference in 2020 where police announced a $1 million reward.
A video of the press conference was posted on the NSW Police Facebook page, prompting Rumsby to leave a comment.
"It's so sad that they havent (sic) caught her killer … Michelle was like a sister to me I feel sorry for the family," he posted.
The seven-week trial heard Rumsby quietly moved to Wilberforce on Sydney's outskirts two weeks after he murdered Michelle in February 1999 and began working at an abattoir as detectives followed up thousands of potential leads – many of which had been thrown up by the local rumour mill.
Rumsby made a new life for himself while Michelle's family wondered if the person who had killed the popular schoolgirl was still living among them.
9News can reveal that not long after he moved to Sydney, police questioned him over the phone about Michelle's death.
READ MORE: Seven arrested as police swarm Melbourne freeway
The day after that phone call, the red station wagon he owned was burned.
Today a jury also found Rumsby guilty of trying to sexually assault and strangle another teenager in 1998, just a few hundred metres from where he murdered Michelle a year later.
The jurors were never told about the full extent of Rumsby's sexual obsession with young women.
He's accused of choking and sexually assaulting a teenager in western Sydney in 2007 and convicted of indecently assaulting a 22-year-old woman on a train at Richmond in 2013 and groping an 18-year-old in a car park at Blacktown in 2019.
Rumsby will face a sentencing hearing before the trial judge – Justice Robert Allan Hulme – at a date yet to be determined.
Sign up here to receive our daily newsletters and breaking news alerts, sent straight to your inbox.
