Kissed Goodbye at Dawn, Found in a Shallow Grave: The Brutal End of Farmer Richard Wills.
A routine Easter Sunday morning in the small Victorian town of Ouyen ended in a discovery that has left a community and a family searching for answers. Richard Wills, 65, known to most as Rick, kissed his wife Donna goodbye around 8am on 5 April 2026 and drove the short distance to his 1,600-acre farm on the Mallee Highway. He wore his usual high-visibility top and dark cap. He ate breakfast, left the house on Hughs Street, and set off to service machinery and tend the property as he had done for years.
He was expected home for lunch. When he failed to appear, Donna and family members began searching the sprawling sharecropping and livestock farm. They found no sign of him. The following morning she reported him missing. Police, State Emergency Service volunteers, friends and relatives joined the search. At approximately 1.30pm on Tuesday 7 April, they located his body in a shallow grave on the property itself.
Richard had been fatally shot. Investigators noted evidence that his body had been dragged behind a vehicle for a considerable distance across the land before being covered with a thin layer of dirt. His ute and phone were found on the farm. An autopsy confirmed the gunshot wound as the cause of death.
Donna later described the ordinary start to that day. “He just kissed me goodbye. I thought I’d see him at lunchtime.” She said her husband of 32 years was a workaholic who often stayed late tinkering with machinery or caring for the sheep and pigs. He was known as someone who would help anyone. “Why would they want to do it to him?” she asked.
Detectives from Victoria Police’s Missing Persons Squad took charge of the investigation. Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Trewavas stated that Richard had clearly met with foul play. What remained unclear was who was involved and why. Police noted that Richard had previously reported the theft of sheep from his property and said they were mindful of that history as one line of inquiry. Later statements dismissed links to organised crime groups while the investigation continued. No arrests had been made in the immediate aftermath.
The farm sits on the outskirts of Ouyen, a quiet Mallee town roughly 450 kilometres northwest of Melbourne near the South Australian border. Multiple entrances make the large property difficult to monitor. Locals described shock and disbelief. A fundraising campaign quickly raised thousands of dollars to support the family. Richard’s daughter spoke of another family loss a decade earlier and said this new tragedy felt like a nightmare from which they could not wake.
Public discussion has focused on the short window between Richard leaving home and the events that must have unfolded on the farm. He was a familiar figure who followed a predictable routine. The discovery of the body so close to where he worked, combined with the evidence of dragging and the shallow burial, has fuelled questions about whether someone was waiting for him or whether a confrontation escalated rapidly. Police have appealed for anyone who saw Richard on the Sunday, or who has any information about vehicles or people in the area, to contact Crime Stoppers.
The case remains open. Detectives continue to examine forensic evidence from the scene, the vehicle and the phone. The family has expressed determination to seek justice. Donna and relatives have spoken of a kind-hearted man who spent his days on the land he loved and returned each evening to the home he shared with his wife.
The final confirmed image of Richard Wills is simple and ordinary: a 65-year-old farmer leaving his house after breakfast, kissing his wife, and driving toward the paddocks. Two days later the same land yielded a shallow grave. Between those points lies the unanswered stretch of time that investigators are still working to reconstruct. Until further information emerges, the circumstances of how a hardworking grandfather met his end on his own farm stay under active investigation.