Probe into suspicious Cooktown death ramps us after family beg for answers

UPDATE: SES crews and police have returned to the scene near where Cooktown woman Donna Steele’s body was located.

UPDATE: SES crews and police have returned to the scene near where Cooktown woman Donna Steele’s body was located.

The group conducted a land search through dense bushland this morning around Isabella Creek at Leggett’s Crossing which is about 20km west of the town.

Police and SES search the banks of Isabella Creek near Leggett's Crossing, investigation into the suspected murder of Donna Steele, Cooktown. Photographer: Liam Kidston.

It has now been more than five days since the 42-year-old mother-of-two’s wrapped body was located by a friend floating in the water.

Police are continuing to call for anyone who spoke with her in the days before her disappearance or who has CCTV or dashcam footage from in or around Cooktown from last Wednesday, August 2 which is when she was last seen at the IGA in Helen St.

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COOKTOWN mum Donna Steele was known to visit the isolated creek where her body was found, police have been told.

Mark Seears, who discovered Ms Steele’s wrapped and discarded body at Leggett’s Crossing, said he searched for her there because it was an area she’d been in the past.

Mr Seears was working in Musgrave, about 280km north of Cooktown, when he found out on Saturday morning that Ms Steele had been reported missing.

He drove a work vehicle home to Cooktown that afternoon, the Cairns Post has been told.

At about 5am Sunday he went searching for her at the creek, about 5km from the bush block where he lives with Ms Steele’s close friend Roslyn Avard.

Once a popular swimming hole, Leggett’s Crossing is now feared by locals to be inhabited by crocodiles. However it is still used for fishing and as a “hang out” area.

Mr Seears and Ms Avard live on adjoining properties which police have kept sealed off for examination.

Detective Inspector Geoff Marsh yesterday said the couple may soon be able to return home.

“They were made crime scenes early on in the investigation when we were still establishing the movements of certain persons in and out of Cooktown,” Insp Marsh told a media conference.

“But the investigations have established that the persons involved in those residences, there’s a number of witnesses to their movements and also other technological evidence which identifies that they weren’t in Cooktown at the time.”

Poison Creek Road sign, investigation into the suspected murder of Donna Steele, Cooktown. Photographer: Liam Kidston.

A team of 20 detectives working on the case in Cooktown were “very confident” of solving it.

“We won’t stop. There will be one person out there who holds information that will assist us get a resolution ... and give closure to Donna’s family.”

Police are particularly appealing for dash cam footage around Cooktown from 12.15pm on Wednesday August 2, when she was last seen, to 4pm when she failed to meet her sons at a bus stop.

The two boys — eight and 10 — spent the night on their own at their rural property on Poison Creek Rd. The alarm was raised when their father, mechanic Tony Brown, returned from work out of town the next day.

Originally published as Probe into suspicious Cooktown death ramps us after family beg for answers