Searching For Rachel Antonio: Bowen tip could be excavated for $3000
A LOCATION long thought to be the resting place of missing Queensland teen Rachel Antonio remains unsearched. Now, the cost of a dig there has been uncovered by the lead detective on the case. NEW PODCAST
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- Diaries could spark new search
- Earlier Hytch relationship ‘ended in violence’
- Pool manager’s knowledge a mystery
- Rachel’s family ‘know where body is’
- Searching For Rachel Antonio: The podcast
THE lead detective on the Rachel Antonio investigation has interviewed a former tip manager as it emerges excavation for a new search would cost as little as $3000.
Detective Sergeant Mark Inmon spent four hours with former Bowen dump manager Hugh Smith on Wednesday night, discussing the prospect of searching the tip for the first time.
Mr Smith told the detective he could locate the pocket of rubbish from the days after Rachel went missing, using tip diaries he discovered only last year.
He revealed he had access to equipment to do the search at minimal cost and volunteered to help police get it done.
“I’d be happy to take a week off work and donate my labour,” Mr Smith told The Courier-Mail.
“I can’t see it costing more than a few thousand dollars in machine work.”
Rachel’s parents Ian and Cheryl Antonio yesterday renewed their call for police to search the tip for their daughter, who vanished on Anzac Day 1998.
Mr Antonio said based on recent coronial findings, the killer may have had very limited time to dispose of a body and a skip would have been an “easy” option.
“It has never been eliminated,” Mr Antonio said.
“It would be too hard to do if they were just going in indiscriminately, but with the tip diaries and maps it’s all there.
“It’s just got to be done.”
Police wanted to search the tip with cadaver dogs months after Rachel vanished but were told it would be pointless due to the range of scents.
Mr Smith’s diaries were revealed in The Courier-Mail’s investigative podcast series, Searching For Rachel Antonio.
They map where Mr Smith put the town’s rubbish from the four days after Rachel went missing. He estimated a maximum of 300 cubic metres – or 30 truck loads – of rubbish would need to be searched.
A dig would determine if the rubbish was preserved in its own “cocoon”, with the whole process to take about a week.
His diaries show he put rubbish from a later period in a separate location that would be more difficult to search.
Coroner David O’Connell found in July that lifeguard Robert Hytch killed Rachel and hid her body.
Mr Hytch had denied any involvement and is appealing the coroner’s decision.
He had no one to corroborate his whereabouts for about half an hour on the night Rachel went missing.
Sgt Inmon visited Mr Smith at Collinsville, where he now drives trucks for the mines after leaving the tip about six years ago.
Episodes of Searching for Rachel Antonio will be released each Monday.
Follow the links to listen:
iPhone or iPad users search for “rachel antonio podcast” on iTunes — by clicking subscribe, each weekly episode will appear on your podcast app.
Android users can listen by following The Courier-Mail on Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/couriermail.
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