Family of Monique Clubb left with few answers nine years later
After almost nine years and a coronial inquest, the family of a missing Hervey Bay woman are no closer getting the answers they need. Now, the are calling for a reward for information into her disappearance.
Fraser Coast
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Every day, the family of Monique Clubb are forced to live with unanswered questions about a mystery they fear will never be solved.
They worry that like Monique herself, the chance to answer those questions was lost in the early days of her disappearance.
The last time they heard from their daughter, sister and friend was June 22, 2013.
Monique was just 24 when she went missing after promising her mother, Sheena, she would soon return home to Hervey Bay following a trip to Brisbane – she just needed to get some money for transport.
The final sighting of Monique was in Hugh Muntz Park, where she was watched by a Beenleigh shopping centre security guard crossing a creek.
That was just after 3pm on June 22.
From there, her phone went unanswered, despite the increasingly frantic calls and messages from her friends and family.
Monique has not been seen or heard from since.
Her sister Minnie was 16 at the time Monique vanished.
“It’s a pain you never stop feeling,” she told the Fraser Coast Chronicle.
“Every day, worried, lost, confused, and the big one is just wondering. Wondering what happened. Wondering where she is. Wondering if we are going to get answers.
“My family and I have felt so lost, wondering for almost nine years.”
In the photos of Monique, she is almost always smiling.
Smiling with her family, often with her arms wrapped around someone.
But her life wasn’t always joyful.
A car crash left her in constant pain and she developed a drug addiction.
She was often in and out of court and in trouble with local police.
On the day of her disappearance, she had visited a doctor’s clinic and received a script for fentanyl while using a false name, a prescription which was found by the coroner to be “inappropriate” at an inquest into Monique’s death, held in December.
The family agonises over whether Monique’s criminal history and lifestyle, or her proud indigenous heritage, meant she was not a priority for police when she went missing.
Minnie strongly feels the case was mismanaged.
“It took two days to actually file Monique’s missing person report, it was pushed aside like she wasn’t important.
“Within those two (days) they could have followed up on appropriate procedures and protocols when it comes to a missing person, which could have had a big impact on the investigation today.
“More CCTV on all buildings in the area and bystanders getting asked if they had seen anything or doing a simple walk around by taking a photo of Monique and asking if they had seen her.
“It’s like they just brushed it under the carpet and dealt with it when they felt like it.”
A Queensland Police Service spokesman provided a response to a series of questions from the Chronicle regarding concerns raised by the inquest and Monique’s family.
“Queensland Police Homicide Group are undertaking a review of the recommendations,” he said.
The findings of the inquest in December make for harrowing reading.
Monique had travelled to Brisbane from Hervey Bay on June 20, 2013, with Tracey Lee Brown, Alan-Lee Heginbotham and Leighton Sullivan.
It was not suggested the three had any involvement in her disappaearance.
She told her mum they were going for the night.
The coroner found they were seeking fentanyl patches that night and in the following days.
The theories about what may have happened to Monique are explored, but none bring the family closer to an actual answer.
Police initially believed they were looking for a body in the park where Monique was last seen, believing she may have overdosed and died there.
But she was never found.
There were other, darker theories contained within the coroner’s report.
Accusations were made suggesting Monique’s body had been placed in a purple suitcase, according to the coroner’s report.
Christina Gamble gave a recorded interview to police in October 2013, saying Daniel Murphy took a “purple suitcase and a bag containing female clothing out into the bush and she believed Ms Clubb’s body was in the suitcase”, even taking Monique’s mother to the location, according to the report from the coroner.
But during the inquest in December she told a vastly different story, saying she had not been in the car and there was only clothing in the suitcase.
Deputy State Coroner Jane Bentley described Ms Gamble as a “completely unreliable witness”.
Monique’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance, referred to in the coroner’s report as Mr Z, told the inquest he had heard many rumours in prison about what had happened to Monique, but they were only rumours and he was never told any reliable information.
According to the coroner’s report Mr Z shared his fears about another man, Vincent Moran, who he, Monique and another man had robbed in 2011.
About a month before her disappearance, the three decided to contact Mr Moran to “sort the matter out amicably”, according to the coroner’s report.
Mr Moran told them to come visit him at his Glenwood property, which they did, but Mr Z claimed Mr Moran was armed with a semiautomatic rifle when they arrived, the report read.
According to the report, he then took Mr Z into the bush behind his house.
Mr Z believed Mr Moran intended to kill him, but he was also armed and was able to extricate himself from the situation, the report said.
He said some time after that, people had come to a house armed and looking for them, but he had never been able to identify those persons.
Investigations later showed that Mr Moran appeared to be in the Tin Can Bay area at the time of Monique’s disappearance and there was no record of him being at Beenleigh, according to the coroner’s report, clearing him of involvement in the disappearance.
Ms Bentley found that Monique had died soon after leaving Hugh Muntz Park.
She found that five fentanyl patches and 50 diazepam tablets prescribed to Monique that day by a doctor was “inappropriate”.
Ms Bentley was critical of the police investigations, saying officers had failed to focus on ascertaining Ms Clubb’s movements, despite available CCTV footage and transportation records.
She further found that police policies in relation to dealing with evidence had not been complied with by the Missing Person Unit in relation to how many hours of CCTV footage had been obtained from Beenleigh railway station or to examine it again.
The conclusion by one officer that Monique was not in the park was disregarded or not known by colleagues and the investigation was “effectively discontinued”.
Ms Bentley recommended that the QPS consider a further trial of airborne phone location systems or implement one.
She also called for the police operational procedures manual to be amended as to which police region or unit is responsible for missing person investigations.
Ms Bentley said she hoped Monique’s body would one day be found.
Minnie wants police to now offer a reward, with the aim of finding out what happened to Monique and to finally bring her home.
New information and leads are vital if the case is ever to be solved, she said.
“QPS has a case to investigate which they failed to do properly,” Minnie said.
She also believed the failure to attempt a triangulation of Monique’s phone was another missed opportunity, with one officer saying it was “too expensive” and another saying it would have been one of the first things he would have tried.
The ongoing impact of Monique’s disappearance is one of the hardest things for the family to talk about.
Babies have been born. They are left to imagine Monique, what a loving aunty she would have been, how much she would have adored her nieces and nephews, who she would have treated “like her own”.
And loved ones have died.
“Nanna was the biggest supporter and she passed away before we could get any answers,” Minnie said.
“(It’s) generation trauma we can’t kick.”
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