Rachel Antonio’s father suspected her body was dumped in a skip

THE father of a girl who disappeared in 1998 suspects her body ended up at the town’s dump. But a man who worked in the area was only approached by police two years ago. Now he has spoken up.

Rachael Antonio with her dog Phantom.

A RUBBISH truck driver says skips around Bowen were kept unlocked and he would not have seen Rachel Antonio’s body if it had been put in one.

Steve De Luca ran one of two businesses that collected rubbish in the small north Queensland town when Rachel vanished there in 1998.

His company, Bowen Trade Waste, had a contract with the Transport Department to empty all of the industrial bins at the Bowen boat harbour.

Rachel’s father, Ian Antonio, suspects her body may have been taken to a skip at the harbour and then ended up at the town’s dump.

“I used to tip the bins Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” Mr De Luca said. “I wasn’t tuned in to look for a body.”

His truck was a frontloader and he’d lift the skips over his head and empty them into the compactor behind him.

When the truck was full he’d drive it to the Bowen dump, empty the contents, then continue collecting the town’s rubbish.

“I have reflected on it quite a lot. When you tip those industrial bins, you don’t generally see what’s inside them,” he said.

“If a body was in there, I’d be very unlikely to ever see it.”

He added that police “never came and asked me about it” at the time.

It was only when Coroner David O’Connell began looking at the case again about two years ago that police approached Mr De Luca.

“On the Monday morning, I did empty the bins around the boat harbour area, which were the ones they were more interested in,” he told The Courier-Mail.

“I couldn’t tell them a thing. If they wanted, they should have gone and dug up the waste facility.”

Episodes of Searching for Rachel Antonio will be released each Monday.

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