High profile Sunshine Coast prisoners and where they are being held
The Sunshine Coast is home to some of the most horrific crimes in Queensland’s history. Meet seven people serving time for their involvement, and where you will find them. *Distressing content
Police & Courts
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The Sunshine Coast has a disturbing history of some of Queensland’s most high-profile crimes, from murders to rape to dangerous driving causing an innocent person’s death.
The following people are serving time for their involvement in some of the Sunshine Coast’s most high-profile cases.
Prisoners’ whereabouts were researched using data from Queensland Corrective Services.
Kelly Liddicoat
Kelly Liddicoat is currently serving a prison sentence at Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre in Wacol, near Brisbane.
Liddicoat, 45, struck and killed young Sunshine Coast mechanics Aaron Pitt, 25, and Lleyton Bartlett, 22, with her BMW while they repaired a broken down bus on the side of Nambour Connection Rd at Woombye on April 21, 2022.
She was found guilty of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death while adversely affected by an intoxicating substance, following a two week trial in the Maroochydore District Court on October 18, 2023.
The court was told Liddicoat had a cocktail of medication in her system at the time of the crash, which she had been prescribed for various mental health conditions. However, these medicines had severely affected Liddicoat’s ability to drive safely.
She was sentenced to six and a half years behind bars, but will be eligible for parole in April 2026.
Liddicoat filed an appeal against conviction on November 15, 2023. The appeal is ongoing at the time of publication.
Lindy Williams
Lindy Williams is currently serving a prison sentence at the Southern Queensland Correctional Centre at Spring Creek, in the Lockyer Valley.
Williams, 66, was found guilty of killing her partner, Coolum Football Club president George Gerbic, 66, after a nine-day trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court in July 2018. She pleaded guilty to disposing of Mr Gerbic’s body at the start of the trial.
Williams murdered Mr Gerbic and then removed his head, hands and legs. His burning torso was found on the side of a road near Gympie in September 2013.
Williams made a later made a starting confession to police, who visited her in prison months after her conviction, that she spent days hacking Mr Gerbic’s body with an electric saw before they were disposed of in various wheelie bins around Gympie and the Sunshine Coast.
The confession came as William’s made a bid for an early release, citing “exceptional circumstances” understood to relate to her ailing health. This was rejected in June 2023.
She was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, and a maximum sentence of two years for interfering with Mr Gerbic’s corpse.
Linda Appleton
Linda Appleton is currently serving a prison sentence in the Townsville Women’s Correctional Centre.
Appleton and her partner John Edward Harris both pleaded guilty in October 2016 to the six-hour torture and eventual murder of 28-year-old Tia Landers in 2014. The pleas came part-way through their trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court in 2016.
The court was told she and Harris slashed Ms Landers multiple times with a machete before Harris killed her with two gun shots to the head.
Appleton then put a plastic bag over Ms Landers’ head to make sure she was dead.
Her body was wrapped in a blanket and buried in a shallow grave at the Beerburrum State Forest in the Glass House Mountains.
Both Appleton and Harris were sentenced to 23 and 27 years in prison, respectively, before they would be eligible for parole.
Appleton attempted to appeal her sentence in 2017, but this was refused.
Harris was found unresponsive in his cell at Townsville Correctional Centre’s Harold Greggs Unit in July 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.
Brett Cowan
Child killer and pedophile Brett Cowan is currently serving a prison sentence at Wolston Correctional Centre in Wacol, near Brisbane.
Cowan abducted and killed Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, 13, in 2003 and dumped his remains in the Glass House Mountains – which were discovered more than a decade after the boy disappeared.
He was arrested in 2013, and became the subject of one of the most complex investigations in Queensland’s history – an extensive covert police operation where he was recruited into an organised criminal gang with police posing as its members.
It was here he eventually confessed to members about the murder and took the coverts to where he killed Daniel.
Cowan went to trial over the brutal murder and was convicted in 2014. He received a life sentence with a non-parole period of 20 years.
With time spent in custody since 2011, he will be eligible for parole in 2031.
It was revealed in 2024 Cowan is a constant target of other prisoners at the centre, having a hot bucket of water tipped over him in 2016, being stabbed in the neck in 2018 and punched in the head by another prisoner in 2023.
Derek Sam
Derek Sam is currently serving a prison sentence at Lotus Glen Correctional Centre in Arriga, Far North Queensland.
Sam was convicted of the murder of Nambour schoolgirl Jessica Gaudie, 16, in 2001 after she disappeared in August 1999.
The teenager was babysitting Sam’s three young children when she disappeared. Sam has admitted he took her for a drive but claimed he dropped her off at a party.
He was given a life sentence for Jessica’s murder, but is not eligible for parole because he has never revealed where her remains are.
Sam is also linked to the disappearances of British backpacker Celina Bridge in 1998 and Sabrina Glassop in 1998, but has never been charged.
Paul Osborne
Paul Osborne is currently serving a prison sentence at Wolston Correctional Centre in Wacol, near Brisbane.
Osborne raped and murdered 10-year-old Leanne Oliver and nine-year-old Patricia Leedie at Warana Beach on October 29, 1995.
The young girls were out door knocking looking for odd jobs to earn pocket money when Osbourne found them and killed them.
The girls were reported missing and an all-night search commenced, but their semi-naked bodies were found in the sand dunes, only 500m from home.
They were clubbed with a tree branch and sexually assaulted.
Osborne blamed a cocktail of drugs and alcohol for his heinous crimes.
He was sentenced to two terms of life in prison in 1997.
In 2024, he was banned from applying for parole until 2032.
Barry Watts
Barry (Barrie) Watts is currently serving a prison sentence at Wolston Correctional Centre in Wacol, near Brisbane.
In 1987, Watts raped and murdered Noosa schoolgirl Sian Kingi, who was riding her bike home from school at Noosa Heads when she was asked for help to look for a supposed lost dog.
She was bound and gagged, then driven about 12km to Tinbeerwah forest, where she was raped and stabbed multiple times.
Watts, along with his wife Valmae Beck, were convicted and given life sentences for the murder in 1997.
Beck had pleaded guilty to the abduction and rape of Sian, but not guilty to murder; while Watts pleaded not guilty to everything.
Beck changed her name to Fay Cramb and died in a North Queensland hospital in May 2008, aged 64.
Watts was eligible for parole on December 15, 2000, but has always been denied freedom.
In 2024, he was banned from applying for parole until February 2034.
It comes after laws were introduced for the state’s worst murderers in 2021, following a public appeal to keep Watts locked up.
The laws allow the Parole Board president to prevent child killers and those who have murdered multiple people from applying for parole for up to 10 years beyond their eligibility date.
Multiple declarations can be made against a person deemed a restricted prisoner.
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