Sunshine Coast murder clue

A shallow grave could be the missing piece of the puzzle needed to solve the mystery surrounding the Sunshine Coast disappearances of Celena Bridge, Sabrina Ann Glassop and Jessica Gaudie.

Derek Bellington Sam was convicted of the murder of 16-year-old Nambour schoolgirl Jessica Gaudie in 2001

A shallow grave could be the missing piece of the puzzle needed to solve the mystery surrounding the Sunshine Coast disappearances of Celena Bridge, Sabrina Ann Glassop and Jessica Gaudie.

The women went missing between July, 1998, and August, 1999 and investigations conducted by the Daily have turned up new evidence relating to the women’s disappearances, and possibly the location of a body.

Derek Bellington Sam was convicted of the murder of 16-year-old Nambour schoolgirl Jessica Gaudie in 2001, though her body was never found.

Pick up a copy of Sunshine Coast Sunday for part two of Anne-Louise Brown's special investigation.

He is presently serving a 15 year jail sentence.

Sam, who worked at Kenilworth’s Piabun Centre for trouble Aboriginal youths, has also been identified as a person of interest in relation to the disappearances of Ms Bridge and Ms Glassop by the Queensland Homicide Squad.

Now, a decade after Ms Gaudie vanished, the partner of one of Sam’s Piabun colleagues, Paul Baker, has come forward with new information.

Caboolture woman Tiarna Wilkie was the partner of Mr Baker, who is presently in jail, at the time of the women vanished.

Mr Baker was previously interviewed by police in relation to the disappearances.

One memory, however, which was never relayed to investigators, has continued to haunt her and Mr Baker – hidden deep in the Kenilworth forest Mr Baker found what he believed to be a shallow grave.

“Paul came home and told me he’d found a grave with a shovel next to it somewhere in the bush around Piabun," Ms Wilkie said.

"It scared him. He also mentioned how oddly Derek had been behaving – Derek was a strange kind of bloke.

“The next day Paul went back to the same spot and the shovel was gone, but the grave was still there. He never went back there again and has never told police. He thought he’d get into trouble.”

Ms Wilkie said Mr Baker had been in trouble with the law since he was a juvenile and did not trust police, the reason he never spoke of what he had seen.

She said she was the only person Mr Baker had ever told of the discovery, but said it often played on his mind.

The exact time of the discovery could not be recalled by Ms Wilkie but she said “it happened around the time the women were disappearing”.

Detective Senior Sergeant Glenn Terry of the state homicide squad said the new information would be investigated promptly.

Det Snr Sgt Terry recently told the Daily he believed Ms Bridge, Ms Glassop and Ms Gaudie had all been murdered by the same person.

“We’ve made no secret Derek Sam is our person of interest,” he said.

“I feel the bodies are somewhere in the Kenilworth area but there is a lot of ground to cover.”

Though not much information is known about the disappearances of the women, all three had two things in common. It is assumed all are dead, having met with foul play, and all three came into contact with Sam.

Celena Bridge, was a 28-year-old British backpacker and the first of the three women to go missing.

For the two nights prior to her disappearance on July 16, 1998, Ms Bridge had stayed at Crystal Waters, a permaculture farm at Conondale.

On the day she went missing she had set off on foot to Little Yabba Creek camping ground near Kenilworth for a bird watching meeting. She never arrived.

The last sighting of Ms Bridge was about 3.30pm by a resident of Booloumba Creek Road, the road Piabun, where Sam worked, was located.

Three men that worked at Piabun said they saw Ms Bridge that afternoon but Sam said he did know if the person had been a man or a woman.

The second woman to go missing was 46-year-old Kenilworth local, Sabrina Ann Glassop, who vanished on May 29, 1999. She lived on Booloumba Creek Road.

Sam, an experienced tracker and horseman, was known to Ms Glassop and had helped her tend to shetland ponies she kept on her property. It was also rumoured the two were having an affair.

About 6am the morning Ms Glassop went missing her mother, Joan Worsley, who lived in a caravan behind her daughter’s house, heard Ms Glassop’s car speed away.

Mrs Worsley became concerned when her daughter failed to return, leaving the animals unfed and the property gate open.

Later that morning Ms Glassop’s car was discovered at the Little Yabba Creek picnic area, but no trace of her whereabouts was ever discovered.

On August 28, 1999, almost three months to the day Ms Glassop went missing, 16-year-old Nambour schoolgirl Jessica Gaudie disappeared.

Jessica was never seen or heard from again by her family after she left home to baby-sit three young children for Derek Sam’s estranged de-facto, Mia Summers, who lived at Burnside.

Ms Summers attended a party and late in the evening Sam turned up. An argument between the pair ensued and Sam left the party.

He later told the police he went to Ms Summers’ house and picked up Jessica to ask her to go into the party and get Ms Summers to come home. Sam said he dropped Jessica off at the intersection of Bonney and Elizabeth streets, Nambour.

In August 2001 Sam was found guilty in Brisbane Supreme Court of Jessica’s body, though her body was never found, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

However, a coronial inquest into the disappearances of Ms Bridge and Ms Glassop produced no closure for their families.

Coroner Paul Johnstone said it was likely they had met with foul play, but there was no evidence to show who killed the missing women despite their links to Sam.

Originally published as Sunshine Coast murder clue