Devora Howard and Danielle Easey’s deaths remain a mystery
The unexplained deaths of Danielle Easey, found wrapped in plastic in a shallow creek west of Newcastle and Devora Howard, whose body was plucked by fishermen from the water off Terrigal, has left some of the NSW Police Force’s sharpest minds baffled.
Central Coast
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Two women, two bodies found days apart and two mysteries that have police scrambling for answers.
The unexplained deaths of Danielle Easey, found wrapped in plastic in a shallow creek west of Newcastle and Devora Howard, who’s body was plucked by fishermen from the water off Terrigal, has some of NSW Police Force’s sharpest minds scratching their heads.
While there is no suggestion the two incidents are in anyway linked, the investigations — and the missing pieces — share several similarities.
They also have some striking differences.
Beautiful 56-year-old Terrigal socialite Ms Howard was known as the life of the party and outwardly she had it all; a million dollar beachside home, a yacht moored up north and an affluent lifestyle.
Privately, however, she had a history of alcohol and substance abuse, and her short-lived marriage of three years to Peter Howard had broken down.
She remained in the marital home where she cared for her elderly mother but it was a poorly kept secret among neighbours she was seeing an “eligible bachelor” who lived nearby.
She was also known to invite younger men back to her home for “beers and bags” of cocaine.
Next-door neighbour Kim Shepherd said she saw Ms Howard talking on her phone on her second storey balcony at 5.45pm.
“She left a neighbour’s place at 10pm to go back to her place,” she said of Ms Howard’s last known sighting.
At 7.15am the next day fishermen pulled her body from the water about 250m north of the Terrigal boat ramp.
A personal trainer had found her beloved Doberman Harvey pining and barking at the water’s edge a few hundred metres away on Wamberal Beach, close to her Pacific St address.
Her bum bag was located on the sand nearby.
She was found wearing the same white jeans as she was seen in the previous evening and a bra but there was no sign of the grey woollen jumper.
She had bruising to her neck but an autopsy found she died from drowning.
Detectives have no suspects and there’s no suggestion that anyone mentioned in this article had any involvement in her disappearance.
The autopsy results have failed to produce a smoking gun — raising more questions than answers.
Toxicology results will not be available for another six to eight weeks.
Likewise detectives have been piecing together her last movements, who she had spoken to and where she could be placed using CCTV from people’s homes in the hours between 10pm and 7.15am.
Police have since identified her from CCTV between those hours but are refusing to disclose where or when.
Next week police divers are expected to conduct a re-enactment to test currents, wave action and rips to try and pinpoint where and when Ms Howard entered the water.
At the other end of the spectrum Ms Easey, of Lake Macquarie, was a 29-year-old mother-of-two who was also described by friends as “the life of the party”.
Similarly her private life had been spiralling out of control — in her case into a milieu of drugs and petty crime.
Although she was based at her mother’s home at Booragul, Ms Easey had been “couch surfing” at friends’ homes around Lake Macquarie for weeks after her boyfriend’s arrest on serious drugs charges.
Her lifestyle meant she had not even been reported missing when a motorist travelling on Wakefield Rd spotted something in Cockle Creek about 10.30am on Saturday, August 31.
Ms Easey had been “gruesomely murdered” and her body wrapped tightly in plastic and dumped up to a week before she was discovered.
She was also due to appear at Newcastle Local Court the week before she was found for breaching community corrections orders on a range of offences including break and enter, goods in custody and custody of a knife in a public place.
Detectives trying to piece together her movements in the days or weeks leading up to her death believe her descent into a world of drugs and addiction led to her murder.
A friend of more than 10 years described her as “the life of the party” who was always making people laugh.
In Newcastle, the window for Homicide detectives investigating Ms Easey’s murder is much wider the Ms Howard’s.
Police there believe the young woman was dumped up to a week before she was found but her whereabouts and the people she was associating with in the weeks leading up to that remain the focus of the investigation.
In any event both women leave behind grieving family and friends who await closure on what happened to Ms Easey and Ms Howard.
