Katrina Bohnenkamp: School friend’s bizarre Cairns sighting of missing teen
It’s a tragic tale that has baffled investigators for eight years, and now one school friend’s bizarre claim has left Katrina Bohnenkamp’s family and her coronial inquest bemused.
Inner West
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A baffling account of how missing Sydney teen Katrina Bohnenkamp was spotted interstate years after she supposedly vanished has been effectively ruled out.
The strange tale came from a former school friend, Christine Sheridan, who told the coronial inquest into her suspected death that in 2015 she spotted Katrina in a Coles car park in Cairns, in far north Queensland.
The last official sighting of Katrina was at her father’s Strathfield boarding home in October 2012.
Ms Sheridan began her evidence at the Coroner’s Court by claiming she saw her from “300 to 500 metres away” and then bizarrely went on to give a detailed recollection of her appearance from that distance.
“She had pink or purple hair and a piercing below her eye,” she said.
“She was with a man and a child waiting to get in a taxi.”
Ms Sheridan had never mentioned the child until today.
Counsel Assisting Philip Strickland SC told the inquest Ms Sheridan’s original statement at the time of the sighting claimed she said the girl she saw actually had blonde hair.
Ms Sheridan maintained she saw Katrina at school in Dubbo in 2013, however, records showed she stopped attending their school in 2011.
The bizarre sequence of events concluded with Ms Sheridan effectively dismissing her own sighting.
“I think I made a mistake,” she told the inquest.
There were audible groans heard from the public gallery during numerous parts of Ms Sheridan’s evidence.
The inquest also picked up from a police interview of Katrina’s step-brother Rick Olden played on Tuesday, who in the footage sensationally claimed her father Maiko Bohnenkamp was standing over her lifeless body saying “I had to hit her, I had to hit her” the week she vanished.
He never saw her again, he told the court.
Katrina’s step-mother Karen Walters became agitated while also giving evidence on Thursday, after notes from her conversation with a journalist were put to her.
Shetold the inquest she would smoke cannabis with Katrina, who was 13 at the time, and her father in a bid to stop her using drugs "in a park or on the street".
“Other parents do it too,” Ms Walters said.
“Is that what you are seriously saying?” Counsel Assisting Mr Strickland responded.
A $500,000 reward from NSW Police is still on offer for any information relating to Katrina Bohnenkamp’s disappearance.
The inquest before Coroner Carmel Forbes continues.
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