How police tracked Linda Sidon’s killer to the Gold Coast hinterland
Read the amazing story of how one tenacious detective discovered the secluded hinterland location where Gold Coast mum Linda Sidon’s body was left after she was killed.
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A TENACIOUS detective discovered the secluded hinterland location where Gold Coast mum Linda Sidon’s body was dumped by listening to road surface and traffic noises captured in secret recordings from her killer son’s car.
Almost three years after Daniel Paul Heazlewood was sentenced to eight years jail for his mother’s manslaughter, the amazing story of how a Queensland homicide detective found the woman’s final resting place by repeatedly listening to a 36-minute recording of car sounds can finally be published.
“The recording was all we had to go on at the time,” the lead homicide officer who worked on the case told the Bulletin.
By this time the recording landed onto his desk, Ms Sidon had been missing for six years and the investigation had only just been reopened.
Heazlewood was already shaping up as her likely killer and a secret bug from his car yielded a bizarre confession to his dog in which the man professed he was “checking on the body”.
But where Heazlewood had travelled to in that 36-minute journey remained a mystery.
Police knew where the car left the Gold Coast so started by charting that point on a map and put on the recording.
The lead detective listened for car indicators going on and off, road changes and turns and other vehicles that could be heard in the background.
“I must have listened to that recording hundreds of times,” the police officer said. “I couldn’t even count the number of times, but that’s all I did for a month. We knew it was key to progressing the case so I basically just focused on going over and over it until (it was) exhausted. It just had to be done.”
It was the sound of expansion joints on each end of a large bridge in the Numinbah Valley that confirmed to police that Ms Sidon’s body had been dumped nearby,
The sound of buses travelling ahead of Heazlewood’s car gave the strong clue that there was something established, like a venue, nearby.
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Soon after, Heazlewood’s car was caught on CCTV travelling past the Cedar Lake Country Resort off Nerang Murwillumbah Rd.
It later came to a stop at Pine Creek Rd in the Numinbah Valley — an isolated location that Heazlewood had previously visited to do burnouts in his car.
He was granted parole after 29 months of the sentence were served.
But before Heazlewood was released he first took detectives back to the exact Pine Creek Rd that had been identified by the recording and participated in a re-enactment of where he left Ms Sidon’s body.
Water levels in the area later rose, meaning the woman’s body has never been recovered.
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New details of how the Gold Coast mum died can now be revealed after the Bulletin confirmed Ms Sidon’s son, Daniel Paul Heazlewood, had been quietly released on parole after the Brisbane Supreme Court sentenced him to eight years jail in 2018.
He had pleaded guilty to his mother’s manslaughter and interfering with her corpse but became eligible for release last November, only 29 months after being sentenced.
The court heard at the time of his sentence that Heazlewood had told friends he hated his mother.
He had said she was “a waste of space … a bogan … an ugly b****”.
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The court was told that Heazlewood killed Ms Sidon in their Housing Commission home during a struggle in June 2009.
Heazlewood later told police he didn’t know his mother had died and left her at their home following an incident in which he alleged she brandished a butter knife.
He said he returned two days later to find her dead.
He then headed out and bought a shovel and a bag of lime at a hardware store.
Heazlewood placed his mother’s body in the boot of his car and drove 30km to a secluded location in the Numinbah Valley where he buried Ms Sidon in a shallow grave.
The part-time cleaner was not reported missing for 18 months, only after her father made contact with police.
Heazlewood was not charged until 2015, when a hidden listening device planted in his car recorded him saying: “She just pushed me too far one day … so I killed her” as he drove back out to the burial site at Numinbah Valley, the court heard during his sentence.
The Bulletin understands these admissions were in part made to his german shepherd
dog while the pair were travelling in a car to the bushland area where he dumped his mum years earlier.
It can now be revealed Heazlewood was also caught on the audio recordings muttering to his dog during the journey that he was “checking on the body”.
When asked about Heazlewood’s parole, Queensland Corrective Services said in a statement they do not discuss the “individual management of prisoners and offenders” but it is understood Heazlewood was released this year.
Despite authorities never finding Ms Sidon’s body, Heazlewood was granted parole even though police made an application under Queensland’s “no body no parole” laws to keep him locked up.
The Queensland Parole Board later found Heazlewood had made genuine attempts to help authorities locate Ms Sidon’s body by taking them to the deserted location in Numinbah Valley where he claimed he buried her and participated in a re-enactment.
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