Notorious Queensland killers who refuse to reveal where their victims’ bodies are hidden
From the wife of a retired Japanese crime boss to the cousin of a pop singer, these notorious Queensland killers have one secret in common.
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From the wife of a retired Japanese crime boss to the cousin of a pop singer, these notorious Queensland killers have one secret in common – the location of their victims’ bodies.
Former veteran police detective turned Bond University criminologist Terry Goldsworthy said he had worked on just three “no body” murder cases in his decades-long career including the death of retired Japanese crime boss Hamago Kitayama.
“You don’t have that overwhelming forensics that you get from a body and a crime scene but there’s plenty of other evidence that the police will rely on, communications, technology, now, everyone leaves a digital footprint,” he said.
“Often these people give self-serving statements that will lessen their criminality and that’s why they don’t want you to find a body because it won’t match their rather bland description of how they killed the person.”
Akiko Kitayama
Retired Japanese crime boss and millionaire businessman Hamago Kitayama, who previously led a violent Yakuza clan, was murdered by his wife and his body dumped at a Gold Coast rubbish tip in April 1999.
Mr Kitayama, 62, had been missing for six weeks on April 16 when his wife Akiko Kitayama told police she had last seen him catching a taxi to Gold Coast Airport.
Kitayama claimed her husband was visiting his sick sister in Japan but police suspected foul play when immigrations checks revealed Mr Kitayama had not left the county.
His passport was later found in the couple’s Surfers Paradise unit.
During her trial it was alleged Kitayama strangled her husband, cut him up with an electric saw, placed the dismembered body in plastic bags and then put them in a large bag which was left for garbage collection under the couple’s unit.
The court was told that in 1998, Akiko offered a friend $84,000 cash to kill Hamago.
She had also unsuccessfully attempted to strangle her husband on three occasions.
It was alleged Akiko went on a spending spree outlaying $80,000 in a week at restaurants and bars and on a Rolex watch and a car for a Japanese male friend.
Mr Kitayama’s body was never found, despite police scouring the now-closed Suntown Tip at Arundel.
Akiko was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life behind bars.
Clive Anthony Nicholson
Nicholson bludgeoned his wife Julie to death with a hammer at their Southport home in July 2003, and was later convicted of her manslaughter.
He stuffed her body in a walk-in-wardrobe and dumped her in the Southport Seaway.
Nicholson wrote suicide letters in which he told their young daughter: “Mummy died as a result of an accident in a fight with daddy … and daddy died as a result of a broken heart”.
Alwyn Gwilliams
Gwilliams claimed he panicked after he accidentally killed his former lover Dulice Birt during a drink-driving accident in bushland at Riverview in October 2009.
Police have never believed the story and Mr Birt’s body was never found.
Gwilliams was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years behind bars in 2013.
Blaze Seaton Pearce, Ashley Roberts
Kevin Stanley Brack was murdered after a drug deal gone wrong at a Fortitude Valley strip club in February 2009.
Mr Brack, 45, was attacked by Blaze Pearce and Ashley Roberts at a strip club following an argument over money and drugs before his body was smuggled away in a wheelie bin.
CCTV footage put the time of Mr Brack’s death at between 10.49am and 10.55am on February 17, 2009.
A Supreme Court jury in Brisbane, took about three days to find Pearce and Roberts guilty of the murder of Mr Brack at the Flikkerz Foto and Dance Studios, in Brunswick Street while a third man, Patrick Robert Doyle was found not guilty of murder but guilty of being an accessory after the fact.
Police did not begin investigations into Mr Brack’s disappearance until four months after the time he was killed but when police teams went to the club they found stains under a carpet, under a lounge cushion, and under tiles which later proved to contain Mr Brack’s DNA.
A former Flikkerz stripper Claudine Davis told of an argument between Roberts and Mr Brack about the quality of the speed he had earlier bought.
It was during the argument Mr Brack was punched, kicked and stabbed with a knife.
In 2011, after a jury found Roberts guilty, Mr Brack’s family made an impassioned plea for Roberts to reveal where he had hidden the body.
Alexander Duncan Carstens
Carstens, a former meatworker, lured young men to their deaths with fake newspaper ads seeking divers to work aboard his boat.
He is believed to have lured as many as seven people to their deaths.
He was convicted in 1971 of the murders of Peter Colburn, 16, Bruce Peters, 22, and Kerry Rowan, 19.
Only Bruce Peters’ body was found, discovered by hikers two years after he disappeared.
Zane Tray Lincoln, Stephen Dale Renwick, Luke Shaye Kister, Nicholas Voorwinden, Kiera Jeanette McKay, Benjamin Francis Graeme Oakley
Timothy Pullen was abducted from his North Mackay unit and killed in April 2012 over a $7000 drug debt.
His body was stored in a nightclub cold room and later dumped in remote bushland towards Collinsville.
Six people were charged over Mr Pullen’s death, which was one of the cases that inspired Queensland’s “No body, no parole” laws.
Mr Pullen’s parents, Gary and Leanne, fought to have the laws introduced in the hope that one of their son’s killers would reveal where they hid the body.
Stephen Pike
Suellen Pike was killed by her son, Stephen Pike, who had been described as a cold-blooded narcissist, in August 2010.
He was charged with murder and convicted of manslaughter.
THE NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN FORENSIC PHOTOS
Mrs Pike’s body was never found, but forensic officers later discovered the burnt remnants of a woman’s handbag, glasses, earrings and false teeth in the ashes of a rural fire pit – items which belonged to the 62-year-old.
The Gold Coast pensioner was killed less than a month after she changed her will, making Stephen sole beneficiary.
Police believe Mrs Pike was killed in her Burleigh Waters home, dismembered and then scattered in nearby bushland just days before her 63rd birthday.
Then-Detective Sergeant Justin Percival, who arrested Pike about six weeks after his mother’s suspicious disappearance, said “I’ve never met a bigger narcissist”.
Daniel Heazlewood
Linda Sidon was brutally killed by her gym junkie son and buried in a shallow grave in the Gold Coast hinterland in June 2009.
Heazlewood was sentenced to eight years’ behind bars for the manslaughter of Mrs Sidon who he called a “a waste of space … a bogan … and an ugly bitch”.
The steroid-using gym junkie killed his mum during an alleged struggle in their Gold Coast Housing Commission unit.
Two days later, he realised she was dead and bought a shovel and a bag of lime at a hardware store, placed her body in the boot of his car and drove to the Numinbah Valley where he buried her in a shallow grave.
She was not reported missing for another 18 months.
Heazlewood confessed to police in 2015, after a listening device was planted in his car and recorded him saying: “Farcked her up. She just pushed me too far one day … ha. so I killed her. Gotta remember where I put the bitch.”
He had earlier denied any involvement, telling police: ‘I do remember fairly 100 per cent … not killing anybody that year’.”
Brothers Lionel Patea and Nelson Patea, Aaron John Crawford
Gold Coast pool builder and father-of-two Greg Dufty was bludgeoned to death with a spanner and tyre iron in a vicious gang attack in July 2015 after he stole marijuana from one of his killers.
Mr Dufty’s body was then incinerated at a property near the northern NSW town of Casino.
Former Bandidos bikie Lionel Patea pleaded guilty to Mr Dufty’s murder while his brother Nelson pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
While Crawford, a former porn star and the cousin of pop singer Ricki-Lee Coulter, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and interfering with a corpse.
Ms Coulter has no connection to the crimes.
Lionel Patea was also sentenced to life behind bars for the domestic violence murder of his former partner Tara Brown in September of 2015, just weeks after Mr Dufty was killed.
Under Queensland’s “No Body, no parole” laws, prisoners whose victims’ remains have not been found can be refused release unless the Parole Board is satisfied they have satisfactorily co-operated to help identify their location.
The Parole Board of Queensland previously considered how Crawford and another man disposed of Mr Dufty’s body, placing him in a pyre of felled timber, dousing him in diesel fuel and setting him alight along with the clothes his killers had worn during the attack.
The board found that Crawford was not a “No Body, no parole” prisoner because it was clear “no remains of the deceased body continue to exist and are capable of being located”.
Lindy Williams
Black widow Lindy Williams received a life sentence for the murder of her former partner George Gerbic, whose dismembered torso was discovered on fire after being dumped on the side of the road near Gympie in 2013.
The rest of Mr Gerbic’s body has never been found, and a parole board hearing in October of 2022 heard Williams, who had previously proclaimed her innocence, gave a startling confession to police in the months after she was found guilty of his murder in 2018.
She detailed how she spent days hacking apart her dead lover’s body with an electric saw in the bathroom of their home before dumping the pieces in random wheelie bins from Gympie to the Sunshine Coast.
Williams had previously denied having anything to do with the death of Mr Gerbic, using a sophisticated web of lies to cover up his death for months.
She will be eligible for parole in 2034.
John William Bennett
Bennett was sentenced to life behind bars following the horrific murder of three-year-old Kelly Jones in September 1989.
He took the little girl from her aunt’s home in Hampton, north of Toowoomba and murdered her between September 24 and 26.
Bennett had been associated with the family and was staying in the Hampton home when Kelly was reported missing about 8:30am on September 24.
Police immediately launched an extensive search for Bennett, who was found two days later in Cooyar.
He told police he’d killed Kelly but could not remember where he dumped her body, only that he recalled putting her in a hessian bag and disposing of her in a dump.
Derek Sam
Sunshine Coast schoolgirl Jessica Gaudie disappeared in 1999 after babysitting Sam’s children.
Jessica, 16, was one of three women who vanished without a trace on the Sunshine Coast in a 16-month period from 1998-99.
Despite one of the biggest search efforts in Queensland history, the bodies of backpacker Celena Bridge, teacher-aide Sabrina Ann Glassop and Jessica were never found.
Sam was linked to all three women in some way, but has only been convicted of Jessica’s murder.
He has denied being involved in the disappearances.
Kevin Baggott
Michelle Baggott was killed by estranged husband Kevin in 1998, just hours after dropping her daughter Kara off a school on July 17.
Then-Detective Sergeant Terry Goldsworthy worked on the Baggott case.
“(Kevin) had no reliable alibi and it was decided that he should immediately be tied down to a story,” Mr Goldsworthy wrote in a 2008 Australian Police Journal (APJ).
“It quickly became obvious to detectives that Baggott had been exceedingly busy that morning, in fact almost excessively so.”
Mr Goldsworthy said Kevin initially denied any involvement in Michelle’s death but as the net closed in he made a shocking confession in the back of a police car when he was arrested on July 26, 1998.
“The trip back was uneventful until about 500m from the station, when Baggott seated in the back seat with Sergeant Niland muttered the words, ‘I did it!’,”Mr Goldsworthy wrote.
“For the next few hours I interviewed Baggott at length about the murder of his wife Michelle. His basic story was that he had telephoned Michelle to come over on the pretence to swap their cars at Lavelle Street (which she did). When she arrived Baggott was downstairs under the house and told Michelle to come in under-there through a rear door.
“When she walked into the downstairs part of the premises, she allegedly said to Baggott, ‘You will never see Kara again’, at which point Baggott lost control and punched her once – allegedly a blow to the head killing her instantly.
“He then claimed to have loaded her body into the back of his work truck and then driven to a Nerang River boat ramp (he claims at 9am in the morning), he then pushed her body out in the middle of the river in full view of the passing morning traffic and watched Michelle slowly sink from view. She was never seen again.”
The Nerang River was dragged but Michelle’s body was never recovered.
Kevin was later convicted of Michelle’s manslaughter and sentenced to 11 years’ behind bars.
Mr Goldsworthy and then-Detective Sergeant Justin Percival visited Kevin at home in 2017 shortly after he was released from prison.
“The purpose of the trip was to elicit the true whereabouts of the remains of Michelle,” Mr Goldsworthy wrote in the 2008 APJ.
“This was to give some closure to her parents and her daughter Kara.
“After a few moments of idle talk I cut to the chase and asked him to tell me where Michelle was. Despite my best attempts he refused to move from his original version.”
Ross Greenwood-Smith
Ross Greenwood-Smith murdered his wife Cynthia in October 2001 following reports ongoing renovations on their Gold Coast hinterland home had put strain on the former brick layer and legal secretary’s marriage.
Mrs Greenwood-Smith was last seen at the couple’s sprawling Wongawallan Drive home on October 1 and was later reported missing by a close friend.
Queensland Police Acting Inspector Mark Procter previously said he was a young officer when he attended the couple’s home.
“The husband didn’t seem concerned at all and didn’t want to talk to us,” he previously recalled.
“He said she had gone on a trip. But we had a job to do and the house was turned into a crime scene while we looked for clues and evidence.
“Along the way we spoke to a contractor who had just finished work on the pool — the floor of it had been raised by almost 2ft. We honestly thought we were going to find a body under there.
“(A special ground-penetrating radar) showed a large mass under the pool and we dug it up, preparing for the worst but it was all of her belongings. Clothes, jewellery, perfume — things her husband said she had taken with her — it was very strange.”
After the discovery, police honed in on Mr Greenwood-Smith, who refused to be formally interviewed and disappeared himself.
His body was found about two weeks after he fled, deep in remote bushland near the northern NSW town of Nimbin.
His wrists and throat had been slashed with the death treated as non-suspicious.
An inquest eventually ruled Mrs Greenwood-Smith was likely murdered by her husband but her remains have never been found.
Acting Inspector Procter previously said the case remained open but it was unlikely an arrest would ever be made.
Originally published as Notorious Queensland killers who refuse to reveal where their victims’ bodies are hidden
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