A killer struck as she tried to find peace and quiet in a car park while taking sanctuary from the Christmas crowds at the Pacific Fair shopping centre on December 13, 1983.

The attractive 21-year-old had been married for two years and building her dream home with husband Robert.

Linda was a shop assistant at McDonnell and East, a former department store at Pacific Fair. The Gold Coast’s busiest shopping centre was awash with Christmas shoppers and when she took her lunch break, she headed for her car to eat her sandwich.

Linda did not return. The alarm was raised during the afternoon.

Within hours, Linda’s devoted husband was conducting a futile search of the Pacific Fair car parks and favourite haunts of his wife.

Later he would say how it amazed him that Linda could disappear from a car park in front of all those shoppers.

HOW POLICE TRACKED LINDA’S ACCUSED KILLER

“All that time after Linda died, I didn’t sleep except for about four hours a night,” said Rob.

“I’d just lie in the dark and think of the why, the who and the how, especially why. Why Linda? She was as sweet as an angel. I would rack my brain. How was it possible for a girl like Linda to leave her job at McDonnell and East for a bit of lunch and not come back?’’

Three days after her disappearance, Linda’s car — filled with Christmas presents — was found abandoned in bushland at Gaven, which has since become suburbia.

Her bound and gagged body was found less than 100m away.

Linda’s hands had been tied behind her back with a bikini top and a piece of blue cord. The straps of her dress and bra had also been wrapped around her wrists.

It was believed she had been sexually assaulted, tied up and left to drown in a creek puddle.

A large-scale appeal for witnesses and information followed, with police setting up exhibits with a mannequin, photographs and Linda’s car in a bid to jog the memories of thousands of shoppers.

The investigation turned up little information, but three years later there came a breakthrough.

A convicted murderer, Craig Andrew McConnell, was charged with Linda’s death. He went to trial after allegedly confessing to a fellow inmate at Brisbane’s Boggo Road jail, which has since been shut down.

But McConnell was acquitted due to insufficient evidence after the chief witness died of a heroin overdose shortly before the trial.

Pathologist Dr Tony Ansford gave evidence at McConnell’s failed hearing that Linda probably drowned in the muddy creek bed. He said grit, mud and copious quantities of fluid were found in her airways.

Her body was partly decomposed and Dr Ansford said he could not tell if she had been strangled.

Years later, Linda’s mother Nancy Fein told the Bulletin — in 2016 — she prayed she would live to see justice.

“My husband has passed away and as you can appreciate, I’m getting older as well,” she said.

“It would be so nice to see justice done, it’s gone on for so long now and I’m running out of time.”

In 2010 her husband and Linda’s father, Oskar Fein, had revealed he had been diagnosed with kidney cancer and feared he could die before his daughter’s killer was brought to justice.

Tragically, his fear was realised but at the time he said the hunt for answers to the mystery had taken on a new urgency.

“I just want to know what happened to my beautiful daughter,’’ he said. “I deserve that. It’s always been terrifying to think we could never find out who killed Linda. I just want answers.’’

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The grieving couple told how their hearts had broken when they learned their “beautiful and happy’’ daughter had been murdered.

“It hurts to know Linda’s killer is still out there, walking around living life. Linda had her future taken away and so did we,’’ Mr Fein said.

Mrs Fein said she reported Linda missing after she was told by Robert she had disappeared from work.

Worry became panic when a search of the Pacific Fair car park failed to find Linda’s car.

In 2010 Mrs Fein spoke of her frustration in dealing with police when she reported her missing in 1983.

“I knew my daughter well. Linda was very responsible and wouldn’t just disappear. It was totally out of character,’’ she said.

“(But) we had to wait 24 hours before Linda could be listed as missing.’’

Years later a detective involved in the investigation also told of frustration.

Back in the 1980s, Bob Pease had been a detective sergeant with the homicide squad.

By the time of an interview with the Bulletin in 2002 he was an inspector. He recalled the investigation in minute detail and said it was fair to describe the murder as “frustrating’’.

“You don’t like to think someone got away with such a serious and horrendous crime,’’ Inspector Pease said.

“Linda had such a strong work ethic that everyone found it strange when she didn’t come back from lunch that day and it was a complete mystery at first.’’

Even after Linda’s body was found, police were still baffled how and why she had been taken from the car park.

Two years after her death, there was a breakthrough when a Boggo Road Jail prisoner asked to see police.

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That prisoner, Graham Steer, told officers that another inmate, Craig McConnell, had confessed he had killed Linda Reed and then eaten her sandwiches.

Steer, then 45, was on remand and McConnell, then 21, was a convicted double murderer.

McConnell, a former printing apprentice, had surprised many people by pleading guilty in the Supreme Court in Brisbane in 1985 to the murders of Tweed Heads sex shop owner Kevin Mannix and Surfers Paradise call girl Lovina Cunningham. He had cut the throats of Mannix and Cunningham during robberies.

McConnell was serving two life sentences when he was linked to the Reed homicide.

The Crown case, which was largely based on Steer’s statement concerning McConnell’s confession, was that McConnell and Greg Rooker, who died of a self-administered drug overdose, had been trying to steal from a car in a Pacific Fair car park and thought Linda Reed had spotted them. They bundled her back into her car and drove off from the car park to the murder scene.

“It made sense to us and until then we had no idea why she would be taken from the car park,’’ Pease said.

When he interviewed McConnell in Boggo Road Jail on December 17, 1985, McConnell told him: “You’ve got the wrong man.’’

POLICE ARREST MAN OVER 1983 ABDUCTION AND MURDER OF LINDA REED

Steer had six meetings with detectives and told of many discussions with McConnell over the Reed murder.

In court, he said Linda had warned her killer “Rob will get you’’ as they drove from Pacific Fair.

Pease said Linda always called her husband Rob, never Bob or Robbie or any other derivation of Robert.

“(Steer) also told how McConnell told him he had eaten Linda’s sandwiches and that they had cheese and pickles in them,’’ Pease said. “Our scientific people even found traces of cheese in Linda’s car.’’

Pease said McConnell had drawn a mud map for Steer of the murder scene at Gaven.

“The map was drawn on a welfare sheet and it showed a line of pine trees and where the body was in the creek and it was exactly as we found the murder scene to be,’’ he said.

But after a Supreme Court trial lasting almost three weeks and involving 59 witnesses, on October 7, 1986, a jury of nine men and three women found McConnell not guilty of the murder.

McConnell stood motionless, his hands at his sides as the jury returned the verdict.

“I never believed in going down for something I never done,’’ McConnell said from the dock before he was returned to prison to continue serving his two life sentences.

An inquest was held into Linda Reed’s murder in 1987.

Outside the coronial hearing, Mrs Fein had blinked back tears and said Linda’s death was a chapter of the family’s lives that would never close. “It’s not fair — all she did was go to work and never return,’’ she said.

But the enormity of pain felt by the family was uttered by Linda’s shattered husband Rob, who told coroner Mr L. O’Connell: “I still cry myself to sleep sometimes.’’

THE PLAYERS

THE VICTIM

LINDA REED: The newly married 21-year-old took a break from her retail assistant job at a Pacific Fair department store, escaping the Christmas crowds of 1983 by retreating to her car for a sandwich. She never returned, sparking a three-day search that ended when her bound and gagged body was found in bushland at Gaven.

THE HUSBAND

ROB REED: When he learned Linda had not returned from lunch, the young husband began his own frantic search of the Pacific Fair car park and places he knew his attractive wife liked to frequent. Her death left him a shattered man, with him telling an inquest years later that he still cried himself to sleep.

THE MOTHER

NANCY FEIN: The worried mother went to Broadbeach police to report her daughter missing, later telling the Bulletin it was out of character for Linda to “just disappear’’. In recent years she acknowledged time was running out for her to see justice for her daughter.

THE FATHER

OSKAR FEIN: Tragically, the grieving father went to his grave never knowing the outcome of the decades-long hunt for whoever was responsible for Linda’s abduction and death. The cancer patient said in 2010 he just wanted answers. “I deserve that,’’ he said.

CHIEF SUSPECT AT THE TIME

CRAIG McCONNELL: The former apprentice was serving two life sentences for the grisly murders of sex shop owner Kevin Mannix and Surfers Paradise call girl Lovina Cunningham when another prisoner told police McConnell had confessed to killing Linda Reed. A map McConnell allegedly sketched of the murder scene and details he mentioned to the prisoner convinced police at the time he was the killer. McConnell was charged but another witness vital to the case died from a drug overdose before the trial. McConnell strongly denied killing Linda and was found not guilty.