Gold Coast crime: Twisted true stories behind Surfers’ most horrific crimes
It’s at the heart of the Gold Coast, but this seaside suburb has a dark underbelly. Find out the heinous crimes that rocked Surfers Paradise.
Police & Courts
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SURFERS Paradise is known as the jewel in the crown of the Gold Coast.
The tourist mecca boasts a famous beach, high-rise skyline and lively nightclubs.
But the seaside suburb has a dark underbelly.
These are the faces behind the crimes that shocked Surfers Paradise:
Margaret Rosetta Rosewarne
Margaret Rosetta Rosewarne walked out of her Surfers Paradise unit for the last time on May 5, 1976, never to return home.
The 19-year-old’s body was found in bushland off Burleigh’s Newcastle Street 16 days later, brutally beaten in a struggle that left her unrecognisable.
The teenager was so severely bashed with a blunt instrument that her forehead had been pulped, her jawbone was smashed in several places and her top row of teeth had been broken away from her body.
The killing of Ms Rosewarne 45 years ago has never been solved, despite a $250,000 reward for any information.
It is one of the oldest unsolved crimes in the Gold Coast’s history.
Hamago Kitayama
A retired Japanese crime boss who previously led a violent Yakuza clan was murdered by his wife and his body dumped at a tip in 1999.
Millionaire businessman Hamago Kitayamam, 62, had last been seen on April 16 when his wife Akiko Kitayama told police she had last seen him catching a taxi to Gold Coast Airport for a flight to Japan.
But police suspected foul play when immigration checks revealed he had not left the country and Japanese authorities found no trace of him.
Searchers with sniffer dogs sifted through more than 300 tonnes of rubbish at the now-closed Suntown Tip at Arundel after local residents told investigators they had seen a large black canvas bag near an industrial bin.
The investigation also zeroed in on the Kitayama family’s unit in Surfers Paradise.
Mr Kitayama’s body has never been found.
In January 2001 the jury took about 10 hours to find the then-54-year-old Akika Kitayama guilty of murder and she was sentenced by Justice John Muir to life behind bars.
The Court of Appeals and High Court both shot down appeal attempts in 2001 and 2002 and she remains behind bars today.
Christine Petersen
In December 1991, the model’s former de facto husband Lawrence Stehlik stabbed her in the heart, dumped her body in bushland and then returned to his Pottsville banana plantation where he cut his leg in an effort to make it look like self-defence.
Christine called family on the morning she was murdered, saying Stehlik had been harassing her.
Stehlik had come to her Surfers Paradise unit and, when a girlfriend prevented him from seeing her, put a finger to his head and made soft gunshot sounds.
Gold Coast detectives confirmed Ms Petersen called police that morning and was told there was nothing police could do unless Stehlik became violent.
Ms Petersen’s body, stabbed through the heart, was found in bushland.
Stehlik told his solicitor he had killed Miss Petersen before he shot himself with a rifle at Bega, 430km south of Sydney on December 12.
Peter George Wade and Maureen Ambrose
One of the men involved in the murder of SP bookie Peter George Wade, 50, and his de facto Maureen Ambrose, 53, in their Gold Coast unit in December 1991 lost his false teeth and left a bloody trail of broken dentures.
Police said one of assassins lost part of a lower bridge dental plate and some natural teeth in a fierce struggle with Mr Wade.
Ronald Henry Thomas, 43, was found guilty of the callous shooting.
During the forensic examination of the Surfers Paradise murders, palm and fingerprints belonging to Thomas were found.
Thomas was charged with the double murder, convicted in 1992 and given two life sentences.
Michelle Cohn
A convicted car thief killed South African tourist Michelle Cohn by stomping on her neck.
Shane Sebastian Davis, who lived in a Burleigh caravan park, pleaded not guilty to the murder on December 26, 1990.
However, a Supreme Court jury took just over three hours to find Davis guilty of murder. Aged 20 at the time, he was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence. Landmark retesting of DNA evidence 20 years later confirmed Davis’ guilt.
Michelle was a quiet, reserved girl who had spent Boxing Day alone at the family’s Oak Lodge apartment at Surfers Paradise and was murdered while the family was away.
He said Davis had “deliberately stomped on her neck and chest causing very, very deep, bruising and her to stop breathing’’.
The Postcard Bandit
It was the prison break that stopped the nation and led to one of Australia’s biggest manhunts.
The November 5, 1997 escape from the Sir David Longland Correctional Centre at Wacol was masterminded by notorious armed robber Brenden James Abbott became one of the biggest news stories of the 1990s.
Abbott, known as the ‘postcard bandit’, was imprisoned at the centre after a series of armed robberies, some of which happened in Gold Coast banks.
Abbott was believed to have hidden up to $1 million from the 37 robberies he was believed to have committed.
He was finally recaptured in May 1998 outside a Darwin laundromat and was sentenced to a further six years for escaping lawful custody and four counts of serious assault.
The following year he was sentenced to another seven years for armed robbery and six years for unlawful use of a motor vehicle with a circumstance of aggravation committed while at large
In mid-2016 he was extradited from Queensland to Western Australia after being granted parole on outstanding charges.
He remains behind bars today.
Baby found on beach
A man who threw his baby daughter into the Tweed River was found not guilty of her murder due to mental illness, with the incident described in court as a “terrible tragedy”.
The father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, received the special verdict at the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney last year after Justice Helen Wilson determined he could “not be held criminally responsible” for the act due to mental illness.
Justice Wilson said it was beyond dispute that the man, who was homeless at the time, “cast” his daughter into the Tweed River on the on November 17, 2018, but accepted evidence from several psychiatrists that he was severely mentally ill at the time.
The evidence from psychiatrists was that the man was a “chronic schizophrenic” with “bizarre delusional beliefs” including hallucinations about killing infants, Jesus and the popstar Britney Spears, the court heard.
On the day of the infant’s death, the court heard that the man tried to give her away before taking her to the banks of the Tweed and tossing her in along with a “bundle of possessions”.
The bundle was later seen by several people floating out to sea, while the girl’s body was found “naked face down in the sand” on a Surfers Paradise beach on the morning of November 19, 2018.
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