Margaret Rosetta Rosewarne: True story behind long-unsolved Gold Coast murder case
A Gold Coast teenager was so severely bashed that her forehead was pulped, her jawbone smashed in several places and her body was left unrecognisable. Her killer remains at large.
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A night out in Burleigh Heads awaited 19-year-old Margaret Rosetta Rosewarne as she walked out of her Surfers Paradise unit on May 5, 1976.
Tragically, she would never return home.
Her body would be 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.
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Pathologists were unable to determine if she had been raped, but detectives at the time said there was little doubt she had been sexually assaulted.
They described the slaying as the “work of a sadistic fiend”.
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.
Ms Rosewarne disappeared on a Wednesday night while attempting to hitchhike from her home on Surfers Paradise’s Old Burleigh Road to a farewell party for a friend at the Gold Coast Hotel in Burleigh Heads.
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She originally planned to drive to the party with her flatmate Elaine Warr but the latter was unwell and decided to stay in.
Fatefully, Ms Rosewarne instead chose to hitchhike and was last seen leaving the house at 9pm.
She never arrived at the party.
Detectives believed that Ms Rosewarne was picked up by her killer near El Dorado Motel.
The only sign of her between disappearing on May 5 and the discovery of her body on May 21 was her handbag being found near Broadbeach Surf Lifesaving Club on May 8.
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The young woman’s body was eventually found by a couple inspecting land about 10 metres from the cul-de-sac’s dead end.
Police later determined she had tried to flee into the bush, but her killer chased and caught her, then bashed her to death.
Ms Rosewarne’s younger sister Brenda Atkinson told the Bulletin in 2011 that she remembered clearly the moment she was told of her loved one’s death.
“I was 17 and in my first year of uni at Toowoomba when Marg vanished,’’ she said at the time.
“Marg and I had always been really close. We were from a big family so she was more like a best friend than a sister.
“My parents asked me to come home, but they hadn’t told me Marg was missing. When I walked in the door I remember having a really uneasy feeling. I asked my parents where Marg was and they told me she’d vanished. It just got worse from there.’’
The teenager has long been believed the final victim of the so-called “hitchhiker murders” which terrorised the city between 1972 and 1976.
All the victims were female hitchhikers aged under 21 and, though police never made a decisive link between the crimes, all had similarities.
Among those were the 1973 killings of teens Michelle Ann Riley and Gabrielle Ingrid Jahnke, who were abducted while hitchhiking between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and whose bodies were later found.
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The girls had been bludgeoned to death. There were signs of sexual assault.
In late 2020 police renewed calls for any witnesses with knowledge of Ms Jahnke’s death to come forward, offering a $250,000 reward.
Detective Rod Redmond, who led the chase to find Ms Rosewarne’s killer, told the Bulletin in 2011 he believed there was a link between the killings.
“This is a vicious and brutal attacker. We think he knows the Gold Coast area very well,’’ he said.
“All three girls died from massive head injuries, all had been hitchhiking and all the murders tie in geographically.’’
Ms Rosewarne’s family at one time called for late serial killer Ivan Milat to be investigated for potential involvement in the case. However, police long ruled it out, saying there was no evidence.
The state government approved a reward of $50,000 in the 1970s and increased it to $250,000 in 2004.
Ms Rosewarne’s parents died never knowing the truth about their daughter’s death.
“To begin with the police didn’t take Marg’s disappearance seriously,” Ms Atkinson said in 2011.
“They seemed to think she’d just gone off somewhere for a few days, but it wasn’t like Margaret to go away and not tell anyone.
“My parents always had a huge amount of faith that the police would find out who murdered Marg, but they died not knowing.’’
The case came back into the spotlight again in mid-2018 when Gold Coast police put out a renewed call for any new information on the case.
But more than three years on there have been no fresh leads towards solving the brutal slaying.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
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