‘We all wanted the bastard caught’: Son of fire victim Carmel Pierce speaks out as sister’s murder remains unsolved
His mother fought for decades to catch his sister’s killer but died in a ferocious house fire last year. Now, Joshua Pierce has spoken about the two tragedies, including how his mother had singled out a potential murder suspect before her untimely death.
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Carmel Pierce fought for decades to catch her daughter’s killer but died in a ferocious house fire in Logan last year alongside son Marcus.
Her daughter Cary-Jane Pierce, 26, was brutally killed and dumped in bushland near Brisbane’s Gateway Bridge in September, 1988.
A devastated Ms Pierce spent years appealing for information, saying she would never be at peace until her daughter’s killer was caught.
But she and Marcus died in a fire at their home on Cypress St, Woodridge, just after 6pm on June 16 last year.
Cary-Jane’s murder remains unsolved.
Breaking his silence after decades of tragedy, Ms Pierce’s youngest son Joshua Pierce said it was hard to accept that his mother died without seeing Cary-Jane’s killer behind bars.
“We all wanted the bastard caught, as soon as possible,” Joshua said.
“She just wouldn’t accept that someone could get away with (Cary-Jane’s murder).”
Joshua’s eldest sister Helene died of an overdose in 1982 when he was just 12 years old.
“I’ve written off my late teens, early 20s,” he said.
“My eldest brother (Larry) and I have got on with our lives since and moved forward but both of us would still like to know (who killed our sister).
“I always used to say ‘I’ll sleep properly when I find out who did it’ but you have to live your own life too. (Mum) was prepared for (Cary-Jane’s murder) to dominate her life.”
Cary-Jane’s decomposing body was found about two weeks after she was last seen leaving her mother’s home on Wambool St, Bulimba about 10.25pm on September 17, 1988.
She had been struck on the back of the head with a rock and a strap from the canvas knapsack she was carrying was found bound tightly around her neck.
The single mother was found in an area known as “Rabbits Hill” off Creek Rd in Murarrie by a boy who was walking his dog on October 2.
Then-Detective Senior Sergeant Peter Swindells previously said the murder investigation had widened to include five unsolved murders from the 1970s known as the “Hitchhike Killings”.
Five girls had been abducted while hitchhiking and killed by savage blows to the head between 1973 and 1976.
Police believed Cary-Jane was also hitchhiking from Bulimba when she met her killer.
“We are re-evaluating five murders to see what, if any similarities there are between them and our murder inquiry,” Sen Sgt Swindells said in 1988.
“Somewhere there is a killer that comes out only every so often to find a victim.”
Just four months later, police received an anonymous letter written in red biro from a woman who detectives at the time believed could help them find Cary-Jane’s killer.
Part of her letter read: “I was only recently looking at an old paper when I seen this picture of this woman and read she’d been killed approx. on this date. I was horrified …”
Police arranged for the woman to contact The Courier-Mail in February, 1988.
“As a result of inquiries following her letter, we have obtained certain new information which has established a new line of inquiry,” Snr Sgt Swindells said at the time.
Detectives also raided homes in South Brisbane and had extended interviews with the crews of the USS New Jersey and British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal.
Joshua said Cary-Jane’s daughter Sarah-Cate Ophelia Pierce moved into their Bulimba home after her mother’s murder with Ms Pierce appointed legal guardian of the four-year-old.
He said Sarah-Cate “never really got a break” from her mother’s murder.
Ms Pierce went on to be a prominent member of the Victims of Crime Association and later a board member of the Queensland Community Corrections Board.
When there were advancements in DNA testing, Ms Pierce said she believed she knew who was responsible for the death of Cary-Jane and hoped there would be a breakthrough.
She believed he was a middle-aged man who was infatuated with a frightened Cary-Jane.
Senior police in 1997 confirmed they had “very strong suspicions’’ about a man still living in Brisbane.
But Joshua said his mother never disclosed who she believed Cary-Jane’s killer was.
“I know if she knew for sure she would have called me and said ‘this is the f — ker’ so I don’t think she did, but she might have too … but she was probably still chipping away to see if it was a concrete or not,” he said.
In their appeals, police used a picture of Cary-Jane on a mannequin with clothes she was last seen wearing including a white skirt with large coloured dots, a black top, coloured bracelets on her right arm, pink bobby socks and black shoes.
“It was a dreadful nightmare and it is still a bloody nightmare; the thought her killer still is not punished,” Ms Pierce said in an interview with The Courier-Mail in 1997.
“Cary would have fought hard. She had three belts in kung-fu and was training for a fourth. She would have died fighting.
Joshua first heard about the fatal fire when he received a text message from a close family friend saying: “I’m so sorry to hear”.
“As soon as I see something like that, because so many bloody awful things have happened in my family, I think ‘what hell is this?’,” he said.
“I knew the (Woodridge) address and of course mum was known for her work.”
Joshua said his mum was an “incredible feminist”.
“I had gay sisters and brothers … I was pretty moulded for the new world before it even happened in the late 70s, early 80s,” he said.
Marcus, who was also known as Lance Leopard, was a prominent member of Sydney’s LGBTIQA+ community and a former columnist at On The Street, Sydney Star Observer and Capital Q in the 1990s.
Lance famously created Sydney’s very own Viper Room, a lounge bar on Oxford St, which lasted just six months in 1995.
Joshua said Lance moved to Sydney when he was about 15 but returned to Brisbane several years ago to care for their elderly mother.
Ms Pierce and Lance both had mobility issues.
Asked whether Ms Pierce was different after Cary-Jane’s murder, Joshua said: “it didn’t make her completely bitter but it made part of her cold … she found the world a lot dirtier”.
Joshua said Cary-Jane was a “wild child”.
“She could scare people at the same time as being wildly good fun … she was a force of nature herself,” he said.
Joshua, now 54, said he was in disbelief when he first heard about the fire before he remembered: “I’m a Pierce, this is what happens”.
“If I hadn’t inherited mum’s ridiculous, wicked, eclectic sense of humour there’s just no way I would have coped,” he said.
“(Mum and Lance) could both take over a room whether it be good or bad.”
“No matter how prepared or well versed you are in tragedy, you never know when it is going to strike.”
A Coroners Court of Queensland spokesman said a “detailed” Queensland Fire Department investigation identified a “number of potential ignition sources (one of which was oil heaters)”
“But due to the extent of the damage the fire investigator was unable to confirm which source actually caused the fire,” he said.
A reward of $250,000 remains for information which leads to the conviction of the person or people responsible for Cary-Jane’s murder.
An indemnity from prosecution exists for any accomplice, if they were not the person who committed the crime.
Originally published as ‘We all wanted the bastard caught’: Son of fire victim Carmel Pierce speaks out as sister’s murder remains unsolved
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