I saw Shandee Blackburn’s missing handbag: Driver

A rubbish-truck driver believes he has solved the mystery disappearance of murder victim Shandee Blackburn’s handbag.

Security footage of Shandee Blackburn leaving her work with her handbag minutes before she was stabbed to death. The bag has never been found.

A rubbish-truck driver believes he has solved the mystery disappearance of murder victim Shandee Blackburn’s handbag.

When Ms Blackburn was savagely stabbed to death walking home from work in Mackay in 2013, the bag she was carrying went missing and has never been found.

Jamie Lewis has told the Shandee’s Story investigative podcast series that he saw the bag, with its distinctive skull symbol, at a waste facility just days after the murder.

In a “major stuffup” his call to triple-0 to report the bag missing was lost in the system and it took police two months to get to him.

“I was driving for the local council rubbish bin collection,” Mr Lewis said.

“I come home from work one day and my wife said to me, ‘Oh, they’re looking for a bag for Shandee’.

“At that time I was doing that area where Shandee was attacked. I said to Verna, my wife, ‘I actually seen a bag today with a couple of pairs of work boots’.”

Police had released a photograph to media outlets to try to get leads on the bag. The police photo was not an exact replica, because they had trouble finding the same kind.

The one Mr Lewis saw was very similar. He decided to call triple-0 to report it.

“It took the police over two months to get to me, which we were very shocked with,” he said.

“They actually stated to us that the bag that was in the paper was not the actual real bag.

“The bag that I had described was the actual real bag – you could see through the skull to the material.

“The detective … actually stated to me that he believed that bag was the bag of Shandee’s.

Mystery solved? Rubbish-truck driver reported seeing Shandee Blackburn’s handbag.

“He said it was a major stuffup basically. It got lost in the system.”

The detective acknowledged that if the call had been followed up immediately, “there was a very good chance … that they would have found that bag”.

Mr Lewis added: “I do believe 100 per cent I’ve seen the bag. If they had’ve come to me within hours or within even two days or a day, there’s no doubt in my mind they would have found that bag because it would have (been) a very small area to dig.”

The missed opportunity means it is also impossible to know if the boots could have been the killer’s, with traces of DNA that could have solved the crime.

One pair was new, the other “well and truly worn”. They were lying very close to the handbag in the rubbish mound.

“It was a very big thing in Mackay at the time,” Mr Lewis said. “My wife works in emergency services herself, so it was a talking point very regularly among us.

“We want our kids to walk around the streets. And when they don’t come home, whether it’s our children or somebody else’s children, that’s a big impact on the community.

“It was a very emotional case for the whole Mackay.”

Anyone with information about the murder of Shandee Blackburn can contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at [e-mail]