Tiahleigh Palmer: the disturbing case of a Brisbane schoolgirl victim

The 12-year-old Brisbane schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer joins the sad roll call of other child victims.

TWAM-20150411 EMBARGO FOR TWAM Christine Middap Dinkus wide pic : TWAM

Unsolved child murders and random abductions are (thankfully) rare enough events in this country that the names of the victims are seared into the public mind: the Beaumont children, Daniel Morcombe, William Tyrrell.

All well known cases, all highly publicised. Then there’s Tiahleigh Palmer. The 12-year-old Queenslander was dropped at school one morning last October and vanished. Her body washed up on a riverbank some 30km away almost a week later. There are many troubling aspects to this case beyond the fact that a schoolgirl has been murdered and (at the time of going to press) her killer is walking free. As Trent Dalton writes, whatever happens next, police investigations in Queensland will be changed by the case of Tiahleigh Palmer.