Sharron Phillips murder: State coroner to deliver verdict
For four decades it has been one of Queensland’s most enduring cold case murder mysteries but today the state coroner hands down the findings into the 1986 disappearance of Sharron Phillips.
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The state coroner will on Monday make a finding in one of Queensland’s most enduring murder mysteries – the 1986 disappearance of Sharron Phillips.
Ms Phillips was 20 when she vanished nearly 40 years ago after running out of fuel on Ipswich Rd (now the Ipswich Motorway) west of Brisbane.
Police later determined she’d called her boyfriend from a service station payphone at 11.18pm and asked him to come collect her, but he accidentally drove to the wrong place.
She tried to call him again at midnight but was told he’d already left.
Her disappearance remained a mystery for many years, with some family members raising doubts about their father’s movements on the night Ms Phillips vanished.
The nearby army barracks also came under scrutiny after it was discovered Ms Phillips had walked there and asked to use the phone but was turned away.
An inquest held in 1988 found she’d disappeared in “suspicious circumstances” but was unable to shed any light on what had happened to her.
In 2016, police sensationally began excavating a stormwater drain at Carole Park in Ipswich in the hope of locating her remains after receiving fresh information. Nothing of value was found.
It later emerged a man named Ian Seeley had come forward to accuse his father, long-dead taxi driver Raymond Mulvihill, whom he said had made a deathbed confession to murdering Ms Phillips and various other women.
The inquest heard Mr Seeley told police he’d helped move an unconscious Ms Phillips from his father’s taxi into the boot of his own car on the night of the murder. He said his father then dropped him at home before driving away with Ms Phillips.
Mr Seeley said his father later showed him where he’d hidden her body.
Further investigation determined Mulvihill would park his taxi behind the group of shops where Ms Phillips had stopped to use the phone and that he had done so on the night she disappeared.
The search at Carole Park led to a couple coming forward to say they had seen a man emerge from the trees with a shovel late at night. They described a man eerily similar to Mulvihill long before his image had been made public.
In 2017, homicide investigators said they believed the taxi driver had murdered Ms Phillips and had he not died, they would have arrested and charged him.
A fresh inquest was held in 2021 where Mr Seeley was grilled about inconsistencies in his story, with a lawyer for a member of the Phillips family accusing him of inventing parts of his story for his podcast – a claim he denied.
Cold case homicide Detective Sergeant Scott Chapman told the inquest Mr Seeley had provided police with specific and credible information when he came forward in 2016.
“We believe Raymond Mulvihill played a significant role in her disappearance and Ian Seeley potentially played a role as well,” he told the inquest.
No charges have every been laid in relation to Ms Phillips’s disappearance.
Ms Phillips’ sister Merlesa said she held little hope of ever being able to lay her sister to rest.
“Every time Sharron’s name is dug back up in the media, it’s like tearing open a wound that has never healed,” she said.
“We are dragged back to the past and old traumas are revisited. We just want answers. We want an ending to the constant pain.
“We want Sharron to be laid to rest, but I know for myself, I have little hope.”
State coroner Terry Ryan will on Monday deliver his findings, which are expected to include whether Ms Phillips is in fact dead, and if so, how, when and where she died and what caused her death, as well as the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and whether the actions or omissions of any person caused her disappearance.
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