Couple charged with Chinchilla murder to plead guilty to interfering with toddler Kaydence Mills’ body

A mother and de facto stepfather charged murdering and torturing a two-year-old Chinchilla girl will plead guilty to moving the girl’s body which was found in a shallow grave on the banks of a regional Queensland river in 2020.

Tane Desatge and Sinitta Dawita are expected to stand trial charged with the murder and torture of two-year-old Chinchilla girl Kaydence Mills.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that the following article contains images of the deceased.

Four years after the remains of a missing two-year-old girl were found in a shallow grave on the banks of the Condamine River south of Chinchilla, the toddler’s caregivers will stand trial for her alleged murder and torture.

Chinchilla toddler Kaydence Mills was known to the Department of Child Safety.

In March 2020, investigators charged Kaydence Mills’ mother Sinitta Dawita, 32, and de facto stepfather Tane Desatge, 44, with a number of offences including murder, torture, and interfering with a corpse.

On Monday, July 15, the Toowoomba Supreme Court was told Ms Dawita and Mr Desatge intend to plead guilty to interfering with her corpse when the pair stood trial before a judge on July 22.

They have not yet been required to enter in their pleas to the remaining charges.

During the review of the trial on Monday, the court was told the Queensland Police Service would make a suppression application to prohibit the media from releasing information heard during open court when the trial commences next week.

Investigators charged the little girl’s mother Sinitta Dawita, 32, and stepfather Tane Desatge, 44, with a number of offences including murder, torture, and interfering with a corpse..

The court was told the suppression order related to a covert police operation involving Mr Desatge, where he disclosed information regarding the girl’s burial at the Chinchilla Weir.

Before the trial begins on Monday, another trial review will be heard before Toowoomba’s Supreme Court on Wednesday, July 17.

During that review several issues will be raised, including what information the Crown intends to put forward concerning some police interviews and evidence, and a pending application from Ms Dawita’s legal team for her to be hidden from Mr Desatge’s view during the trial.

In December 2019 officers from the State Crime Command declared the child’s home a crime scene and dug up the floor of a laundry.

The court heard Mr Desatge intends to oppose the application for a screen to be placed to prevent him from seeing his ex-partner.

Last month Mr Desatge’s legal team put forward a failed application from him to be tried separately from Dawita.

The two-year-old quietly went missing for a number of years before detectives began looking into her disappearance in 2019, prompted by the girl’s sisters.