Police excavate land following new information about suspected murder of Sharron Phillips
Queensland police are digging in and near a stormwater drain for the remains of Sharron Phillips after a member of the public came forward with new information about her 1986 disappearance.
Earlier on Tuesday police investigating the suspected murder of Phillips announced they would start excavating land at Carole Park on Tuesday in a bid to uncover details about the 30-year-old cold case.
Phillips was last seen at around 11pm on May 8, 1986 at a telephone box near the Wacol Railway Station.
“The information is specific, that she has been buried out here, ” Superintendent Damien Hansen told Yahoo7 Tuesday afternoon.
“It a person that has come forward, we have spoken to the person, the aspects of what they say have been verified in a lot of detail from pervious investigations,” he continued.
“We’re looking for Sharron’s remains,” Hansen said.
“We have not spoken to this person previously.”
“The person has come forward because of their conscience.”
Sharron, 20 at the time, disappeared from Brisbane’s southwest, 30 years ago after her car ran out of petrol on Ipswich Road.
She reportedly went to a nearby army barracks for assistance and to make a phone call but was turned away.
Police will commence the excavation of roadway on Tuesday in Cobalt Street, Carole Park.
It's reported she was later seen waiting for her boyfriend after using a public phone.
Her suspected murder remains among the country’s most mysterious unsolved cases.
In a cold case that has left Queensland baffled there has been no body, no-one charged and there still remains $250,000 reward on offer.
The investigation caused Sharron's family to fracture, but now her siblings have reunited in an effort to get police to examine the alibi of their father, Bob.
Bob Phillips, who died last year, had told a reporter he was in NSW picking up a truck on the night his daughter disappeared.
Three of his children have now told Fairfax Media they doubt that alibi, saying he didn't own trucks at the time.
"When I began to think about it, about 10 years ago, that he had an alibi because he was picking up a truck, I couldn't believe it, because it's just not true," Sharron's sister, Donna Anderson, said.
"I have felt so bad for thinking it may have been Dad."
Retired detective Bob Dallow, who investigated the case, also has doubts about the alibi.
That's despite the Phillips patriarch telling him he didn't know anything about Sharron's disappearance while on his deathbed.
Mr Dallow said the siblings deserved answers.
"I think the whole family now want to give her a decent burial," he told ABC Radio.
The siblings believe Sharron's body may be at a block of bushland next to their parent's home at nearby Riverview and want it searched.
Brisbane journalist and author Matthew Condon, who had interviewed Bob many times, said news of the siblings questioning their father's alibi sent "chills up his spine".
"It was an unusual case that was off-skew," he told ABC Radio.
He said reopening the investigation would bring solace to the Phillips family.
"Secondly, this is one of those cases ... that linger in the city's subconscious like an open wound - they don't go away and they beg for resolution," he told ABC Radio.
Newsbreak – May 31
