Grim update on the search for a woman’s body after it was dumped in a garbage can
- Police are going to search landfill for woman’s body
- The body of Lesley Trotter, 78, is missing
Police are about to begin the grueling task of searching through tons of dumps for a woman’s body, as a top police officer warns the effort could take months.
Engineers have attempted a ‘massive task’ of isolating the rubbish collected on March 28 from a single bin believed to contain the body of Brisbane woman Lesley Trotter, 78, among the thousands of tonnes of landfill.
A team of police is expected to begin a physical search this week – by hand and piece by piece – to find any trace of her remains.
Police plan to launch a close search for the body of missing Brisbane resident Katarina Carroll, whose body was dumped in a rubbish bin in Toowong on March 28 (Photo: Miss Carroll poster)
Engineers will now attempt a “gigantic task” of isolating the waste collected from a single bin among the thousands of tons of landfills in an effort to find any trace of her remains (Photo: stock image of garbage cans)
“It can take days, but I’ve seen investigations like this in the past, it can take weeks,” Commissioner Katarina Carroll said Monday.
“They can even last for months.”
Despite the arduous task, recovering Ms Trotter’s remains will be vital to the police investigation.
“When you get a person’s body, you have a lot more information available to you in terms of evidence, forensics, et cetera, so it’s incredibly important that we do everything we can to find her in the coming weeks. .’
Ms Trotter disappeared from the suburb of Toowong on March 28.
The retired teacher’s cell phone and wallet were found in her unit and her car was still in the garage.
Days of searching turned into weeks and hopes of finding her alive faded when police confirmed they feared Mrs Trotter was dead and considered her death a homicide.
Investigators had ‘strong evidence’ that Ms Trotter died on the night of her disappearance, police said.
Her body was hidden in a garbage can, which was picked up the next day and then taken to a Nudgee transfer station and dumped in a pit along with the trash from another 22 trucks.
The waste was pressed into huge blocks in a huge press and transported to landfills at Swanbank near Ipswich and Rochedale in south Brisbane.
Both dumps are official crime scenes as police begin a forensic investigation through mountains of trash.
Her body was hidden in a garbage can, which was picked up the next day and then taken to a Nudgee transfer station and dumped in a pit along with trash from another 22 trucks (Photo: Dumpsters where police search for the remains from Mrs. Trotter)
It won’t be an easy task.
On the day Mrs. Trotter went missing, six B-double loads of rubbish were moved to landfills.
Garbage collection continued for another 14 days, with an additional 300 truckloads being disposed of at the Nudgee transfer station alone.
“It’s going to be tough,” Mrs. Carroll said.
“They have done an extraordinary job of isolating the areas to be searched and now the hard work of thoroughly searching those areas begins.”
It will be a painful wait for her devastated family who have begged for privacy.
“While the family continues to support each other during this difficult time, they ask that they be given space to grieve in private,” the family said in a police statement.