Police have quarantined two Brisbane landfills as they search through mountains of rubbish for the body of a woman they believe was p icked up in a wheelie bin.
Queensland Police said there was “strong evidence” that the body of missing 78-year-old Lesley Trotter had been dumped in a wheelie bin in Toowong, in inner-city Brisbane.
Rubbish was collected from Maryvale Street at Toowong the morning she was reported missing.
“Over that morning, that bin was collected by rubbish truck, [as it was] each Tuesday,” Detective Superintendent Andrew Massingham said.
The rubbish was then dropped into a pit at the Nudgee Waste Transfer Station, along with loads from 22 other trucks. It was compressed and taken to dumps at Rochedale and Swanbank.
Both sites were quarantined at the weekend. Queensland Police have begun an “extensive search” for Ms Trotter’s body.
Investigators said last week they believed Ms Trotter was dead after conducting extensive searches at Brisbane’s Mt Coot-tha, where she was known to bushwalk.
Ms Trotter last spoke to her family on March 27 and was not at her Toowong home when relatives visited the following day.
Her mobile phone and wallet were found in her unit and her car was still in the garage.
Superintendent Massingham said police believed Ms Trotter’s body was in a wheelie bin on Maryvale Street. Detectives couldn’t rule out foul play and continued to treat the matter as suspicious.
Superintendent Massingham indicated the search would be complex and difficult, with excavation needed at Rochedale.
Once engineers finalised the scale of area to comb, police would commence a “piece-by-piece” operation.
“These types of searches are not uncommon, but I think the scale of this one will make it quite complex,” he said.
“It will require a combination of resources from many different specialised areas to ensure we leave no stone unturned.”
Superintendent Massingham said it was important for police to not disclose information about Ms Trotter’s body until they were able to “exhaust people’s memory” with respect to their recollections of March 28.
He did not rule out links to a dispute over recycling in the area. Ms Trotter was well known in the neighbourhood for ensuring rubbish was put into the correct bins.
“It is a line of inquiry,” he said.
“It’s certainly an issue that has been raised by a number of people in respect to that behaviour and we can’t rule out that that has something to do with her death in some way.”
