On 29 May 1999, Sabrina Ann GLASSOP, 46 years, was reported
missing to Kenilworth police by her estranged husband Eric GLASSOP. Mr GLASSOP
had last seen his wife at about 8.30 pm the previous evening when they dined
together at her residence in Booloumba Creek Road, Kenilworth. Her parents, John
and Joan WORSLEY reported hearing her vehicle, a red 1997 Suzuki Alto Reg. No.
274DXA, leave the residence at about 6.00 am on 29 May 1999 and drive towards
Kenilworth. The vehicle was later located in the Little Yabba Creek carpark. A
search of the area where her vehicle was located failed to find any trace of the
victim or of her poodle dog. Any member of the public with information which
could assist Police is asked to contact Homicide Investigation Group, Brisbane, Phone (07) 3364 6122 or Crime Stoppers,
Phone 1800 333 000
Search of forest, Bridge and Glassop suspected murders, Kenilworth
QLD Police and State Emergency Services Volunteers will search forest near
Kenilworth on Saturday following new leads into the suspected murders of two
women in 1998 and 1999 on the north coast.
Police and State Emergency Services Volunteers will search forest near
Kenilworth on Saturday following new leads into the suspected murders of two
women in 1998 and 1999 on the north coast.
The two women, Celena Bridge, 28, a British tourist and local resident Sabrina
Ann Glassop, 46 of Kenilworth both disappeared in the Kenilworth area 10 months
apart.
Celena Bridge, who was holidaying in Australia, was last seen on July 16, 1998
on the Booloumba Creek Road, Connondale.
Sabrina Ann Glassop, 46, was last seen on the evening of May 29, 1999 at her
home in Booloumba Creek Road, Kenilworth. Her parents reported hearing her car
leave the property the next morning about 6.00am and drive in the direction of
Kenilworth. A search of the area located her car in the Little Yabba Creek
carpark.
Following new leads police are coordinating the first of a number of searches of
the Brooloo forest which is located between Imbil and Kenilworth. Saturday’s
search will comprise police from the local area, officers from the Homicide
Squad, officers from the Police Dog Squad with cadaver dogs and 80 State
Emergency Services volunteers.
A $250,000 reward is offered in each case for information which leads to the
apprehension and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the
disappearance and suspected murders of Ms Bridge and Ms Glassop.
Media interested in obtaining vision can meet at the State Emergency Services
Headquarters in Yabba Street, Imbil at 8.00am. The search will be conducted in
areas of the forest 10-15 kilometres from Imbil and is only accessible by 4WD.
Detective Senior Sergeant Marc Bailey from the Homicide Investigation Unit,
State Crime Operations Command will be available to speak with media following
the 8am briefing.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on
1800 333 000.
Last updated 27/04/2007
Cold case search fails to solve bush mystery
April 29, 2007 05:51pm Article from: AAP
A SEARCH through thick bush on Queensland's Sunshine Coast has failed to uncover
any clues in the 10-year-old mystery behind the disappearance of two women from
the area.
About 50 police and State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers yesterday used
machetes and shovels to cut their way through thick bush at Brooloo Forest,
between Imbil and Kenilworth, on the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
They were searching for fresh evidence after homicide detectives reopened the
cold case files of British backpacker Celena Bridge and local teachers' aid,
Sabrina Ann Glassop.
Ms Bridge, 28, who was bushwalking in the area, was last seen on July 16, 1998
on the Booloumba Creek Road, Conondale.
Ms Glassop, 46, was last seen on the evening of May 29, 1999 at her Kenilworth
home.
Her car was later found abandoned in a nearby country picnic area.
Yesterday's search found no new evidence, police said today, and the effort was
not resumed.
Further searches would be conducted in the region in the coming weeks, police
said.
Search fails to find clues
Article from: April 30, 2007 12:00am
A SEARCH through thick bush on the Sunshine Coast has failed to uncover any
clues in the 10-year-old mystery behind the disappearance of two women from the
area.
About 50 police and State Emergency Service volunteers on Saturday used machetes
and shovels to cut their way through thick bush at Brooloo Forest, between Imbil
and Kenilworth, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
They were searching for fresh evidence after homicide detectives re-opened the
cold case files of British backpacker Celena Bridge and local teachers' aide,
Sabrina Ann Glassop.
Bridge, 28, who was bushwalking in the area, was last seen on July 16, 1998 on
the Booloumba Creek Rd, Conondale.
Glassop, 46, was last seen on the evening of May 29, 1999, at her Kenilworth
home. Her car was later found abandoned in a nearby country picnic area.
But the weekend search did not find any new evidence, police said yesterday,
although there would be further searches in the region in the next few weeks.
A team of investigators was sent to Victoria and NSW to interview people of
interest in the case.
Detective Senior-Sergeant Marc Bailey, of Brisbane's Homicide Investigation
Unit, did not say what led police to search the area.
But cadaver dogs were used to comb the isolated area.
Anyone with information is asked to contact CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000.
Search fails to find murder clues
16.06.2007 - Sunshine Coast Daily
A search today of forest near Kenilworth did not uncover anything of
significance relating to the suspected murders of two women on the Sunshine
Coast in 1998 and 1999.
Police said it appeared the area searched has previously been used to dispose of
animal remains.
Police and State Emergency Service Volunteers conducted the search but did not
find any human remains.
This search followed on from new information and comprised local police,
Homicide Squad, Police Dog Squad and cadaver dogs and 80 State Emergency Service
volunteers.
Police intend to conduct further searches in the near future.
Celena Bridge, 28, a British tourist, and Sabrina Ann Glassop, 46, of
Kenilworth, both disappeared in the Kenilworth area 10 months apart.
Celena Bridge, who was holidaying in Australia, was last seen on July 16, 1998
on the Booloumba Creek Road, Connondale.
Sabrina Ann Glassop, 46, was last seen on the evening of May 29, 1999 at her
home in Booloumba Creek Road, Kenilworth.
Clothes spark new hunt
Article from: Lou Robson - Courier Mail
June 17, 2007 12:00am
CLOTHING found in bushland west of the Sunshine Coast could be linked to the
disappearance of two women more than eight years ago.
Police yesterday revealed that women's clothing had been found in the Imbil
State Forest, 25km north of Kenilworth, where British tourist Celena Bridge, 28,
and teacher's aide Sabrina Ann Glassop, 46, went missing between July 1998 and
May 1999.
Detective Senior Sergeant Marc Bailey said the clothes were found beside a dirt
road.
Animal bones were also found in the area, on the outskirts of the forest.
It is believed local farmers who butcher their own meat discard bones in a gully
near where the clothes were found.
"Forensic tests confirmed the clothing is women's clothing but we do not know if
the items belonged to the missing women," Det Sen-Sgt Bailey said.
"Bones found nearby also underwent forensic examination and were not human."
Police refused to describe the items. Det Sen-Sgt Bailey said a Brisbane
documentary-maker investigating the disappearance of Sunshine Coast teenager
Daniel Morcombe found the clothing in 2005.
The badly decayed items were initially examined to see if they were Daniel's.
They were re-examined recently at the John Tonge Centre in Brisbane and
identified as women's clothes.
The re-examination of the clothes prompted a search of the region yesterday.
State Emergency Service volunteers combed 1ha of forest near where the clothes
were found.
The search follows the examination on April 29 of 4000sq m of forest at Brooloo,
5km north of Kenilworth.
Three suspect mounds of earth were found during the search but were later ruled
out of the investigation.
In 2002, Maroochydore coroner Paul Johnstone found the missing women were dead
"having met with foul play".
Anyone with information should contact Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.
Kenilworth cold cases still not closed, police say
Posted Sun
Apr 29, 2007 9:49am AEST
Updated Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:21am AEST - ABC
Queensland police say investigations into two unsolved
suspected murder cases on the Sunshine Coast will continue.
British backpacker Celena Bridge, 28, disappeared in the Kenilworth area
in 1998 and 10 months later local woman Sabrina Ann Glassop, 46, vanished in the
same area.
Acting on new leads, police and State Emergency Service (SES) crews
yesterday searched bushland in a Kenilworth forest.
Detective Senior Sergeant Marc Bailey says there will be more searches in
the future.
"To this stage nothing's been turned up but we do have to go over a couple
of other areas at a later date with scientific officers," he said.
"As you can appreciate, we were just acting on information that we had
received and as result we had to go to that area so it wasn't a case of
specifically looking for anything, it was a case of looking for anything and
everything."
He says the police will not give up on the case.
"Sometimes the public perceive that we close cases but I can assure the
public now that no case that has never been closed is ever closed, it always
remains open," he said.
"That's the case with this one - it's been reviewed and as result further
investigations are being conducted."
Behind one of the Coast's biggest mysteries
28.04.2007
BACKGROUNDER by Janine Hill Ballina Shire Advocate
WHEN British backpacker Celena Bridge began a hike in the Sunshine Coast
hinterland on a winter's day in 1998, she walked into a mystery that would
envelope two more women and intrigue Australia for the next seven years.
Ms Bridge was the first of three women to go missing on the Coast in a 16 month
period. All of them are now assumed to be dead.
Each was linked in some way to a man named Derek Bellington Sam, although he has
only ever been charged and convicted of one murder, that of teenager Jessica
Gaudie - the last of the three to disappear.
Finding the missing women, or their bodies, has been like looking for a needle
in a haystack for police - without knowing exactly where to find even the
haystack.
In all three cases detectives have been frustrated tracing the women's final
hours, with either no, or hazy, reported sightings to follow up to help pinpoint
a location.
Extensive searches in the Kenilworth area, which involved police camping out
overnight in rough terrain and climbing into ravines, failed to turn up
anything.
Detective Superintendent Mike Condon, of the Brisbane Homicide Squad, said there
were many deep mine shafts in the area that were too dangerous to be searched.
Ms Bridge could have met her fate up to 25 days before anyone realised something
was wrong.
The 28-year-old environmental science graduate was in Australia on a backpacking
trip to study ecosystems and birdlife when she disappeared.
She had stayed two nights at a "commune'' in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, the
Crystal Waters permaculture village at Conondale, before she set off on July 16
to walk to the Little Yabba Creek camping ground at Kenilworth for a bird-
watching meeting the following weekend.
She never arrived.
However, it was not until August 10, when she failed to meet her boyfriend,
Johnathon Webb, when he flew over from England to join her that anyone realised
she was missing.
Searches of the area failed to find any trace of Ms Bridge or her backpack.
Ms Bridge was seen about 3.30pm on July 16 by a resident of Booloumba Creek
Road, and also that afternoon by two men who worked with Derek Sam at Piabun, a
centre for troubled Aboriginal youths, on the same road.
However, unlike his boss Mark Johnson and workmates John Poole and Geoff Turner,
who identified the person they saw as Ms Bridge, Sam told a 2002 coronial
inquest he could not identify the person he saw as male or female, let alone as
Celena Bridge.
That same inquiry also looked into the disappearances of Sabrina Ann Glassop and
Jessica Gaudie. Ms Glassop was known to Sam and the two were rumoured by some to
have been having an affair.
The 47-year-old teacher aid, who lived on the same road as Ms Bridge was last
seen, and the same road as the Piabun centre where Derek Sam worked, disappeared
on May 29, 1999.
Her car was found at the Little Yabba Creek rest area, just a few hundred metres
from her home, where she is believed to have taken her poodle, Poppy, for a
walk.
She had dined with her husband, Eric, the night before. He lived in the
Kenilworth Forestry office and they made arrangements that he would return the
next morning with newspapers and fresh bread for breakfast.
The next morning, Ms Glassop's mother, Joan Worsley, who lived with her husband
in a caravan behind her daughter's house, heard her car leave about 6am or
6.30am.
Mrs Worsley became concerned when her daughter failed to return, leaving the
animals unfed and the gate open. Eric was also concerned when he arrived for
breakfast.
On his way back to the office, he spotted her car. He stopped and noticed it was
locked and the bonnet slightly warm.
As with Ms Bridge, searches for Ann Glassop turned up nothing.
Sam's Piabun colleague, John Poole, later told an inquest that Sam had made lewd
comments about Ms Glassop and boasted of doing some work at a teacher's house
and having a date with one.
Mr Poole told the inquest that a few days after Ms Glassop's disappearance, Sam
had acted strangely during a horse ride, taking different routes through the
bush, and avoiding an area known as Spike's Hut.
Jessica Gaudie went missing almost three months to the day after Ms Glassop
disappeared. However, she was almost instantly linked with Derek Sam, who was
later convicted of her murder.
Jessica was never seen by her family after she left home on August 28 to babysit
three young children, for Derek Sam's estranged de facto, Mia Summers, who lived
a short distance away in Ridgewood Street, Burnside, and wanted to go to a
birthday party that evening.
That night, Sam turned up at the same party and was involved in an argument with
another man over Mia. He told police he went back to Mia Summers' house and
picked up Jessica to ask her to go into the party and get Mia to come home.
He claimed he had dropped Jessica off at the intersection of Bonney and
Elizabeth streets, Nambour.
Missing women mystery revived
Rae Wilson | 30th
November 2011 - Sunshine Coast Daily
DETECTIVES are preparing to put the disappearance of three women on
the Sunshine Coast in the late 1990s back on the agenda.
British backpacker Celena Bridge, 28, was the first of the three to go
missing in a 16-month period. Sabrina Ann Glassop, 46, was the second and
Jessica Gaudie, 16, the third.
Their bodies have never been found but police have long believed all
three disappeared at the hands of Kenilworth-based indigenous tracker Derek
Bellington Sam, 38.
The three women were all linked in some way to Sam, who is serving
jail time for the murder of Jessica.
Sunshine Coast detective Daren Edwards, a cold case specialist who
became the Criminal Investigation Bureau chief earlier this year, had
promised to pursue the disappearances to give the women's families answers.
But the Daniel Morcombe investigation took precedence after an arrest
in August and resources were allocated to an extensive search near the
Glasshouse Mountains.
This week Snr Sgt Edwards said he would pursue the investigation with
renewed vigour in the new year.
"We're in the process of getting all the original files from Homicide
to have a proper read," he said.
"We want to refresh our minds, do a review of everything and find out
where everyone is.
"But right now we're trying to tidy up the Major Incident Room here
(which has been the heart of the Morcombe investigation) to make it more
user friendly. Our aim is to take a new direction on this investigation with
fresh eyes."
Missing Women
- British backpacker Celena Bridge, 28, spent two days at a
Conondale permaculture farm before disappearing on July 16, 1998. She
was last seen on Booloumba Creek Rd by a local about 3.30pm.
- Kenilworth woman Sabrina Ann Glassop, 46, disappeared on May 29,
1999. About 6am that day, Ann's mother heard her daughter's car speed
away from the house.
- Nambour schoolgirl Jessica Gaudie, 16, vanished on August 28,
1999, after leaving home to babysit three children of a friend.
