Rose Rain HOWELL

Police Renew Appeal For Missing Woman - Coffs Harbour

11 April 2005

On the 12 April 2005, Rose Rain Howell has been missing for 2 years . Operation Chelonia was established to investigate her disappearance. Police believe she may have been the victim of foul play.
On the morning of Friday 11 April, Rose left her mother's home in Bundagen, about 20km south of Coffs Harbour. She went to the library in Bellingen and worked on invitations to her 19th birthday party, (Monday 21 April 2003). After Rose left the library an unknown person drove her from Bellingen and dropped off about 5:00pm at Marx Hill, several kilometres away. It is unclear how Rose left Marx Hill but it is believed she was picked up by another motorist.

The last sighting of Rose was at 5:30pm on 11 April when she was seen hitchhiking north on the Pacific Highway near the Old Pacific Highway turn-off to Perry Hill and Repton.

Rose is 20-years-old, she is described as being of white appearance, about 160-165cm tall with olive skin, hazel/green eyes, thin eyebrows and 2 moles about 1cm apart below the hairline with another mole on the left side of her neck. At the time of her disappearance she had short dark brown hair with the sides shaved and a Mohawk on top. She was wearing a black tank top, dark grey jeans, a black belt with a silver buckle and black boots.

Anyone with information regarding
the disappearance of Rose Rain
Howell is urged to contact Coffs
Harbour Police on 6652 0299 or
Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000

Appeal from Rose's mother

An outgoing woman with a short, dark mohawk and hazel-green eyes, Rose Howell was last seen on Friday, April 11, 2003, walking along Perry's Road in Repton, NSW. Rose turned 20 in April this year, and at the time she disappeared had just been invited to join a band. Her mother Malila tells her story ...

As my daughter Rose left with friends for Bellingen, I said to her, "Let me know if you need a lift home."

Rose, my youngest of four, was planning a big party at home on April 21 — the day after her 19th birthday. We live at Repton, which is about a 15-minute drive from Bellingen in northern NSW.

Rose spent the day in town making invitations on the Bellingen library's computer and personally delivering them to her friends. She didn't come home that night, but she often stayed in town overnight. However, by Sunday morning I was seriously worried.

Though Rose is a determined and independent young woman, I knew she hadn't run away — her mobile, electric bass and the rest of her belongings were at home. She was looking forward to her party and was excited because she'd been invited to join a band. When she didn't turn up for her appointments in Coffs Harbour on Monday, I went to the police. They didn't think she'd run away, either.

We found out Rose had been coming home when she vanished. She had hitched to the corner of the Old Pacific Highway and Perry's Road at about 5.30-6pm and started walking. Rose was within five kilometres of home — but she didn't make it there.

It was dusk and raining when someone saw her at the top of Perry's Hill. This was the last time anyone saw her.

I put up posters in Bellingen, describing her — 160-165cm tall, hazel-green eyes, with a very short, dark mohawk and wearing a black singlet top, charcoal-coloured jeans and black boots.

The police don't have any clues. Their only lead is an anonymous letter from May 28 last year but no-one came forward when I went on television to appeal to the writer.

The local community has raised a $20,000 reward for accurate information about Rose's location.

All I can do is keep putting up posters and talking to the media. I'll never let go of hope. Rose, if you're out there somewhere, please let me know. I miss you.

If you have any information, please call Coffs Harbour police station on (02) 6652 0299.

- with thanks to WOMAN'S DAY magazine

It was less than a week before Christmas in 2012 when detectives from Maroubra police station in Sydney’s east spoke with a Long Bay prison inmate.

Days before the coronial inquest into Rose Howell’s 2003 disappearance, Crime Stoppers had received an anonymous call claiming the good-humoured and independent teenager from the small community of Bundagen on the NSW mid-north coast had been murdered by a prisoner there.

It would turn out the source of information was the prisoner himself.

Giving evidence at that inquest was Detective Senior Constable Peter Watt, who had travelled more than 500km from Sydney to the Bellingen court on the north NSW coast.

Detective Watt was put in charge of Rose’s case after an earlier investigation failed to locate the 18-year-old or establish any real circumstances around her disappearance.

Rose was last seen alive around 6.45pm on Friday 11 April, 2003, just nine days before her 19th birthday. She had been hitchhiking north along the Pacific Highway towards her home in Bundagen – a 30-minute drive from Coffs Harbour. She has never been heard from again.

In accordance with the Coroners Act 2009, on December 14, 2011 -  eight years after she went missing - Detective Watt officially listed Rose as deceased.

One year later, in mid-December 2012, the inquest was held.

Retired musician, Lawrence Fowler, came forward to say he and his friend Leah Munro had seen Rose as they drove from Coffs Harbour towards Bellingen on Friday 11 April, 2003.

Lawrence said he thought Rose was heading to Bellingen, and given it was raining and getting dark, he stopped to offer the teenager a lift. He remembered meeting her earlier that year in a Bellingen cafe where they chatted about music.

“The girl accepted and got into the car. She then changed her mind and told Mr Fowler and Ms Munro that she had to go to Bundagen. She then got out of the car and Mr Fowler and Ms Munro proceeded on their way,” Rose’s coroner’s report reads.

Another witness, William Robb, said he saw a girl fitting Rose’s description sitting on a wooden bench later that afternoon at a lookout near Perrys Road – an area just outside the township of Repton and less than 20 minutes from Bundagen.

William was on his way to pick up his daughter from his sister’s house at Raleigh, about a nine-minute drive away. On his return home, at around 6.15pm, he said he again saw Rose at the lookout and noticed a car parked nearby.

William said he couldn’t recall much about the car’s description, except to say it was “white” or “yellow”. He said he continued driving as it didn’t look like Rose was in need of a lift.

Alan Scott, a Bellingen tow truck operator, also came forward during the inquest. He had known Rose as she regularly walked past his workshop and said he remembered seeing her in the “early night time” standing on the bank of the Old Pacific Highway at Pine Creek.

Alan said she was about 100m to 120m south of the turnoff to Bundagen. When quizzed over the date, he first said he thought it might have been April 3 or April 13. He later said it could have been April 11.

It’s worth noting here that the body of 20-year-old Melbourne hitchhiker, Ineka Hinkley, was found in bushland near a truck-stop also at Pine Creek on November 6, 1996.

Back to Rose. There were reports of a number of other sightings of the teenager in the days after April 11, 2003. Though police have been unable to verify them.

As her inquest continued into the second day, it was abruptly adjourned when the Crime Stoppers call was revealed.

The individual behind that call has only ever been identified publicly as ‘Prisoner A’. Little is known about ‘Prisoner A’ other than he is serving time behind bars and is also a mental health patient at the Long Bay Correctional Centre Hospital.

During his first conversation with Detective Watt on December 19, ‘Prisoner A’ alleged Rose had been abducted before being killed. He also claimed he and another individual were involved in the teenager’s death and that he knew the location of her body.

‘Prisoner A’ was interviewed by detectives again on March 6, 2013 and one day later cops searched an area of Coffs Harbour which they thought could be Rose’s final resting place.

Six days later, the area was searched again with a police cadaver dog. No sign of Rose’s body was found.

It should be noted here that in the coroner’s report ‘Prisoner A’ was considered too mentally unstable by doctors to be allowed any sort of leave from the Long Bay Hospital and as such did not help with the search.

While Detective Watt accepted the prisoner appeared to believe the information about Rose was true, his account was found to have a number of “significant inconsistences” between the first and second interviews.

These inconsistencies included the prisoner’s mental state and that he had been associating with another prisoner who had been receiving “considerable media attention”. The name of this prisoner has also been kept confidential by authorities.

The coroner’s report suggested ‘Prisoner A’ may be using the information he provided to detectives to obtain “some kind of attention for himself”.

“It did appear to be the case that he had some personal knowledge of Rose and a sound knowledge of the geographical areas in which the killing of Rose and disposed of her body was said to have occurred,” the coroner’s report read. “That knowledge would not, however, be exclusive to ‘Prisoner A’.”

Now, while it could well be the case that ‘Prisoner A’ was delusional when he came to ring Crime Stoppers back in 2012 and truly had nothing to do with Rose’s disappearance - a thought has kept bubbling way at the back of my mind since reading Rose’s coroner’s report – what about the weather.

In the nine years since she went missing until her inquest, NSW had record amounts of rain, including, in 2012, the wettest March since 1956. While I do not doubt the thoroughness of the police search, could weather conditions over those nine years have shifted any remains in the soil?

Perhaps this is just wishful thinking on my part that searchers were in the right location but looking in slightly in the wrong spot.

Tragically, it is at this point in the series where Rhoda Roberts re-enters.

In July 1998 Rhoda lost her twin sister Lois. Her bound and tortured remains were found in the thick scrub of the Whian Whian state forest six months and 10 days after she was reported missing.

On April 30, 2002, six years after Lois’ murder, her family was dealt another nightmare blow when Rhoda’s cousin and mother-of-two, Lucy McDonald, vanished from her Lismore Heights home without a trace.

Tragically her daughter returned home from work that evening to find Lucy’s keys and wallet but no sign of mum.

“Poor Lucy,” Rhoda tells me, her voice drained. “Her body has never been found”.

A spokesperson for NSW State Crime Command says local police conducted numerous inquiries to locate Lucy, including following up sightings at various places, including Cowangla, Nimbin, Lismore, and near Tweed Heads. But she was never located.

After exhausting “all lines of inquiry”, detectives referred the case to the NSW Coroner with an inquest into her disappearance held in 2008. The NSW Coroner returned an open finding.

As to where that investigation is up to now, I’m told Lucy’s disappearance remains under the responsibility of Lismore detectives and that is all I’m told.

For the families of Lois Roberts, Lee Ellen Stace, Ineka Hinkley, Margaret, Rose and Lucy McDonald the search for answers never stops.

“Since the coroner’s inquiry (we haven’t heard) a bloody word from them (the police). Not a word,” Rhoda tells me.

The inquest into her twin sister’s murder was held 15-years ago and returned an open finding.

“The cold case unit (detective) came and spoke to us (back in 1998) and then they were disbanded … and he basically told us we’d have to wait three years because there was so many more (cases) they had to investigate before her.”

While the waiting is agonising for Rhoda and her family, a part of her understands. She says that one of the investigation officers undertook in the years since Lois’ murder resulted in a husband being charged with the cold case murder of a local Ballina girl.

“They can have an effect all those years later but we’ve never heard from the Lismore police since that coroner’s inquiry and yet time and again there are more girls missing and murders,” she says.

“So, I just think the level of police compassion is zero when it comes to Aboriginal murder victims.”

Rhoda then mentions Lynette Daley and her six-year wait for justice.

The young indigenous mother-of-seven died from severe blood loss after she was violently sexually assaulted during a camping trip on a north coast beach near Iluka in 2011.

In November, it took a jury 32 minutes to convict Adrian Attwater – Lynette’s then boyfriend – and his friend Paul Maris. Attwater was this month sentenced to more than 14 years jail for manslaughter while Maris was handed almost seven years jail for tampering with evidence. Both men were also found guilty of the aggravated sexual assault of Lynette.

“They knew who the perpetrators were and they still waited six years and they have no idea what that does to families. They have no idea what it does,” Rhoda says.

“We will never, ever, ever be the same people we were (before Lois’ murder). Ever.”

When I ask the NSW State Crime Command for an update on the status of the victimscovered in this series, the response is less than heartening.

Lois, Lee, Ineka, Rose and Margaret’s cases are all with the Unsolved Homicide Team for further investigation. As mentioned, Lucy’s disappearance remains in the hands of Lismore detectives.

To this day, Terri Blackwell, has much anger. She has ongoing trauma from having to identify her best friend Lee’s belongings as well as sitting through the 14-day inquest in 2009 at the end of which the coroner returned an open finding.

Without missing a beat, she recalls how the open hearing was told Lee lost her life to “means other than natural causes”.

If that wasn’t enough, Lee’s family was forced to mourn her death a second time when, four years after her murder, her bones were finally returned to the family for burial.

When I ask the NSW State Crime Command about any hope the families might have these cases could one day be solved, Detective Chief Inspector Chris Olen tells me that reality comes down to people coming forward with information. If officers are presented “fresh and compelling evidence” it will be actively pursued, he says.

Gary McEvoy, a retired Coffs Harbour senior police officer who supervised detectives investigating both Rose’s disappearance and Lee’s murder, is more optimistic.

“Nowadays all documents are scanned so there’s the paper copy and the scanned copy and there’s a computer case manager. There are quite a few systems that would still be there now, probably even better than when I was there and it’s very easy to reactivate,” he says.

“I’m sure the police would encourage anyone with information to come forward and they would make a prompt assessment of the information and reopen the investigation if required.”

Which also to me begs the question, what about advances in DNA technology.

Associate professor of forensic genetics with University of Canberra, Dennis McNevin, tells me it is indeed possible for DNA evidence to be retested after all this time, though it all depends on the quantity of the sample and how it has been stored.

“If evidence is stored appropriately, it should yield a DNA profile for many years,” he says.

“We often obtain DNA profiles from 20- to 25-year-old blood stains in our laboratory.”

While Dennis, who has worked with the Australian Federal Police and trained members of the Indonesian, Thai and Iraqi police services, says the same “basic technology” used at the time of the murders continues to be used today, he points to the fact now a profile “can be generated from one billionth of a gram” of DNA.

I ask him if evidence was retested today for traces of DNA, would that testing provide better results, or offer greater possible matches.

He breaks it down for me.

“The only thing ‘better’ would be the sensitivity, that is, the ability to obtain a DNA profile that might not have been detected previously,” he says.

“Remember, the point of DNA profiling is to restrict a match to one individual - either the victim or the perpetrator.  Things get a little more complicated if there is a mixed DNA profile - that is, more than one person contributed DNA. This could be the case if the victim’s DNA is mixed with the perpetrator’s DNA or if there were multiple perpetrators.”

DNA procedures have been a consistent source of mystery for families of the victims featured in this series. For those I have managed to track down, they all adamantly claimed DNA retesting has not taken place in the cases involving their loved ones.

The NSW State Crime Command could not give a definitive response on whether or not the DNA in these cases has been retested.

Another blow for the victims' families.

When I ask Terri if she has a message for anyone who has information that could help detectives solve Lee’s case, her voice is clear and direct.

“Put themselves in Lee’s shoes, like what if it was one of their family members,” she says.

“How would they feel if someone was nervous or uncomfortable about saying something? Someone knows something. No one can ever keep something to themselves. They’ve got to have told at least one person.”

Rhoda has a similar response.

“The more you ‘um’ and ‘ah’, the more this person is out there and they could be committing this crime time and time again,” she says.

“By keeping quiet, you’re allowing the particularly perpetrator to continue doing what he or she obviously gets off on. If you’ve got the slightest bit of information, you might not think it’s anything great, but it could just be that tiny little thing that triggers something else. And, would you want your daughter to be murdered?”

When Rhoda speaks these words, I think back to the first time I heard about Lois’ murder two years ago around the fire in a friend’s backyard.

At the time, it seemed unthinkable that anyone could go more than a year, let alone a decade, without any answers to what happened to their sister, daughter, mum and friend in Lois. Next year, it will be 20 years since Lois’ murder. That’s two decades without answers for Rhoda and her family.

Tragically, the families of Lee, Ineka, Margaret, Rose and Lucy each have experience of what it’s like to perpetually wait for any news as to the killer or killers responsible for taking their loved one.

It just makes you think again and again – someone, somewhere, must know what happened to them.