A week-long search of a tip for missing woman Lesley Trotter’s remains has been hampered by bad weather and will continue for several weeks, with just a 10th of rubbish quarantined searched.
Ms Trotter vanished from the inner Brisbane suburb of Toowong on March 28.
Her mobile phone and wallet were found in her unit and her car was still in the garage.
Investigators believe 78-year-old Ms Trotter was killed the night she went missing and her remains were hidden in a wheelie bin, which was compacted by rubbish collectors and freighted to two massive landfill sites.
The search started on April 18 but was stopped as wet weather and high winds hampered efforts at the Swanbank tip, near Ipswich, earlier this week.
Queensland Police said the search would continue for several weeks and would depend on the weather.
“Aerial drone mapping indicates 12.7 per cent of the rubbish that was quarantined has been searched,” police said on Thursday.
Investigators said they would comb through up to 200 tonnes of rubbish a day at landfill sites in the search for the retired teacher.
Police were confident the quarantined rubbish they were searching is from the vicinity of Ms Trotter’s home, saying they had located paperwork belonging to a resident in a nearby street, “which indicates search efforts are concentrated in the right area”.
The search is in its seventh day, with homicide, crime scene, disaster victim identification detectives and frontline officers scouring the site, with help from the Australian Defence Force.
The search started on April 18 and was temporarily halted due to wet weather and high winds this week.
Investigators continued to run extensive inquiries in relation to Ms Trotter’s death.
-AAP
