Sharron Phillips disappeared in 1986. 30 years later, a deathbed confession changed everything.

Warning: This post mentions murder and rape and might be triggering for some readers.

When Sharron Phillips vanished from Wacol, Queensland, in 1986, it fast became one of the state’s most famous murder mysteries.

A young woman, just 20-years-old, last seen on Ipswich Road just before midnight on May 8 having run out of petrol 10km from home. 

With the nearby service station closed, she used a payphone to call her new love-interest, Martin, for a lift. 

It was 11:18pm. 

He got caught up with a flat tyre himself, and by the time he arrived just after midnight, she was gone. 

He'd noticed her empty car on the side of the road, and assumed she must have found a lift elsewhere. 

She was never heard from or seen again. 

Listen to QLD journo Kate Kyriakou talk through the case on True Crime Conversations.

It was Sharron's workmates who first raised the alarm when she didn't turn up to the Peaches 'n Cream Fruit Market at 07:30am the next morning. 

She was a very reliable employee, so they were immediately suspicious and were quick to alert her parents. 

It wasn't long before her dad, Bob, came across her abandoned car on the side of the road, which he decided to bring back to the family home. 

They also visited her flat. Sharron had recently moved out for the first time, and was loving being in her own space. 

But as Kate Kyriakou, The Courier Mail's chief crime reporter told Mamamia's True Crime Conversations, "At the time people thought her family had gotten in the way of a crime scene or the police and messed things up a bit, but really, if someone you love has gone missing you don't think about that. You just think, 'well where did she go? What can we do to work that out?'"

It wouldn't be until 8pm, the night after her disappearance, that Sharron was officially reported as a missing person to police.

Frustrated by the family's interference, police were left unsure whether Sharron had made it home to her flat, and had to try to place her Nissan Bluebird back on Ipswich Road where it was abandoned, in an effort to retrace her steps. Every potential crime scene had been disturbed.

There had been multiple witnesses in the hour before Sharron vanished - some soldiers at the nearby army barracks (who she'd asked for a telephone from), a couple of passersbys who'd checked to see if she was okay (she'd told them Martin was on his way) - but no one had seen anything suspicious. 

Five days after Sharron went missing, her shoes and wallet were found mere metres from where police believe her car ran out of petrol. 

Their discovery angered Sharron's family who were critical of the police investigation. Police had been (apparently) over and over the area in numerous line searches.

The alternative hypothesis - that someone had come back to the scene and dumped the belongings there after the fact - felt too ludicrous to be true. 

In the end, that's exactly what happened. But it would take another 30 years for the truth to come out. In the meantime, Sharron's disappearance and suspected murder became another one of Queensland's 'cold cases.' 

A deathbed confession. 

In 2016, a man called Ian Seeley went to police with an admission. According to him, his father, Raymond Peter Mulvihill, had murdered Sharron in 1986.

And she might not have been his only victim.

Over the years, there had been various claims regarding Sharron's case - some more unbelievable than others. 

As Kyriakou explained to True Crime Conversations, "it happens all the times in cases like this (false leads and stories). I've been a journalist in Queensland for 10 years now and I myself have gotten a whole bunch of tips of various theories or information about what could have happened to Sharron. You always try to check them out, because you never know, but it's a situation that happens a lot." 

But Seeley's story was different. 

Raymond Peter Mulvihill. Image: 9News.

Mulvihill demanded the use of his son’s car. 

“He said, ‘wait here and keep an eye out for police’ and then he reversed my car around to the back,” Seeley told Nine News in 2016.

As Kyriakou wrote at the time for The Courier Mail, Seeley told police Sharron was tied up and gagged with tape in the boot of the taxi. He watched as his father pulled her from the boot and walked her to his car. 

He heard the boot close, and they left the taxi behind and drove away. 

“He didn’t really acknowledge it, he just said ‘turn up the stereo and just kept driving,’” Seeley told Nine.

When they got home, Seeley was dropped off and Mulvihill drove away. 

In court years later, Seeley said his father forced him to drive at knifepoint, and had told him to get in the car with him "or I'll kill you." 

Days later, Seeley opened up the boot to find a pair of shoes and a handbag inside. After realising they were Sharron's he drove back to Wacol and dumped the items nearby. 

Police would later allege that Sharron likely saw the taxi drive down the back of the shops that night, and went over to the driver to ask for a lift home. 

Mulvihill died of cancer in 2022, but before he died, his son says he confessed to murdering Sharron and dumping her body in a stormwater drain at Carole Park. 

He urged him to go to police and to "give the girls back" that were "in that drain".

Police checked out the story and were able to verify a few things; a brief police pullover of Seeley's car that evening by local police and Mulvihill's taxi being parked behind those shops around that time on May 8. So they organised a dig of Carole Park. 

"I remember going out to that scene, and that's an extraordinary situation, because sure police chase leads and do searches all the time. But getting an excavator in and spending days out there moving huge amounts of soil... they clearly had some interesting information to warrant doing that. They don't do it if there's nothing to back it up, or they don't have a good feel about the information," Kyriakou told True Crime Conversations.

Police officers excavating a storm water drain and surrounding creek at Carole Park, west of Brisbane, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Image: AAP/Dan Peled.

They'd pulled over to ask if he was alright and he'd told them, "can't a guy take a s**t in peace?"

Again, it could have just been another story. But the couple described Mulvihill in great detail, even though police hadn't yet made any descriptions public. 

Watch: The couple chatting to 7News. Post continues.

In announcing that an inquest into the disappearance of Sharron would be reopened in 2017, Detective Inspector Damien Hansen told media if Mulvihill was alive today, he would be arrested and charged with her murder. 

The inquest eventually got underway in 2021, with Mulvihill's sister-in-law Allison Clancy telling the court he confided in her about his role in the crime at a family gathering in 1992.

"Sharron Phillips - my 15 minutes of fame - dumped by the big hero downstairs," he allegedly told her.

She suggested Mulvihill raped Sharron, and then knocked her out to stop her screaming.

At the inquest, Seeley explained that the Sunday after Sharron's disappearance his father was reading an article about it and laughing because "he thought it was funny the cops had no idea [what happened]".

When he asked his dad if this was what happened on Thursday night with "the chick in the boot," The Brisbane Times reports he told the court his dad had replied; "You’re a smart boy." 

As for Seeley's claim of other potential victims. He recounted the conversation he had with his father on his deathbed during the inquest.

The Times reports Seeley asked, "How many girls are in there?’ to which his dad replied, "lots".

The inquest wrapped up in March, 2021. We are still waiting for findings. 

As we wait for a verdict, Kyriakou thinks Sharron's story should reiterate the importance of revisiting cold cases.

"I think it's always important to keep cold cases in the public eye. You just never know when some new piece of information will come forward that will solve it....a lot of these cases are solvable, because they just lacked the technology back in the day, and we have that technology now," she told True Crime Conversations.

Feature image: QLD Police/Nine.

This story was originally published in 2016, and updated in 2022.