Arabic version: التحقيق القضائي يستمع إلى آخر محادثة للابنة مع جوان باترفيلد
According to ABC News, a coronial inquest in Cairns is examining the suspected death of Joanne Butterfield and the adequacy of the police investigation into her 1998 disappearance in Far North Queensland. Butterfield, a 37-year-old Mossman resident, disappeared in late June 1998 after quitting her supermarket job and telling people she needed to leave town and intended to hitchhike south.
Her daughter, Skye Lemon, was 16 when Butterfield disappeared. Lemon told the inquest that on June 24, 1998, her mother called upset and asked her to collect photographs of her siblings. When Lemon arrived, Butterfield was packing and appeared “very distressed”. Lemon later returned to school after the holidays and was given an envelope from her mother containing a driver’s licence, chequebook, rent book and key card. She reported her mother missing on July 7, 1998.
The court heard Butterfield was last seen leaving a home on foot at Mowbray, near Port Douglas, late on June 26. Two days later, personal belongings were found near a lookout beside a cane railway at Pin Gin Hill, near South Johnstone, more than 160 kilometres away. The items included clothing and underwear, while a handbag nearby contained Butterfield’s passport, a typed resume, a Corrections appointment slip and part of a hospital bracelet bearing her name.
Lemon said Detective Senior Constable Kevin Spies’s approach changed in 2021 after a national media appeal and after he learned of what she had said during her final conversation with her mother. She later took part in a recorded interview but did not sign the resulting statement, telling the inquest its wording did not reflect what she was trying to convey. The inquest heard Butterfield had been a patient of the Cairns mental health service from 1995 until January 1998, and had appeared distressed before she vanished. It is expected to run for nine days and hear more witnesses, including two persons of interest, over the next week and a half.
