NEW LEAD ON KILL MYSTERY
THE man who murdered Sharron Phillips was a Vietnam veteran who bragged of being a serial killer and called himself “The Gingerbread Man”, chillingly telling his family: “You can’t catch me”.
Brisbane detectives have sensationally revealed they have enough evidence to charge taxi driver Raymond Mulvihill with murder but can’t because he died in 2002. An inquest into her disappearance will now be reopened.
The investigation resumed last year after Mulvihill’s son, Ian, came forward with information on his father’s deathbed confession. Detectives continue to investigate whether another person was involved in Sharron’s 1986 disapp e a r a n c e . Police now know that Sharron was abducted from the Wacol phone booth where she called her boyfriend the night she disappeared after running out of petrol.
A terrified Sharron was told “get in the f*** ing boot or I’ll kill you” before being driven to a different location, murdered and buried two days later in a stormwater drain. News Corp Australia can reveal exclusive details of the evidence police have on Mulvihill, as well as his son Ian’s recollection of the night Sharron disappeared and the horrifying deathbed confession from his father years later.
“He opened the boot and she just went at him,” Ian said. “He said that on his deathbed. ( He said) there’s one thing you can tell the family: she fought right to the end.”
Detectives are convinced 20y year- old Sharron was murdered after approaching Mulvihill in his taxi for a lift home. But instead of helping her, the balding, overweight Redbank Plains man overpowered Sharron and bundled her into the taxi’s boot.
“The Sunday after Sharron ( disappeared), he had the paper there and I looked and said, ‘ Is that what happened? Is that the other night?’ And he says to me, ‘ Are you going to put Daddy in jail, are you? You better make sure you get it right and Daddy doesn’t get near you’,” Ian said.
“So there were threats. He was always threatening me.”
Ian said he did not hate his father but rather “admired him” for being a skilled criminal who had killed more than once.
Police have not been able to link Mulvihill to any murder but Sharron’s.
Homicide Detective Inspector Damien Hansen said it was a huge breakthrough in what has been “one of the highest- profile unsolved cases for this state”.
“The investigation is at a stage that, if he was alive today, he would be charged,” Det Insp Hansen said.