Fresh twist in tale of murder mystery
TWO men who were key witnesses in the murder of Mareeba father-of-two Bruce Schuler say they think they know where his body was hidden by his killers.
This week marked seven years since Mr Schuler disappeared while prospecting on Palmerville Station in Cape York with three friends.
The station owners Stephen Struber and Dianne Wilson-struber are serving life sentences after being convicted of killing him in 2015.
His body has never been found and despite the introduction of ‘ no body, no parole’ laws in Queensland after a campaign led by Mr Schuler’s widow Fiona Splitt, the couple have never revealed its location.
Former crime journalist and author Robert Reid has released a new book this week called Murder on the River of Gold, focusing on the disturbing case, and interviewed Wilson-struber six times during research for the book.
He had hoped she would finally confess and give Mr Schuler’s family the answers they seek, but remained staunch in her version that “I wasn’t there”.
But witnesses Dan Bidner and Tremain Anderson, who are seasoned gold prospectors and were with Mr Schuler on the trip he disappeared, have a different theory.
Despite a large-scale search of the 134,000ha property by police during the investigation, the pair think that’s not where the Strubers left him.
Speaking in the book they said it was more likely the couple drove him, his prospecting gear and two missing guns to an area called the “limestones” and told police this.
It took police 36 hours to reach the site after the pair reported Mr Schuler missing and Mr Anderson said it would have given the couple plenty of time to take the body “a long way away”.
“The Chillagoe limestone formations are near and we’re talking about hundreds of unexplored nooks and crannies, holes and caves, brambles that make it inaccessible to anybody except somebody like a station owner who knows his way through it,” Mr Anderson said.
“There could be a cattle path that only he knows about. I told them one day you’ll never find him, no f--ing way, not unless he tells you. I don’t care what anyone says, the only reason he hasn’t talked is because there’s other bodies out there.”
The theory that Mr Schuler was not the Strubers’ first victim has lingered for some time, although it has never been supported by police because no one had ever been reported missing there.
Det Sgt Brad Mcleish said police had carried out “extensive” searches of the station that included sections of the limestone. “But it’s literally a needle in a haystack,” he said.
“By all means if there is credible information of course we’ll do a search, but we can’t search based on rumour. We believe they have driven the body from the location but we don’t know to where.
“The body could literally be 100 metres or 500 miles from the murder (scene).”
Mr Anderson, a professional prospector, has good reason to believe the Strubers had done it before and gave evidence to police they had pointed a gun at him years prior to Mr Schuler’s death.
He admitted that he battled with fear while prospecting after the incident and even considered killing Struber himself during the almost three years the couple was on bail prior to their trial.
Palmerville Station has been managed by Dianne’s brother George since the couple were jailed and is now up for sale.
Ms Splitt has said she will approach whoever buys it so she can search the property for her husband’s remains.
She wants answers having suffered through her seventh year without him.
It’s an anniversary no one would want to mark,” Ms Splitt said. acted sooner, Mr Schuler could still be alive.
But Cairns police det Sgt Brad Mcleish said in the book he disagreed, and while the rumours of the Strubers’ threats and intimidation were rife among locals and miners for years, there were no official reports for them to investigate.
“(The Strubers) were living in a world where they were a law unto themselves,” he said.
“The community of miners, as loose as it is, is made up of eccentrics and loners and they didn’t bother to officially report instances of threats against them. There is plenty of evidence to suggest they were firing guns at people, and pointing guns at people, but that evidence didn’t come to light until our investigation.”
Sen-constable Haydon has since left the Queensland Police Service.