THE GIRL WHO VANISHED FROM THE BUS STOP
It was the big media story of its day. The pretty blonde model who went missing from a bus stop on the way to a beauty pageant meeting and was never seen again.
Now, five decades on, the mystery of Lucille Butterworth is the subject of the new investigative podcast Understate: Lucille Butterworth. And the case remains as captivating as ever. A body has never been unearthed and over the years Lucille’s family have had many more questions than answers about the police’s handling of such a high-profile case.
Lucille was just 20 when she went missing from a bus stop in Claremont, Tasmania, on Aug. 25, 1969. Initially dismissed as a runaway and “a flighty young girl”, police reassured her frantic parents, Winifred and Bruce, that she would come back. But as months went on, it became increasingly obvious that was not the case and, as the story piqued the public interest, police were under pressure to find a suspect.
John Gannon Lonergan became the prime one. The convicted rapist had picked up his victims from bus stops in the past. On the night of Lucille’s disappearance, Lonergan didn’t turn up for work and his wife and daughter were away so unable to provide an alibi.
“They were convinced it was him,” Jim Butterworth, Lucille’s half-brother, tells New Idea.
But four months later Lonergan moved to NSW and even though police travelled there to interview him, his denials effectively saw an end to the investigation.
Fast forward seven years and, with no real inroads, police were about to receive a bombshell confession which could have seen an end to what has now become Tasmania’s longest-running cold case. Geoffrey Charles Hunt was arrested for the rape and murder of 24-year-old car saleswoman Susan Knight.
One of the police officers, Barry Dillon, who interviewed him, told the podcast how Hunt freely confessed to killing Knight. And there was more. He also admitted to strangling Lucille Butterworth seven years earlier and dumping her body by the river. Hunt later showed police the exact spot.
Dillon tells the podcast how Hunt admitted to picking Lucille
TASMANIA’S LONGESTRUNNING COLD CASE IS SO CLOSE TO BEING SOLVED, BUT WILL THERE EVER BE JUSTICE?
up from the bus stop thinking she might need a lift: “He [Hunt] said she got this cramp in her foot and [he said], ‘so I stopped the car then something came over me and I tried to grab her and she struggled,’ and he strangled her and that was it, killed her. Then he carried her ... in a fireman’s lift ... towards the river and dumped her.
“He told us everything quite freely,” Dillon remembers. “There was no pressure ... there was no hesitation.”
But, with Knight’s murder being the most recent and some officers still convinced of Lonergan’s guilt in Lucille’s case, senior police chose to focus their attention on getting a single conviction. Crucially, neither Hunt’s confession for Lucille’s murder, nor the place he said he dumped her body were ever formally recorded and her family were not told about it.
“The not knowing broke my parents,” Jim says. “Dad died of heart failure because of all the stress and my stepmum, she lost her faith. I remember her smashing plates into the sink and saying, ‘I’ll never believe again’.”
In 1976, Hunt was given a life sentence for Knight’s murder, which in those days meant life. The fact he also killed Lucille became what the podcast calls an “open secret” in the Tasmanian police. But horrifyingly, as laws changed, Hunt became eligible for parole and he was released in 2000. It was 11 years later that a new police investigation discovered Hunt’s link to Lucille’s case and called for an inquest.
The incredulous Butterworth family were told that all this time police had a potential murderer and details of Lucille’s possible burial site.
“Those cops never told us, not for 40 years,” says Jim, angrily. “Weeks and weeks we’d searched up the Derwent River in the wrong place. If they’d told us where [Hunt] said he’d left her, we wouldn’t have left a stone unturned.”
By now, Hunt denied making any confession, a dig was unsuccessful and the 2015 coronial inquest disappointed the family. After five months and hearing from 40 witnesses, coroner Simon Cooper found she had been strangled by Geoffrey Charles Hunt. But, in March 2017, the Tasmanian Director of Public Prosecutions decided there was not enough evidence to charge him. “I have concluded that a significant amount of evidence that was given at the coronial inquest would not be admissible at any criminal trial,” Daryl Coates SC said.
“It’s unbelievable,” Jim says simply of the outcome. “I’d love to think someone will come forward with something new.”
• Understate: Lucille Butterworth is available now via the Podcastone app and Apple Podcasts. If you have any information on the case, call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
“HE STRANGLED HER ... THEN HE CARRIED HER IN A FIREMAN’S LIFT ... TOWARDS THE RIVER ...”