Katie was a quirky, happy and beloved single mum of five from Melbourne. On December 17, Katie and her 11-year-old daughter Brigid O’Shea flew to Cairns to visit her son, Alan and his partner Bryer. Alan and Bryer lived two hours from Cairns in the town of Ravenshoe, and they were expecting their first child.
As Lily says, she was so incredibly excited to meet her very first grandchild. But Katie never made it to the birth of her granddaughter.
After a few weeks of staying at Alan and Bryer’s property, on December 29, Katie decided to go for a walk into town. Her son Alan then picked her up and dropped her at a pub in Atherton. She told him she was going to the pub to play pool.
This was the last time anyone saw Katie alive. The New Year came and went, and on January 9, 2006, Bryer gave birth to a baby girl. Katie wasn’t there.
It’s been 15 long years and Katie still hasn’t been seen by a single soul.
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“She was bubbly. I always say she marched to the beat of her own drum and she probably made the drums. She played by her own rules, but she loved being a mum. That was her number one love. She was just abnormally proud of all of us, no matter what we did,” Lily tells the podcast Investigates.
Lily says it just doesn’t make sense for her mother to go missing of her own volition.
As the days turned into weeks and trickled into months, the case went cold and her family sadly came to the realisation she wasn’t coming home.
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“If anything she was too loud to go missing on her own accord, if that makes sense,” Lily explains.
“She was the kind of woman that mix and matched her clothes and always had flowers in her hair that she'd stolen from people's gardens. It's hard not to notice her. So for her to incognito herself would've just been a small miracle.”
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Katie O’Shea, please contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
For more, listen to Investigates on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or wherever you get your podcasts.
April GloverApril Glover is News Editor at New Idea magazine. She has been a journalist covering breaking news, real-life, celebrity and lifestyle topics across titles in Australia, New Zealand and the UK for five years.
