The Echo of Absence: Monique Clubb

What if I told you that nestled within the bustling city of Brisbane, Australia, an Indigenous woman mysteriously vanished? Tune in as we embark on the unsettling journey of Monique Clubb, whose sudden disappearance in June 2013 has left a void in the lives of her loved ones and those close to her.

We examine the last known sighting of Monique, navigating through her departure from Hervey Bay to her mysterious disappearance in Hugh Muntz Park and into the intricacies of the police investigation that followed. 

As we unearth the real details of Monique's case, the spotlight inexorably shifts to a more pervasive issue - the alarmingly high number of missing Indigenous women in Australia.

ABC News Article

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Transcript

Carla Morgan: 0:00

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be advised that the following podcast may contain names and information of people who may have passed. The last time anyone saw Monique, she was walking through a park in Beenleigh, an outer Brisbane suburb. When she reached a small creek on the other side of the park, she waded across, then turned and, leaning against a concrete pillar, she looked back at the person who had been watching her. She has never been seen again. Despite extensive searches of that park, the creek and surrounding bushland, Monique hasn't been found. Where did she go, what happened to her and where is she now? This episode covers the missing persons case of Monique Clubb, who went missing on the 22nd of June 2013 near Brisbane, Australia. There are so many unanswered questions in this case and, while the police have conflicting views about what they believe happened to her, Monique's family knows she's out there somewhere. They want answers and they want to be able to bring their sister and beloved daughter home. I'm Carla Morgan and this is BOLO, a podcast covering cold and active missing person's cases with the aim of helping families bring their loved ones home.

Carla Morgan: 1:53

When she went missing, Monique was 24 years old, 170 centimetres tall, slim, with brown hair and brown eyes. She is an indigenous woman who was living with her mother and siblings in the sunny beachside town of Hervey Bay on the southeast coast of Queensland. The traditional owners of this part of Australia are the Badtjala people, of which Monique is one. Monique was outgoing and very athletic, participating in sports carnivals when she was at school. She was like a second mum to her five siblings. Monique was the second eldest and she loved playing with them and her cousins. To her, family was everything. As she got older and finished school, she got in with a rougher crowd, which her family wasn't really pleased about. It was around this time that she had some minor criminal charges laid against her. Monique had suffered a severe spinal injury in a past car accident, which resulted in her needing to take pain medication. This eventually led to an opiate addiction that she suffered from up until the day of her disappearance. Here was a daughter and sister who was extremely close to her family and in constant contact with her mom, Sheena. It was normal for Monique to check in with her mum if she was going away or to let her know where she was and what she was doing.

Carla Morgan: 3:32

Before we get into what happened on the day she disappeared, I think it's important for those of you who aren't familiar with the issues currently percolating here to provide a bit of background. Like the Indigenous women of Canada and The United States, Australia's First Nations women make up a disproportionate number of our missing persons compared to the rest of the population. As reported in an article from the ABC News, which I'll link in the show notes for you: "In Western Australia, aboriginal people make up 17.5% of unsolved missing persons cases, despite making up just 3% of the state's population. In Queensland, police estimate 6% of open unsolved missing persons cases are Indigenous, and in New South Wales the number is 7%. So it's hard to know the real number of missing Indigenous women in Australia because there's no nationally coordinated body or method to report Indigenous women missing. There's no single person accountable for keeping track across the different states and territories. Different states have different methods of reporting. Some states aren't even counting or do not distinguish Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. So even the states that we do have are not necessarily accurate. Adding to this, the missing and murdered or presumed murdered Indigenous women really aren't being talked about here. They certainly do not receive the same level of media coverage and public interest as missing white women do. This is not to say white women don't deserve what attention they do receive. It's to point out that we need to show up for all women, regardless of race, age, gender identity, sexual orientation or social status. Late last year, it was announced that there would be a national inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children. This is due to be released at the end of this year. So this is something, but we also need to be taking action so that the families of missing Indigenous people are being heard and their cases are being investigated with the same level of resources and rigor provided to everyone else.

Carla Morgan: 6:04

As I was researching this episode and now recording it, I realised that it was the 10-year anniversary of Monique's disappearance almost to the day, so I wanted to share her story now to try and get the word out there and hopefully get some answers for her family. On the day she disappeared, it was 10.30am the morning of Thursday, the 20th of June 2013. Manik left Hervey Bay with three friends Tracey, who was the driver, Leighton and Alan- Lee. She told her mum they were going to Brisbane for the night. Brisbane is about a three and a half hour drive south from Hervey Bay. Tracey was actually driving further onto the Gold Coast, but she had agreed to drop Monique, Leighton and Alan- Lee off where they wanted to go, which was Deception Bay. Deception Bay is a suburb north of Brisbane, so Tracey dropped them there and then she carried on to her destination on the Gold Coast.

Carla Morgan: 7:19

In Deception Bay, Monique, Leighton and Alan- Lee waited about five hours for the person they were supposed to meet up with there, but that person never arrived and we never find out who they were. So the two guys, Leighton and Alan- Lee, stayed the night with a relative nearby and Monique remained behind telling them she'd call someone to come and pick her up. The person she called was a guy called Dominic and according to him, Monique was friends with his girlfriend, but they had never met before. Dominic came and picked up Monique and we presume she stayed at his home that night, but again, that's not clear in any of the reports I've read. But the next day, which was Friday, he drove her to the house where Alan- Lee and Leighton had stayed that night. Dominic gave Leighton a lift to Caboolture train station where he was seen boarding a train back to Hervey Bay at 11.30am. Alan- Lee stayed another night in Deception Bay.

Carla Morgan: 8:22

Monique ended up in Brisbane City that night, she met a man called Bryce Watt who gave her a blanket and some food, and Monique told him that she was staying at a lodge just down the road from where she met him. The next morning, which was Saturday June 22nd, Monique called her mum to check in, say hello, and she told Sheena that she was with her friend Alan- Lee and that Dominic was going to drive them back to Hervey Bay, but she didn't give a clear time of when she was going to come back, and this was the last time Sheena would ever talk to her daughter. Instead of going back to Hervey Bay that day, Dominic ended up driving Monique and Bryce Watt from South Brisbane to Buranda Railway Station. This was roughly a 10 minute drive, and Monique and Bryce then caught a train to Beenleigh around midday. This is about a 30 minute train ride, and when they arrived they walked a couple of minutes over to the local shopping centre, the Beanley Marketplace, and they went inside.

Carla Morgan: 9:32

The next series of events is provided from CCTV footage inside the shopping centre. So Bryce was seen on the footage calling a taxi from a taxi phone inside the shopping centre and then he went back outside to wait at the taxi rank, Monique went into a medical centre called Mediprac where she saw a doctor who prescribed her with five fentanyl patches. The patches were 75 milligrams which she then collected from the adjoining pharmacy. Now I'm not a doctor, but to me that does sound like an extremely large amount to prescribe to one person in one appointment. Her and Bryce then met up again briefly inside the shopping centre and Monique made a call to Alan- Lee. This was around 2.30pm. This is important, as this was the last time Monique's phone was ever used by her. There were a load of missed calls and text messages from Alan- Lee, from Dominic and, of course, from Monique's family, but there were no further outgoing calls or text made from this point on. So Monique went into the bathroom where she remained for about half an hour. Bryce can be seen waiting for her for a bit, but then, when she didn't come out fairly soon, he went back to the train station and headed back to South Brisbane, also confirmed by CCTV footage.

Carla Morgan: 11:00

After Monique left the bathroom, she was reported to be behaving erratically in a shoe shop, so the security guard was called. The staff member who made this accusation about her behaviour was never spoken to by police in the follow-up investigation. So her account can't be verified and it is at odds with what the security guard, Mr Apollo, who was spoken to, reported. So when Mr Apollo, the security guard, got to the shoe shop, Monique had already left, but staff pointed her out to him so he followed behind her as she walked out of the shopping centre. When he got outside he couldn't see her, so he walked around the other side of the shopping centre, which is the eastern side, and that overlooked a park called Hugh Muntz Park, and then he saw her again. She had walked through the park and she was crossing a small creek it was only about a foot deep and when she got to the other side of the creek she turned around. She leaned against a concrete pillar and she looked back at him. She was carrying a large handbag and according to the security guard, Mr Apollo, she didn't appear injured, intoxicated or under the influence of drugs at the time. And this was the last known sighting of Monique Clubb.

Carla Morgan: 12:59

Monique's mum reported her missing on the 28th of June to Hervey Bay police. That was six days after she was last heard from. There were plenty of rumours and reports provided to police about what people thought had happened to Monique, but nothing came of any of them. One such report was that Monique had been killed by a man called Vincent Moran as payback for breaking into his house and stealing some property. His home was searched by police and he was questioned. However, he denied any involvement or knowledge of Monique's whereabouts and that lead fizzled out.

Carla Morgan: 13:41

The initial investigation honed in on the park surrounding waterways and the bushland. It's quite a big park and I'll put some photos on socials for you to see. There's a body of water in the middle of the park and then it turns into bushland and just behind it is a motorway. The initial investigation honed in on the park surrounding waterways and bushland. It was an obvious place to start looking because that was where she was last seen. But no sign of Monique was discovered there and no body was found. Police focused heavily on searching the areas in and around the park because they believed even at this very early stage of the investigation that Monique must be there. They did check CCTV footage from Beenleigh Railway Station on the afternoon she was last seen, but they only checked the footage before 3.30pm that day and they didn't see her on that footage. Here it's important to note Hugh Muntz Park is in the opposite direction of the train station, so in one direction east it leads to the Pacific motorway, which is a busy highway where it's possible

Carla Morgan: 15:04

To she to the train station before 3.30pm. She would have had to circle back around the long way around the park, around the shopping centre and across to the station. According to Google Maps, that's about a 12 minute walk from the middle of the park to the station. If the reports are accurate, she went into the bathroom at 2.30pm for 30 minutes and came out. Then she went to the shoe shop, left the shopping centre, walked through the park and, if she did go back around to the train station, it's possible but it's a really tight time frame to her have caught a train by 3.30pm.

Carla Morgan: 15:50

So did Monique die in the area around the park or waterways? Did she leave the area and immediately meet with foul play, or did she somehow make it to a different location and then go missing? Proof of life checks confirmed there was no trace of Monique after she left the shopping centre that day, in terms of no bank accounts being touched, no calls being made from her phone and no further sightings that we know of. So why didn't the police search the footage from the train station after 3.30pm? Why did they hone in on the park and assume that's where she was? Because they made assumptions about her based on her race, that she must have been intoxicated, that she must have been running away from the security guard and that she must have overdosed in the park. They made these assumptions even though the last witness to see Monique the security guard, Mr Apollo said she was not running, she didn't appear injured or intoxicated, and none of the people who were with her or spoke to her that day not Bryce, not Dominic, not Sheena, not Alan Lee said that she had been drinking or appeared drunk. These are the assumptions that led police at the time to focus virtually 100% of their resources into searching the park, the surrounding areas and to narrow the investigation instead of looking further afield.

Carla Morgan: 17:32

In 2015, two years after Monique had disappeared, detective Senior Sergeant Powell of the missing persons unit handed over his report to the homicide investigation unit. In this report, he stated that he was of the view that Monique had overdosed in the bushland nearby. However, this report contained a number of inaccuracies. It said that Monique had obtained a number of medications that day when she had only obtained the fentanyl patches. It also said that she was seen going into dense bushland into a swamp. But she was not. She was last seen at the edge of a creek by a security guard not going into bushland. And finally, the report said that she possibly died in the park or bushland and has not been found. But this view was not shared with other senior investigators. They determined that there was a 100% certainty that Monique was not in the park and that their views were made known to these other investigators.

Carla Morgan: 18:41

At the time, Sergeant Nelson and Senior Sergeant Whitehead, who are the QPS experts in relation to search and rescue, had a different conclusion to that of Detective Senior Sergeant Powell. Senior Sergeant Whitehead said it was reasonable to expect that if Monique had died in the park she would have been found either during the searches or sometime after by users of the park. But this report by the QPS experts was either disregarded or not passed on. They strongly believed that as the park was used for recreation there's even people caravanning in that park. It's used by some people experiencing homelessness. There's a lot of people around in that park. So they believed that if she had passed away there she would undoubtedly have been found during the searches or by other users of the park. They go on to add. Had they followed other leads and not just kept looking in the one area that she definitely wasn't, they might know more, they might have more information that could lead us further to Monique's whereabouts today.

Carla Morgan: 19:53

All of this was backed up by the Deputy State Coroner, Jane Bentley, in her report from the 2021 inquest. So Monique had been missing by eight years at the time of the inquest. The coroner ascertained that once the search of the park revealed nothing of note, the police investigation failed by not looking at CCTV footage at other public transport hubs like bus stations, taxi ranks, the motorway and the train station past 3.30pm to try to work out where she could have possibly gone instead of the park. The coroner also made mention that the police believing Monique had died in the park were based on misconceptions that she was drunk, running away and running through bush, when in fact, the CCTV footage showed she was not running and did not appear intoxicated or injured.

Carla Morgan: 20:47

Monique's case is a classic example of how systemic racism impacts on the missing, feared, murdered Indigenous people in our country While her case was investigated and time was spent looking for her. The narrow mindedness and the racist assumptions about her meant that the investigation failed her. The coroner's findings were that Monique had left the park shortly after entering it and died soon after. It's possible that she travelled back into the South Brisbane area, but her lack of contact with family and friends would suggest she died soon after she was last sighted by the security guard at the shopping centre. Her family still have nothing not Monique, not Monique's body, nothing. Someone knows what happened to her and someone knows what happened that day. If you or anyone you know know anything at all, please contact police link on 131-444 or call Crime Stoppers on 1800-333-00. Thanks for listening to Bolo. If this episode has brought up feelings for you and you need support for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander crisis support, please call 13 yarn or reach out to Lifeline on 1311-14. You.