THE first public inquest into one of Tasmania’s oldest unsolved murders will start next month – 45 years after the victim disappeared without a trace.
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Lucille Gay Butterworth, a 20-year-old beauty queen from Montagu Bay, was last seen alive at a Claremont bus stop on August 25, 1969.
The pretty radio station typist had been dropped off by a friend just after 5.30pm.
What happened next will be key to determining how she died as she never made the bus to New Norfolk where her fiance John Fitzgerald was waiting.
It’s believed that Miss Butterworth, on her way to a Miss Tasmania Quest meeting, accepted a lift from her suspected killer after her bus ran late.
But the lack of a definite answer left her family enduring a lifetime of grief.
In the years after Miss Butterworth’s vanishing, family members reportedly searched for her body in the Derwent River, in a lime kiln in New Norfolk and in Southern swamp land.
Her parents Winifred and Bruce are now dead, but brothers Jim and John and her fiance still hope for answers.
A source close to the inquest, to be opened by coroner Simon Cooper on May 11, said it was a final chance for the family to get some closure on the cold case.
‘‘It’s an end process for the family and to see if we can get justice for Lucille,’’ they said.
It’s expected that persons of interest in the disappearance and suspected murder of Miss Butterworth will be identified.
It’s unclear why the decades old case has never been the subject of a coronial inquiry.
But in 2011 a review of what is the state’s oldest outstanding missing persons case turned up fresh leads and people of interest.
Several were arrested but no one was ever charged.
Most recently in 2014 a Sheffield man was questioned for hours in Devonport but was released without charge.
The Examiner has been told there was not enough evidence in the police file to get a conviction in the case.
Last year the coronial investigation began.
While it’s not the coroner’s role to find people guilty of criminal conduct they can subpoena witnesses to give evidence in a hearing.
Mr Cooper will hold a directions hearing next month in the Hobart Magistrates Court where he will determine how the inquest will be held.
