A coronial inquest into the 1969 disappearance of the 20-year-old Hobart beauty queen will open next month.

Her fiance at the time said the inquest could be the last chance for closure for Miss Butterworth’s brothers and himself.

‘‘I’m running out of time now – I’m 70 years of age, I’ve got major illnesses and I think if I’m ever going to find an answer it’s going to take something like this inquiry to bring it out,’’ John Fitzgerald said yesterday.

‘‘Lucille’s parents are gone now and there was no closure for them.

‘‘I can’t speak for Jim and John [Butterworth] but I’d say they feel like myself – the more we keep it out in the open and keep talking about it the better.’’

For those closest to Miss Butterworth it’s been a torturous 45 years never knowing what happened.

There have been theories, suspicions, suspects and arrests, but no final truth.

‘‘Poor old Mum [Winifred Butterworth] didn’t deserve this – it broke her heart,’’ Mr Fitzgerald said.

‘‘It’s been hell for all of us.

‘‘You tear yourself to pieces trying to work it all out.’’

On the night she went missing Miss Butterworth, a radio station typist with model-like looks, had been due to meet her fiance at New Norfolk for a Miss Tasmania meeting.

She was last seen waiting for the bus at Claremont on August 25.

‘‘She was so looking  forward to everything. The Miss Tasmania quest the following year, the engagement, and our plans we had with our lives ... she was such a happy little soul,’’ he said.

Mr Fitzgerald blamed himself for a long time afterwards.

Desperate to find her, all manner of tipoffs would be pursued.

‘‘We went for days and days looking. Through swamps, then we had these bloody clairvoyants writing to us saying, ‘I know where she is’,’’ he said.

One letter stated Miss Butterworth was buried under a mound on a golf course near New Norfolk.

‘‘I’ll never forget that day. We’re there and we’re digging with our hands and all it was was a dead sheep. But that’s the type of crap you have to put up with. It’s cruel what people do to you,’’ he said.

Miss Butterworth’s inquest will open before coroner Simon Cooper on May 11 with a case management conference at Hobart Magistrates Court.