Inquest into Joanne Butterfield disappearance hears of confronting conversation with daughter
Missing Joanne Butterfield
The opening day of an inquest into the 1998 disappearance of Joanne Butterfield from her Mossman home has heard disturbing evidence from her then teenage daughter of their final confronting conversation and concerns for Ms Butterfield’s mental health.
Being heard in the Cairns Coroner’s Court by Far North Coroner Stephanie Williams and expected to run for up to nine days, eight witnesses gave evidence and insight on day one, including Skye Lemon (nee Linton) who was 16 at the time of her mum’s disappearance in June, 1998.
She detailed the last conversation she had with Ms Butterfield, then 37, and how those details had changed the approach of a detective who had shown a strong commitment to her mum’s case.
The conversation came when Ms Lemon went to see her mum the day after Ms Butterfield had quit her job at a supermarket. She was very distressed and packing to leave, saying she planned to return to Sydney.
Ms Lemon told the court: “I told her that if she was going to leave, not to come back, and that if she was going to kill herself to do it properly.”
She said Detective Senior Constable Kevin Spies’s line of inquiry changed after a national media appeal in 2021.
The inquest heard from Ms Lemon that Detective Spies had called her to say he had found out details of the final conversation she had with her mother. She added she had a formal recorded conversation with the detective but she had not signed the statement that came from the interview, saying “a lot of the wording that had been put into there had been not what I was trying to get across”.
Ms Butterfield was last seen leaving a Mowbray house on June 25, 1998 with plans to hitchhike to Sydney.
Ms Lemon reported her mother missing to police on July 7, 1998, after she had returned to school after the holidays and was given an envelope addressed to her from her mother. It contained Ms Butterfield’s driver’s licence, a chequebook, a rent book and a key card.
The inquest also heard from Ms Butterfields doctor Wendy White who confirmed she was in a state of “emotional distress” at the time she was last in contact with her family.
Police Officer Darryn Casson, the officer at the South Johnstone police station near to where Ms Butterfield’s belongings were found on a train corridor and Barry Steele and Abby Grant who found and reported the find on June 28, 1998, also gave evidence.
Nearby residents Damien Baylis and his step-father Wilson Forbes, who also came across items of Ms Butterfield’s that day also gave evidence to the inquest.
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