Cold Case Files

Lily Parmenter will not rest until she finds answers.

And she wants the people who know what happened to her mother back in December 2005 to know that.

The cruellest part is that Katie O’Shea was the happiest Lily had seen her in years.

She was about to meet her first grandchild.

Katie was living in Melbourne in Australia but flew to north Queensland to await the arrival of her son Alan’s first born.

“When my sister-in-law first fell pregnant she had gone up there for a visit,” Lily said.

“She came back and she asked me ‘can you keep a secret?’ I said yeah and she said ‘well I can’t, Alan’s having a baby’.”

Katie then spent the ensuing months collecting a plethora of items for the baby.

She was determined to be in the delivery room when her grandchild was born.

“I have this image of her fighting the doctors off and saying ‘I can deliver it, it’s my grandchild’.”

Lily’s younger sister flew to Queensland with her mother about a week before Christmas in 2005.

She didn’t hear from her mum, but didn’t think much of it.

Her mother had always been a free spirit and despite having a mobile phone, she rarely used it.

“She had a little Nokia but she was useless with it,” Lily said.

On January 9 Lily received a call from her brother delivering the news that he was a father.

“I asked him ‘how did mum go in the delivery room – did she cry more than you guys?'”

Lily was shocked when he told her she wasn’t there.

“I said ‘what do you mean she’s not there?”

Alan told her that he had last seen her some days ago when he dropped her off in the nearby town of Atherton to see a friend Debbie.

Lily discovered her mum didn’t take her phone with her so she asked him if he had Debbie’s number.

He didn’t.

“I had to phone half of Queensland to get on to one of my god mums,” Lily said.

She agreed to go to Debbie’s to see if Katie was there.

The next phone call sent chills through Lily.

Her godmother had been to Debbie’s, who had informed her she had not seen her friend.

She had been expecting her in a few days, but had not heard from her.

Lily rang her brother back, desperate for answers.

He admitted the two had a tiff and he dropped her off outside of Atherton.

She told him she would walk to a nearby pub before going to her friend’s place.

“She told him she was going to play some pool and drink her disgusting Cooper’s stout,” Lily laughed.

“She drank that because she used to say it had vitamins and iron.”

Lily asked him when that was and he replied it was a few days before New Year’s Eve.

She told him to go to police, reminding him their mother would not have missed the birth by choice.

“There’s no way she would have missed it,” Lily said.

“She would have walked over hot coals, she would have walked over volcanoes, braved blizzards, anything.

“Not only that, she was gone for two weeks and there’s no way she would spend that long away from my sister.

“She was a devoted mother – there’s no way in hell she would have stayed away that long.”

Lily said her brother convinced her to wait a few days before reporting her missing.

“I rang churches, I rang bottle shops, I rang cafes, I rang pubs. I even rang the police to find out if there was any chance she had been locked up.”

Katie O’Shea was reported missing on Friday, January 13.

“By this point she hadn’t been seen or heard from in 15 days,” Lily said.

Lily flew to Queensland and was told her mother was last seen at the Atherton bottle shop with two men.

Sadly, the pub had taped over its CCTV footage that could have possibly identified the people she was seen with.

Lily fears her mother, who was met with foul play.

It’s a fear that haunts her waking and sleeping hours and it has spurred her on to study criminology in the hope of helping others find answers.

She said the feeling of being locked in limbo was one that she wouldn’t wish upon her worst enemy.

Lily said she had no doubt someone holds the answers to unlocking the case and bringing her family closure.

If someone does know something I think staying quiet is the most spineless thing you can do,” she said.

“They may have their reasons for staying quiet, I get that, but it’s bigger than them now.

“I don’t know what happened to her and I don’t know where she is.”

Lily has vowed to continue to search for answers for as long as she lives.

“I think that’s my little form of punishment for whoever it is,” she said.

“Maybe they will always be looking over their shoulder wondering ‘is this the day I’m going to get caught?'”

Lily said her mother had a tough life.

She was a single mother who struggled to make ends meet.

But she was also the “fun mum”.

“I still remember when I would have a fight with mum I would go into my room and turn the music up to her annoy her.”

However, her mum made it hard to stay mad.

“That didn’t work with mum. She would knock on the door and say ‘turn it up baby, I like this song’.”

In recent years there has been speculation that a man accused of raping and killing Western Australian teenager Hayley Dodd was a suspect.

Francis John Wark was in the area when Katie disappeared and served time in jail in 2015 for physically and sexually assaulting a woman he picked up on a remote road.

It’s this detail that sends shivers down Lily’s spine.

Had he killed her mother after picking her up 10 years prior?

If he did, he’s not talking.

“I hope it’s not him because I don’t want to think about what she might have went through,” Lily said.

But she needs answers and is begging for anyone else who knows anything to come forward.

She won’t rest until she can finally bring her beloved mum home.

Have a story you would like to share in search of answers? Email [email protected]