She WENT OUT FOR A BREAK and disappeared. THE DISTURBING TRUTH was not learned until 35 years later

a young woman who worked at a jewelry store disappeared Without a Trace during her lunch break when investigators began to unravel this mystery they were only able to find a few unusual Clues and Witnesses only several decades later the truth finally became known and it was a big surprise for the detectives Linda Reed was born in 1962 in the Australian City of Gold Coast she grew up in a loving family was a cheerful and energetic child and had many friends in her school years Linda met a guy named Robert the couple began dating and at 19

years old the young woman married him they dreamed of creating a large and friendly family as well as building the house of their dreams the newlyweds started working on this almost immediately after the wedding they bought a plot of land and began saving a significant portion of their income for construction in order to have the house ready as soon as possible the couple decided not to spend money on rent and lived in a trailer on Robert’s parents backyard Linda got a job as a salesperson at a jewelry store located

in a large Shopping Center she immediately liked this job found common ground with the team and the decent income allowed her to save up for her dream home even faster December 1983 was a tense month as there was a frenzy in the store due to the approaching holidays Linda who was 21 years old at the time had to work in an intensified mode December 13th was no exception from the beginning of her shift Linda worked diligently and only at 12 pm did she have the opportunity to take a break usually she had lunch in the same

shopping center and returned earlier than the allotted time but on that day it didn’t happen Linda’s colleagues were very surprised that she did not return from her break at the appointed time as the young woman had never been late before the work day went on and Linda still did not show up everything looked as if she had simply decided to leave her Ship Without informing her colleagues but they doubted that the young woman could do such a thing as she approached her job with the utmost responsibility her husband was also surprised when Linda

did not return home after her shift he waited for some time and then contacted her colleagues they told the man that his wife did not return from her break and Robert started to seriously worry he went to the shopping center and started walking around in search of Linda after that he visited several other places that the young woman regularly frequented but she was nowhere to be found with each passing minute of searching he became increasingly concerned that something bad had happened to Linda so by 7 PM that

evening the man decided to call the police the operator told him that a report of a missing adult would only be accepted after 24 hours had passed since the disappearance Linda’s mother also tried to contact them but received the same response in the end the relatives had to wait until the next day before the report was accepted the police began investigating and tried to find out what Linda was doing during her break they learned that the young woman went shopping for New Year’s presence in several stores located in the same

building after that she visited her bank branch and received a check to pay bills the last person to see her was the shopping center security guard who noticed Linda leaving the parking lot in her car the police could not find any other information the young woman’s relatives had no idea why Linda left in the middle of her shift and most importantly where she was headed the police sent out alerts for the young woman and her car and began keeping an eye on Robert according to statistics husbands are more likely to commit crimes against

their wives but in this case Robert had a reliable Alibi no other suspects were found and according to everyone who knew Linda she never had enemies and was generally a very positive person as investigators tried to find New Leads several days had passed since Linda’s disappearance on the third day the police received a report about an abandoned car that matched the description of the young woman’s car it was located in a suburban area 20 kilometers from the shopping center arriving at the scene the police realized that it was indeed Linda’s car

the vehicle was parked on the side of the road next to bushes in the 1980s this area was almost undeveloped with most of it covered in bushes and trees inside the car the police found Christmas presents that Linda had bought before her disappearance the doors were unlocked and the ignition key was inside in the salon the police found an unusual clue an empty menthol cigarette pack was lying next to the front passenger seat Linda and Robert never smoked so investigators came to the most obvious conclusion the pack could belong to the

kidnapper the police immediately began to search for evidence and soon they made a sad discovery about 40 meters from the car in the Stream bed of a small Creek they found Linda’s body her hands were tied with a bikini and eyeglass cord the victim’s relative said that she never owned either of these items medical experts determined that the cause of death was asphyxiation and the young woman was also subjected to violence but at that time Specialists could not extract a DNA sample from the criminal thus the investigators

presented an approximate chronology of events in their opinion an unknown criminal attacked Linda in the parking lot of a shopping Center when she came to put the gifts she bought in the car he forced her to sit behind the wheel and drive to the place where they later found her body after that he subjected her to violence and killed her there were no leads that could lead the investigators to a suspect then they decided to try to interview all the visitors of the shopping center who were there during Linda’s lunch

break of course this was an extremely difficult task to attract people’s attention the police took the victim’s car and placed it in the shopping center attaching a photo of the young woman and information about her disappearance to it investigators hoped that such a visual installation would help visitors Who Saw Linda that day remember some details several witnesses told the police that they saw a teenager with light hair in the shopping center parking lot but investigators could not identify him other Witnesses told something more

interesting on the day of Linda’s disappearance they saw a man who was trying to catch a ride on the highway less than a kilometer from where the victim’s body was found soon the driver of the van turned to the police and reported that on the same day he had picked up a man who was hitchhiking on the road in the same location where other Witnesses had seen him here’s where things got interesting the driver recounted that the man was smoking menthol cigarettes but he was holding them all in his hand without a

pack since an empty pack of menthol cigarettes was found in the victim’s car this became the first significant lead for investigators forensic Specialists examined the driver’s van and found a fingerprint on the Glass near the passenger seat that did not match the owner’s Prince unfortunately a comparison with existing databases did not yield any results the suspect’s description that the driver provided was also superficial and did not help the authorities find the man no other evidence was found and the investigation into this case came to a

standstill for many months a new lead only appeared just over a year later in 1985 when a prisoner in one of the state’s prisons who was a police informant gave investigators an interesting tip his cellmate Craig Andrew McConnell had confessed to him about Linda Reed’s murder according to Craig he and another man were trying to steal a car from the parking lot of a shopping Center when Lyndon noticed them fearing that she would remember their faces and report them to the police the criminals abducted and killed her

detectives had come across this name before Craig had received two life sentences for murders committed in 1984 and he was considered a suspect in Linda’s case but the police could not find any connection at the time after the tip from the informant they talked to Craig in prison but he claimed that he had nothing to do with the murder he added that his cellmate had made it all up and they never talked about the case but the police were not quick to believe him Craig committed two brutal murders just a few months after

Linda’s death and the story told by the informant could very well be true forensic experts compared the suspect’s fingerprints to those found on the van’s glass but they did not match despite this the detectives continued to consider Craig as a possible killer and in 1986 they decided to bring the case to trial the only arguments against him were the words of an informant however he himself did not live to see the start of the trial the man died shortly before from an overdose of illegal substances nevertheless the prosecution had his

entire story according to the informant Craig Drew him a rough map of the place where he left Linda’s body experts concluded that it matched the terrain fairly accurately right down to the location of the trees in addition Craig said that Linda told the kidnappers that Rob would seek revenge the young woman really did often call her husband by his incomplete name the suspect also told the informant that he ate a cheese and vegetable sandwich that belonged to Linda after her car was found experts did find traces of cheese in her purse

despite such precise details all of the this with circumstantial evidence and did not provide sufficient grounds for a guilty verdict for this reason Craig was not found guilty of Linda’s murder investigators continue to believe that he was involved in the crime and tried to find additional evidence that would allow them to secure a guilty verdict but other attempts led to a dead end and ultimately the case stalled for many years in 2014 30 years after the murder detectives reopened the investigation and decided to review the existing

evidence they handed samples of fingerprints from the Vans glass to experts who tried to reconstruct them using modern technology and when they finally succeeded and loaded the data into the database the police finally had a match the fingerprints belonged to Troy James O’Mara who was already serving a life sentence one and a half years after Linda’s death he killed a 22 year old young woman and the details of this crime were very similar his victim was returning from a shopping center with purchases for her upcoming wedding

when she approached her car James forced her to sit in the car and drove her to a remote area where he subjected her to violence and killed her tying her hands beforehand despite this similarity James was never a suspect in Linda’s case and was not even on the police’s radar the detectives remembered another fact during the early stages of the investigation several witnesses reported seeing a fair-haired teenager in the parking lot of the shopping center and given that James was only 17 years old at the time he fit the description

despite this the police wanted to find as much evidence as possible and an interesting turn of events awaited them it turned out that a DNA sample of the person who assaulted Linda had been stored at the warehouse all this time although it was no longer listed as evidence in the documents the investigators discovered it almost by chance but here was one problem the sample was very small and had already begun to degrade so local experts were unable to extract the perpetrator’s profile from it then the investigator sent it to a

modern laboratory located in New Zealand the experts managed to extract the profile and it fully matched James’s DNA all of this took several years for the investigators considering that the criminal was already serving a life sentence they could take their time and properly prepare the case for trial in the end James was only arrested on August 26 2018 almost 35 years after the murder at that time the man was 51 years old he had spent more than half his life in prison and had earned several more charges during that time

James twice attacked guards and even managed to escape from prison once but he was caught the next day after his arrest for Linda’s murder he denied his guilt and preparation for trial began the process lasted for several years but in March 2021 the criminal decided to confess he said he saw Linda in the parking lot the young woman was sitting in her car eating a sandwich he got into her car and threatened her to drive to remote location where he assaulted and killed her when the judge asked him about his motives James noted that he simply

wanted to kill a random young woman that day as a result James was sentenced to 30 years in prison for Linda’s murder although he was given the right to apply for early release in July 2022 since he had already served more than 30 years in prison but at the moment he continues to serve a sentence although he may be released in the next few years unfortunately Linda’s father did not live to see the police find her killer he had spent decades wanting to know what happened to his daughter but he passed away after a long battle with

cancer after his wife’s death Robert vowed to never marry again as his heart belongs to Linda Forever at the trial after the verdict was given he thanked the investigators and declared that James had forever deprived him of his family as for Craig and the informant story things are quite ambiguous it should be noted that the informant was a hardened criminal himself and could have received significant benefits from helping to solve the case it is possible that he lied to the police and all the key facts about the case could have been gathered

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