Rosemarie Elizabeth Katherine Dodd was last seen on February 19, 1983 at about 10.30pm at Kingsbridge Oval,
Scrubby Creek, Kingston QLD where she attended an open Christian Outreach
Revival meeting.
On the night of her disappearance Ms Dodd was driving her green Valiant
station sedan which was later located with her possessions she was carrying
during the Revival meeting locked inside the vehicle.
She is described as 165cm with a medium build, fair complexion, black
hair and green eyes.
Husband recalls disappearance of Rosemary ‘Cathy’
Dodd after religious meeting in Kingston in 1983
Patrick Billings, The Courier-Mail
A BRISBANE man who police once believed may have buried his wife
in their back yard has broken his silence over the 35-year-old
cold case.
Kingston mother of three Rosemary Elizabeth Catherine Dodd
vanished in bizarre circumstances after a religious meeting near
Logan on Saturday, February 19, 1983.
Speaking through the screen door of their once-shared home,
husband Graham Dodd said that he had had nothing to do with her
disappearance.
Now 77, the slightly built Mr Dodd could offer “no idea” why
police considered him a person of interest.
In about 2010, detectives arrived on the doorstep of the Dodds’
white suburban home on Monarch St.
Police dug up the yard looking for her body and took Mr Dodd in
for questioning.
“They were looking for her body. They reckoned I had her buried
in the backyard,” he said.
“The neighbours overlook my yard. If I had her buried in the
yard they would have known.
“They had nothing on me, they couldn’t do anything else.”
The case will now be examined by the Coroner as the police
investigation appears to have been exhausted.
Mr Dodd, a retired bus driver, said his wife’s disappearance had
left him to raise three children – two under school age – on his
own. One is now a Queensland Police officer.
But, he said the most traumatic was the suspicion that he had
killed his own wife.
“That was really bad, and that long afterwards as well,” he
said.
He and Cathy, as his wife was known, were getting along fine
before she vanished.
“We had our differences but we'd been together for seven years,”
Mr Dodd said.
Some of Cathy’s friends tell a different story. They speak of
woman who felt trapped in an unhappy marriage with a stern
husband.
“She had plenty of reasons to (run off) but I don't think that
at all. She wouldn’t have left her kids,” said Liz, a friend who
asked to be anonymous.
“She was a loving mother. I remember our last conversation on
the Friday afternoon. We talked about the future and our kids.”
For the deeply-religious Cathy, the future included the
Pentecostal church movement that was sweeping through Brisbane’s
outer suburbs.
Heather Ashcroft, who attended Bible study class with Cathy,
remembered a quiet but friendly woman with marriage troubles.
“She was a beautiful lady. It was so sad to lose her,” she said.
“She loved her children, she adored them … she would have taken
them with her if she’d left.”
On the night she disappeared, Cathy, then 31, attended a
Christian outreach revival meeting in a tent on an oval at
Kingston. She was alone.
When her green Valiant station wagon was located days later at
Kingston train station, locked, her possessions were inside.
Cathy’s friend Liz said among the items was her Bible.
“Catherine’s father said she would never, ever have left her
bible behind,” she said.
Had Cathy Dodd’s embrace of religion played a role in her
disappearance?
Mr Dodd thinks it may have.
“My main interest was in someone who has passed away now, a
friend that she was associated with before and after we got
married,” he said. “He was a pastor of the church she was
involved in at the time.”
At other times during the guarded but revealing interview, Mr
Dodd said he had no idea what had happened to his young wife.
“Like it’s all nothing definite, it’s all just might what might
have been,” he said.
“Maybe the scenario’s quite different. I have no idea.”
Police say Mr Dodd never reported Cathy missing. He disputed
this but couldn’t remember whether he had reported it in person
or on the phone.
“She went out Saturday night and never came home, so Sunday was
the earliest I could report it,” he said.
“I don’t recall what I did. I know I threw the kids in the car
in the morning and went for a drive around.”
Mr Dodd said he thought about Cathy’s disappearance all the time
“It’s all the same stuff over and over again,” he said. “I think
of what could have been.”
He thinks there is “every chance in the world” she could still
be alive today.
“She’d only be 67 if she was still alive,” he said.
As to whether somebody out there knows the truth, Mr Dodd said
it was “hard to say”.
Southeastern Coroner James McDougall said the matter was being
reviewed by counsel assisting in the lead up to the inquest