A coronial inquest into one of Western Australia's most baffling missing person cases has uncovered no new information on what happened to Julie Cutler, other than it is "beyond reasonable doubt" she is dead.
Key points:
- Julie Cutler was 22 when she mysteriously disappeared 35 years ago
- Her car was found washed up on Cottesloe Beach several days later
- An inquest could not determine if she was a victim of foul play
Ms Cutler was just 22 when she vanished in 1988 after a work event at a high-end Perth nightclub.
Her car was found floating in the sea days later, but Ms Cutler's body has never been found.
Several leads of enquiry, a "substantial" reward and repeated appeals for public information led nowhere.
A two-day inquest in November 2022 by Deputy State Coroner Sarah Linton uncovered no new details on what happened to Ms Cutler.
In her report released on Thursday afternoon, Ms Linton was unable to determine whether Ms Cutler was a victim of homicide, or took her own life.
"It is very rare in this state for a young woman to simply disappear, even more so with the strange circumstance of her empty car then being found in the ocean," she said.
"The Western Australian community has shared Julie's family's bafflement, concern and desire for answers.
"Losing a loved one prematurely is painful enough without having to suffer the hurt of having no body to bury and no idea where they are or what happened to them.
"With regret, I am therefore unable to give Julie's family and friends the answers they seek."
Ms Linton said the inquest could only offer Ms Cutler's family "formal recognition" she had died around the same time she went missing.
Claremont killings link
Ms Linton noted the similarities between Ms Cutler's disappearance and those of Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon, who were abducted and murdered by Claremont killer Bradley Robert Edwards several years later.
However, she said Ms Cutler was last seen "safely driving away" from the hotel carpark, whereas Edwards' modus operandi was to abduct young women who were on foot.
She said although Edwards had declined to cooperate with police since his convictions for the Claremont killings, he had earlier denied knowledge of Ms Cutler, and police "have concluded there is no compelling evidence to elevate him above the many other persons of possible interest" in her disappearance.
Police had few leads
Police were stumped by the young woman's disappearance from the outset.
Despite an intensive investigation encompassing a sea, land and air search of Cottesloe beach and surrounds, where her little grey Fiat was found floating on its roof, police found no trace of Ms Cutler.
And though they interviewed dozens of those who were at the same nightclub work function she attended on the night she disappeared, there were no notable leads.
By December 2 of that same year – less than six months after she vanished – Detective Sergeant Ronald Carey, who was part of the Major Crime Squad looking into the case, concluded police had done all they could.
They had no suspects, and the inquiry could no longer be considered an active one.
But in the intervening years, a number of items possibly linked to the case emerged.
In 1989 a kebab shop owner handed police a plastic bag he'd found in his shop around the same time Ms Cutler vanished. It contained a white Parmelia Hilton blouse that detectives believed was almost certainly hers.
In 1996, items including a blank 1988 diary, a purse and a cheque book were uncovered in dunes at Cottesloe, about a kilometre south of where her car was found floating — they may have also belonged to Ms Cutler.
However, Ms Linton noted that neither discovery "shed much light on the matter".
Suicide, homicide both possibilities
Police reopened an investigation into Ms Cutler's death in 2017, headed by Detective Inspector Gailene Hamilton, who testified at the inquest.
Detective Inspector Hamilton told the court there were convincing factors pointing to both suicide and homicide as causes of Ms Cutler's death, but neither was more likely than the other.
While Julie had made an apparent suicide bid while on holiday in Greece the year before she vanished, and had told a co-worker at the Parmelia Hilton hotel she wanted to end her life after breaking up with her boyfriend, Ms Linton noted the 22-year-old was prone to act impulsively, but also that her close friends and family did not think she would have taken her life.
"They all expressed the opinion it would very out of character for Julie not to leave any kind of note explaining her actions and describing her thoughts and emotions if she had, indeed, made a choice to take her life," Ms Linton found.
"No such note or diary was ever found.
"Unfortunately, it is equally open on the evidence to find that Julie died as a result of suicide as it is to find that she died as a result of homicide."
Ms Cutler's father Roger and sister Sarah both attended the inquest and gave evidence, with Ms Linton noting poignantly that Mr Cutler "has lived all these years not knowing what happened to his daughter".
"The investigation remains open, subject to any new information arising," she wrote.
"However, depending on how Julie died, it is possible those answers may never be forthcoming."