The case of Karlie Pearce-Stevenson is eerily reminiscent of the most famous murders in South Australia – a story of assumed identities

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

When the decomposing body of a young woman was found in an Australian forest in 2010, police immediately thought of the country’s most notorious serial killer, Ivan Milat.

The Belanglo forest in New South Wales was Milat’s favoured dumping ground for his victims in the late 1980s and early 1990s – young women travelling alone or couples, usually backpackers he had offered lifts to. Milat has been found guilty of seven murders, but police have always harboured suspicions there are undiscovered victims.

He was ruled out as the killer of the woman found in 2010, dubbed “Angel” because of the T-shirt she was wearing, and for five years her remains lay in a Sydney morgue unidentified.

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In July this year a man stopped by the side of the Karoonda highway in South Australia to relieve himself and noticed a suitcase splayed open, with the contents spilling out. On closer inspection, they turned out to include the remains of a toddler.

Police appealed for information and scoured school, vaccination and child protection records. As with the case of the woman found 1,200km away there was no missing person’s report that matched the young girl, and no one came forward to identify her.

No family, no friends. It was almost as though the girl and the young woman had appeared from a vacuum.

But the 1,267th call to a police hotline suddenly brought a breakthrough.

On 21 October police sensationally announced that the two cases were intimately linked. The woman in the forest was the mother of the toddler girl in the suitcase.

They were Karlie Pearce-Stevenson and Khandalyce Pearce, from Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The last confirmed sighting of the pair had been in 2008 when they were pulled over by a police officer near Coober Pedy. Pearce-Stevenson was then 20, and Khandalyce was two years old.

In the 10 days since, just as it seemed the allegations could not get any worse, grimmer details have been revealed leading to comparisons beyond Milat and to the gruesome Snowtown murders in South Australia, where eight people’s bodies were discovered stuffed into barrels in 1999.

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A missing person’s report for Pearce-Stevenson had been filed in 2009, but quickly withdrawn after assurances from her that she and Khandalyce were OK but wanted no contact with family.

As more information seeped out, the case became yet more puzzling.

How could this young mother and her daughter go off the grid? How could no one be missing them? Why were they saying they were OK when there was no other trace of them after 2009?



The answer would be eerily reminiscent of the most famous murders in the state where Khandaylce’s remains were found, South Australia.

As police worked to find why no one had reported the two missing they discovered text messages, bank transactions, alleged interactions with Centrelink – the government agency that dispenses welfare payments – and even phone calls supposedly by Pearce-Stevenson, right up until 2011.

The Snowtown murders of 12 people between 1993 and 1999 were carried out by four men who also tried to assume the identities of some of the victims and claim their Centrelink payments after they had been killed.

Police now believe Pearce-Stevenson was killed late in 2008.

For several years after that her Centrelink payments were still claimed and wages passed through her account. At one point a woman allegedly spoke to Pearce-Stevenson’s mother saying she was her daughter. The mother, who died in 2010, even deposited cash in her daughter’s account.

Text messages were sent from Pearce-Stevenson’s phone assuring people she and her daughter were OK.

Altogether $90,000 went through Karlie’s bank account between the estimated time of her death and 2012 when the last transaction was recorded. The mobile phone was used until mid-2011.

In 2010 a woman in a wheelchair allegedly went into a South Australia bank accompanied by a man, producing documents that identified her as Karlie Pearce-Stevenson and convincing the bank it was her.

The same year a woman in a wheelchair, believed to be the same woman, allegedly entered Centrelink with Pearce-Stevenson and Khandalyce’s identification papers to update details. Staff at the time did not see any cause to believe she was not who she said she was.

Records of Pearce-Stevenson’s bank account, which was used across four states and territories after she died, and of her mobile phone, as well as CCTV footage, led police to Daniel James Holdom.

Holdom was driving a car carrying his partner Hazel Passmore and her children in 2008 when it crashed. Two of Passmore’s children, a nine year old and a six year old, were killed.

Holdom, now 41, was arrested on Wednesday night and charged with the murder of Pearce-Stevenson. Police believe Khandalyce was murdered at a separate time and place to her mother and are still investigating her death. No charges have yet been made.