Sharron Phillips: Sister calls for new inquest into 1986 disappearance of Brisbane woman.

By Josh Bavas.

The sister of Brisbane woman Sharron Phillips, who vanished in 1986 after her car ran out of petrol, is pleading for a new inquest into her death.

Detectives and forensic teams hunting for Ms Phillips’ body began excavating a site on an industrial estate at Carole Park in Ipswich yesterday after a tip-off from a member of the public.

But in her first TV interview, her sister Donna Anderson repeated calls for detectives to instead hunt for a grave at the family’s old home at Riverview, Ipswich.

She also repeated her suspicions that her father Bob Phillips was responsible, saying the alibi he gave detectives at the time did not stack up.

Sharron Phillips, 20, was driving on Ipswich Road at Wacol in Brisbane’s industrial outskirts when she ran out of petrol late on the night of May 8, 1986.

She first tried to get help from a nearby Army barracks.

When that failed she found a payphone and reverse called a friend to pick her up. She then called a second time after he failed to arrive. By the time the friend arrived, Ms Phillips was gone.

“I always thought that when her friend hadn’t turned up she would have rung Dad,” Ms Anderson, who is one of nine siblings, told 7.30.

Father’s alibi branded ‘absurd’

Mr Phillips told detectives that at the time of his daughter’s disappearance he was with his wife Dawn collecting a truck in Gilgandra, New South Wales — 750 kilometres away.

“I thought he was at home in bed … or at home … and I honestly thought, because I repeated that to people,” Ms Anderson said.

“None of us knew he had that alibi that night. To me, that was the first alarm bell. That whole story is absurd anyway. That’s why from the start, I don’t know why just a couple of questions couldn’t have been asked.”

Bob Phillips died last year. At his funeral Ms Anderson discovered some of her siblings also believed their father was involved in their sister’s murder.

She said family members feared their sister’s final resting place could be under the old family home just kilometres from where she went missing.

And Ms Anderson says it is there, rather than at the industrial estate where detectives are now digging, that police should be focusing their search.

“I really hope that if they don’t come up with anything there (at Carole Park) that they then go on to check out the land that my brothers and I have a strong feeling — and my brothers have hinted — that Sharron could be there.”

Ms Anderson said she wants Queensland’s Attorney-General to grant a new inquest to investigate all the loose ends in her sister’s case.

She said she repeatedly asked police to question her father before he died last year.

“I just couldn’t explain the frustration. I’ve given up so many times and thought — OK I’m never meant to get answers, and thought ‘No, this isn’t right’ and persevered again.”

“We all know that Dad was not honest. We all know that Dad was violent. And sadly, I think there was even a darker side to him.”

Wife dropped chilling hint on daughter’s death: Former detective

Bob Dallow worked as a detective on the case in the 1980s and says Bob Phillips stayed close to the investigating officers as they looked into his daughter’s disappearance.

“He made sure that he was right with us all the time on the investigation. Like you couldn’t scratch unless he was with you,” he said.

As time passed Mr Phillips blamed the unsolved mystery of his daughter’s disappearance on poor police work.

Mr Dallow, who is now retired, says five years after Sharron’s disappearance her mother Dawn approached his wife.

“We had been pretty friendly with the family. She grabbed my wife and said to her that Bob had killed Sharron and put her in a box, and she wanted him to kill her too.”

Asked if he had tried to pass on his information to the police currently investigating the case, Mr Dallow told 7.30: “Yeah I’ve given information, as I’ve got it, I’ve given it to them. Whether they’ll do anything with it, I don’t know.”

Last week police collected old diaries penned by Dawn Phillips before she died in 2010.

Bob Phillips unknowingly handed them over in a pile of old books to Mr Dallow, who now runs a book store.

“In some of her diary entries there are things like: ‘I’m sick of telling lies, and keep your mouth shut’ and all of these sorts of things,” Mr Dallow said.

Police now in charge of the investigation say they began digging at the Carole Park site yesterday after a tip-off from a member of the public, who suggested his father may have had something to do with the 20-year-old’s suspected murder.

They say it could take up to two weeks to dig up the site in Cobalt Street, and have defended their handling of the case.

“It has to be specific information. To go down that path of doing searches, you have to take a lot of things into account and you have to have lawful reasons for doing that,” Acting Superintendent Damien Hansen told reporters.

“We’ve got a crime scene warrant to do those searchers, rather than just gut feeling.”

This post originally appeared on ABC News.