Inside the cover of Newcastle musician Cecilia Devine’s 2017 CD album, Liberty, these words are printed:

I dedicate this album to two cities: New York, NY, USA (for pulling me apart) & Newcastle, NSW, AUS (for putting me back together).

Reading those words was the first I ever knew of Cecilia. I’d picked up a CD, more or less at random, in an op shop in the Newcastle suburb of Wallsend. A little intrigued (partly because I had recently been to New York myself), I bought the album and, when I got home, looked up the artist’s name to find out more about her music and story.

I got more than I bargained for. I discovered that Cecilia had gone missing in September 2018, about a year after her album appeared, and that her body had been found in a dam in bushland near Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, six months later. Learning this I felt very sad.

Some short time later, on October 23, 2024, I saw an article by reporter Sam Rigney in The Newcastle Herald, noting that a coronial inquest into Cecilia’s death had been wound up, with no cause of death identified. NSW Police announced a $500,000 reward for information that might help them solve the mystery.

Cecilia was a very talented singer and song-writer. Soul was her style and she did it very well. I learned something about her by watching an interview – filmed by Geordie Anderson – on YouTube, where Cecilia talked about creating her album. It’s a very revealing interview, in which she describes suffering a mental health crisis in New York in 2013. This was clearly a very harrowing experience, made worse by the fact that she had travelled alone to the USA.

According to the interview Cecilia’s album, Liberty, was created to describe and process that terrible experience. A moving film clip to one of the songs, Bared, is also on YouTube (and also created by Geordie Anderson). The song’s title and its film clip are all the more haunting in the light of what happened to her.

A lot of information about Cecilia is also available from the report of the coroner into her death. This is available online here.

She was born on December 21, 1976, and her original name was Kristen Pearson. When she was young her family moved to Toronto, Lake Macquarie, and she went to school in Newcastle. In her interview she talked about writing poetry as a teenager before getting the opportunity to write songs and perform. Performing under her own name, she developed into a polished and powerful singer, as the many online videos of her work attest. She moved away from Newcastle to pursue career opportunities but came back in 2011 to look after her sick father, who died the following year.

In 2013 she went to Miami, in the USA, to perform. During that trip she went to New York where she had an acute mental health episode. Her brother, Troy, went to the US and brought her home. She was admitted to Newcastle’s Mater Hospital where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

According to family and friends, Cecilia didn’t always take her medication, but she did use cannabis regularly. She had more hospitalisations for mental health issues. Friends and family told the coroner that Cecilia sometimes believed she was being followed and would discard her mobile phone and other personal property, sometimes leaving home and walking long distances without telling anybody where she was. She usually ended up seeking help at a hospital.

She was living and working in Newcastle when she disappeared in 2018. A worried neighbour called police on September 5, noting that she wasn’t answering her door and also that her back screen door was damaged. When police visited they found the screen door locked, Cecilia’s cats inside and her car in the carport. There were no signs of disturbance.

A friend (who had a key and who had apparently been staying at Cecilia’s home) told police that Cecilia hadn’t been well and that she hadn’t been taking her medication. Her mobile phone wasn’t at her home, and according to phone charge records its last location was the suburb of Maryland, near Wallsend. It wasn’t used on September 5 or anytime since. Her Opal (public transport) card showed no use since January. Bank records, however, provided a clue. Her card was used three times in Katoomba on September 6: once to withdraw $700 from an ATM, once at a supermarket and once at a Rivers clothing store.

She had tried to book a room at Katoomba’s Carrington Hotel, but was apparently refused because she wasn’t wearing shoes. CCTV footage from the hotel showed her, shoeless, in the reception area, then walking away. She could be seen talking briefly to a man, who appeared to be giving her directions. Footage of her walking away from him represents the last known sighting of her. Katoomba Chamber of Commerce has cameras in the town’s main street, but these were not examined.

Surprisingly, police didn’t follow up with the supermarket or the clothing store until the following March. Luckily, the clothing store still had CCTV footage that showed Cecilia bought a pair of shoes, a cardigan, a pair of gloves and a scarf. The shop assistant who served her recalled Cecilia saying she had walked a long way, had nowhere to stay that night and that other people had been rude to her. She was directed to the Salvation Army , but nobody there recalled her attending. Cecilia evidently next withdrew $700 from an ATM then went to the supermarket, where sales records showed her card was used to buy water, vegetables and fruit. That was 3.53pm on September 6, 2018. Nothing more is known of her movements.

It wasn’t until March 18, 2019, that a government water scientist found her naked body lying face-up in shallow water at the edge of Upper Cascade Dam, about 3km from Katoomba. Her body was badly decomposed and there was no clothing or other items nearby. A police search of the surrounding area a month later located only two items of interest: a single shoe that matched the pair Cecilia had bought the day she vanished and an orange towel.

Another clue was provided by a routine aerial photo of the dam that had been taken on September 13. That photo showed what appeared to be a body lying in the water about 65 metres from where Cecilia’s body had been found. The coroner examined the photo and stated that it appeared to show a naked body.

The dam is secluded and not easily accessible. It’s not generally open to the public and vehicle access is prevented outside daylight hours by a locked gate. There are no walking tracks and the nearest fire trail was 50 metres from the part of the dam where the body was found. Police described the terrain on both sides of the trail as densely vegetated. Much of the ground is spongy and treacherous. The dam’s distance from Katoomba means that, in the highly unlikely event that Cecilia walked there after shopping at Coles, she would almost certainly have arrived after dark.

An expert witness told the inquest that it was possible Cecilia’s clothes might have come off in the dam due to natural causes. I must admit I am highly dubious about it, and so, apparently, are Cecilia’s family members.

A post mortem shed little light on the case, beyond showing no signs of bone or skull fractures.

The orange towel and the motorbike thief

The coroner expressed regret that the police had not tried to get all available CCTV footage much earlier than they did, since by the time they made those inquiries a lot of footage had been over-recorded. If the footage from the supermarket and the complex it is in was available, it might have shown where Cecilia went after leaving the supermarket.

I’m no expert on anything much, but I’d say, looking at this case, that suicide is highly unlikely. I also think it’s very unlikely that Cecilia’s clothes came off spontaneously. I don’t think it likely that she walked all the way along the “winding and hilly” back streets of Katoomba and then managed to get through the bush to the dam in clothing inappropriate for hiking and carrying a bag of vegetables and fruit. And then stripped off, jumped in the water and drowned.

I agree with the police who believe she was probably murdered.

So, what about that orange towel, the only other item of interest (apart from the shoe) found during the first search of the dam area, a month after the body had been found? Well, it was tested and yielded traces of male DNA. The DNA was a match for records on file with the police. The match came from a motorbike which had been stolen some years before. Sadly, the identity of the motorbike thief is still apparently unknown. (A test of the man from whom the motorbike had been stolen proved negative.)

The coroner concluded that there was really no firm evidence to link the towel to Cecilia’s death. Sure, maybe, but you have to think it’s a strong possibility. I guess it’s possible that the one-time motorbike thief went for an innocent swim at the dam one day and left his towel behind. But maybe the motorbike thief is the killer.

Another question is, how did Cecilia get to Katoomba? Her phone was last used at Maryland, but how did she get there? Her Opal card wasn’t used and her car was still in its carport. Did she hitch-hike? Surely she didn’t walk? I’m thinking somebody came and collected her and took her for a drive. But if so, then who? And why?

She disappears from Newcastle and pops up in Katoomba with no shoes and no phone but ample money in the bank. But nobody has the faintest idea how she got there and why she would have gone.

It’s all made more difficult by the apparent likelihood that she may have been suffering a mental health episode at the time. That might well have made her a perfect victim, in somebody’s eyes.

I think somebody killed her and put her body in the dam.

If that’s true then I hope they get caught.

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Twist of fate for the old man of the street