Essay by Eric Worrall
A strange story from the Aussie state of Queensland.
Queensland police investigate whether disappearance of elderly woman linked to recycling
Brisbane detectives believe Lesley Trotter has died, and ‘have not ruled out’ potential neighbourhood dispute
Australian Associated Press Fri 7 Apr 2023 14.20 AEST
Queensland police believe an elderly woman who has been missing for 12 days from inner-city Brisbane has died, and are investigating whether her disappearance is linked to her habit of removing recyclable waste from neighbourhood bins.
…
“Unfortunately, investigations yesterday afternoon and late into the evening, have led us to the conclusion that Mrs Trotter is in fact deceased,” Massingham said on Friday.
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More than 40 detectives are probing Trotter’s disappearance, which police said may be linked to recycling practices.
“Mrs Trotter would often go to wheelie bins out the front of her residence or the neighbouring properties and remove recycling trash from general waste bins and transfer those into the correct bins,” Massingham said.
“We have not ruled out that this activity in some way is linked to her death.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/07/queensland-police-investigate-whether-disappearance-of-elderly-woman-linked-to-recycling-habits
There is still hope Mrs Trotter will be found safe and well. I hope her relatives and friends receive a speedy resolution.
Chances are that she is a total busybody and stumbled over a meth lab.
Forty keystone kops are investigating.
The other 100 are looking for a lost cat.
It was an apartment complex so owners association has more interest in these sort of things than normal single family dwellings would do
The benefit to having the Keystone Kops on the scene is that they all travel together in one small vehicle, which conserves energy. The downside is that they probably would blow themselves up if they found themselves in a meth lab. But they’d do so in a cartoonish manner and all would be perfectly intact again by dinner.
The irony to this story is that if she was, indeed, the unfortunate victim here, she was probably the person best qualified to help the killer dispose of the body.
Obviously violence is a bad way to respond to this type of neighborhood conflict. How should you handle it if a neighbor were digging through your trash every week? I know there are people out there who support inspection of all trash pickup.
I would handle it by telling them to F off. Killing someone over it is more US-style than Australian. In Tassie, at the moment, they have cameras on the garbage collection trucks to see if you’re putting the wrong garbage in the bin and the council won’t pick up after warnings.
There is more to this than recycling.
Hey, Alexy! As a gun-toting American I resemble that remark. And the next time you see a story about a captured U.S. fugitive having an “arsenal” of weapons in his home, rest assured I have more weapons on hand than does he.
My next-door neighbor works at the combined trash and recycling central collection terminal. On various occasions he has told me they just dump all of the collection trucks, regular or recyclables, in the same pile. They’re unionized, so who knows.
I followed my garbage trucks and the recycling went in the same pile as the rest of the garbage. Recycling is bull crap.
at least the bull crap gets recycle by the farmer 🙂
Good point🤔😊
I’m always amused at what the news-blatherers call an “arsenal”: 4 guns and 2000 rounds of ammo.
That’s not an arsenal, that’s a day at the range.
It’s been too long since I’ve been to the range, but I did mostly .22LR in my S&W semi-auto. I’d go through about 250 rounds (half a brick) on most days. That was just about 2 hours or so. I didn’t like to spend too much more than that. Range time would get pricey otherwise. Four bricks would be 2,000 rounds. That would all fit in an ammo can with room left over for some .45 ACP. Some arsenal.
Pure speculation here, but if she was rummaging around in commercial-sized trash containers typical of apartment complexes (Duker’s assumption) she may have fallen in, become incapacitated and removed with the rest of the items with the automatic pickup and dumping machinery on large trash trucks. I don’t know the age of the photo, but even if it were recent she doesn’t look all that spry for “dumpster diving.” Can any of you Aussies tell me what a “wheelie bin” looks like and its size?
It is not said, but the story implies that the police have evidence to expect some local resentment for her arbitrary rearrangement of common trash. Do you people “down under” have some funny rules about offending others with purely old-gal zany activities? [Hey, Duker, are you implying the owner’s association or one of its members offed her?]
About 240 litres.
sorry about image size
Thanks for the photo, Alexy. It appears to be the size and configuration of a standard single family home trash pickup bin we all have in suburbia. Here, they are made to be picked up and dumped into the side opening of the large trash truck using automated gripping lifter arms.
Based on Duker’s description of an apartment complex, I was imagining the large-volume, 4-wheeled metal commercial container I’ve called “Dempsey Dumpsters” since seeing my first one marked with that contractor’s name during Army basic training in 1968. You know, the ones made famous by describing the results of most governmental actions as “dumpster fires.”
News article mentions wheelie bins. The suburb she lived in is in suburbia and doesn’t really have high rise. She would have been going up and down the street snooping in bins
Sorry, plenty of apartment buildings in Toowong. Article says she lived in a “unit block” and “apartment complex”. Toowong is chockas with them.
Old age. I was thinking Kenmore. Toowong has had high rise for yonks.
Weird habits and weird people
Talking of weird people
“”Climate crisis causing more home runs in baseball, study suggests””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/07/climate-crisis-more-home-runs-baseball-study
It hasn’t affected the football
I doubt if any team would consider hitting more home runs a “crisis”. Besides, more hot air would effect both teams equally. (Unless the EPA starts subtracting runs from the team whose players own the most SUVs!)
PS Was there a surge in home runs in the 30’s? The article says they only went back to 2010.
To compensate for the discrimination from past generations, minority players will from now on be allowed to use corked bats.
“It hasn’t affected the football.” You obviously haven’t read next weeks Grauniad.
‘Scottish footballers claim climate change gives advantages to English players because their climate is warming twice as fast as Scotland’ 🙂
England and Scotland are right next to each other.
Obviously true but we all know that everywhere is warming twice as fast as anywhere else because the Grauniad tell us that constantly (except for the Arctic which it regularly state is warming 3 times faster than anywhere else! 🙂 )
Awww, she was ‘recycling’ was she?
Not digging for bank statements, old credit cards, personal letters, utility bills, letters from lawyers/police/social services or ANYTHING in the least bit personal or confidential
How could the old moo be so silly & stupid
And where were the cops, could a passing plod not have pointed that out to her?
There again, plod are now even worse – having been given a bollocking for fixing up roadside cameras that peer into passing cars and photograph women’s knickers, and the rest, as they drive along.
edit to PS: Look what just came in..
https://www.wionews.com/videos/tesla-workers-shared-private-footage-captured-by-the-cars-cameras-ex-employees-say-580189
How long before Plod/Government/BigBrother demands access to that stuff..
“How long before Plod/Government/BigBrother demands access to that stuff”
Do you seriously think the government and government-adjacent big tech companies don’t already have access to pretty much all of your info? All they would gain by the “demand” would be make more people aware of that fact.
Either way, accident or act, if harmed she would have been harmed for pursuing a pointless objective.
Maybe the crocodile that dragged her away was just hungry.
What has this got to do with either climate or science?
And why are a number of the comments here at least as ugly as the hypothetical murder?
(I am surrounded by a fair number of officious old ladies, and if any of them want to take on the chore of picking through my rubbish they can start tomorrow. I dispose of my confidential waste in a fire.)
Are we supposed to assume that she was offed by some eeeeeevil climate denier who so hates The Planet ™ that he couldn’t abide the old biddy rooting through his rubbish bin (yes, he/his! Of course, it would have to be a he, no?)
Isn’t that just the obvious most likely scenario? I mean how unlikely would it be that she stumbled across something more serious than a recycling mis-sorting violation? Is there such a thing possible? More serious than a failure to sort recycle? Please! Ok maybe bringing an apple into the country would be a worse offense, but that’s not related to this story.