Yvonne Whear

Yvonne Whear was a 73 year old grandmother and great-grandmother from the Tweed Shire area of northern New South Wales, Australia, who disappeared in February 2026 and whose body was recovered eight months later on a rural property near Murwillumbah. She became widely known in Australia not for a public career but through the long, anguished search for her and the community effort to find out what had happened to her.

Whear had rented the same farm property for 23 years and was known locally as someone devoted to her animals. At the time she vanished she was engaged in a long running dispute over the lease of that farm and had been due to appear before the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal the week after she disappeared. She was last seen on 19 February 2026, driving near Murwillumbah, including a stop at a service station on Tweed Valley Way, with her family calling her disappearance out of character. At her home, investigators later found signs that she had expected to return: her usual shoes were by the door, food had been left in a slow cooker, and her clothes were folded on her bed ready for the next day.

Her disappearance triggered one of the region's largest search operations, with police searching the area extensively using drones, helicopters, police boats with sonar equipment, trail bikes and officers in cars and on foot. Her daughter, Gillian Hallac, repeatedly appealed to the public for information during the search, pleading that someone out there knew something. In September 2026, searchers recovered her gold coloured Ford Escape from the Rous River, but Whear herself was not inside and her disappearance remained unexplained.

On 5 October 2026, two trail bike riders discovered a body while riding on a track through a property at Terragon, south west of Murwillumbah, submerged in a tank used to treat livestock for ticks and other parasites. On 13 October 2026, NSW Police formally confirmed that the body was that of Yvonne Whear and said her death was being treated as a homicide, with a strike force formed to investigate. Tweed Byron Police District Commander, Acting Superintendent Matt Zimmer, said the news of her death in these circumstances was tragic and that her family had described the loss as unimaginable grief.

News of Whear's death was felt well beyond her immediate family. Zimmer said her death had not only affected her family but had also had a significant impact on the local community, creating distress and concern in what he called a very tight regional community. He also described her simply as a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother and a person who was clearly loved by those around her. As of the time of writing, no arrests have been made, police continue to appeal for information, and the exact circumstances of her death have not been made public.