Remains may give d aughter answers

Violet Walker loved the sea to death.

Depressed and divorced at the time of her death, 48-year-old Violet enjoyed an alternative lifestyle swimming, running and painting violets on teacups and cards before she disappeared mysteriously off Cottesloe beach in 1975.

Yesterday, forensic experts exhumed the skeletal remains on behalf of Violet’s daughter, Pat Holmes, who requested the exhumation following the recent discovery of the unmarked grave in which her mother is thought to have been buried.

Buried in 1976, the bones were removed from Karrakatta cemetery and taken to the State mortuary in Nedlands to be positively identified.

Police were unable to determine the age or identity, having completed three autopsies which offered different ages — delaying the burial of the remains for a year.

“It is the grave the remains were buried in, but we don’t know whether they belonged to her mother,” Ms Holmes said. “All I want to know is whether it is her.”

Ms Holmes, who already has provided a DNA sample to the coroner, said she planned to rebury the skeletal remains if they turned out to belong to her mother. She did not plan to scatter her mother’s ashes at sea because “that’s what killed her”.

“I have lived with this for a long time, it has affected my whole life,” Ms Holmes said from Dumbleyung, unaware her mother’s home still stood on John Street in Cottesloe.

“I don’t go there and I don’t let my children go there.”

Journalist Juliet Wills, who recently found the grave, said relatives and friends of Violet described a very fit woman who was coming to terms with her new life and depression, for which she was being treated.

She also was recently divorced and had left her job at the Thomas Flour Mill in Cottesloe. “Violet used to sit at the end of Cottesloe groyne for hours at a time looking out to sea,” she said. “She only lost her job a few days before her disappearance.”

Ms Wills, who teaches journalism at Edith Cowan University, said the alert was raised after Violet’s landlady found her tenant’s key in the door, the bed was unmade, which was unusual because she was fastidious, and her cat was hungry.

Four weeks later, the badly decomposed remains of a woman were found washed up just south of the Cottesloe groyne at the end of Jarrad Street on September 7, 1975. No clothes were found.

Forensic scientists have completed a preliminary analysis of the skeletal remains. They also hope to compare DNA samples with those provided by Ms Holmes.

They said it was unlikely the remains were linked to the disappearance of a prostitute who supposedly was thrown from a yacht sailing between Fremantle and Rottnest because of the distance involved. It was more plausible they belonged to Violet because they were found in the same area she disappeared.