Police Search Fails To Unearth Body

The Age

Saturday July 31, 1999

BRETT FOLEY, CRIME REPORTER

Detectives excavated the bank of a dam on a property near Diggers Rest yesterday in their search for the body of a woman who has been missing for 26 years.

Using heavy earth-moving equipment, detectives from the missing persons unit and forensic experts looked for the body of Mrs Joyce Culleton, who was 34 when she went missing from her home in Geelong West in July 1973.

Acting on information they had received, police began excavating the dam bank yesterday.

The dam was empty yesterday and detectives used shovels and sifting equipment to sort through the earth that was overturned by the heavy machinery.

They failed to find any trace of Mrs Culleton, whose disappearance had baffled police until a breakthrough in the case earlier this year.

Her husband, John Culleton, 64, was charged with murder and extradited from Mackay in Queensland in April this year to face charges in the Victorian Supreme Court.

His brother, David Culleton, 61, of Gap Road, Sunbury, was also arrested in April and charged with being an accessory to murder.

Both men are before the Supreme Court.

Police are yet to decide whether they will continue to dig at the site today.

© 1999 The Age

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