The evidence emerged in a 2015 video re-enactment of his discovery, played during the coronial investigation that is seeking to determine who is responsible for Ms Wallman’s death.
During the re-enactment, Mr Breadsell said police questioned him about the skull in 1974 after he had taken it to a pub. “I don’t like to say this, but we took it over to the pub and used it as an ashtray one night,” he said. “Made me feel a bit shitty when we found out it was hers and we were mucking around with it.”
In the video, Mr Breadsell showed police where he saw the top part of a skull lying on grass in a cattle paddock, near an illegal dump site. He told police he had gone to the property to collect palm fronds to shelter his mother’s orchid house, and that he initially thought the remains belonged to an Aboriginal person. “Who else’s skull would it be?” he said. “I had it at the shed there [at my home] for at least a fortnight or three weeks.”
A pre-inquest hearing in August heard that in 2006, updated DNA testing methods confirmed the skull was Ms Wallman’s remains. The court also heard that in the past decade, Mr Breadsell had become close friends with person of interest Noel Morris, who was married to Ms Wallman’s cousin at the time of her disappearance.
Marilyn ‘scared’ before disappearance
Trudy Voltz, a friend of Ms Wallman, told the inquest Ms Wallman looked “scared” the day before she disappeared. Ms Voltz said Ms Wallman argued with another friend that day and had been quiet during a lunch break at North Mackay State High School.
The 68-year-old recalled that Ms Wallman had left to walk towards a school gate without saying why, and sat near a window looking out at the same entrance during a maths class. “I said to her, ‘Who’s out there?’ And she answered me,” Ms Voltz said. “I think she said the word ‘uncle.’”
The court heard Ms Wallman sat alone near the tuck shop after school and told Ms Voltz she did not want to catch the bus, and declined to go home with her friend.