Body found in stockyard trough confirmed to be missing 73-year-old Yvonne Whear

New South Wales police say a decomposed body found in a stockyard trough last week was missing woman Yvonne Whear, who vanished eight months ago after last being seen in Murwillumbah.

Last week, police said a partially submerged body believed to be a woman was discovered in a remote stockyard in Terragon near Murwillumbah.

The badly decomposed body was found partially submerged in a disused stock dip, a large trough commonly used to bathe livestock in anti-parasite solutions. Police on Tuesday confirmed it was Whear and her death was being treated as a homicide.

In mid-September, police divers found her car in the Rous River in Dulguigan – a short distance from her home.

“Several personal items, believed to belong to Yvonne, were also recovered,” police said at the time.

Whear was last seen on CCTV on 19 February buying orange juice and putting $50 credit on her phone at the Shell service station in Murwillumbah, before she drove through cane fields to her hobby farm at the hamlet of Dungay.

She had lived there for 23 years with a menagerie of animals she cared for.

At 8.30pm a member of the public reported seeing her car, a gold Ford Escape wagon, parked in the dark without lights, on Dungay Creek Road, less than a kilometre from where she lived.

Her daughter Gillian Hallac said that she never drove at night if she could help it.

Whear’s boots and hat that she had been wearing in the CCTV footage were still in her house, she had food in the slow cooker, her usual shoes were at the door. Her clothes were folded on her bed ready for the next day. Her family said she would never leave her animals.

Her phone last pinged at 10am the next day from a tower that put her mobile in the area where her car was subsequently found.