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Detective Superintendent Des Bray said officers are beginning to search through the Uleybury Landfill in Adelaide’s northern suburbs for the rest of McLean’s remains.
“As part of the investigation, we were able to recover his torso but there are the body parts that have been missing,” Bray said.
“The investigation has identified those remains were placed in rubbish bags and rubbish bins in the vicinity of where the offenders lived.”
Bray said police have identified 70 per cent of the rubbish in the bins in the area was sent to the Uleybury Landfill site and packed into large bales similar in size to a wool bale.
Each weighs about 1.5 tonnes and there are between 100 to 150 bales to be searched.
“If his remains are in those bales, I’m confident we will find them,” Bray said.
But if the remains were in the other 30 per cent of rubbish, it is unclear where it was sent.
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“We do need a little bit of luck because we know 30 per cent of the rubbish from the area, we do not know where it’s gone,” he said.
Police expect it to take several days to go through all the bales and are running two shifts a day for the search teams to sift through the rubbish wearing special suits and using rakes, tools and their hands.
“The people from the landfill will remove the bales and drag them out into the open about four to six at a time and then the search team will systematically pull them apart and look at the contents to see if we can find Geoffrey’s remains,” Bray said.
Before his disappearance, McLean was subject to four separate attacks, police said last year.
These involved being attacked by a person with acid, being struck with a log splitter, having his car set alight and having a bucket of acid thrown at him.
Bray said police will continue searching for the remainder of McLean’s remains for as long as it takes.
“I’m sure no one would want their loved ones discarded and put in the landfill and we’re committed to do everything humanly possible to recover his remains no matter how difficult or challenging that might be,” he said.
