How Treasa Steinhardt survived her daughter Keyra being murdered by a serial killer

Two decades after her nine-year-old daughter was abducted and murdered by a serial killer, Treasa Steinhardt still can’t believe she’s gone.

The still-grieving mother never saw Keyra’s naked, lifeless body propped up against a tree in a creek bed with her throat cut and her school jumper draped over her.

Neither did she peek inside the tiny coffin the funeral home in Rockhampton, Queensland, prepared – only lifting it to prove she was inside.

Keyra Steinhardt, 9, was abducted and murdered in Rockhampton on April 22, 1999

Leonard John Fraser was jailed for life after the investigation into Keyra's disappearance led to him confessing to four killings in the late 1990s. He died in prison in 2007

Leonard John Fraser was jailed for life after the investigation into Keyra’s disappearance led to him confessing to four killings in the late 1990s. He died in prison in 2007

The last time Ms Steinhardt saw her daughter was the morning of April 22, 1999, when she dropped her at school, 20 years ago today.

Later that day, a couple witnessed the moment a man knocked her out after following her home before loading her into a car boot. 

They waited a crucial 20 minutes to call police.

Hundreds of police and local volunteers scoured the town and bush for her body, but it was only found when her killer led them to it.

Eight years after Leonard John Fraser was jailed for her murder and those of three others, he died of a heart attack. Ms Steinhardt will live with his crime forever.

For 10 years after Keyra’s death, she went off the rails, completely unable to deal with what happened. 

The last time Keyra's mother Treasa Steinhardt (left) saw her daughter (right, with her grandmother and baby brother Connor) was the morning of April 22, 1999, when she dropped her at school

The last time Keyra’s mother Treasa Steinhardt (left) saw her daughter (right, with her grandmother and baby brother Connor) was the morning of April 22, 1999, when she dropped her at school

Hundreds of police and local volunteers scoured the town and bush for her body, but it was only found when her killer led them to it

 Hundreds of police and local volunteers scoured the town and bush for her body, but it was only found when her killer led them to it

Her marriage failed and after two years she left her son Connor with his father Blair and drove to Melbourne where she worked a retail job all day and lost herself in video games at night.

It was only after fleeing to Canada and being a nanny to an autistic girl that she began to get her life together, returned to Rockhampton, and reunited with Connor.

Ms Steinhardt now says she survives by rewriting Keyra’s story to make her the victim who led to him finally being captured so he couldn’t kill again. 

‘I still find it very hard that she’s gone because I didn’t get to see her,’ she told the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin in a new podcast about Fraser.

‘So, for me to survive, I turned it around and she is the hero of the story, that she caught him and put him in jail, that she saved the other girls from being hurt and the ones that were killed have been brought back to their family. 

Keyra's mother Treasa says she recovered from a decade of depression following her daughter's death by rewriting Keyra's story with her as the hero who caught a serial killer

Keyra’s mother Treasa says she recovered from a decade of depression following her daughter’s death by rewriting Keyra’s story with her as the hero who caught a serial killer

'She is the hero of the story, she caught him and put him in jail, she saved the other girls from being hurt,' Ms Steinhardt said

‘She is the hero of the story, she caught him and put him in jail, she saved the other girls from being hurt,’ Ms Steinhardt said

‘That’s how I’ve survived. I’m fine if I live that.’

Fraser spent 20 of the previous 22 years in jail for rapes of multiple women, but was never a murder suspect until Keyra went missing.

He broke after weeks for interrogation and confessed to her murder and to killing Beverley Leggo, Sylvia Benedetti, and Julie Turner in 1998-99.

Justice Ken Mackenzie described Keyra’s murder as ‘severe, indeed extreme, violence on a child’ as he sentenced Fraser to life in prison.

‘Fraser’s story is that of a sexual predator of the worst kind,’ he said.

Ms Steinhardt with a painting of Keyra she did to help work through her death

Ms Steinhardt with a painting of Keyra she did to help work through her death

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