A haunting detail that emerged during the search for missing Queensland teenager Pheobe Bishop was the discovery of dead dogs at the home of Tanika Bromley and James Wood where she was living.
This week, the truth behind the animals’ deaths came to light when Pheobe’s housemate James Wood admitted to a friend that the dogs were actually puppies that died of natural causes.
In a text leaked to Daily Mail Australia, a friend bluntly asked him ‘Why did the dogs get killed?’
Wood responded: ‘They didn’t get killed. There was 5 puppies out of a litter of 13 that contracted hookworm and passed before the treatment could work,’ he wrote.
Puppies are particularly susceptible to hookworm, a intestinal parasite that affects dogs as well as humans. It’s commonly inked to warmer climates and poor sanitation.
Pheobe’s neighbour said living next to Mr Wood had become ‘horrible’ because the property became cluttered with rubbish and there had been noise from parties and a howling dog, Ms Loughland said.
A stomach-churning stench surrounded the home and Ms Loughland said the remains of up to 11 dead dogs had actually been found at the property during a police search.
One local told Daily Mail Australia that they had been forced to close their windows and doors to block the smell of the rotting dogs as temperatures soared past 28C.
Since Pheobe’s disappearance, Wood has been said to be living in a Hyundai ix35 with one of his dogs.
Days after the teenager went missing, he shared a Facebook post which mentioned ‘One very lost sad little chonker puppa at home missing [Pheobe] like crazy’.
Mr Wood claims the reported dead dogs found at his home had died from hookworm
Pheobe Bishop’s flatmate told a friend the deceased pets were puppies
Questions remain over why Pheobe was living with Wood and Bromley, but final posts she made to social media before she disappeared suggested the troubled teen had fallen out with her mother and would not return home.
Pheobe, 17, was last seen on May 15, leaving the rundown home in Gin Gin.
The pair drove Pheobe the 40 minutes to Bundaberg Airport, where she was supposed to board an 8.30am flight to Brisbane and then onto Perth, where she planned to meet up with her boyfriend.
The 17-year-old did not check into her flight and her high school sweetheart was left waiting in vain at Perth Airport as flights arrived without her on board.
New police developments in search for Pheobe
Wood was taken into custody at 11.40am on Wednesday in Bolewski Street, Bundaberg but no charges were immediately laid.
That came shortly after police announced they were calling off the search for Pheobe.
He spoke to Daily Mail Australia about the tense and emotional morning that ended with Pheobe getting out of the car adjacent to the airport – and never being seen again.
The derelict Milden Street home was declared a crime scene, but it has since been closed
Forensics reportedly found the dead animals when they descended on the property
Pheobe has been missing since May 15, but the search for her has been ‘scaled back’
The morning Pheobe vanished
Wood claimed that at their home at Gin Gin that morning, Pheobe was stressing about what to pack, what to wear and making the flight on time.
‘She wanted to get up at 5am but I said I wasn’t waking up that early, it’s not that far.
‘Then she slept through her alarm and when she got up she was furious.
‘She gets like that sometimes and usually we can calm her down but she was escalating and then she smashed the TV,’ Wood claimed.
‘After that she started shouting about not having anything to wear and she was so worked up about seeing her boyfriend for the first time and she wanted to look good.
‘And I get it, she is a teenager and she thinks he may be the love of her life, so I understand.
‘I grabbed some grey brand new trackies I had and I threw them to her and said wear these and first she said she didn’t want to take them as they were mine but then she said “OK” and put them on.’
James Wood – the flatmate of missing teenager Pheobe Bishop has revealed explosive new details about the her car ride to the airport on the day she disappeared
James Wood has been living out of his car after Pheobe went missing
Wood claimed emotional outbursts were not unusual for the 17-year-old, but they had become more frequent in the weeks leading up to her trip.
‘She does have a temper but she is not a bad kid, she is actually a great kid, she is kind and smart and has good manners but she was living with us because she couldn’t live at home anymore,’ he said.
‘There were too many fights, too much had gone on and she is just a kid.
‘If I had a little sister and all she had was her car to live in then I would want someone to help her.
‘I had known her for almost a year when she moved in with us four months ago and Tanika worked with her as a carer so they knew each other well.’
The car ride to the airport
Despite the tardy start to the morning of her planned departure, Wood said there was still plenty of time to make her flight from Bundaberg, which was around 10am.
He quickly ran to the local IGA to grab energy drinks and returned to the house around 8am.
After loading a large duffle bag – ‘almost the size of her’ – into the car alongside his dog, they set off for the airport, with Bromley driving and Pheobe in the back seat.
Minutes later, about 8.30am, before they’d left Gin Gin for Bundaberg, Pheobe called her boyfriend to let him know she was on the way.
Daily Mail Australia previously reported the boyfriend claimed he heard shouting during the call.
The boyfriend later told a friend: ‘They were both yelling at her and I couldn’t really hear her.’
Wood doesn’t dispute the claim and said that Phoebe was still complaining she didn’t have time to do her make up and was worried she was going to miss the flight.
‘We just wanted to get her checked in and thought if we can just get there she will calm down.
‘Tanika grabbed her makeup bag next to her and passed it back and told her to take anything she needed.
‘Her plane was stopping in Brisbane and we told her that the airport had everything she needed and she can take her time and do the makeup in the toilets.
‘But she wanted to look nice for the flight first and wouldn’t let it go.’
The last time Pheobe was seen
Wood said he told Tanika Bromley (pictured) to pull over so they could give Pheobe some space to cool off. After stepping away for a few minutes, he claimed he returned to find her and her large duffle bag gone
By the time they reached airport drive, less then 1km from their destination Wood says the arguing hadn’t subsided so he told Bromley to pull over into a layby
As they approached Airport Drive, less than a kilometre from the terminal, the argument continued, Wood said.
Wood told Bromley to pull the car over and they got out and walked a distance away to give Pheobe some space to collect herself.
‘We wanted to give her five minutes – give her her own space to do what she needed to do,’ he said.
‘We walked to the end, it was maybe five minutes, maybe it was three minutes or maybe it was eight but that’s about how long we were gone.’
Wood said when he returned to the car, Pheobe and her bag were gone.
He assumed that she had walked the short remaining distance to the terminal. The couple then drove toward the airport to check, he said, but they didn’t see her along the way.
‘You wouldn’t miss her carrying that thing, if you drove past her and saw her, you’d notice,’ he said.
Wood claims the pair then waited outside the small terminal for some time but did not go inside.
‘I said to Tanika if I go in it will just escalate things again but she said if she went in it would look like we were parenting her.’
They then decided to check surrounding roads in case she had walked off in another direction.
‘We drove around and as far as we thought she could have made it and then drove a bit further in case.’
Wood claimed this would have been the moment when CCTV footage picked up his car heading towards the Good Night Scrub National Park.
Wood insisted that he did not hurt Pheobe and assumed she had boarded the flight.
He said it was not until the following afternoon when he received a text message from Pheobe’s sister that he realised she was missing.
Daily Mail Australia is not suggesting Wood was involved in Pheobe’s disappearance, and likewise does not suggest Ms Bromley played any role in Pheobe going missing.
