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Body found in Australia believed to be convicted child killer Allyson McConnell

Australian media is reporting the identity of a body found underneath a well-known bridge is that of convicted child killer Allyson McConnell.

Channel 7 News was one of the first outlets to break the story, after a member of the public discovered the woman Wednesday morning at 11am in Sydney.

“I can say with a degree of certainty this is Allyson McConnell,” says Senior Reporter Robert Ovadia. “Based on the fact she was reported missing by her family yesterday, so police were looking for her…”

“They did have grave concerns given her suicidal tendencies and her personal history and given that a woman matching her description with remarkably similar features to the face was found underneath the bridge… police are extremely confident that it is her,” he tells 660News.

According to Ovadia, they still have to rule out whether this was foul play although he says it is leaning towards a suicide.

McConnell was convicted of drowning her two boys in a bathtub at a home in Millet, Alberta.

She was deported to Australia after serving only ten months of a manslaughter sentence, inside a psychiatric hospital.

The Alberta government had planned to appeal her sentence and criticized their federal counterparts for allowing her to be deported to her native Australia earlier this year.

New South Wales Police hasn’t released the name of the person in their morgue.

“The woman will not be formally identified until later this week however police believe it is that of a 34 year old woman from Gosford,” says Sergeant Dave Rose. “We’ll have a post-mortem examination later this week but at this time, it’s not believed to be suspicious.”

Ovadia anticipates those results should be available by Thursday night Calgary time.

He says McConnell had been a recluse since her highly publicized arrival.

“I guess Australia’s attention was drawn towards her after seeing the headlines the past couple of years in Canada, but the news itself hasn’t been to the scale that it has been there,” he explains.

“A very sad, sad end to what seems to be an enduring tragic story, a woman in a body bag in the back of an ambulance by a rather beautiful, tranquil scene otherwise,” Ovadia adds.

Late Tuesday night, Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk tweeted “mental health makes victims of us all, sad end to what already was a tragedy.”

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