Natasha Ryan, known across Australia and overseas as the ‘Girl in the Cupboard,’ was found dead on a golf course in Rockhampton on Sunday.
The 40-year-old’s body was discovered by police over the weekend after her husband notified authorities about her disappearance.
Her death is not being treated as suspicious, and a report is being prepared for the Coroner.
Ms Ryan was at the centre of one of Australia’s most shocking disappearances in the late 1990s.
The case dominated the media for years and even made international headlines.
So who was she and what happened to her?
Ms Ryan was just 14 years old when she went missing in the central Queensland town of Rockhampton in August of 1998.
A major investigation was launched with police and emergency services spending countless hours and an estimated $400,000 in efforts to locate her.
She was eventually presumed dead several years later, with notorious serial killer Leonard Fraser put on trial for her death. He was later charged with her murder.
Ms Ryan’s family held a formal memorial for the teenager in 2001.
However, the case was turned on its head in 2003 after local police received a bizarre anonymous note which reportedly said: “Natasha Ryan is alive and well”.
According to the Courier Mail, the note also included a telephone number of a house in the suburb of Frenchville.
Officers raided the address to find Ms Ryan alive, hiding in a cupboard in the house of her 22-year-old boyfriend Scott Black.
It was later revealed she had been stowing herself in the cupboard when company came to the house and only moved around the property with the curtains drawn. She rarely left the house.
Ms Ryan was eventually called to give evidence in Fraser’s trial and the charge accusing him of her murder was dropped.
Fraser in 2003 was given an indefinite life sentence for the murder of nine-year-old Keyra Steinhardt and years later given another three life sentences “for the manslaughter of Julie Turner, and the murders of Beverley Leggo and Sylvia Benedetti,” according to 7News.
Ms Ryan told New Idea magazine several years later she would not publicly reveal why she ran away.
She also spoke of her boyfriend Mr Black who was a milkman at the time.
“He was protecting me and I caused him to do it – it was my fault he did that,” she reportedly told the masthead.
“It was my decision to run away. He was doing something really lovely and protecting me and I felt like I should have been, or deserved to be, punished.”
Mr Black in 2005 served a 12-month jail term for perjury for “telling police he didn’t know where his girlfriend Natasha Ryan was, when in fact she was living in his home,” the Guardian reported.
The pair married in 2008 in a covert ceremony north of Yeppoon. The couple reportedly sold their wedding photo to Woman’s Day for a large sum.
Ms Ryan, who later went by the name of Tash Black, went on to study nursing.
Community members who knew her posted online in the wake of her death, with one remembering her as a “caring and amazingly talented health care professional” and “beautifully dedicated parent”.
“She was a fabulous nurse and a treasured friend. This is so very sad. I truly feel for all her family and friends. Be at peace now Tash you will never be forgotten,” another wrote.