Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: This interview has been conducted in the Epping Police Station,
Speaker 2: Victoria at two minutes to four to agree with the
Speaker 2: time I might watch yes, okay PM on Sunday, the
Speaker 2: eighteenth day of December twenty eleven. Could you tell me
Speaker 2: what you can remember from nineteen ninety three relection to
Speaker 2: your father's disappearance, just.
Speaker 3: So he came down to see me in hospital and
Speaker 3: for the last time I was sorry.
Speaker 4: In a Melbourne police station, two detectives sit across from
Speaker 4: Leanne Phillips, one of Les Ball's daughters.
Speaker 2: Okay, and when.
Speaker 3: Was that member? I think was the Wednesday night? Wednesday.
Speaker 3: It's all pretty figue, Okay.
Speaker 2: We do understand it was eighteen years ago and we're
Speaker 2: just asking for the truth from what you can remember,
Speaker 2: and we don't want you to make anything.
Speaker 4: Up in case you missed it. In that police recorded
Speaker 4: audio that was later handed to the coroner, the Wednesday
Speaker 4: night Leanne is being questioned about is the twenty first
Speaker 4: of April nineteen ninety three, the night Leanne claims her
Speaker 4: father Les visited her in a Brisbane hospital. Leanne told
Speaker 4: police that around eight thirty pm she was on a
Speaker 4: public phone in the lobby of the seventh floor of
Speaker 4: the Princess Alexandra Hospital. She was trying to call home
Speaker 4: on the public payphone when Les suddenly emerged from the lifts.
Speaker 4: He'd apparently come straight from the train station after making
Speaker 4: the more than twenty four hour journey from Townsville. They
Speaker 4: sat down on some chairs in the waiting area and
Speaker 4: had a brief chat, mainly about how his ex wife, Margaret,
Speaker 4: who was staying at the Phillips house, was driving him crazy.
Speaker 4: He only stayed for around thirty minutes and told Leanne
Speaker 4: he was going to visit Lachelle, his youngest daughter and
Speaker 4: Leanne's half sister, on the Sunshine Coast.
Speaker 5: How was he intending to give there? Do what?
Speaker 4: Only the police already know. The signature on Les's train
Speaker 4: ticket was forged.
Speaker 3: Why would the ticket be forged though if he was, Oh,
Speaker 3: I can't answer can incident.
Speaker 2: Someone wanted to make it look like he traveled to Brisbane.
Speaker 3: I don't know why anybody would want to do that.
Speaker 4: They know that Les never boarded the train.
Speaker 2: Has someone told you to say he came to visit
Speaker 2: in the hospital, nobody has.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 3: I saw my part friend.
Speaker 2: Hospital because we believe he didn't attend the hospital.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry he did.
Speaker 4: This isn't the first time Leanne has been questioned about
Speaker 4: the night she says her dad visited her in hospital,
Speaker 4: and it won't be the last. In fact, this visit
Speaker 4: has been heavily scrutinized over the years by police and
Speaker 4: two separate coroners, decades apart, because all other evidence suggests
Speaker 4: that visit never happened and that Leanne was mistaken. I'm
Speaker 4: Joe Townsend.
Speaker 1: And I'm Calm Deness. We're trying to figure out who
Speaker 1: killed Les Baul. This is perfect alibi.
Speaker 6: Change.
Speaker 4: The most important task for police in a homicide inquiry
Speaker 4: is establishing when the victim was last seen alive. For
Speaker 4: that reason, Detective Noll Powers focused on the supposed hospital visit.
Speaker 7: Lezard apparently come down to visit her, and she hadn't
Speaker 7: seen or heard of him since then.
Speaker 4: Even putting aside the forgery and Les not boarding the train, Well.
Speaker 3: He didn't make dawn down to Brisbane, but don't if
Speaker 3: he didn't go on the train and then so must
Speaker 3: have brought him down.
Speaker 4: There were issues with Leanne's story. Leanne said lez had
Speaker 4: come straight from the train, but the train he was
Speaker 4: booked on arrived in Brisbane at three point fifty pm,
Speaker 4: nearly five hours before he was supposed to have visited her.
Speaker 4: Leanne also told police that she and lez sat on
Speaker 4: chairs in a public waiting area outside the lifts on
Speaker 4: Level seven. Police checked there were no chairs in that area.
Speaker 7: It just didn't seem to add up. We spoke to
Speaker 7: a lady who was occupying the room with Leanne and
Speaker 7: she said Leanne did not receive any visitors in hospital
Speaker 7: on that day.
Speaker 4: Then there was the big one. Why would Lesbie and
Speaker 4: Brisbane visiting Leanne at all when he should have been
Speaker 4: in Cardwell finalizing the purchase of his home.
Speaker 2: He put a seven thousand dollar cash deposit. Now he
Speaker 2: risked losing that money.
Speaker 3: I can't answer your question.
Speaker 7: In some instances, In the majority of instances, people will
Speaker 7: go all right, well, they'll modify this story or change it,
Speaker 7: or just simply go all right, well it didn't happen,
Speaker 7: and this is really what happened. So when you're presented
Speaker 7: with a certain number of facts that disprove what you're saying,
Speaker 7: then either you'll get a new version or the person
Speaker 7: will admit to either being wrong or manufacturing that version.
Speaker 7: But as instance, no, he visited me in hospital that
Speaker 7: was at full stop.
Speaker 4: We don't have the tapes of Nol's interview with Leanne
Speaker 4: from nineteen ninety three, but when you hear Detectives interviewing
Speaker 4: Leanne in twenty eleven, you can see what he means.
Speaker 4: She's sticking to her version of events.
Speaker 2: So this is a copy of the trained detail report.
Speaker 2: And this is why we know your father did not
Speaker 2: have to train.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they said that's Peper didn't see it in
Speaker 3: the seat that he sound like I did.
Speaker 2: He far to show Yeah, So do you want me
Speaker 2: to show you explain.
Speaker 3: That I member of there?
Speaker 1: Have you? Okay?
Speaker 3: So for the purpose that has said anywhere, I mean, well.
Speaker 2: We don't think so in the fact that Towns will
Speaker 2: to Brisbane travel football far to show fts, it's marked
Speaker 2: as well, and that I'm going to show you. These
Speaker 2: are their handwriting from your father. That's a handwriting from
Speaker 2: your father, and that's the forgery.
Speaker 8: That's what's on the ticket.
Speaker 3: I can't I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I can't answer, cannot explain why.
Speaker 5: It's a forgery.
Speaker 4: Even when confronted with the fact that Les's ticket was
Speaker 4: forged and he never boarded the train to Brisbane. Leanne's
Speaker 4: story never wavered. She even offered what she said was
Speaker 4: physical proof that Les had visited her in hospital a
Speaker 4: losing lotto ticket. It had been purchased in Townsville using
Speaker 4: Les's card on Tuesday, the twentieth of April. According to Leanne,
Speaker 4: Les gave it to her the next evening when he
Speaker 4: visited her in hospital.
Speaker 2: So can you remember your father giving this to it?
Speaker 3: I remember fine on the side of the draw, and
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure that he could put it there.
Speaker 2: You're pretty sure he put it there?
Speaker 3: I think so, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 7: Pretty sure, Thanky. It's one of those things that don't
Speaker 7: really stack up. And suppose that your curiosity is piqued
Speaker 7: even more because you just think, well, that is quite unusual.
Speaker 1: It didn't stack up because we know police believe Les
Speaker 1: never made it to hospital to visit Leanne. If that's right,
Speaker 1: there's no way he could have given her the lotto ticket.
Speaker 1: Someone used Les's pension card to collect his train ticket
Speaker 1: and forge his signature. Maybe that same person used Less's
Speaker 1: card to buy this lotto ticket.
Speaker 7: So you know, again, there's one version that doesn't add up.
Speaker 4: So cal this is the big question mark in this case.
Speaker 4: Who's right here, the police or Lianne, Because after investigating it,
Speaker 4: police are certain Les didn't make that trip to Brisbane,
Speaker 4: but Leanne is sure she saw Lez in hospital.
Speaker 1: Well, a coroner looked into this nearly thirty years after
Speaker 1: Les went missing, and we're going to cover that in
Speaker 1: detail in a later episode. But the corona found that
Speaker 1: Leanne had a genuinely held but mistaken belief that her
Speaker 1: father visited her hospital.
Speaker 4: So, in other words, the coroner's saying, I believe you, you're
Speaker 4: not lying, but it didn't happen exactly.
Speaker 1: What about the lotto ticket then, Well, the coroner basically
Speaker 1: found that Leanne had nothing to do with it. There
Speaker 1: was no evidence to suggest she has.
Speaker 4: So the coroner determined that Les never visited her in hospital,
Speaker 4: he never handed her the lotto ticket which Leanne presented
Speaker 4: to police, but also that Leanne is a credible witness
Speaker 4: and genuinely believes she's telling the truth. So the short
Speaker 4: story is that Wednesday visit at the hospital didn't happen,
Speaker 4: couldn't have happened.
Speaker 1: Having proven that Les never made it to Brisbane, police
Speaker 1: were working off a theory that the reason he missed
Speaker 1: his house settlement was because by Monday, the nineteenth of April,
Speaker 1: he was dead.
Speaker 7: I've got no doubt that before the nineteenth, and even
Speaker 7: before the twentieth, he'd met his demise. And I'll say
Speaker 7: that now you know, there's no doubt about it that
Speaker 7: Lesbil had been killed prior to that.
Speaker 1: Day, and so police focused on Sunday, the eighteenth of April,
Speaker 1: the last day Les was seen alive.
Speaker 6: Now remember Les was.
Speaker 1: Living in the garage of the Phillips home. There was
Speaker 1: David Phillips in the house. That's his son in law,
Speaker 1: the ex cop. Before moving to Queensland, he served ten
Speaker 1: years as a police officer in Victoria, five years as
Speaker 1: a detective and he was.
Speaker 6: A good detective too.
Speaker 1: He worked on the major crime and Armed robbery squads
Speaker 1: and received multiple commendations. Also living there was Margaret Phillips,
Speaker 1: Les's first ex wife, and David and Leanne's four kids.
Speaker 4: David says he left the house on Sunday, the eighteenth
Speaker 4: of April with his mother in law, Margaret and all
Speaker 4: of David and Leanne's kids and when they returned at
Speaker 4: two pm that day, Les wasn't home, David noticed Les's
Speaker 4: car and trailer were gone, all of his belongings were gone,
Speaker 4: and the fridge had been cleared out. Here's what David
Speaker 4: told police about that day in a twenty eleven interview.
Speaker 4: We've got our hands on a copy of that interview
Speaker 4: that was tabled at the inquest, and this is the
Speaker 4: first time that his side of the story has been
Speaker 4: publicly aired. Listen carefully because audio recordings back then were terrible.
Speaker 1: David, can you start your fallen correct name David Jeremy Phillips,
Speaker 1: and your data booths before six fifty things? And where
Speaker 1: were you born?
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: In the video, the camera is focused on David's profile.
Speaker 4: He's wearing a light blue polo. Still has a full
Speaker 4: head of hair, but it's gone white, and he's wearing glasses.
Speaker 5: Do what we intend to question you about today? It's
Speaker 5: the disappearance to suspect murder Upper Towns of ninety ninety three.
Speaker 4: The detectives tell David he's being asked about the disappearance
Speaker 4: and suspected murder of Les, and David's answers are curt
Speaker 4: and a little bit sarcastic, which didn't expect.
Speaker 6: You about just blom all right, you've just explained them.
Speaker 4: The police remind David of his rights.
Speaker 1: Basically, you have the right answer if you say I
Speaker 1: can you understand that's the one.
Speaker 4: As a former coop himself, this routine should be very
Speaker 4: familiar to David.
Speaker 1: Were building supersplas and hungry Jerks.
Speaker 6: When you're so weird, he you've go the kings and mo, yeah,
Speaker 6: the go.
Speaker 7: You remember seeing lest All.
Speaker 4: Then, in case you missed that, David says, the family
Speaker 4: were out visiting display homes. This was a regular outing
Speaker 4: for the family. Lez had put a deposit on a
Speaker 4: block of land and the Phillips were planning on building
Speaker 4: a family home on it. They stopped at Hungry Jackson.
Speaker 4: When they returned home, Les was gone. Inside the house,
Speaker 4: David and his mother in law, Margaret found a note
Speaker 4: from Les saying a family friend called Tony Hoyer had
Speaker 4: called by, although that note was never handed into police,
Speaker 4: so police spoke to Tony. He told detectives he'd called
Speaker 4: around to the Phillips house in the afternoon with a
Speaker 4: bag of prawns. He worked in the seafood industry and
Speaker 4: would often join the Phillips for dinner. According to Tony,
Speaker 4: when he got to the Phillips household, Les was the
Speaker 4: only one there, putting a suitcase into the boot of
Speaker 4: his car. Lez's bright blue homemade trailer was there and
Speaker 4: it appeared as if it was about to be hitched
Speaker 4: to the car.
Speaker 7: Just said he was packing stuff under the boot and
Speaker 7: he told him he was on his way down to
Speaker 7: Brisbane to go and see Leanne.
Speaker 4: Tony asked if he could go inside to put the
Speaker 4: prawns in the fridge, but Les said no, he'd already
Speaker 4: locked up the house.
Speaker 7: It Morls gave us a start point. You develop a
Speaker 7: timeline and these investigations and a certain timeline evidence indicates
Speaker 7: certain things on certain dates and it gives us a
Speaker 7: true picture of what really happened from there.
Speaker 1: So police now have another last possible sighting of Les
Speaker 1: my family friend Tony Hoyer on Sunday, the eighteenth of April.
Speaker 1: On one hand, Tony's account lines up with Leanne's story
Speaker 1: of Les catching a train to Brisbane to visit her,
Speaker 1: except Tony said Les was leaving right then on the Sunday,
Speaker 1: so the timeline's out of whack. Leanne told police Lez
Speaker 1: visited her on a Wednesday and the train ticket was
Speaker 1: booked for Tuesday, So why would Leslie packing up and
Speaker 1: heading out to the train on the Sunday? And also,
Speaker 1: here's the kicker. The train from Townsville to Brisbane, it
Speaker 1: didn't run on Sundays back then. To be fair to Tony,
Speaker 1: he's given several statements over the years and has made
Speaker 1: it clear that he can't remember exactly what day he
Speaker 1: saw Lez, and there's no evidence that he had anything
Speaker 1: to do with Lez's disappearance. But Lesz's belongings were gone
Speaker 1: from the Phillips house. For police, the question remained, why
Speaker 1: would les pack all of his possessions in his car
Speaker 1: and trailer then leave the car at the train station.
Speaker 1: David told the police that he knew Less's car was
Speaker 1: at the train station and left a note on the windscreen.
Speaker 1: When police found the car, they saw the note and
Speaker 1: it read les Margaret has gone home. Could you please
Speaker 1: ring or call in David? But where was that trailer?
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, Lez's lawyer and real estate agent were both frantically
Speaker 4: calling the house looking for Lez.
Speaker 7: From what they told us, there was sort of someone there.
Speaker 7: The lady who answered the phone and we've got no
Speaker 7: idea who it was was sort of appeared to be
Speaker 7: a little bit reluctant or didn't particularly want to pass
Speaker 7: any information on.
Speaker 4: The real estate agent kept calling and eventually got through
Speaker 4: to Leanne, who was home from hospital by then. She
Speaker 4: tried to explain the urgency of the situation, but Leanne
Speaker 4: kept repeating that she didn't know where her father was. Eventually,
Speaker 4: Leanne told the real estate agent not to call again,
Speaker 4: that they were a nuisance caller.
Speaker 7: They just seemed to be an overall Oh look, he's
Speaker 7: gone away, we don't know where he is, and that's it.
Speaker 4: Even if Les had a habit of just going bush.
Speaker 4: Les's trayler had gone missing, all of his possessions were gone,
Speaker 4: and his lawyer and real estate agent were both frantically
Speaker 4: calling because Les hadn't shown up to collect the keys
Speaker 4: to his new home and his car was sitting at
Speaker 4: Townsville train station out in the open. Why didn't David
Speaker 4: the former police officer, report him missing. In July nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety three, nearly two months after Les vanished, the police
Speaker 4: got a break. They'd circulated images of Les's trailer in
Speaker 4: the media, hoping locals would recognize it. The trailer was
Speaker 4: one of a kind, pretty distinctive looking. It was hand
Speaker 4: built and bright blue.
Speaker 7: We received a phone call from a gentleman who I
Speaker 7: suppose part time was. His interest was to go to
Speaker 7: a bush area just down the outskirts of towns Well.
Speaker 7: There was notorious for just people just dumping I won't
Speaker 7: say rubbish, but just car bodies, bits of metal and
Speaker 7: things like that. So he'd go and scraunge, pull metal
Speaker 7: out and I either sell it to scrap metal merchants
Speaker 7: or just on sell it. So he got into contact
Speaker 7: with us and told us that he'd found remnants of
Speaker 7: a trailer.
Speaker 4: The trailer had been burned and only its metal parts
Speaker 4: the wheel, axle and frame remained. Amongst the ashes, there
Speaker 4: was some cutlery, glass fragments, and melted tools. The trailer
Speaker 4: had been full when it was set alight. The scrap
Speaker 4: metal collector took the trailer's axle, leaving the metal frame behind.
Speaker 4: When he came back to collect the frame a week later,
Speaker 4: it was gone. He also noticed that the ashes and
Speaker 4: debris from the fire had been raked up. When he
Speaker 4: returned again another week later, he saw the area had
Speaker 4: been burned. A second time. He saw something else too.
Speaker 7: He saw someone probably about one hundred and fifty meters
Speaker 7: just standing leaning against a car. Wasn't able to elaborate
Speaker 7: what sort of car it was, who it was give
Speaker 7: us any description, but he said this person stood and
Speaker 7: watched him for at least fifteen to twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: Another local had also stumbled upon the trailer. He also
Speaker 4: returned to the scene a week later and noticed that
Speaker 4: the fire and debris had been cleared up. He noticed
Speaker 4: two people, a guy in his thirties and another man
Speaker 4: he couldn't describe, near the burned out trailer. When Noel
Speaker 4: arrived on the scene, it was immediately obvious whoever had
Speaker 4: set the trailer alight had tried to cover their tracks.
Speaker 7: And in fact, later on, when we went back and
Speaker 7: did a search with the sees, we found separate piles
Speaker 7: of the debris. Someone had gathered it all up and
Speaker 7: spread it out in separate piles around the are if
Speaker 7: one was about one hundred and fifty meters away from
Speaker 7: where the trailer was found, so there'd been a deliberate
Speaker 7: attempt to hide the remnants of the fire.
Speaker 4: In other words, someone had made at least two attempts
Speaker 4: to completely destroy the trailer, and even though there wasn't
Speaker 4: much of it left. Police were pretty sure it belonged
Speaker 4: to Les.
Speaker 7: Tayler had a specific stud pattern on the wheels that
Speaker 7: was quite unusual. So comparison of that with the photo
Speaker 7: that we had were able to reasonably confident that that
Speaker 7: was Leeds's trailer.
Speaker 4: Police needed to do two things, first identify whether Les's
Speaker 4: body was amongst the ashes, and second to make absolutely
Speaker 4: sure that this really was Les's trailer. They sifted through
Speaker 4: the crime scene, collecting and logging what they found amongst
Speaker 4: the ash, and asked et Issen Lez's ex wife if
Speaker 4: she could identify anything that belonged to Les.
Speaker 8: So I flew up to Townsville that I was asked
Speaker 8: to go, and I flew up to Townsville, at my
Speaker 8: own expense, up to the police there and they took
Speaker 8: me to the police station. And after that I was
Speaker 8: given bags and bags and bags of stuff that I
Speaker 8: had to go through with my fingers and to see
Speaker 8: if I could recognize anything. Well. I recognized quite a
Speaker 8: few things that probably only I would have known because
Speaker 8: we'd been married all those years.
Speaker 4: Sure enough, amongst those tiny fragments, it recognized some old
Speaker 4: china that belonged to Lez.
Speaker 8: I remember finding little scraps of just tiny bitch inch
Speaker 8: by an inch or something that I knew a part
Speaker 8: of a dinner set that was ours that I'd given him,
Speaker 8: you know, having to go through with my fingers to
Speaker 8: pick out any tiny little bit of thing that I
Speaker 8: knew was lesses. That was emotionally one of the hardest
Speaker 8: things I've ever had to do in my life, because
Speaker 8: I'm going through ashes and all the time I didn't
Speaker 8: know whether his body had been burnt there. It was
Speaker 8: a horrible time for me, dreadful, but I didn't want
Speaker 8: Lazelda have to do it. I went through and did it.
Speaker 4: With confirmation that the burned out trailer was les Balls,
Speaker 4: police were now certain they were dealing with a homicide,
Speaker 4: the same conclusion Officer Ian Nanness had reached after just
Speaker 4: two days. But until then, Lachelle had been holding out
Speaker 4: hope that her dad was still alive. When you heard
Speaker 4: the news of the burnt out trailer and finding that
Speaker 4: trailer in July that year, is that when you realized
Speaker 4: one hundred percent that your dad had been murdered.
Speaker 9: I still had hope that he was still in a
Speaker 9: homeless shoulder Like well, I'd look at homeless people on
Speaker 9: the street and think, oh my god. I double checked
Speaker 9: to see if it was my dad or anything, even
Speaker 9: though it wasn't. It was just horrendous. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I always had hope, but I sort of knew. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Police analyzed the ashes Les wasn't burned, along with his trailer,
Speaker 4: and the sees Or State Emergency Service helped search the
Speaker 4: area too. There was no sign of Lez, they had
Speaker 4: no idea where he could be. It seemed to detective
Speaker 4: null Powers that whoever had murdered Les had created an
Speaker 4: elaborate smoke screen to buy themselves time. They'd booked a
Speaker 4: ticket to Dolby via Brisbane in Les's name to make
Speaker 4: it appear as if he was alive while they worked
Speaker 4: to completely destroy his trailer.
Speaker 7: Someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the evidence,
Speaker 7: to create a version that would distract us, that would
Speaker 7: put us on the wrong path.
Speaker 1: Finding the trailer was a lucky break for police, especially
Speaker 1: because they missed other clues. The first inquest heard evidence
Speaker 1: from the scrap metal collector that he gave the police
Speaker 1: the number plates of someone who'd apparently seen the trailer
Speaker 1: before it was set a light, but police lost the
Speaker 1: details of this vital witness. By the time the scrap
Speaker 1: metal collector was on the witness stand, he couldn't remember
Speaker 1: the plate number. And a woman who cleaned the Phillips
Speaker 1: house twice a week told police she saw a trailer
Speaker 1: that looked like Lez's full of furniture at the building
Speaker 1: site where David was rumored to have dumped Lezz's body,
Speaker 1: but police didn't take a statement from the house cleaner.
Speaker 1: By this point, police were paying close attention to David
Speaker 1: and Leanne.
Speaker 7: No one else came into that realm, so those two,
Speaker 7: in my opinion, had a case to answer.
Speaker 4: Although police had questions for Leanne, she wasn't their main focus.
Speaker 4: She was in hospital when Les disappeared. She couldn't have
Speaker 4: had anything to do with his murder, but they were
Speaker 4: zeroing in on her husband, David. He was at home
Speaker 4: when disappeared. He knew Les's car was sitting abandoned at
Speaker 4: Townsville train station. He should have been the first person
Speaker 4: to report Les missing. Instead, he was passive and evasive.
Speaker 7: If you didn't ask the question, he wouldn't provide any
Speaker 7: information at all. And it was you know you used
Speaker 7: that using expressions like pulling bloody out of a stone.
Speaker 4: But police had no physical clues and no body. They
Speaker 4: needed evidence, and so they conducted a forensic search of
Speaker 4: the Phillips home, paying close attention to the garage.
Speaker 7: David was fairly nonplassed by the whole scene. If the
Speaker 7: police are at your house executing a search warrant, of
Speaker 7: course you'd be concerned. You know, the normal person and
Speaker 7: the normal conditions would be didn't seem to worry.
Speaker 4: One possible reason why David was so relaxed was he
Speaker 4: knew exactly how murder investigation play out. He'd been a
Speaker 4: detective on the Major Crime Squad.
Speaker 7: I think he knew what we were potentially doing. And
Speaker 7: you know, part of the investigative strategy, we're able to
Speaker 7: obtain listening devices for the houses as well too.
Speaker 4: By listening devices NOL means the house was bugged. Police
Speaker 4: obtained approval to secretly into the Phillips home and install
Speaker 4: covert microphones. One was shoved between the couch cushions, hoping
Speaker 4: it would pick up something incriminating said by David. Staff
Speaker 4: were monitoring the feed on a twenty four hour roster.
Speaker 7: The TV was on all the time, so there was
Speaker 7: a constant noise in the background where you didn't get
Speaker 7: to hear too much at all, and that would indicate
Speaker 7: David was aware of the methodology and simply chose to
Speaker 7: do and simply used the message to distract us from it.
Speaker 4: At this point, David had been out of the force
Speaker 4: for about seven years and was working as a laborer
Speaker 4: on a Townsville shopping center development.
Speaker 7: David was subject to a bit of we wouldn't say bullying,
Speaker 7: but you know, there were people he worked with were
Speaker 7: giving him a little bit of stick about you know,
Speaker 7: is he buried? Where is he buried?
Speaker 4: In fact, a rumor was going around the building site
Speaker 4: that David had buried Less's body beneath a concrete manhole
Speaker 4: in the development's car park.
Speaker 1: About a year into our investigation, me and Joe decided
Speaker 1: to head to Townsville. It's an industrial city, a big,
Speaker 1: army town with about two hundred thousand people.
Speaker 6: It's sunny all year round, sticky and humid.
Speaker 1: We've been looking at les Ball's case for long enough
Speaker 1: that we needed to see some of the places ourselves.
Speaker 1: Our first stop was on the outskirts of town, where
Speaker 1: Les's trailer was discovered. Okay, so we're just pulling into
Speaker 1: Drugy Street. Wow, you heard it. We're pulling right into
Speaker 1: Jerky Street. So this is where Les's burnt out trailer
Speaker 1: was found, and the way Nol described it, this was
Speaker 1: a well known dumping area in Townsville. If you wanted
Speaker 1: to get rid of an old car or get rid
Speaker 1: of a trailer, this is the place dump property.
Speaker 4: It's exactly this sort of place, isn't it. I can
Speaker 4: totally see why whoever dumped Les's trailer thought this was
Speaker 4: the perfect place to get away with it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I would have said a body too,
Speaker 1: except that we know the sees and police they did
Speaker 1: really thoroughly search this area.
Speaker 4: There's no reason why Lez's remains. Less's body could have
Speaker 4: been buried here. We know that it wasn't found with
Speaker 4: the remains of the burnt out trailer. We know it
Speaker 4: definitely wasn't there because that was so carefully combed over
Speaker 4: by forensics and Les's remains were definitely not found.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about this.
Speaker 1: Let's assume that it was David Phillips. Okay, So if
Speaker 1: you're David Phillips, the critical thing is they never find
Speaker 1: the body, and that's one of the reasons why David
Speaker 1: has been a person of interest to suspect for so
Speaker 1: long but has never been arrested or charged with anything
Speaker 1: Because there is.
Speaker 6: No physical evidence.
Speaker 1: All we have are a series of inconsistencies and his
Speaker 1: suspicious behavior in not reporting Les missing and never seeming
Speaker 1: too concerned about Les missing.
Speaker 6: I think it's.
Speaker 1: Unlikely then that he would have buried Les there, because
Speaker 1: remember he's a former detective. He would know that if
Speaker 1: they did find the trailer, they'd also be looking for
Speaker 1: a body in that location.
Speaker 6: So I don't reckon Less buried there.
Speaker 1: We drive up a highway and back into suburban Townsville
Speaker 1: before finding our way to the Willows, a sprawling, multi
Speaker 1: level shopping center where thirty years ago David was rumored
Speaker 1: by his colleagues to have dumped Les's body.
Speaker 6: I'm imagining this place in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: It would have been a really big building site, a
Speaker 1: lot of earth moving equipment busy, a lot of yellow builders,
Speaker 1: soil busy, lots of point of access as well, absolutely
Speaker 1: easy to slip into, potentially.
Speaker 4: No CCTV at night exactly.
Speaker 1: And again, just to go back to this rumor, it's
Speaker 1: that Les was buried under a manhole under some concrete
Speaker 1: in the car park that was under construction. As soon
Speaker 1: as that concrete was poured, you'd have a pretty good
Speaker 1: it'd be a pretty good bet that no one would
Speaker 1: ever say what was under there, because why would they.
Speaker 4: I didn't even know what a forensics person would do here.
Speaker 4: I didn't expect this huge, sprawling car park with all
Speaker 4: different additions over time, only one multi story section which
Speaker 4: is underground. And this feeling that I understand now that
Speaker 4: Noel would have been confronted with, this feeling of helplessness
Speaker 4: of if you are going to look for a body
Speaker 4: in concrete here, where on earth do you start? For
Speaker 4: precisely that reason, the rumor remained just that a rumor.
Speaker 7: From my understanding, was a fairly decent sized slab. So
Speaker 7: in order to have to dig the slab up or
Speaker 7: break the slab up and explore, you'd need something a
Speaker 7: lot more than just unconfirmed rumor from an unknown witness.
Speaker 4: The forensic search on the Phillips home turned up nothing,
Speaker 4: nor did the listening devices. The only physical clue police
Speaker 4: found was a fingerprint on Les's rear view mirror. It
Speaker 4: didn't belong to Les, but it wasn't a match for
Speaker 4: David Phillips either. Did you, Noel, ever get to a
Speaker 4: point where you felt like you were pretty close to
Speaker 4: making an arrest.
Speaker 7: No, Unfortunately we never got to that point. There were
Speaker 7: just it's one of those ones. And I'm fairly confident
Speaker 7: in saying that in some instances, particularly in unsolved cases,
Speaker 7: that the offender is known but there's just not enough
Speaker 7: evidence to put it to court.
Speaker 1: The biggest missing piece was Les. Police was sure he
Speaker 1: was dead, but without a body, they weren't one hundred
Speaker 1: percent certain that they were dealing with a homicide. At
Speaker 1: the end of May nineteen ninety four, Noel handed his
Speaker 1: report to the coroner. He'd concluded that Les had met
Speaker 1: his death at the hands of a person or person's unknown,
Speaker 1: but that's pretty much what police thought from day one.
Speaker 1: The only hope of getting closer to finding out what
Speaker 1: happened to Les and who was responsible lay with a
Speaker 1: coronial inquest open later that year.
Speaker 9: I was distraught, like so upset.
Speaker 4: I was young.
Speaker 9: My mum explained it all to me, but I didn't
Speaker 9: really understand what a coroner's inquest was.
Speaker 4: A coronial inquest operates a bit like a court there's
Speaker 4: a magistrate presiding, witnesses give evidence. Its purpose is fact finding,
Speaker 4: though to probe the circumstances surrounding someone's disappearance or death.
Speaker 4: A coroner can direct the police to investigate or refer
Speaker 4: matters for prosecution. The coroner doesn't say guilty or innocent,
Speaker 4: They just decide if the case should be taken to
Speaker 4: the courts. The inquest was held in Townsville and Brisbane.
Speaker 4: Les's real estate agent and solicitor were questioned. Noel was
Speaker 4: questioned about his investigation, so were employees from Townsville train
Speaker 4: station and Tony Hoyer. What an absolutely horrible experience for
Speaker 4: a young adult like Lille, she's not yet twenty listening
Speaker 4: to all these details of her dad disappearing maybe he
Speaker 4: was murdered. It must have been the most awful experience.
Speaker 6: Truly is unimaginable.
Speaker 1: They're going over in great detail about what is the
Speaker 1: worst thing that could ever happen to anyone, and is
Speaker 1: certainly the worst thing that's ever happened to Lachelle in
Speaker 1: her life. And yet as awful as it is, she
Speaker 1: must have been really hoping for an outcome here because
Speaker 1: this was her opportunity to find out what happened to
Speaker 1: her dad. After hearing three days of evidence, the coroner
Speaker 1: handed down his findings in nineteen ninety five. Police was
Speaker 1: still sure David was guilty, but the coroner didn't agree.
Speaker 1: In fact, he wasn't sure that Les was even dead.
Speaker 1: The coroner found that some person or person's deliberately tried
Speaker 1: to convey the impression, and that Les traveled to Brisbane,
Speaker 1: and that there were strong indications to suspect that Les
Speaker 1: was the victim of foul play. But in the end
Speaker 1: he delivered an open finding, and that was because of
Speaker 1: David's evidence. The coroner said, had it not been for
Speaker 1: his evidence of Les's tendency to go missing for periods
Speaker 1: of time, he would quote have no hesitation in finding
Speaker 1: the cause of the missing person's disappearance was foul play.
Speaker 8: He is et I thought that they haven't got all
Speaker 8: the answers here, and I just we left that court
Speaker 8: feeling well, that was a waste of time.
Speaker 1: The coroner delivering and open finding is critically important.
Speaker 6: Had he ruled that Les was the victim.
Speaker 1: Of foul play, he could have ordered the police to
Speaker 1: keep investigating. Instead, the coroner was persuaded that Les had
Speaker 1: a tendency to go missing. According to David, he'd done
Speaker 1: it in March nineteen ninety three in very similar circumstances.
Speaker 1: Here's what David told police in twenty eleven.
Speaker 5: He vanishes and he's missing. There's a reason for him. Wait,
Speaker 5: she's gone before and before he told Leo.
Speaker 4: So, according to David, not only had Les disappeared for
Speaker 4: three weeks without saying a word, but when they tried
Speaker 4: to find him, Les told Leanne off and he wouldn't
Speaker 4: tell her where he'd been other than just up north.
Speaker 1: Unusually for David, this story was very specific. He said
Speaker 1: it happened in March nineteen ninety three and that Les
Speaker 1: was away for three weeks.
Speaker 6: But David's statement didn't match Leanne's.
Speaker 1: He said Les disappeared when Leanne was in hospital, but
Speaker 1: according to Leanne, Les waited until she was discharged home
Speaker 1: and feeling better before leaving. She said in a police
Speaker 1: it was when I came home and Dad knew I
Speaker 1: was okay.
Speaker 6: He went away.
Speaker 1: What's more, Leann's statement makes it clear that Les told
Speaker 1: them he was going away before he left.
Speaker 4: So we tried to find the evidence of this earlier
Speaker 4: disappearance that David was talking about.
Speaker 1: We looked at Les's bank statements, atm records, the Phillips
Speaker 1: phone records covering the time period Les apparently vanished for
Speaker 1: three weeks. We combed through all of the police statements
Speaker 1: and in fact Les wasn't away for three weeks at all.
Speaker 1: He was only away for six days.
Speaker 4: So David was lying. It wasn't when Leanne was in hospital.
Speaker 4: It wasn't for three weeks. And Les told Leanne he
Speaker 4: was going on a trip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and David said they had no idea where he'd
Speaker 1: been when he got back.
Speaker 6: But guess what Les was.
Speaker 1: Doing on that trip away buying a house. That's right,
Speaker 1: buying the house in Cardwell. By making it seem as
Speaker 1: if Les would disappear all the time and then turn
Speaker 1: up alive and work, David created a credible excuse for
Speaker 1: his lack of action when Les vanished and painted himself
Speaker 1: as the son in law of an elderly missing man
Speaker 1: rather than a suspect in his murder. But David wouldn't
Speaker 1: hold off that suspicion forever. Next time, on Perfect Alibi,
Speaker 1: we look into David's lies.
Speaker 5: He had no.
Speaker 1: Regard for the truth.
Speaker 3: His liar compulsive liar storyteller, and he's only making up
Speaker 3: these things to.
Speaker 6: Retains his reputation.
Speaker 4: And by following the money, we uncover the strangest murder
Speaker 4: we've ever investigated.
Speaker 2: Nothing out up, nothing had any sense I believe in
Speaker 2: what was financial.
Speaker 4: Because looking at it, there doesn't seem or appear to
Speaker 4: be any other reason. If you've got more information on
Speaker 4: this case, you can contact us at les Bawl Podcast
Speaker 4: at ProtonMail dot com. That's L. E. S B A
Speaker 4: double L podcast at ProtonMail dot com