Speaker 1: When I first arrived in Cardwell in nineteen ninety it
Speaker 1: was a wonderful place. The fishing was fantastic, the people
Speaker 1: were wonderful. It was one of the best places on earth.
Speaker 2: In the early nineties, Cardwell, in far North Queensland was
Speaker 2: a sleepy tropical paradise, a small village on the edge
Speaker 2: of the Great Barrier Reef, surrounded by mountains of lush
Speaker 2: rainforest and waterfalls. Not much happened there, which suited in
Speaker 2: the nests just fine.
Speaker 1: I bought myself a boat and I could go out
Speaker 1: on the reef for a whole day and no one
Speaker 1: believe it though I wasn't in town. It was a
Speaker 1: lovely tim.
Speaker 2: He was officer in charge of the local police station,
Speaker 2: quite possibly one of the most relaxed policing jobs in
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: The crime rate was very low. I think in the
Speaker 1: first year I had three reported crimes and we solved
Speaker 1: a lot of them.
Speaker 2: But there's one crime I never solved. More than thirty
Speaker 2: years later, it remains a cold case. It all started
Speaker 2: one Friday night in May nineteen ninety three. Ian picked
Speaker 2: up a call at the local police station from an
Speaker 2: eighteen year old woman called Lachelle.
Speaker 3: I said, can you check on my father. He's an
Speaker 3: elderly man. He may have had a fall. I was
Speaker 3: thinking something caved in at his house or something and
Speaker 3: he's fallen. Can you go and check on him please?
Speaker 3: I just want to make sure he's okay.
Speaker 1: She told me that he had recently bought a property
Speaker 1: in Cardwell and he was always regularly in contact affair
Speaker 1: and she hadn't heard from him for some time.
Speaker 2: Ian agreed to go to Les's new house and check
Speaker 2: in on him. Cops do that sort of thing all
Speaker 2: the time. It's called a welfare check. It's garden variety policing.
Speaker 2: So when Ian pulled up at Less's home in Cardwell,
Speaker 2: he had every reason to believe this would be another
Speaker 2: routine job. It was possible Les would open the door
Speaker 2: and explain it was all a big misunderstanding. But when
Speaker 2: Ian knocked on the door, a woman answered.
Speaker 1: He was running the property. She was aware that it
Speaker 1: had been sold to mister Ball, but had not heard
Speaker 1: from him at all.
Speaker 2: The tenant heard that the sale hadn't gone through, which
Speaker 2: was strange because a stream of mail addressed to Lez
Speaker 2: had started arriving.
Speaker 1: There were bank statements social Security, veterans affairs letters and
Speaker 1: things like that. I started opening some of the mail
Speaker 1: up just to see if there's anything that would assist
Speaker 1: me in finding him.
Speaker 2: Nothing in the letters offered any clues about where Les
Speaker 2: might be. So Ian spent the next couple of days
Speaker 2: making some inquiries.
Speaker 1: At that point, you know, it was still just a
Speaker 1: welfare thing. I was looking for this fellow. I spoke
Speaker 1: to solicitors, I spoke to the real estate I spoke
Speaker 1: to the people at the house that he was buying.
Speaker 2: Forty eight hours after he took Lechelle's call, Ian called
Speaker 2: her back and told her Les never moved into his
Speaker 2: new home. On the day he was supposed to collect
Speaker 2: the keys. He never showed up.
Speaker 3: It's a worse feeling in the life. Like I just
Speaker 3: was sick in the stomach because my dad wanted to
Speaker 3: move into that house. He was not not moving into
Speaker 3: that house. So I was like, well, where is my dad.
Speaker 3: Something's happened to him.
Speaker 4: So I was just like hysterical.
Speaker 2: That's something Ian didn't tell the shell.
Speaker 5: I thought he was dead.
Speaker 1: Someone's down this bloken and that was my feeling feeling.
Speaker 6: It's now been more than thirty years since Lachelle Ball
Speaker 6: made that phone call, and no one has seen or
Speaker 6: heard from les Ball.
Speaker 7: The police don't have the answers.
Speaker 6: Two coronial inquests have failed to find any answers. But
Speaker 6: we've spent more than two years digging into this cold case.
Speaker 6: We've uncovered clues that cops and coroners have missed, we
Speaker 6: found fabricated evidence and uncovered fraud. And our investigation has
Speaker 6: taken us from the suburbs of Townsville right down to
Speaker 6: the Melbourne underworld. And not only do we believe les
Speaker 6: Ball was murdered, we think we can prove who did it.
Speaker 6: I'm Joe Townsend and.
Speaker 2: I'm Callum Tanas. You're listening to Witness, the home of
Speaker 2: investigative podcasts for News dot com dot Au. This is
Speaker 2: our newer series, Perfect Alibi. Like Ian, I first met
Speaker 2: Michelle over the phone. I'm a journalist and TV producer
Speaker 2: and I mostly make true crime. Michelle wanted me to
Speaker 2: look into her dad's disappearance.
Speaker 3: I wanted someone that would actually like look at it
Speaker 3: and dolve deeper into it because obviously the justice system
Speaker 3: had failed us.
Speaker 2: Three police investigations and two coronial inquests have failed to
Speaker 2: find out what happened to Les or who's responsible. So
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure how I could help. But Lachelle's faced
Speaker 2: bigger obstacles than a skeptical journalist. Her whole life has
Speaker 2: been consumed by seeking justice for Les.
Speaker 3: I'll solve it one day. I'm never going to give
Speaker 3: up now not having it, I won't let it rest.
Speaker 2: So on a stinking hot day, Lachelle rode a bike
Speaker 2: to my house and dropped a thumb drive containing hundreds
Speaker 2: of documents into my letterbox, and suddenly it seemed like
Speaker 2: there might be more to this cold case than I
Speaker 2: first thought. That's when I brought in my colleague Joe
Speaker 2: Townshend to help me investigate, and since then we haven't stopped.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 7: Well, no, you don't.
Speaker 6: Need to be sorry in the slartest caw and I've
Speaker 6: been guess bagging.
Speaker 2: Me and Joe have got and to know Lachelle pretty
Speaker 2: well in the two years who have been working on
Speaker 2: this story.
Speaker 6: I was excused, mess, just just shut your eyes.
Speaker 2: If you've ever been to Bondai and observed the locals,
Speaker 2: you'll have a pretty good sense of what Lachelle looks like.
Speaker 2: She's tanned, clad, inactive where with a sleek black ponytail
Speaker 2: and bright white smile. And she has a tattoo on
Speaker 2: her left wrist the letters LB and curly writing.
Speaker 3: I just wanted something of my dad and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'll get his initials LB, les ball. It's my initials
Speaker 3: as well, just something on my body to have memory.
Speaker 2: Lachelle doesn't have much to remember Lesby, just an old wristwatch,
Speaker 2: some photos and childhood memories.
Speaker 3: He was a fantastic dad, like he was always there
Speaker 3: for me. He was yeah, great childhood father. Anything I wanted,
Speaker 3: or taking me to like the football matches, taking me
Speaker 3: to sports matches. He was just a good dad, you know,
Speaker 3: a fun loving dad.
Speaker 2: Le's was a World War Two veteran and like a
Speaker 2: lot of men of that generation, he was frugal and handy,
Speaker 2: the kind of guy who could build or fix anything.
Speaker 3: Built a cricket pitch for me to play cricket with
Speaker 3: at home, flying fox, anything I ever wanted.
Speaker 2: Apart from Lachelle, Les's great love in life was golf.
Speaker 2: If the game means anything to you, he played off
Speaker 2: a handicap of two. And if you don't know what
Speaker 2: that means, just consider the fact that Les single handedly
Speaker 2: built himself a nine hole golf course on the family property.
Speaker 2: He was golf crazy. He loved it.
Speaker 3: He used to teach me how to play golf.
Speaker 7: I wish he kept it up.
Speaker 2: Les was a slight fella, but fit and active.
Speaker 3: Also, he was very good looking, blue eyes, full head
Speaker 3: of hair, quite muscly, athletic because he's always doing something,
Speaker 3: always into his sport, very chann because he was always outdoors.
Speaker 2: Les had Lachelle with his second wife, Ethel Eisen. Everyone
Speaker 2: calls her Et. She lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
Speaker 2: Early one morning I flew up to me her am
Speaker 2: driving up the highway from Brisbane. I was excited to
Speaker 2: meet et because I'd been reading her diaries from when
Speaker 2: Les disappeared. I'm not a creep. L Shelle gave them
Speaker 2: to me. From her forensic entries, I got the sense
Speaker 2: that she was whip smart and fiercely protective of her daughter.
Speaker 2: Where After a few wrong turns, I found her modest
Speaker 2: unit in a retirement village where she now lives.
Speaker 5: Good.
Speaker 2: As a typical male, I did not listen to your instructions, No,
Speaker 2: not at all. Sitting in an armchair in her small
Speaker 2: living room, the walls covered with family photos, musical instruments.
Speaker 2: It's exactly the person i'd imagined.
Speaker 4: I'm eighteen, now you know, I sort of I'm what
Speaker 4: they call an old lady, now you know. I don't
Speaker 4: like it, but that's what I am. Oh God, I
Speaker 4: hate that tag.
Speaker 2: She's still fiercely protective of her daughter.
Speaker 4: I worry that Lachelle's never going to let it go,
Speaker 4: and she's always going to hope for the best and
Speaker 4: hope that something will come out. I pray about it
Speaker 4: all the time. But yeah, she will never let it go.
Speaker 4: Not in my day. She won't.
Speaker 2: Edenles married in nineteen seventy five, when Lachelle was four
Speaker 2: months old. Les was in his fifties and had four
Speaker 2: kids from a previous marriage, but was devoted to Lachelle
Speaker 2: as if she was his first.
Speaker 4: He was absolutely obsessed with that child from the moment
Speaker 4: that she was born. When we were coming home from
Speaker 4: the hospital with this tiny baby, he was so anxious
Speaker 4: about looking at her, and he was so obsessed with
Speaker 4: her that he almost re and well, he did run
Speaker 4: off the road a little bit, and I had to
Speaker 4: scream at him, watch the road. You know you can
Speaker 4: watch her when you get home. Yeah, but he was
Speaker 4: obsessed with that little girl.
Speaker 2: Ed Les and Lachelle, along with ET's two other children
Speaker 2: from a previous marriage, lived on the Sunshine Coast for.
Speaker 4: A little while. He was sort of king of the
Speaker 4: kids in the street because if they wanted anything fixed
Speaker 4: or and they bring it down to Les and he'd
Speaker 4: fix it. You No, no worries at all.
Speaker 2: It still has plenty of affection for Les. But the
Speaker 2: marriage wasn't great. Les was retired, which meant that ed
Speaker 2: was the breadwinner, so he spent his time playing golf
Speaker 2: and surprising his wife with half cooked schemes.
Speaker 4: He went out for low for bread one day and
Speaker 4: came home and Tommy, he'd bought a house. Oh god,
Speaker 4: I nearly killed him. And he bought this big house
Speaker 4: that was partly finished. And he actually finished that house
Speaker 4: and it was magnificus, a beautiful big home with a
Speaker 4: swimming pool.
Speaker 2: Once that scheme had come off, Les cooked up another,
Speaker 2: a plan to breed race horses. Without telling his wife,
Speaker 2: Les sold the family home kind.
Speaker 4: Of I'm telling you. He swapped that house for opals,
Speaker 4: and I had to trade out of them because he
Speaker 4: wasn't going to do it. Where's the money to build
Speaker 4: another house? Oh well, I don't know. He didn't think
Speaker 4: of that. Oh he was a sucker for a good deal,
Speaker 4: you know. And I remember being so furious with him
Speaker 4: that it was unbelievable.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety one, after sixteen years together, the marriage ended.
Speaker 4: I was feeding horses and I got jack of that better,
Speaker 4: couldn't speak sense, jeweie. Yeah, golf and horses was all
Speaker 4: he ever wanted to do.
Speaker 2: Let's was seventy, with two failed marriages behind him. He
Speaker 2: was flushed with cash from the divorce and ready for
Speaker 2: a change, so he decided to move up north to
Speaker 2: Townsville to live with Leanne Phillips. She's one of his
Speaker 2: daughters from his first marriage, and so she's Lachelle's half sister.
Speaker 2: Let's packed all of his things into a big, light
Speaker 2: blue trailer, hand built by Les, of course, and set
Speaker 2: off for Townsville. Lachelle was seventeen, and at that age
Speaker 2: most teenagers would do anything to avoid spending time with
Speaker 2: their parents, but she volunteered to join him and wrote
Speaker 2: passenger on their trip north.
Speaker 3: And then we put up out in front of the
Speaker 3: Phillips house. A week later, and we come in and
Speaker 3: then well, Lianne wasn't too happy to see me with
Speaker 3: dad because Dad hadn't told her.
Speaker 2: I don't think Leanne lived with her husband, David, and
Speaker 2: their four kids, Les and Lachelle. She had a room
Speaker 2: in one of the kid's bedrooms. The half sisters had
Speaker 2: never been close, but now they were under the same roof.
Speaker 2: They were at each other's throats.
Speaker 3: We were always arguing. We just never got on. I
Speaker 3: suppose I was a teenager, wasn't I? And she was
Speaker 3: in her thirties.
Speaker 2: Lachelle didn't Likene's husband either. She found David, a former
Speaker 2: cop from Victoria, intimidating.
Speaker 3: It was a man of not many words and like
Speaker 3: you were a little bit scared of him, though sunk
Speaker 3: about him. I didn't argue with him. I never really
Speaker 3: spoke to him. To the truth, Yeah, he didn't really
Speaker 3: speak to anyone.
Speaker 2: On Lachelle's eighteenth birthday, the tension that had been building
Speaker 2: up for a couple of weeks boiled over.
Speaker 3: That was singing Happy Birthday, and I ended up throwing
Speaker 3: the birthday cake in her face and running out and
Speaker 3: ringing my mum.
Speaker 2: It arranged for Lachelle to leave the Phillips and return
Speaker 2: to the Sunshine Coast, and she left the house that night.
Speaker 2: It was relieved. She'd been uneasy about Lachelle living in
Speaker 2: David's house. Call it a mother's intuition.
Speaker 4: She'd got a bit frightened of David up there. It
Speaker 4: was more of gut Feeley. She knew she needed.
Speaker 5: To get out.
Speaker 2: Lachelle went back to live with Et and life became
Speaker 2: quieter in the Phillips household. Les shifted from one of
Speaker 2: the kid's bedrooms into the garage. He and LeeAnne had
Speaker 2: a close relationship, and Les would often pick up the
Speaker 2: four kids from school. In December nineteen ninety two, he
Speaker 2: put a deposit on a block of land not far
Speaker 2: from where the Phillips were renting. The plan was to
Speaker 2: build a house for the family to live in. Les
Speaker 2: was a builder, That's what he did. It's not clear
Speaker 2: if it was a gift or alone, but just a
Speaker 2: couple of months later, in February nineteen ninety three, things
Speaker 2: began to sour. That's when Les's first ex wife, Margaret,
Speaker 2: the one he was married to before Yt, came to
Speaker 2: stay with the Phillips to help out around the house
Speaker 2: while Leanne was in hospital.
Speaker 3: Our dad couldn't stand and do want anything to do
Speaker 3: with her. They'd have a lot of fights, like Margaret
Speaker 3: was screaming at him what he'd be screaming.
Speaker 2: This isn't just Lachelle's characterization. Everybody from every warring faction
Speaker 2: of Less's family agrees that he and Margaret couldn't stand
Speaker 2: each other. And so just a couple of weeks after
Speaker 2: his ex came to stay, Les tried to hit the
Speaker 2: eject button. He decided he'd move out of the Phillips
Speaker 2: house and by a home of his own. He told
Speaker 2: his real estate agent that he was sick of being
Speaker 2: the Phillips family babysitter.
Speaker 1: He obviously wasn't happy in his living arrangements. It appeared
Speaker 1: that the situation wasn't harmonious in that household, and basically
Speaker 1: this was one of the main reasons that he was
Speaker 1: moving the card well to get away from that situation.
Speaker 2: Les wasn't looking for long. He bought the second house
Speaker 2: he saw.
Speaker 3: It was an old Queenslander house, two levels, It was
Speaker 3: behind a golf course and he had the beach around
Speaker 3: the corner. He was very happy and you're excited to
Speaker 3: be moving in there. It was absolutely perfect for him
Speaker 3: his dream house.
Speaker 2: Basically, So, Joe, how much do you reckon a two bedroom,
Speaker 2: freestanding home in tropical paradise cost les back in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three.
Speaker 6: Okay, so it's the early nineties. I'm going to go
Speaker 6: with three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Well, you're only a few hundred grand. Half it actually
Speaker 2: cost seventy thousand dollars. I know, it actually hurts. So
Speaker 2: it was a cash sale. He put down a seven
Speaker 2: thousand dollar deposit and when the settlement date came around
Speaker 2: and he picked up the keys, he'd pay the rest
Speaker 2: of the balance, which was sixty three thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: He must have been so keen to move if he
Speaker 6: only looked at two houses and bought the second one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was really planning on moving too, because
Speaker 2: he changed all his addresses over. He opened a new
Speaker 2: bank account in Cardwell. He even volunteered to pay for
Speaker 2: twelve months of home insurance upfront.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're not going to pay twelve months of home
Speaker 6: insurance upfront if you have no plans of living in
Speaker 6: the house. And for me, the idea of changing your
Speaker 6: address with really important things like veterans affairs. He was
Speaker 6: a World War Two vet, and he really would have
Speaker 6: wanted people to know where he lived. It just seems
Speaker 6: so unlikely that he would have gotten cold feet on
Speaker 6: this sale after doing all of that and paying all
Speaker 6: that money exactly.
Speaker 2: And he was also really eager to move because he
Speaker 2: actually tried to bring the whole thing forward, but he
Speaker 2: couldn't quite get the money together. So this settlement date
Speaker 2: was set from Monday, the nineteenth of April, which is
Speaker 2: just after Easter in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 3: I spoke to my dad at Easter time and I said,
Speaker 3: where can I send your present? I had photos of
Speaker 3: myself that I wanted to send him, and he goes,
Speaker 3: send it to my new address because I won't be here.
Speaker 3: Just send everything to my new address, and gave me
Speaker 3: his address.
Speaker 2: Lachelle posted Lester's present and photos to his new address
Speaker 2: in card Well, but there was no reply.
Speaker 3: After a week. I'm like, gee, where's Dad hasn't wrung
Speaker 3: me or Anything's woody weird.
Speaker 2: When Lachelle tried to call Les's new home, she discovered
Speaker 2: the phone hadn't been connected. So Lachelle wrote him another
Speaker 2: letter and she paid for priority post, so it would
Speaker 2: be in his letterbox the next day.
Speaker 3: My second letter was like, Dad, I'm really worried about you.
Speaker 3: You never got back to me. You haven't wrung me,
Speaker 3: you haven't sent me anything back. Please, I'm really really worried.
Speaker 3: Can you just get in contact with me.
Speaker 2: No reply. Lachelle's now frantic. Les hadn't called her for weeks,
Speaker 2: or replied to two of letters, or even connected the
Speaker 2: home phone to his new house. And back then, connecting
Speaker 2: the landline was the first thing you did when you
Speaker 2: moved in.
Speaker 3: I rang the Phillips's house and David got on the
Speaker 3: phone and I said, where's my father. He's not getting
Speaker 3: back to me, and he goes, I don't know. He
Speaker 3: visited Leanne in hospital about a week ago. I went, okay,
Speaker 3: well he's not at using your address, and so then
Speaker 3: hung up with him.
Speaker 2: Lachelle's next call was to in the Nests in Cardwell.
Speaker 2: Lachelle's mum Et jumped on the phone too. She called
Speaker 2: everyone Les's family, police, even David and Leanne's family, to
Speaker 2: try and locate her ex husband.
Speaker 4: Now, that was never any love match between Lesson and I,
Speaker 4: but he was the father of my child and it
Speaker 4: was my responsibility to help her find him because she
Speaker 4: loved him. He loved her, and that was all I
Speaker 4: needed to know.
Speaker 2: Lachelle meanwhile, kept on replaying in her head something Less
Speaker 2: had said to her back at Easter.
Speaker 3: He whispitched to me on the phone. I can't wait
Speaker 3: to get out of here. It's haunted me for years
Speaker 3: because like I didn't really think about it, Like I
Speaker 3: just thought it was just they was sending him crazy.
Speaker 3: And if I'd asked him, what was the real reason
Speaker 3: or just I don't know. Yeah, now thinking about it's
Speaker 3: very daunting, like that my dad might have felt threatened
Speaker 3: or something. I don't know.
Speaker 6: It was now six weeks since Lachelle had heard from Les,
Speaker 6: and on the twenty second of May nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 6: she filed an official missing person's report, and that meant
Speaker 6: Townsville Detective Noel Powers took up the investigation. Noel's retired
Speaker 6: now and spends his time driving a bus for people
Speaker 6: with disabilities.
Speaker 5: We're trying to sort of keep it nice and even
Speaker 5: and everything and definitely no please speak, okay.
Speaker 6: But old habits die hard. He still sounds like a
Speaker 6: cop from Central Casting.
Speaker 5: So Lachelle instigated, you know, instigator called a Cardwell police.
Speaker 5: They made a couple of inquiries, one of them was
Speaker 5: with the local real estate agent, and it turned out
Speaker 5: that he hadn't turned up. The settlement hadn't been made.
Speaker 6: On Monday, the nineteenth of April, the settlement day, when
Speaker 6: Les was supposed to pay the remaining sixty three thousand
Speaker 6: dollars and collect the keys to his new home, he
Speaker 6: never showed up. Being a no show meant losing his
Speaker 6: seven thousand dollars deposit, and this wasn't at all like
Speaker 6: frugal Les, especially since he'd already tried to bring the
Speaker 6: settlement forward before Easter.
Speaker 5: He poured a bit of money into the house in Cardwell.
Speaker 5: It was quite obvious that he intended to settle down
Speaker 5: there and make the he's forever home. And then all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, it just it stopped, basically dropped off
Speaker 5: the earth, and there was no sign of his account
Speaker 5: being active.
Speaker 6: Nol Powers needed to work out when and where Lez
Speaker 6: had last been seen, so he started with the people.
Speaker 6: Lez had been living with, his daughter Leanne and son
Speaker 6: in law David Phillips.
Speaker 5: So we kicked off with them. They provide a bit
Speaker 5: of background information when he'd last been seen.
Speaker 6: Finding out where and when Les was last scenes sounds simple,
Speaker 6: but it turns out no one could agree on the
Speaker 6: exact day he'd gone missing. David told police that he
Speaker 6: last saw Lez as he left for work on a
Speaker 6: Friday morning. Leanne said she saw Les a week later
Speaker 6: when he visited her in hospital in Brisbane.
Speaker 5: She said he didn't stay all that long, just inquired
Speaker 5: about how she was going, and that he was going
Speaker 5: to visit Lachelle up on the Sunshine Coast, and according
Speaker 5: to her, that's the last he's ever been seen of.
Speaker 6: Brisbane is over thirteen hundred kilometers from Townsville.
Speaker 7: It's not an easy trip to make.
Speaker 6: Leanne told police that Les said he'd made the journey
Speaker 6: by train, which would take about twenty four hours.
Speaker 7: When Noel checked.
Speaker 6: Her story, he found that on Monday, the nineteenth of April,
Speaker 6: the same day Les was supposed to be in Cardwell
Speaker 6: for settlement, he was instead in Townsville collecting his train ticket.
Speaker 6: And he did something odd. He booked an onward journey
Speaker 6: from Brisbane to Dolby.
Speaker 5: And for the information of listeners, Dolby's probably a good
Speaker 5: ar four hours west of Brisbane.
Speaker 6: What on Earth would Les be doing in Dolby when
Speaker 6: he told Leanne he was going to the Sunshine Coast
Speaker 6: to visit Lachelle.
Speaker 5: When we put that to both David and Leanne later on,
Speaker 5: they are on aware they didn't know where Dolby is.
Speaker 6: Lez's ex wife, et Iison, was just as confused when
Speaker 6: she heard about the train ticket to Dolby.
Speaker 4: Now you know where Dolby is, It's in the middle
Speaker 4: of nowhere.
Speaker 6: In fact, Dolby seemed like the last place on Earth
Speaker 6: Les would be traveling to. He'd been there once as
Speaker 6: a young man working on a farm as a jackaroo
Speaker 6: on a station, and he hated the place so much
Speaker 6: he vowed never to return it. Thought the whole idea
Speaker 6: sounded absurd, so she got on the phone.
Speaker 4: I rang the station master. Did he remember anybody of
Speaker 4: that description? Getting off? No, he didn't remember it.
Speaker 7: Rang all the hotels in Dolby. Nobody had seen Lez.
Speaker 6: Nobody at Townsville train station could recall seeing Les either,
Speaker 6: but they'd seen his car because it had been abandoned
Speaker 6: in the car park.
Speaker 7: The car bothered nol for two reasons.
Speaker 6: First, why wouldn't Les just leave his car parked at
Speaker 6: the Phillips house, it'd be safer there than at the
Speaker 6: train station. And second, where was his distinctive looking homemade
Speaker 6: trailer that was usually attached to his car. It wasn't
Speaker 6: at the Phillips house or the train station. The trailer
Speaker 6: had just vanished.
Speaker 5: There was no sign of that trailer. There was no
Speaker 5: indication where it could be, so again, that was something
Speaker 5: of concern for us.
Speaker 6: Ten days after she saw Les in hospital, Leanne arrived
Speaker 6: back home in Townsville, but her dad's car, his trailer,
Speaker 6: and all of his possessions were gone, and the garage
Speaker 6: which had contained all of Less's possessions was empty. By
Speaker 6: the time Lachelle filed that missing person's report with Noel,
Speaker 6: it had been five weeks since.
Speaker 7: The Phillips family had seen him. So why didn't they
Speaker 7: report him missus? They told nol.
Speaker 6: It was because Lez had a habit of going missing,
Speaker 6: taking impromptu off grid trips, and returning home to his
Speaker 6: worried family whenever he felt like it.
Speaker 5: Prone to just packing up and going off on his own,
Speaker 5: not keeping contact with anyone, go away for you know,
Speaker 5: periods of time, not long periods of time, but then
Speaker 5: just rock up again as if nothing had happened, and
Speaker 5: I think they seem to believe that this is just
Speaker 5: simply another one of these instances.
Speaker 6: If this was true, it wouldn't just explain why the
Speaker 6: Phillips never reported Les missing. It would present police with
Speaker 6: another explanation for what could have happened to him. Maybe
Speaker 6: the trip to Dolby was another one of his frequent
Speaker 6: unannounced trips away, and maybe while on that trip he
Speaker 6: met some sort of misadventure, like a snake bite or
Speaker 6: a bad fall.
Speaker 2: But Et and.
Speaker 6: Lachelle they reckon Lez would never just take off and disappear.
Speaker 4: Leanne told him that all her life the father had
Speaker 4: gone wandering. Well maybe he had when they were all
Speaker 4: younger and they were married. I don't know, but we
Speaker 4: knew where he was, and he would ring and want
Speaker 4: to talk to Lachelle. He never went away for weeks
Speaker 4: on end.
Speaker 3: I would always know where my dad was. Not once
Speaker 3: would my dad ever take off and I wouldn't know
Speaker 3: where he was.
Speaker 2: Ever.
Speaker 6: It's worth pointing out here that both things can be true.
Speaker 6: That Les always told Edon Lachelle where he was going,
Speaker 6: but would often take off without telling David and Leanne.
Speaker 6: What stood out to noel powers as a police officer, though,
Speaker 6: was that the Phillips family didn't seem to take Les's
Speaker 6: disappearance all that seriously.
Speaker 5: From memory, there was there wasn't a great deal of concern.
Speaker 5: Lachelle in particular, was in contact with me and with
Speaker 5: us quite frequently, wanting to know what was going on,
Speaker 5: asking how we're going? Had you do this? Did you
Speaker 5: do that? That's what you do expect of a family
Speaker 5: involved in this sort of situation. Whereas Nan and David
Speaker 5: was nothing. There was no contact.
Speaker 6: Everything nol had learned up to this point, Les forfeiting
Speaker 6: his deposit. The business with the car and the trailer
Speaker 6: fell into the something doesn't feel right here category. Take
Speaker 6: the supposed train trip to Brisbane. Noel couldn't explain why Lez,
Speaker 6: a thrifty pensioner, was at Townsville, collecting the ticket when
Speaker 6: he was supposed to be in Cardwell. Seven grand was
Speaker 6: a lot of money back in the nineteen nineties, especially
Speaker 6: for Les, the thrifty pensioner. There was no way he'd
Speaker 6: forfeit that or his dream retirement home. But then the
Speaker 6: investigation unearthed a piece of evidence that screamed foul play.
Speaker 6: Les had booked a pension affair, so when he picked
Speaker 6: up the ticket, he had to show the cashier his
Speaker 6: pension card and signed for the ticket.
Speaker 5: We had the handwriting analysis of that signature done and
Speaker 5: was obviously was not leases.
Speaker 6: Handwriting analysis sounds very CSI, but it doesn't take a
Speaker 6: trained eye to see that this is a forgery when
Speaker 6: you line it up with less authentic signature. These two
Speaker 6: signatures at the top are Lezzes.
Speaker 2: Yep, so they're pretty uniform. That's La ball in quite
Speaker 2: neat kind of cursive handwriting.
Speaker 6: And you see how the R is written really neatly
Speaker 6: in that open style. Now this signature is forged. Look
Speaker 6: at the bottom one there that are.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's completely flubbed. It's like someone panicked halfway
Speaker 2: through doing it and gave up.
Speaker 6: But there was a chance that lez had just disguised
Speaker 6: his signature for whatever reason. So Noel looked into the
Speaker 6: train journey itself.
Speaker 5: We had a booking reference number who'd used his pension card,
Speaker 5: and then as inquiries per rest, we found out that
Speaker 5: the ticket had been mark with a file to show fts.
Speaker 6: In the nineteen nineties, train tickets were checked by hand
Speaker 6: by a conductor.
Speaker 7: The process was really thorough.
Speaker 6: They walked up and down the aisle, ticking names off
Speaker 6: their seating plan.
Speaker 7: When the conductor on the trip to.
Speaker 6: Brisbane reached seat thirty nine, Les's booked seat, he wasn't there.
Speaker 6: They walked the length of the carriage looking for Les
Speaker 6: and checked his seat again. In eight hours, he never
Speaker 6: got on that train to Brisbane or the next trip
Speaker 6: from Brisbane to Dolby. Police were just as thorough as
Speaker 6: those nineteen ninety three train conductors, checking with airlines and
Speaker 6: bus companies to see if they had any reservations in
Speaker 6: Les's name.
Speaker 5: We even went so far as to in Aviereau, lady
Speaker 5: young English backpacker who'd been traveling around hers was the
Speaker 5: seat next to time where Les's was allocated, where it
Speaker 5: was booked, and she was quite chuffed, obviously because she
Speaker 5: had two seats to herself all the way down the bridbone.
Speaker 6: The question of why Les was in Townsville collecting a
Speaker 6: train ticket when he was supposed to be in Cardwell
Speaker 6: collecting the keys to his new home was solved. It
Speaker 6: wasn't Les, It was someone impersonating him at the ticket
Speaker 6: booth and forging his signature.
Speaker 5: This is probably your home moment.
Speaker 6: Of course, that raised all sorts of different and more
Speaker 6: troubling questions.
Speaker 5: So what's happened to him, what's going on, who's hiding,
Speaker 5: who's not telling us what's going on.
Speaker 6: Les hadn't blown off his house settlement to go traveling,
Speaker 6: but somebody wanted to make it look like he had.
Speaker 5: And it sort of turns the investigation more or less
Speaker 5: from a missing person into a potential homicide. Sorry, Les
Speaker 5: has disappeared off the face of the earth. It's as
Speaker 5: simple as that.
Speaker 6: Coming up on perfect alibi and he said, don't hang up,
Speaker 6: it's me.
Speaker 4: He said, I'm being buked and you're probably being buked
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 8: All he wanted to do was Pellatroth and used words
Speaker 8: the fate of He almost wrapped his win patment. And
Speaker 8: I truly believed that he was the person that murdered LESBOI, that.
Speaker 3: He died being bashed to death.
Speaker 2: It was just horrific.
Speaker 4: It was terrible.
Speaker 6: If you've got more information on this case, you can
Speaker 6: contact us at Les Bowl podcast at ProtonMail dot com.
Speaker 6: That's l EESBA Double L Podcast at ProtonMail dot com.