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Speaker 1: It didn't should the window, didn't should picture on the wall,

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Speaker 1: didn't shod the bed head. It didn't shoot him in

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Speaker 1: the knee or party's hair, or knock his right or

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Speaker 1: left arm. About what it did was shoot him extremely dead.

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Speaker 1: Lorraine was feeding him enough arsenic to kill Farlap. And

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Speaker 1: the reason for this is Lorraine I was conducting a

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Speaker 1: very torrid affair with one of Johnny Moss's workmates. I'm

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Speaker 1: Andrew Rule. This is Life and Crimes. Today we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about a group of people some people call

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Speaker 1: black widows. Now, I don't know if they're call on.

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Speaker 2: Black widows because of the black widow spider.

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Speaker 1: That's the spider that's renowned because the female of the

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Speaker 1: species eats the male of the species after they reproduce.

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Speaker 1: It could be, but anyway, it's the name that everyone understands.

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Speaker 1: When we talk about black widows, we're generally talking about

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Speaker 1: women who may or may not have caused the death

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Speaker 1: of their husband or other intimate partner. And today we're

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Speaker 1: going to look at several cases. Three of them were

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Speaker 1: convicted of unlawful killings and one was not. And we

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Speaker 1: point that out. Now, the one that attracts our attention.

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Speaker 1: First up is the interesting case of Margaret Utley. Margaret

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Speaker 1: Erica Utley. Like a lot of people in the past,

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Speaker 1: she was married young. She married at twenty years old

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Speaker 1: to a twenty year old young farmer, a young guy

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Speaker 1: called Stephen Henry Utley. And Stephen Henry Utley farmed a

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Speaker 1: block i think growing vegetables, mostly down on the Werribee

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Speaker 1: River out on the other side of Weerriby at Tarneq

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Speaker 1: now Tarnique these days is one of the newer out

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Speaker 1: western suburbs, but back in the seventies, eighties nineties it

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Speaker 1: was very much still a farming district beyond Weeraby and

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Speaker 1: Stephen Utley was a farmer there and he and his wife, Margaret, they.

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Speaker 2: Had four kids.

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Speaker 1: She was known as a hard working, diligent, pretty respectable

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Speaker 1: sort of woman, and Stephen was known, I think over

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Speaker 1: time as a hard drinking, probably depressive sort of guy.

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Speaker 1: And after twenty five years of this it had reached

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Speaker 1: the stage where Stephen Utley would apparently drink heavily every

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Speaker 1: night and his only concern was to get his wife

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Speaker 1: Margaret to drive him around as if she was a

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Speaker 1: taxi driver into Werriby, to various pubs and home again,

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Speaker 1: and life had become fairly miserable for her and her

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Speaker 1: four children, who were at this stage quite mature. I

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Speaker 1: think the youngest one was a secondary school but the

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Speaker 1: others were young adults. And given they've been married twenty

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Speaker 1: five years in the year two thousand, therefore kids ranged

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Speaker 1: in age from about twenty four down to fifteen something

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Speaker 1: like that. The last time that Stephen Utley's friends saw

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Speaker 1: him was at a barbecue on a Sunday night around

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Speaker 1: whereby somewhere, I think it was Sunday, October the eighth,

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Speaker 1: in the year two thousand, so this is only one

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Speaker 1: week after the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. That

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Speaker 1: gives us the era usual thing, he'd been to a barbecue,

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Speaker 1: got a belly full of grog and went home. Now

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Speaker 1: no one now knows how he got home. Did he

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Speaker 1: take a taxi or did Margaret pick him up as usual,

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Speaker 1: or did he get a ride with one of his mates.

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Speaker 1: But the last time his mate's remember seeing him was

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Speaker 1: that night. Now he vanishes. Margaret tells her friends and

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Speaker 1: family that Stephen has bolted, that he's left her and

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Speaker 1: gone to the Northern Territory, that you know, finally the

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Speaker 1: straw breaks the camel's back. They've been arguing and fighting.

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Speaker 1: He's a drunken, a big problem, and he's said, bugger it.

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Speaker 1: I'm off to the Northern Territory to work on a

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Speaker 1: cattle station, and I'm going with you, Tom.

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Speaker 2: Dick or Harry whatever.

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Speaker 1: This is the story she tells everybody in the following

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Speaker 1: days and weeks that Stephen's left her and he's gone

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Speaker 1: up north. And it would appear that those closest to

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Speaker 1: Margaret Utley believe this, or believed it sufficiently not to

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Speaker 1: question it in any real way. It'd be interesting to

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Speaker 1: know what her adult children thought, but presumably they were

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Speaker 1: sort of more on mom's side than dad's side. Apparently,

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Speaker 1: Stephen's siblings he has at least two sisters, weren't all that.

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Speaker 2: Happy about this.

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Speaker 1: Stephen's their mother was dead at this stage, so there

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Speaker 1: were no sort of parents to look into Stephen's whereabouts,

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Speaker 1: and Stephen had been a sufficiently loose unit that it

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Speaker 1: made some sort of sense that he might disappear and

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Speaker 1: not be seen for a while. But as time wore on,

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Speaker 1: the nagging suspicions of relatives, friends, neighbors, drinking buddies started

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Speaker 1: to become stronger because no one heard a word from him.

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Speaker 1: No Christmas, no birthdays, no this, no that. And eventually

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Speaker 1: I think Stephen's sisters probably caused the police to look

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Speaker 1: into it. And when they did look into it, they

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Speaker 1: went and interviewed Margaret utterly, and she said, you know,

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Speaker 1: he left sometime that week, said he was going to

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Speaker 1: the Northern Territory with with his mate, and I haven't

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Speaker 1: seen him since. And she stuck to that story, but

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Speaker 1: she didn't.

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Speaker 2: It very long.

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Speaker 1: The police are pretty good at interviewing.

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Speaker 2: People, and perhaps they saw that there was a.

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Speaker 1: Bit of a chink in her armor, that she wasn't

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Speaker 1: as resolute and as defiant as she might be, and

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Speaker 1: they kept at her and in the end she threw

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Speaker 1: her hands up and said, now I'll tell you what

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Speaker 1: really happened. And Margaret Utley's version of what really happened

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Speaker 1: goes something like this. She says that on two AM,

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Speaker 1: so this early morning, after midnight of the eleventh of October,

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Speaker 1: it's in a sense the Tuesday night, but it's after midnight,

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Speaker 1: so it's the next morning. She says that as usual

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Speaker 1: Stephen stayed up late drinking and was very drunk and

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Speaker 1: very aggressive and nasty, and that he came into their

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Speaker 1: bedroom or her bedroom, in the dark with a loaded shotgun.

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Speaker 1: Now I'm not sure how she knew in the dark

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Speaker 1: what he was holding, and whether she knew it was

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Speaker 1: a loaded shotgun or an empty shop gun or what,

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Speaker 1: but this.

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Speaker 2: Is the story.

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Speaker 1: She says that she was able to grab the shotgun.

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Speaker 1: A man handled it away from her husband, who, to

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Speaker 1: be fair to her, was not a terribly big man,

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Speaker 1: and he was a drunk man, so you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: she couldn't. She says she wrestled the shotgun from her

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Speaker 1: husband and that she managed, obviously to reverse it. She

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Speaker 1: didn't just pull it towards us. She was able to

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Speaker 1: turn it around and lo and behold, amazingly, it went off,

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Speaker 1: as sometimes guns seemed to do in these circumstances, they

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Speaker 1: just go off by themselves. And it went off by itself,

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Speaker 1: and amazingly, of all the places that could have shot,

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Speaker 1: it didn't shot the window, didn't shot the picture on

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Speaker 1: the wall, didn't shit the bed head, It didn't shoot

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Speaker 1: him in the knee or party hair, or knock his

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Speaker 1: right or left arm about what it did was shoot

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Speaker 1: him extremely dead. So it hit him in a vital swat,

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Speaker 1: if not the head, then fair and square around his heart,

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Speaker 1: and that killed him. And interestingly, she would later assert

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Speaker 1: that her two younger children and by this woman, an adult,

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Speaker 1: a young adult old enough to drive a car, maybe nineteen,

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Speaker 1: and her youngest one who was at high school maybe

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Speaker 1: fifteen something, that they were asleep in the house at

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Speaker 1: the time. Now that is amazing, because this is a quiet,

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Speaker 1: smallish and very quiet farmhouse out on ninety hectares of farmland,

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Speaker 1: surrounded by other farmland. It's not a suburb. It's farmland

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Speaker 1: and pretty quiet and peaceful at night, particularly back in

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Speaker 1: that era. And a shotgun, a twelve grade shotgun in

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Speaker 1: a house is a massive, explosive and deafening raw. It's

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Speaker 1: a very loud noise, and I think unless the two

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Speaker 1: up children had really good earplugs in that night to

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Speaker 1: stop them hearing all the crickets that you might hear

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Speaker 1: on a silent night, it would wake them. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: her story is that they were asleep in the house

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Speaker 1: elsewhere in the house and didn't hear a thing but

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Speaker 1: their presence. She would later instruct a lawyer to tell

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Speaker 1: a court their presence means that she could not have

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Speaker 1: premeditated murder because of course her kids were there. So

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Speaker 1: who would premeditate a murder with a shotgun when your

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Speaker 1: kids are there? Because they'd hear it, wouldn't they. This

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Speaker 1: is very interesting to me. I find it fascinating that

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Speaker 1: this would happen in this way and at work the

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Speaker 1: judge copt it said yep, I'll believe that, and ultimately

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Speaker 1: a judge would believe her or her defense case, which

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Speaker 1: was I think slightly contrived in my view, but anyway,

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Speaker 1: she was very well advised.

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Speaker 2: Her solicitor was.

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Speaker 1: One of the most shrewd crime lawyers, particularly on that

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Speaker 1: side of the West Cape Bridge. We won't name him here,

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Speaker 1: but trust me he's good, and her counsel, her barrister

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Speaker 1: was mister Phil Dunn, who we have mentioned him many

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Speaker 1: times in our podcast. He is criminal legal royalty, very

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Speaker 1: very good at it, and they were able to sell

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Speaker 1: or tell Margaret Utley's tale in court very well, and

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Speaker 1: it went so well that Margaret Utly pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

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Speaker 1: We should point out that previously the police did not

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Speaker 1: get to talk to Margaret Utly for some years, and

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Speaker 1: it really wasn't until two thousand and seven that the

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Speaker 1: going got tough for her, because it took that long,

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Speaker 1: and we're talking a time of six and a half

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Speaker 1: odd years for the suspicions to grow into accusation, and

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Speaker 1: the accusations to prompt the police to go and talk

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Speaker 1: to her. And so for those years Margaret Utley had

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Speaker 1: basically lived the life of a grass widow. She was

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Speaker 1: home on the farm with whichever of her children were

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Speaker 1: still there with her, and life went on. And in

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Speaker 1: that time, you know, those people who knew her, perhaps

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Speaker 1: apart from Stephen Utley's immediate family, the Utley family, leave

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Speaker 1: them out for the minute, but those other people who

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Speaker 1: knew were neighbors, friends, community people regarded her as a

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Speaker 1: good citizen, a good woman, kind hearted, hard working, decent

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Speaker 1: in every way. She formed a relationship with a local

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Speaker 1: man who I think proposed to her later when she

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Speaker 1: was in jail. But she certainly formed a relationship with

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Speaker 1: this man who already had children from his previous marriage.

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Speaker 1: And one of the witnesses to Margaret at least good

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Speaker 1: character was her new partner's ex. Her new partner's X

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Speaker 1: said I've got no beef with Margaret. She's nice, she's good,

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Speaker 1: and when my children go to stay at her place

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Speaker 1: with my ex husband, I'm quite happy about it because

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Speaker 1: she's really good. And so when it came time for

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Speaker 1: the judge, Judge Osborne, to rule how much time she

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Speaker 1: should serve, he took all of those good references into

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Speaker 1: account and said she was a good character, and he

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Speaker 1: sentenced her to five years for pleading guilty to manslaughter

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Speaker 1: with a two year minimum, which meant that with the

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Speaker 1: time she'd already served on remand she actually was in

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Speaker 1: jail for less than two years. She went into jail

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Speaker 1: in the middle of two thousand and nine and walked

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Speaker 1: out of jail a Taran Gower Women's prison up him

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Speaker 1: Aden in late twenty ten. Not a bad trick if

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Speaker 1: you can do it. The interesting thing about Margaret Utley

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Speaker 1: is that after she got out of prison, her good

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Speaker 1: luck got even better. She served, you know, two years

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Speaker 1: for manslaughter rather than many years for murder. Good And

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Speaker 1: then it turns out that the property which had been

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Speaker 1: gifted to her late husband by her mother in law

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Speaker 1: who was dead, was now controlled effectively by her children

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Speaker 1: and effectively by herself. So she and her kids had

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Speaker 1: inherited ninety hectares at tarant which had just been rezoned

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Speaker 1: as a new suburb. And so the ninety hectares of

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Speaker 1: relatively ordinary farmland on which they struggled to make a

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Speaker 1: living suddenly was real estate that was sold by the foot.

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Speaker 1: And so that block of farmland was worth anywhere between,

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Speaker 1: you know, fifteen and twenty one million dollars. So that

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Speaker 1: was falling on your feet. And perhaps because of her

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Speaker 1: millionaire status, million hair status, she hadn't actually got the

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Speaker 1: millions in her pocket, but she could expect not to

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Speaker 1: be too poor in the future. She joined a syndicate

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Speaker 1: in racing a race horse. Now, any of you out

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Speaker 1: there that takes an interest in the gallops and in

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Speaker 1: punting will have heard of the horse in which Margaret.

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Speaker 2: Utley had a share. That horse was a very.

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Speaker 1: Good sprinter, not a champion of champions, but he was

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Speaker 1: one of the better and most durable sprinters in Victoria.

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Speaker 1: In fact, he won five races down the straight six

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Speaker 1: at Flemington. He won over several seasons, and he won

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Speaker 1: a total of close to nine hundred thousand in state money,

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Speaker 1: which means if his owners had been backing him, especially

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Speaker 1: on those big days at Flemington. They probably grossed a

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Speaker 1: million dollars out of the horse, which makes that horse

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Speaker 1: a remarkable success compared with ninety nine and a half

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Speaker 1: percent of race horses. But it's the name of the

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Speaker 1: horse that is the most excellent part about it. Because

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Speaker 1: Margaret Utley, who was accused by some people of murdering

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Speaker 1: her husband, was convicted and pleaded guilty to manslaughter of

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Speaker 1: her husband after becoming a very serious suspect for his death,

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Speaker 1: that horse was called serious suspect. The spelling is s

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Speaker 1: I R I us and then suspect, but still when

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Speaker 1: you say it, it is serious suspect, and his breeding

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Speaker 1: a leads to that name. He is by the stallion wanted. Now,

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Speaker 1: Margaret Utley is just one of a handful of people

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Speaker 1: that we're going to look at black widows. Another one

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Speaker 1: that her name has come up over the journey, and

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Speaker 1: some listeners might recall it was Lorraine Moss. Now Lorrain

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Speaker 1: Moss was the Bendigo poisoner, or one of the Bendigo poisoners.

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Speaker 1: She's not the only Bendigo poisoner. And Lorrain Moss was married,

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Speaker 1: probably young like Margaret to a bloke called Leonard John Moss,

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Speaker 1: and he was known always as Johnny Johnny Moss, and

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Speaker 1: he was a meat worker at Bendigo and they lived

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Speaker 1: locally out on the outskirts of Bendigo and one of

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Speaker 1: the suburbs out there.

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Speaker 2: And he used to pack hiss.

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Speaker 1: Cut lunch in the mornings and go off to work

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Speaker 1: at the meat works or small goods factory whatever it

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Speaker 1: was like that, and they had a couple of kids,

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Speaker 1: and you know, life went on. They had a holden

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Speaker 1: and probably a dog all that, and lo and behold

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Speaker 1: in the early eighties, poor oh Johnny Moss starts to

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Speaker 1: get sick, and he gets very sick. He gets terrible

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Speaker 1: stomach pains, and he loses weight and he's in diabolical trouble.

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Speaker 1: And he gets taken to hospital and they look at

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Speaker 1: him and they examine him, and they feed him hospital

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Speaker 1: food and all the rest of it. And his ever

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Speaker 1: loving wife Lorraine comes in and gives him grapes and stuff.

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Speaker 1: And when he's in hospital, he improves, He gradually improves

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Speaker 1: and he gets a bit better and he goes home

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Speaker 1: and he's wanting to go back to work at the meatworks,

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Speaker 1: and sometimes she would pack his cut lunch to go

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Speaker 1: to work at the meatworks. One day he didn't feel

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Speaker 1: up to eating his ham sandwiches or whatever, and he

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Speaker 1: gave him to a couple of his mates, who are

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Speaker 1: always hungry and they like kids at school. The mate

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Speaker 1: said that the sandwiches and lo and behold the two

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Speaker 1: mates get crooked. One of them was off work for

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Speaker 1: months and it didn't kill him, but nearly did. And

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Speaker 1: this was an amazing business that these fellows would be sick,

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Speaker 1: and was very puzzled. And the really strange thing was

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Speaker 1: that when Johnny Moss came home from hospital to effectively

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Speaker 1: recuperate at home, suddenly his condition would get worse. He

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Speaker 1: would go downhill. And the problem was that Lorraine was

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Speaker 1: feeding him enough arsenic to kill farlap. And the reason

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Speaker 1: for this is the actual reason, was that Lorraine was

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Speaker 1: conducting a very torrid affair with one of Johnny Moss's workmates,

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Speaker 1: a blood called White. That's whyte and that was her motivation.

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Speaker 1: She wanted to get rid of Johnny Bath in their

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Speaker 1: thirties at this stage so she could take up with loverboy.

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Speaker 1: And a bit of bad luck intervened here, a bit

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Speaker 1: of inefficiency in the system. The Austin Hospital did tests

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Speaker 1: on Johnny Moss, and those tests, had they been not lost,

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Speaker 1: which they were for a year or something, those tests

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Speaker 1: showed that Johnny Moss had actually something like eighty times

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Speaker 1: the safe amount of arsenic in his system. Your system

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Speaker 1: can tolerate a tiny amount of arsenic, it cannot tolerate

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Speaker 1: eighty times that amount. And had that report from the

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Speaker 1: laboratory at the Austin Hospital been sent up the line

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Speaker 1: to Bendigo, to the local hospital and distributed to the

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Speaker 1: perhaps the local police or whatever, things might have ended differently.

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Speaker 1: But it was lost and that didn't happen, and the

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Speaker 1: result of that was that Lorraine Moss kept poisoning Johnny,

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Speaker 1: and Johnny died. Johnny died in about nineteen eighty two

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Speaker 1: after some sixteen months of being poisoned, and there was

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Speaker 1: a coroner's inquest into it, and some questions were raised.

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Speaker 1: I think there were suspicions, but the absence of that

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Speaker 1: rep meant that the coroner, who I'd have to say

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Speaker 1: was a very kindly and generous and gentle coroner, concluded

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Speaker 1: that although Johnny mossad died of sustained exposure to Arsenik,

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Speaker 1: that there was no proof that his wife, Lorraine was

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Speaker 1: the one giving it to him, And so she got

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Speaker 1: to do not go to jail card from the coroner's court,

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Speaker 1: and she went home to Bendigo, of course, and she

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Speaker 1: married the fellow white that was Loverboy, and she lived along. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: herd kids, they've grown up and become young adults, and

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Speaker 1: I think particularly one of them.

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Speaker 2: Was always suspicious about the whole thing, as you might be.

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Speaker 1: And one day, and this is about eighteen years or so,

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Speaker 1: at least eighteen years or so after Johnny Moss's death,

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Speaker 1: the daughter is talking to her mother, and her mother

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Speaker 1: blurts out something about, oh, well, I can't look into

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Speaker 1: it now because it's too long ago. And she had

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Speaker 1: assumed wrongly. I might say that once something was so

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Speaker 1: long ago, eighteen years, twenty years, that you wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: able to be charged. She imagined in her befuddled mind,

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Speaker 1: And she was befuddled, otherwise she wouldn't have poisoned her husband.

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Speaker 1: It is a bit befuddled. She imagined that there was

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Speaker 1: a statute of limitations that would protect her, and she

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Speaker 1: said something like this to her daughter. She blurted out

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Speaker 1: something that was actually incriminating, and the daughter didn't miss it.

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Speaker 1: She thought, oh, this is it. Mum's actually admitting she

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Speaker 1: poisoned DA. And she went to the police and said,

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Speaker 1: mum's admitting she poisoned d and that makes a lot

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Speaker 1: of sense. We always thought there was something strange about it.

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Speaker 1: And the police said, oh, well, that's interesting, and they

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Speaker 1: wired her for sound. They got the daughter to wear

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Speaker 1: a mini tape recorder and a little microphone, and she

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Speaker 1: went and met mum at a picnic somewhere or whatever.

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Speaker 1: They met for lunch somewhere, and she gets mum to

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Speaker 1: tell her the whole sad story of how she poisoned

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Speaker 1: the girl's father and it's all on tape. And so

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Speaker 1: the girl goes back to the homicide squad and they

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Speaker 1: were able to prosecute her. And the judge in that case,

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Speaker 1: the judge in the murder trial, that is Justice Bill Gillard,

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Speaker 1: who's a lean and hungry judge. He had defended a

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Speaker 1: lot of crooks and so he knew a fair bit

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Speaker 1: about it, and he didn't miss Lorraine Moss at all.

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Speaker 1: He said, you're a wicked woman whose wickedness knew no bounds.

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Speaker 1: You condemned your husband to a painful death, and you

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Speaker 1: kept at it for month after month after month. You

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Speaker 1: know there's no redeeming features. And he sentenced her to

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Speaker 1: twenty two years with a minimum of eighteen and that

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Speaker 1: was in I think two thousand and two, which means

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Speaker 1: that even if she served every day of that sentence.

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Speaker 1: Lorraine Moss, whose name was later Lorraine White, he's out

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Speaker 1: there amongst us, somewhere, probably wondering what happened to the

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Speaker 1: last twenty years. There's one more thing to add about

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Speaker 1: Lorraine Moss, the Bendigo poisoner.

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Speaker 2: The police were suspicious of it for.

356
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Speaker 1: Some time, and one of them, a sergeant, a detective

357
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Speaker 1: sergeant Jack Jacob's, a very funny man, a very charming man.

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Speaker 1: Women liked him, and he would drop in and talk

359
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Speaker 1: to her, to interview her and see if he could

360
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Speaker 1: get her to incriminate herself. This is before they had

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Speaker 1: the tape recorder, I think. And he said she was

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Speaker 1: really hospitable and friendly, and she would always offer him

363
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Speaker 1: a cup of tea, which he never ever touched, just

364
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Speaker 1: in case. Another Bendigo's story, another black widow, probably seen

365
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Speaker 1: by many people as not such a black widow extenuating circumstances.

366
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Speaker 1: You're honor Heather Osland. Now, Heather Osland was a big deal.

367
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Speaker 1: It was a celebrated case because Heather Oceland. It was

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Speaker 1: well held, and I think fair to say that she

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Speaker 1: was a battered wife. She'd married a man called Frank Osland,

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Speaker 1: and from all accounts he was a violent and nasty

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Speaker 1: piece of work and gave her and perhaps her children

372
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Speaker 1: a very hard time. And it got so that Heather

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Speaker 1: thought it would be better if either he'd kill her

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Speaker 1: or she'd kill him, and so she sedated her husband

375
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Speaker 1: using some form of tablets said it. And when he

376
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Speaker 1: was fairly well drugged unconscious, she got her son to

377
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Speaker 1: help her hit him with a blunt object. I'm not

378
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Speaker 1: sure if it was the back of an axe or

379
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Speaker 1: what it was, but they hit him with a blunt

380
00:24:57,720 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 1: object until he was dead. One was not terribly old,

381
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Speaker 1: he might have been a teenager. And he beat the

382
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Speaker 1: charge on self defense, which is interesting. I suppose it

383
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Speaker 1: was one of those defense issues where you say, well,

384
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Speaker 1: I was scared of him and he used to flog me,

385
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Speaker 1: and this was my way to fight back. So anyway,

386
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Speaker 1: the judge and jury bought that story, and the boy walked,

387
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: but his mother, Heather, did not walk because Heather had

388
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:34,639
Speaker 1: premeditated the death, and she had obtained the sedative and

389
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:37,640
Speaker 1: she had administered it to her husband, and so that

390
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 1: element of premeditation counted against her, and so it was

391
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 1: murder fair and square, and she was convicted of same.

392
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Speaker 1: And because of the extenuating circumstances, I think she only

393
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Speaker 1: served about nine and a half years in total. Unlike

394
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Speaker 1: Lorrain Moss, she served about half the sentence that Lorrain

395
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:01,160
Speaker 1: Moss did. And when she got out of jail, Heather

396
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:04,639
Speaker 1: Oslin was welcomed by a group of supporters, mostly women,

397
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,520
Speaker 1: who clapped and cheered when she walked out of the

398
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:11,639
Speaker 1: gates of the women's prison at Tarangawer, the one near Malden.

399
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 1: And finally, we're going to talk about not so much

400
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:17,679
Speaker 1: a black widow as a sort of a piebald widow

401
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:20,400
Speaker 1: or a gray widow, and that is Diane Griffy. Now,

402
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: Diane Griffy is the widow of Michael Griffy, and Michael

403
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 1: Griffy was regarded in the media as a millionaire building contractor,

404
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:36,119
Speaker 1: and Michael had left Diane and their four children, and

405
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:38,679
Speaker 1: I think he'd taken up with another woman, and he

406
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 1: lived with the other woman down at San Remo on

407
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 1: Phillip Island, and Diane and her four kids, who were

408
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:50,880
Speaker 1: teenagers up to young adults, lived at the family property

409
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,680
Speaker 1: at Packenham, pretty big house on a bit of land,

410
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:57,720
Speaker 1: I think. And it comes about that Michael Griffy's body

411
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: turns up in the garage of the family house, the

412
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 1: house that he's left a couple of years earlier, and

413
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 1: the body is wrapped and sort of hidden away, trapped

414
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 1: in a bed sheet and a tar poland very neat

415
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:17,679
Speaker 1: and tidy. And Diane Griffy, his ex wife, reports it

416
00:27:17,760 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: to police that she's just found this body of her

417
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:24,919
Speaker 1: ex husband in the garage at the house and she

418
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,639
Speaker 1: thinks that it must be a robbery gone wrong, that

419
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 1: he's surprised somebody who's attacked him, who's killed him by

420
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:35,680
Speaker 1: hitting him with something, and then wrap him up and

421
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 1: left the body there, which struck the police as highly unlikely.

422
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 1: That can be a bit skeptical detectives, and they thought

423
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:46,719
Speaker 1: that it didn't look like a hit done by a professional,

424
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: not a paid killing. They didn't think it looked like

425
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,879
Speaker 1: a robbery gone wrong. They thought it looked like a

426
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: classic domestic murder done by someone very close to home,

427
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:02,359
Speaker 1: because the method and be the fact that the body

428
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,119
Speaker 1: was so carefully wrapped up, and all the rest of it.

429
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:09,439
Speaker 1: There's elements of that that go to the psychology of

430
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:13,400
Speaker 1: the domestic or family murder. And that is what they believed.

431
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:18,679
Speaker 1: And so they charged Diane Griffy with killing her husband

432
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:24,159
Speaker 1: or the murder of her husband, and they were proceeding

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00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:27,199
Speaker 1: to put together what I would have thought was a

434
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 1: pretty strong circumstantial case. You can be convicted on a

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00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:35,480
Speaker 1: circumstantial case. And some of the elements.

436
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 2: That the police looked at were that.

437
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 1: Diane Griffy had mentioned to someone I think she used

438
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 1: to play the pokies, and she'd mentioned to someone she

439
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: knew that maybe that she was short of money, but

440
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 1: that her husband, her ex husband, was worth more dead

441
00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 1: than alive because he had an insurance policy on his

442
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: life life policy of one point five to four million,

443
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 1: quite a bit of money, and mentioning that probably didn't

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00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 1: help her cause when it was brought up later, But

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00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 1: what did help her cause, just as the police of

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00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: putting the final touches to a heavily circumstantial case, now

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00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: about motive and opportunity and all.

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00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 2: That good stuff.

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00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 1: What derailed it was that their youngest daughter, who was

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00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:24,479
Speaker 1: a teenager at the time, she put a hand up

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00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 1: and said, oh, I'd done it.

452
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 2: I killed that.

453
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: I hit him with a big stick or whatever, or

454
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 1: a wood splitter or an axle hammer or whatever. I

455
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:37,200
Speaker 1: think it might have been a wood splitter, and.

456
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 2: I killed him.

457
00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 1: And the police weren't convinced by this. They thought that

458
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 1: she was a bit light on for details, and that

459
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: she wasn't overly sincere, and they thought that perhaps the

460
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 1: daughter was just being a bit of a hero and

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00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: trying to save mum. But they realized the police and

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00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: the prosecutors realized that the confession so called of that

463
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 1: young woman she was I think sixteen or thereabouts, would

464
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: be enough to muddy the water and would be enough

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00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 1: for a skilled defense counsel to use to raise enough

466
00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 1: doubt with a jury. And so the case against dying

467
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 1: Griffy was discontinued and she walked. So there you go.

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00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 1: So today's episode, he's been about three black widows and

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00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:39,959
Speaker 1: one who narrowly escaped that label. I don't know if

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00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: Dyane Griffy follows the races. She might be more of

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00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:45,080
Speaker 1: a poky sort of girl, but if she did follow

472
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: the gallopers, I hope she had no Oman bet On

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00:30:49,880 --> 00:31:00,840
Speaker 1: serious suspect. Thanks for listening. Off and Crimes is a

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00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 1: Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer

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00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go

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00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: to Heroldsun dot com dot au forward slash andrew rule

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00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:21,520
Speaker 1: one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold

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00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: at news dot com dot au. That is all one

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00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 1: word news podcasts sold And if you want further information

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00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:34,520
Speaker 1: about this episode, links are in the description