Speaker 1: In Melbourne. Ross Ball, Lachelle's favorite cousin. Les Ball's nephew,
Speaker 1: spends hours on the road driving trucks.
Speaker 2: So where are you driving to right now? As we speak?
Speaker 2: What's today's roof?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: Delivering a couple of tweet I'll contain it.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of empty highways and staring at bitchamen.
Speaker 1: And like many of us, he passes the time the
Speaker 1: same way as you are right now.
Speaker 4: I quite enjoy listening to a lot of true crime
Speaker 4: as I drive around. It's quite a stimulating mental thing
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 1: But Ross is living his own true crime story the
Speaker 1: disappearance of his uncle Les. Ross was really fond of
Speaker 1: his uncle. His dad Lindsay, who sadly died now too,
Speaker 1: was Les's brother.
Speaker 4: Les came down for a holiday for like the Christmas
Speaker 4: pride in him going missing and stayed with my mum
Speaker 4: and dad and I and my brother at our house
Speaker 4: in Melbourne.
Speaker 5: For both sides of Les's family, money is the cornerstone
Speaker 5: of this case. The only reason Ross can think of
Speaker 5: that Les was murdered was because David Phillips owed less
Speaker 5: money and he didn't want to repay it.
Speaker 1: Les was sick of staying in the Phillips garage and
Speaker 1: wanted to buy a home of his own, but to
Speaker 1: do that he needed David to cough up and repay
Speaker 1: what he'd loaned them.
Speaker 4: But he told my mom and dad, I don't know
Speaker 4: how that's going to go. He wasn't very hopeful that
Speaker 4: it was going to be a very pleasant conversation trying
Speaker 4: to get that back from him.
Speaker 1: Why would lez have been nervous about that conversation with
Speaker 1: David specifically?
Speaker 4: I think Les he was a lover, not a fighter.
Speaker 4: I don't think you like confrontation and arguments too much,
Speaker 4: and I think David was quite intimidating man ex detective
Speaker 4: police officer. Obviously, I think it would have been an
Speaker 4: intimidating conversation to have with David.
Speaker 1: So when Les mysteriously went missing, Ross, who was fifteen
Speaker 1: at the time, remembers his dad being really worried and
Speaker 1: calling the Phillips household. He specifically remembers his dad speaking
Speaker 1: with David.
Speaker 4: One of the turning points for me of realizing that
Speaker 4: Les had met foul play was my dad hung up
Speaker 4: on the phone with David and said, oh, he's full
Speaker 4: of it. He's full of it.
Speaker 1: What did your dad mean when he said David's full
Speaker 1: of it? He's full of it? What do you think
Speaker 1: he meant?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he just meant he didn't believe a word he said.
Speaker 4: He was lying and maybe withholding information I guess is yeah,
Speaker 4: he didn't believe what he was saying. He said, Ei,
Speaker 4: there's something going on there. Obviously this not adding up.
Speaker 1: Remember in the last episode, David Phillips lied about Les's
Speaker 1: tendency to just take off and go bush. But as
Speaker 1: we'll soon see, this is on brand for David because
Speaker 1: for a former detective, he has a precarious relationship with
Speaker 1: the truth. Speaking with Les's family, the sense you get
Speaker 1: is that his final months in the Phillips household were
Speaker 1: unhappy ones.
Speaker 4: Apparently he was living in the garage. Even his meals
Speaker 4: were delivered to the garage. You'd died in the garage.
Speaker 4: I know, my dad had said it'd called to speak
Speaker 4: to him and they'd have to go and get him
Speaker 4: from the garage to come to the phone to speak.
Speaker 4: And he even went to the toilet and the garage
Speaker 4: and a bucket, like even when Les had moved out,
Speaker 4: they found a bucket of you're on in the corner
Speaker 4: of the garage.
Speaker 1: What we are about to discover is a money trail
Speaker 1: with its own hidden secrets and dogged Irish detective determined
Speaker 1: to uncover the truth about Les Ball.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Townsend and I'm Callendoness.
Speaker 5: This is perfect alibi. So we're turning into the housing
Speaker 5: subdivision where the Phillips lived. It's one of those classic setups.
Speaker 5: This looks like your land to drive. Now, what number
Speaker 5: are we looking for? Maybe three? Okay, So the house
Speaker 5: we're looking for is on it right, Wonder if I
Speaker 5: recognize that. I've seen lots of photos of it. Okay,
Speaker 5: we're close. I reckon. We park here, let's park here. Oh,
Speaker 5: there it is. I recognize it.
Speaker 6: A couple of.
Speaker 2: A couple of big cars in the driveway, like someone
Speaker 2: might be home. Le's moved in in October, and so
Speaker 2: he would.
Speaker 1: Have been there all summer, sweltering hot in that garage.
Speaker 1: The owner of the house has come out to chat
Speaker 1: to us. Now, hello, and Joe, how are you this
Speaker 1: Callum should talk.
Speaker 5: To that neighbor over there. I think he's the first copreen. Yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 5: all right, thanks for that. We'll go knock next door.
Speaker 2: More than thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: Les was living in the garage of this modest, low
Speaker 1: rise brick home, hatching a plan to escape.
Speaker 2: Beautiful garden here.
Speaker 1: In the town's well's been watering the plants.
Speaker 5: Very well manicured line. Okay, hello, how are you. It's good.
Speaker 1: We're the people from the audio documentary. My name is
Speaker 1: Joe and this is Callum the case.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, when you were was going on here, I
Speaker 3: didn't know him very well, you know, just as a
Speaker 3: own wave. He seemed like lovely gentlemen, you know, and
Speaker 3: he just disappeared. That seems an awful shame, you know,
Speaker 3: to subbage just disappears. You have to face the earth.
Speaker 1: Visiting the last place Les was seen alive, and maybe
Speaker 1: the crime scene gave us a better idea of exactly
Speaker 1: why Les was so excited to get out of there
Speaker 1: and into a place of his own. We promised to
Speaker 1: keep the new owner at your landa drive and old
Speaker 1: bill from over the road up to date if we
Speaker 1: found out anything more.
Speaker 5: By March nineteen ninety three, Les was completely over living
Speaker 5: in the Phillips garage. He secretly found a place of
Speaker 5: his own in card Well, but he felt guilty about
Speaker 5: leaving without telling his family. The first they heard of
Speaker 5: it was when he announced he'd placed an offer.
Speaker 1: Right and he wanted to move out over Easter, but
Speaker 1: his real estate agent and solicitor noted a major problem.
Speaker 1: Les suddenly couldn't pull the final settlement money together. It
Speaker 1: was incredibly strange, considering his divorce settlement had just come through.
Speaker 5: This is something police looked into during that first investigation,
Speaker 5: and I've gone over it too. The reason Les didn't
Speaker 5: have the money was simple. He'd loaned tens of thousands
Speaker 5: of dollars to David Leanne, but I'm picking the exact
Speaker 5: amount was difficult because the story kept changing.
Speaker 1: In Leanne's first police statement, she didn't mention money at all.
Speaker 1: A week later, she admitted to a ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: In fact, the total was closer to thirty one thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: Leanne told police that Les was transferring the money to
Speaker 5: her and David to help Lez out.
Speaker 6: The version that she provided was that he was trying
Speaker 6: to sort of minimize the amount of money his account
Speaker 6: so it wouldn't affect his betteran affairs payments.
Speaker 5: Leanne told police she was withdrawing the cash for Les,
Speaker 5: so that he could keep the money in his account
Speaker 5: to a minimum and avoid affecting his pension payments. She
Speaker 5: told them she was just withdrawing the cash and handing
Speaker 5: it right back to LEDs right.
Speaker 1: Leanne also told police that some of the money was
Speaker 1: alone to them, and there was nothing to disprove Leanne's account,
Speaker 1: nor did it sound implausible. Maybe Lez had cash dashed
Speaker 1: away under a mattress and parents lend their kids money
Speaker 1: all the time. But if that was the case, where
Speaker 1: was the cash and why couldn't Lez afford his settlement?
Speaker 5: Well, Noel couldn't see what Les was apparently all this
Speaker 5: money on. I mean, he was living in the garage
Speaker 5: of his family home. People described him as thrifty, some
Speaker 5: even said he was tight with money.
Speaker 6: Every couple of days there'd be about one hundred and
Speaker 6: so two hundred taken out of his account, which with
Speaker 6: normal living expenses I've posed fuel, maybe helping him with
Speaker 6: golf or things like that. That seemed to be about normal.
Speaker 6: But then the to and fro again, you could understand
Speaker 6: how he was trying to minimize the impact on his
Speaker 6: better affairs payments as well too. You know that's a bonus.
Speaker 6: So again We've got this version. We had nothing to
Speaker 6: say otherwise, so you have to take it on face
Speaker 6: value for what it is, and then bank records and
Speaker 6: everything show that what they said is true.
Speaker 5: But detectives soon found a specific ten thousand dollars transfer
Speaker 5: that gave them a clue on where some of this
Speaker 5: money might have been going. Les had transferredly and ten
Speaker 5: thousand dollars. She told police that Le's owed David's his mother, Shirley,
Speaker 5: and Leanne was just transferring the money over to pay
Speaker 5: the debt, but when police spoke to Shirley, she had
Speaker 5: a different version of events. She told them that she
Speaker 5: had gone garran tore on a ten thousand dollars loan
Speaker 5: for Leanne and David after David had injured himself helping
Speaker 5: out on a relative's reno. Shirley isn't alive now, but
Speaker 5: we managed to track down David's sister, Christine, who recalled
Speaker 5: the incident.
Speaker 7: He was in the bathroom using a circular saw and
Speaker 7: I was painting. He called me in and there he is,
Speaker 7: lying flat out on the floor, the circular saw in
Speaker 7: his right groin. He's very lucky to survive that. So
Speaker 7: my parents got a loan off their business ten thousand
Speaker 7: dollars to get them all through. Flew the family down,
Speaker 7: and they made a promise to pay back regularly with
Speaker 7: the pension that he was receiving from the police force.
Speaker 8: They never did.
Speaker 7: They didn't pay one cent back. So when he recovered,
Speaker 7: they went back to Tansville, and my mom found out
Speaker 7: they went on a cruise.
Speaker 5: Because Shirley was guarant taur she was on the hook
Speaker 5: for ten thousand dollars, a big sum now, but even
Speaker 5: bigger back in the early nineties.
Speaker 7: Eventually, she flew up to Queensland and asked mister Ball
Speaker 7: if he could possibly help her out paying back the money,
Speaker 7: and he did because he was a nice man.
Speaker 1: So, according to Christine, that ten thousand dollar transfer that
Speaker 1: Les the nice man made to Leanne was to help
Speaker 1: the couple pay off the debt they owed to David's mum.
Speaker 5: Shirley Leanne denied this version of events to police, saying
Speaker 5: the couple had paid off the debt themselves and that
Speaker 5: this money was from Leeds for a separate debt that
Speaker 5: he owed. Shirley and Leanne remained stubborn in her police interviews.
Speaker 5: She didn't offer up much unprompted.
Speaker 6: It wasn't open. If you didn't asked the question, you
Speaker 6: weren't given the answer. It was a case of having
Speaker 6: to find out what was the go on. And the
Speaker 6: old thing is you know, asked the question if you
Speaker 6: know the answer, so we knew the answer, giving Leanne
Speaker 6: the opportunity to provide us with the information, and when
Speaker 6: it became apparent that we knew, then she would tell us.
Speaker 6: But it was the same thing. If you didn't ask,
Speaker 6: you weren't told.
Speaker 5: So we know Leanne was in hospital over a thousand
Speaker 5: kilometers away when Les disappeared, and there's never been any
Speaker 5: evidence that she was involved in his disappearance in any way.
Speaker 5: And to be fair to Leanne, there's also plenty of
Speaker 5: reasons why she might not have been totally forthcoming about
Speaker 5: her finances. David said, one of the reasons she was
Speaker 5: a bit all over the place was that she was
Speaker 5: on heavy prescription drugs getting hospital treatment in Brisbane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but equally you can see why police were looking
Speaker 1: into the Phillips finances. Lez was living in the garage
Speaker 1: and was apparently desperate to get out out of there,
Speaker 1: but had to delay moving out because, according to his
Speaker 1: lawyer and his real estate agent. He needed the Phillips
Speaker 1: to repay some of the tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: they owed him. And when you start to include that
Speaker 1: block of land, Les had actually loaned the Phillips a
Speaker 1: total of sixty thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of money back then, a lot of.
Speaker 2: Money in nineteen ninety three, isn't it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But even with their progress into Les's finances, Nole's case
Speaker 1: eventually goes cold. By nineteen ninety five, there's just a
Speaker 1: single newspaper article with the headline no verdict on man missing.
Speaker 1: For two years, an inquest was held and no charges
Speaker 1: were recommended by the coroner.
Speaker 5: The files sat gathering dust for sixteen years until police
Speaker 5: officially reopened the case in twenty eleven and began to
Speaker 5: reinterview witnesses and their main suspect, David Phillips. Some of
Speaker 5: those interviews are covertly recorded and later tended at the
Speaker 5: inquest into Lester's disappearance, and this cold case investigation is
Speaker 5: now looking even more closely at the Phillips finances.
Speaker 2: Your father had lent you money at his own free will.
Speaker 3: Next question, Okay, there's a total of thirty one.
Speaker 7: Well, we'd like to talk to you about the find.
Speaker 3: No need to dad, Gay.
Speaker 8: He gave his own free will.
Speaker 3: That's it. No, no, he gave it to you. It's
Speaker 3: added to meet my own and his own free will.
Speaker 3: So there's nothing. There's no question in the about money.
Speaker 3: It's only it that brought up a question of the
Speaker 3: money because she hated me. Anything now, next question, So
Speaker 3: only it wanted to point out about the money.
Speaker 1: As part of the twenty eleven police investigation, detectives also
Speaker 1: spoke to Leanne's mum, who is Les's first wife, Margaret.
Speaker 9: Heads one mess now ten am on Sunday twenty seven
Speaker 9: November eleven, going off but see Margaret Balls.
Speaker 1: Two detectives arrived at Margaret's house on a Sunday morning
Speaker 1: to let her know they were reopening the investigation. They
Speaker 1: were secretly recording their conversation.
Speaker 7: I just wanted to you know that we are reinvestigating.
Speaker 7: This is Chinas parents has speaking herd of less Ball.
Speaker 7: So what we're doing is we're speaking with everyone he
Speaker 7: was involved in the original investigation, perhaps other people too.
Speaker 1: Margaret was staying at the Phillips house when Les disappeared.
Speaker 2: When police spoke to her.
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, she was with some relatives and their
Speaker 1: reaction when asked about David and Leanne and money tells
Speaker 1: you a lot.
Speaker 10: Do you know of any money that Les may have
Speaker 10: lent to Leanne?
Speaker 9: David, if he did, it would have been on.
Speaker 11: The same terms that we all.
Speaker 5: In casing this that last part, one family member jokes
Speaker 5: that the loan would be on the same terms. Then
Speaker 5: Margaret says, the boomerang that never returns, and.
Speaker 9: I gave them the money. In that David said, oh,
Speaker 9: come be down tomorrow, I'll give you the money. That
Speaker 9: no worries, I said, I forget it you did, No,
Speaker 9: I definitely will be down and give you the money,
Speaker 9: and no intentions to giving them give me back.
Speaker 5: Margaret told detectives about a time after Lasar's disappearance when David,
Speaker 5: Leanne and the kids were living in Melbourne and came
Speaker 5: to stay and.
Speaker 9: I was at the hairdressers for two hours. When I
Speaker 9: came back, like practicularly clean me out on were shots.
Speaker 9: I take it, took everything because I had to have
Speaker 9: anything to sleep in it and cook with them. They're
Speaker 9: even down to the room and the dust fit.
Speaker 5: So well about it we didn't.
Speaker 8: How can you do it?
Speaker 5: At this point, Margaret had been estranged from Leanne for
Speaker 5: a number of years, so we should probably take that
Speaker 5: story with a healthy grain of salt. But what's interesting
Speaker 5: is what David's side of the family has to say.
Speaker 5: According to his younger sister, Christine, David was always hitting
Speaker 5: their parents up for cash.
Speaker 7: They paid a lot of bills for them, example, carpet curtains,
Speaker 7: air conditioning, and outside blinds. And I'm aware of him
Speaker 7: going to my father for money, although Dad never told
Speaker 7: me how much. My parents paid for a caravan for
Speaker 7: him to sit and study with. And I know my
Speaker 7: mom frequently filled up the pantry food, the staples, meat, veggies,
Speaker 7: so the kids had food. He frequently would say I
Speaker 7: need money for a bill, and I wouldn't give him
Speaker 7: any money. I said, give me the bill. Yeah, And
Speaker 7: he went into detective training. I did pay for two
Speaker 7: suits for him to go into detective training with. That
Speaker 7: was about six hundred dollars way back then.
Speaker 2: Why do you think he needed all that money?
Speaker 7: Good question. I think it was the want wan what want?
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: This evidence from Leanne and David's own family probably explains
Speaker 5: this next part of the police interview with Leanne. In
Speaker 5: the video, Leanne sits close to camera, arms folded off camera.
Speaker 5: A female detective sits across the table from her.
Speaker 9: Okay, because we're aware that he received in a property
Speaker 9: settlement of one hundred and forty one thousand in lushing
Speaker 9: to the marriage break.
Speaker 3: With not answering email question about the money, you're all
Speaker 3: barking up the long tree.
Speaker 2: He was money.
Speaker 5: Next question in the corner of the interview room. It's
Speaker 5: a male detective for most of the interview, his fairly silent.
Speaker 5: And then are you systematically fluicing money?
Speaker 2: Can do you know?
Speaker 5: He goes in hard.
Speaker 3: You never so the these are these stupid, stupid questions
Speaker 3: that keep coming up. I'm not even going to justify
Speaker 3: with an answer.
Speaker 12: It be stupid if we're talking about one hundred dollars
Speaker 12: land that we're not.
Speaker 3: We're talking about a couple of months, well you know,
Speaker 3: ten thousand that went to the lawyers, which I've got
Speaker 3: back and we're given back to dad. And I mean
Speaker 3: to stop making issues that aren't there is your parents
Speaker 3: that are giving you any money or anything over your years,
Speaker 3: didn't give me thirty one thousand, person, and stop it
Speaker 3: and some of that little can't go back to dad
Speaker 3: because I've got more money as was supposed to be.
Speaker 3: So you've created a problem that's not even there. You
Speaker 3: don't think that's a reasonable proposition. Did you hunt someone
Speaker 3: over thirty one thousand dollars?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: Exactly right. The next questions aren't, Oh, don't give iculous,
Speaker 3: next question?
Speaker 12: How much of a one hundred and forty did you get?
Speaker 3: You know, all those details I'll do and don't ask
Speaker 3: me why are you getting? Because I can't understand how
Speaker 3: you can just be so narrow mind and hardly one subject,
Speaker 3: and then you've gone all around this one subject and
Speaker 3: making it the bee's and ends or of everything in
Speaker 3: your wrong, wrong role.
Speaker 5: In two thousand and one, after Les had been missing
Speaker 5: for eight years, he was officially declared deceased and Leanne
Speaker 5: was appointed executor of his estate. She closed his bank account,
Speaker 5: which had seventy thousand dollars in it, and it's not
Speaker 5: clear what happened to that money. Later, the block of
Speaker 5: land was sold, netting his estate another seventy thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: Les had left most of his kids specific mounts five grandire,
Speaker 5: ten grand, there Leanne and Lachelle his two favorite children
Speaker 5: were supposed to split the rest equally, but police have
Speaker 5: never been able to work out if that happened or not.
Speaker 5: By the time they tried to get the bank statements,
Speaker 5: they'd been destroyed because banks only keep those records for
Speaker 5: seven years. Usually a solicitor would handle the estate and
Speaker 5: payments to beneficiaries, but in this instance, Leanne herself sent
Speaker 5: out the checks, including a sixteen thousand dollar check to Lachelle.
Speaker 10: So I'll put the check into my bank account, and
Speaker 10: then I'll go into the bank and there's an overdrawer
Speaker 10: on my bank account. I didn't know what happened.
Speaker 5: They said, you need to check bounce this is Lachelle's mum.
Speaker 7: Ed she'd send it to Lachelle, and she counceled it
Speaker 7: the same day.
Speaker 5: So naturally, detectives questioning Leanne were curious to know what
Speaker 5: was going on.
Speaker 1: What happened to his estate?
Speaker 3: Then, Ah, you know exactly what happened?
Speaker 4: Well, we don't.
Speaker 9: You should do We don't know exactly, No, you should do.
Speaker 3: No, you know where money?
Speaker 8: Well, can you tell us where I.
Speaker 3: Went to one that was supposed to go to accept
Speaker 3: a shirt. I changed it. I canceled her check. At
Speaker 3: the last minute because she was stopping the sole of
Speaker 3: the land and going through she failed twice. It was
Speaker 3: sold and she wouldn't let it go through. I said,
Speaker 3: just let her have the land and she can deal
Speaker 3: with it. Chucker would end up being equal the same man.
Speaker 3: So because Atlaine was supposed to be divided again when
Speaker 3: it came to I just said to give her half.
Speaker 3: That that was just that was just the family issue.
Speaker 5: Michelle, for what it's worth, says this isn't true. She
Speaker 5: only found out about the block of land after her
Speaker 5: check bounced.
Speaker 10: After we found out the check bounced, my mum and
Speaker 10: the lawyers got onto it quickly and went through courts
Speaker 10: to put a caveat on the land so that she.
Speaker 12: Couldn't touch that.
Speaker 5: But it's David who was the focus of the police investigation,
Speaker 5: because remember Leanne was in hospital when her dad went missing.
Speaker 5: Here's David's police interview and.
Speaker 12: Now speling to go on. I didn't understanding all the
Speaker 12: type of question we put through the mill before.
Speaker 1: In case you missed that David Phillips audio that's not
Speaker 1: great quality. He said he knew he was the prime
Speaker 1: suspect and said he'd been put through the mill answering
Speaker 1: questions before at the coronial inquest, except, as you might remember,
Speaker 1: he never went to the inquest.
Speaker 8: Don't you understand what? What's suspicious? What I should think
Speaker 8: of this?
Speaker 12: What did you think the way for me? What did
Speaker 12: you do? I can't change in the statements because I
Speaker 12: have not been more blue about it to say if
Speaker 12: I compelled him with anything on them. I've been through
Speaker 12: all these questions before, a lot of styled do you
Speaker 12: have had a good time in nineteen ninety three? Not
Speaker 12: exturting at normal pension?
Speaker 7: Your pension is that like?
Speaker 12: That does pension?
Speaker 1: Detectives in that audio were asking about David's finances because
Speaker 1: ross Ball's true crime instincts were right.
Speaker 4: There's US bank records that we obtained after he went missing.
Speaker 4: There was numerous transfers to David and Land of five
Speaker 4: seven ten thousand dollars at a time that all added
Speaker 4: up to sixty thousand dollars. I think the fact that
Speaker 4: he'd had to loan them money so many different times
Speaker 4: that you know, became apparent that they weren't too well
Speaker 4: off with So I think getting it back as I
Speaker 4: wasn't going to be a much harder conversation and not
Speaker 4: a very realistic prospect. I guess when you're group feeding
Speaker 4: five and seven ten thousand dollars loans to them, it
Speaker 4: all odds up to sixty thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: So by April nineteen ninety three there was a pressing
Speaker 5: financial deadline. Les had bought this house in Cardwell, and
Speaker 5: as the settlement date of April the nineteenth loomed, the
Speaker 5: one that had pushed back from Easter because he didn't
Speaker 5: have the money together, Les was just over one thousand
Speaker 5: dollars short of the sixty three thousand dollars plus fees
Speaker 5: he needed to complete the purchase the dream house. The
Speaker 5: loan to the Phillips and the deposit on the block
Speaker 5: of land had wiped out his one hundred and forty
Speaker 5: five thousand dollar divorce settlement. And according to Lachelle, David
Speaker 5: was a scary character.
Speaker 10: Just his whole presence. He just had a presence about him.
Speaker 5: Did he have a temper, Yeah.
Speaker 10: He did have a temperer. I was sitting in the
Speaker 10: lad and I could hear him say on the phone call,
Speaker 10: we'll have to get rid of him. So I don't
Speaker 10: know who he is talking to, but that just scared me.
Speaker 8: Okay, am mine to take this in your Constable Les
Speaker 8: mc norton, registered number four zero one five zero ninety
Speaker 8: five from the Homicide Investigation Unit. Today's Friday, the tenth
Speaker 8: of February twenty seventeen and the time is nine thirty
Speaker 8: am in the morning.
Speaker 1: That distinctive Irish accent belongs to Liz McNaughton, former cold
Speaker 1: case detective in Brisbane and one of the homicide team
Speaker 1: that took on Les's case two decades after he disappeared.
Speaker 1: In the more recent police interviews, she stands out. She
Speaker 1: sounds like she just gets it. We really wanted to
Speaker 1: interview her, but she'd quit the police force.
Speaker 5: By this time. Lesu's case had truly run cold, and
Speaker 5: so had our investigation. We spent nearly a year looking
Speaker 5: for Lis mc norton and she it seemed like a
Speaker 5: bit of a ghost. There wasn't a single hit when
Speaker 5: we googled her, no social media accounts, our police contacts,
Speaker 5: didn't know her. All we knew was that she was
Speaker 5: living back in Ireland. But looking up e Liz mc
Speaker 5: norton in Ireland is like asking for John Smith. In Australia,
Speaker 5: there are hundreds of them. We didn't even know what
Speaker 5: part of Ireland or Northern Ireland to start looking in.
Speaker 5: But then I had an admittedly brilliant idea, because it
Speaker 5: occurred to me that every Irish person I've ever met
Speaker 5: can pinpoint an accent down to the nearest half mile.
Speaker 5: And we had that piece of audio, and that's when
Speaker 5: you came in, Joe.
Speaker 1: So I sent that piece of audio to my close
Speaker 1: friend Grace, who's Irish.
Speaker 2: I was a bridesmaid at her wedding. She said she'd ask.
Speaker 1: Her Irish cousins in a WhatsApp group if they could
Speaker 1: pick the exact accent.
Speaker 2: Hey hey, Gracie, how are you good?
Speaker 1: How are you? You're really good?
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 13: I'm just living a dream managing kids' activities, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 13: I do know, I do know.
Speaker 2: All right, how did you go with our Irish copper?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 13: Really good.
Speaker 9: Look.
Speaker 13: As soon as I heard played by the police officer speaking,
Speaker 13: I knew instantly she had a Northern Irish accent, but
Speaker 13: I knew it wasn't Belfast.
Speaker 2: So I sent on a klip to my cousin Nicole.
Speaker 13: Who lives in Northern Ireland, and I'll just free you
Speaker 13: the response she sent back to me or night.
Speaker 2: So she said, the accent's.
Speaker 13: Definitely from around Ballamina area, so hopefully that helps you.
Speaker 13: It's about forty five minutes out of Belfast.
Speaker 1: Okay, the Ballamina area, all right, let me look that up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I can see it just above Belfast there.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, there's only thirty one thousand people in Ballina.
Speaker 2: How did she pick that?
Speaker 7: Oh the beauty of being Irish.
Speaker 13: We can pick up accents from anywhere in Ireland. It's
Speaker 13: pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to start hunting for MacNaughton in Ballamina.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Gracie.
Speaker 1: Amazing And just like that, Thanks to Grace and cousin Nicole,
Speaker 1: the search for the Irish detective who worked on Les's
Speaker 1: case with the super common name went from a needle
Speaker 1: in a haystack of roughly seven million people to a
Speaker 1: regional northern Irish town called Balamina of just over thirty
Speaker 1: one thousand people. And when we did eventually find her,
Speaker 1: she remembered Les's case in incredible detail. And even better,
Speaker 1: she was visiting Australia soon, which is how we found
Speaker 1: ourselves standing outside a church on a suburban street in
Speaker 1: Sydney on a blustery cold day waiting for Liz McNaughton.
Speaker 1: I still can't believe that Irish Liz, the Irish Connection
Speaker 1: is in the country and we're about to meet her.
Speaker 5: That's been a long time coming. Support the weather with her,
Speaker 5: it's horrible.
Speaker 1: Liz kindly agreed to fly to Sydney to talk to
Speaker 1: us about Liz.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: There she is, Oh, finally the Irish Connection.
Speaker 5: And she practically jumped out of the taxi and gave
Speaker 5: me in Jo a big, tight hug.
Speaker 2: Are you?
Speaker 1: Liz is nothing like the other cops we've interviewed for
Speaker 1: this podcast. There's that melodic Irish accent, of course, an
Speaker 1: accent I now know is a Ballymena accent, and the hugging.
Speaker 1: But also it's how she became a detective in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 11: When I first came here, I've worked in retail. I
Speaker 11: was a retail manager. But when I first came here,
Speaker 11: I did that and I just didn't warm to you,
Speaker 11: you know anymore. So just to say that, to go
Speaker 11: bike to Uni, you know, I'll go bike to TeaF
Speaker 11: see what I can study looking through the book Tea hahnbook,
Speaker 11: just a studies love a good thriller, love a good crime.
Speaker 11: So I went, maybe I could do that, and I
Speaker 11: remember sent to my husband at the time when he
Speaker 11: just sorry shook his head as aflic really I want
Speaker 11: I think I'll agree it. So that's actually how it started.
Speaker 11: I just want to started doingjustice studies and the lecturer
Speaker 11: there was an inspector in the Queensland Police. That was
Speaker 11: that for me. That was exactly where I wanted to
Speaker 11: be and my focus was set and that was me
Speaker 11: off and running.
Speaker 1: By twenty fifteen, the second investigation into Les's disappearance had
Speaker 1: fizzled out. There was no new evidence and nobody knew
Speaker 1: where Les's body was. Liz mcnorton was now a homicide
Speaker 1: detective in Brisbane and that's when she first heard about
Speaker 1: Les's case.
Speaker 11: My detective sergeant at the time had said, oh there's
Speaker 11: this ks that it really bothered him over the years.
Speaker 1: Liz agreed to start working on the case but couldn't
Speaker 1: dedicate much time to it because of what Liz calls
Speaker 1: the hot jobs. Wait, it sounds way better when she
Speaker 1: says it.
Speaker 11: We're only able to give a little bit of time
Speaker 11: to it because of the hot jobs. You're always called off,
Speaker 11: you know, going here, going there.
Speaker 1: More urgent jobs, which in the homicide squad means murders
Speaker 1: kept coming up, or as Liz called them.
Speaker 5: Hot jobs.
Speaker 2: So Liz couldn't.
Speaker 1: Really do much on Lez's case until one day Liz
Speaker 1: was injured in the line of duty, hurt on the
Speaker 1: job while protecting the community.
Speaker 11: I was at a crime scene on the Gold Coast,
Speaker 11: and you know, we're just all there, media's there. I'm like,
Speaker 11: first day, you know, I'm yet great job, can't wear it,
Speaker 11: and we're going down to the embankment and I missed my step.
Speaker 11: Dinah went and just pop back up again as ef
Speaker 11: nothing had happened, but my handkird was so sore. And
Speaker 11: thenber the time they got my bit off to the
Speaker 11: hill brook an ankle. So that left me in the office.
Speaker 1: Liz suddenly had plenty of time on her hands and
Speaker 1: no hot job interruptions. She got the entire les Boll
Speaker 1: file and read and read and read.
Speaker 11: Prior to my review of it, there was two prior investigations,
Speaker 11: so there's original investigation when Lez went missing, and now
Speaker 11: I think two th and eleven it was rumped up again.
Speaker 11: And then so you had all art material to go through.
Speaker 11: It was like a cheerse. You know, you've got this
Speaker 11: ten thousand piece puzzle and you know you want to
Speaker 11: get every last piece.
Speaker 1: And what I love about police officers, cops, you know,
Speaker 1: old school cops like you, is you get a real
Speaker 1: spidery sense when you get a case.
Speaker 3: You do.
Speaker 2: When you first got this file, what did you think here?
Speaker 11: Everything was wrong about it? I mean everything's wrong. Nothing
Speaker 11: out of up, nothing made any sense.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 11: We had this Perphala that was just about to start
Speaker 11: a new life in a new home, and all of
Speaker 11: a sudden they had just gone disappeared. Something wasn't right,
Speaker 11: something was missed, Something's wrong. Somebody knows something.
Speaker 1: To Liz, the money flowing to the Phillips looked like
Speaker 1: a motive for murder.
Speaker 11: I believe them was financial because looking at it, there
Speaker 11: doesn't seem or appear to be any other reason. Lez
Speaker 11: was a quiet gentleman, had a drink like this, fashion
Speaker 11: like this, golf just your every day Assie.
Speaker 8: Brooke, isn't it, you know?
Speaker 11: And financially had the finances, he was able to buy house.
Speaker 11: He was able to do these things. See if it
Speaker 11: wasn't felt that pinch, maybe jealousy.
Speaker 2: Police had already.
Speaker 1: He pursued that theory and got nowhere, But Lizer's investigation
Speaker 1: was about to uncover something that would blow the case
Speaker 1: wide open. Next time on perfect alibi, a stunning murder confession.
Speaker 11: It was quite massive, quite bloody, and used warriis the
Speaker 11: effect of he almost wrapped his one paint.
Speaker 1: If you've got more information on this case, you can
Speaker 1: contact us at les Bawl podcast at ProtonMail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's l Eesba double L podcast at ProtonMail dot com.
Speaker 3: Mz