Speaker 1: Hi, everyone. Before we get into this episode of Perfect Alibi.
Speaker 1: In the previous episode we misattributed some police audio to
Speaker 1: Danielle Phillips. We fixed that up and are sorry for
Speaker 1: the error.
Speaker 2: This court has now resumed, Please be seated. The next
Speaker 2: meet witness mister Murphy is on the phone.
Speaker 3: Thank you, miss Murphy.
Speaker 1: Can you hear me?
Speaker 2: Good morning, It's Murphy. My name is Edyvy State Pina Gallagher.
Speaker 3: Would you like to take an oak or make an affirmation?
Speaker 4: I'll turn you over to take it.
Speaker 5: In a Brisbane Coroner's court in twenty twenty two, Brian
Speaker 5: the Skull Murphy is about to give evidence. He's dialing
Speaker 5: in from Melbourne. This is the second inquest into Les's disappearance.
Speaker 5: The first coroner delivered an open finding, not ruling one
Speaker 5: way or the other if Les was dead or alive,
Speaker 5: but after the skull came forward to Queensland Police, Detective
Speaker 5: Liz mc norton concluded that David Phillips was the only
Speaker 5: one with the means and motive to murder Les, triggering
Speaker 5: the second in quest because, according to the skull, David
Speaker 5: confessed to Les's murder.
Speaker 2: So tell us again the words that he said to you,
Speaker 2: to the best of your memory about what he did
Speaker 2: to his father in law.
Speaker 4: He in the shed, call me, what of you virtually
Speaker 4: thinking to his father Rogan? Then? Or of it?
Speaker 2: Okay? And you've also said something like he nearly pulled his.
Speaker 4: Windpiebut again in such a trading, I had him by
Speaker 4: the dragged up against the war, and but he got it.
Speaker 4: It won't buy every shrow.
Speaker 5: In case he didn't get all that, because the audio
Speaker 5: is not great. The skull says he got him in
Speaker 5: the shed and beat the shit out of him, gave
Speaker 5: him such a thrashing so bad it nearly pulled his
Speaker 5: windpipe out. The skull's testimony is extraordinary, but it's what
Speaker 5: David apparently told him next that verges on the unbelievable.
Speaker 5: According to the skull, after the attack, David went down
Speaker 5: to the local pub and found someone that looked like
Speaker 5: Les to help him dispose of Le's body because the
Speaker 5: neighborhood Sticky Beak, who lived across the road, was permanently
Speaker 5: looking out her window waving hello to her neighbors, and
Speaker 5: David told the skull that's exactly what happened the night
Speaker 5: he murdered Leeds. The one person neighborhood Watch committee waved
Speaker 5: to Les's doppelganger as he and David drove away with
Speaker 5: Lezer's body. Detectives did speak to some neighbors, but they
Speaker 5: didn't take written statements, so we don't know how many
Speaker 5: people they contacted or what they said.
Speaker 4: That before I put him in and then, like the
Speaker 4: old work to bud them, an tel track a part
Speaker 4: of the railway left it there.
Speaker 2: Okay, prep me, it's not getting it wrong.
Speaker 6: But David killed Las, and then he went down to
Speaker 6: the pub. I found someone who looked remarkably like Leaves.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 4: Yep? That's correct.
Speaker 2: Did he say that have you met this like before?
Speaker 6: Nor so?
Speaker 2: Does some gime it looked like Les happens to be
Speaker 2: the pub?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, And then it took this guy and this guy's
Speaker 6: unknown person helped him bury Les, correct, and then he
Speaker 6: David killed the unknown person.
Speaker 4: From the pub.
Speaker 2: That's right, And he buried him as well.
Speaker 4: And I'll put him in his name, right?
Speaker 2: Did that strike you as unlikely?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: By this time? Oh, you ovisually had in fact only things.
Speaker 7: And I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 4: He was telling me.
Speaker 5: Les's daughter, Lachelle wasn't in Brisbane to hear the skulls testimony.
Speaker 5: She listened to his evidence at home in Sydney.
Speaker 8: That was the most cruciating thing, like someone had just
Speaker 8: ripped out my heart.
Speaker 7: I couldn't stop crying for a week.
Speaker 9: I felt like.
Speaker 8: I never felt before, the worse pain than being in pain,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean?
Speaker 9: That he died being bashed to death, and how it
Speaker 9: was just terrific.
Speaker 10: It was terrible.
Speaker 5: As terrible as hearing that evidence was. It almost made
Speaker 5: Lachelle hopeful because thirty years after Les disappeared, she was
Speaker 5: now closer than ever to getting justice for her dad.
Speaker 5: If the coroner accepted the Skull's evidence, then surely they
Speaker 5: would agree with Liz mc norton and find that David
Speaker 5: murdered her dad.
Speaker 1: It sounded one hundred percent truth.
Speaker 11: For I heard how he died, that he bashed him
Speaker 11: to death. I actually did believe it.
Speaker 9: To tell the truth, I'm Joe Townsend.
Speaker 1: And I'm Callumptoness. This is perfect alibi.
Speaker 5: You might have detected some skepticism from the lawyer cross
Speaker 5: examining the Skull about David's confession because it sounds like
Speaker 5: something out of a B grade movie. So now we're
Speaker 5: digging into the skull. Who was he and could he
Speaker 5: have been telling the truth. To help us answer those questions,
Speaker 5: we turned to a former Victorian detective Bill Nash.
Speaker 9: He's measured and he talks a lot of sense.
Speaker 12: I applied for the Fraud Squad and moved to the
Speaker 12: Fraud Squad in about nineteen eighty five, and I stayed
Speaker 12: there for twenty five years before retiring as a detective
Speaker 12: senis sergeant.
Speaker 5: Through his time in the Victoria Police Force, Bill Nash
Speaker 5: heard all sorts of stories about the Skull because in
Speaker 5: policing circles he was notorious. He made his name in
Speaker 5: the bad old days of policing when cops were known
Speaker 5: to bend the law.
Speaker 12: He's certainly well known and is a bit of a legend.
Speaker 12: I he shot someone in his backyard. He had a
Speaker 12: police issue revolver for his own protection, and he found
Speaker 12: someone climbing over the neighbor's fence into his backyard or
Speaker 12: vice versa, and he shot him in the leg. Didn't
Speaker 12: he get charged?
Speaker 5: By all accounts, the Skull was a bit of an enigma.
Speaker 5: He was awarded policing's highest honor, the Valor Award and
Speaker 5: was a devout Catholic, but he also bragged that he'd
Speaker 5: shot and wounded forty people in his long policing career.
Speaker 5: Once he poured petrol on two drug dealers in the
Speaker 5: street and threatened in court to bite off a crook's nose.
Speaker 5: He was charged with manslaughter for bashing a criminal to death.
Speaker 5: He was acquitted and was the target of one of
Speaker 5: Victoria's biggest ever anti corruption inquiries.
Speaker 12: He was a good source of information for both the
Speaker 12: police department and the underworld, so you couldn't really trust
Speaker 12: him because you don't know who he's playing off against.
Speaker 12: He had a prolific almost as good as Shane Warns
Speaker 12: contact lists. It was something you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 5: The Skull told the Inquest. He met David Phillips at
Speaker 5: Melbourne's Russell Street Criminal Investigation branch back in the early
Speaker 5: eighties giving you.
Speaker 4: A detector at Rochelly Troit and I was a detective
Speaker 4: sergeant and it were quite a good nation work.
Speaker 5: David left the force a couple of years later and
Speaker 5: moved to Queensland and he and the Skull fell out
Speaker 5: of touch. But after suffering a stroke in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 5: David moved back to Melbourne. He was in a bad way.
Speaker 5: The stroke had left him wheelchair bound. The skull and
Speaker 5: his wife would visit the Phillips every Saturday, bringing with
Speaker 5: them one hundred dollars worth of food to feed the family,
Speaker 5: and occasionally even lending David money. On the stand at
Speaker 5: the coronial inquest, the skull told the court that one
Speaker 5: day he received a call from one of David's kids
Speaker 5: begging him to come to the house because David was
Speaker 5: in a fit of rage, tearing their place apart with
Speaker 5: an axe.
Speaker 4: Oman dam. It was there till the plant the walls
Speaker 4: that would't work in the place, and everybody was terrified.
Speaker 11: And so to be clear, did you see mister Phillips
Speaker 11: with an axe?
Speaker 4: I did, and should not under his hair job with
Speaker 4: him in each Dan why he's done, He was sitting
Speaker 4: any shit, he would love his ship. He was still
Speaker 4: yelling at treating, carrying off, which I've never seen ignite
Speaker 4: that before. I couldn't believely done the damage. It felt
Speaker 4: a real daughters in these.
Speaker 5: Why the skull calmed David down, But soon after the
Speaker 5: skull cut off contact.
Speaker 1: So David and the skull were old police buddies and
Speaker 1: resumed their friendship in nineteen ninety four after David returned
Speaker 1: to Melbourne.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So this was a fairly long relationship and pretty close
Speaker 1: to given that we know the Skull and his wife
Speaker 1: used to come around every week dropping off food, and
Speaker 1: the Skull was this notorious figure with connections to the underworld.
Speaker 1: What I want to know is what do we know
Speaker 1: about David's police career. Does this mean that he moved
Speaker 1: in the same sort of circles as the Skull.
Speaker 5: Well, according to a document we found amongst the police
Speaker 5: files on Lez's case, he was actually a highly decorated cop.
Speaker 5: The document is a letter it's addressed to David from
Speaker 5: a Victorian assistant commissioner. It says that in David's ten
Speaker 5: years in the police force, he was awarded eleven commendations
Speaker 5: and was nominated for the Valor Award three times.
Speaker 1: That's huge, massive. But the thing is it kind of
Speaker 1: stands at odds slightly with Christine, his sister, because she
Speaker 1: told us this story that kind of made us raise
Speaker 1: our eyebrows.
Speaker 3: One day he called him with a police carp and
Speaker 3: he was on his own. He didn't have his partner
Speaker 3: and sad, I want to show you something I quivered
Speaker 3: in my boots a bit. Jee's what's in the boot?
Speaker 3: And it was a bootload of drugs and I distinctly
Speaker 3: remember on one side plastic bags with little brown stuff
Speaker 3: in it. I presume that was marijuana and little silver
Speaker 3: packages on the right. And he said, I want you
Speaker 3: to smell it and taste, so you know what it's like.
Speaker 3: I declined, absolutely not interested. I said, why are you
Speaker 3: showing me this? He said, I just want you to learn.
Speaker 3: I said to him, where's your partner? And I said,
Speaker 3: we've just done a big drug bust. And I said,
Speaker 3: but where which I should He didn't tell me, of course,
Speaker 3: And I said, why are you driving around with all
Speaker 3: this in your boot? He said, don't worry. He bent forward,
Speaker 3: rolled up his pants and he said, I've got protection.
Speaker 3: And it was a knife in his boot.
Speaker 5: According to that police document I mentioned, David was medically
Speaker 5: retired from the force in nineteen eighty six. When detectives
Speaker 5: investigating Leeds's disappearance asked David for more details, he wouldn't elaborate.
Speaker 5: His sister, Christine doesn't know why he left his police
Speaker 5: in career but remembers he was in a hurry.
Speaker 12: Very.
Speaker 3: Very surprised. We sort of questioned him why he was
Speaker 3: doing it. He stead of just got to get out.
Speaker 3: I drove him to a caya in Brunswick. He said,
Speaker 3: I'm getting a new car. Can you take me? Honestent, sure,
Speaker 3: but he wouldn't let me drop him off in the caryat.
Speaker 3: It was in a side street and next thing I
Speaker 3: heard the car had been abandoned.
Speaker 5: We heard a similar story from Lachelle's side of the
Speaker 5: family too, that David abandoned the car he drove to
Speaker 5: Queensland by the side of the road. Margaret Leanne's mother,
Speaker 5: who was staying at the Phillips house when Les vanished,
Speaker 5: had her own suspicions about why David left the force.
Speaker 5: In this covert police recording, she's with some relatives.
Speaker 3: Did you hear why he left the place?
Speaker 11: I think I thought.
Speaker 8: I think he knew he needed to leave, okay, and
Speaker 8: why there was a lot of things that were going on.
Speaker 11: We're prided.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I know.
Speaker 8: Of it's definitely not above board and no offense. But
Speaker 8: you know how cops that very bad names off and
Speaker 8: I think he was right in the heart of all
Speaker 8: that Whenden, he was working.
Speaker 7: There and he got out.
Speaker 5: When the Phillips first moved to Queensland in the eighties,
Speaker 5: they briefly lived with Les and Et and it recalls
Speaker 5: overhearing some troubling phone calls.
Speaker 7: He took some very suspicious phone calls when he was
Speaker 7: at my place and I heard him say, well, if
Speaker 7: you can't do anything, then break his knees. I was
Speaker 7: hearing all this on the phone and he was obviously
Speaker 7: talking to other police in Victoria.
Speaker 5: So some of his family suspected David might have had
Speaker 5: dodgy police connections. But then again we have to take
Speaker 5: into account that none of them are fans of David anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we won't take their word as gospel. But then
Speaker 1: we have Bill Nash, the form of fraud Squad detective.
Speaker 1: He looked into David's connection to the skull and corrupt
Speaker 1: police really closely as part of an investigation that was
Speaker 1: completely separate to Lesbaul And it's a wild twisting tale
Speaker 1: about two murders. First, some history. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Tanner, the sister in law of a Melbourne detective,
Speaker 1: was shot in the head twice, but unbelievably. Local police
Speaker 1: initially dismissed her death as a suicide.
Speaker 12: You can shoot yourself in the head once, but you
Speaker 12: can't do it to because you're knocked out. You don't
Speaker 12: have any sense.
Speaker 1: In July nineteen ninety five, the body of Adel Bailey,
Speaker 1: a sex worker who disappeared in nineteen seventy eight, was
Speaker 1: found dumped in a mine shaft in the regional of
Speaker 1: Victorian town of Bonnie Done not far from where Jennifer
Speaker 1: Tanner was murdered.
Speaker 12: This girl was a native of New Zealand. She was
Speaker 12: a transgender person working on the streets and certainly wasn't
Speaker 12: a country girl and wasn't familiar at all with the
Speaker 12: location of the mind shafting Bonnie Doone.
Speaker 1: By nineteen ninety six, police were pursuing an explosive theory
Speaker 1: that Dennis Tanner, a serving officer and the brother in
Speaker 1: law of Jennifer Tanner, was responsible for both murders.
Speaker 12: There was a very strong suggestion that police were involved
Speaker 12: in both. The suspect for that immediately fell on that
Speaker 12: woman's brother in law, who was a serving member.
Speaker 1: This scandal wasn't limited to one officer. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: an informer contacted police and said that Tanner would regularly
Speaker 1: bring sex workers up to Bonnie Dune for wild party,
Speaker 1: sometimes with other cops. This informer said that's exactly what
Speaker 1: happened the night Adele Bailey was murdered. She was at
Speaker 1: a caravan park with Tanner and another officer named Jerry
Speaker 1: when Tanner killed her. But the investigation into the two
Speaker 1: murders essentially went nowhere. So in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: at the request of the Victoria Police Commissioner, Bill Nash
Speaker 1: was conducting a top secret investigation into the two murders
Speaker 1: because cops were implicated. He had to work in isolation,
Speaker 1: away from other officers, in a secure room at the
Speaker 1: Fraud Squad headquarters, and that's when he discovered that the
Speaker 1: confidential informer was none other than the Skull.
Speaker 12: When we first approached Murphy, I got his phone number
Speaker 12: and we went down to his address. He wasn't home,
Speaker 12: so I phoned up. All right, I explained who I am,
Speaker 12: what I want to say about getrift hung up with
Speaker 12: my ear so I rang him back. That same night,
Speaker 12: I said, Brian, we're parked outside your house and we're
Speaker 12: going to stay here until you come home. Within fifteen minutes,
Speaker 12: a dark colored car drives up the street, slows down,
Speaker 12: has a look at us, and drives on. Ten minutes later,
Speaker 12: Brian rings up, how about Monday, I come in and
Speaker 12: see you.
Speaker 1: Fine, So, at the agreed time of four pm, the
Speaker 1: Skull shows up to the officers of the fraud squad
Speaker 1: and he tells Bill that the information about adel Bailey's
Speaker 1: murder actually came from another former detective, David Phillips.
Speaker 9: David Phillips, what did David say?
Speaker 1: Well, he said that he was actually there the night
Speaker 1: that Adele Bailey was murdered. He witnessed it.
Speaker 5: So wait, this isn't a rumor. He said he was
Speaker 5: actually there.
Speaker 1: Yes, and then passed it on to the police.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the fact that he's even passing that information
Speaker 5: on sort of flies in the face of what we
Speaker 5: think we know about David Phillips. He was actually a
Speaker 5: secret source for a really high profile investigation into pretty
Speaker 5: serious police corruption.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was really really significant information too, because prior
Speaker 1: to David's tip off, police only had one officer, Dennis Tanner,
Speaker 1: in their sites. David's story implicating Officer Jerry meant the
Speaker 1: force now had two officers under investigation for murder, and
Speaker 1: Officer Jerry became a key suspect. Police bugged his house,
Speaker 1: they even installed a microphone above the marital bed that
Speaker 1: it ended his career. But the investigation into the double
Speaker 1: murder went nowhere, And so Bill was picking this whole
Speaker 1: thing up years later, and he really needed to corroborate
Speaker 1: that information that David had provided.
Speaker 12: And this information was very significant and it could have
Speaker 12: blown the whole investigation open and assisted us enormously.
Speaker 5: Am I right in wondering if at least some, if
Speaker 5: not all, of David Phillips's behavior that we thought was
Speaker 5: so strange all along completely inexplicable, could be explained if
Speaker 5: he was working together with a police informant the Skull,
Speaker 5: or if he himself was also a police informant. Could
Speaker 5: some of this bad cop stuff we've discovered actually be
Speaker 5: David Phillips being a very good cop.
Speaker 1: So to answer that, we have to look at Bill
Speaker 1: Nash's investigation. Bill Nash had never met David Phillips, he
Speaker 1: hadn't even heard of him. So he assembled a team
Speaker 1: of detectives to follow David and Leanne, and by this
Speaker 1: point in two thousand and three. They were homeless, drifting
Speaker 1: between motels. Neither worked, and Bill's officers observed David doctor shopping,
Speaker 1: using fraudulent prescriptions to obtain drugs.
Speaker 12: We eventually tracked him down in a motel. We knocked
Speaker 12: on the door. Leanne answered, no, day's not here. We
Speaker 12: invite ourselves in, had a quick look around. He's hiding
Speaker 12: in the cupboard in the motel room from us. That
Speaker 12: was our introduction to Dave Phillips.
Speaker 1: Bill spent around six weeks interviewing David.
Speaker 12: We initially treated him as a witness, a prime witness,
Speaker 12: and he was always polite enough to talk to us,
Speaker 12: but he has a dark, secretive mind.
Speaker 1: During those six weeks, the routine emerged. Police would interview
Speaker 1: David and then.
Speaker 12: We'd leave him. We'd have to track him down again.
Speaker 12: He's somewhere else, in a halfway house, lying on charity
Speaker 12: to provide his accommodation. Now, at the end of the
Speaker 12: one session, I'd gone away, typed up the information on
Speaker 12: a statement, brought it back to him. He's reading it through.
Speaker 12: He says, can I borrow your pin? Bill? He gets
Speaker 12: the page and puts a line to that. He says, oh,
Speaker 12: that's not true. Now that jeopardized the whole statement. It
Speaker 12: was a five page statement and he's just said, we'll
Speaker 12: laugh in this page. That information not true, so you
Speaker 12: might as well throw it away and not use it.
Speaker 1: David laid about big things, small things, everything. In fact,
Speaker 1: Bill said that David laid on at least fifty occasions.
Speaker 1: You've interviewed a lot of people over the years. A
Speaker 1: lot of crooks, a lot of bad people, a lot
Speaker 1: of layers, a lot of fantasists, a lot of fraudsters.
Speaker 1: How does David feel compare?
Speaker 12: He's number one. He had no regard for the truth.
Speaker 12: My description of Dave is he was a low life
Speaker 12: bum and a drifter. That says it all. He's a liar,
Speaker 12: compulsive liar, storyteller, and he's only making up these things
Speaker 12: to chance his reputation. That's my view.
Speaker 1: David Phillips was no noble ex cop. In fact, Bill
Speaker 1: suspects David made the whole thing up to try and
Speaker 1: claim a reward. As for Officer Jerry, the one that
Speaker 1: David said, dump to del Bailey's.
Speaker 12: Body, one innocent.
Speaker 1: David's tale didn't just waste Bill's time, It completely destroyed
Speaker 1: the life and career of the police officer he falsely accused.
Speaker 1: That officer ended up receiving a four hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: payout from Victoria Police, which was one of the largest
Speaker 1: ever at the time, because that original investigation had taken
Speaker 1: David's story at face value.
Speaker 9: Wow, what about the other cop, Well.
Speaker 1: Dennis Tanner was named by a coroner in twenty twelve
Speaker 1: as Jennifer Tanner's likely killer, although police dropped those charges.
Speaker 1: He was never charged over Adel Bailey's murder, and he's
Speaker 1: previously said he's innocent of both murders. Those two cases
Speaker 1: are still unsolved.
Speaker 5: What I really want to know is why did David
Speaker 5: just make all of this up? Was it just to
Speaker 5: try and claim the reward money.
Speaker 1: Well, Bill thinks there was another reason too, which is
Speaker 1: that David felt this desperate need to impress the skull.
Speaker 12: Dave always had this problem that he wanted to be
Speaker 12: known himself, especially in front of a person like Brian Murphy.
Speaker 9: What about the skull though, Was he telling the truth?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Bill thinks he was telling the truth and that David
Speaker 1: really had told him that he'd seen this officer Dumper
Speaker 1: del Bailey's body and he was just passing it on
Speaker 1: to police, which is what any former co would do.
Speaker 5: So that brings us back to les Ball. According to
Speaker 5: the skull, David told him that he murdered Lez, which
Speaker 5: the skull again duly passed on to police. And remember
Speaker 5: our Irish cold case cop Liz also thinks the skull
Speaker 5: was being truthful. You think, Brian, the skull Murphy was
Speaker 5: completely legit absolutely telling the truth.
Speaker 9: Why did you think that?
Speaker 10: I think you get a feel for people, you know,
Speaker 10: you get you get a feel. He wasn't getting anything
Speaker 10: from us, you know. All he wanted to do was Pellatroth.
Speaker 10: This is what you told me?
Speaker 7: Do you ever?
Speaker 10: Hut actually confessed to him that he had killed his
Speaker 10: father in law and stead that it was quite massy,
Speaker 10: quite bloody, and used words the fate of he almost
Speaker 10: wrapped his win paper. I found him very credible. I
Speaker 10: didn't really add anything anathing to prove he didn't nothing.
Speaker 1: Again, but even if the skull was telling the truth,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that David was telling the truth. David
Speaker 1: lied to the skull about all sorts of things, so
Speaker 1: the skull could have just been passing on dodgy information
Speaker 1: that he got from David.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 5: But Liz Len's weight to the fact that the skull
Speaker 5: knew specifics about the case, the sort of details that
Speaker 5: weren't made public, they could have only come from David.
Speaker 10: Brian was able to give information in that statement from
Speaker 10: what Devi had said about the car being at the
Speaker 10: tree and station, about it being moved, and about the ticket. No,
Speaker 10: Brian would not have known any of that. So for
Speaker 10: him to have known that, he would have to have
Speaker 10: heard that from somebody that knew the investigation, and that
Speaker 10: could only even David, because he wasn't in connection, it
Speaker 10: wasn't speaking to anyone else. Was the only person he
Speaker 10: was speaking to. So for him to harb that information,
Speaker 10: he could only have got up from Devid.
Speaker 5: Okay, let's get back to that coronial inquest. After the
Speaker 5: Skull gave his evidence, it was Leanne's turn. She was
Speaker 5: also dialing in from Melbourne, and about forty minutes into
Speaker 5: her examination by the counsel assisting the coroner, something unusual happened.
Speaker 5: Have a listen now, I might go back.
Speaker 13: To mister Murphy. I don't know if you're aware, but
Speaker 13: he gave evidence this morning. I heard yeap okay, so, Leanne,
Speaker 13: you were listening to the evidence of mister Murphy this
Speaker 13: morning from your solicitor's office.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 2: And did you hear mister Nash's evidence as well?
Speaker 8: I did?
Speaker 2: Did you also hear mister Boyer's evidence this aufternoon?
Speaker 4: I did?
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: You're on a this is something obviously, Miss Slane.
Speaker 3: We might take ten minutes at this point in time.
Speaker 1: You very much.
Speaker 2: We'll just say journ for a minute, Leanne, Please, this
Speaker 2: sport has now adjourned.
Speaker 5: In case you missed that Leanne had listened in to
Speaker 5: previous witnesses give evidence at the inquest. Coronial inquests don't
Speaker 5: allow witnesses to listen in to what other witnesses are
Speaker 5: saying before they give evidence. It means that their account
Speaker 5: remains independent. In the most severe cases, a witness that
Speaker 5: does this sometimes people refer to it as tailgating, and
Speaker 5: its banned so that there can be no collusion between
Speaker 5: witnesses can be charged with contempt of court.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never heard of it happening. It's just such
Speaker 1: a no.
Speaker 5: No, absolutely I haven't either. But after a short adjournment,
Speaker 5: the hearing resumed. None of the other parties objected to
Speaker 5: the fact that Leanne had been listening in and then
Speaker 5: Leanne responded to what the skull had said.
Speaker 2: And I really volunted it when I heard that, I
Speaker 2: will feistate gone true. I need to put them to.
Speaker 4: I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 8: It's untrue, It's just rubbish and I don't want to
Speaker 8: hear those details plates.
Speaker 5: At this point, the coroner told Leanne she had to
Speaker 5: answer questions, so the counsel assisting pressed on, focusing on
Speaker 5: the skulls evidence that David had once terrorized his own
Speaker 5: family with an axe.
Speaker 2: What was David actually doing just raising his voice? Was
Speaker 2: he hitting anything or punching anything? No, So when you
Speaker 2: say going off, it was simply like that. He had
Speaker 2: like typlate rages and then he would have seize.
Speaker 6: It became more and more frequent, and sometimes Brian was
Speaker 6: able to take away and hung down for us that night.
Speaker 2: You say David had these psychotic rages? Did this this
Speaker 2: is something that resulted from the stroke. From the stroke.
Speaker 2: Was David ever violent before his stroke? No, not to
Speaker 2: my knowledge.
Speaker 5: And of course Leanne was once again questioned about her
Speaker 5: account of Les visiting her in hospital.
Speaker 2: Now one hundred percent sure he come to visit me.
Speaker 2: I think in your interview in twenty eleven you use
Speaker 2: the words pretty sure. So is that something you record?
Speaker 6: I think that's just a matter of words.
Speaker 2: All right, So right here and now you're telling their
Speaker 2: court that you are certain that your father visited you
Speaker 2: at hospital in Brisbane.
Speaker 5: As we've covered, Leanne has given conflicting statements about the
Speaker 5: hospital visit and the lotto ticket. But when police spoke
Speaker 5: to Leanne in twenty eleven and twenty seventeen, she wasn't
Speaker 5: aware they were recording her conversations, and on the stand
Speaker 5: at the inquest she took issue with that.
Speaker 2: In one of the conversations, you said you found it
Speaker 2: in your and in another conversation he said you found
Speaker 2: it on your bedside table because one of the times
Speaker 2: that you spoke to police who told them that he
Speaker 2: had visited you in your room.
Speaker 3: In fact, I have him point in the whole conversation.
Speaker 2: Or right edit in I can assure you that this
Speaker 2: court has been given the entire recording. But that's okay.
Speaker 2: If you don't if you don't agree with what I'm
Speaker 2: saying that, please do say that you don't agree, Like
Speaker 2: you Yeah, apparrently just agree with that.
Speaker 5: For what it's worth. The counsel assisting is correct. We've
Speaker 5: listened to those recordings all the way through. Then the
Speaker 5: cross examination turned to the subject of money. Liz mcnorton
Speaker 5: concluded that David had a financial motive to murder Leez
Speaker 5: because in the lead up to settling on his house,
Speaker 5: Les was just short of the sixty three thousand dollars
Speaker 5: he needed to close the deal, so he had to
Speaker 5: confront David about money he owed.
Speaker 11: Can I suggest to you that when your father found
Speaker 11: out that he had insufficient funds in his account to
Speaker 11: pay for the property at Cardwell, he asked you or
Speaker 11: David to repay some of the money that had been
Speaker 11: given to you, and that's incorrect. Do you have any
Speaker 11: idea how he was going to get the extra money
Speaker 11: to purchase.
Speaker 3: Such a bed. I did not know at that time
Speaker 3: that cap, so I wouldn't know that ant.
Speaker 1: The inquest didn't just cover old ground. Police were questioned
Speaker 1: about a twenty eleven crime Stoppers report from an anonymous caller.
Speaker 1: The caller said that around the time Le's disappeared, they
Speaker 1: were driving on the Bruce Highway close to well As
Speaker 1: his trailer was dumped. They saw a scruffy looking man
Speaker 1: covered in blood, carrying something in his arms, which he
Speaker 1: put into the boot of an old green Valiant, which
Speaker 1: is the description of Lester's car. This anonymous caller spotted
Speaker 1: the same man in Townsville a week later, clean shaven
Speaker 1: with a fresh haircut. They said something else too, that
Speaker 1: a guy at a dump had seen the same bloke
Speaker 1: and questioned why he was covered in blood. He said
Speaker 1: that he'd been in a fight.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But how do we know that any of these
Speaker 5: calls have any real cred.
Speaker 1: Good question, because we know that a lot of widows
Speaker 1: call up crime stoppers. But what caught the attention of
Speaker 1: police who assessed this tip was that information about Lester's
Speaker 1: car wasn't in the media at the time, but because
Speaker 1: the report was anonymous, police didn't follow up. So, as
Speaker 1: far as we know, the identity of this potential witness
Speaker 1: remains a mystery.
Speaker 5: After hearing two days of evidence, the coroner handed down
Speaker 5: findings in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 9: The coroner ruled that les was dead.
Speaker 5: And that a person or person's unknown may have been
Speaker 5: involved in his death, but Coroner Gallagher said there wasn't
Speaker 5: enough evidence to make a finding about who was responsible
Speaker 5: for Lachelle, who'd been pinning her hopes on this inquest.
Speaker 5: Hearing the coroner say there wasn't enough evidence to determine
Speaker 5: what happened to Lez was devastating.
Speaker 11: It's a nightmare that.
Speaker 6: You don't want to ever have again.
Speaker 8: So to relive this and put yourself through that pain
Speaker 8: and that scut wedging his is the worst pain you
Speaker 8: could ever feel.
Speaker 11: It's like the pain of losing someone that this pain
Speaker 11: and not knowing.
Speaker 1: So Liz had concluded in twenty seventeen that David was
Speaker 1: the only person with the means and motive to murder Lez,
Speaker 1: and according to the skull, David even confessed to murdering
Speaker 1: laz So you'd think that would be enough for a
Speaker 1: coroner to make findings, wouldn't you.
Speaker 5: Except that the coroner found the skull's account inherently implausible.
Speaker 5: There were no missing persons that could have been the
Speaker 5: random guy from the pub that David claimed he murdered,
Speaker 5: and after hearing the Skull's confession into an seventeen police
Speaker 5: did a forensic search of the house and didn't find
Speaker 5: any traces of blood. The original police investigation hadn't found
Speaker 5: any traces of blood in Liz's car either.
Speaker 1: The thing that jumped out to me from the coroner's
Speaker 1: findings was that all of David's violence, like tearing the
Speaker 1: house apart with an axe and all the lies he
Speaker 1: told Bill Nash only started happening after David's stroke in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's what Leanne told Liz McNaughton too, that
Speaker 5: after the stroke he would be violent towards her and
Speaker 5: talk all sorts of nonsense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the coroner accepted her evidence there, and as
Speaker 1: a result, accepted basically everything David told police about the case,
Speaker 1: despite all the inconsistencies that we've had. So many people
Speaker 1: describe David as a liar. I mean, this is how
Speaker 1: Ed described him. And remember she knew him well before
Speaker 1: the stroke, when he was living with her in the eighties.
Speaker 7: He could tell you a lie without flinching. You never
Speaker 7: knew whether he was telling you the truth. He was
Speaker 7: the greatest, cleverest liar that I've ever known in my life.
Speaker 1: David's sister Christine told us that again. In the eighties,
Speaker 1: when David was still a cop, he tried to con
Speaker 1: her parents' bank manager into giving him a loan.
Speaker 3: They had a mixed business in mintone and the bank
Speaker 3: manager came down. He said, your son has just been
Speaker 3: in trying to borrow five thousand off the business said
Speaker 3: that you gave permission. Why would you even do that?
Speaker 1: I mean you've used the word borrow there, But that
Speaker 1: sounds like he actually tried to nick five grand a
Speaker 1: few parents. I think he might be right, And there
Speaker 1: was evidence before the coroner that David's lying started well
Speaker 1: before nineteen ninety four. This secretly recorded conversation between police
Speaker 1: and Margaret, that's David's mother in law, was exhibited at
Speaker 1: the inquest. He was a great I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1: What was the greatest liar?
Speaker 3: And about him found tip.
Speaker 5: We've heard so many conflicting accounts of David. According to Leanne,
Speaker 5: he was a man whose personality changed after a devastating stroke.
Speaker 5: Others describe him as a pathological liar from way back then.
Speaker 5: There are rumors of his dodgy police connections versus that.
Speaker 9: Document we mentioned. I mean, when you.
Speaker 5: Read those commendations, he sounds like a remarkable cop. He
Speaker 5: had three commendations for singlehandedly disarming armed defenders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he also had a commendation for entering a river
Speaker 1: and saving a man from an upturned vehicle, commendations for
Speaker 1: convicting murderers, robbers, rapists. This letter from Victoria Police makes
Speaker 1: him look like a super cop. The thing is, Queensland
Speaker 1: Police never checked the true origin of this document. We did, Joan,
Speaker 1: what have you got?
Speaker 8: I just wanted to ask Victoria Police to see if
Speaker 8: they had any knowledge of this letter. It took them
Speaker 8: weeks and they've just come back to me, and frankly,
Speaker 8: I cannot believe the response.
Speaker 9: They've come back with this statement.
Speaker 8: It says that on the fourth of February he was
Speaker 8: commended with one other for initiative observation and intelligent interrogation
Speaker 8: of two juvenile offenders, and on the twentieth of October
Speaker 8: nineteen eighty one he was commended with two others for
Speaker 8: initiative intelligence and dedication to duty putting in a special
Speaker 8: effort in the Dandenong area.
Speaker 9: At no time.
Speaker 8: Did he receive any honors, awards or decorations.
Speaker 1: So it's all bullshit. It's total bullshit. He far from
Speaker 1: winning eleven commendations for extraordinary acts of bravery, he got
Speaker 1: like two participation awards.
Speaker 8: Either he's got a man on the inside who has
Speaker 8: somehow managed to get him a letter that they both
Speaker 8: know is a lie, or this is an out and
Speaker 8: out forgery. You look at this document and it really
Speaker 8: does look official. It's stamped, it's signed by justice of
Speaker 8: the peace, it's got a really fancy letterhead, and yet
Speaker 8: it's a total and utter fabrication.
Speaker 1: I mean, anybody who just took a quick look at
Speaker 1: the document would think it was legit. And it seems
Speaker 1: I guess that that's what detectives did. They looked at this,
Speaker 1: said it looked legit, and no one asked any questions
Speaker 1: until you called up Victoria Police. That's insane. Bill Nash,
Speaker 1: as you might recall, spent most of his career in
Speaker 1: the Fraud Square Victoria Police. So we had him examine
Speaker 1: the letter and he points out some anomalies that should
Speaker 1: have caught police's attention.
Speaker 12: It's in very poor condition and it's very difficult to read,
Speaker 12: and it indicates to me that it's perhaps been through
Speaker 12: a number of fax machines and it's been scanned a
Speaker 12: couple of times, perhaps a little bit of cut and pasting.
Speaker 12: There's the signatures here from two justices of the piece,
Speaker 12: and the writing is different. One lot of writing is
Speaker 12: sloping to the right, one lot of writing is sloping
Speaker 12: to the left, So it's got to be two different people.
Speaker 12: I would maintain at all times that Dave has written
Speaker 12: this document promoting himself.
Speaker 5: We had the signatures analyzed by a court certified handwriting analyst.
Speaker 5: What a cool job that is, by the way, but
Speaker 5: he said a signature alone isn't an enough of a
Speaker 5: sample to really determine if the justice of the peace
Speaker 5: signatures were forged as well.
Speaker 1: But this is proof of what so many people have
Speaker 1: told us, and of what they told police, that David
Speaker 1: was a frequent, habitual liar well before that stroke in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four. He wasn't a police informant, he wasn't
Speaker 1: one of the state's most highly decorated cops. He was
Speaker 1: just a liar, simple as that.
Speaker 12: Well, if I was the coroner or anyone else, I
Speaker 12: would suggest that Dave has the distinction of being Australia's
Speaker 12: best equipped police officer. Without a doubt, no one could
Speaker 12: ever come near this. So clearly it's an impressive document
Speaker 12: if you believe it. It's certainly gone in Dave's favor,
Speaker 12: and you might have an opinion that you are an
Speaker 12: impressive person. I would, and most police officers would say
Speaker 12: this is not a legitimate document. Eleven commendatory entries between
Speaker 12: nineteen seventy seven in nineteen eighty four, which is seven years.
Speaker 12: He's received eleven commendations in seven years. That immediately says
Speaker 12: it's absolute crap. You can't describe it any better than that.
Speaker 1: And there's another reason it's significant because, of course, at
Speaker 1: the center of les Bol's disappearance is another for its document,
Speaker 1: the train ticket to Brisbane.
Speaker 12: I'd be rather interested in this document if I was
Speaker 12: handling the les Ball investigation, they should be taking a
Speaker 12: great deal of notice of this dog.
Speaker 1: Next time, on Perfect Alibi, we revealed David's dark history
Speaker 1: of violence.
Speaker 3: He was extremely abusive, foul language, and threatened to fly
Speaker 3: down and shoot us all on our winding day, every
Speaker 3: single one of us.
Speaker 1: He threatened to fly down, Yes to Melbourne and.
Speaker 3: Shit you yep everyone at the wedding.
Speaker 5: The coroner seemed to be of the opinion that David
Speaker 5: really only turned violent after his stroke. But every story
Speaker 5: you've told us pre dates his stroke.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 9: Did the coroner get that right.
Speaker 3: Probably not, because if you weren't violent, why would you
Speaker 3: bring up and threaten to kill a family.
Speaker 5: If you've got more information on this case, you can
Speaker 5: contact us at les Bawl podcast at ProtonMail dot com.
Speaker 9: That's L E.
Speaker 5: S B A double L podcast at ProtonMail dot com