Speaker 1: Hell, I was up speaking. Oh hi, Rachelle, Yeah, it's lez.
Speaker 1: How are you good, Banks Brusa? Are you good?
Speaker 2: You're okay to talk now?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I am now okay.
Speaker 3: The person our Irish cold case cop Liz McNaughton is
Speaker 3: speaking to is Rochelle, David Leanne's youngest daughter. She was
Speaker 3: only nine when it's disappeared. In this phone call, she's
Speaker 3: thirty three, trying to recall the days leading up to
Speaker 3: her grandfather vanishing. Margaret that's Rachelle's grandmother and Lessa's first
Speaker 3: ex wife, were staying at the family home while Leanne
Speaker 3: was in hospital in Brisbane.
Speaker 1: I remember the hair mm hm. I remember my grandmother
Speaker 1: was around as well. Yeah, that wasn't a very friendly
Speaker 1: situation when they were the girl I remember, I remember
Speaker 1: where become he came in room. Who'd demeanor changed all
Speaker 1: the time? Now very nasty.
Speaker 3: Rochelle was close to her granddad. By all accounts, she
Speaker 3: was his favorite, so she took his disappearance hard, suffering
Speaker 3: recurring nightmares every time.
Speaker 1: The nightmare happened in the car. And you're always kind
Speaker 1: of picking out from school and you always hate throach flip.
Speaker 1: You always pointed in the back. It was every single night.
Speaker 1: After we found out, it was every single night for
Speaker 1: a month, every single night.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a long time.
Speaker 1: It was only May. They kept having the nightmare. It
Speaker 1: was always May at the school, at the Climate school,
Speaker 1: by myself. He came, he picked me up.
Speaker 4: I'm Callum Dness and I'm Joe Townsend. This is perfect alibi.
Speaker 3: When Liz McNaughton started her investigation in twenty fifteen, she
Speaker 3: was essentially starting from scratch. Two years later, she'd hear
Speaker 3: an explosive confession. We'll talk about that later this episode,
Speaker 3: but for now. In twenty fifteen, Liz poured over hundreds
Speaker 3: of pages of documents, paying very close attention to what
Speaker 3: the Phillips children had told police. This reckons that in
Speaker 3: murder investigations, children are most likely to tell the story
Speaker 3: that's closest to the truth. Jacqueline is David and Leanne's
Speaker 3: eldest daughter. She was fourteen when those disappeared. Police are
Speaker 3: talking to Jacqueline at her house while a TV plays
Speaker 3: in the background. She recalls that when Leanne came home
Speaker 3: from hospital in Brisbane two weeks after Les was last seen,
Speaker 3: she was distraught and insisted he had visited her.
Speaker 5: Oh, I remember Monster just absolutely crying. She used to say,
Speaker 5: I saw him. She was just hysterical, like she was
Speaker 5: just crying. She was so upset. I had never seen
Speaker 5: her upset the way she was.
Speaker 3: These police tapes were laid handed to a coroner. Detectives
Speaker 3: thought her father, David, the former detective, was suspiciously apathetic
Speaker 3: about Les's disappearance, but Jacqueline paints a completely different picture.
Speaker 1: I remember him standing.
Speaker 6: In the bedroom, you know, just going over, you know,
Speaker 6: looking at things. You go on now, you just.
Speaker 7: Just going through things, trying to work out up.
Speaker 8: Leia.
Speaker 7: I had some clothes and that's still in the cupboard.
Speaker 7: He just said a mom, don't worry, he'll come back,
Speaker 7: or we'll find it. Is your dad dead, so don't worry.
Speaker 1: You'll find you.
Speaker 6: And then he nevers, you just go on, don't worry, No,
Speaker 6: we'll find him.
Speaker 9: Might that.
Speaker 3: Liz McNaughton flew down to Melbourne with her boss to
Speaker 3: interview Leanne. Leanne was interviewed in the original nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: three investigation and again in twenty eleven. She never walked
Speaker 3: back her account of seeing Les in hospital, even when
Speaker 3: confronted with evidence that Les never visited her. She stuck
Speaker 3: to her guns, but it had been six years since
Speaker 3: police had last spoken to her, and Liz was hoping
Speaker 3: the passage of time might have led Leanne to admit
Speaker 3: she got it wrong. She and her colleague pressed Leanne
Speaker 3: on her story and the evidence Les never visited her.
Speaker 3: This is how she responded, but I still believe he did.
Speaker 5: I know you may not believe that, but I still
Speaker 5: believe you did.
Speaker 9: You know, you say you believe you came to see you, watchful,
Speaker 9: Why do you say you believe you came to see you?
Speaker 10: What what makes you believe?
Speaker 2: She would say, I believe he did. There was never
Speaker 2: a I am sure and I am certain that he did.
Speaker 2: It was always well, I believe he did. Well, that's
Speaker 2: what I recall, just.
Speaker 9: Trying to put your memory by it and because it's
Speaker 9: just that you keep saying I believe he did. But
Speaker 9: you don't seem to be committed to.
Speaker 1: You do you know what I mean?
Speaker 9: I don't know, because if you're you know, if you're mistaken,
Speaker 9: that that's okay. I'm sure you've been in hospital about time.
Speaker 9: So yeah, what makes you so sure that you came
Speaker 9: to your hospital to see you because he always came
Speaker 9: to you when I was in hospital.
Speaker 3: He saw me. As we've mentioned, coroners found that Liz
Speaker 3: didn't visit Leanne in hospital in Brisbane, but that Leanne
Speaker 3: sincerely believes that he did.
Speaker 4: And that Leanne was a credible witness.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: Leanne was on prescription medication as part of her hospital
Speaker 4: treatment at the time, so that's understandable. Maybe her memory
Speaker 4: was a bit affected or she felt a bit hazy exactly.
Speaker 3: That can happen, particularly when neuron say like heavy drugs
Speaker 3: in hospital.
Speaker 4: Liz is a warm woman, she's a hugger, and recalling
Speaker 4: her interview with Leanne, she's actually full of empathy because
Speaker 4: when Liz spoke to Leanne, she was a widow. David
Speaker 4: died in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, David had a really bad stroke in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: four and then suffered a really long period of poor
Speaker 3: health right up until he died in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4: And Leanne told Liz that the stroke changed his personality.
Speaker 4: He started lying and he became violent, tired.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I felt she was tired. Protective of her children
Speaker 2: was then and stellees no as adults, protective of her grandchildren.
Speaker 2: And that's her mother, isn't it you know? So her
Speaker 2: protective nature has said and to protect what she has left.
Speaker 2: She's been strange from the rest of the farmily and
Speaker 2: she only has her children and her grandchildren. She's protective.
Speaker 2: That's what I felt she was. I felt she was tired.
Speaker 3: The Phillips family were crucial witnesses to the day Les
Speaker 3: was last seen alive. We've covered what happened that day
Speaker 3: previously and by the time Liz picked up the investigation,
Speaker 3: so had a coronial in quest, the original police investigation
Speaker 3: into Less's disappearance, and a twenty eleven review, But Liz
Speaker 3: discovered crucial information those inquiries had missed. The story of
Speaker 3: what happened that day involved seven people, David, his mother
Speaker 3: in law, Margaret, family friend, Tony Hoyer, and the four
Speaker 3: Phillips kids. So let's start with the adults, Okay.
Speaker 4: Back in nineteen ninety three, Tony told police he'd gone
Speaker 4: to the Phillips house that afternoon with a big bag
Speaker 4: of prawns. When he arrived, he found Lez packing his car.
Speaker 4: He said he was going to Brisbane to visit Leanne.
Speaker 4: Tony asked to put the prawns inside, but Lez said
Speaker 4: no because he'd just locked up the house. Margaret and
Speaker 4: David said when they returned home they found a note
Speaker 4: from Lez.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this sticks out to me because if Les
Speaker 3: couldn't be asked unlocking the house to let Tony in
Speaker 3: his bag of prawns in, it didn't make sense that
Speaker 3: he'd later changed his mind unlock the house and go
Speaker 3: in and leave a note. The other thing is David
Speaker 3: said the note read call Tony or Tony called. Margaret
Speaker 3: said the note read Tony called with prawns. We'll call
Speaker 3: back at five pm. But police never saw the actual note.
Speaker 3: He was never handed in as evidence to them.
Speaker 2: So we have three different versions of what happened that day.
Speaker 2: Was he there, did he come back? Was there a
Speaker 2: note left? Did Lairs leave the note?
Speaker 3: Then there was Tony's description of the car and trailer.
Speaker 2: He described how the car was and how the trailer was.
Speaker 2: They weren't hooked up, or as when David said when
Speaker 2: he left or they left to take the kids off
Speaker 2: to the display Holmes that they were hooked up.
Speaker 3: By twenty eleven, Tony had a different memory of that day.
Speaker 3: This time, when he arrived, Les wasn't outside packing his car.
Speaker 11: And I remember dropping off the stuff and then he
Speaker 11: came to I just nobody was saying, so I banged
Speaker 11: on the door and then I put the car crawls
Speaker 11: there official or whatever was it A polly put it
Speaker 11: at the door. Then as I was walking away, he
Speaker 11: came to the door and I said, oh, there's.
Speaker 10: He and then he says, oh, yep.
Speaker 11: I said, I just got some sepood the other day,
Speaker 11: and then he worries him and that was it, and
Speaker 11: that was it.
Speaker 3: That was it. In this version, Tony successfully dropped off
Speaker 3: the prawns, and Les doesn't mention anything about going to Brisbane.
Speaker 8: Did Lis indicate to you what he was going to
Speaker 8: do for the rest of the day.
Speaker 12: We didn't.
Speaker 11: I didn't don't care or didn't care on whatever.
Speaker 12: I didn't talk to him for long.
Speaker 11: So yeah, it was just like a in an outsort.
Speaker 3: So back in nineteen ninety three, David and Margaret told
Speaker 3: police that Tony came around later that night with the
Speaker 3: seafood to cook up the barbecue, but Tony said he
Speaker 3: came back a week and a half later.
Speaker 4: Hang On in nineteen ninety four, didn't Tony amend that
Speaker 4: same statement while on the stand at the coronial inquest,
Speaker 4: saying he did in fact return that evening.
Speaker 3: Yeah he did, but he said that he stayed for
Speaker 3: two hours, whereas David said Tony stayed the night. So
Speaker 3: in twenty eleven, detectives western Tony about this discrepancy.
Speaker 8: When you left, do you remember where you went?
Speaker 3: What you did? No, I can't remember.
Speaker 12: I think probably went home. It's probably it.
Speaker 13: So son, you say about a week and half, lady,
Speaker 13: you saw you go back around there.
Speaker 10: But Dave says in his statement, he says that you
Speaker 10: do go around.
Speaker 1: There that night, but there you go.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, but I think, actually I think
Speaker 3: I might might have. It's important that we're fair to
Speaker 3: Tony here. From his perspective, that day wouldn't be particularly memorable.
Speaker 3: He showed up at the Phillips house some family friends
Speaker 3: of his with a bag of seafood to have a barbecue.
Speaker 3: He did that all the time, so you kind of
Speaker 3: get why the details of that might change over the years,
Speaker 3: which is the point he made to police when questioned
Speaker 3: about these discrepancies.
Speaker 2: The second time he was Footman two and the third
Speaker 2: time he was Footman too, he couldn't recall that first
Speaker 2: a cone. But he said that must be okay, because
Speaker 2: that's why I first said.
Speaker 3: But what struck is when she went back and looked
Speaker 3: at Tony's original statement was that he never actually told
Speaker 3: police that this encounter with Les occurred on Sunday, the
Speaker 3: eighteenth of April.
Speaker 2: No, we didn't nomine a parteicularly just said for Sunday.
Speaker 4: So what did he tell police? Why did they think
Speaker 4: this happened on the eighteenth of April?
Speaker 3: Well, already statement Tony said, I can't remember the date,
Speaker 3: but it was on a Sunday last month, and I
Speaker 3: went around to Dave's house. So detectives just assumed that
Speaker 3: he must have been talking about the same Sunday as
Speaker 3: Margaret and David. But get this, when police spoke to
Speaker 3: him again in twenty eleven, he wasn't even sure that
Speaker 3: this whole thing happened on a weekend.
Speaker 14: Did let's tell you when David was at the time.
Speaker 10: Yeah, no, I can't recall. I thought.
Speaker 11: I just said, oh, I know he would have been
Speaker 11: at work, so on this Sunday, I thought. I didn't
Speaker 11: go around the word was it? I I don't know
Speaker 11: where he was.
Speaker 3: David told police that after getting some fast food with
Speaker 3: Margaret and the kids. The family stopped off to watch
Speaker 3: a game of cricket, and we.
Speaker 1: Drove back to Humbry.
Speaker 3: Jackson stopped off and figure guy had a few fiends.
Speaker 3: That's it, except Margaret made no mention of stopping off
Speaker 3: at the cricket.
Speaker 4: Yes, so Liz is the first one to realize that Margaret, David,
Speaker 4: and Tony's stories about that crucial day don't line up.
Speaker 3: Or she was the only one to line their statements
Speaker 3: up on a timeline, which is kind of wild to
Speaker 3: think about, right.
Speaker 4: What about the kids?
Speaker 3: Yep, so the youngest Phillips girl was only nine when
Speaker 3: this happened. The eldest was I think fourteen. Police questioned
Speaker 3: them years later when they adults. Jacqueline and Danielle, who
Speaker 3: were the two eldest, said they remembered visiting display homes,
Speaker 3: but when she was questioned by police in twenty eleven,
Speaker 3: Jacqueline said that Nana Margaret didn't attend. Her memory was
Speaker 3: that it was only David and the three kids that
Speaker 3: went and when they returned home, Margaret was sweeping out
Speaker 3: the house. Lizz's police report says that after a long
Speaker 3: discussion with her parents, she changed her statement, but Danielle,
Speaker 3: who's the second eldest, also said that she didn't remember
Speaker 3: their nan coming with them on this family outing either.
Speaker 3: Samantha Phillips, who was only eleven when Le's disappeared, thought
Speaker 3: he vanished on a school day and I.
Speaker 15: Remember say good bord him in the morning to go
Speaker 15: to school and coming back at all his stuff gone.
Speaker 3: And Rochelle, who's the youngest, was in hospital in Townsville
Speaker 3: with appendicitis shortly before Les went missing. She said that
Speaker 3: when she got home, which was on a Friday, he
Speaker 3: was gone.
Speaker 1: I got home. Yeah, it wasn't there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you said that in your statement.
Speaker 1: Okay, he wasn't there. His stuff wasn't there. Nothing was
Speaker 1: there at all. Even in the bungalow. There was none
Speaker 1: of them stuff around that would look gone.
Speaker 4: So, in other words, everybody has a different story of
Speaker 4: that day.
Speaker 3: Do you believe that Les was alive on the eighteenth
Speaker 3: of April?
Speaker 2: No, I do not believe that, definitely not. So that's
Speaker 2: my opinion.
Speaker 4: Isn't it wild that nobody until Liz mcnorton had lined
Speaker 4: up all of those differing accounts.
Speaker 3: I thought that would have been the first thing that
Speaker 3: you did right.
Speaker 1: Hm.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I think about when I look
Speaker 3: at these accounts of that day is it just makes
Speaker 3: me feel really sorry for the Phillips children. Their dad
Speaker 3: took them on this normal, frankly quite boring outing to
Speaker 3: go look at display homes, and it just happens to
Speaker 3: be central in what happened to this unsolved murder of
Speaker 3: their grandfather. It's just I really feel for them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they've been questioned by police for decades and really
Speaker 4: dragged into this investigation.
Speaker 3: And they've had to grapple with some pretty confronting questions.
Speaker 2: I believe that they were ras and weft understand where
Speaker 2: did he go? Why did he leave without sand? Why
Speaker 2: did he not.
Speaker 3: Speak to you?
Speaker 2: Has he loved us? We cared for the children, and
Speaker 2: I don't think he would have left with oat san
Speaker 2: his goodbyes.
Speaker 3: By the time they spoke to the now adult Phillips children,
Speaker 3: they were aware that their father had long been the
Speaker 3: suspect in their grandfather's murder, and in the audio recordings
Speaker 3: you can hear them each processing the idea that that
Speaker 3: Dad might be guilty.
Speaker 15: I'm not saying whether Dad did it or not.
Speaker 4: I honestly have no idea young.
Speaker 15: We were too young to even consider what could.
Speaker 10: Have happened to granddad. We just know we thought he left.
Speaker 3: Yep. And because they were only children when Le's disappeared,
Speaker 3: there was stuff happening in the house that they had
Speaker 3: no idea about, such as the family finances. Here's Jacqueline's
Speaker 3: reaction when police informed her that Les had loaned her
Speaker 3: parents thirty one thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: How four.
Speaker 10: Always thought we.
Speaker 1: Were financially stable.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, he meant thirty one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: What did they do thirty one thousand dollars?
Speaker 3: Jacqueline was stunned to hear that there was still money
Speaker 3: completely unaccounted for. And that's this estate.
Speaker 7: She hasn't gained anything from it.
Speaker 5: With granddad alive and building us a house, a land
Speaker 5: of house, that would have been more beneficial.
Speaker 8: Unless he wasn't really going to build that house, and
Speaker 8: he was gonna sit along the house and hard a
Speaker 8: little way about there.
Speaker 5: But he still bought didn't he still buy us at
Speaker 5: block of land?
Speaker 8: Yes, so you're.
Speaker 6: Saying he's gonna sell that block of land to build
Speaker 6: a house in Cardwell.
Speaker 8: We're not sure, but he seems to have kept the
Speaker 8: purchase of the house at Cardwell secret from everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 8: old you do that. He hasn't told obviously you and
Speaker 8: your sisters. He hasn't told your.
Speaker 3: Mother, Dad.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: We asked all four of David's daughters if they'd like
Speaker 4: to be interviewed for this podcast, but they declined, and
Speaker 4: we absolutely respect that. We've stuck to their police interviews
Speaker 4: and except they were just kids at the time, unwittingly
Speaker 4: dragged into a pretty awful event through no fault of
Speaker 4: their own.
Speaker 3: Let's go back to the timeline for when Les goes missing.
Speaker 3: The three adults, David, Margaret, and Tony gave completely contradictory
Speaker 3: accounts of the last day Les was supposedly seen alive,
Speaker 3: which was the Sunday.
Speaker 4: So when was Les really last scene alive?
Speaker 3: Well, Liz thinks that the last time anyone can say
Speaker 3: for certain that Les was definitely alive was on a Thursday.
Speaker 3: That's Thursday, the fifteenth of April. Rochelle, the youngest, told
Speaker 3: police that Les called her when she was in hospital,
Speaker 3: and her nursing notes actually confirmed that this call did
Speaker 3: take place.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably the last time that anybody can
Speaker 2: with creepd sure that they actually spoke two lairs and
Speaker 2: knew it was lairs. And that's his granddaughter. She knows
Speaker 2: her grandfather. We don't have any concrete evidence to suggest
Speaker 2: that anybody else saw him or had a conversation with
Speaker 2: him from that time.
Speaker 4: So we have three adults here, Margaret who died in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, Tony and David, each telling different stories. I mean,
Speaker 4: what's going on?
Speaker 2: I always maintee and probably still do that. Margaret knows
Speaker 2: more than Margaret, her husband saying that she knows. That's
Speaker 2: my that's my feelin.
Speaker 3: This isn't just Lizza's suspicion here. Here's what Samantha told police,
Speaker 3: but which.
Speaker 15: Has been bothering me for quite a few years.
Speaker 1: Is my grandmother.
Speaker 2: And was very different after that.
Speaker 8: Okay, different house.
Speaker 3: She was very different.
Speaker 15: Well to kill us has been since.
Speaker 3: And again, I mean a different how when you came
Speaker 3: back to Melbourne.
Speaker 15: Came back Broode. We were a burden to her?
Speaker 1: Can I say something I'm a detective or any far
Speaker 1: probably something, just not to think about it all over again.
Speaker 3: But could Nan have done it?
Speaker 1: Don't cover it up?
Speaker 4: WHOA? So in case you missed that audio, she says,
Speaker 4: could Nan, So that's Margaret have done it, and dad
Speaker 4: she's talking about David Phillips have covered it up. So
Speaker 4: we've all got this right. The Phillips children also have
Speaker 4: differing accounts. Some of them say that Nana Margaret wasn't
Speaker 4: with them when they visited those display homes with their
Speaker 4: dad David. But they were just kids and nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: three is a long time ago.
Speaker 3: That's right. You have to take it with a grain
Speaker 3: of salt, I suppose. But the other thing I keep
Speaker 3: thinking about is that Margaret spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: with Les at the Phillips house. You know, David was working,
Speaker 3: the kids were at school. Leanne, as we know, was
Speaker 3: all the way in hospital in Brisbane, so it was
Speaker 3: just her and Les there during the day. She's deceased now,
Speaker 3: of course, so we'll never know exactly what she did
Speaker 3: or saw on you. But just take a listen to
Speaker 3: what Leanne said about Margaret her mother.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think mum has an opinion on what happened.
Speaker 3: I just agree with her opinion.
Speaker 1: You have you heard that from your mum or Oh,
Speaker 1: we had an.
Speaker 2: Argument over it a few months ago.
Speaker 3: Okay, what was said during.
Speaker 1: That conversation.
Speaker 3: Even David's own parents suspected that he may have been
Speaker 3: responsible for Less's murder. This is his sister, Christine.
Speaker 10: Well, I asked my mum and dada, and dad said,
Speaker 10: I don't know. My mom goes. Possibly they went to
Speaker 10: heaven thinking that their son's a murderer and didn't have
Speaker 10: any answers.
Speaker 3: Then there's Tony. Police have paid him heavy scrutiny over
Speaker 3: the years. There's the fact that his memory of what
Speaker 3: happened on Sunday the eighteenth is so hazy and has
Speaker 3: changed so dramatically each time he's told it. But memory
Speaker 3: is unreliable, that happens. What really caught police's attention was
Speaker 3: a series of coincidences. First, remember the lotto ticket, the
Speaker 3: one that Leanne said Les gave to her in hospital.
Speaker 3: That ticket was purchased in Townsville, so Leanne couldn't have
Speaker 3: bought it, and police suspected Les was dead by the time.
Speaker 3: Somebody used his card to buy it.
Speaker 13: And your brother had a news agency, said a towns
Speaker 13: Ye Victorian news agency.
Speaker 10: So this lot of ticket.
Speaker 13: He's allegedly given to Lianne by her father when she's
Speaker 13: in the hospital, handd Lez give her a lot of
Speaker 13: ticket if he didn't come and visit her, No I did.
Speaker 12: How could he get rid of a lotto ticket? I
Speaker 12: didn't give it a lotto ticket. I never buy anybody
Speaker 12: a lotto tickets. I don't even play lotto. So but no,
Speaker 12: definitely not.
Speaker 3: Then there was the patient that she had a room
Speaker 3: with Leanne. Although she didn't see anyone matching Les's description
Speaker 3: pay a visit, she did see a bloke in his thirties.
Speaker 3: Tony was twenty three at the time. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 3: police confronted Tony Hoyer with another strange coincidence, a train
Speaker 3: manifest showing that the same day Leanne received this mystery visitor,
Speaker 3: a passenger with a very similar surname, Haya, was recorded
Speaker 3: leaving the train station attached to the hospital.
Speaker 12: No, I didn't go to visit in the visitor, no, Mishael,
Speaker 12: Pretty sure, No, I don't think I did. Now I
Speaker 12: remembered that. I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 13: The fact she's in the PA hospital.
Speaker 11: From the PA hospital, that's very strange. I've never even
Speaker 11: seen that.
Speaker 12: Before, So yeah, that's pretty freaking that.
Speaker 11: It definitely wasn't either, And I was twenty three at
Speaker 11: the top. I'm not thirty, whoever visited her Joe.
Speaker 3: We should stress these are just coincidences that don't prove anything,
Speaker 3: and no matter how strange or unusual the cops thought
Speaker 3: these coincidences were. It's a reach by the police, right,
Speaker 3: Like they don't directly connect Tony to Les's disappearance.
Speaker 4: I think all this is about police possibly just trying
Speaker 4: to turn the screws on Tony and see what he knows.
Speaker 4: Mister Hayer and mister Hoyer are not the same Tony's right,
Speaker 4: and there's plenty of different newsagents in Townsville. These are
Speaker 4: pretty weak links and could just be nothing coincidences. The
Speaker 4: only thing we can accuse Tony of is having a
Speaker 4: dodgy memory. If that was a criminal offense, I'm afraid
Speaker 4: I'm just as guilty as him.
Speaker 3: Lock her up. But one reason police were questioning Tony
Speaker 3: is because it seems that David thought Tony had something
Speaker 3: on him, something that could be very damaging. Here's a
Speaker 3: piece of audio from the coronial inquest. Two detectives are
Speaker 3: talking to Tony in a crowded public place. Pay attention
Speaker 3: to what they say.
Speaker 11: Yes, someone that he said.
Speaker 9: The only way that basically indicact the only way you
Speaker 9: will come undone or things you'll come undone is if
Speaker 9: is if you said something.
Speaker 12: Now, this is what he said.
Speaker 11: Now, That to me doesn't suggest he's putting you in
Speaker 11: as feeing in goal.
Speaker 2: What suggests to me is that in his mind, at.
Speaker 6: Least you knew something that could have let me damn.
Speaker 11: Which Anthony Hoyer, Yeah, I MAT's rock solid.
Speaker 3: So Joe police said that was rock solid. But what
Speaker 3: does that mean? How would they know that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't know if the police on that tape
Speaker 4: were just bluffing to try to get something out of
Speaker 4: Tony here, or if they really did know from some
Speaker 4: other means. He's always maintained he had nothing to do
Speaker 4: with Lez's disappearance, and really nothing suggests otherwise. In twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three, a coroner found that Tony was a cooperative
Speaker 4: and credible witness. We contacted Tony to give him a
Speaker 4: chance to give his side of the story, but he's
Speaker 4: decided not to engage with us.
Speaker 3: Okay, So let's focus on the other adult in this story,
Speaker 3: David Phillips. By the time Liz was on the case,
Speaker 3: David was dead, so Liz could only go off his
Speaker 3: previous police interviews.
Speaker 2: My impression was that Devi was manipulative and he probably
Speaker 2: used his police and career to ignore himself. He would
Speaker 2: like to ance her own questions, didn't really answer a
Speaker 2: question sort of more was it all very vague and
Speaker 2: had a story for a question, but the question was
Speaker 2: never really answered. I find him very hard to very
Speaker 2: hard to read, and very hard to pinpoint down to
Speaker 2: a particular He was very confused, and I think that
Speaker 2: was I don't know if that was intentional or if
Speaker 2: that's just the way it was.
Speaker 3: Lizz suspects David used his knowledge of police investigations to
Speaker 3: evade attention, particularly when it came to Less's car. So,
Speaker 3: according to what David told police, he first realized that
Speaker 3: Les's car was at the Townsville train station when Leanne
Speaker 3: got back from the hospital in early May.
Speaker 4: That's before Les was reported missing exactly.
Speaker 3: By then, it had been nearly two weeks since David
Speaker 3: arrived home to find the garage empty and Less's car
Speaker 3: and trailer gone. So David left a couple of notes
Speaker 3: on the car, telling Les that Margaret was gone and
Speaker 3: to call home.
Speaker 4: But it's only when Ian Naness was doing that welfare
Speaker 4: check five weeks after Les was last seen that David
Speaker 4: mentions the abandoned car to the police exactly.
Speaker 2: I think Devot was quite clever and keeping the car there.
Speaker 2: He did put notes on it, so he knew it
Speaker 2: was there. It's not like he didn't know. He knew
Speaker 2: quite early it was there. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: the weather can change the outside of a vehicle, different things.
Speaker 2: The car should have been forendsly examined a lot sooner,
Speaker 2: like the minute it was there, and I think Devid
Speaker 2: definitely changed that whole scenario by let it sit there
Speaker 2: and not actually, you know, I don't know why he
Speaker 2: didn't mention that the car was there until such a
Speaker 2: long time later.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, David do You'll remember Joe. He's a
Speaker 3: former detective. He spent ten years in Victoria Police, including
Speaker 3: time on the Major Crime Squad. Detectives who ran the
Speaker 3: original investigation into Les's disappearance suspected he was where his
Speaker 3: house might be bugged and left the TV on to
Speaker 3: obscure anything police microphones might pick up. When you hear
Speaker 3: how the people who knew him best described David, it
Speaker 3: seems he was certainly capable of that. This is how
Speaker 3: his sister Christine describes David is rerap cunning. Police also
Speaker 3: spoke to Margaret. She was with some relatives when they
Speaker 3: spoke to her, and this is what they had to say.
Speaker 1: A very very bright person, very clever academically, very.
Speaker 5: Clever, but.
Speaker 1: Too clever.
Speaker 4: But this is all just suspicion. Police didn't have any
Speaker 4: actual evidence to prove David played any role in Les's disappearance.
Speaker 4: There was very little evidence at all, although when Liz
Speaker 4: poured over the police file line by line, she found
Speaker 4: clues that previous investigations had overlooked.
Speaker 2: When you get new SATs of eyes, every time those
Speaker 2: sets of eyes pick up things other people may have
Speaker 2: missed because they're looking at it from a different angle.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they're definitely were things that were missed at
Speaker 2: the beginning.
Speaker 4: And there was a troubling detail in Margaret's statement. When Margaret, David,
Speaker 4: and the four kids returned home from their outing, Less's
Speaker 4: car and trailer were gone, and the garage he'd been
Speaker 4: staying in had been cleared out. His bed remained, but
Speaker 4: not the mattress.
Speaker 2: She said when she had come back that all Lazz's
Speaker 2: things had gone, and even the matris was gone, any
Speaker 2: evidence that would be there, you know, if there was
Speaker 2: file play something like that there, because it would be
Speaker 2: quite easy to get rid of that.
Speaker 4: These precious missed opportunities didn't get police any closer to
Speaker 4: figuring out what happened to Les, but one very important
Speaker 4: piece of evidence dead. A former detective who worked with
Speaker 4: David in Victoria contacted Queensland Police with explosive information. His
Speaker 4: name was Brian Murphy and the former cop had a
Speaker 4: legendary reputation in Melbourne, so legendary that he had this nickname,
Speaker 4: the Skull, and because it's such a great nickname, will
Speaker 4: refer to him as the Skull throughout.
Speaker 2: And remember us travel and doing to Melbourne to vest
Speaker 2: and you know, we had this sort of reputation because
Speaker 2: he's written a book, you know, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's verentorious. It's like wow.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was Liz's warm glow of empathy, or maybe
Speaker 4: it was the Irish connection, whatever it was, Liz was
Speaker 4: quite charmed by the Skull.
Speaker 2: But you know, we went to his home, beautiful home,
Speaker 2: hot tea. His wife was there, absolutely.
Speaker 4: Gorgeous over a cup of tea in his beautiful home
Speaker 4: with his gorgeous wife. The sk told Liz that David
Speaker 4: had told him something absolutely wild about Lez.
Speaker 2: Well. He told us that he had met up with
Speaker 2: Deva at a certain point in time, and that Deva
Speaker 2: had actually confessed to him that he had killed his
Speaker 2: father in law.
Speaker 4: David Phillips didn't just confess. He described in gory detail
Speaker 4: murdering Lez in the family garage.
Speaker 2: Was quite messy, quite bloody, and used words to the
Speaker 2: fact of he almost ripped his win paintment. And he
Speaker 2: said then he had met up with some old guy
Speaker 2: that looked like Lez and had got am to gone
Speaker 2: by a tree and tecker, and then he had helped
Speaker 2: him bury him in some onmarked grave that he had
Speaker 2: previously had reading which sorry would think it was premeditate
Speaker 2: then that you know, we had this rarety for that
Speaker 2: particular event.
Speaker 4: It's a wild story and frankly quite unbelievable. David not
Speaker 4: only almost ripped out Les's windpipe but later executed another
Speaker 4: man he'd recruited to help dump Less's body. But Liz
Speaker 4: had no doubt that the skull was accurately conveying what
Speaker 4: David had told him. She believed the skull was absolutely
Speaker 4: telling the truth.
Speaker 2: I think you get a feel for people, you know,
Speaker 2: you get you get a feel. You know Brian was
Speaker 2: you know, he'd been around, he was in the police
Speaker 2: before you know it was. It wasn't a silly maum
Speaker 2: and for him to come up with something like that
Speaker 2: there would be ridiculous. There've been no reason for it
Speaker 2: if nothing to gee and he wasn't getting anything from us.
Speaker 2: All he wanted to do was pellatros. This is what
Speaker 2: you told me. I'm not telling you do with it
Speaker 2: what you will, but this is what we say it.
Speaker 4: Police look for the two ms when they're investigating a crime,
Speaker 4: motive and means. Liz had established a strong motive for
Speaker 4: David murdering Les money. Lez had loaned the family tens
Speaker 4: of thousands of dollars and called the loan in. And
Speaker 4: we know David had the means, not only the strength
Speaker 4: to almost rip out the windpipe of the much smaller Les,
Speaker 4: but the policing know how to cover it up.
Speaker 2: The only conclusion, after reviewing all that I could come
Speaker 2: to was that Devid Phillips was the only person that
Speaker 2: had the means in them all earth to do it.
Speaker 2: And I truly believed that he was the person that
Speaker 2: murdered Lazbol in my heart and my gun. That is
Speaker 2: what I will believe to the day I DIA.
Speaker 4: Basically next time on perfect Alibi, the Skull testifies about
Speaker 4: David's confession. But just how credible is this notorious ex cop.
Speaker 2: I gave him Judge a friendly and I had him
Speaker 2: by the dragged up against the war and.
Speaker 1: Or but Dotage would stroke.
Speaker 14: He was a good source of information for both the
Speaker 14: police Department and the underworld, So you couldn't really trust
Speaker 14: him because you don't know who he's playing off against.
Speaker 14: Anyone you just didn't know.
Speaker 4: If you've got more information on this case, you can
Speaker 4: contact us at les Ball podcast at ProtonMail dot com.
Speaker 4: That's l eesb a double L podcast at proton mail
Speaker 4: dot com.