Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Mia acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waterers. This podcast was
Speaker 1: recorded on it's nine point thirty PM on a Thursday
Speaker 1: night in July nineteen ninety four, and Martin and Roz
Speaker 1: have just settled in at home after closing up their
Speaker 1: news agency in suburban Adelaide. The phone rings. Ros answers
Speaker 1: and is immediately met by an agitated voice. It's Jeff,
Speaker 1: her daughter's husband of three months, and he's dead. He
Speaker 1: tells her. Don't you say that to me? Don't you
Speaker 1: say that to me? She replies. By the time Martin
Speaker 1: runs into the room, his wife is slumped on the
Speaker 1: floor in the fetal positions, screaming. He grabs the phone,
Speaker 1: but Jeff isn't making sense. The couple are in Brunei
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia. They're in the process of moving over
Speaker 1: there for work, but Anthea was supposed to be coming
Speaker 1: home to Adelaide tomorrow to finish up work at a
Speaker 1: local school before making the move. Permanently killed in a
Speaker 1: burglary gone wrong, Her family is told they've given very
Speaker 1: little information about the circumstances surrounding her death. Forced to
Speaker 1: say goodbye to her in the same church she said
Speaker 1: her vows only a few months prior, but four years
Speaker 1: later they discover information from the night she died that
Speaker 1: rocks them to their core. All this time, the police
Speaker 1: had a name an official suspect in the murder of
Speaker 1: Anthea Bradshaw. I'm Jemma Bass and this is True Crime
Speaker 1: Conversations a Muma mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious
Speaker 1: crimes by speaking to the people who know the most
Speaker 1: about them. The body of twenty six year old Anthea
Speaker 1: Bradshaw was found on the floor of the apartment her
Speaker 1: husband Jeff Hall, was living in in Brunei. South Australian
Speaker 1: police believe there is enough evidence in this case to arrest, charge,
Speaker 1: and potentially convict someone, but Brunei doesn't agree, despite numerous
Speaker 1: attempts by our authorities to make that happen. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four nine, senior reporter Ben Avery has been reinvestigating
Speaker 1: this case and he's determined to help put her killer
Speaker 1: behind bars. He's spoken at length to Anthea's family, friends,
Speaker 1: and the Australian police involved in the case in a
Speaker 1: new podcast called The Anthea Bradshaw mystery, Ben joins us.
Speaker 2: Now, Ben, you've been looking back into Anthea Bradshaw's story,
Speaker 2: how has it felt talking to her friends and parents
Speaker 2: and brothers and really getting deep into her life.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it was about ten years ago that
Speaker 3: Craig Bradshaw, that's Anthea's eldest brother, contacted me in the
Speaker 3: nine News Adelaide news room and I was shocked at
Speaker 3: the time that I hadn't heard about this case. It
Speaker 3: was an innocent South Australian school teacher who went overseas
Speaker 3: to Brunei three months after her wedding and never came home,
Speaker 3: and there really hadn't been a lot of coverage about it.
Speaker 3: And I could tell in Craig's voice that a lot
Speaker 3: of years may have passed, but he was still deeply
Speaker 3: upset and frustrated by not only the fact that he'd
Speaker 3: lost his sister, but also justice hadn't been served in
Speaker 3: a case that seemed somewhat solvable. And so I got
Speaker 3: to know Craig quite well. I've got to know the
Speaker 3: rest of the family quite well, and it's very clear
Speaker 3: to me that they're consumed by this case and that
Speaker 3: they won't rest until it is solved. And so a
Speaker 3: lot of people will say to them, and they get
Speaker 3: frustrated by people saying to them that you should just
Speaker 3: move on, and they just say, look, we don't want
Speaker 3: to move on, and we can't move on. And so
Speaker 3: here we are, thirty years later, still talking about it,
Speaker 3: perhaps no closer to the answers that they need.
Speaker 1: This case was nineteen ninety four. Why do you think
Speaker 1: it didn't get as much media coverage back then?
Speaker 3: I guess back then things were a lot different. I
Speaker 3: feel like if it happened now, there would be a
Speaker 3: lot of coverage about it. Obviously, traveling overseas as a
Speaker 3: journalist perhaps didn't happen as often back then. Getting information
Speaker 3: from overseas was a lot more difficult too, Getting vision
Speaker 3: and pictures from overseas was tricky. And so I went
Speaker 3: through the archives here at Channel nine. I did find
Speaker 3: one story from nineteen ninety four that provided some information
Speaker 3: about what had happened. But obviously, these days, this is
Speaker 3: something that would be covered at length, day in day out,
Speaker 3: perhaps for a good couple of weeks, if not longer.
Speaker 3: And so a very unique situation here where a horrible
Speaker 3: murder of a much loved, innocent South Australia went almost
Speaker 3: unnoticed for a very long time.
Speaker 1: You said that Craig got in contact with you ten
Speaker 1: years ago. That's a long time to be sitting on
Speaker 1: this story, to be thinking about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean I have done stories in those
Speaker 3: ten years from time to time. Obviously there's been quite
Speaker 3: a few developments since then, but nothing that has got
Speaker 3: them to the point that they want. For me, it's
Speaker 3: been a ten year journey, but for the Bradshaw's obviously
Speaker 3: it's been a thirty year journey. And he tells me
Speaker 3: how they got to ten years after the murder and thought,
Speaker 3: we can't believe that it's been ten years and there's
Speaker 3: still nothing. Surely we won't get to the point where
Speaker 3: it's twenty years and there's nothing. And then they get
Speaker 3: to twenty years and think, surely we won't have to
Speaker 3: go another ten years without getting the justice that we need.
Speaker 3: And now we're at the thirty year point and they
Speaker 3: can't even comprehend the fact that they're still living with
Speaker 3: this and that potentially another ten years will pass and
Speaker 3: will be still here.
Speaker 1: Can you take us back to Anthea's childhood. She had
Speaker 1: two brothers, two loving parents. How does her family describe her.
Speaker 1: What are their memories of her as a little girl
Speaker 1: and as a young woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, her mum Rosalind says she was born in
Speaker 3: the Kapunda Hospital or a country hospital a few hours
Speaker 3: from Adelaide. She was the only baby in the birthing
Speaker 3: ward at the time and so she was immediately the
Speaker 3: center of attention and really that didn't change because she
Speaker 3: was the only daughter in the family. She was bubbly,
Speaker 3: she talked a lot, She liked to sing, and her
Speaker 3: mum has given me a cassette tape that she's never
Speaker 3: listened to. She can't bring herself to listen to it,
Speaker 3: but it's Anthea singing a song Morning Has Broken and
Speaker 3: such a sweet, innocent young voice, and we play that
Speaker 3: on the podcast. And then grew up being the middle child,
Speaker 3: so she was a big sister to her younger brother Paul,
Speaker 3: and Paul says that she really looked after him. She
Speaker 3: always loved children. She helped him a lot growing up
Speaker 3: and that developed, I guess into her growing up to
Speaker 3: ultimately wanting to be a teacher. Her mum was a
Speaker 3: registered nurse, so there was a period where she thought
Speaker 3: she might want to be a registered nurse, but there
Speaker 3: was her love of kids that took her into teaching,
Speaker 3: and she ended up working at a school for underprivileged
Speaker 3: children in murray Bridge, about an hour out of Adelaide.
Speaker 3: It was called the Fraser Park Primary School. And I'm
Speaker 3: told by her brother Craig that these were kids who
Speaker 3: didn't have much support at home for the most part,
Speaker 3: and so they wouldn't get birthday cakes on their birthdays.
Speaker 3: And so Anthea went right through the list of her children,
Speaker 3: found out when their birthdays were and would make a
Speaker 3: birthday cake for them on their birthday. And Craig got
Speaker 3: quite emotional when he told me that story, but it
Speaker 3: just really highlighted how caring she was and how she
Speaker 3: went to those extra lengths and did a lot for
Speaker 3: those children.
Speaker 1: She sounds like miss Honey, remember that childhood character.
Speaker 3: A beautiful soul, absolutely And if you look at photographs
Speaker 3: of Anthea, and I've been shown a lot of them
Speaker 3: and home videos, always smiling, and I've never heard anyone
Speaker 3: say a bad word about her. She was just this
Speaker 3: really gentle, friendly soul who seemed to get along with everyone.
Speaker 1: Her husband, the man she ended up marrying, they got
Speaker 1: together quite young didn't they can you talk us through
Speaker 1: their relationship.
Speaker 3: It was year ten at school though in the same
Speaker 3: year at Pembroke College, a private school here in the
Speaker 3: eastern suburbs of Adelaide, And it started out as a friendship,
Speaker 3: I'm told, or certainly they were telling people it was
Speaker 3: a friendship, and they spend a lot of time together.
Speaker 3: Jeff would be around at the Bradshaw family home a
Speaker 3: lot of the time, and he was welcomed with open arms.
Speaker 3: The brothers Craig and Paul got along with him really well.
Speaker 3: They became mates, the three of them, and it was
Speaker 3: a relationship that continued right through high school into obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, their late teenage years early twenties. And the
Speaker 3: family says that it was always a really good relationship
Speaker 3: that they got along well. They didn't see any signs
Speaker 3: of tension. Maybe the odd argument here and there, but
Speaker 3: definitely and if you look at the photographs and the
Speaker 3: home videos, to me, it just looked like he was
Speaker 3: really welcomed and he was part of that Bradshaw extended family.
Speaker 1: I guess that makes this case quite unique in that
Speaker 1: the family did know Jeff so intimately because he basically
Speaker 1: grew up alongside.
Speaker 3: Them absolutely, and they all make a point of saying
Speaker 3: that that this wasn't one of those situations where it's
Speaker 3: a son in law and a brother in law that
Speaker 3: sort of comes in and is a little bit on
Speaker 3: the outside. He was embraced totally, and the brothers say
Speaker 3: they can't even remember him coming into their lives. It's
Speaker 3: like he was just always there, almost an extension of
Speaker 3: the family. And that's what makes this case, I think
Speaker 3: so shocking, is to know some of the allegations and
Speaker 3: the suspicions and the fact now that there is this
Speaker 3: wedge between the Bradshaws and Jeff Hall all of these
Speaker 3: years later, and that's just a horrible thing to lose
Speaker 3: your sister or your daughter, but then also have that
Speaker 3: shadow in the background.
Speaker 1: So in their twenties, Jeff and Anthea kind of traveled
Speaker 1: the world together, did all of those early twenty backpacker
Speaker 1: kind of things. And then they got married in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four. What does her family remember of that day?
Speaker 1: Was it a great wedding day for the couple?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they find that hard to talk about now. And
Speaker 3: I have watched the wedding video and it did look
Speaker 3: like a beautiful day, a really typical Adelaide wedding Tusmore
Speaker 3: Park Uniting Church in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide. Anthea
Speaker 3: arrives in a ford falcon Saedan gets out of the
Speaker 3: car and her dad approaches and takes her by the arm.
Speaker 3: She has her two bridesmaids in front of her. They
Speaker 3: then walk into the church. You know, lots of smiling
Speaker 3: friends and family. Her brothers were there, all of Jeff's
Speaker 3: family were there. Anthea looked extremely happy, not a worry
Speaker 3: in the world, as she always did, and it just
Speaker 3: looked like your every day suburban wedding. I've also seen
Speaker 3: video of the reception, and a typical reception as well,
Speaker 3: lots of drinking and laughing. You see all of the speeches,
Speaker 3: really funny speeches. Lots of people spoke. Anthea's eldest brother
Speaker 3: was the MC for the wedding and he tells me
Speaker 3: that it was the best wedding he'd ever been to,
Speaker 3: and a few people have said that, and really difficult
Speaker 3: to watch that now knowing what would happen only ninety
Speaker 3: six days later.
Speaker 1: It was what were the plans for after the wedding?
Speaker 1: Because things happened quite quickly in that Jeff moved overseas
Speaker 1: and Anthea was trying to wrap things up. What was
Speaker 1: the plan there.
Speaker 3: They had done a lot of travel and then they
Speaker 3: get married and Jeff gets a job in Brunei, a
Speaker 3: country on the island of Borney, an oil rich country
Speaker 3: where there's a lot of money, and he gets a
Speaker 3: job as a radiographer at a medical clinic that was
Speaker 3: owned by the Brunei royal family at the time. It
Speaker 3: was quite a lucrative position in that it paid reasonably
Speaker 3: well and he was also put up in accommodation so
Speaker 3: he didn't need to pay for his apartment. So he
Speaker 3: went over there pretty soon after the wedding. Anthea, though,
Speaker 3: was going to stay at home because she was still
Speaker 3: teaching at the Fraser Park Primary School in murray Bridge,
Speaker 3: and so she wanted to finish that teaching contract before
Speaker 3: she would eventually move over to join him permanently. Now
Speaker 3: there was then a decision though, that she would go
Speaker 3: and visit in this period while Jeff was over there alone,
Speaker 3: and so she organized to go over to Brunei for
Speaker 3: ten days. She would obviously catch up with her husband
Speaker 3: and socialize with him and his workmates, and she would
Speaker 3: also want to look for jobs, so she would go
Speaker 3: and visit other schools in Brunei to see if she
Speaker 3: could organize a job for when she did move over permanently.
Speaker 3: And so her mum and dad recall taking her to
Speaker 3: the airport. She gets on the plane to fly over
Speaker 3: for this visit, sadly not knowing that she would never
Speaker 3: return home. And back then there were no mobile phones.
Speaker 3: Communication was more difficult. There was no Facebook or email,
Speaker 3: certainly not what they used anyway, and Anthea had told
Speaker 3: her mum and dad, look, don't ring me while I'm
Speaker 3: in Brunei because Jeff is worried about phone tapping. He
Speaker 3: was worried that Brunei authorities listened to phone calls and
Speaker 3: he told Anthea that before she went over as well,
Speaker 3: so she didn't have much contact with him either while
Speaker 3: he was there alone. And so Anthea's mum and dad
Speaker 3: took this on board, although they do tell me now
Speaker 3: that they would not have cared if Brunei authorities were
Speaker 3: listening to their phone calls, because they would just ring
Speaker 3: and say how are you going? Are you safe?
Speaker 1: It's not exactly controversial, not controversial.
Speaker 3: And that's something they think about a lot now about
Speaker 3: why Jeff was worried about that and what it meant
Speaker 3: was that Anthea had been there for nine days and
Speaker 3: they hadn't had any contact with her in any form.
Speaker 1: Then what happened to Anthea on July twenty one, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, So this.
Speaker 3: Was the day before she was to go home back
Speaker 3: to South Australia. And I might tell you what happened
Speaker 3: from Jeff's perspective because I've seen his full witness statement
Speaker 3: and that can give us a bit of an idea
Speaker 3: into how he says the day unfolded. They'd been out
Speaker 3: for dinner the night before with some friends. They woke
Speaker 3: up reasonably early. They had to go and visit a
Speaker 3: school called the Jigsaw School, where Anthea was going to
Speaker 3: talk to the school about a potential teaching job. So
Speaker 3: they went there in the morning. They had that interview.
Speaker 3: They get back to the apartment complex at Geredong Park,
Speaker 3: which is not far from where Jeff works, at about
Speaker 3: eleven o'clock in the morning. Jeff has a shower, they
Speaker 3: have something to eat, both of them. Again, this is
Speaker 3: Jeff's story from his witness statement, and then his shift
Speaker 3: was beginning at the Geredong Park Sports Medicine Center at
Speaker 3: midday that day. He had a car there, a red
Speaker 3: Toyota Salika, and Anthea was going to drive him to work.
Speaker 3: And so shortly before midday they get in the car,
Speaker 3: they make the very short journey to Geredong Park Sports
Speaker 3: Medicine Center. Anthea drops Jeff off, he goes to work,
Speaker 3: she goes back to the apartment complex. Now, Jeff says
Speaker 3: that he was at work for all of that day
Speaker 3: in terms of from midday until five pm, and then
Speaker 3: he goes out for his dinner break, and the plan
Speaker 3: was that Anthea would come and pick him up from
Speaker 3: the medical center for that dinner break. So he's standing
Speaker 3: out the front of the medical center along with a
Speaker 3: few other people as they were either lead for the
Speaker 3: day or leaving for dinner, and he's waiting for Anthea.
Speaker 3: And I've spoken to lots of witnesses and I've seen
Speaker 3: lots of witness statements. People that saw Jeff standing there
Speaker 3: and they went to him and said, would you like
Speaker 3: a rite home, because a lot of them lived in
Speaker 3: the same apartment complex or nearby, and Jeff was repeatedly
Speaker 3: saying no, No, Anthea is coming to pick me up.
Speaker 3: She shouldn't be too long, and this happened, as I say,
Speaker 3: with several witnesses I've spoken to. However, as time went
Speaker 3: on and I think, you know, maybe ten to fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes past. Jeff then made a phone call to one
Speaker 3: of his colleagues, a woman named Peter, who lived in
Speaker 3: the apartment complex, and Peter said, yeah, look, the car
Speaker 3: is still here, so I will try and ring, and
Speaker 3: I think she made a phone call to the apartment complex.
Speaker 3: Nobody answered, so Peter went and picked up Jeff from
Speaker 3: the medical center. Then Peter says that Jeff was worried
Speaker 3: about where Anthea was, and they made a decision to
Speaker 3: drive around where she may have gone walking or running
Speaker 3: because she'd been doing that while she was in Brunei.
Speaker 3: There was no sign of Anthea, so a short time
Speaker 3: later they returned to the apartment complex. Peter and Jeff
Speaker 3: get out of the car. Peter says, she heads to
Speaker 3: her apartment and says, I'll see you again soon. Jeff
Speaker 3: goes to his apartment, which is on the third floor.
Speaker 3: He opens the door and Anthea is in a pool
Speaker 3: of blood and it is clear that her body's cold
Speaker 3: and that she's dead, and he screams out to Peter,
Speaker 3: because Peter's a nurse. Peter comes up sadly. It's clear
Speaker 3: that there's nothing anyone can do by that point, and
Speaker 3: really that's where this mystery begins.
Speaker 1: Because she'd been quite brutally murdered, hadn't she.
Speaker 3: So the post mortem would find that she had been
Speaker 3: strangled to death, and then after she was already dead,
Speaker 3: she was stabbed multiple times, and it has never been
Speaker 3: explained why the killer stabbed her lifeless body.
Speaker 1: Was there any other evidence in the apartment in the room,
Speaker 1: was there anything else out of place?
Speaker 3: Some furniture had been displaced in the bedroom, so the
Speaker 3: bed that Anthea and Jeff slept in had been moved,
Speaker 3: and a chair in that room had also been knocked over.
Speaker 3: Now that has been explained by Jeff very early on
Speaker 3: in his original witness statement. He says when he found
Speaker 3: his wife's body, he went into the bedroom and kicked
Speaker 3: the bed and kicked the chair out of frustration. So
Speaker 3: that's how he explains that. There are also photographs that
Speaker 3: show a bloodstained knife, which was presumably the murder weapon,
Speaker 3: near the front door, so the killer had discarded the
Speaker 3: knife right near the front door on the way out
Speaker 3: is what we can take out of that. Another thing
Speaker 3: to note about that knife is that people I've spoken
Speaker 3: to from the other apartments say it appears to be
Speaker 3: the standard issue knife for all of the apartments, which
Speaker 3: indicates that perhaps, and this hasn't been confirmed, that perhaps
Speaker 3: that knife came from Jeff's kitchen. There was also an
Speaker 3: ironing board out, and there was a business shirt draped
Speaker 3: over the ironing board. The iron was plugged in and
Speaker 3: it was still switched on, so it appeared that someone
Speaker 3: had been ironing a shirt and for whatever reason, stopped
Speaker 3: abruptly there. I guess the key pieces of evidence from
Speaker 3: inside the apartment. Piecing it all together is difficult. I
Speaker 3: guess it can tell a story whatever way you look
Speaker 3: at it, but this would form part of that initial
Speaker 3: Brunei police investigation.
Speaker 1: How did the Bradshaws find out about this all happening?
Speaker 3: So it was a Thursday evening, Adelaide time, nine point
Speaker 3: thirty pm on the twenty first of July nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3: The Bradshaws owned a news agency in the eastern suburbs
Speaker 3: of Adelaide. They just got home from late night shopping
Speaker 3: and Martin Bradshaw had got on upstairs to watch the
Speaker 3: Channel nine AFL football show. That's how he remembers the time,
Speaker 3: because he said that the show was just starting and
Speaker 3: the phone rang and he said he could hear Roz
Speaker 3: answering the phone. Roz says that she picked up the
Speaker 3: phone and it was Jeff and he didn't say hello,
Speaker 3: he just said and he's dead. And she doesn't remember
Speaker 3: much from that point apart from saying, don't say that
Speaker 3: to me. Don't say that to me. Martin says he
Speaker 3: heard this commotion, he went downstairs and by this point
Speaker 3: Roz was curled up in the fetal position. He took
Speaker 3: the phone, and he says that Jeff was that hysterical
Speaker 3: he could barely understand what he was saying. So he
Speaker 3: was asking for someone else to take over the phone call,
Speaker 3: you know, put someone else on the phone, and eventually,
Speaker 3: and he doesn't know who it was, but eventually someone
Speaker 3: told him that his daughter had been murdered. And then
Speaker 3: he says, Martin says that he thought that he was
Speaker 3: the calm one in the room, rose obviously in the
Speaker 3: fetal position, but he looked down and realized that he
Speaker 3: had urinated in his trousers after hearing that news.
Speaker 1: What about the brothers, You've spoken to them about finding
Speaker 1: out as well, And they also had their own stories.
Speaker 3: Craig Bradshaw was living in a sharehouse. He was working
Speaker 3: in radio on commercial radio, and that evening he had
Speaker 3: to go to bed early because he had an early
Speaker 3: start the next day. His friends had all gone to
Speaker 3: the pub. The people that he was living with went
Speaker 3: to the pub. But then at around nine point thirty
Speaker 3: or a little bit after, one of his friends came
Speaker 3: and woke him up in the bedroom and said, Craig,
Speaker 3: you need to go home. Presumably he had somehow found
Speaker 3: out from Martin and Ross Craig's parents, and Craig hopped
Speaker 3: in his car. He didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 3: His friend didn't tell him, and so he had that
Speaker 3: painful drive to his mum and dad's house, and he
Speaker 3: said the moment he arrived, he approached the front door
Speaker 3: and he could hear his mum howling, absolutely howling inside
Speaker 3: the house. And went in and again he was given
Speaker 3: a phone and it was Jeff, and Jeff said that
Speaker 3: Annie had been murdered, and Craig then had to try
Speaker 3: and get his head around that, and obviously couldn't get
Speaker 3: his head around that, because why would anyone murder her?
Speaker 3: It was a relatively safe country. She'd been there for
Speaker 3: nine days, she didn't know anyone apart from Jeff and
Speaker 3: perhaps some of his other colleagues who she would have
Speaker 3: only just been introduced to, So almost an impossible thing
Speaker 3: to fathom for Craig Bradshaw. And he says that he
Speaker 3: then tried to get hold of his other brother, Paul,
Speaker 3: and he was out at the pub that night, and obviously,
Speaker 3: again mobile phones weren't a thing, so they struggled to
Speaker 3: get hold of him. Paul was still living at home
Speaker 3: and late that night he came home in his car
Speaker 3: and he saw all of the cars in the front yard.
Speaker 3: So by then, I guess a lot of the extended
Speaker 3: family had arrived at the house, and he just looked
Speaker 3: and thought, what is going on here? And he said
Speaker 3: that he was that concerned and confused that he actually
Speaker 3: didn't go into the house. He drove up and parked
Speaker 3: on the side of the road for an hour, just
Speaker 3: sat there. Perhaps he knew at that point that his
Speaker 3: life was about to change, and that if he could
Speaker 3: have another hour without knowing then he would take that.
Speaker 3: But eventually he went into the house, and he says
Speaker 3: that he thinks it was his auntie who told him
Speaker 3: what had happened.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bass.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Ben Avery about the murder of Anthea Bradshaw.
Speaker 1: Up next, we find out how far the Bradshaw family
Speaker 1: will go in their fight for justice. What did the
Speaker 1: next few days and weeks look like. Obviously in Brunei,
Speaker 1: we've got police investigating Jeff still over there. Does her
Speaker 1: family get on a plane, how do they get Anthea's
Speaker 1: body back? What does that?
Speaker 3: So there are a lot of discussions around that. Craig
Speaker 3: spoke with various members of his family about whether he
Speaker 3: should go over to be there with Jeff and to
Speaker 3: talk to the police about what's happened here. I think
Speaker 3: one of his aunties offered to pay the cost of
Speaker 3: him to fly over and to stay over there for
Speaker 3: a period of time, but Craig says that he was
Speaker 3: talked out of doing that by various people, including Jeff,
Speaker 3: that Jeff had said, there's nothing you can do. Leave
Speaker 3: it with me, essentially, and so no member of the
Speaker 3: Bradshaw family went to Brunei and that's something that they
Speaker 3: regret to this day. Instead, Jeff Hall's father went over
Speaker 3: and Jeff Hawlls best mate went over together. And I
Speaker 3: think what the Bradshaws perhaps didn't know at that time,
Speaker 3: well I'm almost certain they didn't know at the time
Speaker 3: was that Jeff was being treated as a suspect by
Speaker 3: the Brunei police. He was actually in custody. I was
Speaker 3: told by one of Jeff's colleagues in the podcast that
Speaker 3: he had been held for questioning and that they went
Speaker 3: and visited him and he was behind bars. So he
Speaker 3: was in some form of custody at that point, and
Speaker 3: he was beside himself. He was crying and saying that
Speaker 3: he was innocent. Again, these are all things that the
Speaker 3: Bradshaw family weren't aware of at the time, and they
Speaker 3: really do wish that that had some representation I guess
Speaker 3: as a family over there in those initial days.
Speaker 1: We'll get to this, but they didn't find that information
Speaker 1: out for another four or so years. So what did
Speaker 1: they believe had happened to Anthea in that timeframe, Well,
Speaker 1: there hadn't.
Speaker 3: Been a lot of information, it has to be said.
Speaker 3: In those early months and years. There was a theory though,
Speaker 3: that had been prominent to my understanding, and that is
Speaker 3: that there was an unknown man spotted outside of the
Speaker 3: apartment complex who no one recognized. And when I say
Speaker 3: no one, there was only one person I'm aware of
Speaker 3: who saw that man, and I've spoken to her and
Speaker 3: she's described him as being of Thai or Vietnamese descent,
Speaker 3: that he had a cap, and that cap was pulled
Speaker 3: down over his face to the extent that she couldn't
Speaker 3: really make out any distinguishing features. And this was looked
Speaker 3: at thoroughly by the Brunei police. They did a photo
Speaker 3: fit of this man, even though the woman who spotted
Speaker 3: him says that that was pretty pointless because she didn't
Speaker 3: know what he looked like anyway. And news would filter
Speaker 3: back to the Bradshaw's that there was this theory of
Speaker 3: an itinerant worker, a tie worker perhaps, who may have
Speaker 3: worked in maintenance on the apartment complex, or who may
Speaker 3: have worked on a nearby construction site and may have
Speaker 3: gone up to that third floor apartment and killed Anthea,
Speaker 3: And they, to an extent, I guess, accepted that they
Speaker 3: accepted that perhaps this was an unfortunate random killing.
Speaker 1: How did they find out that jeff had been a suspect?
Speaker 3: So it was four years later, in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: that the coroner released its findings to the Bradshaw family
Speaker 3: and so they got a letter in the mail and
Speaker 3: Rosalind tells me about the moment that she opened that letter.
Speaker 3: It was a very short report, only a few pages long,
Speaker 3: but at the end it said that the only apparent
Speaker 3: suspect in the case appears to be the deceased husband,
Speaker 3: one Jeffrey John Hall. However, the finding also said police
Speaker 3: investigations could not find any evidence to justify any charge
Speaker 3: against him.
Speaker 1: How did they react to that?
Speaker 3: Rose couldn't believe it. She just hadn't even given thought
Speaker 3: to that in those four years, none of them had,
Speaker 3: and so she was shocked, absolutely shocked. And she says
Speaker 3: that that was the moment she started to wonder whether
Speaker 3: her son in law had some questions to answer.
Speaker 1: What did they do? Well, what can they do? It's
Speaker 1: four years later. Do they contact Brunei police, do they
Speaker 1: go to Australian police? What are their next moves?
Speaker 3: So then Rod starts to think where she can go
Speaker 3: from here? And I'm not entirely sure how the South
Speaker 3: Australian Police became involved. I know that they were contacted
Speaker 3: in the early days of the Brunei police investigation, so
Speaker 3: that had some involvement. And then following this revelation in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety eight, there is some communication between Essay Police
Speaker 3: and the Bradshaw family and a detective with the South
Speaker 3: Australian Major Crime Branch, Detective Brenton Rownie, begins looking at
Speaker 3: the case. There's no jurisdiction obviously for South Australian Police
Speaker 3: in Brunei, but that doesn't stop them from making their
Speaker 3: own inquiries. And so that started to begin and really
Speaker 3: ramp up in the early two thousands, led primarily initially
Speaker 3: by Detective Rownie.
Speaker 1: Well, Brunei actually allows one of these police officers to
Speaker 1: go over and review the case in person. That's quite unusual,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 3: It is extremely unusual, and the reason that that came
Speaker 3: about was almost pure chance. So Brenton Rownie's looking at
Speaker 3: all of this information, He's starting to see that it
Speaker 3: warrants further investigation and that perhaps the case needs some
Speaker 3: more expertise that the Brunei police may not have had.
Speaker 3: And as I say, by chance the Brunei authorities were
Speaker 3: coming to Adelaide, or some of them were coming to Adelaide.
Speaker 3: You may have heard of the police tattoo that is
Speaker 3: held around the world and police forces will come with
Speaker 3: their police bans and things like that. Well that was
Speaker 3: being held in Adelaide this year, and so the Royal
Speaker 3: Brunei Police Force Band was coming and so as part
Speaker 3: of that, Brenton Rownie organized for the South Australian Police
Speaker 3: Commissioner at the time to meet with a high ranking
Speaker 3: official from and they had a meeting when they were
Speaker 3: here for the police tattoo, and as a result of
Speaker 3: that meeting, Brunei said yes, look, we are prepared to
Speaker 3: pay for the flights and accommodation of your detective to
Speaker 3: come over to Brunei wow and conduct his own inquiries,
Speaker 3: which was a real breakthrough for the Bradshaws and for
Speaker 3: say police they could go over and for the first
Speaker 3: time have a look at this for themselves in terms
Speaker 3: of someone from South Australia at least, and so that happened.
Speaker 3: It was in two thousand and four that Brenton Rownie
Speaker 3: bordered a plane and headed over to the place where Anthea.
Speaker 1: Lost her life, and what did he do when he
Speaker 1: got there? He obviously was going to look into Jeff
Speaker 1: being a potential suspect. Did he look at any other
Speaker 1: possible theories? Was there anything else that came out of
Speaker 1: him being on the ground.
Speaker 3: He says he went into it with a very open
Speaker 3: mind and so one of the things though, that became
Speaker 3: clear when he got there, and one of the first
Speaker 3: things that jumped out to him was that the Brunei
Speaker 3: police were not very experienced dealing with murders, and he
Speaker 3: says that's because murder was almost unheard of in that country. Now,
Speaker 3: I've looked into this and there's one News Corp particle
Speaker 3: here in Australia that said there'd been only three murders
Speaker 3: in the decade preceding Anthea's death. I haven't been able
Speaker 3: to confirm that because the stats from Brunei are very
Speaker 3: patchy and unclear. Probably the best data I could get
Speaker 3: was from the United Nations. Actually that showed between nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six and twenty thirteen, so this is a period
Speaker 3: really after the murder, But probably the best data I
Speaker 3: could get there were fifty four murders, an average of
Speaker 3: around three per year for that period. Now it is
Speaker 3: a small country, about around half a million people, but still,
Speaker 3: even if you go off that data, it's fair to
Speaker 3: say that murders were quite rare, and so the police
Speaker 3: force over there wouldn't have had the same skills that
Speaker 3: someone from South Eastutralia would have. Brenton Rownie would have
Speaker 3: investigated other murders before. The major crime branch here in
Speaker 3: South Australia handles a lot of murders and a lot
Speaker 3: of cold cases too ongoing. So that's the first thing
Speaker 3: that stood out to him. And he also learned for
Speaker 3: the first time that Jeff had been held in some
Speaker 3: form of custody after the murder, and he says that's
Speaker 3: something that he didn't know previously, and obviously, as I've mentioned,
Speaker 3: the Bradshaw family wasn't aware of either. He says that
Speaker 3: the Brunei police were helpful to an extent. They provided
Speaker 3: him with exhibits from the case, he was able to
Speaker 3: visit Geredong Park where this murder took place, and he
Speaker 3: ultimately returned home after four days with dozens of exhibits
Speaker 3: that he was allowed to physically take back to South Australia.
Speaker 1: Before we get further into that. I want to give
Speaker 1: a bit more context about Brunei because you've said there
Speaker 1: weren't many murders, so to speak, and it was a
Speaker 1: relatively safe but it's actually a very strict country. It
Speaker 1: has some extreme punishments, some very backwards laws. In our
Speaker 1: Australian eyes, doesn't it very much.
Speaker 3: So it's an Islamic country, very strict laws, as you say,
Speaker 3: including punishment for homosexuality, and when it comes to murder,
Speaker 3: the death penalty, So anyone convicted of murder can face
Speaker 3: the death penalty. It isn't always enforced, but certainly murder
Speaker 3: is punishable by death. And for this reason, because it
Speaker 3: was so strict, crimes were very unusual. So I'm not
Speaker 3: just talking about murders. I'm talking about break ins, robberies, thefts,
Speaker 3: sexual assaults. It didn't happen very often for that reason.
Speaker 3: Hence why a lot of people I've spoken to said
Speaker 3: that this murder of Anthea Bradshaw was very out of
Speaker 3: the box.
Speaker 1: What did Rowney determine after investigating everything to do with this.
Speaker 3: Case, He was firmly of the opinion that Jeff Hall
Speaker 3: had questions to answer about the murder. He brought back
Speaker 3: a lot of exhibits, some of them I've spoken about
Speaker 3: those photos that showed the bed had been moved, the
Speaker 3: chair had been kicked over, the blood stained knife. There
Speaker 3: was also forensic evidence, though. He brought back a shirt
Speaker 3: that Jeff Hall was wearing on the day of the murder,
Speaker 3: and this would become a very important piece of evidence,
Speaker 3: and that's because it was clear that there were blood
Speaker 3: like stains on Jeff's shirt. Now, there would be various
Speaker 3: forensic reports done that looked at that shirt, and a
Speaker 3: DNA examination of the shirt found that the blood stains
Speaker 3: on Antia's shirt weren't Jeff's blood, ruled out that it
Speaker 3: was Jeff's blood, and one report from Singapore found that
Speaker 3: there was only a one in fifteen chance that that
Speaker 3: blood was anyone else's but anteis, So we can take
Speaker 3: out of that there was a high likelihood without being
Speaker 3: one hundred percent, that Jeff Hall had his wife's blood
Speaker 3: on his shirt on the day of the murder. Now
Speaker 3: that's obviously significant, But the other thing you need to
Speaker 3: look at then is how did the blood get there,
Speaker 3: Because he does say that he went and checked his
Speaker 3: wife's body when he got back to the apartment and
Speaker 3: saw her on the ground, so very possible it could
Speaker 3: have happened then, and that's why you need to look
Speaker 3: further into the evidence and further at those blood stains
Speaker 3: and further at the crime scene to try and work out, okay, well,
Speaker 3: how did he get that blood on his shirt. There
Speaker 3: was a report done in the year or two after
Speaker 3: the murder by a forensic scientist named doctor Henry C.
Speaker 3: Lee from Connecticut. He worked for the Connecticut State Laboratory,
Speaker 3: and he was very well known. He's worked on thousands
Speaker 3: and thousands of cases. He worked on the OJ Simpson case,
Speaker 3: he worked on the John Benet Ramsey case. And I
Speaker 3: was only watching a Netflix documentary the other night called
Speaker 3: The Staircase, and in it he was used by the defense.
Speaker 3: So this was a well known forensic scientist. He looked
Speaker 3: at the blood stains that was his speciality, and he
Speaker 3: determined that there were what he called medium velocity blood stains,
Speaker 3: which sounds very technical, but essentially what it means is
Speaker 3: that there were microscopic droplets that appeared to have got
Speaker 3: there after traveling through the air. So this wasn't a smear,
Speaker 3: it wasn't a white that there had been some kind
Speaker 3: of projected mechanism that got the blood on Jeff's shirt.
Speaker 3: Now that's significant. It doesn't necessarily say that it got
Speaker 3: there through the process of stabbing Anthea, but it does
Speaker 3: say that perhaps some of the blood got there through
Speaker 3: traveling through the air. And so then you need to
Speaker 3: think about, Okay, how could Jeff have got the projected
Speaker 3: blood onto his shirt by just viewing and checking Anthea's body.
Speaker 3: And it's possible he could have stepped in the pool
Speaker 3: of blood, for example, and it could have splashed up
Speaker 3: onto his shirt. He could have had the blood wipe
Speaker 3: onto his shirt and then that could have gripped from
Speaker 3: one sleeve to the other. That's also possible. But it
Speaker 3: was definitely evidence that would support a theory that perhaps
Speaker 3: it had got there through the process of stabbing Anthea.
Speaker 3: And then it became about not necessarily just taking Henry C.
Speaker 3: Lee's word for it, because in these cases there are
Speaker 3: varying opinions and if you go to another forensic scientist
Speaker 3: it can be different. And that's what police did. They
Speaker 3: went to someone in Western Australia who looked at the
Speaker 3: evidence as well and wasn't as convinced that there was
Speaker 3: this medium velocity blood. He said that it was possible
Speaker 3: that there was projected blood stains on the shirt. And
Speaker 3: there were also similar findings from a South Australian forensic
Speaker 3: scientist who said the same thing. But one thing that
Speaker 3: they all agreed on was that there was blood or
Speaker 3: at least blood like stains on the shirt. And then
Speaker 3: to wrap that up, they need to then go, okay, well,
Speaker 3: let's look at the crime scene. Let's see how Jeff
Speaker 3: may have got that blood on his shirt without being
Speaker 3: too graphic anthey's on the ground, there's a pull of
Speaker 3: blood off to one side of her body. And there's
Speaker 3: a pathologist here in South Australia named Roger Bayard, Professor
Speaker 3: Roger Bayard, who looked at the crime scene photographs and
Speaker 3: was asked to make a determination on how Jeff could
Speaker 3: have got the blood on his shirt in checking the body.
Speaker 3: And I've spoken to Roger in the podcast and he
Speaker 3: tells me that when he looks at the photo, he
Speaker 3: thinks if Jeff had come around from one side and
Speaker 3: approached her. And we need to keep in mind, and
Speaker 3: this is something that I might not have mentioned. Jeff
Speaker 3: has been specific about what he did he touched Anthea's face,
Speaker 3: he checked her pulse, and he touched her leg. And
Speaker 3: Roger says that if he had come from one side
Speaker 3: of the body and done those things, he can't see
Speaker 3: how Jeff could have got blood on him because there
Speaker 3: wasn't any blood on that side. Then Roger says, Okay,
Speaker 3: if he went around the other side, yes he could
Speaker 3: have got blood on him, but he would have disturbed
Speaker 3: the pool of blood. And when you look at the photograph,
Speaker 3: there is no evidence that there was any disruption to
Speaker 3: that pool of blood. And so this became important evidence
Speaker 3: as well in that it raises doubt about whether Jeff
Speaker 3: could have got blood on his shirt when he checked
Speaker 3: Anthea's body.
Speaker 1: What does Bruneye do with all of this information?
Speaker 3: This was all given to Brunei police because they still
Speaker 3: had jurisdiction. Sow. The Australian police might have been investigating,
Speaker 3: but they had jurisdiction. And I need to point out
Speaker 3: that that blood stained evidence I talk about is significant,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it's conclusive, and it was given
Speaker 3: to the Bruney police. They made a determination not just
Speaker 3: based on that, but also based on alibi accounts that
Speaker 3: we should talk about at some point, witness accounts that
Speaker 3: there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute jeffrel.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the alibi stuff. Now, how does that
Speaker 1: come into play?
Speaker 3: As I've mentioned Jeff was at work, well, he says
Speaker 3: that he was at work that afternoon, and so then
Speaker 3: the question becomes time of death very important. Here did
Speaker 3: Anthea die in the morning, for example, before Jeff even
Speaker 3: went to work. This is where the witness has become important.
Speaker 3: And I've spoken to the key ones. There's a woman
Speaker 3: named nur Angela Hillyard who worked with Jeff lived at
Speaker 3: the apartment complex, in the apartment directly under Jeff's and
Speaker 3: she says that that day she was at work as well. However,
Speaker 3: she went home for lunch, and she did this at
Speaker 3: around one pm, and there was a shuttle service, so
Speaker 3: there was a van that the employees could get in
Speaker 3: at the medical center and then make the short journey
Speaker 3: to the apartment complex. So she went home for lunch,
Speaker 3: and then at around one point fifty she went back
Speaker 3: into the van to go back to the medical center,
Speaker 3: and she said she looked up at Jeff and Anthea's
Speaker 3: apartment and Anthea was on the balcony, and so this
Speaker 3: is a sighting of Anthea alive at one fifty pm.
Speaker 3: It's also important to note that a short time after that,
Speaker 3: around two ten PM, another woman who was living at
Speaker 3: that apartment complex named Carolyn Chilcott, heard a domestic dispute
Speaker 3: and she's described it to Brunei police as a domestic
Speaker 3: dispute at around two ten pm, the sound of a
Speaker 3: man and a woman having an argument and also the
Speaker 3: sound of furniture being moved. She says that went for
Speaker 3: about seven minutes, and then she heard the sound of
Speaker 3: footsteps going down the stairs and out of the apartment complex.
Speaker 3: So we have a sighting of Anthea alive at one
Speaker 3: point fifty we have the sound of a domestic dispute
Speaker 3: at two ten, not necessarily coming from Jeff and Anthea's apartment,
Speaker 3: but certainly from somewhere in the apartment complex. If the
Speaker 3: sighting and that sound is linked to Anthea's murder, then
Speaker 3: Jeff Hall is at work at the time. Few things
Speaker 3: we need to question there. Firstly, there was only one
Speaker 3: person that saw Anthea alive, and identifications like that have
Speaker 3: been notoriously unreliable. I've interviewed neur Angela. I think she
Speaker 3: is credible and one hundred percent believe she saw Anthea.
Speaker 3: But that has been the case in many murder investigations
Speaker 3: where those accounts have turned out to be wrong. So
Speaker 3: we need to take that for what it is. And
Speaker 3: I've been told by prosecution experts that in any trial
Speaker 3: that would become under a lot of scrutiny, there'd be
Speaker 3: a lot of questions asked about that sighting. The other
Speaker 3: thing obviously we need to ask, is well, are we
Speaker 3: sure that the sound of the dispute came from Jeff
Speaker 3: and Anthea's apartment. It could have been someone else, could
Speaker 3: have been a complete coincidence. And the police say that
Speaker 3: any investigation there will be red herrings like this. They're
Speaker 3: the first two things we need to consider. But then
Speaker 3: we also need to look at Jeff Hall's version of events.
Speaker 3: Was he really at work that whole time? Who saw
Speaker 3: him at work was as someone that can account for
Speaker 3: him being there every minute of the day between twelve
Speaker 3: and five. And I have to say there are alibi
Speaker 3: witnesses for Jeff Hall, people who say they saw him
Speaker 3: around two point fifteen, although they couldn't be completely sure
Speaker 3: of the time. But I think just to simplify it
Speaker 3: a little bit, because Jeff Hall's version of events is
Speaker 3: probably most important. He said in his original police statement
Speaker 3: that he had a coffee break at two o'clock in
Speaker 3: the afternoon. He says that he had that coffee break
Speaker 3: on the clinic grounds. He never went home. He says
Speaker 3: he never went back to the apartment and he says
Speaker 3: that he had that coffee break with his superior Varghi's Powlos,
Speaker 3: who was the head of the MRI department where he worked.
Speaker 3: Problem is Fagie's powerloss in his statement says, yes, I
Speaker 3: did have a coffee break with Jeff Hall, but that
Speaker 3: was at two forty five, and so there's a difference
Speaker 3: in timings there, and it is possible that one of
Speaker 3: them has just got their time wrong. But a fact
Speaker 3: of this case is that Jeff says he had a
Speaker 3: coffee break at two and the person he says he
Speaker 3: had a coffee break with says, no, it happened at
Speaker 3: two forty five. Crucial timing when you consider the sound
Speaker 3: of the domestic dispute at the apartment complex at about
Speaker 3: two ten pm. The other important thing to note there
Speaker 3: is that whilst Jeff's car wasn't with him by all reports.
Speaker 3: At the medical center. It's a fairly short walk. I've
Speaker 3: looked at it on Google Maps. As the crow flies,
Speaker 3: it's less than a kilometer from the apartment complex to
Speaker 3: the clinic. Jeff was a fit man. If he wanted
Speaker 3: to run, he'd cover a kilometer in five minutes. If
Speaker 3: he walked, he might take ten to fifteen. He could
Speaker 3: get a ride. That's something that has been investigated. What
Speaker 3: it essentially shows is that there is a possibility that
Speaker 3: Jeff could have gone home during that five hour period.
Speaker 3: I will repeat, though, that there were several people who
Speaker 3: certainly say that they were with Jeff the large chunks
Speaker 3: of the day. The other thing that Jeff said was
Speaker 3: that he spent a lot of that afternoon with var
Speaker 3: Geese and with another colleague, Emmett Timperley. Emma has been
Speaker 3: supportive in her witness statement of what I've seen in
Speaker 3: terms of spending a lot of time with Jeff. Var Geese, though,
Speaker 3: who I've interviewed, has said that he would have only
Speaker 3: spent a few minutes here and there with Jeff, and
Speaker 3: certainly doesn't think he would have spent a large chunk
Speaker 3: of the afternoon with him.
Speaker 1: So Rownie has all of this evidence and investigation, what
Speaker 1: does he do with it in terms of the Australian authorities.
Speaker 3: So he wanted an opinion as to whether or not
Speaker 3: what he had gathered was enough for a prosecution, and
Speaker 3: so he went to the South Australian Director of Public
Speaker 3: Prosecutions at the time, who was a man named Stephen Polaris.
Speaker 3: It was his role as the DPP in South Australia
Speaker 3: to look at evidence that police have gathered and make
Speaker 3: decisions on whether or not there was enough to put
Speaker 3: a person before the court. This was his speciality. This
Speaker 3: is what he did every day. So that evidence was
Speaker 3: presented to him, and he tells me after examining that evidence,
Speaker 3: he came to the conclusion that there was not only
Speaker 3: enough evidence to charge Jeffrey Hall, there was enough evidence
Speaker 3: to put him on trial for murder. This was a
Speaker 3: determination he made in two thousand and eight. And I
Speaker 3: do want to caveat that with the fact that perhaps
Speaker 3: evidence has been gathered since then that might change his mind,
Speaker 3: but certainly that was his determination in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: You have Brunei not wanting to do that. You have
Speaker 1: Australia wanting to do that. How do you go about
Speaker 1: making that happen because we don't have jurisdiction there, and so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was the first brick Wall I guess that
Speaker 3: those investigators faced here in South Australia. So there was
Speaker 3: Detective Brenton Rownie, but there was also another one that
Speaker 3: came in, Detective John schneiem Milch. They worked together for
Speaker 3: a point and they decided, okay, Brunei Police isn't going
Speaker 3: to investigate the DPP here thinks there's enough evidence. Our
Speaker 3: next step, we're going to talk to Jeff Hall. Jeff
Speaker 3: Hall was working in Tokyo as an executive by this point.
Speaker 3: They put an alert on his passport so that whenever
Speaker 3: he enters the country they would know about it. Jeff
Speaker 3: Hall eventually comes back to Australia and he's staying at
Speaker 3: a hotel in the CBD and detective Rownie and schnee
Speaker 3: Milch go to his front door at the hotel room. Jeff,
Speaker 3: to their surprise, agrees to talk to them and they
Speaker 3: interview him at length. Jeff sticks to that original story.
Speaker 3: I've got varying accounts from those two detectives. One of
Speaker 3: them believes that he thought that at one stage Jeff
Speaker 3: Hall was going to confess to the murder. The other
Speaker 3: detective certainly didn't agree with that at all, but both
Speaker 3: of them do agree that Jeff Hall was extremely upset.
Speaker 3: He was obviously extremely shocked to suddenly have detectives arriving
Speaker 3: at his door all of these years later, but they
Speaker 3: did interview him. He agreed to the interview. Jeff's story
Speaker 3: didn't change, and then the detectives went to the Bradshaw's home,
Speaker 3: sat them down and said, we think we've done all
Speaker 3: we can here. Now we don't have any jurisdiction and
Speaker 3: we're going to have to leave it at that. And
Speaker 3: Craig Bradshaw, Anthea's eldest brother, who very frustrated by this point,
Speaker 3: says that he went outside. He had a punching bag
Speaker 3: and he punched the punching bag and he broke his
Speaker 3: wrist because he felt like it was just another as
Speaker 3: I say, brickwall that they had faced. And so when
Speaker 3: he had eventually calmed down, he said to these detectives, Okay,
Speaker 3: well where can we go from here? And they said, well,
Speaker 3: we don't think your chances are very good, but you
Speaker 3: could go to Federal Parliament and you could change a
Speaker 3: law so that police in Australia can investigate this crime,
Speaker 3: because at the end of the day, the victim was
Speaker 3: Australian and there was legislation in place already that came
Speaker 3: in in two thousand and two after the Bali bombings
Speaker 3: that allowed Australian police to investigate overseas murders. The problem
Speaker 3: with that though, was that it wasn't backdated, so the
Speaker 3: legislation only began in two Anything before that, including Anthea's
Speaker 3: murder in nineteen ninety four, wasn't subject to this legislation,
Speaker 3: and so what the Bradshaws would need to do is
Speaker 3: changed that legislation so that it was retrospective. And that's
Speaker 3: where a whole new fight began for the Bradshaws. They
Speaker 3: went to journalists at the time and one of them
Speaker 3: was probably me, but also a reporter with a local
Speaker 3: paper who wrote a feature article about this. It gave
Speaker 3: the case a bit more prominence. And then I'm sure
Speaker 3: you'll know Nick Xenophon, a very prominent independent senator at
Speaker 3: the time, became aware of the case and he went
Speaker 3: and met with the Bradshaws and he said Okay, well,
Speaker 3: let's see if we can change this legislation. It was
Speaker 3: going to be difficult though for Nick on his own
Speaker 3: because he was an independent wasn't aligned to either of
Speaker 3: the major parties here in Australia. But perhaps another stroke
Speaker 3: of luck was that the local member for the Bradshaws
Speaker 3: was Christopher Pine, a prominent cabinet minister at the time,
Speaker 3: and so Nick and Chris and the family get together
Speaker 3: and they try to work out, okay, how do we
Speaker 3: go about this. Christopher Pine approached the Attorney General at
Speaker 3: the time, who was George Brandis, and they decided that
Speaker 3: if they introduced a private member's bill through Nick Xenophon,
Speaker 3: that perhaps this could get past the Senate and the
Speaker 3: House of Representatives. And it didn't happen easily, but eventually
Speaker 3: that did happen and the law was changed, and the
Speaker 3: Bradshaws went to Canberra. They fronted the cameras and this
Speaker 3: was an historic day and they changed federal law and
Speaker 3: it became known as Antia's Law or the Bradshaw Bill,
Speaker 3: and that would not just help them, but potentially help
Speaker 3: many other Australian families as well. That could be seen
Speaker 3: as a victory For the Bradshaws, they certainly didn't see
Speaker 3: it that way and they said as much. This was
Speaker 3: just Martin Bradshaw that his father said. They were never
Speaker 3: going to be any winners in this. It's just about
Speaker 3: pursuing justice. But this allowed them to take that next
Speaker 3: time step.
Speaker 1: We still don't have anyone behind bars for this murder,
Speaker 1: so that law might have gone through, but what's actually
Speaker 1: happened since that law came through? Where are we at
Speaker 1: in this investigation?
Speaker 3: And so the Bradshaws thought at this point that the
Speaker 3: South Australian Police would then investigate and have jurisdiction. That
Speaker 3: didn't happen. The Australian Federal Police were given the job
Speaker 3: of investigating it, presumably because they used to dealing with
Speaker 3: overseas governments, overseas police forces, and they might have access
Speaker 3: to more intel than the South Australian Police would have,
Speaker 3: so in a way it made sense. Two investigators were
Speaker 3: given the task of not conducting an investigation. They used
Speaker 3: the word evaluation to evaluate the evidence to then make
Speaker 3: a decision whether it was even worth investigating. Those two
Speaker 3: investigators spent around eighteen months looking at the evidence, conducting
Speaker 3: their own investigations, re examining forensic exhibits, They visited Brunei,
Speaker 3: they spoke to witnesses. However, they then summoned the Bradshaws,
Speaker 3: or called the Bradshaws to their AFP offices in Adelaide,
Speaker 3: sat them down and told them quite bluntly that they
Speaker 3: would not be conducting a full investigation into the matter.
Speaker 1: That must have been heartbreaking after all of that, after
Speaker 1: everything that they had been through, it ripped their hearts out.
Speaker 3: Paul Bradshaw, I'm told, reacted very angrily. Anthea's younger brother
Speaker 3: just wanted to leave, dropped some f bombs, told them
Speaker 3: what he thought of them, and eventually left the building.
Speaker 3: I'm told by some sources he may have done a
Speaker 3: small burnout in the car park and then drove off.
Speaker 3: And it was the same feeling for Craig and Roz
Speaker 3: and Martin. It was a shock. They thought that there
Speaker 3: would at least be an investigation. And that's the point
Speaker 3: I want to make here, is that this wasn't about going, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's go and arrest Jeff Hall. It was about let's
Speaker 3: investigate who killed Anthea. There are other theories, but someone
Speaker 3: killed Anthea. So Let's find out who it was. Let's
Speaker 3: not just allow a South Australian woman to be murdered
Speaker 3: overseas and do nothing about it. That was their frustration,
Speaker 3: and it was a shock for me too. I've been
Speaker 3: following this case. I tried to ring the Brawdshaws. They
Speaker 3: weren't answering their phones. They dropped off the grid for
Speaker 3: a few days, maybe a few weeks. And I'm only
Speaker 3: being told now the reason that was was that Martin
Speaker 3: Antea's father started to spiral. His health started to suffer
Speaker 3: and he had a stroke a couple of weeks after
Speaker 3: being told this news. He survived that stroke. Craig was
Speaker 3: there and managed to get into a hospital, but sadly,
Speaker 3: he had a few more strokes and he continued to
Speaker 3: go downhill, and a few years ago he passed away
Speaker 3: without knowing what had happened to his daughter.
Speaker 1: Is that why you've come in? Is that why you're
Speaker 1: reinvestigating this to try and help this family in this
Speaker 1: next stage of their fight.
Speaker 3: Yes, because they don't know where else to go. The
Speaker 3: Bradshaw family at the moment, we need to reflect. Now
Speaker 3: we've had a Brunei police investigation that didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 3: South Australian Police were enthusiastic about helping them, but ultimately
Speaker 3: didn't have the primary jurisdiction and it was given to
Speaker 3: the AFP, which investigated. And I need to be very clear,
Speaker 3: they called that investigation an evaluation and then they said
Speaker 3: explicitly to the family that they would not conduct a
Speaker 3: full investigation into the matter. And I found that very
Speaker 3: unusual for several reasons. And I'm not saying that they
Speaker 3: didn't do a thorough job. And I'm sure that they
Speaker 3: are aware of evidence that I'm not aware of, and
Speaker 3: perhaps the other police forces aren't aware of, and the
Speaker 3: former South Australian DEPP isn't aware of. But did they
Speaker 3: do everything they could? And should they be saying that
Speaker 3: they're not going to conduct a full investigation. I think
Speaker 3: that's a horrible thing to tell a family. I really do.
Speaker 3: And for example, if there's a cold case in South
Speaker 3: Australia the South Australian Police, it'll always be something that
Speaker 3: they never give up on and they will hold press
Speaker 3: conferences or they'll keep pushing it out there and calling
Speaker 3: for information. Now, I'm not aware of a single police
Speaker 3: officer in the world having ever done a press conference
Speaker 3: about Anthea's murder. Not one nearly thirty years not one
Speaker 3: might have happened in Brunei. Perhaps I'm not sure. Certainly
Speaker 3: not in Australia. And that's what I guess what we
Speaker 3: can focus on now, because clearly it's now Australia's job
Speaker 3: to do this, because Brunei is not going to I
Speaker 3: would have thought that at some point you front the
Speaker 3: cameras and you say it's not acceptable that an innocent
Speaker 3: South Australian school teacher was killed in the prime of
Speaker 3: her life in a foreign country. We want to do
Speaker 3: something about it. Who knows something? If you know, call
Speaker 3: this number, put out a reward, like you do with
Speaker 3: every other unsolved murder in Australia that hasn't happened. Either.
Speaker 3: There's no reward. The AFP might say, I will look,
Speaker 3: this happened overseas. Why would we call for witnesses here
Speaker 3: in Australia. Well, a lot of the witnesses now live
Speaker 3: in Australia. Well, the key one, nor Angela, who I
Speaker 3: spoke to, who was the last to see anthrough her
Speaker 3: live will, says she was the last to see anthrow
Speaker 3: your lives. She lives in Perth. I've spoken to another
Speaker 3: witness who had dinner with Anthea and Jeff the night before.
Speaker 3: She lives in Borough, South Australia. A lot of these
Speaker 3: expats are in Australia and anti families in Australia. Antea's
Speaker 3: friends are in Australia. It's important to know about Jeff
Speaker 3: and Anthea's relationship before they went overseas. You need to
Speaker 3: build a full picture, and so I think there is
Speaker 3: good reason to do a press conference or a recorded
Speaker 3: interview here in Australia and I have reached out to
Speaker 3: the AFP with a full list of questions. It took
Speaker 3: me a long time to get an answer as to
Speaker 3: whether they would speak with me, and six weeks after
Speaker 3: that first inquiry I got an email saying that they
Speaker 3: would politely decline. And what's particularly frustrating about that is
Speaker 3: that podcasts they extend beyond borders, don't they Like people
Speaker 3: in BRUNEI might listen to the podcast, the American expats
Speaker 3: might hear it in the US. There are witnesses in
Speaker 3: the UK, and there is a very good chance that
Speaker 3: once the podcast starts getting shared around, it will get
Speaker 3: to the right people. I was extremely disappointed that they
Speaker 3: didn't want to talk. They did provide me with an
Speaker 3: extensive written statement, and I should acknowledge that they certainly
Speaker 3: say that they did everything that they could, that they
Speaker 3: feel like they turned over every stone, that they interviewed
Speaker 3: all of the right people, They re examined the forensic evidence.
Speaker 3: They also say that they uncovered new evidence, including some
Speaker 3: injuries we weren't aware of to anthea, which is well
Speaker 3: and good, but I would have some follow up questions
Speaker 3: for that, and I'd like to know a little bit more.
Speaker 3: And if there is some stuff that they know that
Speaker 3: we don't the public doesn't know, that doesn't sit very
Speaker 3: comfortably with me either, because that would mean that Martin
Speaker 3: Bradshaw passed away without knowing the full story. And they
Speaker 3: probably do say that they need to keep some things
Speaker 3: up their sleeve because it might compromise the investigation if
Speaker 3: they release that information. But my response to that would
Speaker 3: be what investigation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've said they're not doing one.
Speaker 3: It's been thirty years. Maybe it's time to take some
Speaker 3: risks in releasing some information and getting the public talking again.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's okay to sit there inter state
Speaker 3: and say, oh, look, there are things that you guys
Speaker 3: don't know in this case. We're all is. Even if
Speaker 3: there's only a few new things that we can be told,
Speaker 3: it might be enough to get those witnesses talking again
Speaker 3: and to get the case back on track. So that
Speaker 3: has been frustrating.
Speaker 1: I just want to touch on this briefly, but as
Speaker 1: part of your investigation, you've been trying to build that timeline,
Speaker 1: that relationship inside Jeff and Anthea's world by talking to
Speaker 1: friends and stuff like that. Has anything in that timeline
Speaker 1: surprised you? Because one thing we haven't mentioned is that
Speaker 1: Jeff is actually a gay man. He came out in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands around that time has been gay.
Speaker 1: Is that something that's worth talking about.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think it's worth talking about. Obviously, we need
Speaker 3: to be very careful. I don't think that we can
Speaker 3: say it's important to the investigation necessarily. And the Bradshaws
Speaker 3: make the point as well that just because Jeff has
Speaker 3: come out as gay, it doesn't make him a murderer.
Speaker 3: And I hope that's an obvious thing to say. However,
Speaker 3: given that ninety six days after Anthea's wedding, she was killed,
Speaker 3: and given that Jeff Hall has been named as a
Speaker 3: suspect in a coroner's in quest and also in an
Speaker 3: Adelaide court since then. Given those things, it's important to
Speaker 3: go back over their relationship because that helps build a picture.
Speaker 3: So I want to talk about a few things there. Firstly,
Speaker 3: the Bradshaws say that they never saw many signs of
Speaker 3: tension between the couple, only an argument here and there.
Speaker 3: I've spoken to friends of Anthea who say that they
Speaker 3: did like Jeff, but they've also painted a bit of
Speaker 3: a different picture about what was happening behind closed doors.
Speaker 3: There was one letter in particular that Anthea had sent
Speaker 3: to one of her friends that spoke about them having
Speaker 3: some doozy of arguments, is how she described them, arguments
Speaker 3: that involved furniture throwing and minor injuries. Now, I want
Speaker 3: to make it clear that that doesn't make Jeff a
Speaker 3: murderer either, and that lots of couples would have arguments,
Speaker 3: and lots of couples probably have quite volatile arguments. Again,
Speaker 3: I think it's important to paint the picture though about
Speaker 3: their relationship, given that he is a suspect in the murder.
Speaker 3: There were other friends as well that also recall there
Speaker 3: being arguing. And there are some friends as well that
Speaker 3: say that there was some strange behavior, erratic behavior from
Speaker 3: Jeff after Anthea died, after the funeral, and I guess
Speaker 3: that could be explained. He would have been grieving at
Speaker 3: the time, but I think important to put that on
Speaker 3: the record. So there were those things from Antie's friends. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it was not a perfect relationship. Also, when you mentioned
Speaker 3: Jeff coming out as gay, that happened around ten years
Speaker 3: after the murder, that was a real shock for the
Speaker 3: Bradshaw family because they were still close with Jeff, particularly
Speaker 3: the brothers. They were still mates, but Jeff didn't tell them.
Speaker 3: One of the brothers, Paul, was at a social event.
Speaker 3: It was a cricket party, he says, and he was
Speaker 3: talking to a mutual friend of Jeff's and Paul said,
Speaker 3: how is Jeff? And this friend said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I was a bit shocked about him coming out with
Speaker 3: this young fellow. And Paul said, what do you mean
Speaker 3: coming out of what? And would soon put two and
Speaker 3: two together and that was how he found out that
Speaker 3: Jeff was gay. And so Paul says, why didn't Jeff
Speaker 3: tell me that? Why didn't he come to meet with it,
Speaker 3: and at no point did these brothers think, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: that's it. That means that he killed Anthea. Far from it.
Speaker 3: In fact, Craig says that when he found out this news,
Speaker 3: he essentially said, look, so what doesn't make him a murderer.
Speaker 3: And he even reached out to Jeff. He called him
Speaker 3: and said, I've just built a new house at Morson Lakes.
Speaker 3: Would you like to come and see it? And Jeff said, no,
Speaker 3: I can't, I'm too busy with water Polo and basically
Speaker 3: hung up. And that was the last interaction that Jeff
Speaker 3: and Craig had ever had, and the Bradshaws haven't spoken
Speaker 3: to him for many years. And so why is his
Speaker 3: sexuality relevant? It's potentially not reallyan Why am I mentioning
Speaker 3: it in the podcast? Well we need to know did
Speaker 3: Jeff know he was gay when he married Anthea? And
Speaker 3: if he did, why did he marry Anthea? And it
Speaker 3: speaks to the dynamics of the relationship. I think it's
Speaker 3: an important thing to mention.
Speaker 1: Will You're right in calling it a mystery because there
Speaker 1: are still so many unanswered questions in this case, it's
Speaker 1: definitely not one we should be just closing a book
Speaker 1: on what's Jeff's response been to all of this and
Speaker 1: to the various investigations that have been going on.
Speaker 3: It's really important to put on the record that Jeff
Speaker 3: has always denied any involvement in Anthea's murder. The Brunei
Speaker 3: police investigation did not find enough evidence to charge him.
Speaker 3: South Australian police have obviously never charged him, and an
Speaker 3: AFP investigation did not find enough evidence to charge him,
Speaker 3: so in the eyes of the law, he is an
Speaker 3: innocent man. I've reached out to him for comment so
Speaker 3: far I haven't got a response at this stage. I
Speaker 3: know that a user with sixty minutes reached out to
Speaker 3: Jeff for comment a few years ago. He was polite
Speaker 3: on the phone and certainly indicated that he would like
Speaker 3: to help, but ultimately declined the request for an interview.
Speaker 3: And more recently, the AFP has told me that they
Speaker 3: reached out to Jeff for an interview for their investigation
Speaker 3: and he declined, which is his right to do. So
Speaker 3: that's where we're at at the moment, and I do
Speaker 3: want to maintain that whilst Jeff has been named as
Speaker 3: a suspect, there have also been other theories including a
Speaker 3: stranger seen outside of the apartment complex, including the fact
Speaker 3: that there were a lot of people around the apartment
Speaker 3: complexes at that time.
Speaker 1: Lastly, I just wanted to ask you what you think
Speaker 1: this case can teach us about grief, because I think
Speaker 1: listening to the Bradshaws, they say time heals wounds, their
Speaker 1: wounds don't feel in any way, shape or form. Thirty
Speaker 1: years later, their grief is so palpable you can hear
Speaker 1: it in their voices. How deeply has this affected the
Speaker 1: trajectory of their lives, and do you think that justice
Speaker 1: will help them to finally be able to handle that grief.
Speaker 3: Firstly, it's absolutely ruined their lives. They haven't been the same.
Speaker 3: Their lives have been turned upside down, mental health problems,
Speaker 3: suicidal thoughts, alcohol problems. They've gone from being a happy
Speaker 3: suburban family to being completely ruined. And I don't think
Speaker 3: we can even begin to imagine what it would be like.
Speaker 3: I've got a sister. If she was one moment, I'm
Speaker 3: m seeing her wedding, the next moment, I'm getting a
Speaker 3: phone call to say that she'd been murdered. Unthinkable. There's that,
Speaker 3: and that's the worst part, right that's the worst part.
Speaker 3: They've lost their sister, they've lost their daughter. But I
Speaker 3: think what has really destroyed them is this ongoing fight
Speaker 3: for justice and the frustration of that and that anger
Speaker 3: that that would bring. And that's what I think really
Speaker 3: comes out when you speak to them. They want whoever
Speaker 3: was responsible to suffer in the way that they have suffered.
Speaker 3: And I've spoken to the former victim's Rights commissioner here
Speaker 3: in South Australia who had some strong things to say
Speaker 3: on this, and he said that families don't ever move
Speaker 3: on from these things. You know, time doesn't really heal wounds.
Speaker 3: People just learn how to live with what's happened to them.
Speaker 3: And he's made the point of saying that these families
Speaker 3: shouldn't be expected to move on afterwards and just to
Speaker 3: drop the investigation and think this isn't getting anywhere, Let's
Speaker 3: go on with our lives. Well, I think it's offensive
Speaker 3: when people say that to them, because it's not for
Speaker 3: other people to decide that. And when I made inquiries
Speaker 3: with witnesses and investigators, some of them said they've got
Speaker 3: to get on with their lives. Anthea wouldn't have wanted this. Well,
Speaker 3: I even question that because Anthea obviously knew who killed her.
Speaker 3: There are people that have said to me anthey will
Speaker 3: be saying go and get them. It's not good enough
Speaker 3: to say that the family should be expected to move
Speaker 3: on because they're never going to have any kind of
Speaker 3: peace until the case is solved. And that's for them
Speaker 3: to decide. And so if there are reasons why things
Speaker 3: can't be investigated further, I mean there are people I
Speaker 3: approached for interview for the podcast who said no, and
Speaker 3: that's completely fine. People have their reasons for that. I
Speaker 3: just don't want one of those reasons to be that
Speaker 3: the family should just move on and that it's best
Speaker 3: for the family, because it's not for us to decide
Speaker 3: what's best for the family.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Ben for assisting us to tell this story.
Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations is a Mumma mea podcast hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by me Jemma Bass, with audio design by Scott Stronik.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is lif Proud. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
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