Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and wortars. This podcast was
Speaker 1: recorded on It's eleven forty four AM on December two,
Speaker 1: twenty ten, in Melbourne and Phoebe Hans Juck and her
Speaker 1: dog Yoshi are captured on security camera. They're leaving the
Speaker 1: luxury apartment building on Saint Kilda Road she shares with
Speaker 1: her boyfriend as a fire alarm sounds. She returns six
Speaker 1: minutes later. It's the last time she's ever seen alive.
Speaker 1: After that short clip, we know she consumes enough alcohol
Speaker 1: to put her three times over the legal limit. Traces
Speaker 1: of a sleeping pill are found in her system, according
Speaker 1: to police. At some point over the course of the evening,
Speaker 1: Phoebe exits her apartment and enters her floor's rubbish chute,
Speaker 1: falling twelve floor into a wheelie bin. She survives, but
Speaker 1: her right foot is almost severed by the compactor's blade,
Speaker 1: and in a last bid for life, she drags herself
Speaker 1: around the room looking for an exit. She doesn't find it.
Speaker 1: Her body is found by a concierge at seven pm.
Speaker 1: Her death is ruled a suicide, then an accident, but
Speaker 1: those explanations have never made sense to her family. How
Speaker 1: did she get into the shoot? Why did she get
Speaker 1: into the shoot? Did the police and the coroner get
Speaker 1: it wrong? I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations,
Speaker 1: a Muma Mere podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes
Speaker 1: by speaking to the people who know the most about them.
Speaker 1: The garbage shoot at Phoebe's apartment was one of those
Speaker 1: ones that you open via a handle about halfway up
Speaker 1: the wall. It swings open on an angle, revealing a
Speaker 1: twenty two centimeter latch opening. It's a pretty awkward hole
Speaker 1: to maneuver yourself into, and watching the recreation of how
Speaker 1: Phoebe might have managed it on Channel nine's Under Investigation,
Speaker 1: it looks almost impossible.
Speaker 2: It's very tight.
Speaker 1: In her second attempt, Daniel pulls herself up, but it
Speaker 1: takes all her strength, balance and coordination. It's just one
Speaker 1: of a long list of questions that remain unanswered in
Speaker 1: this case, a story that has been covered in depth
Speaker 1: by multi award winning investigative journalist Richard Baker, whose podcast
Speaker 1: Phoebe's Fall for the Age, hosted with Michael Bachelard, worked
Speaker 1: closely with Phoebe's family to try and figure out what
Speaker 1: really happened to her. It's a case that has baffled
Speaker 1: and angered the Australian public, and fourteen years later, many
Speaker 1: of the questions asked by Phoebe's fall remain a miss.
Speaker 1: Richard joins us. Now, Richard, how was Phoebe's body discovered
Speaker 1: and what happened as police arrived on that scene.
Speaker 3: Phoebe's body was found in the garbage refuse room of
Speaker 3: this really fancy apartment building in Sint Kilda Road in
Speaker 3: Melbourne around seven pm by the concierge or a cleaner
Speaker 3: going about her work. She was just trying to put
Speaker 3: a broom back or something and felt that there was
Speaker 3: a weight against the door and had trouble opening it
Speaker 3: and eventually got it open and they're lying in a
Speaker 3: pool of blood. Was Phoebe And so what happened from there?
Speaker 3: Obviously you know, police and emergency services were called and
Speaker 3: pretty quickly the building started to fill up with police
Speaker 3: and ambulance officers. Interestingly, the ambulance officers didn't go and
Speaker 3: check for proof of life, which I found a bit troubling,
Speaker 3: and I know that troubled members of Phoebe's family, but
Speaker 3: the police had already made an assessment that she was well,
Speaker 3: I'm truly gone, and then it was really about talking
Speaker 3: to her de facto partner, Ant Hample and trying to
Speaker 3: piece together her movements of that day.
Speaker 1: How quickly did the police start talking about suicide.
Speaker 3: Well, from what we know and from the coroner's inquest,
Speaker 3: from the word go, that was in the backdrop of
Speaker 3: all the conversations about what might have happened there, I know,
Speaker 3: and had mentioned that she was mentally unwell at the
Speaker 3: time in his opinion, and she was seeking some treatment
Speaker 3: and care from the medical profession for her mental health.
Speaker 3: And within two days the homicide squad had pretty much
Speaker 3: written it off as a suicide, and that meant the
Speaker 3: case then was bound for the coroner, and a detective
Speaker 3: from the nearest police station, South Melbourne was assigned the
Speaker 3: job of putting together the brief of evidence. It was
Speaker 3: a really quick judgment called to make and something I've
Speaker 3: never seen happen so quickly, and any other high profile
Speaker 3: death in a suspicious circumstance involving you know, a young
Speaker 3: woman or a woman in that de facto or intimate
Speaker 3: partner setting let's.
Speaker 1: Paint the picture of Phoebe's life at the time a bit.
Speaker 1: She was, you know, twenty four living with her boyfriend
Speaker 1: who you mentioned. Can you tell us a bit more
Speaker 1: about the life she was living.
Speaker 2: On the surface, it looked like a pretty good life.
Speaker 3: I managed a vibrant twenty four year old, you know,
Speaker 3: stunning looking young woman, big personality, from a loving family.
Speaker 3: You know, her family and her friends would conceive a
Speaker 3: bit of a wild child, loved a party, but could
Speaker 3: also then get like many of us buyer's remorse after
Speaker 3: too good a time.
Speaker 2: And a bit like and a bit down. And yeah,
Speaker 2: she mixed.
Speaker 3: And through her boyfriend and his connections. He was quite
Speaker 3: a bit older and from a very established Melbourne legal family,
Speaker 3: and worked and it still works in the events and
Speaker 3: entertainment space, going to a lot of parties, meeting a
Speaker 3: lot of quite hip and happening on the move people.
Speaker 3: So it was a pretty full long lifestyle. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I think her family and friends would have said that
Speaker 3: she did have her battles with alcohol and occasional drug
Speaker 3: use and stuff like that, but you know, quite common
Speaker 3: for people in their early to mid twenties to be
Speaker 3: doing all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So what do we know about how her relationship was going.
Speaker 1: You mentioned there was an age gap, it was quite
Speaker 1: a big one, and was forty three she was twenty four,
Speaker 1: and they had quite a few breakups in the kind
Speaker 1: of time before she died. How was the final weeks
Speaker 1: of their relationship volatile?
Speaker 2: Very volatile?
Speaker 3: There had been, according to Phoebe's mom and grandma, who
Speaker 3: you know, she was very close to, kind of six
Speaker 3: occasions where she had left him or walked out between
Speaker 3: October and she was found dead in December. So it
Speaker 3: wasn't in a it wasn't in a healthy, healthy state.
Speaker 3: And I think that last week they'd had a massive
Speaker 3: blue after a dinner at some of Ant's friends, and
Speaker 3: he didn't like the way she behaved or some of
Speaker 3: the things she said, and she had a couple of
Speaker 3: glasses of wine, and I don't think he liked that
Speaker 3: because of I guess he saw alcohol.
Speaker 2: As as a problem in her life, but why.
Speaker 3: Keep taking it her places then where it's kind of
Speaker 3: in abundance. So that last week, I think the Monday
Speaker 3: night of it, yeah, they had a massive row and
Speaker 3: really things sort of started to spiral a bit from there.
Speaker 1: During your investigations. You spent a lot of time with
Speaker 1: the family and her friends, and you kind of tried
Speaker 1: to unpick how the relationship changed. Phoebe and a lot
Speaker 1: of her friends spoke about how she was a different
Speaker 1: person really towards the end than the person they knew.
Speaker 1: Can you talk to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, from their perspective and the way they saw her
Speaker 3: and her change and behavioral change, it was almost like
Speaker 3: she's trying to fulfill a role or acting, trying to
Speaker 3: fit a mold that was being made or had been
Speaker 3: made for her, and to really modify her behaviors to
Speaker 3: take the edges off a bit.
Speaker 2: But she seemed Yeah, I mean, they say that she
Speaker 2: was a.
Speaker 3: Person caught up in a relationship where there was a
Speaker 3: lot of real or perceived coercive control going on.
Speaker 1: Right. Did her family see any signs of her being suicidal?
Speaker 2: No, No, not from what I know.
Speaker 1: Because her dad is a psychiatrist, isn't he.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we've got to look at the time she
Speaker 3: was found dead, her youngest brother was about to have
Speaker 3: I think his eighteenth birthday that very weekend, and there
Speaker 3: is no way she would have wanted to do anything
Speaker 3: to upend or to ruin that occasion. So yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: the mental health thing is obviously there, as it is
Speaker 3: in for everyone who dies in a suspicious way. You've
Speaker 3: got to take into account what's going on in their life.
Speaker 3: But from where I sit, and for my knowledge of
Speaker 3: this case, and you know, of the views of her
Speaker 3: family and friends, and also the evidence it was presented
Speaker 3: at the inquest, I think it was a really really
Speaker 3: bad call by the cops to write that off in
Speaker 3: two days. And yeah, I'll stand by that all these.
Speaker 1: You later, Can we talk a bit more about Phoebe's
Speaker 1: last week. You mentioned she'd had a blue with ant,
Speaker 1: but there are a number of other kind of strange
Speaker 1: things that happened. Yeah, there was a dinner and a
Speaker 1: tomato soup text and bits and pieces.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last week, he's kind of you know, sometimes
Speaker 3: real life is crazier than anything you can make up.
Speaker 3: But there was an appointment with a doctor, you know,
Speaker 3: talking about her mental state. Then another bender, another drinking
Speaker 3: bender with a young friend of Phoebe's, where it was
Speaker 3: a pretty late night and I think and you know,
Speaker 3: she threw her phone to the ground in anger at
Speaker 3: how many times he was calling her to find out
Speaker 3: where she was and what she was doing. I think
Speaker 3: she might have had an ecstasy pill or something, the
Speaker 3: friend reported that night. And then you know she did
Speaker 3: come home and was hungover and recovering. And you know,
Speaker 3: not long after that, one day, a strange text was
Speaker 3: sent to family members and ant and one or two
Speaker 3: other people about her having tomato soup and going to
Speaker 3: drift off into this wonderful sleep and sort of apologizing
Speaker 3: about things and you know, merrily, merrily, life is better
Speaker 3: dream And that was a really concerning thing, obviously for
Speaker 3: family to see. And I think Natalie hands Juck, Phoebe's mom,
Speaker 3: was on a plane and you know, when she landed
Speaker 3: and got signal again that came up, and she rang
Speaker 3: her mum, you know, Jeanette, Phoebe's grandmother, to try and
Speaker 3: check out what was going on. You could read many,
Speaker 3: many things into that text message and perhaps still never
Speaker 3: know what the intent was or indeed who the author was.
Speaker 1: When was that text message sent?
Speaker 3: That was on the Thursday morning, so the day before
Speaker 3: or Phoebe died.
Speaker 1: What about her movements on the day she died. We
Speaker 1: know she headed out in the morning with her dog.
Speaker 1: She's captured on CCTV camera.
Speaker 3: Then what we don't know. There's a space of hours
Speaker 3: that no one's got any insight into. What we do
Speaker 3: know that Phoebe was captured on CCTV in the lobby
Speaker 3: of the apartment building with the little dog, and in
Speaker 3: the apartment that she shared with that he reported sort
Speaker 3: of seeing a little shrine when he came back in there.
Speaker 3: Her hair straighteners had been plugged in. Get her handbag
Speaker 3: on the bench and a phone charger with it. Now,
Speaker 3: those things, knowing from my wife and now seventeen year
Speaker 3: old daughter, they're pretty normal indications that that a girl
Speaker 3: or a woman is heading out somewhere if you've got
Speaker 3: those kind of implements on or on the bench ready
Speaker 3: to take with you. And obviously she didn't, the best
Speaker 3: of our knowledge, go out anywhere. And the other things
Speaker 3: that the police discovered was that Phoebe's Gmail had been
Speaker 3: accessed and messages deleted from her email account, and no
Speaker 3: one really knows what that's about or why either, So
Speaker 3: they're enduring mysteries. And because the police had made that
Speaker 3: quick assumption that this was either a suicide or a
Speaker 3: accidental death, it meant Victoria police couldn't get American authorities,
Speaker 3: so where Google's headquartered, to go in and try and
Speaker 3: download or extract the deleted data to find out what
Speaker 3: went on, because under the legal cooperation treaties between the
Speaker 3: two countries to get them to do that, there has
Speaker 3: to be suspicion or strong evidence of a homicide.
Speaker 1: Just another kind of mystery, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another door that couldn't be opened. Now, it maybe
Speaker 3: be a coincidence or something there. But you know, this
Speaker 3: is the after effects, I guess, or the fallout of
Speaker 3: rushing to a conclusion rather than keeping an open mind
Speaker 3: and maybe just gathering all the evidence you can in
Speaker 3: the first place and then make an assessment of what
Speaker 3: is the most likely thing to have happened, whether it
Speaker 3: be a suspicious death or foul play, or a suicide
Speaker 3: or an accident.
Speaker 1: We know that the concierge found Phoebe at about seven.
Speaker 1: What were ants movements that night?
Speaker 3: So his phone records and he's swipe card to enter
Speaker 3: the building show him getting home around ten past six,
Speaker 3: and he says Phoebe wasn't there, and that there was
Speaker 3: like a candle burning and a photo of them or something,
Speaker 3: and some smashed glass and a ripped cushion or something
Speaker 3: like that, so it's a bit of an odd And
Speaker 3: also later it was, you know, it was found out
Speaker 3: that there was some.
Speaker 2: Blood in the apartment.
Speaker 3: Now they were meant to be going out for dinner
Speaker 3: that night with Phoebe's dad, and there was a weird
Speaker 3: phone call to or from their apartment number registered to
Speaker 3: a Western Australian number, and when they checked that number,
Speaker 3: it was wa solar like a solar panel thing that
Speaker 3: nobody knows what the hell that was about, and I
Speaker 3: don't think ant has any recollection.
Speaker 2: Or any idea of what that is.
Speaker 3: What happened next was one of Phoebe's phones rang, and
Speaker 3: I don't know whether the aunt had possession of it
Speaker 3: or not, but it was it was Phoebe's dad and
Speaker 3: he was ringing to confirm dinner or to say that
Speaker 3: where are you, you know, because they haven't rocked up yet.
Speaker 3: And then about sixty seconds later and happened to call
Speaker 3: Phoebe's father back to say, oh, I don't know where
Speaker 3: Phoebe is now, I think, and said that he didn't
Speaker 3: realize that was a coincidence. He didn't know that Phoebe's
Speaker 3: dad had just called sixty seconds earlier looking for her,
Speaker 3: and then as it got closer to seven, I think
Speaker 3: An ordered some takeaway. He assumed that dinners off and
Speaker 3: that maybe Phoebe's dad probably wasn't that keen on just
Speaker 3: having dinner with him on his own.
Speaker 1: Those other kind of bits and pieces you mentioned broken glass,
Speaker 1: a ripped pillow, and blood, were they ever investigated by
Speaker 1: police or locked down as a crime scene.
Speaker 3: The place was eventually locked down for one of a
Speaker 3: better word, or taped off as a crime scene, but
Speaker 3: not till much later in the evening.
Speaker 2: When it's one thing I've always found a.
Speaker 3: Bit unusual, and when that happened, and already had family members,
Speaker 3: including his father, I believe his late father, Supreme Court
Speaker 3: Judge George Hampel, up in the apartment, and I don't
Speaker 3: know what they were doing there, I guess supporting him.
Speaker 2: But again, when you think about how these.
Speaker 3: Things are normally done, I would have thought normal procedure
Speaker 3: would have been to lock down that place, get everyone out,
Speaker 3: preserve the evidence, collect every sample of blood and DNA
Speaker 3: possible in there, and the fragments of glass and the
Speaker 3: computers and anything that might lead to some clues or
Speaker 3: some certainty about what happened, And yeah, the adequacy of
Speaker 3: the steps that were taken that night by police, it
Speaker 3: wasn't good enough. It was inadequate, and they missed testing
Speaker 3: some samples of blood. And to me, wouldn't that be
Speaker 3: a sign of perhaps there's been a struggle.
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't you? You know?
Speaker 3: Also, okay, there were three glasses in the sink, and
Speaker 3: who's been home all day? Why are there three glasses?
Speaker 2: You know? What was in the glasses? Was there? An alcohol?
Speaker 2: Was there?
Speaker 3: This?
Speaker 2: Was there? That not done?
Speaker 3: And the other big failing of that night in terms
Speaker 3: of an investigatory sort of thing, was to actually access
Speaker 3: and seize the CCTV from the apartment building.
Speaker 1: So they didn't do that. No, isn't that basic policing.
Speaker 1: I'm not a police officer putting my hands up, but
Speaker 1: that feels like.
Speaker 3: Sort of on every episode of CSA like that. I mean, it's, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know why you wouldn't you wouldn't do that there?
Speaker 3: And then yeah, I know I've always thought, this is
Speaker 3: my own personal opinion here that Phoebe's family were and
Speaker 3: remain owed an apology by Victoria police.
Speaker 1: Was there an issue with getting that CCTV after the fact.
Speaker 1: Could they not get it later when they.
Speaker 3: Went back to get it. I think it had overwritten
Speaker 3: itself or filmed. It was on a loop so it
Speaker 3: was hard to access. And then the building manager, when
Speaker 3: I went to interview him a few years later, mentioned
Speaker 3: a hard drive. This is when Detective Pain who was
Speaker 3: doing the coroner's investigation. I wanted to see if there
Speaker 3: was something on a hard drive that they eventually found
Speaker 3: what looked like the right or relevant hard drive, and
Speaker 3: then that missing from the building.
Speaker 1: What about witness statements or you know, a statement from ant.
Speaker 1: Was that something that happened that night?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did give a statement, and I think in
Speaker 3: it he mentioned that she was troubled and having battles
Speaker 3: with mental health and poor girl, and you know.
Speaker 2: Things like that.
Speaker 3: And then one of the officers on the scene observed
Speaker 3: in his notebook that was, in his opinion, acting strangely
Speaker 3: and almost sort of putting on the crocodile tears and
Speaker 3: emotion and behaving unusually. But that said, people do cope
Speaker 3: with grief and shock in different ways. And you know,
Speaker 3: I don't think any of the other police remarked one
Speaker 3: way or another on his behavior. And then when Detective
Speaker 3: Pain so that the South Melbourne detective he was given
Speaker 3: the job of forming the brief of evidence for the
Speaker 3: Corona inquest, he wanted to reinterview in January, so you know,
Speaker 3: maybe four or five weeks after Phoebe had died, and
Speaker 3: he wasn't being interviewed under caution or anything. But Ant's father,
Speaker 3: the retired Supreme Court judge, wouldn't leave his sight. And
Speaker 3: even when Detective Pain said, I'd rather talk to him alone. Again,
Speaker 3: we're talking about a forty three year old man here,
Speaker 3: he said, no, my son's grieving.
Speaker 2: I don't want to leave him.
Speaker 1: But I guess that's an important point to make that
Speaker 1: his dad was very high up in the legal system
Speaker 1: in Victoria, which is not a bad thing. It just
Speaker 1: means that this family knows court. They know legalities they do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they know the law and they know how things
Speaker 3: work and they know the I guess just by virtue
Speaker 3: of the position to Ant's stepmother was a sitting county
Speaker 3: court judge, so that's the equivalent of the district court
Speaker 3: in New South Wales also, so yeah, they know, they
Speaker 3: know the l all they know, you know, how things
Speaker 3: can be pushed how police procedure works, all of those
Speaker 3: kinds of things. And that's not a criticism of them,
Speaker 3: it's just a fact of their experience and the profession
Speaker 3: that they have. But I guess it's human nature. People often,
Speaker 3: rightly or wrongly, tread a bit lightly around powerful people.
Speaker 3: And you know, you've got to wonder whether or not
Speaker 3: that happened here, because the point of doing this podcast
Speaker 3: was to actually put the justice system on display and
Speaker 3: ask the question did it give Phoebe a fair go?
Speaker 2: And I think it.
Speaker 1: Failed well, as you were mentioning before. Within a few days,
Speaker 1: so by the seventh of December, homicide detectives had determined
Speaker 1: that there was no second party involved in Phoebe's death,
Speaker 1: that she entered the shoot voluntarily. How did her family
Speaker 1: react to that.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, they would feel under a bit
Speaker 3: of a tidal wave of emotion and question and trying
Speaker 3: to make sense of it all. But I think they
Speaker 3: were really going to back with the speed which that
Speaker 3: conclusion was reached. And I mean, we look at other examples,
Speaker 3: other prominent cases where women, wives or girlfriends have been
Speaker 3: found dead in suspicious circumstances. So you know, I'm talking
Speaker 3: about the Jill Mark case. Also, you know in Inner
Speaker 3: Melbourne a few years after Phoebe, the early stages of
Speaker 3: those investigations put a bit of media and public heat
Speaker 3: on the husbands and talking to experienced detectives after Phoebe's case,
Speaker 3: they thought that was really odd that this is a
Speaker 3: strange situation. This is a domestic de facto relationship here.
Speaker 3: There is evidence of blood and other things in that
Speaker 3: apartment and was home when Phoebe's body was found. So
Speaker 3: it's again not saying that he was guilty, but why
Speaker 3: wasn't the same standard procedures and processes followed here.
Speaker 1: When did you become involved in this story? It was
Speaker 1: around about now, wasn't it that the family kind of
Speaker 1: contacted you. They were quite frustrated with everything that was happening,
Speaker 1: particularly Phoebe's grandfather, who himself was a retired detective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Lawn Campbell, Phoebe's maternal grandfather. It was a
Speaker 3: very experienced Victoria police officer and detective. And he reached
Speaker 3: out to myself and my then colleague and still great mate,
Speaker 3: Nick McKenzie at the age and what he was reaching
Speaker 3: out for was it looked like at that point in time,
Speaker 3: that there was not going to be any inquest by
Speaker 3: the coroner into Phoebe's death, that it was going to
Speaker 3: be written off either as.
Speaker 2: An accident or suicide, with no questions.
Speaker 3: Asked, and Hamble's lawyer had approached the coroner's court saying
Speaker 3: that an inquest was not needed, and that struck me immediately,
Speaker 3: is really weird, and I've.
Speaker 2: Just gone hang on.
Speaker 3: I did a be quick search to find out if
Speaker 3: anyone else in Australia has been found dead at the
Speaker 3: bottom of a garbage chute and found no. Plus you're
Speaker 3: adding all the other stuff that went on in Phoebe's
Speaker 3: last week, and the suspicious kind of scene.
Speaker 2: In the apartment, and the fact that there was.
Speaker 3: No fingerprints on the garbage chute, and the diffiguity of
Speaker 3: getting yourself in there with no external assistance. Of all
Speaker 3: the things that you might want to have an inquest
Speaker 3: into this would be one. Why would a Krona not
Speaker 3: want to do this? And if you are a grieving
Speaker 3: partner of someone who's died in such a bizarre way,
Speaker 3: wouldn't you want to find out why?
Speaker 2: And what happened so instantly for me?
Speaker 3: And I remember Nick was gone, This doesn't feel right,
Speaker 3: This doesn't smell right, it's not right. And we wrote
Speaker 3: quite an extensive feature article detailing all the marks still
Speaker 3: around Phoebe's death, and yeah, putting some pressure on for
Speaker 3: an inquest, that the right thing happened, that there be
Speaker 3: an open and public inquest with witnesses called and the
Speaker 3: facts as the best they could be established, put on
Speaker 3: the table.
Speaker 1: Do you think that without that media pressure the inquest
Speaker 1: might not have happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it would have.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that make it a bit of a ticker box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's astounding, but I don't think it would have
Speaker 3: gone ahead.
Speaker 2: I think it would have been written off. And in
Speaker 2: Victoria at the time.
Speaker 3: It was basically impossible to appeal a coroner's finding or
Speaker 3: the way the coroner was doing something.
Speaker 1: So once a coroner gives a finding, that's it.
Speaker 2: At the time time, Yeah, and it's still quite hard.
Speaker 3: But you know, one of the I guess silver linings
Speaker 3: of highlighting Phoebe's case and the way the justice system
Speaker 3: performed or didn't perform, was that some amendments were made
Speaker 3: to the Coroner's Act that does open up more avenues
Speaker 3: for families to appeal questionable decisions or findings by a coroner.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me Jemma Bass.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with journalists and podcaster Richard Baker about the
Speaker 1: death of Phoebe Hands jock up. Next, Richard tells us
Speaker 1: what the coroner found happened to Phoebe. I want to
Speaker 1: unpack a lot of the evidence from the inquest, but firstly,
Speaker 1: let's jump to the end. What did the inquest find.
Speaker 3: The inquest found that Phoebe was under the influence of
Speaker 3: alcohol and a prescription drug sold here as steel knocks.
Speaker 3: In the States, it's called ambient. It can make people
Speaker 3: do some strange things. And the coroner said that Phoebe
Speaker 3: took herself to the garbage chute, got herself in feet first,
Speaker 3: and then shimmied down and went down, you know, eleven
Speaker 3: or so stories. He said that she put her elbows
Speaker 3: to the edge of the aluminum shoot to kind of
Speaker 3: slow her descent. But I know that the forensic pathologist
Speaker 3: who examined her body and all of that under questioning,
Speaker 3: said he couldn't say that that had happened, and that
Speaker 3: there was no debris on her arms or anything like that.
Speaker 3: And the other difficult thing to think about is that
Speaker 3: when Phoebe was found, she was found with her jeans
Speaker 3: around her knees. So going down, I don't know how
Speaker 3: that might happen. You're more likely to have your pants
Speaker 3: sort of pull up as you're going down rise up.
Speaker 3: But also if they were down before she hopped in
Speaker 3: the chute, how did she get in.
Speaker 1: Because this shoot is I'm using my hands to kind
Speaker 1: of show, but it's about twenty two centimeters that's the gap.
Speaker 2: It's tiny. It's literally like a plastic bag of rubbish.
Speaker 2: So it's not easy. It's not impossible to get into
Speaker 2: on your own.
Speaker 3: But like you've got to be now, Phoebe was fit
Speaker 3: and athletic, but also she's under the influence of stuff.
Speaker 3: You'd have to say a judgment and find motor skills
Speaker 3: could have been impaired. It's really difficult to get into
Speaker 3: on your own and to not leave a fingerprint. I
Speaker 3: don't know how you would manage that. So you know,
Speaker 3: the finding was that she died by a tragic case
Speaker 3: of misadventure, and the cause of death was when she
Speaker 3: got to the bottom, she got caught by a compactor
Speaker 3: blade and it severed. Nellie severed her ankle and she
Speaker 3: lost a lot of blood.
Speaker 1: So rather than suicide, which is what the police found,
Speaker 1: the coroner found that it was accidental death or misadventure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did.
Speaker 3: And what was kind of stood out about that was
Speaker 3: he went against the advice or the submissions of counsel assisting.
Speaker 3: So that's a senior barrister that's appointed by the court
Speaker 3: to basically lead the in Now, the coroner is of
Speaker 3: an independent mind, but the inquest is run by the
Speaker 3: counsel assisting the coroner, this senior barrister, and in this
Speaker 3: case the barrister deborahs amendsma in hearst. The missions had
Speaker 3: submitted that only an open finding be made. And what
Speaker 3: an open finding is is that the evidence you couldn't
Speaker 3: rule in or rule out foul play or the involvement
Speaker 3: of other parties. You couldn't rule in or rule out suicide,
Speaker 3: and you couldn't rule in or rule out death by
Speaker 3: misadventure or an accident. And that to me was the
Speaker 3: right finding on the evidence there. And that's all Phoebe's
Speaker 3: family I've ever said as well. They don't think that
Speaker 3: evidence is there to convict anyone for it because they
Speaker 3: don't know whether that's for sure what happened. But why again,
Speaker 3: would you have to you know, I find it odd
Speaker 3: that you have to kind of stitch together a narrative
Speaker 3: that's not supported in some cases by the evidence at
Speaker 3: your inquest when you had a perfectly reasonable finding to make,
Speaker 3: which is open.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, if an open finding is what
Speaker 1: the coroner was to rule, would that have left the
Speaker 1: door open to potentially look down a murder investigation if
Speaker 1: more evidence was to come out, it kind of leaves
Speaker 1: the door open.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's easier for the court, you know, to act
Speaker 3: on new and fresh information. So, you know, because of
Speaker 3: finding has been reached, it doesn't mean you know, and
Speaker 3: if it's really good information that changes things out, would
Speaker 3: then take it back under the umbrella of the police
Speaker 3: to go and investigate that. So just because these findings made,
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean police are forbidden from acting on fresh evidence,
Speaker 3: and neither is the court. But it just is another
Speaker 3: a blockage. I guess it makes it that bit harder
Speaker 3: for the court or for the family or for new
Speaker 3: people to present new evidence to the court to get
Speaker 3: that finding overturned and perhaps made into an open finding,
Speaker 3: because then you have to really go about undoing the
Speaker 3: finding that's already there to then be able to add
Speaker 3: the new information to the mix.
Speaker 1: We've already talked about some of the weird clues. The
Speaker 1: one that sticks out to me is the no fingerprints
Speaker 1: on the shoote. I've watched a young girl who is
Speaker 1: the same kind of heightened build as Phoebe try and
Speaker 1: get into that rubbish shoot and I just don't see
Speaker 1: how you would do it by yourself and not put
Speaker 1: fingerprints the pants around the ankles, as we've mentioned. But
Speaker 1: then another kind of clue that came up in the
Speaker 1: inquest was bruising. Can you talk us through that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Detective Pain was having a look at some
Speaker 3: of the medical examination photos of Phoebe's body and had
Speaker 3: picked up on some bruising around her arms and also
Speaker 3: on the side of her of her face, and he
Speaker 3: asked for the pathologist to take another look, and he
Speaker 3: came back and said, yeah, there is some bruising to
Speaker 3: I think the jaw or the side of one of
Speaker 3: the side of Phoebe's face, But also then some bruising
Speaker 3: marks around her arms that he said could be consistent
Speaker 3: with grip marks. So like being forcefully held and that
Speaker 3: you know, again that was overlooked initially, like no one
Speaker 3: had picked up on that, and it wasn't until Detective
Speaker 3: Pain was at the doing the brief for the coroner
Speaker 3: that this understanding of bruising to her made it into
Speaker 3: all the evidence.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: days and weeks after Phoebe died and the reactions of
Speaker 1: her inner circle, because Natalie, Phoebe's mom really wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of understand what happened, and so she asked for
Speaker 1: a chat with aunt. Can you tell us what happened?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Natalie hands Druck, Phoebe's mum, went to Ant's
Speaker 3: apartment and just really wanted to have.
Speaker 2: Just to break the.
Speaker 3: Bread sort of chat and find out what was going on,
Speaker 3: you know, what had happened in that last week, trying
Speaker 3: to get some answers. And I also think they were
Speaker 3: trying to work out funeral details and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: because Ant had pressed his case to be next of kin,
Speaker 3: as they'd been living together as de facto's more than
Speaker 3: six months, and Natalie was kind of protesting that because
Speaker 3: that many had control over her body, also control over
Speaker 3: you know, obviously with the body, where a funeral would be,
Speaker 3: what sort of event it would be. And then it
Speaker 3: emerged that she had life insurance policy and that gave
Speaker 3: him access to that, although down the track he did
Speaker 3: give up all of those things. So Natt went there
Speaker 3: for a meeting to sort out a lot, to get
Speaker 3: some understanding, but also to try and flesh out why
Speaker 3: he was pushing for next of kin and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And she recorded the meeting. Why well, you know, I
Speaker 3: think she was suspicious and was wanting to gather some
Speaker 3: evidence and I guess, given the police had already given up,
Speaker 3: who else was going to do it, And so she
Speaker 3: recorded it and I've heard and I think we played
Speaker 3: in the podcast a part of that recording that was
Speaker 3: played in the coroner's.
Speaker 2: Court, and yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was pretty strange and had his stepmother, Felicity Hample,
Speaker 3: the judge there with him. I believe his father might
Speaker 3: have been there, and a couple of other support people,
Speaker 3: and the conversation, yeah, went around funerals and Natalie wanting
Speaker 3: to push her case for the family to to do
Speaker 3: the farewell and wanted his own service, and on the
Speaker 3: tape and stepmom for the city reminded Phoebe that under
Speaker 3: the law.
Speaker 2: And was next of kin and had this right to
Speaker 2: do what he wanted. So yeah, it was a kind.
Speaker 3: Of strange situation, and Natalie said and was acting strangely,
Speaker 3: and I think at one point went over to the
Speaker 3: couch and was just kind of in a fetal position
Speaker 3: with grief, and she's found the whole thing really odd.
Speaker 3: And I think there was also quite loud music playing
Speaker 3: in the background, which I don't know why it was there, maybe.
Speaker 2: Made hearing the tape if he could.
Speaker 1: In any event, there ended up being a bit of
Speaker 1: a rift kind of formed between Phoebe's family and ants didn't.
Speaker 2: There Yeah, pretty quickly, especially over the.
Speaker 3: Next of kin's staff and not releasing the body and
Speaker 3: then applying to access her insurance policy and a state
Speaker 3: George ham Paul wrote a letter of support affirming their
Speaker 3: relationship and the genuineness of it to convince the relevant
Speaker 3: authorities that should be the beneficiary.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Like I said, he later gave those moneies and things
Speaker 3: to Phoebe's brothers. But yeah, the whole dynamic was pretty
Speaker 3: frosty because of the unanswered questions, and I think the
Speaker 3: odd behavior and the other thing I think that really
Speaker 3: pissed the family off was announcing Phoebe's death on Facebook,
Speaker 3: saying that she was a troubled young woman and he
Speaker 3: did his best to save her, but she's taken her
Speaker 3: own life.
Speaker 1: Which is something that they just categorically don't think is true.
Speaker 2: They don't think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they've got an open mind on it,
Speaker 3: but they think that's the least likely. Also, why would
Speaker 3: you do it in that way?
Speaker 1: To reiterate at hasn't been implicated in Phoebe's death, but
Speaker 1: the public record does show that Phoebe is not the
Speaker 1: only young girlfriend he has had who has died in
Speaker 1: unusual circumstances.
Speaker 3: No, in twenty eighteen, I got a phone call from
Speaker 3: Natalie Hanshak and she just said, are you sitting down?
Speaker 2: And I was at work.
Speaker 3: I remember it really clearly, and said no, but do
Speaker 3: I need to? She goes, I think you do, and
Speaker 3: she just said it's happened again. I said, what do
Speaker 3: you mean she goes and had another girlfriend die? And
Speaker 3: I said, you're kidding me? And how and all of that,
Speaker 3: And so the young woman we're talking about here is
Speaker 3: a young Melbourne woman called Bailey Schneider who had been
Speaker 3: seeing and in.
Speaker 2: A more casual way I guess than Phoebe.
Speaker 3: They weren't living together, but they had holidayed together and
Speaker 3: were in a intimate relationship. And Bailey was twenty five
Speaker 3: again had her issues with mental health and how she
Speaker 3: viewed herself, issues with alcohol and drugs and partying.
Speaker 2: And things like that.
Speaker 3: And she was found in her parents' home in ascot Vale,
Speaker 3: a suburban Melbourne's in a northwest hanging with a curtain
Speaker 3: cord or She's found on the floor of the kitchen
Speaker 3: with a curtain cord around her neck.
Speaker 2: And the belief was.
Speaker 3: She hung herself from a kitchen cupboard and her parents
Speaker 3: had just gone out for an hour to go to
Speaker 3: the shops and she'd asked them to bring something back
Speaker 3: to eat.
Speaker 1: Wow. I just tragic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And now has been cleared of any involvement in
Speaker 3: her death by a police investigation and also a coroner's report.
Speaker 3: This one didn't go to in quest, but he was
Speaker 3: one of the last people to communicate with her overnight
Speaker 3: and that day they had phone calls and had exchange
Speaker 3: messages over Facebook Messenger and things like that, and Bailey's
Speaker 3: parents wondering about what the impact of their relationship was
Speaker 3: on her state of mind and her mental health in
Speaker 3: the weeks and months leading up to her death.
Speaker 1: You released your series on Phoebe in twenty sixteen. What
Speaker 1: was the reaction like when you put all of this
Speaker 1: evidence out?
Speaker 2: It was overwhelming.
Speaker 3: Actually, you know Australia, two years before in America, Cereal
Speaker 3: had released the first version of the serial podcast and
Speaker 3: that kind of turned people on to I guess, that
Speaker 3: way of getting really deep into a story. And it
Speaker 3: had been eating at me since the outcome of the Inquest,
Speaker 3: which was delivered in twenty fourteen. We hadn't told this
Speaker 3: story right yet, and I thought, with no experience in
Speaker 3: podcasting at that stage or skills, that this would be
Speaker 3: the way to tell it. And yeah, it was difficult
Speaker 3: and a real challenge, and they needed a lot of
Speaker 3: help from a lot of good people along the way
Speaker 3: to help write it and tell it and all of that.
Speaker 2: But once we released it, it was massive.
Speaker 3: It was like it just went gangbusters, and people were
Speaker 3: asking questions of the justice system.
Speaker 2: That we all rely on.
Speaker 3: We all don't want to have to rely on it,
Speaker 3: but any day we could be relying on it to
Speaker 3: work properly. Fairly and nothing's perfect, but to do its job.
Speaker 3: And what Phoebe's story did was tell a story of
Speaker 3: on a few levels that are really pertinent to the
Speaker 3: community about you know, power imbalances in relationships, power imbalances
Speaker 3: between families in different layers or levels of society, and
Speaker 3: the performance of the justice system and who gets its
Speaker 3: mercy and who gets short changed through you know, inadequate
Speaker 3: and instigations and things like that. So I thought, wow,
Speaker 3: you can get this right, and you can tell the
Speaker 3: story in a factual but engaging kind of way that
Speaker 3: allows people to kind of see it play out inside
Speaker 3: their own heads, which is what the beauty of good
Speaker 3: podcasting is. They have a longer shelf life and that
Speaker 3: to me then gives it more scope to actually get
Speaker 3: our politicians and other authorities to act well.
Speaker 1: This podcast did help do that right. It helped the
Speaker 1: Victorian government decide that they were going to review the
Speaker 1: Coroners Act.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did.
Speaker 3: So they did a review into the Coroners Act with
Speaker 3: a focus on the difficulties or impediments to appealing outcomes
Speaker 3: or decisions of the Coroner's Court, and then some amendments
Speaker 3: were made to make it that bit easier for families
Speaker 3: to challenge things, which is, you know, is a good outcome.
Speaker 3: So hopefully because of what happened with Phoebe's in a
Speaker 3: case and the high like we're a spotlight we put
Speaker 3: on it, other families won't have the door closed to
Speaker 3: them for challenging decisions and things that happen in the
Speaker 3: coroner's court that they disagree with or they believe aren't
Speaker 3: supported by evidence. Because a finding, when you don't have
Speaker 3: a prosecution or someone to blame, you know, a coroner's
Speaker 3: findings all you've got. That's the legal final word. That's
Speaker 3: how the state says your loved one died and the
Speaker 3: circumstances with which they died.
Speaker 2: If you don't agree with that, or you think.
Speaker 3: That it's made on false assumptions and isn't fact or
Speaker 3: isn't true, that's a lot to live with. That's a
Speaker 3: really heavy thing to go. Well, the record says, you know,
Speaker 3: my brother's sister whatever died this way, but I don't
Speaker 3: believe it, and I don't think when you assess the
Speaker 3: evidence rationally, when there was a much more obvious and
Speaker 3: acceptable finding in this case, open finding, I'd find that
Speaker 3: really hard.
Speaker 2: The stomach.
Speaker 1: Where do we sit with Phoebe's case? Now, it's say
Speaker 1: years since you know, all of those changes were announced
Speaker 1: and we were able to appeal. Has Phoebe's finding changed?
Speaker 1: Has anything else happened?
Speaker 3: I am Phoebe's family and others. You know, still get
Speaker 3: people coming forward with bits and pieces of information. You know,
Speaker 3: some of it may be irrelevant, some of it.
Speaker 2: Looks to be relevant.
Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, you know, there's nothing's changed.
Speaker 2: The finding is still the finding.
Speaker 3: The same question marks over that finding from those who
Speaker 3: don't think it's the right one still exist. I think
Speaker 3: Phoebe's family believe, and I believe, and I have, you know,
Speaker 3: some foundation for this belief that there are people out
Speaker 3: there who know a bit more, who she may have
Speaker 3: come across or was involved with in that final week
Speaker 3: of her life, who for whatever reason, weren't questioned by police,
Speaker 3: perhaps because they weren't known to police or weren't obviously
Speaker 3: connect to her in that way. I feel that her story,
Speaker 3: you know, I think there'll be one or two more
Speaker 3: twists or turns before too long.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Richard for helping us to tell this story
Speaker 1: and to reiterate, Anthony Happle has not been implicated in
Speaker 1: Phoebe's death. The coroner's finding legally stands to this day,
Speaker 1: ruling that the twenty four year old's death was an accident.
Speaker 1: We'll leave a link to Richard's podcast Phoebe's full in
Speaker 1: our show notes. True Crime Conversations is a MoMA mea
Speaker 1: podcast hosted and produced by me Jemma Bass and Tylie Blackman,
Speaker 1: with audio design by Tom Lyon. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.