Speaker 1: Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty
Speaker 1: verdicts against all three defendants.
Speaker 2: It was absolute shambles, to tell you the truth, just
Speaker 2: absolutely really heaving.
Speaker 3: Blood on his clothing the day after the alleged a.
Speaker 1: Top on a shallow mud bank and it fits through
Speaker 1: a river.
Speaker 3: Basically, I think most of the people are used to me,
Speaker 3: there are good people.
Speaker 1: I think a really important question we need to ask
Speaker 1: is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia are innocent.
Speaker 3: This is Curtain, a podcast where we pull back the
Speaker 3: blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of
Speaker 3: our justice system and ask who are the victims. I'm
Speaker 3: Amy Maguire and I'm.
Speaker 1: Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate for the Foreign Prisoner Support Service.
Speaker 1: And a warning this series contains the names of deceased
Speaker 1: peoples and has distressing content that might upset some listeners.
Speaker 2: Welcome to episode forty nine of Curtain, the podcast. Over
Speaker 2: a week ago, Amy and I spent a few days
Speaker 2: sitting down pouring over some new documents that we've discovered.
Speaker 2: We've spent plenty of time and money writing freedom of
Speaker 2: information requests to documents that weren't present at trial and
Speaker 2: are not part of the original trial transcripts, and we've
Speaker 2: uncovered a lot more than we ever thought we'd find.
Speaker 2: But this was also the first time that Amy got
Speaker 2: a chance to see all the documentation that relates to
Speaker 2: Kevin Henry's trial in one go. So, Amy, what was
Speaker 2: it like after nearly two years of working on this
Speaker 2: case to see this to two thousand pages sitting in
Speaker 2: front of you for the first time.
Speaker 3: It was actually really amazing because obviously I thought I
Speaker 3: knew a lot about the case, obviously from investigating it
Speaker 3: with you for two years and also talking to a
Speaker 3: lot of people around Rockhampton and experts that we've done
Speaker 3: and that you've heard over the series of the Court
Speaker 3: that you've heard over the course of the podcast. But
Speaker 3: it was almost overwhelming looking at the weight of the documents.
Speaker 3: So there are about two thousand paids of trial transcripts
Speaker 3: that Martin and I went through yet again. And I
Speaker 3: think for you, Martin early the tenth the relevance time
Speaker 3: even more going through it. But for me it was
Speaker 3: really interesting because gave me it filled in a lot
Speaker 3: of gaps in the timeline, and it gave me a
Speaker 3: bigger picture of what actually happened that night, not just
Speaker 3: at Tanuba House, but the day after when Linda's body
Speaker 3: was found, and then the police officers coming in, when
Speaker 3: they started their instigation, what they did and what they
Speaker 3: didn't do. It really just a lot of pieces were
Speaker 3: falling into place that I didn't have a complete understanding of.
Speaker 3: So for me, it was really amazing that even after
Speaker 3: years and of continually talking about this case, continually digging
Speaker 3: into every little aspect of it, there were still things
Speaker 3: that needed to be uncovered and needed to be to
Speaker 3: over And it just shows just how long reinvestigating a
Speaker 3: case like this can take. And it really feels like
Speaker 3: that we're doing the work that should have been done originally,
Speaker 3: and if it had been done originally, Kevin Henry would
Speaker 3: still be in jail. So it was very overwhelmed, but
Speaker 3: also inspired me to continue the fight as well, and
Speaker 3: also gave me a better background knowledge of what was
Speaker 3: happening in the police force at that time in Rockampden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think there was a few things that
Speaker 2: really care to both of us, one of which for
Speaker 2: me was that looking at the trial transcripts and the
Speaker 2: new documents that we now have which are running to
Speaker 2: the hundreds and hundreds of pages. We know that Kevin's
Speaker 2: case has been handed to other solicitors, a university babal
Speaker 2: legal service over the years to request appeals or for
Speaker 2: these to be examined, and these documents have been looked
Speaker 2: at before and nothing has ever occurred after that, there's
Speaker 2: been no follow up. And sitting down with Amy and
Speaker 2: seeing her reaction as to just how much is there,
Speaker 2: it actually reminds you once again that how did so
Speaker 2: many other people look at this case and not take
Speaker 2: it further? I think it's very interesting to get a
Speaker 2: journalist's reaction and Amy uncovering things too that I admit,
Speaker 2: where we've seen lawyers look at these and just turn away,
Speaker 2: and I think that is incredibly frustrating and also goes
Speaker 2: to the issue that we've discussed on this podcast a lot,
Speaker 2: which is how many other Indigenous prisoners are innocent? And
Speaker 2: given the weight of evidence here for Kevin, and we
Speaker 2: know that we've had all these lawyers over the year
Speaker 2: look at these docum and look away. How many other
Speaker 2: cases have they looked at and looked away? How many
Speaker 2: other people are there just like Kevin, average men, women,
Speaker 2: and young people in juvenile attention who have just as
Speaker 2: much evidence for them showing their innocence, and their cases
Speaker 2: have been looked at by the als University, other lawyers
Speaker 2: and it's never progressed. So that was something else that
Speaker 2: stood out for me. Amy. The other thing I guess
Speaker 2: that really struck me at the end of the day
Speaker 2: sitting down and spending the time stand out in this
Speaker 2: story the fact that the more you read it and
Speaker 2: the more you get to grips with exactly what happened,
Speaker 2: and we had some good breakthroughs. Just Evin just how
Speaker 2: badly he was failed. I'm wondering obviously that's something we've
Speaker 2: known all along, but did that strike you as well?
Speaker 3: Oh? Most definitely, definitely worst about Linda being so vulnerable
Speaker 3: and no one living to care for her, even that night,
Speaker 3: but then the day after, and even the way she's
Speaker 3: sort of spoken about in the trial transcripts. There is
Speaker 3: just nothing about her humanity. And we've told you, and
Speaker 3: we've talked to the family. We know that she was
Speaker 3: an exceptional woman down in South Australia. She was really
Speaker 3: ahead of her time in her chosen field. She was
Speaker 3: incredibly beautiful, She was a great mother to her four
Speaker 3: children and yet in the trial transcripts there was none
Speaker 3: of that. There was no one there to speak about
Speaker 3: her as a person. It became a victim, and that's
Speaker 3: what came out of the trial transcripts for me, and
Speaker 3: it's what we have to continue trying to do to
Speaker 3: ensure that you know, this was a you know, this
Speaker 3: is a life, and across history, Aboriginal women's lives have
Speaker 3: been so devalued, and Linda's life was devalued in the
Speaker 3: core of those court proceedings and also the night that
Speaker 3: she sadly lost her life. And also the thing that
Speaker 3: really came up for me in the transcripts was just
Speaker 3: how much it focused on the assault. So I didn't
Speaker 3: realize that the majority of the case actually involved detailing
Speaker 3: and trying to figure out the truth about what happened
Speaker 3: before she was put in the river. And so it
Speaker 3: was really interesting to me to see that Kevin Henry,
Speaker 3: the allegations against him, played very little part in the
Speaker 3: court proceeding, and that was really confusing and frustrating because
Speaker 3: I wondered how the jury could have convicted based on
Speaker 3: such little evidence around against Kevin. It's really unfathomable that
Speaker 3: it could have happened when so much of the weight
Speaker 3: of evidence was actually directed to the assault itself and
Speaker 3: not what actually happened after, and none of the barristers
Speaker 3: actually picked up any of that, I don't think. So
Speaker 3: that was really interesting, and well, the fact that the
Speaker 3: focus was never really on Kevin, and yet he got
Speaker 3: the harshest sentence, and in a sense, no one really
Speaker 3: stood up for him as well. So Linda and Kevin
Speaker 3: were both outsiders at Tanuba in different ways, and the
Speaker 3: system very much let them down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree, and I think that's something that's
Speaker 2: come to the form more and more that we're looking
Speaker 2: at thousands and thousands of pages. We're looking at not
Speaker 2: just the trial transcripts now, but everything that was done
Speaker 2: before the trial, even handwritten notes. Pages up to twenty
Speaker 2: pages of handwritten notes we've been able to uncover, and
Speaker 2: there's really nothing about Linda. In fact, there's vital details
Speaker 2: just about her age and things like that that are
Speaker 2: completely wrong in a lot of the transcripts and some
Speaker 2: of the information that was acquired by police early on.
Speaker 2: Linda was a woman who, as we've spoken about before,
Speaker 2: are in early childhood education for Aboriginal children in South
Speaker 2: Australia and there was no mention of this, and something
Speaker 2: you find always in murdered focus on the victim and
Speaker 2: creating a picture for the jury of who they were.
Speaker 2: Part of how we understand the loss of death is
Speaker 2: to understand the person. Well, this was not done at
Speaker 2: all in the troll. In fact, I doubt very much
Speaker 2: that the jury, even exiting with fresh minds on all
Speaker 2: the evidence, could have told you anything about her and
Speaker 2: her life. And I think that's absolutely appalling and it
Speaker 2: shows what we know so much about the way Aboriginal
Speaker 2: women are treated in this country. We've spoken about miss
Speaker 2: Marr who died in police Cutty. She died within just
Speaker 2: a few hours of being put in a police cell
Speaker 2: and it said of natural causes. Someone doesn't just die
Speaker 2: in a police cell, young person, and no real explanation
Speaker 2: is given, no real investigation is done. Once again, Aboriginal
Speaker 2: women are just killed and nothing about their humanity is
Speaker 2: ever uttered. And it's that lack of humanity that is
Speaker 2: placed on Aboriginal women that allows these things to take
Speaker 2: place originally, and yet to read through a murder trial
Speaker 2: and nothing about Linda to be raised is absolutely disgusting
Speaker 2: and That's one of the reasons we've tried to dig
Speaker 2: and uncover more is how did the police and those
Speaker 2: who were supposed to get Linda justice do such a
Speaker 2: terrible job. And so part of that process is to
Speaker 2: reinvestigate the entire case and also find out how did
Speaker 2: Kevin Henry get him for what he's adding up to
Speaker 2: be his life for something he didn't do. And from
Speaker 2: the documentation is also so clear there is no real focus,
Speaker 2: as Amy said, on Kevin, it's largely all about the assault,
Speaker 2: which we know Kevin not only didn't take part in,
Speaker 2: he told the people who were doing it to knock
Speaker 2: it off. So as part of reinvestigating this, Amy actually
Speaker 2: went and spoke to one of the witnesses from the trial,
Speaker 2: in fact, the very first person to take the stand. Amy,
Speaker 2: can you tell us who that was and how that went.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this was last year sometime, and we didn't
Speaker 3: put the interview on the podcast because the men in
Speaker 3: question didn't want his voice heard on the radio. But
Speaker 3: it was actually the fisherman who found Linda's body on
Speaker 3: that Sunday morning, first of September nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 3: there were two fishermen out that day and they had
Speaker 3: actually launched their dinghy closest to the old bridge on
Speaker 3: the north side of the of the bank. So the
Speaker 3: race collide and the fisherman remembers that it was a
Speaker 3: very very low tide, and he remembers thinking that the
Speaker 3: tide was so low that it must have begun falling
Speaker 3: about six hours before. And he told me the tide
Speaker 3: in such a state that it was not moving at all,
Speaker 3: and so it was in a half an hour of
Speaker 3: dead time. And so he and his friend who is
Speaker 3: out so him and his friend who were out there
Speaker 3: that day actually had a good understanding of the tides
Speaker 3: and what was going to happen, and they knew that
Speaker 3: as they sailed up the river Quiet River on a
Speaker 3: Sunday morning, that the tide was going to turn within
Speaker 3: thirty minutes. So I spoke to him, and he had
Speaker 3: quite a lot of memory of that day. It was
Speaker 3: the first time that he'd ever seen a dead body.
Speaker 3: He's a non indigenous man with quite a comfortable life,
Speaker 3: who respected the police and had no reason not to,
Speaker 3: and so it was quite a shock for him when
Speaker 3: they turned a bend just past town and saw Linda's body,
Speaker 3: and he actually told me that at first glanced the
Speaker 3: two men that it was a doll, and I think
Speaker 3: they were far enough away that they couldn't really determine
Speaker 3: what it was. But it seemed to me like in
Speaker 3: his mind he was trying to go through any conclusion
Speaker 3: rather than what looked like the truth, a really, really
Speaker 3: horrible truth. So he actually told me about he remembers
Speaker 3: actually getting off the boat with the detective. So after
Speaker 3: the two men found the body, they turned back towards
Speaker 3: the fitz Row rotorbated clutches right next to the uber house,
Speaker 3: and they rang the police and a police constable, a
Speaker 3: police officer, Constable Glenn Jones, actually came and boarded the
Speaker 3: boat and went out to the ball and sinking down
Speaker 3: right the mud and it was the mud like glue
Speaker 3: that's found at the bottom of the river, and he
Speaker 3: remembers that it came up about to his knees. The
Speaker 3: other thing that was interesting was he remembered seeing and
Speaker 3: pointed to the constable the lot and led up to
Speaker 3: her her feet, and he remembers that clearly, and he
Speaker 3: remembers telling this, and the very interesting for me talk
Speaker 3: the very interesting thing for me talk to him that
Speaker 3: afternoon was that he remembers what he was thinking at
Speaker 3: the time, and he remembers when he saw that line,
Speaker 3: he thought, well, there's no way that she could have
Speaker 3: come in on the other side of the bank. And
Speaker 3: he thought, because it was a place where you couldn't
Speaker 3: access by car or by foot, Flor must have brought
Speaker 3: her in by a boat and had dragged her along
Speaker 3: the side. The members telling an SEES worker or a
Speaker 3: police officer later that morning that's what he thought happened
Speaker 3: enabled him that no, she'd actually come from the other
Speaker 3: side of the bank, and he just accepted it. So
Speaker 3: it was very interesting. He also remembers a lot of
Speaker 3: the reason he remembers that is because obviously he was
Speaker 3: a very keen fisherman, even though he was an amateur
Speaker 3: Members when thinking about how he was going to get
Speaker 3: this mole of his mind out of the bottom of
Speaker 3: his boat. So that was the other interesting thing, the
Speaker 3: fact that there was so much mud that he spent
Speaker 3: all afternoon when he got home from the police station
Speaker 3: trying to scrub it out, and it took him a
Speaker 3: fair few hours as well. So Martin, when you eyewitness
Speaker 3: accounts like that, what can we sort of draw from that,
Speaker 3: particularly that fact about him seeing all of that might
Speaker 3: at the bottom of his vote.
Speaker 2: Look, I think it's reinteresting, and I think it's we're
Speaker 2: learning things that didn't come up so much at tri
Speaker 2: things that should have definitely been explored, both by the
Speaker 2: defense and the prosecution. But there's one thing you said
Speaker 2: just then that's very interesting and struck me immediately when
Speaker 2: you first told me, which was that he seemed quite
Speaker 2: convinced that the body had gone on the northern side, which,
Speaker 2: as we've discussed on the podcast before, is the opposite
Speaker 2: side of the bank from where Tanuba House is and
Speaker 2: where Kevin and Linda were. But also the police told
Speaker 2: him that no, the body had gone in on the
Speaker 2: southern side. And so here we have, before any investigation
Speaker 2: has begun, simply the finding of the body. The police
Speaker 2: have already decided on which side of the riverbank and
Speaker 2: where the body has been placed, and this wigation because
Speaker 2: they decided something very early without any facts. And what
Speaker 2: we've discovered is the second fisherman, who we knew had
Speaker 2: never tooken a trial, did give a lengthy statement to police.
Speaker 2: And so for those of you who support the podcast
Speaker 2: through Patreon and you can do that if you like it.
Speaker 2: Patreon dot com, Forward slash Curtain podcast. That money has
Speaker 2: largely been going lately to lots of freedom of information
Speaker 2: requests to find out new information. And one of the
Speaker 2: things your money has uncovered is a statement by the
Speaker 2: second fisherman. Now I won't give his name, because there's
Speaker 2: no point. He was a much more experienced fisherman. He
Speaker 2: was older in age, and he'd grown up on the river.
Speaker 2: He knew it really well, and his statement goes to
Speaker 2: show that he understands the times it takes to travel
Speaker 2: to different parts of the river. He knows all the
Speaker 2: names of all the locations. He'd fish this river for
Speaker 2: a considerable period of time. And what we understand is
Speaker 2: that he was actually showing the other fisherman, who was younger,
Speaker 2: some of the things he knew about the river that morning.
Speaker 2: And he too was also quite sure and confident that
Speaker 2: the body must have gone in on the north side
Speaker 2: of the river, not the side the police would suggest immediately.
Speaker 2: So here you have two fishermen who really didn't have
Speaker 2: time to say a lot to each other. You have
Speaker 2: to remember that once they'd seen the body, they immediately
Speaker 2: went back at police and come, and it's not like
Speaker 2: they could have collaborated their stories and sound like they
Speaker 2: do what you do, have a share own knowledge based
Speaker 2: on what they saw that morning, believed the body must
Speaker 2: have been put in on the northern side of the river.
Speaker 2: And yet the police had decided two things, one that
Speaker 2: that wasn't the case. And this sort of shocked the fishermen,
Speaker 2: but they just assumed the police must know something they did.
Speaker 2: But of course the police didn't even know who the
Speaker 2: body belonged to, but they'd already decided. Most confronting to
Speaker 2: me is the fact that the men that found Linda's body,
Speaker 2: the older man knew it like the back of his hand,
Speaker 2: believed the body had been put in on the northern side.
Speaker 2: Not once was a police vehicle dispatched to that northern
Speaker 2: side to look for eddance of where Linda might have
Speaker 2: been placed in the water. They did not follow up
Speaker 2: on this knows what they might have found if they'd
Speaker 2: done that. But already they decided that the body had
Speaker 2: been placed in the south side of the river. And
Speaker 2: the only reason they would be deciding that is because
Speaker 2: that's where those Aboriginal people had been the night before,
Speaker 2: So before the body is even found. We know that
Speaker 2: the police were looking to pin this crime on an
Speaker 2: Aboriginal person from Tanuba House, and we'd read through two
Speaker 2: thousand pages of transcripts and hundreds of pages of more
Speaker 2: information and there is not an ounce of evidence that
Speaker 2: suggests that foot suggestion by the police is accurate. And
Speaker 2: to me it's shocking to know that before anyone was interviewed,
Speaker 2: before Linda's name was known, the police had made up
Speaker 2: their mind. I was wondering amy over the Lanfe last
Speaker 2: couple of years, and it's something we thought was the case,
Speaker 2: but now we're finding out new information. As a journalist
Speaker 2: too is always having to investigate things that have gone
Speaker 2: on where the truth is unclear. What did you think
Speaker 2: and feel about this police assessment basically that was going
Speaker 2: to pint on Aboriginal people from the beginning, despite the evidence.
Speaker 3: I wasn't particularly shocked because, as we've said in the podcast,
Speaker 3: this is the time of the ninety ninety one Fitzgerald
Speaker 3: inquiry into police corruption throughout Queensland. So to me, it
Speaker 3: seems that they've seen an Aboriginal woman on a mud
Speaker 3: bank and immediately have assumed that Aboriginal people are the perpetrators,
Speaker 3: and that assumption is very dangerous, so they use that
Speaker 3: assumption as a cover in order to not do their
Speaker 3: investigation properly, to just sign and off. So I think
Speaker 3: it shows that they just did have the best interests
Speaker 3: of aberal people in mind at all, and just my
Speaker 3: own background and reporting a lot of these some cases
Speaker 3: to Linda and Kevin's. It's not surprising because it happens
Speaker 3: so often, particularly in this time period of the nineties,
Speaker 3: where we see police actively covering up Aboriginal deaths in custody.
Speaker 3: So it does not suppose me at all that they
Speaker 3: would also not carry out their duties as police officers
Speaker 3: in relation to a murdered Aboriginal woman.
Speaker 2: We're aware of many murders that took place along this river,
Speaker 2: but there was one that was quite well known in
Speaker 2: town and we won't discuss right now. In fact, I
Speaker 2: won't mention any names about it, but it was a
Speaker 2: well known murder and assault on an Aboriginal woman, and
Speaker 2: when you hear about it, the similarities to what happened
Speaker 2: to Linda are shocking. But Amy, you've been looking into this,
Speaker 2: and I'll just ask one question about it, which is
Speaker 2: what side of the river was her body placed into
Speaker 2: the water.
Speaker 3: So this Aboriginal woman was actually placed in on the
Speaker 3: north side of the river, and she was found four
Speaker 3: days low, but she was definitely placed on the northern
Speaker 3: side of the river.
Speaker 2: So here we have an example of something very similar happening.
Speaker 2: Just like the fisherman believed Linda's body was probably placed
Speaker 2: in on the north side, everything they saw told them
Speaker 2: that the case where that had occurred too, And yet
Speaker 2: once again they made no attempt to investigate whether Linda
Speaker 2: had been placed on the north side. So there were
Speaker 2: so many reasons they could have done this, and I
Speaker 2: think just this little issue got to the heart of
Speaker 2: everything the police did that was so wrong. Now, in
Speaker 2: addition to the fisherman, the second fisherman whose statement we've uncovered,
Speaker 2: we have many many other statements that we'd never seen
Speaker 2: and perhaps we don't know were kept from Kevin's defense too,
Speaker 2: but they certainly highlight a great deal more. One thing
Speaker 2: we learned was that when Linda's body was brought back
Speaker 2: to the boat club that morning, once the fisherman had
Speaker 2: found her body, and the police said one police officer
Speaker 2: had helped them bring the body back to shore, there
Speaker 2: was a medical practitioner waiting, and he was there simply
Speaker 2: to do a quick assessment. Basically, in that situation, the
Speaker 2: doctor to write whether the person is in fact deceased
Speaker 2: or not and record a time. This is before any
Speaker 2: post mortem or thing like that is done. And what
Speaker 2: this doctor said is that he confirmed what the two
Speaker 2: fishermen had said, that Linda's body was heavily cut, it
Speaker 2: in mud, and that there was a sense of an assault,
Speaker 2: there was blood, and that much of what we already
Speaker 2: know matches up, but he made particular mention of the
Speaker 2: amount of mud. And yet what you've heard us speak
Speaker 2: about in the past when we discussed the post mortem
Speaker 2: is the fact that the doctor who undertook that post
Speaker 2: mortem state that the body had been covered with mud.
Speaker 2: But the body has since been cleaned. Now, what we
Speaker 2: don't know is what happens between the first doctor seeing
Speaker 2: Linda's body covered in mud and when the body was cleaned.
Speaker 2: There is no recorded information about happened there, but we
Speaker 2: have been able to uncover what might have happened, and
Speaker 2: certainly the people that were in charge of custody of
Speaker 2: the evidence and Linda's body in that time, and that
Speaker 2: information is shocking.
Speaker 3: That was episode forty nine of Curtain.
Speaker 2: Before we Go. I just want to quickly apologize for
Speaker 2: the audio issues you will have heard throughout the podcast.
Speaker 2: We'll have those rectified for next week, and don't forget.
Speaker 2: You can help us uncover more information that you've heard
Speaker 2: about today by supporting us on Patreon, which all the
Speaker 2: information is available for, on our Facebook page, Twitter, and
Speaker 2: on the website, which are all Curtain the podcast