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Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty verdicts against all three defendants.
It was absolute shambles to show you the truth, just absolutely really.
Honored blood on his clothing the day after the alleged A top.
A shallow mud bank and it fits through a river.
Basically, I think most of the people are used to me are good people.
I think a really important question we need to ask is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia are innocent.
This is Kurtain, a podcast where we pull back the blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of our justice system and ask who are the victims. I'm Amy Maguire.
And I'm Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate for the Foreign Prisoner Suppult Service. Our producer is Paul Watts. Music by Clint Curtis and produced in collaboration with the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association and a warning. This series contains the names of deceased peoples and has distressing content that might upset some listeners.
Thank you for joining us for kurtin the podcast. If you've been following regularly, you would know that we've been airing this investigation for the past eight weeks. We've raised a great deal of doubt about the guilt of Kevin Henry, who has been in jail for a quarter of a century over the murder of an Aboriginal woman named Linda in September nine ninety one. Now, for the last few episodes, we've been giving you a few details about the forensic evidence in this case.
That evidence is currently in the process of being reviewed by an international forensic expertly be very important and so as we told you last week, we can't rush these things. But in the meantime we want to tell you a little bit about the background to this case. If you're not from Australia, and even if you're not from Queensland, you may not have known what it was like for people living there in nineteen ninety one.
When we tell you the details of this case, particularly regarding the police. You need to know the context in which this happened. It's vital to your understanding of this case. We told you previously that Kevin Henry was picked up the day Linda was found for public drunkenness. He was then thrown in the watchhouse with two other men that day. Now many blackfellows in Australia would know this was not an unusual occurrence.
We told you about how Linda died in the same year the Royal Commission into average or Deaths in Custody was handed down. Her brother was one of the most high profile cases investigated by the Commission at the time. The Commission came down heavily on the criminalization of public drunkenness, taking in mind the fact many of the men and women who had died in custody had been locked up for simply being intoxicated in public.
We also told you about how people at Tanuba House would often use the place as a sanctuary to get away from police. Around the same time, the local morning Bulletin newspaper would report on several outrages involving over policing in the town, particularly when a twelve year old boy was locked up with adults and thrown in the watchhouse overnight. It seems fair to say that Aboriginal mob at the time, just like the current day, had a strange relationship with police,
and it wasn't just Aboriginal people. This tragedy occurred only a few years after the Fitzgerald Inquiry was handed down, when public attention on police corruption in Queensland was at its highest point. But if you can imagine the wider public were concerned about police misconduct, imagine how Aboriginal people would have felt.
The aboriginality of both the alleged perpetrators and the victim is vital to understanding this case. It is vital to understanding what we've told you so far. The police investigation into this case was deeply flawed. From the moment they entered the crime scene, it was left unsecured for hours, and from there the problems just continued to pile up. Many of the witnesses were interviewed either while intoxicated, without
legal representation, or both. Quite a number of the witnesses were illiterate and were unable to read the statements they had allegedly given. They were also giving those statements under considerable duress. Many spoke about the pressures placed on them to provide multiple statements before the trial commenced. We also know that once the police had arrested Kevin Henry on the fifth of September, by their own admission, they ceased investigating the case any further. This is despite many issues
coming up. The forensic evidence hadn't come back yet, a man allegedly confessed to his own solicitor who passed on this information, and many more questions that were raised over the coming months. There was also the deeply concerning issue that not only were the three women charged with murder on the same day, the fifth of September, as Kevin Henry, they were charged under different circumstances. And how could one murder take place in two different ways by two sets of people.
But to understand why this might have occurred in the police investigation and why it's perhaps not even surprising for the time, you also have to understand Queensland at the time. Even a couple of years after the Fitzgerald and inquiry, which led to convictions for several police officers, as well as the charging of several Queensland politicians, these concerns still continued.
Now, leading up to the Fitzgerald Inquiry, there were two journalists in particular whose work was vital in pushing for change. One of those journalists was the Four Corners reporter Chris Masters, and the other was The Career Male's Phil Dickie. Phil would go on to win the Gold Walkley, the highest honor in Australian journalism.
Now Phil Dickie lives in Switzerland. Martin spoke to him earlier this week to give us a sense of what it was like to live in Queensland at this time and why police were the subject of so much mistrust.
Can you tell me a little bit about the series of reports in the Career Male that helped spark the Fitzgerald inquiry.
Yes, of course. I was asked to investigate the ownership of a sort of massage parlor at the top of the valley, and I took some liberties with that assignment and tried to find out who owned all of the massage parlors, tried to establish what actual business was going on there. It was clearly constitution which was clearly illegal.
And then I detailed the people who enrold in a level of detail that hadn't been done before, and that sort of led to four and one thing led to another, and the detailing of the criminal figures and their links to particular police led to fairly clear inferences of corruption. Because of the legal system, we had to keep it at the level of inferences that were together with the outstanding ABC four Corners report, it took the government to a place where that they had to call him quote.
And at the time when you were writing these articles, how widely known or suspected was it in the public that this level of corruption was going on.
Probably only some impression in the public. I think amongst journalists it was fairly well believed that the police were quite corrupt, that despite numerous succession of stories over many years that had never been cracked before. And I think the difference was that before the media would get a statement from someone alleging corruption, they'd repeat the statement, the government, the police would deny it. The person who made the complaint would find themselves out of a job or posted
to kindamother or something. That would be the end of it. They'd be token efforts to set up police complaints, Tropian aws and things like that, but these were, you know, these were operated in such a way that they never came to any result. I think the difference that I made was I took it from an investigative point of view, so it was actually Victoria Mail making the allegations, not some vulnerable, you know, pissed off police officer or something like that.
Yeah.
Absolutely, and clearly the work you did was so impactful that you won the Gold Walkley. I wonder what sort of pushback you had from the police and from political circles about what you're exposing.
Quite quite a lot, from you know, lots of lots of violence to a bullet hole and a related window. That's probably not surprising my head later about efforts to defame me or just annoy me and sort of say, okay, Dick, he's obviously gay or something like that. That sort of thing fairly typical, I think you. I think basically you have to ignore it. Sometimes you have to sort of play to someone, hey are you sittening me? And that usually makes them back off a bit.
Yeah.
And was that part of the culture, the political culture and police culture at the time in Queensland sort of widespread.
I think you've got to get beyond the police source and look at Queensland overall, and I think probably the best term of describing how Queensland has run at the time was it a sort of a cony state. If you were in good with the governing powers and or the governing arrangements at all sorts of levels from the state to the council, then you know, then you would do well. And if you upset the apple cart, then you know steps would often be taken to marginalize you or get your decease and defess.
And what links did you find? I guess that you could explain to the general public who may not be aware at all of the Fitzgerald inquiry between police and the absolute top level politicians and political circles in the state.
I think, very very early on sort of myself and Chris Masters found ourselves operating not at the level of you know, constables and detective sergeants, that we're operating at the level of assistant commissioners and very senior police. And then you've got obvious questions of you know, these people have had question marks over their careers, who's been promoting them and so you've got a very direct link into
the political circles there. But we also we're operating in a background of frequent allegations of strange dealings politically that we're close to verging on corruption. So you know, it's
all part of the picture. I think in many ways, and I've done a bit of work outside Australian now, in many ways the police are the easy ones to catch a corruption because they deal with with criminals and criminals like the Big Note themselves, and you know, there's always cross upon the streets, and there's a fairly high level of interest in the media in the salacious aspects of police work. So police are often the first to get caught out in a system which is fairly corrupted through.
And through, and I mean through all the investigation work you've done own, how would you say this culture of corruption from the top down started and was allowed to fester for so long.
Well, I did go into the history of it in a lot of detail. I think you can go back to colonial times and find you know, with the treatment of aboriginals, the native police, the way temperate servements, gambling in early prostitution were governed, you can find respecting I think with the thread of corruption that was exposed in the Fitzgerald inquiries, you've got a very clear link between the sudden growth of an illegal economy in the Second World War and the sort of the continuous grace of
corruption to the level of the joke and the political corruption that Fitzgerald outlined. There were efforts, there was one, never good effort to deal with it on the way through, but that failed, and in part it failed, I think because it concentrated on the monetary aspect of corruption and not in terms of the corruption of police process. You know, the constant verbaling to get quick convictions. Didn't wrote that.
I think there's a you have to tackle corruption as endemic and serious you know when you find it, and even then it's a very hard thing to route us. And I'm not sure that Queen's Land succeeded. That had an excellent opportunity based for seriald but I don't think it's succerded on the throat.
Yeah, And I mean based on all the work you've done and what you've seen take place since the inquiry, what would you say or who were the big victims in Queensland of the corruption? Was it the most vulnerable people in society?
Look, I think we're all victims and you can clearly outline some people who are particularly victimized and identifize one of the most victimized groups was honest police. A lot of laws that are hard to enforce and a sort of more about enforcing morals than dealing with crime. You have this classic effects all over the world that the policing of those sorts of laws impacts on minorities or
people who who are outside the general stereotypes. And you're saying that now, of course, with you know, migration law around the world dealing with refugees, you know who is impacted not the people who arrive on aeroplanes and other states visus that the people who try and you know, sort of swim or take leaky boats into across national borders. So it's the most the most vulnerable who always suffer.
I think there was the same in Queensland that we managed to verify with research about cannabis law enforcement, which is, you know, the rich gets stoned and the poor get busted, right. And I think in Australia you see all of the numerous reports on indigenous enforcement, the way the way Indigenous people are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system and in the jail, in the courts, you know more than their more than their actual involvement in crime wise.
Yeah.
Absolutely. I think for those who do know some of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and saw the full Horners report, they'd know a lot about what happened in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast. But what about regional areas? How much did it affect regional Queensland.
Look, in some cases it was worse because you were dealing with smaller market. The police and criminal partnerships were more of a factor in.
Society.
They were closer links to local government. For instance, in places like Cans and the Gold Coast, the corrupting influence influences were much closer together and much clok sort of. It wasn't as remote as George Street. It was in a city hallum and the police station and the local clubs and nightclubs and the pubs, and so it could be more of a factor and you could help away from the scrutiny of the biggest city institution, the newspapers
and journalists. You could get quite quite You could get arrangements where people were really living in fear of their lives and small communities because they had fallen outside the system.
Yeah, absolutely, but I did see.
That myself a bit in places like Mariba for instance.
Right, one thing we've discovered in our investigation of the time and speaking to particularly the Aboriginal community in rock Hampton, was a great level of fear of the police and the authority. I wonder if you discovered anything about rock Hampton in particular in your investigations.
The only thing I remember there was an abortive a tea to buy one of the crime reps to set up a gambling casino in rock Hampton, So apart from that, I didn't go into too much detail there.
Right.
Another issue that the inquiry raised was the issue of the way Aboriginal prisoners in particular were interrogated and the issue of gratuitous concurrence where they would often just give an answer most likely to please the questioner, and there were a lot of issues raised around whether that led to convictions. Was that something that you'd touched on in your investigation?
If I could go.
A bit broader than that, You know, I've done a lot of work with Indigenous people around the world now and you will find that that's a common made of communication that that you know, there is this real desire to please and relate, so you will be told things that from a you know, from our perspective are quite clearly untrue or unlikely that they're not you know, they're not being said in that context, or if you ask the question, you'll get an answer that he's meant to
please you, whether it actually resembles the actual state of of what happened or what you're inquiring about. So you know that happens now. It's a matter of cultural sensitivity. Now a will conducted, will run police force, which Greenslin did not have in those days, would have had specialists who would know some of these subtleties and who would you know, sort of allow and there'd be specific training.
I think, you know, I hope that sort of thing happens now, but it's it's I think it was commonplace. It was commonplace sometimes just because of this, you know, quick and easy attitude to getting getting a conviction s having someone through the court, and also because you know it could work, and because you know, junior police follow
the example of more senior police. And if they're not specifically instructed but this is a particular issue with a particular population, then they don't take account of it court. You know, there's also a role for courts to question this too and to be aware of it. I think you've got you've got a general failure of caring frequently in Queensland.
Yeah, and just finally before we came on air, we spoke. Now you've lived away from us for around a decade now and see seen the way other court systems operate. I was just wondering if you could explain to the listeners what you've observed, and mainly the positives and negatives of the two systems.
I think you know, there is in theory a presumption of innocence in the British judicial system that most of the Anglo countries around the world have adopted. But there's also elements of old medieval trial by combat, a resolution of.
The skips and.
Getting it at guilty or innocence, and if you don't, you can't afford it, your marginalize then you don't get the champion in the court and you can suffer thereby. I think in the in the alternative tradition of European systems, the Code Napoleon system, you know, there's more of a structure where the judiciary is involved from the start in investigation and the obligation of parties before the court is
to assist in getting at the truth of the matter. Now, both systems can be corrupted and you can get you can get outcomes that are incorrect and less than desirable in those systems, but you know they're they're the advantages and drawbacks. The urwing thing in priensent i guess is the Fitzgerald inquiry is and inquiries generally are thinks conducted under the under the European type system. You're trying to get a truth of the matter, and you uncover things
that would never come out in courts of law. You know, there's there's more ways of ruling evidence and admissible and we're declining to take into account things it might seem extraneous but are actually vital to explanation.
Thank you so much for that explanation and for your expertise on this area.
Okay, Martain, we just heard from Phil Dickey, who we told our listeners was the journalist to help spark the Fitzgerald inquiry. What do you take from that? Do you think it gives a good sense of what Queensland was like maybe when Kevin was first arrested.
Well, I think it puts things in perspective. I think we have to always remember what Phil said as we talk about this case, and when we think about this case, that the way Queensland was run, both politically and the way police operated was not what most people are used to nor understand. There was a high level of corruption, there was no oversight, and there were huge issues with the way the place was run. And I think that for most people looking at the case won't really appreciate that.
And I think it's really important to keep it in mind.
If it's Jerals Enquirer was handed down in the late eighties, so a few years before this happened. But do you get a sense that, particularly in regional Australia, it might have still been sort of the It hadn't really been resolved at that time, not it hadn't had enough time to change this sort of environment.
Yeah, certainly, I think we can take from what Phil said that he still has concerns that things haven't changed even to this day. So certainly just a few years later, in a regional town like Rockhampton, the same police was still working, the same lack of oversight still existed, and the same tactics of operating was still in existence, and I think that we have to question whether things have
changed at all in this world. We still see the exact same problems that were raised in the Fitzgerald Inquiry occurring to this day. So while many of the political issues may have been resolved, I don't think the policing.
Issues were particularly I guess it explains maybe a lot of the how if the wider Queensland viewed police that way, and in fact the whole nation viewed Queensland police that way, imagine how Aboriginal people and the Aboriginal community in Rockampden must have viewed police at that time. It was obvious that there must have been tension between the two groups, do you think.
Well, absolutely, and I think there was also a great level of distrust and fear. I think that's clear from the report handed down that the way Queensland was run was a corrupt state. And any time a state is run and is corrupt from the very top as it was, that those who are most vulnerable are at the most risk.
So I think for Aboriginal people in particular, and those in lower socioeconomic circumstances, that the fear that would have existed, The distrust that would have existed would have been enormous, and I think that reflects on why many people didn't report crimes that were committed against themselves, as well as the way people were policed.
It's interesting you say that because I guess a lot of listeners would be thinking why didn't anyone call police when Linda was assaulted the first time? And maybe that distrust of police and that fear of police could have led into that reluctance to call.
Thus do you think.
I think that's absolutely right, and I think we have to remember that at the same time as this was occurring, we'd just seen the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in custody, where we still know twenty five years after that finished, we have nearly four hundred Aboriginal ontari Straight Islander people have died at the hands of police and corrective services. So at the time, we had both this level of corruption in police and at a political level, and violence
by police and corrective services. So why would anyone in the Aboriginal community call the police for help when their most likely way of dying, being assaulted and injured, was at the very hands of people they were being asked to call. So I think the level of fear definitely played into that. I think the whole issue surrounding black deaths in custody, surrounding corrupt police behavior, violence by the police,
intimidation threats. I mean, these are just not allegations. These are things that were raised and proven in both royal commissions and well one Law Commission and the in COURK Fitzgerald Inquiry. So I mean this was systemic in Queensland and right across Australia, and I think we need to consider that when we listen to what happened on that day at Tenuber House.
And yeah, it's very interesting you said that it was raised particularly in the Fitzgerald Inquiry, and it did have occasions it's brought it brought up the police handling of Aboriginal witnesses. So I think in the Fitzgerald Inquiry there was a section where it talked about gratuitous concurrence and how some police actually use that to an advantage. And
it seems like the case in Kevin's confession. When you read comments like that from the Fitzgerald Inquiry, you sort of see it line up with what might have happened with Kevin's confession, which we've already discussed.
Yeah, absolutely, I think we can see in the way Kevin's confession took place, the fact that it was done without legal representation, the way the questions were asked, and the yes or no answers that were given, This was exactly the sort of interview that the Fitzgerald Inquiry warned against and warned against because it had led to so many statements that were factually incorrect. Clearly, it led to
the arrest and conviction of innocent people. Clearly, it led to statements that weren't at all based on the truth. It was just about pleasing the officers involved and getting the version of events they wanted and suited their story.
So I think it's fair to say that the Fitzgerald Inquiry in that sense as well, had definitely not filtered down to Rockhampton at the time, and we have to have grave concerns about the way that that interview was conducted and the fact that the issues surrounding the way it was conducted had been raised at the highest levels in the state and yet just years later it was
still going on. So Queensland Police had definitely not learned a lot from the Fitzgerald Inquiry VISAVI dealing with Aboriginal and terrestrate Islander people in an appropriate manner.
So going forward in this podcast series, it's important to remember the words of Phil Dickie, the career mail reporter whose journalism helped spark the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
And we must also remember at the time the recently finished Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. The inquiry, the Royal Commission and the corrupt nature of the way Queensland was run at the time, both at a political level and a police level, play a crucial role in the trial and conviction of Kevin Henry.
That was episode eight of Curtain, a podcast delving into the nineteen ninety one murder of an Aboriginal woman named Linda on the banks of Tanuba or the Fitzroy River in Rockampton, Central Queensland. For now, you can catch up on iTunes by typing in Curtain the Podcast, or go to our website www dot Curtain Theepodcast dot com.
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