New Documents Revealed

But this was also the first time that Amy got a chance to see all the documentation that relates to Kevin Henry's trial in one go. So, Amy, what was it like after nearly two years of working on this case to see this to two thousand pages sitting in front of you for the first time.

that Martin and I went through yet again. And I think for you, Martin early the tenth the relevance time even more going through it. But for me it was really interesting because gave me it filled in a lot of gaps in the timeline, and it gave me a bigger picture of what actually happened that night, not just at Tanuba House, but the day after when Linda's body was found, and then the police officers coming in, when they started their instigation, what they did and what they

didn't do. It really just a lot of pieces were falling into place that I didn't have a complete understanding of. So for me, it was really amazing that even after years and of continually talking about this case, continually digging into every little aspect of it, there were still things that needed to be uncovered and needed to be to over And it just shows just how long reinvestigating a

case like this can take. And it really feels like that we're doing the work that should have been done originally, and if it had been done originally, Kevin Henry would still be in jail. So it was very overwhelmed, but also inspired me to continue the fight as well, and also gave me a better background knowledge of what was happening in the police force at that time in Rockampden.

been no follow up. And sitting down with Amy and seeing her reaction as to just how much is there, it actually reminds you once again that how did so many other people look at this case and not take it further? I think it's very interesting to get a journalist's reaction and Amy uncovering things too that I admit, where we've seen lawyers look at these and just turn away, and I think that is incredibly frustrating and also goes to the issue that we've discussed on this podcast a lot,

which is how many other Indigenous prisoners are innocent? And given the weight of evidence here for Kevin, and we know that we've had all these lawyers over the year look at these docum and look away. How many other

cases have they looked at and looked away? How many other people are there just like Kevin, average men, women, and young people in juvenile attention who have just as much evidence for them showing their innocence, and their cases have been looked at by the als University, other lawyers and it's never progressed. So that was something else that

stood out for me. Amy. The other thing I guess that really struck me at the end of the day sitting down and spending the time stand out in this story the fact that the more you read it and the more you get to grips with exactly what happened, and we had some good breakthroughs. Just Evin just how badly he was failed. I'm wondering obviously that's something we've known all along, but did that strike you as well?

ahead of her time in her chosen field. She was incredibly beautiful, She was a great mother to her four children and yet in the trial transcripts there was none of that. There was no one there to speak about

her as a person. It became a victim, and that's what came out of the trial transcripts for me, and it's what we have to continue trying to do to ensure that you know, this was a you know, this is a life, and across history, Aboriginal women's lives have been so devalued, and Linda's life was devalued in the core of those court proceedings and also the night that she sadly lost her life. And also the thing that really came up for me in the transcripts was just

how much it focused on the assault. So I didn't realize that the majority of the case actually involved detailing and trying to figure out the truth about what happened before she was put in the river. And so it was really interesting to me to see that Kevin Henry, the allegations against him, played very little part in the court proceeding, and that was really confusing and frustrating because I wondered how the jury could have convicted based on

such little evidence around against Kevin. It's really unfathomable that it could have happened when so much of the weight of evidence was actually directed to the assault itself and not what actually happened after, and none of the barristers actually picked up any of that, I don't think. So that was really interesting, and well, the fact that the focus was never really on Kevin, and yet he got the harshest sentence, and in a sense, no one really

stood up for him as well. So Linda and Kevin were both outsiders at Tanuba in different ways, and the system very much let them down.

there's really nothing about Linda. In fact, there's vital details just about her age and things like that that are completely wrong in a lot of the transcripts and some of the information that was acquired by police early on.

Linda was a woman who, as we've spoken about before, are in early childhood education for Aboriginal children in South Australia and there was no mention of this, and something you find always in murdered focus on the victim and creating a picture for the jury of who they were. Part of how we understand the loss of death is to understand the person. Well, this was not done at

all in the troll. In fact, I doubt very much that the jury, even exiting with fresh minds on all the evidence, could have told you anything about her and her life. And I think that's absolutely appalling and it shows what we know so much about the way Aboriginal women are treated in this country. We've spoken about miss Marr who died in police Cutty. She died within just a few hours of being put in a police cell

and it said of natural causes. Someone doesn't just die in a police cell, young person, and no real explanation is given, no real investigation is done. Once again, Aboriginal women are just killed and nothing about their humanity is

ever uttered. And it's that lack of humanity that is placed on Aboriginal women that allows these things to take place originally, and yet to read through a murder trial and nothing about Linda to be raised is absolutely disgusting and That's one of the reasons we've tried to dig and uncover more is how did the police and those who were supposed to get Linda justice do such a

terrible job. And so part of that process is to reinvestigate the entire case and also find out how did Kevin Henry get him for what he's adding up to be his life for something he didn't do. And from the documentation is also so clear there is no real focus, as Amy said, on Kevin, it's largely all about the assault, which we know Kevin not only didn't take part in, he told the people who were doing it to knock

it off. So as part of reinvestigating this, Amy actually went and spoke to one of the witnesses from the trial, in fact, the very first person to take the stand. Amy, can you tell us who that was and how that went.

the north side of the of the bank. So the race collide and the fisherman remembers that it was a very very low tide, and he remembers thinking that the tide was so low that it must have begun falling about six hours before. And he told me the tide in such a state that it was not moving at all, and so it was in a half an hour of

dead time. And so he and his friend who is out so him and his friend who were out there that day actually had a good understanding of the tides and what was going to happen, and they knew that as they sailed up the river Quiet River on a Sunday morning, that the tide was going to turn within thirty minutes. So I spoke to him, and he had quite a lot of memory of that day. It was the first time that he'd ever seen a dead body.

He's a non indigenous man with quite a comfortable life, who respected the police and had no reason not to, and so it was quite a shock for him when they turned a bend just past town and saw Linda's body, and he actually told me that at first glanced the two men that it was a doll, and I think they were far enough away that they couldn't really determine

what it was. But it seemed to me like in his mind he was trying to go through any conclusion rather than what looked like the truth, a really, really horrible truth. So he actually told me about he remembers

actually getting off the boat with the detective. So after the two men found the body, they turned back towards the fitz Row rotorbated clutches right next to the uber house, and they rang the police and a police constable, a police officer, Constable Glenn Jones, actually came and boarded the boat and went out to the ball and sinking down right the mud and it was the mud like glue that's found at the bottom of the river, and he

remembers that it came up about to his knees. The other thing that was interesting was he remembered seeing and pointed to the constable the lot and led up to her her feet, and he remembers that clearly, and he remembers telling this, and the very interesting for me talk the very interesting thing for me talk to him that afternoon was that he remembers what he was thinking at the time, and he remembers when he saw that line, he thought, well, there's no way that she could have

come in on the other side of the bank. And he thought, because it was a place where you couldn't access by car or by foot, Flor must have brought her in by a boat and had dragged her along the side. The members telling an SEES worker or a police officer later that morning that's what he thought happened enabled him that no, she'd actually come from the other side of the bank, and he just accepted it. So

it was very interesting. He also remembers a lot of the reason he remembers that is because obviously he was a very keen fisherman, even though he was an amateur Members when thinking about how he was going to get this mole of his mind out of the bottom of his boat. So that was the other interesting thing, the fact that there was so much mud that he spent all afternoon when he got home from the police station trying to scrub it out, and it took him a

fair few hours as well. So Martin, when you eyewitness accounts like that, what can we sort of draw from that, particularly that fact about him seeing all of that might at the bottom of his vote.

defense and the prosecution. But there's one thing you said just then that's very interesting and struck me immediately when you first told me, which was that he seemed quite convinced that the body had gone on the northern side, which, as we've discussed on the podcast before, is the opposite side of the bank from where Tanuba House is and where Kevin and Linda were. But also the police told him that no, the body had gone in on the southern side. And so here we have, before any investigation

has begun, simply the finding of the body. The police have already decided on which side of the riverbank and where the body has been placed, and this wigation because they decided something very early without any facts. And what we've discovered is the second fisherman, who we knew had never tooken a trial, did give a lengthy statement to police. And so for those of you who support the podcast through Patreon and you can do that if you like it.

Patreon dot com, Forward slash Curtain podcast. That money has largely been going lately to lots of freedom of information requests to find out new information. And one of the things your money has uncovered is a statement by the second fisherman. Now I won't give his name, because there's no point. He was a much more experienced fisherman. He was older in age, and he'd grown up on the river. He knew it really well, and his statement goes to show that he understands the times it takes to travel

to different parts of the river. He knows all the names of all the locations. He'd fish this river for a considerable period of time. And what we understand is that he was actually showing the other fisherman, who was younger, some of the things he knew about the river that morning. And he too was also quite sure and confident that the body must have gone in on the north side of the river, not the side the police would suggest immediately. So here you have two fishermen who really didn't have

time to say a lot to each other. You have to remember that once they'd seen the body, they immediately went back at police and come, and it's not like they could have collaborated their stories and sound like they do what you do, have a share own knowledge based on what they saw that morning, believed the body must have been put in on the northern side of the river. And yet the police had decided two things, one that

that wasn't the case. And this sort of shocked the fishermen, but they just assumed the police must know something they did. But of course the police didn't even know who the body belonged to, but they'd already decided. Most confronting to me is the fact that the men that found Linda's body, the older man knew it like the back of his hand, believed the body had been put in on the northern side.

Not once was a police vehicle dispatched to that northern side to look for eddance of where Linda might have been placed in the water. They did not follow up on this knows what they might have found if they'd done that. But already they decided that the body had been placed in the south side of the river. And the only reason they would be deciding that is because that's where those Aboriginal people had been the night before,

So before the body is even found. We know that the police were looking to pin this crime on an Aboriginal person from Tanuba House, and we'd read through two thousand pages of transcripts and hundreds of pages of more information and there is not an ounce of evidence that suggests that foot suggestion by the police is accurate. And to me it's shocking to know that before anyone was interviewed, before Linda's name was known, the police had made up

their mind. I was wondering amy over the Lanfe last couple of years, and it's something we thought was the case, but now we're finding out new information. As a journalist too is always having to investigate things that have gone on where the truth is unclear. What did you think and feel about this police assessment basically that was going to pint on Aboriginal people from the beginning, despite the evidence.

investigation properly, to just sign and off. So I think it shows that they just did have the best interests of aberal people in mind at all, and just my own background and reporting a lot of these some cases to Linda and Kevin's. It's not surprising because it happens so often, particularly in this time period of the nineties, where we see police actively covering up Aboriginal deaths in custody.

So it does not suppose me at all that they would also not carry out their duties as police officers in relation to a murdered Aboriginal woman.

everything the police did that was so wrong. Now, in addition to the fisherman, the second fisherman whose statement we've uncovered, we have many many other statements that we'd never seen and perhaps we don't know were kept from Kevin's defense too,

but they certainly highlight a great deal more. One thing we learned was that when Linda's body was brought back to the boat club that morning, once the fisherman had found her body, and the police said one police officer had helped them bring the body back to shore, there was a medical practitioner waiting, and he was there simply to do a quick assessment. Basically, in that situation, the doctor to write whether the person is in fact deceased or not and record a time. This is before any

post mortem or thing like that is done. And what this doctor said is that he confirmed what the two fishermen had said, that Linda's body was heavily cut, it in mud, and that there was a sense of an assault, there was blood, and that much of what we already know matches up, but he made particular mention of the

amount of mud. And yet what you've heard us speak about in the past when we discussed the post mortem is the fact that the doctor who undertook that post mortem state that the body had been covered with mud. But the body has since been cleaned. Now, what we don't know is what happens between the first doctor seeing Linda's body covered in mud and when the body was cleaned.

There is no recorded information about happened there, but we have been able to uncover what might have happened, and certainly the people that were in charge of custody of the evidence and Linda's body in that time, and that information is shocking.