Quodcast Unite Our Voices.
This is Curtain, a podcast where we expose the disappearances of Aboriginal people across this country, shining a light on the darkest parts of our justice system. We ask who are the victims?
I'm aiming Macquire and I'm Martin Hodgson, Senior Advocate at the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning. This series contains the names of deceased people and includes distressing content that may upset some listeners.
Hello and welcome to Season two, Episode eight of Curtain the podcast. Today we are going to discuss a story that happened back in nineteen eighty seven. It's the case of horrendous violence perpetrated against two young Aboriginal teenage girls in the New South Wales town of burk Their names were Mona Lisa Smith and just sent to Smith, who
was known by her friends and family as Cindy. Mona Lisa was sixteen and Cindy was fifteen when they died in the early hours of sixth of December nineteen eighty seven.
We're going to discuss a bit about the details of this case because last year, from twenty seventh November to one December twenty twenty three, an inquest, a long awaited inquest was finally held into their deaths in Burke and it was an inquest that was held because of the long standing advocacy and care of Mona, Lisa, and Cindy's families, who never tired in trying to find out the truth
of what had happened to them. And in a lot of these inquests, the stories of the girls or the women who have passed is often eclipsed by the horrific details of what happened to them. So today on the podcast, we're going to open with some of the memories of Mona and Cindy as told to the end Quest by their families. Mona's mother, June Smith, shared about her daughter Mona.
She said, Mona was a beautiful baby and she grew up you know, lovely, happy, go lucky girl and as she got older, her and her cousin Cindy were always together every day. She told the inquest that Mona was a singer. Around twelve and thirteen, she wanted to sing in the talent quest because they used to have Aboriginal talent quests every year and everyone joined in. Mona loved singing. She said she wanted to be a singer, so she
used to sing. And then Cindy's mother, Dawn Smith, also spoke about her daughter, telling the inquest about her favorite songs. One day, she was on a school excursion and came home with a picture of her playing the piano, and she wanted to learn how to play the piano. Dylan also said, and this is I'm quoting from the inquest, we would go down the rivers for swimming, fishing, and crayfishing. The kids and old people would play games like rounders,
Skippy's high jump, and marbles. And every Sunday we would walk uptown to church. We used to take the children out to show them wealth, fruit and bush medicine too. She also talked about a love for singing from Cindy, although she was a bit more shy. She said she used to love taking her kids to the Talent Quest where they would perform. Cindy was always too shy to get up and sing, but she enjoyed going and watching the others. They were young, bright girls, the coroner said,
sparkling with light and excitement. They had big hopes and dreams and so much to look forward to. But over the past thirty seven years. Mona and Cindy's family and the Aboriginal community in Burke had been devastated by what happened to them on the sixth of December nineteen eighty seven. It was only recently that the findings into that inquest were handed down, and warning to our listeners, the findings
are very horrific. It tells the tale of what we know to be true, the racialized violence not only in towns like Burke, where white perpetrators target young Aboriginal girls, but also the devastating inefficiencies by the police, which sometimes are excused us for example, bad policing, But when you read the in quest, and what we're going to tell you today is they're very examples of the racial violence
of policing. And we're going to go through this in quest today because I think it says so much about
the issues that we're talking about through this podcast. But I just want us to remember as we tell you these really horrific, devastating details that first and foremost, it's the families who have been there fighting for Mona Listern Cindi, fighting for their memories, fighting for the truth to be told, and fighting for a conception of justice that they have been pushing for for nearly four decades now, now more than four our listeners, Can you tell us a bit
about what happened that morning on the sixth of December nineteen eighty seven, So.
The night prior, a man known around town, Alexander Ian Grant, who was forty at the time, was a known predator. He was often seen patrolling around town in his white highlucks looking for young Aboriginal girls. He'd often offer young Aboriginal girls vast quantities of alcohol. And it's important to remember that in a previous occasion, Cindy had done an excellent job of protecting another family member, another cousin, from
this same man. But he was an itinerant worker. He was married and had lived in the town not very long, and he spent a lot of time buying alcohol and then going out to the reserve. And on the night, the girls had gone into town and then were making their way home when he picked them up in his Toyota highlucks intoxicated and had bought more alcohol which he plied the girls with. And then sometime later on that night, there was a horrific accident and the Toyota Highlarks rolled.
There were skid marks nearly two hundred meters down the road, and tragically both the girls Mona, Lisa and Cindy were killed. Grant was largely uninjured. And so what the inquest first had to do was resolve what had happened. Now, we should explain that there was a police investigation, and we will come to that shortly. And mister Grant was eventually charged, but he was never convicted, and that's why the inquest
that the family called for had to happen. Otherwise they were never going to get any answers, and it took them all these years before anyone would agree to give them that in quest to find out exactly what had happened on that night.
So, mardon, there was a car crash involving this high loox what had happened afterwards?
So it wasn't until early on in the morning. It was probably still dark, the light just coming up that passers by came across the crash site. And for our listeners, the following does contain some distressing material. The car was severely damaged and destroyed, and it obviously rolled, and tragically both of the young girls had been ejected from the
vehicle during the accident. The first people on the scene noticed that both girls were clearly already deceased, and that Grant was heavily intoxicated and had made no effort whatsoever to assist the girls in any way. And in fact, there is the possibility, and the coroner found it most likely that even after the accident, Grant had sexually assaulted one of the girls. But these passes by were not
exactly here to help. One of the passes by who'd stopped a mister Batty told Grant, and I quote, you have two dead gins here, mate. Mister Grant responded, no, no, they're all right, they've had too much to drink. Mister Baddy recalled. The male then became agitated and abusive. The male was intoxicated. Mister Baddy could smell alcohol, and there
were bottles and cans around the area. Now, for those listeners overseas or in Australia who don't know, gin is perhaps the most violent, misogynistic term that anyone could use to describe an Aboriginal woman. The fact that both young girls were deceased and this first witness on the scene described them that way shows you the kind of racist attitudes that were all to prevalent in Burke then and
remain a reality in this country today. Grant had clearly offered no assistance whatsoever to the girls, and the other passer by went to police to notify them to get someone to come out of there. But although one individual stayed at the scene, he soon left because Grant became aggressive and abusive.
And Martin's exactly right in that racialized and really violent language of the us gins was used by one of the witnesses. And it should also be noted that this witness in particular had only provided a statement to police on the fifteenth of February twenty twenty three and then gave evidence at the inquest, and so that's thirty seven
years afterwards. So that speaks to one of the deficiencies in the police investigation already, is that one of the key witnesses to what had happened, the first person other than Grant to arrive on the scene, had actually not even been asked for a statement by police until thirty seven years later. The family of Cindy and Mona Lisa also said, particularly the mothers said that the police never
even told them about what had happened. They had actually been called by relatives to go up to the hospital to identify the two girls, and that was the first time they said the police had not even kept them updated or had never even told them about what had happened. And that speaks directly to what we're going to start unraveling today around the really horrific police reaction to the deaths of Mona, Lisa and Cindy. So Martin, how did the police respond first?
So when the police arrived on the scene, it was fair to say they had no real regard for the girls either. Constable Mackenzie was the first person on the scene and initially that he was told by Grant that
Grant was the man driving the vehicle. He admitted as much, but when the case was handed over to Detective Sergeant Peter Ashman, he claims that he asked Grant who was driving, and Grant claimed that Mona had been driving the vehicle, even though in his notebook, in his logs, in his diary, in his initial evidence, and his following evidence to the inquest, Mackenzie has always maintained that he told the detective that it was Grant who was driving and Grant admitted that
he had, but Eshmand never questioned Grant. He simply took him at his word. A man who was found with two dead children by the side of the road, heavily intoxicated and abusive, and the coroner questioned him about this. She asked, did you then by the time the crime scene unit came, did you have any doubts about who the driver was? Answer? I didn't have any doubts. No. Grant told me one of the girls wanted to drive. Question you believed him? You accepted that answer? Yes? Question
why answer from the detective? He told me what happened, and this would plague the horrific police investigation that detective Sergeant Pete Ashman would take Grant's word for everything he told him had happened that night. Even though Grant was a predator found with two deceased Aboriginal girls, he also did next to nothing to secure the crime scene. He himself took no photos of the crime scene. He did no real investigation into what had led up to the
incident or any of the other contributing factors. Mackenzie, it has to be said, did take photos and did draw a map of the crime scene. But by his own admission, he was a very inexperienced police officer and this was not really his task. And so for all these years it is his work that has had to be relied upon to piece things together, because Eshmund did such a terrible job.
And at this point, the fact that the police have not really contacted the family to get statements became quite important, didn't it, Martin, Because it's not only just that the police have ultimately believed without questioning the white man's version of events. They didn't take into account that Mona couldn't even drive a manual car, because the Hilux was a manimal.
Yeah, And so this became a very important part as well of the investigation, which Mona's family, her mother, her brothers, they could all tell the police very easily that there was no way Mona could have driven a manual vs vehicle, And in fact, crash investigators who had analyzed the information both a few years later and then more recently for the inquest, basically found there's no way Mona could have been driving. It was a heavily ladened early model Toyota Highlux.
It was a manual. Her family had absolutely told police that Mona had only ever driven a car once and it was an automatic, And as the crash scene investigators years later would explain, such a heavily laden vehicle that was full of tools and other equipment would have required an extensive amount of manual gear changes to get it up and going and then to maintain the speed. And the vehicle was found more than thirty kilometers outside of Burke,
So there's just no way that Mona was driving. And yet again the coron questioned Eshman about this, about the fact that he was a detective, and that why would he just accept as a detective at face value mister Grant's story, And we see some of Eshman's racism come through immediately. He said, it wouldn't be unusual for young kids, unlicensed drivers to be driving cars. There's nothing unusual about that, But he never checked. This was a pure assumption based
on the fact that the girls were Aboriginal. The coroner then asked a further question, but in case the allegation was that it was an unlicensed teenage girl driving a manual utility, do you think you should have made some inquiries at the time about whether or not either of these girls could drive a manual utility. Answer no. Question you don't think that was a legitimate line of inquiry?
Answer no. And for the record, the coroner note and I quote, I was troubled by this evidence from mister Eshmond. Not only had he, as the senior officer, not bothered to go to the homes of the girls and inform their families of their tragic passing. He had no care in the world, despite being a detective sergeant of solving this crime, of doing any work whatsoever that would get to the bottom of what happened. He simply took Grant's
word for it and was done with it. His callous disregard was as racist as that of the first person to turn up on the scene who called the girl's gins, and as racist as Grant's behavior of applying young Aboriginal girls with alcohol. And then there was a further problem. Any crash scene investigator will tell you that measurements need to be taken. This was never done. There should have been markers laid out on the road as to where the first skid marks occurred, where other debris was found,
and where the vehicle ultimately came to a stop. This was not done. There should have been markers place by the side of the road where the girls were found. This was not done. Nothing was done as per police instructions for what they are supposed to do when they come to a crime scene. And worst of all, the vehicle was never properly taken into custody. It was towed back into Burke and then the chain of custody was completely lost and the vehicle would end up at mister Grant's former workplace.
And that's really important, isn't It might internote that the car has never been probably examined, including a steering wheel, and this just is so it's not an aberration. It happens in a lot of cases we've looked at, particularly around this time, where key evidence, for example cars or key evidence that could indicate the guilt of the accused is handed back to the accused. So this isn't something that is even an aberration in a lot of the
investigations that we've looked at. It's something that happens quite a lot, and it seemed to happen in this case as well, where they're not even looking at what has happened and the scene as even a crime. And that's shown by the fact that they so readily believe that Mona is responsible for the traffic accident, and then that nothing has happened afterwards, no other crime has taken place.
Yeah, and I think this was something that stood out to senior sergeant from Sydney who was involved in this sort of investigation in Sydney and had been out to other crime scenes around the state, and he was troubled by just a memory of hearing about that investigation, to the point that he had his inspector called the Burke Police station and speak to the officer in charge out at Burke. And this was the response when a senior police officer from Sydney with serious concerns a man had
got away with murder rang Burke. This is the response by the head of Burke Police over the telephone. Well, as far as I'm concerned, you can hop in your car and piss off back to Sydney, because my detectives did this job and I'm content with what they did. Now.
The fact that he would say this means either he had clearly not reviewed the work of his detectives, who had done no work whatsoever he had, and he was satisfied that what they'd done nothing was okay, and this would come out even further because the police officer, who had raised doubts about the investigation, decided not to leave it there. He asked a colleague to go out and locate the vehicle, and the vehicle couldn't be found at the police station where it should have been being held
as evidence. Instead, it was that we wore electrics where a man had purchased the vehicle from Grant. Grant had been allowed to take ownership of the vehicle, the potential murder weapon and key piece of evidence in this case, and sell it. He owned the business mister Grant where the vehicle had been stored major metals excavations until he'd
sold the vehicle. But when mister Hurle purchased the vehicle, crucial key pieces of the Highlarks had been removed, one of which was the steering wheel, which would have allowed police had they bothered, to dust it for fingerprints. And if Mona's fingerprints were not on that steering wheel, clearly Grant was lying and she could never have been driving it. Grant obviously knew this and took the steering wheel from the vehicle. The fact that this was allowed to happen
just shows the level of care the police had. It is criminal that they were able to do this and get away with it and be backed up and defended for all these years by their most senior colleagues.
And this color's disregard to evidence and to securing the crime scene and the severe deficiencies in the police investigation were really highlighting the racialized nature of the way police were responding to this because it was about two Aboriginal girls who had lost their lives and this is what
came out of the inquest. As an example of this systemic racism is that Mona in Cidy's family had always said that they felt severely discriminated against because they were Aboriginal, and this is something that a lot of family, I mean majority of Aboriginal families feel when dealing with police. But we have to remember that this is a time
when the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Death in Custodies. The momentum was building for that the death in custody of Lloyd Berney out at Rawarna, which isn't far from Burke, and also David Gundy in Sydney, and this affected the way that the police was responding to the community. So there was one constable who spoke about the reason that he even attended the site of the crash was too
in his words, keep the peace. He said, the main aim was to go down there and assist Constable Mackenzie being the fact that it must have we must have been told that there were two Aboriginal girls that had been killed. That was part of the reason we went.
And I've had the scenario before where this sort of thing where Aboriginal people had been injured and then everyone finds out about it and everyone swarms it or swarms this in and I just didn't want twenty or thirty Aboriginal people there upset, and Ken had to deal with it by himself. He claimed that it wasn't a racist thing to do. This was severely racialized. This meant that they considered it a key concern that Aboriginal people would come and in effect riot or swarm the scene, which
is horrific. You know, that is incredibly insensitive to the families and the community, and it affected the way that they were dealing with the family. They couldn't see this as the tragedy it was. Instead, it almost became an inconvenience to them, but it has really affected the way that this case has been born out over the years. Mardin because the family have been requesting an inquest for a very long time, but they've been knocked back before.
One thing that has absolutely struck me a bad but the death of Mona, Lisa and Cindy, is the fact
that the family has never given up. I don't think I've ever seen an example of a large family and community who have campaigned for so long, despite the disgraceful investigation by police, despite the fact that Grant was acquitted at a completely botched trial, despite all of the knockbacks, they have never stopped, and thirty three years after, in March twenty twenty, via their lawyer, they had written to the Commissioner of Police, Mick Fuller, and asked for an
investigation and an inquest. This is not a lot to ask when inquests are such a standard part of our legal system and understanding why people have passed away. But Fuller, like his counterparts in the eighties, had no intention of grand that family's request. He said the brief of evidence has been subject to thorough independent reviews in both two thousand and four and twenty eighteen, both reviews found that an adequate investigation was conducted. How on earth could anyone
in their bright mind claim that. He also noted that the accused, Alexander Ian Grant, had been discharged by a jury and was deceased, and that further investigation is not planned by police, and he said it was for this reason that I quote, I do not believe an inquest into the deaths of Jacina and Mona Lisa will adduce new or additional information. And as we know from what came out of the inquest that was wrong. Why isn't
Fuller made to answer? This is a man who now cops a fortune in pension for being our police commissioner,
who couldn't other to just ask for an inquest? His counterpart, the Attorney General, Liberal Mark Speakman, was written to by George Newhouse of the National Justice Project on behalf of the family, and he finally received a reply on the seventh of March twenty twenty two, and the Attorney General advised that he too had decided not to direct a coronial inquest, and I quote a further coronial inquest would not be capable of finding any new information not already
known or of providing any meaningful information or closure for Mona or Cindy's families, again a lie. The families didn't have closure. They were requesting this in quest, and as we know, this inquest did deliver findings and did deliver answers. Why isn't speakmen held to account for denying this family who had campaigned for decades to get the truth of what had happened to their daughters any sort of answers
and he denied them. That he had the role as Attorney General to clear this up as best as possible and he couldn't be bothered to lift a finger.
So Martin, with that in mind, the fact that this inquest has been really significant and has given some sense of justice back to the families, what did the coroner actually find well?
And I think that's a very important part that for the family, they did state at the end of the inquest that they were grateful for the coroner's work, and the coroner actually commended the family and the community immensely for their involvement and the way they assisted the coronial
in quest. And the coroner found quite simply that Grant was a predator, that Grant was the only person driving the vehicle that night, that Grant was heavily intoxicated and his driving had killed Mona, Lisa and Cindy in that accident. The coroner also found the serious deficiencies in the police investigation and spoke of the racism in the police and the way that influenced their investigation or lack their role.
And finally, there was a very important finding which was that the coroner found that Grant had indeed sexually assaulted Cindy. Now this was a charge he never faced. It was dropped because a ridiculous part of the law said that because the time of Cindy's death couldn't be determined, that the prosecution for his sexual assault on her after the
accident couldn't go ahead. And I'm convinced had the jury heard this, that despite their own racism in the jury, this may have played a role in securing a conviction against Grant. So one thing the family asked the coroner via their lawyers to do was to amend the law so that if the time of death couldn't be determined, but that there is sufficient evidence of a sexual assault,
and there was in this case. That the coroner found that the charge can still proceed and I think in finding this and in changing this aspect of the law and seeking for the Parliament to do that, the Parliament owes the families of Mona, Lisa and Cindy this tiny fraction of what they have always asked for, and it
is a key part of the recommendations. But probably most importantly is the fact that after all these years, this is a huge victory for the campaigning of the family, that they are changing the law and influencing the law and exposing what has gone on. They have exposed the very fact that a white man in a regional rural town was able to pray on young Aboriginal girls. We know that Sidney had previously protected one of her own cousins from him. We know he killed those girls. We
know he gave no care whatsoever. We know the police simply took him at his word. And yet despite decades of having to deal with all of this, the family have ensured that our society will be safer as a result of their loss. And for that campaigning, I think we have to be incredibly grateful and in awe of the families.
And with that in mind, I just wanted to give the last word to the family. So after the inquest, Dawn Smith, Cindia's mother, said, we want to be able to hold someone accountable for what we have heard. The findings were good, but the pain and the hurt are still with us and always will be. That will never go away. I hope that other families in our position won't ever go through the same thing that we did
for thirty six years. We hope that there is a change in the way the police force treats Aboriginal families who have had loved ones who they have lost or have been killed. And June Smith, Mona's mother said, for the fellows and the police that did the wrong thing, they shouldn't be in the police force. If you don't like black follows why they come out here. We all believe the same. We are proud to be black. For cops to treat us different because of racism is wrong.
If it was two white girls, it would have been different. And I think that says everything about the racial and gendered violence in the police and in society, and it says something about what we hope to do through this podcast, and we hope that you'll stay with.
Us horrifically as we record these post We've just learned of the murder of a young Aboriginal girl in Sydney, and so in closing this episode of Kurt and the Podcast, we ask the police to do one simple thing. Heed the calls of Mona, Lisa and Cindy's mums as they ask police to either do their job and care about Black people or not be in the police force. This epidemic of violence against Aboriginal women and children has to end. The families of Mona, Lisa and Cydndey have led the way.
Now it's on the police to show another family the due diligence, love and care that Mona, Lisa and Cindy never got. This episode was brought to you by Black Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more you can visit us at www dot curtinthepodcast dot com, follow us on Twitter at Curtain Podcast, and help to support our work look at Patreon dot com. Backslash Curtain Podcast.
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