What about the Witnesses

looking at bad investigations. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the new evidence that we've uncovered and what it is about Ken's case.

it had been discovered. But something that jumps out immediately is the first expert witness that the police spoke to. Now, you have to remember that Linda was placed in the river on the Saturday night. The Sunday, the police start rounding everybody who had been at t Nuba house up, But it wasn't really until that night and into the Monday that they started alleging that almost everyone there had somehow been involved. But immediately there's a problem and the

police make a crucial mistake in their investigation. And the first expert that they speak to is someone from boating and Fisheries who knows the river very well. And what they were looking for this person to do is to give them information on how the body would have got

to where it had been found in the river. You would think therefore they were trying to trace backwards to where the body had been placed in the river, but rather than asking open ended questions, they simply put it to this expert that the body had to have been placed in the river at Tanuba House and for this

expert to tell them how that would take place. And so the expert gives a statement as to how the body would possibly get from this south side to Nuba House all the way across to the north side and then further downstream and just around the corner, despite there being a drag mark parallel to the north side, and as we've spoken about in the podcast, all the evidence suggests the body was placed in the river on the north side, but the police wanted an expert witness to

tell them how it would have been placed on the south side because that would link the people at Tanuba House, including Kevin, to the crime. But this is not how you conduct an investigation. You don't ask people a leading question, especially not an expert, and make assumptions you don't know to be fact, they didn't know the body had been

placed in on the south side. They either simply assumed it had because everyone had been at Tanuba House, or they wanted it to because they knew for Kevin to be charged it had to be placed on Tanuba House. So the expert comes up with quite a crazy theory, including the movement of Eddi's the tides having to be a particular way, whirlpool effects the outflow of the Gaviel Creek, all combining with a clockwise whirlpool effect on the surface of the water, and goes on and on about these things.

Now the expert gives this statement and it's quite detailed, and again what they're trying to do is assist the police because they've been told clearly the body must have been placed in the south side. But what the expert does at the very end before they're cutoff, is they say this the other suggestion which could attribute to the position to where the body was found would be that the body had simply followed the northern bank prior to

going around the corner of the river. So here on the Monday, less than forty eight hours after the events had taken place, the expert who was giving them information as to how the body would have got to that northern side says, you've told me it's gone in on the south side, and they've given their best possible explanation of how that could happen, and it's pretty far fetched. They decide to end their statement by saying, quite simply, it could have just gone in on the north side.

The police simply ignored that part of the evidence. We know for a fact, and by their own admission, they never looked at anyone else. They never looked at who could have placed the body on the other side of

the river. So immediately we know that the investigation was skewed to catching someone who was at Tanuba House that night, because that's where the police had decided, without any information, without any of the forensics coming back, without an autopsy, without a cause of death, that that's where the body had been placed in the river, And so they began their whole investigation on a foul assumption.

uber House and more specifically Kevin. So even testimony an a statement less than forty eight hours after Linda's death and her body had been found from an expert, they simply ignored that information and that evidence because it didn't fit with the person they were going after, and that

being Kevin Henry. And that clearly bleeds in to the rest of their investigation because we know that, as we've spoken about in the past, that Duckhart didn't have an alibi, and yet the police, when asked on the stand, did they bother to check his alibi? They said no, they simply took his word for it, despite other witnesses on the stand saying his alibi not only didn't stack up, but that he was there that night. Now, again, we are not at all saying that Duckhart was involved in

the murder of Linda. What we are saying is that's another person who gave evidence that because it didn't fit with trying to convict Kevin Henry, it was simply dismissed.

that the body had been placed in on the north side. Then, months after our investigation had determined that, we had witness X's statement again something we'd only gotten at that time, and it was an eyewitness testimony again that the body had been placed on the north side. Now in the last ten days we get an expert saying that, yeah, it could have been placed on the south side, and here are all these things that would have to align

for that to take place. But in one sentence they ended by saying, really, it's more likely that it was just simply put in on the north side, and that's why it followed the northern bank. So I think you've got three things here, which is that an impartial investigation that uses science, as we did with the assistance of overseas experts, shows the body was placed on the Norise side.

An eyewitness whose testimony we'd never seen before and those assisting us had never seen before, says they saw it being placed on the north side, and the police's own expert offered that up as the more likely scenario. And yet this was totally ignored and never investigated. The police did not go to the north side of the river and scan the river bank there for evidence, and who knows what they could have found had they done so so.

The cause of death and the autopsy and the forensic work done showed there was no forensic evidence that linked Kevin to the crime. No blood his clothes, no mud, none of the water stains, all the things we've spoken about in the past. So all the forensic evidence pointing away from Kevin Henry. And this is where I want to bring in another case I've worked on, and a case that people who follow perhaps the death penalty, American politics and these sort of poor investigations may be familiar with,

and that is Cameron Todd Willingham. He was a Texan man who was executed for burning down his own house and that resulted in the death of his children. Now, immediately, in that case, the forensic evidence did not point to mister Willingham, and some of the evidence was so far fetched and so absurd that mister Willingham couldn't be arrested

straight away. So instead, with all the forensic evidence pointing away from the person the police wanted, they turned to witnesses who were in prison, and this is what we

call Jarle House informants. And in that case, there was a person by the name of Johnny Webb who testified that once Willingham had finally been arrested and was in prison, that he'd confessed to this crime that had killed his own children, and that he'd told him how he'd done it, and he'd told him some of the things that occurred now this evidence that this jail house informant gave did not match the forensics either, and so in that case, the police went back to the forensic experts, some of

whom would later be imprisoned for giving false testimony, to make them change or ask them to change their statements. And so if we go to Kevin's case and the list of witnesses, almost all the witnesses were interviewed in the first week, and that's the first week of September

nineteen ninety one. But many of those witnesses would be asked to come back to the police station and give more statements, and many were pursued to prison where they were being held for some for minor crimes, others for outstanding warrants, where they were asked to clarify the comments they'd previously made. And many of these new statements were given months later. So there's a list in November of six more people who gave statements, and these were follow

up statements. They were asked very specific questions, again only relating to Kevin Henry that would help the police circumvent the forensic evidence. Now it's quite clear why you don't take evidence from what we know as jail house informants a there's someone who's in prison, they have nothing to gain other than their own freedom, which is often what

is being bargained for. Now, in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, this witness, who by his own admission, would later state that he did perjure himself and that he lied about everything Cameron Todd Willingham told him, was assisted by the prosecutor of Cameron Todd Willingham to get a

reduced sentence and an early release on another crime. Now we don't know exactly if this has happened in Kevin Henry's case, but what we can say is despite many of the people who were there that night having extensive criminal records, only Kevin Henry went to prison for an

extended period of time, and that alone is troubling. But also what is really troubling is every single one of these addendum statements, some that were given just a week before Kevin's trial began in April the following year, completely contradicted the evidence these people had given just forty eight

hours after the events had taken place. So what the police are asking us to believe is that the statements these people gave which were very lengthy and many were probably true, weren't accurate because they didn't mention Kevin and

they didn't point to Kevin. But suddenly, when they're interviewed again for the fourth or fifth time, months and months after the events, some just a week before Kevin was to go on trial, these people were able to give information that, while it wouldn't implicate Kevin directly because there was no evidence to do so, it would at least help not remove the forensic evidence from the record. It

would try and back it up. And each one of these witnesses who had done this, for the most part, admitted their lives on the stand and that they had given false statements. I'm not going to name the individuals. Some are still alive and have been traumatized by these events, and we don't know the pressure that was placed on them by the police, especially given they had been there that night. They may have had nothing whatsoever to do with Linda's death. But remember, the police had accused at

least five people and charged them with various events. Four had been charged with murder. Others, like Wayne Saunders, had been accused on multiple occasions, even though he had nothing to do with the crime. And so these were all people under extreme stress, and suddenly, just a week or so before the trial, they're changing their statements. So, to give an example from Kevin's trial, one of the witnesses who gave multiple statements and who changed their statement each time,

added two particular things. Now they gave these statements well after the initial statement and after Kevin had been charged with murder, and their final statement was the one that was given just a week before Kevin went to trial. Two of the things they added, and they were just very short addendums to some of their original statements, seemed to be to help the police convict Kevin because they're directly related to Kevin and directly related to two very

crucial things that were going to occur at the trial. One, of course, is the confession, because that's the only piece of evidence that the police had. Now remembering that most of this confession was ruled inadmissible by the judge. Now, this witness, who was in prison at the time, said that they'd heard this confession and stated things that they

said they'd heard. Now, not only were these things not in the confession, the things that this person, this witness, this jail house informants say are completely impossible based on the evidence, the forensic evidence, so those parts wouldn't even be, for the most part, presented in trial other than they'd

heard this supposed confession. But for the sake of Linda's family, I won't say what their particular claim was, but needless to say, it could not be substantiated in any way by any of the forensic information from the prosecution's own forensic witnesses, and it was patently absurd what was said. The second thing they added also related to the confession, and this was that this witness said, this jailhouse informant said that somehow they knew that Kevin was being videotaped

when he gave his confession. Now, first, there's a problem here because because this person can't testify as to what Kevin did or didn't know. But more broadly, it didn't actually again match up with the facts of the case. But again, this was a person trying to assist police in inverted commas to point the finger at Kevin Henry. And again it was part of this dodgy statement that helped a large part of this supposed confession of Kevin Henry's be thrown out because again it was just absurd.

So we have two statements where from the same witness so we know was in prison, who we know had something to gain, who was released after they gave evidence at the trial. So this is a witness who gives a statement just forty eight hours after the crime, nothing really relating to Kevin or anything that would be helpful, and then we're just a week to go before Kevin's trial, six months after the events that occurred. Is suddenly trying

to assist the police. But unfortunately for the police, in this attempt, the witness was not capable of coming up with anything remotely close to the truth. And not only did they contradict their earlier statements, they said things that just everyone knew couldn't possibly be true. And this is one of the clear flaws of trying to pressure witnesses to elicit statements from jailhouse informants. Often what they say

is just clearly fanciful. But this person did give evidence at the trial and was released from prison shortly after. Clearly this is a flawed investigation.

and continued to harass him. We also know that some of the others were facing some minor criminal charges, very minor things, and as we know at the time Aboriginal people were frequently denied bail, So these were people who had committed very, very minor crimes that would normally see non Indigenous people out on the street and simply given

a court notice. But we know that at the time the Rockhampton Watchhouse, where people awaiting their own trial, people who were on remand were being held, was severely overcrowded, so much so that female prisoners were being held with male prisoners. This is hugely unacceptable, and that this was largely people who had no business being in prison in the first place, and that included people who were there

that night at Tanuba House. They were being held for things they either didn't do or didn't need to be held on Remand for now, this is such a big issue that this is not just something that defense lawyers raise. The FBI has its own unit that looks into this and has released multiple manuals as to why jailhouse informants and people who give multiple statements shouldn't be used or should not be taken credibly. And I'll read from the FBI. Remember,

these are people trying to catch criminals. This are not people trying to defend them. Why they say the motivations for these statements could be dubious, and why the information in them often is They include things like financial reward, promise of pre trial, release from custody, withdrawal or dismissal of other criminal charges, reductions of sentences, elimination of other

people that they don't like, revenge. And remember we have heard an eyewitness talk about an individual in this case who, by their own admission, hated Kevin Henry. Then there's also reasons for self preservation, and I think these are quite likely to have occurred in this particular case given the discrimination Aboriginal people face. And these are fear or harm, threat of arrest or charges, threat of incarceration, or people who have a desire to enter into the witness protection

program and need that assistance. The other issue, of course, too is that people can have a genuine desire to assist law enforcement and they want to help, but as the FBI warns, these people who want to help are often fared inaccurate information by the police so that their statement will match with the police's version of events and

not the facts and not the forensics. And I think it's safe to say we know that that to be true from this case, and clearly we're talking about a largely vulnerable group who this occurred to, of Aboriginal people. Do not forget that the very first witness whose evidence

was contaminated in this way was the fisheries officer. So you have to remember that while people sitting at home might think they'd always tell the truth, people often are telling what they believe to be the truth, or they are trying to assist the police, but the information the police provide them often results in them telling a version of events that is simply not true.

They would give other statements that might try and assist the police, and again we've explained why that might occur, but not a single one could bring themselves. Even under the possible juress or inducement they were facing, not one said they saw Kevin commit the crime. Now, I just want to ram home this point again because a new documentary highlights this, and it's called Out of Thin Air and it's a documentary about a famous double murder case

in Iceland. So these were skin and an Avian people in a very low crime country in the seventies and two people went missing, and it was perfectly possible that these people were simply missing people and who had died in the winter conditions, as something that was quite a common occurrence. People would walk out into the snow, sometimes intoxicated.

But the police honed in on a group of young people, just like in this case, they honed in on the people from Tanuba House and eventually, under police interrogation, with no forensic evidence pointing towards them, Just like no forensic evidence pointed to Kevin Henry, these people from Iceland, all

well educated, confessed not to one but both crimes. The evidence would show some forty years later that they did not commit those crimes, that they didn't have anything to do with them whatsoever, that they weren't even there when

they occurred. So I really want to ensure that people understand that these issues of gratuitous concurrence that we've spoken about throughout the podcast that particularly impact on Aboriginal Andora Strait Islander people, that these issues of threats and intimidation that people face from the police can occur and do

occur right around the world. And I think if it can happen in somewhere like Iceland, where corruption was very low, where it happened to people who again were not in any way involved, Where it happened to people with a high education and no reason where they could be threatened for other crimes because they hadn't committed them. And again I want to stress this is not a rare occurrence

in America. Just a few years ago, an African American man who spent forty three years in prison was released after forty three years and eleven months, primarily because the evidence that was used against him were these sort of statements where there was no forensics. It was multiple statements, some given by jailhouse informants, some just like Kevin's, given just before he went to trial, and finally he has

been released. So this is something that happens around the world, and Australians need to wake up to the fact that it could and probably has happened right under their noses. What we're claiming is not controversial. In fact, it happened so often that the FBI, the largest law enforcement agent in the world, has drawn up a manual explaining why it happens and why police themselves should ensure it doesn't happen.