Lambie Unleashed

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Welcome back to our Little Lady. We've been waiting to record this episode for some time. In January twenty twenty five, we headed back into Saint Helen's for the first time in almost two years. The last time we left, we felt uneasy. Maybe it was just us, but there was a strange feeling about that town. This time, driving in it was different. I was by myself and looking forward to meeting Jackie Lamby and seeing Jason and Amanda face

And a half.

Oh wow, that's massive.

With an on suite with a two point one eighteen hundred window. So it's just fixed window that you look out great and just a kitchen and a living dining.

I can't help thinking about how proud Eden would have been of a mum and dad, just like her siblings are. While we're chatting about the house, Jackie Lambi and her team drive up the dirt driveway. It's not the first time she's been to Jason and Amanda's. Jackie and I sit around the table with a small team plus a cameraman who's filming for an upcoming piece of content. In the background, just behind us, there are pictures of Eden and the other kids, including some in Defense Force uniforms,

I haven't been in a plane, I don't think until since the tenth of December, so it's been very very nice.

I do a road trip twice a year, yep.

I mean I'm way at the road all the time anyway, but trying to do one half because it takes about nine or ten days.

So we're just coming off that and done that.

Which has been beautiful because the weather it's been spectacular down here, and everybody's out and about. Because I don't everybody knows how am I don't put a jacket on, so I'm not politically out there, so people are happy to say, oh, get here, are you going? In the caravan park, and if you if you had a liberal labor party going through there, they're going what the hell are they doing at he so actually get away with that a little bit, which I'm really grateful for.

Did you grew up in Tazzi's, Tazzy Girl? Did you spend any time in Saint Helen's as a kid? No?

Ours was all up on the Northwest coast. So we've got guns, planes, river, we've got we used a lot of camping out at Portsourel, Hawley Way, that sort of thing. We'd have forty of us out there during the Christmas and then a lot of my Christmas holidays once I hit about nine or ten. We're down the West coast because my mum was one of twenty one Wow yeah, very busy little family. No TV back then, mate, no electricity anyway. So if her brothers weren't mining down the

How did it happen from moving from school into the Defense Force. What was that about.

Yeah, I was really lucky.

I took a gap year and went to the Northern Territory and worked to Catherine for twelve months, spent twelve months off and on at the Catherine Hotel.

Motel.

That's a pretty full place. You're going to get life experience. Go to Catherine Hotel. Back then, it was still the Black sat in the bar. I mean that was in That was in eighty eight. That was going on. I mean, you know it isn't it. Yeah, Yeah, still didn't have them in their having county mills.

So for me that was a wake up call.

I'm really grateful because I learned a lot about the indigenous living up there. So that's one of my I really love getting at them, to those indigenous communities.

I love it.

So It's funny how when you do things in life, it comes back and you go, actually, I'm glad I did all of that because it's an interest I have in politics.

That settled me down a bit because.

On my girlfriends had left year twelve and I was actually going back and I studied really really hard. That sort of settled me down and then I did start getting in that wrong crowd, and we just happened to be going down to Sencilink because two of my girlfriends by looking for jobs. And I call it the Kermit the frog bus because it used to be a green army bus running around then trying to recruit people.

And we all.

Decided we were going to that seat. We're going to be g I Jack's or g I Jane's and we all went into it and we're all going to sign up. So I signed up first. They got their clipboard to sign and then did a run around me. So when I said, actually I don't want to join, he said, you'll be right, sweaty, you'll survive it.

Yes, that's Saturdays. I was in within about.

Twelve weeks straight in as a grunt wheel or.

The Australians and one went into the transport drive. And my dad was a truck driver for many many years, fifty years of his life.

So for me it was in my blood.

I was sitting on Daz's and when I was six months old, you know the steering wheel that, so for me it was second nature.

So I did that.

My two friends went through her. They've had you know, drug and Acco whole problems. They've had men in and out of jail. It's been really awful to watch to watch what's their lives evolved in. Things settled now they've got a bit older, a bit worn out. But yeah, so my life took a very very different avenue to what theirs did.

So I've always been grateful it was meant to be for me to sign up that day.

Over my right shoulder. There's a whole bunch of pictures on the wall of the Westbrook clan and a lot of them are dressed in military because they're part of the Defense Force. How much has that connected you to the Westbrooks.

Well, that's how I got connected in the first place. Yeah, Okay, So we were helping one of the kids out with their claims and stuff like that, and so from that came that we've lost a daughter as well, and then so I started to pick that up and then I got done onto section forty four. So I was like, I just can't do anything for you guys. I've got no privilege. I've got to know nothing. I have to step out and win my seat back section forty four.

During that period of time, I got stuck with it as well. So I was a dual citizen.

And so you essentially left politics and then came back.

Yeah. I left politics for nearly two years, and the TVs were very lovely to me.

I got to do celebrity. Get me out of here. Hey, guys, get I I'm about to go to the jungle. I'm so looking forward to it. I'm quite excited about going in there. So I wish me the best of luck, and I'll see you when I get back from the jungle.

Yeah, I did go back to where you come from. That sort of kept me going. I think out of that, I was able to earn about sixty grand over that two years, and I used I was two or three years up in my house payments, so I diluted that right down over that two years. And then I think I spent about seventy grand to win my seatback after two years.

And Dad and I would just.

Be in an old van going round and ran around with Jackie Lamby all over it because I just don't come from a family with money.

So what is it about politics that you love?

I think for me, for politics that I love is just bringing the injustices out because apparently there's lack of courage up there. I think when you go through something that I went through, where I had to fight a government department, and I realized going through that for ten or eleven years, I worked out very early on in two thousand and the only way I was going to be able to help veterans of myself is I need to be inside the pie. I had no idea about politics.

That's all I knew. I knew that back in two thousand and three, and.

Then it took me another ten years to actually get there. So my journey I ended up in a psich unit. I ended up walking out in front of a car. In two thousand and nine. I was on a lot of pharmaceuticals. I was heavily drugged for many years as I lot, because it's the only way I could control the pain. I had no life whatsoever. My life was just being making sure my boys were fed. That was my daily routine because I just the pain was unbearable.

So I had nothing left.

So when I walked into politics at forty four, I had about four bucks in the bank, no superannuation and nothing and nothing, no house left, anything, nothing, that was it.

That's all I had. In the clothes on my back.

For the first three months I was in politics, I was wearing clothes from Venice and the Second and the opshops.

That's how I survived.

There's one thing you notice when you're talking to Jackie. She's a fighter. She's not the traditional politician. There's no airs or graces, no hauling punches, and that's why she's one of Australia's most popular politicians right now. She doesn't come from money or privilege and I sort of see similarities between her life and Jason and Amanda's. Jackie, like Amanda is feisty when it comes to right versus wrong.

There is nothing that I hate more than cover up, especially dealing with the militey.

Over time.

We just come out of a Royal commission el because of the cover ups.

That go on.

I've seen that as being military police. I know how it works in there. Oh my god, if you want to cover it up, she's in the institution, she'll get covered up. So for me, it's all about what's the right thing. I was brought up to know right from wrong. You know, not to steal, not to lie, and that's.

What it is.

It's just a bloody cover up up there. Disgust me. It's an institution. Anything that's institutional, whether it's our universities, whether it's defense, whether it's politics. All right, those people come institution and what they do is that the first thing that they're taught, especially the hierarchy, is cover the institutions asked at all costs, at all costs. Doesn't matter whether you're taking people's lives, you will cover the institution's ass at all costs.

Nah, I don't think so. No, when it comes to people's lives.

If I can't wake up and put the boxing gloves on first thing in the morning, before I do anything else, before I even go to the toilet.

Then I'm not in politics. Those boxing gloves have got to come in and they've got to be on first thing in the morning.

So you know, it's great not to belong to those major parties and come out bear to fight for people without any restrictions. And I had no restriction. I tell you, if I believe there's an injustice done and I can watch that family hurting and those people around them, I'm going to fight like a bitch. That's what I do until I get the bloody answers. And I can smell it because I was in military police. She can smell it.

You know.

I'm around people all the time. You got, yeah, something's not right here. It's your bullshit radar, and it needs to be up all the time. The longer run politics, a better it gets.

Jackie first met Jason and Amanda when she was helping with the family and a private matter that we won't discuss here, but I wanted to know why, specifically she dug into the case of Enan Westbrook.

I think when I looked at it, the first thing I thought, that's interesting because a young person that age doesn't hang themselves, Veterans hang themselves, first responders hang themselves.

A lot of people will jump, and those.

Kids usually cut their wrists, all taken overdose. And my other thing was, gee, that's a clever little girl to tie that around. How hell did she get up that tree? It just didn't make sense of just none of it did, and I couldn't get the answers that I needed. So for me, I backed off that a little bit. And then some other people come into the game. Because I only got so many people and I've got so many jobs to it, they relive very heavily on them getting

And where's the rope? Where's the autopsy farers.

We're the only state where these people can't say I want those autopsy photos. It's absolutely disgusting. I've got guy Barnett down there the AG which is about as much help as a wet paper bag.

I don't have a lot of time for him at all. That makes me anngry, and that makes me fight even more.

Just get the autopsy photos and pass the bastards over. I can see you wasting time because I'm going to come down on you like a bloody bitch anyway.

And That's what I'm going to do.

And I'm not giving this up until I find and I reckon we're about this close. Was also the kids now, speaking to the kids, and then when Edy passonated go and put the makeup and that on, and you know, just that they noticed the bruising on her and the broken teeth and all that.

That was the clature for me, So no, something's wrong here.

First all I couldn't understand how you get up the bloody story with this bloody rope, how she learned how to tie these things. What I could see about the investigation was from me that they got there, they went, she hung herself. That's the investigation over. They didn't look at anything else. You know, I still don't know where the forensics are off the rope. That rope to me

Last night, on the opening night of the Senate, Jackie Lamby spoke again under parliamentary privilege about Eden's case.

There's been all ten years since much Love fifteen year old Eden Westbrook was found hanging in a park in Saint Helen's, Tasmania. Ten years since the police told her family that she had taken her own life. Ten long years for the Westbrook family fighting through their grief to search for answers. The police said it was suicide, but the evidence that Edie was murdered just keeps stacking up. As I stated in my speeches in July November last year,

To her Jesus.

Then there were the inquiries by the Ridgewater Police some months after Eden's death with a key witness, Kim Woodcock, as to whether she noticed marks on Eden's wrists.

It was apparently suggested.

That Eden's hands may have been tied behind her back, makes it very difficult to hang yourself. Then there is what appears at this stage to be the complete failure took a secure and preserve the.

Evidence never seen anything like in my time.

I'm talking about the rope that Eden supposedly used.

In any case like this, the body and the rope.

Are the two most crucial pieces of evidence. Repeater requests to the Tasmanian Police and the Police Minister have.

Failed miserably to provide any.

Information about the location and the status.

Of the rope.

The Right to information. Forensic documents suggests that police quickly decided.

That Eden's death was a suicide. Nothing to see here because she had rope fibers in her hands. Seriously, go and do your investigations properly, and because Amanda Westbrook said that the rope was from a craypot at.

Their home, except that Amanda says she never this and it's not in the statements, although she may have commented that it was similar color to the ropes at their place and couldn't rote fibers in Eden's hands also be indication of struggle and murder. The police never followed up on this issue of the rope with the west Books, nor nor did they disceal the evidence. You didn't go across the road to the wharf where all that rope is.

You never even across that road. You didn't do your evidence properly. Her mom and dad until twelve days after their daughter.

It appears they didn't check the nearby wolves like I've said,

Get a lot more.

Reynolds was a pedophile policeman who was groomed and who's groomed and abused children of Costasm for over thirty years. He was in your uniform Tasmanian Police. And you had your eyes closed for thirty years. And you want me to trust have done this properly.

Oh, you can't be serious.

And despite the damning evidence of criminal behavior, Reynolds was given an official state funeral, official state funeral only in the last few years, with all the trimmings, including a glowing eulogy from the then placed commissioner.

What an absolute shocker.

And in twenty twenty three the Tasmane government commissioned the Wis Report, but despite detailed submissions from the rest Brooks and their former lawyer, and the matter clearly falling within the terms of reference in this case and family concerns about reynolds official role were not even mentioned in the final report. It absolutely blows me away. It's like tap, you don't.

Want to deal with this down he will deal with it because I'm here.

I'm dealing with it. And I want to know if any of the seven current or former Tasmanian police officers referred by the Wives Review for investigation concerning chrials, sex abuse or dreaming ever worked in that Saint Helen's area. I want to know. Surely you can answer that by breakfast. I want to know if someone has been allowed to

That's where we're at.

This is a boxed investigation. At the very least, the police had clearly decided from the start that Eden had hang herself. Nothing else to see. That was it, end of story. You didn't even look to see if what it was murder. You'd made your mind up. She's hung herself. That's eat.

Everything else is off the table.

They didn't interview critical witnesses and purtises of interests. They didn't ask for Eden's mobile phone or check her social media accout ounce to understand her state of mind, or to check whether or not she was being grooined or abused. In reference to the ongoing saga surrounding autopsy photos, there is now the critical issue of the rope, the missing rope. In the absence of the coronial file and relevant statement, not much as publicly known.

About the rope in Eding's case.

You didn't bag and tag it, and you didn't take forensics that we know you failed. I've written to the Chief Magistrate asking for access to this critical documentation. Police must be out there absolutely going around in circles about this rope because this is it.

The rope has to be there somewhere.

It is also not mentioned in any sale of the Chief Magistrate's decision not to reopen the investigation in twenty twenty two. In fact, it is stated that there is no available evidence to the origin of the rope.

That rope's got to be there. It's got to be there.

The emphasis is on the available evidence, which makes me think that the rope had not been secured by the coroners, Associate Paul Reynolds or investigating police as an exhibit. You failed to pick up an exhibit, the most important exhibit in the case, and you failed to bag and tag it.

You failed.

The rope is simply said to.

Have been ten or twelve millimeters in diameter. Bag and tag, bag and tag. You didn't do it.

The RTI information reveals the rope was not secured by police as an exhibit.

The unexhibit recorded.

Was the seat of ten figure prets for Eden m a man of Restbrook, denies that she advised police on the ourthe in February twenty fifteen at the scene that the source of the rope was a Crayport wrote from their home. The right of information documents that my office has received does not show any corroborating documentary evidence that Amanda Restbooks said that.

And if she did say that, you didn't.

Take the samples of the rope from the Westbrooks either.

You failed to even go and do your job at the rest Books. You failed to try and max the rope. You failed visably in this investigation. This is really bad.

Eden's youngest sister, Sky and her brother Dante are speaking out of gathering for Eden on the lawns of Parliament House in Nova.

Sky is who in her third year of law at UTAs.

She's taken Lord fight for her sister and you go, girl and she'll be concentrating on her studies instead. She like her parents and siblings, are still fighting for truth and justice for poor little Leading. Imagine that your own sister has gone back to do a LRD agree to say I don't believe this, and if I don't do it, she'll do it herself. That's where she is.

This is the ambitious side of this family, that one.

Of their kids is gone to study law in a third year, smashing it like you wouldn't believe, and this is where we're at. We're all coming for you. We're all gone ho. I've got her back, and I will not stop until the family has answers. The Attorney General in Tasmania. I want to ever talk to you, guy Barnett, because you promised me before Christmas time that you would change the law. You would make changes in the first sitting weeks that is in March in Tasmania, changes source

She did not hang herself.

It's fired you up even more, didn't it. Oh?

Yeah, because more information care is coming in right, and it gets worse and worse and worse. Everybody of information that we get in is coming in a lot quickly now because we're getting towards the end of it.

We just need those autopsy photos.

So you know, God Marnack walking there and that first day changed that law, and there will be no reason why he won't get those votes. And I reckon, I'm right on the ball with if something stinks, it's been untidily dumb.

The evidence was never taken properly.

So every time I get new evidence says more stuff coming I'll get up and do another speech, and she she's getting closer and closer. If I was a police commissioner in Tasmaia, I'd be shooting myself, to be honest with you, because I'm going to break this.

I want to talk about the rope. You mentioned that there was a similar case that happened a long time ago, the Helen Bird case. I know you're aware of this. The similarities between the Helen Bird case and the in Westbrook cases that there's a few. Firstly, you've asked for some RTIs. You've asked for that rope or at least

Yeah.

What you're asking in the in Westbrook case as part of your submissions to the RTI, is to say where is the rope and if the rope no longer. It's just why does it no longer is?

And by the way it was if you've just taken on the rope, is that with the autopsy photos. So we need I need those autopsy photos. I need to see if there's a pack in there. Okay, but I just think from those autopsy photos, and I think if she was murdered, these people will crumble.

Whoever's done that.

It won't take long before you put the foot down and they start blaming each other, will just come.

I just need that clinture.

So the rope is critical, and the way we get to the rope is via the autopsy.

Yeah, the autopsy photos are critical more than anything else. I need to say. Those autopsy photos. We all do and we need to have them assessed independently. And we know somebody from the mainland that's got fresh eyes, that isn't aware of the case and needs to come down here and have a good look at it. Yeah, and not someone paid out by the Tasmanian government. I don't want to see any that shit going on because there's too much of that going politics. It needs a clear

Doctor Byron Collins is one of those people who is completely independent. He has been working with the Westbrooks for a while. He's the one that was rejected as an independent forensic pathologist to look at that information.

Why would you reject somebody.

It doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make any sense if there is a problem and everyone's going, oh, okay, maybe we should look at that.

This is a problem in this country.

This is what politics has done to this country with all its cover ups and not giving whistlebliler legislation out there for people to come forward.

Do you think the in Westbrook case is a Tasmanian issue or is it a national issue?

Now? It's a national issue, and I can tell you now the morale through our first responders, whether it's AFP, whether it's policing, our health professionals, or whether outs our military. The leadership right across the board, across all those areas.

You're shocking. It is shocking. It is absolutely shocking. This is the big problem that you have.

Like I said, there are institutions they'd rather cover up than get to the truth.

If somebody didn't do their job. Probably so be it okay, but please be honest with.

That and deal with it and then take them back and go, oh, you've missed this, young fellow or whatever. You didn't do your investigation properly and that needs to be fixed. But we're never going to get people to come forward do things like this if we don't open it up. And you know, instead of cover.

Up, there's a lot here. What's the first step? Isn't Guy Barnett changing the rules around what the curenter can release In the Westbrook case, I'd.

Say to Guy Barnett, you move your ass because I'm imagine you're going to be an election by the end of the year and you ain't getting back.

In big boy.

And if he doesn't realize the harm that he's doing to the rest books by just lengthening this out even further and third thinking it's going to go away, it's not going away today and it's not going away tomorrow. I will never back off this case, and one way or another, I will get to the end of it because I always do. So you need to come out clean now and give us what we want. Oh, I'll just continue to belt you until we find out the truth.

Do you think this whole mess started because it was shoddy police work, I think, and I'm just.

Trying to find out and I can't answer this question. Is we've just put in library studies.

And we're doing this.

But I can remember being when I was very sticking down and out during those two thousands that the Labour Party down here they were in power and they reduced our police forces. They reduced them. I just need to see that. That's what my memory tells me from back then. So I just want to see how that happened, because I do know, and I'll give it to the state Liberal Party. They have been smashing them out the last

That was it?

It was just that's it one mind, and therefore they've missed all that crucial information and.

That can happen.

There's a couple of other things that around that time. We've talked about the girl we call Kate. We know Kate has never been spoken to formally by We also know the phone that Eden used that night stayed here and then obviously was cremated with her body, but was never seized by police. We're unsure where the rope is.

Well, what I'm trying to work out is we've got Eden's number.

I want to go back in to those telecommunication companies, whoever she was, and I want to ask them personally. I want to see whether or not I can obtain that. When you want to get data, you can usually get it. I mean, we're not talking about two thousand and one or two thousand. I just don't believe you cannot get something off that mobile phone back then. I just find that ridiculous. I mean, they might write things after a

Because there's also the question of if Kate was with Eden in the skate park on that evening, then it would be very easy to go we've pinned her phone, we knew she was there or she wasn't there.

It's not just about that. I want to see what's going on in for lead up. I want to see what where Eden was leading into that four weeks. I want to see if there was texting to her from people that shouldn't have been sending her text.

That's what I want to record of.

As we get close to the end of this episode, I want to talk about We've covered the rope, we've covered the autopsy, We've covered the person that's called Kate that's never really been formally interviewed we've got questions around the phone. And then there's the issue of Paul Reynolds, the CURRENTS associate who was connected to the case.

Oh, the filthy pedophile, Yeah yeah, yeah. And there's also a word around here that that might have been a pedophile group down here in Saint Helen. So always needs to be cleared up and it needs to be done. And when Paul Reynolds, as soon as his name comes in it, you go, users christ here we go. Something happened down here during that period of time, and I want to know what it is. When this first happened and I was down here, the community did not want

Something to this. We've had lots of people coming forward on the podcast, and none of those seem to have been investigated.

No, And I think I wonder if that's what worries. They don't want to crack this because it's just going to go into an octopus if we find sheit was murdered.

And I think that other people are going to come forward and go, yeah, and I was sexually abused down here and all that and it's going to open up a can of rooms. We've just got to crack this case. This is center to everything before anything else can happen.

Do you think we can solve this in twenty twenty five?

I need those autopsy, so you give me them and then we can all have a good look at them, and then we can take it further.

I wouldn't think that was a lot to ask either way. The investigation was not done for it was not done.

He went in there with one mind. She hung herself. That was so they didn't bother doing anything else. And that's just lazy policing full stop.

You mentioned before there are people in town that know what happened.

But if they're not in town anymore and they've moved out and you know what's happened with Eadie, I would suggest you come forward because I am going to crack this and if we are right and she's murdered, you're coming down anyway. So I suggest you come forward early. And if you're too scared to go to the police, you don't want to go to anyone, you come to me.

Just come to me. Federal election this year, does that change things for TASMANI do you think it.

Doesn't change anything, Eatie.

Unless I get done and I'm thrown out, then that's going to make it really hard because a lot of the stuff I can pull out is under privilege. And if I go out and say that in the normal world, I'll be sued. So that's the advantage I have, and that's how come we can crack so much. Was even if I'm not sure, I can say, I want to know the answer to this question, did this happen?

I think as long as I can maintain my seat, which hopefully I can, then we will continue to this.

But the best thing that Soney General Dan here could do is do something godly, just for once in his goddamn wife, get that legislation through in the first sitting in March in State.

If he gives a shit.

About the Westbrooks, then I say to Barnett, then you get that legislation through.

That should be your first.

Day when you sit him March in State Parliament. So if he really gives a shit about people's lives, let's see what he's got.

Jackie, thanks for spending time with me.

That's all right.

It's good because I'm starting to get really I right about it as you can see.

I just want to know, you know, and you get you get the thing it's to you get really heavily involved, and you see the hurt. It's been going on for too long. I just we just want to know the truth. And it's more important for the Westbrooks and the kids to know what happened to their daughter and their sister.

And we need to know this and they're never going to move on.

And I want to know because if Eddie was murdered, I want people help responsible for that. I want to know what we're down in. Thanks Jackie, Honey, we're gonna get taught. We're gonna find out what happened to Thank you so much.