Appoche production.
Welcome to the first episode of a new series of Our Little Lady. Across the next four weeks. We've got some big updates to share.
Well, and welcome to one session when the local time has just gone six semitable be getting into the game very surely, keeping in mine on one session is one hour ahead of Brisbone and it's around twenty six degrees outside for everyone, Thank you please.
I can share with you that we recently went back to Saint Helen's to visit Jason and Amanda.
So just got to Jason and Amanda's house.
Dogs are going crazy Jason's on the moa. On the front of the moro I've just noticed as a sticker, which is the sticker we mentioned in one of the episodes a little while ago. Now let's go and say hi to everyone. Hello puppies, Hello puppies. While we were there, we got to sit down with Jackie Lamby and to bring you those episodes across the next few weeks.
There's nothing that I hate more than cover up. So for me, it's all about what's the right thing I was brought up to know right from wrong. Don't cover up because we're never going to get there and that's what it is. It's just a bloody cover up up there. Disgusts me. No, I don't think so. No when it comes to people's lives, because I'm ready. So who's been worzy injustices?
It all coincides with the tenth anniversary of Eden's death on the eighteenth of February twenty fifteen. Kurna found that Eden died on the seventeenth of February, so that date will need to be changed. The family believes strongly, based on the evidence available to them, that Eden died on the eighteenth. In this episode, as the title suggests, we thought we'd update you on the compelling reasons why this
case needs to be reopened and independently investigated. These reasons are not just our work, but the body of work that's been done by the Westbrook team. To start, I'd like to focus on section fifty eight that the Tasmanian Corners Act, which states that the Chief Magistrate may reopen investigations for a number of reasons, and these reasons include.
A the investigation was or may have been tainted by fraud, or b the investigation was not sufficiently thorough or was compromised by evidentiary or procedural irregularity, or c there are mistakes in the record of the findings, or d new facts or evidence affecting the findings have come to light, or e The findings were not supported by the evidence, or f there is another compelling reason to reopen the investigation.
Fortunately, the Westbrooks have a number of grounds they can pursue, including the mistake in the date of the debt. As you've heard over the life of this podcast, new facts and evidence have come to light. There's also a strong view that the investigation, including the forensic was not sufficiently thorough, particularly when police failed to treat the death of a child the suspicious. Let's get into some of the compelling reasons.
The first for reopening is the failure of the coroner and the Chief Magistrate to provide autopsy photos to the forensic pathologist authorized by Jason and Amanda.
I was able to obtain the whole file, including the post mortem examination report, but not the microscope slides or the photographs taken during the post mortem examination.
Now, remember, Jason and Amanda don't need to see these, but they do want an independent expert to view them, so that he can finalize his report.
My understanding is that they are available or present in the complete file, but they were not provided to me, which causes me great concern because any photographs speak a thousand words, and they are very In fact, they are essential and integral to a post mortem examination. They form part of the autopsic report, although they're not written words. They're photographs.
But what they do do is they assist in the interpretation of an injury and the identification of the injury.
And it may be that there are.
Injuries present on the deceased that haven't been described or have been incorrectly described in the autopsio report, and if one has the photographs for reference, these sorts of problems can be sorted out.
We heard from Eden's sisters that her face was bruised and her teeth cracked or smashed when they applied makeup to her face just before she was cremated.
And then went to the lip. And when I was outlining the lip, the pencil lifted the lips up, which then I seen some of her teeth, her front teeth, and there was like cracks in it. It's almost like a glass shuttering, like a crack in a glass and that was like conctanding for me, like kind of stepped back because I was like, oh wow, I wasn't expecting to see that. I assume maybe it was from the fall or something. But I was also really young, so I didn't know. But I continued because I still had
like a job to do. I wasn't me and she had a bruise like coming from the ear down her neck, so we put hair in her face, like hair around her neck so you wouldn't see that.
We've also heard that the woman who first found Eden's body and reported it the delivery driver, was asked by police in Bridgewater some months after Eden's death she saw any marks on Eden's wrists when she found her.
About six months later, I got a call from Bridgewater Police station, which is the closest to where I live, and they asked if i'd mind coming in because the coroner had a few more questions for me. So I went over and they were inquiring about if I'd noticed anything unusual about her wrists, and I said no, I didn't didn't notice anything about a risk at all. And I said, why is that and they said, oh, apparently at some stage her ricks had been tied behind her back,
and I said, ah, so it wasn't suicide. And they said, oh, we don't know. And I said, well, you can't tie your own risk behind your back surely unless you're DENI. I said, so that just confirms my suspicion that it wasn't suicide. And they said, oh, well, that's up to the coroners as determined.
To date, all requests to access autopsy photos have been denied. Jason and Demander have also asked the Attorney General of Tasmania, the Honorable Guy Barnett, who has the power to change the law, to intervene. Since August of twenty twenty four,
their requests to date have fallen on deaf ears. The second compelling reason is the involvement of the disgraced Senior Sergeant Paul Reynolds as the coroner's associate, who, in the coroner's own words, provided regular oversight and direction to the investigation. He was a monster who was an alleged pedophile. He committed suicide in twenty eighteen before he could be charged for numerous offenses. This is the most prolific grooming I
have seen perpetrated by one person in my career. He was responsible for making sure the police investigating Eden's death did their job well. The question has to be asked, is this not enough in itself to reopen the investigation. The third reason we think now more than ever this should be relooked at is due to a recent finding by another coroner in Tasmania in another supposed suicide hanging case. It was a case of Helen Bird in twenty ten. Helen died in the same way as Eden. Her case
was closed without inquest. Like Eden, and Helen's death was also originally deemed to be suicide thanks to the hard work of a detective who investigated this case. Years later, the new coroner found that the original investigation was inadequate. The same forensic officer who attended and processed the scene in Eden's case was the same officer who attended Helen Bird's death. In the Halen Bird case, they didn't take measurements from the rope or the ladder, and they didn't
take samples of the rope for DNA. To date, after numerous requests from the family and Jackie Lamby, police have not confirmed if they have the rope, or seized the rope, or took any sample from Eden's rope for DNA testing.
Are the rope and the top? We need to look at those autopsic photos and I need that rope and were still to know where the rope is so has it been destroyed? Is it still in police evidence?
The next compelling reason is the failure to interview the woman we know as Kate's. She was nominated by the whistleblower as someone who was with Eden on the night along with another man. The girl we call Kate spoke to the family at the vigil for Eden and said she could have stopped it. She also told Eden's sister the same thing shortly after Eden's death. To date, the only interview with this woman was informal and it was said to have been done in twenty twenty three, eight
years after Eden's death. But we know from an RTI that there is no statement from her or no record of interview, even after a formal written referral from the Commission of Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Welcome back to this episode of Our Little Lady. We're outlining the compelling reasons for reopening this case and undertaking an independent investigation.
Another compelling reason is that any information that came forward about this investigation, whether it be during the podcast or for the eight years prior that went to police or crime Stoppers, has not been shared with the family. The Westbrooks have made several Right to information requests, but other than one triple zero call, all others have not been forthcoming.
In one of the RTI disclosures, it's been confirmed that Constable Smithhurst did view the CCTV footage of the skatepark, but at two am it shows a woman talking to someone that looked like Eden, the woman with dark hair. Is that correct?
Is that what you know of?
This is where I mentioned when I went looking for Eden that night with Hunter and my daughter. At nine ten, I'm under that camera. At eleven ten, I'm back under that camera, stopped. I'm about to get out of the car. That hundred tells me I'm not about.
The RTI disclosure stated that there had been a misunderstanding in relation to the information Smithhurst gave the Westbooks within days of Eden's debt. Did you do you know whether your car was spotted at those locations?
I've parked under it. Yeah, literally, but those cameras are gone. They pulled them out. They literally within six months. They took those cameras and they're gone, and they put a whole new ridgide did set in.
And that vision of that CSSTV no longer exists.
No, but I had say to my wife that it's hard to see who it is because the pixels are poor. So he admits that he has seen it. And then I've got Chris Smithurst. When I tell him that the footage isn't in it, he says, it's hard to identify what's being said with two people under a camera at night. So the copers are well aware that Eden Westboro is under that camera at night at two am. Two am eighteen. Didn't die on the seventeenth, Like the current.
Said, that is now impossible to corroborate the Smithhurst died a few years back. It's also interesting to note the location of the skate park to where eat It died takes about ninety seconds to walk. And then there's the multiple witnesses that have come forward to the podcast about alleged grooming at school. My police officers in town and others within the community. Are you okay that I record this conversation as a witness statement. This witness went into
more detail about that night. She named a woman who was supposed to be meeting Eden that night. She also found this to be unusual, as Eden wouldn't normally hang out with this woman.
I was sixteen at the time, ten and seventeen. Obviously, I felt too scared to approach my parents or anyone that could actually help me in a scenario like this, because being sixteen, you're nervous. Do you want to you know, you don't really know how to interact with someone that's a lot older than you, and you know, putting these passwords onto you.
And on the eighteenth of February, it will be ten years since Eden tragically died. Ten years on her mom and dad can only imagine how Eden would be doing at twenty five years old. Such a bright and bubbler girl was such potential. Would she be married, would she have kids of her own? Could she have joined the defense force like a brother and sisters. Maybe she might have become a lawyer like a sister Sky, Or maybe she embraces her creative side that we heard so much about.
What is clear is that Eden was dearly loved. She was planning a future in the short term. The camping trip with her family and meeting the boy that she was talking with online. For Jason and Amanda in a Westbrook family, they will never see Edith's potential realized, and they still don't have any answers as to what happened to their little Edie. In the next episode, we sit down face to face with Jackie Lambie and the gloves come off.
I just I just want to know, you know, and you get you get I think it's you get really heavily involved, and you see they're hurt, and I just want them to have peace. It's been going.
Off 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 it, I want people help responsible for that. I want to know what went down in