3 murders, 21 years, no justice, until now?

[trubble]

Three Aboriginal murders, 21 years, no justice... until now?

When a trio of Aboriginal minors went missing in 1991, there was one suspect. So why has it taken so long for the cases to be solved?

From The Independent: Kathy Marks on a saga that touches Australia's racial nerve.

When 16-year-old Colleen Walker went missing from Bowraville, a country town in northern New South Wales, police told her family she had probably "gone walkabout". They said the same when Colleen's cousin, four-year-old Evelyn Greenup, disappeared three weeks later. Then a third Aboriginal child, Clinton Speedy, 16, vanished – and a fortnight later the bodies began turning up in bushland.

That was in 1991, and 21 years later the families of Colleen, Evelyn and Clinton – who lived in the same street – are still waiting for justice. They have endured two police investigations, two trials, an inquest and numerous appeals to prosecutors and politicians.



Now, finally, they have a glint of hope that the man they are convinced carried out the murders may be brought to account.

Jay Hart was a white labourer who – unusually in a town notorious for its racial divisions – hung around Bowraville's Aboriginal housing estate. According to witness testimony at a 2004 inquest, he supplied alcohol and drugs for parties and made sexual advances to young women and girls, including Colleen. He had a history of violence, the inquest heard, including towards one of his former partners. When each of the three children disappeared, Mr Hart was on the scene. Now 46, he has always denied involvement. He was acquitted of murdering Clinton in 1994. At the 2004 inquest, the coroner recommended that he stand trial for killing Evelyn, and he was acquitted of that murder in 2006. He was not charged with Colleen's murder. Her body was never found, although her clothes were discovered in a river.

Some families would have given up after the acquittals. But not the families of Colleen, Evelyn and Clinton. They campaigned for the state's double jeopardy laws, which prevented a suspect being tried twice for the same offence, to be overturned – and succeeded. They then lobbied the Director of Public Prosecutions and the former Attorney General to reopen the case – unsuccessfully, despite the police claiming to have found "new and compelling evidence" against Mr Hart.

Now they have asked the new Attorney-General, Greg Smith, to refer the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal, which could order a retrial. "We don't want to get our hopes up too high after all this time," Clinton's sister-in-law, Leonie Duroux, said yesterday. "But it's all we've got to pin our hopes on."

Despite the passage of time, the families remain bitter about the mishandling of the original investigation, which may have led to evidence being missed and key witnesses not coming forward. They are bitter, too, about the length of time the case has dragged on – and they believe that, in contrast to other child murders, it has received little attention because the victims were black.

Bowraville, nestling in verdant hills near the coast, has always been racially fraught. Just a few decades ago, Aboriginal people could not get served in cafés and they had to enter the cinema via a side door. And as recently as 1990 the pubs were still segregated.

Detective Inspector Gary Jubelin, who led a second investigation and uncovered new evidence, said: "The families often ask me whether this matter would have been handled differently if the children were white, and it's a question I find very difficult to answer. Certainly they have every right to feel they've been let down by the criminal justice system."

Had it not been for Mr Jubelin's diligence and commitment – he took on the case in 1997 and is still involved 15 years on – it is unlikely it would have got this far. What drives him is what drove him from the start. "From a detective's point of view, it doesn't sit well with me that three children living in the same street can be murdered and no one has been brought to justice," he said. On the night Colleen Walker disappeared in September 1990, she had rebuffed advances by Mr Hart, the 2004 inquest heard. He was later seen following her home.

Evelyn Greenup vanished from a house where Mr Hart had attended a party. Clinton Speedy went missing in February 1991 after going to Mr Hart's caravan with his girlfriend. His body, and Evelyn's, were found in bushland outside town, a couple of miles apart.

Frustratingly, for the families and for police, no jury has yet heard evidence about all three murders. They hope that will happen if a retrial takes place. "It's very important to look at all three cases together because of the very strong links and similarities," said Oscar Schub, senior partner with a Sydney law firm assisting the families.

Mr Jubelin is reluctant to criticise the initial investigation, but says it may have been hampered by "communication difficulties" between police and the Aboriginal community. One key witness, for instance, did not come forward until the inquest in 2004. "He had significant information, and when he was asked why he didn't provide it back then, he said 'I'm a blackfella and I drink, why would anyone believe me?'"

Two years later, when Mr Hart stood trial for Evelyn's murder, Mr Jubelin realised that Aboriginal witnesses were at a disadvantage because of cultural factors. As well as being intimidated by the court setting, they avoided eye contact and were prone to long silences – habits common among Aboriginal people, but which could be misinterpreted as evasiveness.

Although more than two decades have elapsed, few Australians know much about the Bowraville case – unlike, for instance, that of the Beaumont children, Jane, Arnna and Grant, who disappeared from an Adelaide beach in 1966 and have never been found.

One police source said: "If they [the Bowraville children] had been three white kids from an affluent Sydney suburb, I'm sure more pressure would have been brought to bear to speed things up and make sure everything was done properly. But for whatever reason it didn't grab the attention of the community, and so it sort of slipped under the radar."

Ms Duroux, who is the widow of Clinton's late elder brother, Marbuck, said: "We feel terribly let down by the justice system, and have felt at times like we're banging our heads against a brick wall and that the government doesn't care, otherwise there would have been a result years ago.

"We just want to see justice done and get some closure for the families, but also for the kids – they were innocent – and that they didn't die in vain."

[♫anna♫]

A sad case! 20 years time will make this case difficult to solve. Many still believe rightly or wrongly that the suspect Jay Hart was and is the killer!

Evelyn Greenup, 4 Years Old Forever!

[trubble]

He's certainly worthy of suspicion as he seems to have been the last person to see any of them!

The DPP has made a plausible link between the 3 deaths: that Hart sedated women to have sex with them: Colleen; Rebecca (Evelyn's mother); and Kelly (Speedy's girlfriend). Both Rebecca and Kelly woke to find their underwear removed with no memory of it happening. Both Evelyn and Speedy were in the respective rooms where Rebecca and Kelly were sleeping - and so was Hart.

Hart may have been an odd character, not socially ok, so he visited the aborigine housing project to bring dope and alcohol, and get some easy sex that way.
He had a relationship with an aborigine woman there but it broke up after he was violent with her. It seems to me that after that he may have decided on a plan to drug young women with alcohol, marijuana, and possibly other things until they were compliant enough to sleep with him.
It seems it didn't quite work out and his strength and violent nature resulted in 3 deaths. Maybe Colleen wasn't drugged enough and fought back; Evelyn cried and disrupted him; and Speedy either woke and fought him, or was disposed of just in case he woke.

There are so many complications, you can see how the investigation and prosecutions could easily be messed up, and of course the evidence is all circumstantial - we know how difficult juries find that. Quite rightly, perhaps.

It seems to all hinge now on whether they can get the courts to prosecute for all three murders at once. Previously, each case was a separate prosecution and the juries weren't told of the other cases. In isolation, each case would seem bizarre, but altogether it looks like a damning pattern, however circumstantial.

For that to happen, I think they have to force the justice system to make an exception, as normally such a prosecution would be seen as prejudicial rather than providing fair evidence -- but they have already forced it to change the Double Jeopardy rule, so maybe it will happen!

more on the story @ www.themonthly.com.au/bowraville-murders-mission-malcolm-knox-2786

[trubble]

The "new and compelling evidence" against Hart appears to be that Evelyn's grandmother heard Evelyn crying, found the door locked, heard a bang and then Evelyn stop crying, and left it at that instead of investigating (and her guilt has stopped that testimony making it to the original trial). Evelyn's mother was in the room with Evelyn, she knew that. She also knew Hart had been loitering around the hallway earlier and had told him to leave. Another woman saw Hart some hours later leaving the room.

I can see the Attorney-General finding that evidence too flimsy to order a re-trial.

Evidence not given in the original trial for Clinton Speedy's death includes an eye-witness sighting of a white man standing over a dead or passed out aborigine man in the road near to where Speedy was found buried. The witness asked if he could help, and the white man replied that he had already called the police, not to worry. The white man's car matched the description of Jay's mother's car which we know he was using that morning.

I think it's very odd that that witness statement wasn't allowed -- but is it enough to call a re-trial?


Seems very unlikely to me.


Sadly.


(Perhaps it will come down to political will).