The families of three children snatched from an Aboriginal housing estate on the New South Wales north coast 24 years ago say they are “finally on the road to justice” after a NSW parliamentary inquiry recommended legal reforms that could see the suspected serial killer retried.
An upper house committee has recommended that the NSW government clarify a one-word legal technicality, which successive attorneys general have cited as a potential barrier to retrying the man police suspect of killing Colleen Walker-Craig, 16, four-year-old Evelyn Greenup, and Clinton Speedy-Duroux, 16, during a three-month spree in the early 1990s.
MPs said they wept hearing about the impact of the unsolved murders on the small Aboriginal community near Bowraville, blaming bungling by the police and judiciary for “significantly and unnecessarily contributing” to the families’ grief.
Colleen vanished from “the mission”, an estate on the outskirts of Bowraville, in September 1990. Her disappearance was followed a month later by that of Evelyn. Clinton, 16, also went missing from the area in January 1991.
A Bowraville labourer known to the local Aboriginal community was charged with the murders of Clinton and Evelyn, but a supreme court judge ruled in 1993 the two matters should be tried separately, denying the jury the chance to hear evidence demonstrating similarities between the deaths.
The labourer was acquitted of killing Clinton and the charge of murdering Evelyn was subsequently withdrawn. Police also suspect him of killing Colleen, whose body has never been found.
Legal reforms since the trial mean that today all three cases would be likely to be heard together, but double jeopardy laws prevent evidence that was “adduced” in the earlier trials from being shown again to the court.
Greens MP David Shoebridge, who instigated the inquiry, said the legal definition of “adduced” remained unclear, and that if it was clarified to mean “admitted” rather than merely “presented”, similar evidence in all three cases could be presented together.
“If the three cases are heard together that similarity of evidence will irretrievably point in a particular direction as to who the murderer is,” he said.
Shoebridge said the definition had been clarified in this way in the UK and only led to a handful of new cases, suggesting it would not trigger a “floodgates problem”.
The committee recommended that NSW police force training programs and policies be reviewed “to ensure they are consistent with best cultural practice”. A case study of “lessons learned” from the case should also be incorporated into police training, it said.
Relatives of Evelyn told the inquiry that police had initially suspected them of “selling” the girl and suggested she may have just gone “on walkabout”.
Her aunt, Michelle Jarrett, said that police informed the media that the girl’s remains had been found before informing the family, describing how she rushed to tell relatives of the discovery before they heard it on the 6pm news.
Jarrett said on Thursday she had mixed emotions about the release of the report. “I feel happy, sad on one hand, relieved that we’re finally getting acknowledgement that we weren’t lying, for how we were treated,” she said.
“The light’s getting a bit bigger,” she said. “But our families will never be the same because we’ll never have our children back.”
Helen Duroux, Clinton’s aunt, said she “been there since this whole thing started”.
“But today I feel reassured that we’re going to do something,” she said. “We’re finally on the road to justice.”
The Baird government has six months to respond to the recommendations.
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