After a four-month manhunt amid the scrub and flat red earth of New South Wales’ central west, Julian Ingram’s decomposed body was found on Monday 50km from where he allegedly shot his former partner, her boyfriend and her aunt.
Police said on Tuesday morning they suspected Ingram, who was found with a gun near the ute he used to flee the scene of the crime, died by suicide “some time ago”.
The discovery brings some closure to many in the rural NSW town left on edge while his whereabouts remained unknown.
But questions still linger over how police handled domestic violence allegations against the alleged triple-murderer by his former partner, Sophie Quinn, who he allegedly killed while on bail.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailIn February, police announced that the “full domestic violence history” of Ingram and his access to firearms would be examined as part of a critical incident investigation overseen by the police watchdog. NSW police said this would form part of a broader investigation into how police had handled the investigation into the alleged murders.
It came a few weeks after Ingram, also known as Julian Pierpoint, was last seen on 22 January, fleeing Lake Cargelligo in a ute with signage from the council where he worked. Moments before he fled, he allegedly fired at least three shots into a car where Quinn was sitting with her partner, John Harris, 32, outside a house in Lake Cargelligo. After, he allegedly fatally shot Quinn’s aunt, 50-year-old Nerida Quinn.
Quinn was seven months pregnant with a boy her family said she planned to name Troy.
On Tuesday, the police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, said that the investigation remained ongoing after being asked if he thought anything needed to change in how police tracked repeat domestic violence offenders.
“NSW police do an outstanding job in relation to domestic and family violence,” he said. “As an organisation, we respond to over 160,000 calls for service each year, which is one every three minutes. We charge over 33,000 offenders for assault-related matters.
“In relation to Lake Cargelligo, we announced at the time a critical incident investigation to review the circumstances of the police response to domestic and family violence and bail. That investigation is ongoing.”
Police have repeatedly said a risk assessment found Ingram did not pose an unacceptable risk and that he had previously complied with court orders.
But experts raised questions in interviews conducted prior to Ingram being found over what that risk assessment looked like.
Dr Emma Buxton-Namisnyk, a UNSW expert in domestic violence policing, said it remained unclear if risk assessments conducted by police took an incident based approach or examined patterns of behaviour.
“It’s unclear what those risk assessments look like when they consider prior offending – do they just look at their rap sheet, or do they go into what the specific allegations of that charge were to get a sense of the nuance around the incident?” she said.
Ingram was released on bail in November for alleged domestic violence offences against Quinn. He had a history of domestic violence against other partners.
An incident from a decade ago bore similarities. Court documents obtained by Guardian Australia revealed Ingram told a former partner he had a “gun and a hole” for a man he assumed to be her new partner and made threats towards her, their child and her mother. He also breached an apprehended violence order (AVO) the woman had against him.
In 2022, he was convicted of grabbing a family member by the throat after she made a comment about one of his children. He was sentenced to an 18-month community corrections order.
Since 2014, Ingram has had six AVOs issued against him relating to five different people.
After his death, Guardian Australia attempted to contact four former partners or people named in court orders as requiring protection from Ingram.
The Quinn family were also contacted for comment.
The case has sparked criticism over whether changes to bail laws, enacted in 2024 in the wake of Molly Ticehurst’s murder by her former partner while he was on bail, were working. Ingram’s offences didn’t meet the threshold to be captured in the new laws.
Data obtained by Guardian Australia from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research shows bail refusal rates have increased since Ticehurst’s death, including for offences considered less serious, which were not targeted in the reforms.
Dr Jane Wangmann, an expert in legal responses to domestic violence at the University of Technology Sydney, said rather than “taking a mandatory approach of saying all domestic violence offenders should be refused bail”, there needs to be a conversation on “how do we do current bail laws better”.
“The reason for that is that there are a number of consequences that flow from that; the remand population is incredibly high, particularly for Indigenous offenders. We have particular concerns about victim survivors generally, but Indigenous women in particular, being misidentified as offenders,” she said.
Wangmann said police were required to consider “unacceptable risks” before granting bail. This was also changed after Ticehurst’s death to include requirements for police to gain the views of victims.
“Now we don’t know whether or how those matters were weighed in this bail decision,” she said.
But, she added, there were obvious high-risk matters, including pregnancy, separation and stalking.
“I’m really kind of shocked at the lack of translation about what the domestic and family violence death review team talks about in its reports about what are high-risk matters, and what seems to be happening in terms of what’s being decided about bail,” she said.
NSW’s domestic violence death review team is a multi-agency committee that analyses deaths that occur during domestic violence and makes recommendations to the government.
Cecilia McKenzie, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy adviser at Domestic Violence NSW, the peak body for domestic violence organisations in the state, said Indigenous women confront racism embedded into the systems that were “meant to support us”.
The Quinns are a well-known Indigenous family in Lake Cargelligo, and Harris was also Indigenous.
When McKenzie heard about the tragedy in January, she said she was devastated, but “not shocked”. She pointed to figures that showed Aboriginal women were over represented in domestic violence related deaths.
“We’re at the very pointy end; we’re facing an epidemic for women in this country broadly when it comes to domestic violence. There’s so many women losing our lives,” she said.
But she said there were not only problems in how domestic violence was policed, but also a greater need for governments to adequately resource options for women seeking help, particularly in regional and rural areas.
“Rather than standing in front of us, wringing your hands and giving condolences and sympathy, meaningfully fund community controlled solutions,” she said.
“Adequately funded systems and solutions that [are] community driven, but also men’s behaviour programs that are culturally appropriate.”
– Additional reporting by Penry Buckley
