Did the Bondi attackers walk free?

He also agreed that it would be unusual to find hair on the hands of someone who jumped to his death. I agree that it is a fall.

“Personally, I still feel it was bad luck. I understand,” Morgan said.

mother’s request

Kay Warren wrote a petition to the New South Wales State Police in July 1998. Her son Ross, a television newsreader, had been reported missing in July 1989 at the age of 25. Marks found his car in Bondi near the park by a friend, his keys lying on a nearby rock. Near the water’s edge.

A police officer coordinating the investigation into Warren’s disappearance said within days that police “believe that the missing person somehow fell into the sea.” Warren’s suspected death was not reported to the coroner.

“It’s been nine years since Ross went missing and we feel it’s time to close the case with an inquest by the coroner,” Kay Warren wrote. It is said that he was looking for

She didn’t reply. In April 2000 she wrote her sixth letter. This time it is addressed to her NSW Police Commissioner. She began, “This July will be 11 years since my son went missing.”

fresh investigation

It wasn’t until Steven Page, then a sergeant, came across Warren’s letter that the wheels of the investigation began to turn again.

“He sent a report, I think, first of all to Paddington [police]to have it investigated,” Morgan told the investigation.

In June 2001, Page was appointed commander of Operation Taladale to investigate Russell’s death, Warren’s disappearance and suspected death, as well as the disappearance and suspected death of Frenchman Gilles Matini in the same area. .

Mataini, who, like Russell and Warren, was gay, was last seen on the coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama around Marks Park in September 1985. he was 27 years old.

Discovery of two murders

Taradale and Paige’s work, which left the military in 2004, was praised as “thorough” and “impeccable” by then-deputy state coroner Jacqueline Milledge in 2005.

Milledge finds Russell and Warren dead after encountering foul play. She found Matini dead, and although his manner and cause of death were not determined, there was a “strong possibility” that he died under similar circumstances to Russell and Warren.

Milledge said the threat of throwing the victim off a cliff was a modus operandi of “some gay-hate perpetrators” around Marks Park at the time of the man’s disappearance and death, and that it was used by three men. He said it “strongly supports the possibility” that all of the men died in this manner.

re-examination

Despite Milledge’s findings, NSW police formed a top-secret Strike Force Neiwand in 2015 to re-investigate the three Bondi cases, the investigation said. 2017, Naywand effectively reversed the coroner’s findings Without talking to dozens of interested people.

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Neiwand said in internal police documents that Taradale was infected with “tunnel vision” and “relied on investigative confirmation bias, a major factor that ultimately limits the validity of a coroner’s findings.” I was claiming.

Morgan, Neiwand’s investigative supervisor since 2016, agreed with the investigation that these allegations were unjustified. He agreed that investigators started with an open mind, but that the strike force ultimately put more effort into finding evidence that could point to suicide or misfortune rather than murder.

Paige, who now works in the private sector, told the survey: “I think my reputation was completely destroyed professionally by those reports.”

In the case of “zero possibility of solving”

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In 2012, NSW police officers from the Unsolved Homicide Team investigated the unsolved case of the 1988 death of US citizen Scott Johnson. She concluded that the “solvability” of the case was zero.

Twenty-seven-year-old Johnson’s nude body was found at the foot of a cliff near Manley’s North Head on December 10, 1988.

Paige, a former police officer by this time, attended the Manly Police Station with Johnson’s brother Steve in March 2006 and, due to possible similarities to Bondi’s case, suspected Scott of 1988. demanded a reinvestigation of the death.

In 2017, the coroner at the time, Michael Burns, concluded after a third hearing that Scott’s cause of death was “the result of a hate attack on gays”. I’ve heard that suicide is the most likely cause of death.

Scott Philip White from Sydney Billed in May 2020 in the murder over Scott’s death.White pleaded guilty to manslaughter last month A ruling will be handed down later this year.

police review

For inquiries heard evidence As of 2014, senior NSW police officers believed that claims regarding the number of homophobic killings and bashings in the 1980s and 90s were exaggerated and unfounded. Against this backdrop, NSW Police said he founded Strikeforce Paravel in 2015, and from 1976 to 2000 he was responsible for 88 deaths reported in the media and elsewhere. Gay Hate reported that his bias motives may be involved.

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Parrabell’s 2018 report found evidence of bigotry crimes in just eight cases. In addition, he was suspected of 19 prejudice crimes. Insufficient information was available in 25 cases and no evidence of prejudice crimes was found in 34 cases. Two cases were excluded from review.

A team from Flinders University was contracted to investigate police work, and academics were said to be required to take a “cooperative approach” in their tender documents.

The academic team said in its final report that it was “reluctant to endorse” biased crime indicators used by police.

Dr. Derek Dalton, who was involved with Academic Review, told the study that in his experience, Parabel was a “poison cup.”

“I’m not a police apologist. I’ve documented homosexual hate for years of my life.”

The investigation will resume later this month.

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