Australia/New Zealand
Victims of the State

26 Cases

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Location:   New South Wales   Northern Territory
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At 12:40 a.m. on February 13, 1978, a bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel on George St. in Sydney, Australia. The explosion occurred during a prime ministers' conference attended by 12 prime ministers of Asian and Pacific British Commonwealth countries. All were staying at the hotel. The bomb had been placed in a trash bin in front of the hotel and exploded after it was emptied into a trash truck. It killed two trash collectors and a policeman who was standing in front of the hotel. It also injured eleven others.
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Ljube Velevski was convicted of murdering his wife, Snezana, his daughter, Zaklina, age 6, and his twin babies, Daniela and Dijana, age 3 months. The throats of all the deceased had been cut. At trial, Velevski's defence argued that Snezana had killed her three children, then herself. The killings occurred in a three bedroom suburban house in Berkeley, Wollongong, New South Wales. Velevski's parents lived with Velevski and his family at the time of the killings.
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Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of murdering her 10-week-old daughter Azaria. Lindy claimed Azaria was snatched by a wild dog, known as a dingo, from a campsite in central Australia. Azaria was never seen again.  (www.lindychamberlain.com) (A Cry in the Dark)  [12/10]

Kelvin Ronald Condren was convicted of the murder of Patricia Carlton. Carlton's body was found in a parking lot behind a Mt. Isa pharmacy.  (Report) (ALB)

Graham Stafford was convicted of the murder of 12-year-old Leanne Holland. Holland's body was found in Redbank Plains three days after she was reported missing from her home in Goodna. Analysis shows that critical evidence used to convict Stafford is seriously flawed.  (Video 1) (Video 2)

Frank Alan Button was convicted of raping a retarded 13-year-old girl. The victim said she had been assaulted during a party at her mother's home in Cherbourg. She identified Button, but her testimony was confused and contradictory. Button's nephew, Lester Malone, claimed Button had confessed to the rape while they were in a park shortly after Button had been charged with the crime. However, Button went straight to jail after being charged and the confession in the park couldn't have occurred. Malone later withdrew his statement and claimed the investigating detective had intimidated him and put words in his mouth. Following Button's conviction, DNA tests were done which showed the assailant to be a prisoner who was doing time for another rape. Button became the first Australian convict to be exonerated of a crime due to DNA evidence. He was released after serving 10 months of his 6 year sentence.  (JTC) (Police Reform)  [11/10]

Raymond Paul Davy was convicted of murdering 73-year-old Donald Rogers. Three months after Rogers went missing, Davy led police to his remains in Beerburrum State Forest. The Crown alleged Davy withheld Rogers' diabetes medicine to extract his credit card PIN number before dumping his body, burning his car, and spending $30,000 from his account. Davy, a heroin addict, admitted stealing Rogers' money, but always maintained he did not kill him. An appeals court later quashed Davy's murder conviction because it found the possibility that Rogers died by natural causes was not excluded beyond a reasonable doubt.  (Archives)

Frits Van Beelen was convicted of the murder of 15-year-old Deborah Leach. Leach was last seen near her home in Adelaide at 4 p.m. on July 15, 1971. She was crossing a paddock and heading towards the beach. The beach was covered with seagrass that was up to 2 meters (6-7 feet) high. Her partially clothed body was found at 4:20 a.m. the next morning in the seagrass. There were no signs of bruising to her body and a medical examiner ruled that she had been drowned.
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Edward Charles Splatt was convicted of the murder of Rosa Amelia Simper. The crime occurred in Cheltenham, an Adelaide suburb.  (NetK) (Sydney Morning Herald) (Charles Smith Blog)

Emily Perry was convicted of two counts of attempting to murder her third husband Ken Perry. She allegedly tried to poison him in 1978 and again in 1979. Emily's conviction was based in part on three suspicious deaths of people she was close to that occurred in 1961, 1962, and 1970. She was never charged in these deaths.  (NetK)

David Szach was convicted of the murder of 44-year-old Derrance Stevenson, an Adelaide lawyer. Szach, then 19, had been in a gay relationship with Stevenson for three years. Stevenson's body was found in his freezer with a gunshot wound to his head.  (NetK)

Raymond John Geesing was convicted of the abduction and murder of 10-year-old Louise Bell. Bell was last seen at 10 p.m. on Jan 4, 1983 in the bedroom of her family home at 5 Meadow Way in Hackham West, an Adelaide suburb. She was discovered missing the next morning and her body has never been found. Geesing was convicted of the crime in 1983 due to the testimony of four prison informants who alleged he had confessed to them. One informant later retracted his original statement and the testimony of another informant was declared inadmissible. In 1985 an appeals court overturned Geesing's conviction after ruling that the prison informants were unreliable and untrustworthy witnesses. The court also ordered that there be no retrial. Geesing was released after serving 17 months of a life sentence.  (JD33)  [11/09]

Derek Bromley was convicted of the murder of Steven Dacoza in 1985.  (NetK)

Henry Vincent Keogh was convicted of the murder of his 29-year-old fiancée, Anna-Jane Cheney. Cheney was found dead in the bathtub of the home that the two shared on Homes Ave. in Magill, an Adelaide suburb. On the day of her death, Cheney finished work and met Keogh in a local hotel where the two had wine and potato wedges. Both of them went home to Anna's house but drove there in separate cars. Cheney then took her dog to her sister-in-law's house and the two women walked their dogs in a local park. After Cheney returned home, Keogh went to visit his mother. Keogh returned home around 9:30 p.m. and found Cheney slumped in her bathtub with her face underwater. He claimed he tried to resuscitate her, but neither he nor paramedics were successful. Cheney's blood alcohol level was later determined to be .08%, a moderate level of intoxication.
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Michael Penney was convicted of the attempted murder of his wife. Penney allegedly set fire to the trunk of his wife's car right before she drove away.  (NetK)

Christopher Leslie Szitovszky was convicted of the murder of his 58-year-old father, Peter Szitovszky. The victim was nearly decapitated with an ax outside his home between 3 and 4 a.m. in the Melbourne suburb of Wheelers Hill. An appeals court acquitted Christopher of the murder in 2009 on the grounds that the evidence against him was insufficient to convict him.  (NetK)

Tomas Klamo was convicted of manslaughter in the alleged shaking death of his four-week-old son, Izaiah. Klamo admitted to having shaken Izaiah a little harder than normal a week or two before his death. Izaiah subsequently died of a brain hemorrhage. At trial the crown's medical expert was unable to say what caused the hemorrhage, but said he did not believe it was caused by shaking as Izaiah had no other injuries consistent with shaking. Klamo was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment. On appeal in 2008, the Victorian Supreme Court of Appeal found the evidence against Klamo was insufficient to convict. It quashed his conviction and ordered his acquittal.  (R v. Klamo) (Herald Sun)  [11/09]

Darryl Beamish was convicted of the murder of socialite and chocolate heiress Jillian Brewer. He spent 15 years in prison before being released on parole. He was exonerated in 2005 after evidence showed that serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke had committed the crime.  (IPWA) (Beamish v. The Queen)

John Button was convicted of manslaughter in 1963 for allegedly driving his car into his girlfriend, Rosemary Anderson, as she walked by the side of the road. Button was exonerated in 2003 after new evidence indicated serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke was Anderson's likely killer.  (IPWA) (01) (02)

Kevin Ibbs was convicted of sexual assault for “raping” Christine Watson. Watson was a close friend of Ibbs' wife, Katrina Carter, and was living in the same house as the couple. Watson agreed to have consensual sex with Ibbs with the full knowledge of Carter who was in the house at the time. As Ibbs was nearing ejaculation, Watson withdrew her consent to sex (or said she did) and tried to push Ibbs away. Ibbs, however, continued for about 30 seconds without consent.

For this non-consensual sex, Ibbs was charged and convicted of sexual assault. He was dubbed the “30 second rapist.” Ibbs was sentenced to four years in prison, although the sentence was later reduced to six months. Some years later Watson admitted that the whole incident was a setup by Carter to get Ibbs out of the house they were sharing. Watson and Carter were subsequently convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. They served seven months in jail.  (IPWA)  [12/10]

“Jeanie Angel was wrongly convicted in 1991 by an all-white jury of murdering her step-mother in 1989, based on her confession. Angel, an Aborigine, claimed she was forced to confess by police interrogators who bullied her by hitting her on the head with a bottle and screamed at her to confess. Her claim was supported by the fact that the police [asserted] she ‘signed’ a confession, even though she could neither read nor write. [Angel] was sentenced to life in prison. After she was imprisoned a witness who came forward with evidence that two other people committed the crime, and they even showed her where they had hidden the victim's body. Based on the new evidence Angel's conviction was quashed by the Western Australia Court of Appeals in 1991.” – FJDB

Andrew Mallard was convicted of the murder of Perth jeweler Pamela Lawrence, who was killed in her Glyde St. shop. At trial, witnesses with varying degrees of credibility testified that they had seen Mallard in or about the shop around the time of the murder. Police notes of interviews with Mallard were produced, with which the police claimed he had confessed. These notes had not been signed by Mallard. Also produced was a video recording of the last twenty minutes of Mallard's eleven hours of interviews. The video shows Mallard speculating as to how the murderer might have killed Lawrence. Even though Mallard speculated in the third person, police claimed it was a confession.  (NetK) (IPWA) (Mallard v. The Queen)

Salvatore (Sam) Fazzari, Jose Martinez, and Carlos Pereiras were convicted in 2006 of the murder of 21-year-old Phillip Walsham. The three allegedly pushed Walsham off of a pedestrian bridge that spanned a highway onramp. At approximately 2:12 a.m. on Feb. 28, 1998, Walsham had gotten off a train at Stirling station with two friends, Craig Betts and Spencer Toogood. Betts walked ahead of Toogood and Walsham. When Toogood realized that Walsham was not following, he went back to the station and found Walsham there. Walsham was heavily intoxicated and not feeling well. Toogood then set off to catch up with Betts.
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Rory Christie was convicted of the murder of his wife, Susan Christie. He was charged nearly a year after her disappearance. On retrial he was judicially acquitted because the evidence was insufficient to convict him.  (IPWA) (Christie v. The Queen) (Regina v. Christie)

Arthur Allan Thomas was convicted of the shooting murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe. The married couple were killed on or about June 17, 1970. At least one of the them was shot inside the Crewes' farmhouse in Pukekawa and both bodies were dumped in the Waikato River. Jeanette's body was found in the river two months later (Aug. 16) and her husband's body another month afterwards (Sept 16). An axle which had been used to weigh down Harvey's body was also found. The Crewes' disappearance was reported to the police by Jeanette's father and neighbor, Lenard W. Demler, on June 22, 1970. The Crewes' 18-month-old daughter Rochelle was found alive in the house and it is believed that an unknown woman had fed her between the 17th and 22nd. On June 19th, a farm laborer, Bruce Roddick, saw a fair-haired woman outside the house.
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David Cullen Bain was convicted of murdering his mother Margaret, 50, his father Robin, 58, sisters Arawa, 19, and Laniet, 18, and brother Stephen, 14. All had died from .22 gunshot wounds to their heads. The murders occurred at 65 Every Street, Anderson's Bay, Dunedin. Twenty-two-year-old David was arrested four days after making a frantic 111 call from the family home. Police responding to the emergency found him huddled in the house babbling incoherently. At trial, David's defense argued that his father Robin killed the family then himself while David was out doing his early morning paper run. David has consistently maintained his innocence.

The evidence against Robin appears to be greater than that against David, but since none of it is especially strong, one can assume that the evidence against both is evenly divided. Depending on the weight one puts on various pieces of evidence, it is possible to believe either one of them is the likely perpetrator. However, reasonable doubt attaches to David because a plausible case can always be made that Robin is the perpetrator. The motive evidence is stronger against Robin. Other evidence shows the perpetrator had fought with Stephen, and Robin had six recent abrasions on his hands. These abrasions were alleged to be due to Robin's replacement of spouting at the family home.

After exhausting his appeals in New Zealand, David appealed to England's Privy Counsel, and in 2007 it quashed his conviction as a miscarriage of justice, based on new evidence that the Crown reportedly disputes. David was subsequently released on bail by the Christchurch High Court. Two 1997 books were published on the Bain case, the pro-defense David and Goliath by Joe Karam, and the pro-prosecution The Mask of Sanity by James McNeish.  (NZCity) (NZ Herald) (FJDB)  [10/08]