Chapter 11

Police Witnesses

From the start of the second inquest, Denis Tanner and his family were under siege. So were police connected with the original investigation, apart from Bill Kerr, Don Fraser and Neil Phipps, who supported Kerr’s claim that Denis Tanner had originally said he was at the trots.

The media inflamed that situation: the paparazzi behaved like wild animals fighting over a carcass. The Coroner ignored repeated requests from Tanner’s counsel for media restriction. While he sometimes expressed concern, he seldom intervened, allowing the media to mould Denis Tanner as a monster and portray the inquest as a trial.

Bill Kerr

The second inquest focused on the claim that someone had shortened Senior Constable Bill Kerr’s statement on his first Coroner’s brief and the homicide file. The issue of Kerr’s ‘long’ and ‘short’ statements created a media frenzy and wasted much inquest time.

The ‘long statement’ contained all of the text of Kerr’s evidence at the first inquest, along with additional material, including the allegation that Denis Tanner had given conflicting alibis for his movements on the night of Jenny’s death: the trots versus the bingo.

The ‘long statement’ also canvassed several other claims: that Denis had told Kerr Jenny was intending to leave Laurie; that he was concerned at the fate of the family property; that both Denis and Lynne had told Kerr the marriage was ‘failing’; that Ros Smith had spoken to Kerr on the telephone saying Jenny was afraid of Denis; and that Jenny and Denis often argued, a comment attributed to Kath Blake. The tapes of those conversations show that Denis Tanner had never said these things to Kerr, and they were certainly not mentioned in his notes taken at the time.

Confusion prevailed on this issue because allegedly only one statement by Kerr, the ‘long statement’, had been found in his old operational manilla folder. It was claimed the Kale Taskforce hadn’t found a copy of the ‘short statement’ or the first inquest brief because they were destroyed. But analysis of the inquest evidence and exhibits proves that this was untrue.

•••

When Kerr’s file/folder was tendered on the first day of the second inquest, 6 October 1997, it had been interfered with; Kerr’s copy of the full brief for the first inquest had been removed.

Kerr had handed the Kale Taskforce his working manilla folder on 7 January 1997. Among his many other papers, it contained his personal copy of the first inquest brief. I discovered this when I examined second inquest Exhibit 68 (QQQ), which contained his own complete copy of that brief, typed up by the station typist on printed deposition forms. This exhibit contained his ‘short statement’, which was identical to the transcript of evidence at the first inquest. It proved that for the first inquest hearing, nobody had ‘doctored’ anything; the short statement was the only one presented from Kerr to the first Coroner.

Exhibit 68 (QQQ) first made an appearance when it was put to Inspector Peter Mangles in the witness box on Day 11 of the second inquest, 10 December 1997. But the exhibit as put to Mangles wasn’t in its original form. Between the 1985 approval reports of Inspector Mangles, Sergeant Cahill and Senior Sergeant Neil Walker and Kerr’s actual first inquest brief document – the one with the ‘short statement’ that they’d actually approved – were a copy of Kerr’s rambling ‘long statement’ and Kerr’s list of twelve questions from the homicide file. Had these documents been in the file approved by Mangles, they would have been typed and copied as part of the inquest brief, in accordance with Mangles’ instruction to prepare two copies of the file for the Coroner, a function of the station typist.

Mangles denied that he’d ever seen the ‘long statement’, which was now attached behind his approval report, and the exhibit proves him right. This bogus version of the exhibit was never mentioned again, but in the interim it was used to denigrate Mangles, a vocal supporter of Denis Tanner, and create media headlines alleging cover-up by Inspector Mangles and the 1985 homicide squad.

The issue of the ‘long statement’ had first arisen on the first day of Kerr’s second inquest evidence. Mr Rapke had put the ‘long statement’ to Kerr as the only statement from his file, and had drawn attention to the fact that it differed from the first inquest evidence. (It should be noted that Kerr had previously made six statements to the Kale Taskforce without this issue of the conflicts between the ‘long’ and ‘short’ statements being mentioned or addressed.) This was the exchange that followed:

 

Coroner: Are you able to explain why your second part of your inquest statement went missing or wasn’t…?

Kerr: No, I cannot explain why it’s gone missing.

Rapke: When did you first know that it hadn’t found its way in its entirety into the inquest brief?

Kerr: I think you mentioned it to me at the lunchtime break.

Rapke: I told you?

Kerr: Yes.

Rapke: You heard the statement read to you at the [first] inquest, so presumably you knew then that it hadn’t all been put in, or didn’t you twig at the time?

Kerr: I didn’t twig, I don’t think.

 

The inquest deposition procedure is that after each witness is sworn, their statement from the inquest brief is read to them, and they adopt it before examination by counsel and the Coroner. The proceedings in the first inquest were also recorded and played back for adoption at the completion of the evidence. Kerr’s first inquest deposition confirms that the ‘short’ version of the statement read to him was the one placed on the inquest brief. The same statement was obviously on the file that went to the homicide squad in 1985.

It is also preposterous to suggest that the many senior police administrators and criminal investigators who examined this file – and later the first Coroner and his assistant – would all have ignored the allegations contained in the ‘long statement’ if they had been on the file or brief. Counsel at the first inquest would also have examined Denis Tanner and Bill Kerr about them, if the additional matters had been part of Kerr’s statement.

During the second inquest Superintendent Peter Hester from internal affairs was tasked to conduct an investigation for the Coroner to discover whether Kerr’s ‘long statement’ had been on the original first Coroner’s brief. He reported that it was never on the brief; he said the most likely scenario was that Kerr changed his statement at some time, either of his own volition or on the suggestion of a superior.

Mr Hester was right, but it is significant that he was not given Exhibit 68 (QQQ), which included the documents that he was tasked to examine. If Hester had been given this exhibit, it would have provided absolute proof that his assessment was correct and would have exposed the fraud of the doctored exhibit. In reality the Hester investigation was unnecessary.

A distressed first inquest Coroner Hugh Adams and his staff were called to give evidence near the end of the second inquest. They were questioned about shortening Kerr’s ‘long’ statement for the first inquest, but Mr Adams’ examination was also unnecessary because in Exhibit 68 (QQQ), the original brief conclusively proved that Mr Adams and his staff had only ever sighted the ‘short’ statement. This exhibit wasn’t put to Mr Adams, and Coroner Johnstone wasn’t made aware that the exhibit contained the ‘short’ statement as part of a full copy of the original inquest brief.

In his second inquest evidence Kerr said that after the homicide file returned to him he submitted at least three other statements. (The timing here is significant: if Tanner had given conflicting alibis, Kerr couldn’t have created the long statement until after the homicide file with the bingo alibi was returned to him.) He said his later statements were ‘knocked back’ before the brief was finally approved.

There is nothing unusual in a sergeant knocking back a subordinate’s statements. Inexperienced, slothful or less articulate subordinates often draft correspondence containing irrelevant, unsubstantiated, speculative or untidy material with poor layout and spelling. Throughout the chain of police command, superiors use the standard of correspondence to assess subordinates: a sergeant approving a poor brief or report can do immense harm to his own assessment and career.

Kerr claimed that it was Sergeant Doug McPhee who ‘knocked back’ his brief. McPhee denied this late in the second inquest, but as the station’s prosecutor responsible for approval of all court matters, that was his job. He would have been entitled to order Kerr to substantiate evidence rather than speculate with rumour and conjecture. The 68 (QQQ) exhibit also exonerated McPhee of ‘doctoring’ Kerr’s statement.

The mystery is why Exhibit 68 (QQQ) was removed from Kerr’s folder before he tendered it on the first day of the inquest, the manner in which it was used, and why it wasn’t given to Superintendent Hester or shown to Coroner Adams. And what became of Kerr’s other statements that had been ‘knocked back’? Kerr’s working file showed that he meticulously retained copies of every note or document; he even kept envelopes. But his other statements were nowhere to be found.

•••

Kerr’s evidence to the second inquest was difficult to follow, and counsel on all sides revealed faults in his statements. For example, under cross-examination Kerr was asked why he hadn’t returned to Springfield to conduct a more thorough search the day after Jenny Tanner’s death. Kerr responded by claiming that he didn’t go back because Welch had told him over the radio from Springfield that Denis had cleaned the house and burnt the couch.

Days were wasted on this issue, but it was simple to prove that Kerr was wrong: Welch never went to Springfield; he was on his way there when he received a radio message saying that the house was locked and the keys were at Highett Street, so he returned to the Mansfield police station, where he met Denis Tanner.

Denis Tanner hadn’t cleaned the house, and he certainly hadn’t burnt the couch. For Kerr’s claim to have credence, Denis would have had to carry the couch half a kilometre, set fire to it and then leave it burning in tinder-dry grassland on a hot summer’s day while his wife and baby sweltered in their car. June, Frank and Bruce Tanner, Kath Blake and Sergeant Helen Golding all gave evidence that the couch was on the front veranda of Springfield covered with a sheet for a year after Jenny’s death.

But the question arose again after author Robin Bowles tired of waiting for the Coroner to finish the inquest and published her first book, Blind Justice, in July 1998, five months before the Coroner handed down his finding. A week later the Coroner reconvened the inquest and put her in the witness box; he expressed his displeasure but also asked about a piece she published claiming that Denis Tanner had told her during a telephone conversation that he’d cleaned the house at Springfield on the morning after Jennifer’s death.

Her evidence of the phone call was disjointed and speculative, interspersing her belief that Denis Tanner had arrived at Mansfield police station at 10 am (something Kerr had told her) with her own suspicions about which Tanner brother helped Denis to clean the house; she’d also questioned whether or not the Tanner car broke down. She said that Denis Tanner had been reluctant to discuss this with her and had told her he arrived at the Mansfield police station at 10 am, which meant that in her version Denis had cleaned the house before that. Time simply made this impossible; the confusion illustrates why timeline chronology should be used in reconstructing the truth. No matter how well intentioned, her evidence and time lines are wrong.

In August 2007 Bowles and I spoke about this, and she informed me that Denis had told her he left home at 6.30 am. I told her this couldn’t be right, but she argued that Ryan Collins had made a statement saying Denis was backing out of the front driveway when he arrived at their Spotswood home at 6.30 am. I pointed out that Collins was working the Russell Street nightshift, so he couldn’t have possibly finished work until after 7 am, and that the Tanner home didn’t have a driveway.

Denis claims that Ms Bowles got many things wrong. When she’d called, she wanted him to tell her who had cleaned at the house; he told her about his brother but didn’t name him because he didn’t want her annoying Bruce. Denis was trying to avoid talking to her, but didn’t want to be rude. By the time Robin Bowles gave evidence, the Tanners had withdrawn from the inquest, so her evidence was never tested. The Coroner quoted her as his source to confirm that Denis had cleaned the house.

•••

Exchanges in cross-examination often suggested that the Coroner was reluctant to accept evidence that would reflect adversely on Kerr. In his finding too, the Coroner accepted most of what Kerr had said.

Former Superintendent Neil Patterson, who had been Kerr’s district commander at his final station of Macarthur, followed the second inquest in the media and became so disturbed by the credence being given to Kerr’s evidence that he contacted Commander Rod Lambert at headquarters. I later interviewed Patterson, who told me that he received no response; he then spoke to Commander Tom Gillett and asked him to pass the message on. Finally, ‘in frustration’, he wrote to Mr Rapke. He told me, ‘I was not interviewed and heard nothing, other than I noticed from that point that the attitude to myself by senior officers changed markedly and very adversely.’

Mr Patterson’s concern was passed on to barrister Brian Dennis, who appeared for some serving police, but Mr Dennis was repeatedly blocked when he asked questions bearing on the credibility of Kerr’s statements. This is an example:

 

Dennis: Do you recall an incident with a Chief Inspector Rankin and an Inspector Fox visiting you in 1993?

Kerr: Yeah. That wasn’t counselling. That was a long way from counselling.

Dennis: All right. Did you have an official police diary at that time?

Kerr: Yeah, there was an official police diary there.

Dennis: Did you from time to time make entries in that diary in your own handwriting?

Kerr: I did.

 

The Coroner intervened:

 

Coroner: Is this relevant to the Tanner inquest, Mr Dennis?

Dennis: It’s only relevant to the witness’s credit, Your Worship. If that’s not going to assist you, I won’t proceed.

Coroner: You see, I don’t know what you’re dealing with, Mr Dennis.

Dennis: I’m dealing with the motivation for the witness changing his evidence, sir.

Coroner: Will it give me some clues in relation to what occurred in the previous inquest in this matter?

Dennis: Not directly, no.

Coroner: And assist me with the investigation of the death?

Dennis: It would only assist you in evaluating this witness’s evidence. If that’s not going to help I’ll move on to something else.

Coroner: I’m not stopping you, Mr Dennis. I’m just asking you some questions about it.

Dennis: Well, I don’t know that I can be more specific about that, Your Worship. I believe that I’m questioning the witness about his motivations for leaving the force and I think that that may be relevant to the changes that have occurred in his evidence. Now if that’s not going to assist Your Worship, I’ll press on to something else.

Coroner: Well, if it’s not important enough for you to proceed with…

Dennis: I’ll accept your judgment on that.

Coroner: You see I don’t know where you’re going. I’ll let you ask the question and see whether or not I’ll allow it.

Dennis: I was bowing to Your Worship’s judgment. I’ll proceed. Is it not the case, Mr Kerr, that when you left the police force you resigned and you made an entry in these terms in your diary in 1993: ‘I am going to save my sanity.’ I’m quoting this directly, it’s not grammatically correct: ‘I am going to save my sanity is to get out of the controlling environment of Rankin and company, and the only way that this can conceivably be accomplished is to resign and throw away 23 years of service.’ Do you remember writing that in your diary?

Kerr: Something along that line, yeah.

Dennis: Then you went on to say: ‘Well, I have and I expect they will be thinking that they won. Well, they are wrong. I have won’, written that in capital letters, ‘I HAVE WON. Just watch me. I am going to be the one to laugh the loudest and the longest.’ Do you recall writing that in your diary?

Kerr: It sounds fair.

Dennis: You left the force with a bit of a grudge, didn’t you?

Kerr: At the time I wrote that I had been placed under a great deal of stress. A great deal of pressure by two particular people. Those people had pushed me to the point where I was very, very likely to commit an offence against the criminal law of this country, which would have done serious harm to those people and myself. Now I wasn’t going to allow them to push me to that point. It had come too close. I had to get out of the environment to avoid it.

Dennis: Are those two people Chief Inspector Rankin and Inspector Fox?

Kerr: They are two people involved, yes.

Dennis: Did you also write this amongst other things in

your diary, 1 June 1993: ‘Rankin came over to me and

told me that I was officially counselled in relation to my attitude towards him and Inspector Fox’?

Kerr: Can I see that? Is that one of the parts you’ve highlighted, is it?

Dennis: Yes, it is. I can’t tell you the page number. I’ve only got that copy.

 

The Coroner halted Mr Dennis:

 

Coroner: Can we move on, Mr Dennis? We have a number of witnesses to get through. I’m quite sure everybody in court would like to finish at a reasonable hour this evening.

 

Mansfield court clerk Bill Froude was another who copped criticism for his comments on Kerr. In his evidence, Froude said:

 

Froude: Bill, with all due respect to him, had, once he got…once he formed an opinion, he virtually had tunnel vision; this is my belief and he would follow that vision to the contrary of his superiors and other peers in the police force at Mansfield…he was a poor witness.

Dennis: A witness who was likely to change his story under pressure in cross-examination?

Froude: Yes, yes.

 

Again the Coroner stepped in:

 

Coroner: I don’t know whether that is helping, that line, Mr Dennis.

Dennis: I don’t know whether…Your Worship; it’s a question of helping whom I suppose.

 

The Coroner’s findings made no mention of Kerr’s diary or the reliability of his evidence, even though in his written submission Mr Dennis went into specific detail about the changes Kerr had made to his evidence on various days, including his evidence about his sergeants and whether his long or short statement was on the original inquest brief. I quote part:

 

Kerr’s attempt…to place a different meaning on his unequivocal evidence…demonstrates that Kerr is not simply a witness with a very unreliable memory, it demonstrates that he is a dishonest witness who is prepared to lie about what he meant in his earlier evidence in order to be seen to be more consistent. If Kerr was prepared to lie about that mistake, it is not unlikely that he was prepared to lie about his mistake in submitting a shorter version of his statement to the first inquest.

 

In reality Exhibit 68 (QQQ) would have settled the issue, sparing Kerr the pressure and memory fades that occurred during his multiple appearances at the inquest.

Neil Phipps

On 19 June 1996 Senior Sergeant Calderbank took a statement from former Sergeant Neil Phipps. He brought along copies of the Sunday Age articles. Bill Kerr’s claim that Phipps had worked a ‘phantom’ on the night Jenny died exposed Phipps to accusations of having deserted his shift, but the statement that emerged from this interview read as though Phipps had been on duty, waiting back at the station.

Neil Phipps was either unaware or had forgotten that he’d taped his conversation with Kerr, Welch and Denis Tanner at the police station on the day after Jenny’s death. Calderbank can’t have told him the tape existed or played it to refresh Phipps’s memory or shown him Welch’s detailed notes, because Phipps stuck to his claim that the trots had been discussed.

Phipps was an experienced police witness, aware of the pitfalls of being caught out making inaccurate claims. In this statement he hedged his remarks with phrases such as ‘From my recollection’, ‘From memory’, ‘My recollection is’, ‘I am unable to recall exactly’, ‘I believe’ and so on, phrases that left him an escape route should he be confronted in the future with contrary evidence such as the tape itself.

Phipps placed the focus on Denis Tanner by following Kerr’s widely publicised claim that Tanner had said he was at the trots when Jenny died. I’ve italicised the hedging phrases in this excerpt from his statement:

 

As best I can recall he stated that he’d worked that day and went to the trots that night. I am unable to recall exactly but I think he gave me times that covered the meeting he said he attended. It is my belief that Tanner said the trots meeting was at Moonee Valley.

I am unable to say if Welch or myself took notes of the conversation, which I believe was a general type conversation rather than one relative to specific issues.

At this time I am unable to recall any further specifics relating to this matter and I believe that this is due to the fact of my impending transfer and non-involvement in the matter.

 

In the absence of the tape to jog his memory of this distant event, Phipps signed up for comments that followed the media line.

Two months later, on 15 August, Calderbank had another go at Phipps and partly revived his memory by playing the tapes of his telephone conversation with Dr Dyte on 16 November 1984. Again, however, it appears Phipps did not hear the tape of the discussion with Tanner on 15 November or see Welch’s notes. Phipps gained confidence this time, and not just about his interview with Dr Dyte. In a new statement he said:

 

I distinctly remember having a conversation with Denis Tanner at some stage after the death of Jenny Tanner.

I believe that this may have been on the day following Jennifer’s death – which would have been 15 November 1984. It took place in my office as far as I can recollect.

I remember that during the conversation Denis had stated that he was tired as he had been up since early in the morning after he found out about Jennifer’s death and had to drive to Mansfield…From my recollection he informed me that he had been at work during the day and after work he went to either the dogs or the trots…I believe that he said it was the trots.

 

Neither the tape nor a transcript was put to Phipps during his evidence to the second inquest, and the tape was kept from the Tanners and their counsel. The tape proved that Phipps’s recollection was wrong, but the Coroner’s finding quoted his statements as though they were absolute fact.

Phipps later made a written submission to the inquest stating:

 

I confirm my belief that until I transferred out of Mansfield no-one indicated to me that the event was anything other than suicide.

Not being privy to the first inquest, I question why Kerr didn’t make an issue of paperwork missing from that brief, and why it took so long for him to raise the issue, particularly if he believed the death was other than suicide.

I have been informed that Acting Superintendent McPhee has given evidence to the effect that he came into the muster/mess room after the telephone call from Dr Dyte and in my presence said words to the effect, ‘well there goes your suicide theory’. This didn’t occur in my presence and because of its implication would be engraved in my memory.

 

Ian Welch

Detectives Calderbank and Solomon from the Kale Taskforce visited former Detective Sergeant Ian Welch at his Alexandra home on 10 June 1996, the morning after Rule’s first article about the Tanner case appeared in the Sunday Age. Welch had been retired for ten years. He was shown the Sunday Age article and had seen the television news.

Like all policemen, Welch had kept copies of many old files after he’d retired. Among them was a manilla folder containing his notes and documents about Jenny Tanner. He told me that he found and opened the folder to ensure that Dr Dyte’s handwritten notes and drawings were there along with the micro-cassette of his visit to Dr Dyte; he isn’t sure whether the X-rays were still in it as well. Welch then handed the folder to Calderbank, believing that he was doing his bit. In these situations, Police Standing Orders require police to issue a receipt to ensure document authenticity and continuity, but the police didn’t give Welch anything.

Calderbank took a half-page statement from Welch about handing them his file and his Dr Dyte tape. There was no mention of his involvement and contact with the Mansfield police, his observations of the body or why he’d formed the opinion that Jenny Tanner’s death was a suicide. The Kale Taskforce never spoke to him again.

The handling of Welch highlights the taskforce’s lack of objectivity: they were reopening an investigation into a twelve-year-old death, yet they weren’t interested in what the detective who was originally involved had to say. They simply took away anything that could prompt his memory. Later former homicide Detective Senior Sergeant Jim Fry was treated the same way.

When Welch’s folder was shown to him during his second inquest evidence, some of Dr Dyte’s notes weren’t there, including his sketches of the bullet paths; neither were the X-rays. The folder also contained material he’d never seen before, including Kerr’s ‘long statement’. Welch suspected the file had been interfered with, but he was in the hapless position of having the folder sprung on him when he was in the witness box:

 

Rapke: Would you look, please, at this folder? (Folder handed to witness.) Is that the folder of material that you provided to Mr Calderbank?

Welch: Certainly a lot of it is.

Rapke: Well, the question I’m going to ask you is this, is there anything in that folder that you now say you didn’t provide to Mr Calderbank and has come from some other source other than you?

Welch: I’ll have to go right through it.

Rapke: Yes, certainly, please do.

Welch: (Witness complies.) There’s a number of items I can’t remember, some I don’t – can’t even recall seeing…

Rapke: Did you notice that you also had in your file there a statement of Mr Kerr?

Welch: I saw it there, yes.

Rapke: And have you seen that before?

Welch: Well I think so. Whether it’s that specific one?

Rapke: What, you think there might be more than one, do you?

Welch: Well, I don’t know how many statements he made…It was just in a manilla folder when I handed it over, it was not very thick…less than half an inch.

 

Ian Welch had never been given the opportunity to examine the folder, though it had been in the hands of the Kale Taskforce for over a year.

The missing notes did exist, because ballistics expert Adrian Barry told the second inquest that he’d been shown Dyte’s handwritten notes and hand-drawn diagrams on the second day of the first inquest. Welch didn’t attend that day, but it seems he had given a copy of the notes to the Coroner’s assistant, Peter Fleming, or to Bill Kerr. Kerr didn’t attend the second day of the first inquest either, and some of Dr Dyte’s notes were still in his manilla folder when it was presented to the second inquest.

In his written submission to the inquest, Welch protested at his treatment:

 

When this matter resurfaced I gave the investigators all the notes that I had; I didn’t read them at the time. Then to appear as a witness some thirteen years later without the opportunity to access those notes was unbelievable. Time is needed for accurate recall, not just thrust under your nose in the witness box. With time to study and reflect I am sure my evidence would have been much clearer.

In the witness box I was treated like a criminal; my phone was bugged from the start of the investigation; on what evidence and for what purpose?

 

Neil Walker

Mansfield Senior Sergeant Neil Walker was on annual leave the day Jenny died, so he went along to the second inquest not expecting to face the Coroner’s wrath, but he received a strong reaction when he commented favourably on the reliability of Detective Sergeant Ian Welch:

 

Walker: Well, the information that must have been passed definitely put his mind at rest, because I’ve had dealings with Welch in a police capacity I suppose for approximately ten years and he never ever failed to make or attend any request to Mansfield for any crime if he could possibly get there.

 

The Coroner asked:

 

Coroner: Why did you give that evidence? Was that the question being asked of you?

Walker: Pardon your Worship?

Coroner: Why did you give that evidence? Was that the question being asked of you?

Walker: I was asked about information on Welch, Your Worship.

Coroner: Has there been a suggestion that Mr Welch didn’t attend crime scenes?

 

The Coroner’s logic was odd, because that was exactly what Kerr was alleging.

Until he spoke to Phipps in the foyer of that court that day, Neil Walker had always believed that Phipps had attended the Springfield death scene with Kerr and Fraser:

 

Rapke: At that stage, what was the information that you’d received about the circumstances of her death?

Walker: Well. Sergeant Phipps was quite adamant that the matter was suicide. He explained the situation and how…well, I understood at that time that he was at the scene. He explained the situation to me, how he believed the suicide occurred.

Rapke: Did you ask him if he’d attended the scene, did you ask him how he found the scene or what he saw at the scene or the distribution of blood or…?

Walker: Well, I just can’t recall that part…I have been under the impression that he did attend the scene and I seem to have found out just recently that he didn’t.

 

The Coroner then started asking questions about the rifle, when he already knew the answer:

 

Coroner: Did you know what sort of rifle was involved in this incident?

Walker: Yes, Your Worship, the firearm was shown to me at the police station and it looked like a .22 rifle.

Coroner: What sort of action did the rifle have?

Walker: It had a bolt action.

 

Tom O’Keefe

Tom O’Keefe, the Regional Detective Chief Inspector in 1984, complained in his submission that Sergeant Calderbank didn’t give him the privileged treatment he afforded Kerr, who made six statements, each time changing his story.

At the second inquest O’Keefe was in poor health, suffering from a heart condition that caused him to hyperventilate under stress; when police took his statement, he’d required three breaks to complete it. The taskforce already had the original files and reports that O’Keefe had processed thirteen years earlier, but when O’Keefe was making his statement, his memory differed from the file. He wasn’t shown the reports and become a subject of ridicule when he was put into the witness box and shown the disparity. This was grossly unfair and cruel to an elderly and ailing man who had only briefly sighted Kerr’s file as it passed through his office to the homicide squad.

The Coroner was also misled about O’Keefe’s involvement by the evidence of the Coroner’s assistant at the first inquest, Peter Fleming. Fleming relied on his diary, which showed that he was at Mansfield Court for the first inquest from 10 am until 3 pm on 18 October 1985 and then at the police station in conference with Bill Kerr and Tom O’Keefe until 4.30 pm, before returning to the city at 7.30 pm.

But Fleming’s diary entry was wrong; the Coroner and Mr Rapke were mistaken in accepting it without questioning Kerr about whether or not O’Keefe was there. O’Keefe’s own diary shows that he spent all of that day until 6 pm at a drug plantation in the mountains between Jamieson and Eildon in company with other police. He was never at the first inquest hearing; Fleming’s evidence hurt him, and his reputation was damaged.

In his finding, Coroner Johnstone suggested that O’Keefe’s views may have intimidated Bill Kerr:

 

This argument tends to miss the point that O’Keefe was also present in the meeting. From O’Keefe’s memorandum it would appear that he certainly didn’t support Kerr’s view of the world. O’Keefe was considerably more senior than Kerr. If Kerr was overborne by the system this would not have been the moment to raise the issue.

 

Mr Dennis was also wrong in his submission when he said:

 

Kerr had the opportunity to discuss his concerns regarding Denis Tanner’s conflicting alibis with Fleming when they and O’Keefe had a lengthy conversation after the hearing adjourned on 18 October 1985 and inexplicably chose not to do so.

 

When his health improved several years later, Tom O’Keefe pursued the truth of this issue. He took a VCAT action and won. Victoria Police was ordered to record that he was never at the Mansfield inquest on that day and to record in Peter Fleming’s diary that the entry was wrong. O’Keefe’s VCAT support witness list included Kerr and Fraser.