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Getting Away With Murder

In 1966, a remorseless 19-year-old Earl Heatley admitted to police that he had murdered 22-year-old Robert Francis Dunn because Dunn was hurling was abuse at him and had thrown a bottle at his car. In retaliation, Heatley went home and picked up his rifle, came back to the car park in Granville, Sydney, and shot and killed Dunn. Heatley was sentenced to life imprisonment and, after serving 15 years, was released in 1981.

Thirteen years later it was alleged that Heatley killed two men, one his own brother, in the bungled robbery of a factory that contained no money or valuables. After an aborted first trial, Heatley, now a grey-haired, middle-aged man, was sent to jail for the rest of his life.

It was alleged in court at his second trial that Earl Heatley and his brother, Paul, went to an Asquith warehouse on the outskirts of Sydney in October 1994 with the intention of robbing the premises of legal, but very hard to acquire, chemicals required in the making of amphetamines. The court heard that Earl Heatley was supposedly armed with a pistol and wore a mask.

The prosecution said that the Heatley brothers marched the factory cleaner, Mr Thomas Alan Bithell, into another part of the factory to confront the factory owner, Mr Des Thompson. Thompson, having seen what was going on, was on the phone, apparently to the police.

The court was told that Paul Heatley charged into Mr Thompson’s office, punched him in the face and tried to rip the phone out of the wall. Paul Heatley panicked and called for his brother to run away, telling him that the police were on their way.

The court heard that as Paul Heatley started to run away he was tackled by 67-year-old Mr Thompson who, even though he was 20 years older than Heatley, managed to get the better of him and hold him.

It was then alleged that Paul Heatley called to his brother Earl to ‘Shoot him, shoot him, shoot him’. Earl Heatley then supposedly opened fire on the pair, sending four bullets into Mr Thompson’s head and body. One of the bullets passed through Mr Thompson’s body and fatally wounded Paul Heatley.

The prosecution claimed that Earl Heatley then put four more bullets into the mortally wounded Mr Thompson’s head as he lay on the ground dying. Earl Heatley supposedly told police later that he did it because Mr Thompson was ‘lying there crying like a dog, so I put four bullets in his head’.

Paul Heatley staggered to the outside of the factory, where he fell to the ground and died. During the shooting, the cleaner, Mr Bithell, was wounded in the arm by a bullet that entered his forearm and disintegrated as it shattered the bone.

Earl Heatley was arrested and charged with two counts of murder and one of malicious wounding. He pleaded not guilty on all counts but the alleged evidence against him was overwhelming.

At his trial before Justice McInerney in the New South Wales Supreme Court in February 1998, Earl Heatley offered no evidence that could help his case. He also refused to give the names of the drug manufacturers for whom he and his brother were supposedly stealing the ingredients. In return the court showed him no mercy.

Earl Heatley was sentenced to die in jail for the murder of Des Thompson and became the fourteenth person in New South Wales to be sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars under the 1989 truth-in-sentencing legislation. He was also sentenced to 35 years for killing his brother and maliciously wounding Mr Bithell.

He was subsequently granted a retrial on the grounds that the testimony of a witness was unreliable, but this trial was aborted, and two subsequent retrials resulted in hung juries. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Nicholas Cowdrey QC, said there would be no retrial as there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction. Earl Heatley was free to go.

After maintaining his innocence for nine years in jail, during which time he blamed everybody from corrupt police and lying witnesses – including one who thought he was Phar Lap – Earl Heatley was released from prison in April 2004.

‘I’ve always maintained that I’m not guilty of the charges which were finally dropped yesterday and I’m telling you now I didn’t do it,’ Earl Heatley said at a press conference. With that he picked up his jacket and headed for the door. ‘Well, I’m off,’ were his parting words.