"THE CROWN COULD NEVER EXPLAIN WHY THERE WAS SO LITTLE BLOOD AT THE FAMILY HOME, IN HIS VEHICLE, OR INDEED ON HIM, DESPITE EXPERTS SAYING THERE WOULD BE A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF IMPACT SPLATTER FROM THE BLOWS TO HER HEAD.
"MR STAFFORD ALSO SHOWED EXTRAORDINARY COMPETENCE IN MANAGING A BRUTAL MURDER WITHOUT LEAVING EVIDENCE OF IT ON HIS CLOTHING OR HIS SHOES, WHICH WERE SEIZED BY POLICE," JUSTICE HOLMES SAID. "MELISSA HOLLAND'S EVIDENCE WAS, CONSISTENTLY WITH MR STAFFORD'S, THAT HE WAS WEARING BRONCOS SHORTS WHEN SHE LEFT FOR WORK THAT MORNING AND WAS WEARING THEM STILL WHEN SHE ARRIVED HOME IN THE EVENING. THERE WAS NO OBVIOUS STAINING ON THEM, NOR ON THE REEBOK SHOES THAT MR STAFFORD WORE." JUSTICE HOLMES SAID THE EVIDENCE WAS THAT MR STAFFORD HAD ALWAYS HAD A "NORMAL AND AFFABLE RELATIONSHIP WITH LEANNE". "THE SUDDEN KILLING OF THE GIRL, WITH INDICIA OF SADISM, WITH NO CLUE TO BE FOUND IN MR STAFFORD'S PREVIOUS BLAMELESS AND UNREMARKABLE HISTORY AND NO SUGGESTED MOTIVE, SIMPLY SEEMS UNLIKELY.""
DARRELL GILES: THE COURRIER MAIL;
SUNDAY MAIL POLITICAL EDITOR DARRELL GILES HAS REPORTED ON THE STAFFORD/HOLLAND CASE SINCE THE EARLY 1990S. HE WORKED WITH PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR GRAEME CROWLEY TO RE-EXAMINE EVIDENCE IN ONE OF QUEENSLAND'S MOST HIGH-PROFILE MURDER MYSTERIES. MANY OF THEIR FINDINGS WERE USED IN THE 1997 AND 2009 COURT OF APPEAL HEARINGS.
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BACKGROUND: (WIKIPEDIA): Graham Stuart Stafford was a sheet metal worker from Goodna, near Ipswich, Queensland who was convicted in 1992 of the murder of twelve-year-old Leanne Sarah Holland. Leanne Holland, the younger sister of Stafford's former partner, Melissa Holland, was murdered in September 1991. Her viciously mutilated body was found three days after she was reported missing in nearby Redbank Plains. It is possible she was also sexually interfered with and tortured with a cigarette lighter. Stafford appealed to the Queensland Court of Appeal, but this appeal was rejected on 25 August 1992. In 1997, the Queensland Court of Appeal re-examined the case after Stafford lodged an application for pardon with the State Governor on the basis of evidence gathered by private detective, Graeme Crowley. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal again by a two-to-one majority on the grounds that there was still enough evidence to convict. Two applications for special leave to the High Court of Australia subsequently failed. Stafford was released in June 2006 after serving over 14 years in prison. Stafford, who was born in England and does not have Australian citizenship despite having migrated to Australia in 1969, faced deportation in November 2006. Some people, including Professor Paul Wilson of Bond University believe that Stafford is a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Queensland Attorney-General, Kerry Shine, has agreed to closely consider any request on Stafford's behalf concerning a petition to clear him of the murder conviction. In April 2008, the Queensland Attorney-General referred the case to the Court of Appeal for a very rare second appeal for pardon. On December 24, 2009 the Court of Appeal overturned Graham Stafford's conviction and ordered a retrial by a 2-1 majority. The dissenting judge wanted an immediate acquittal.
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"GRAHAM Stafford had limited opportunity to kill schoolgirl Leanne Holland," Darrell Giles' January 3, 2010 Courrier Mail story, under the heading "Graham, Stafford had no time to kill Leanne."
"But timing was never the key component of the Crown case," the story continues.
"Prosecutors relied on circumstantial evidence – a solitary maggot and spots of blood found on items in the boot of his car – to convict Mr Stafford of the brutal murder at Goodna, west of Brisbane, 18 years ago.
That lack of attention to timing has now come back to haunt investigators. The small "window of opportunity" has finally been opened and exposed as one of the major flaws in the Crown case against Mr Stafford.
It has led to his conviction being quashed by the Court of Appeal and a retrial ordered. One of the three judges said Mr Stafford should have been acquitted of the shocking crime. He had receipts to show he was at a fast-food takeaway, shops and a car wash at different points of Monday, September 23, 1991, the day the 12-year-old went missing.
He had an airtight alibi to prove he engaged in phone conversations with Leanne Holland's father Terry and sister Melissa, his girlfriend, and actually visited a close friend, at other times during the day.
There were also neighbours who saw him working on his car during the morning.
The Crown case at trial and at the 1997 and 2009 hearings of a pardon application was that the killing occurred in the afternoon. Justice Catherine Holmes, in her judgment on December 24, said it was important to note that this was not a quick killing – in addition to 10 or more blows to the head from a curved, blunt instrument, the body showed signs of sadistic activity, including torture with weapons and a hot cigarette lighter, and possible sexual assault.
"Whoever killed Leanne Holland used a variety of implements and took at least a little time about it," she said.
All three judges agreed that Mr Stafford, a non-smoker, had not had a fair trial and the Crown case had been "fundamentally undermined by evidence since adduced".
Much of that evidence was gathered over the years by former Queensland policeman turned private investigator Graeme Crowley and The Sunday Mail.
"There are general aspects of the Crown case which make it difficult to credit," Justice Holmes said last week.
"Mr Stafford, if he killed Leanne Holland in the first window of opportunity in the morning, did so not long after he rang Melissa Holland and they discussed Leanne's wanting to dye her hair.
"Either he had at that time no intent to kill or was so foresighted and adept at playing a part that he prefaced the murder with an utterly mundane conversation in order to deflect suspicion.
"And if he had murdered Leanne in the later part of the morning, he showed considerable sangfroid on his arrival at (friend) Arthur Power's house, where he seemed 'perfectly normal', afterwards carrying on everyday activities for the balance of the afternoon.
"Equally, if he killed Leanne in the afternoon, having got home ahead of Ms Holland, he managed to greet her and spend the evening with her without showing any sign of agitation."
Justice Holmes said the only real window of opportunity was between just after 3pm, when he left the car wash, and before 4.30pm, when Melissa Holland returned home. But, she noted, that meant he had to have Leanne and the murder weapon in the car when he got his car washed at Redbank Plains near Ipswich.
"That immediately meets with the inherent implausibility of anyone proceeding to a murder via the car wash," she said.
"If, instead, Mr Stafford returned home from the car wash to collect Leanne, it makes the time available for the murder even shorter . . . at 3.30pm the period was broken by a telephone conversation between Melissa Holland and Mr Stafford."
Justice Holmes said Mr Stafford had "at best for the Crown a little over two hours, at worst not more than about an hour-and-a-quarter, for abduction, killing and return". She said that if Mr Stafford moved the body immediately after the killing, the time needed increased considerably.
"He had then to put the body in the boot, drive it to the track off Redbank Plains Rd where it was found and take it out of the car there, before returning to Goodna," she said.
"But (former government forensic scientist Leo) Freney's evidence about the very limited amount of blood on the items in the boot – a canvas tool bag, blanket and (cloth) wipe – and the absence of blood in the boot itself, weighs strongly against that possibility.
"Mr Freney would have expected considerably more blood in the boot if the body were in it even for as little as five minutes, unless it was wrapped in a medically sealed plastic bag; a plastic garbage bag would not have sufficed.
"And, of course, if the body were moved at that stage, the presence of a maggot in the boot on Wednesday is simply inexplicable."
Police claimed to have found the lone maggot in the boot of Mr Stafford's car on the Wednesday, but did not note, video or photograph it and did not remove it from the boot until the next day, about the same time Leanne's body was found.
Justice Holmes noted that the maggot taken from the car was put in a phial numbered 3, yet maggots taken the next day from the body were in phials numbered 1 and 2.
"At the least, there was room for question as to whether the maggot about which (forensic entomologist Beryl) Morris gave evidence did emanate from the car boot or was the product of some confusion of exhibits with those from the death scene."
Justice Holmes also questioned how Mr Stafford could have moved Leanne's body from the family home at busy Alice St, down the front steps in broad daylight, to his car parked in the front yard, which was highly visible to neighbours, pedestrians and traffic. She said no innocent explanation was offered of the blood stains on the three items in the boot.
"But it may be just as difficult to account for them by way of a guilty explanation," she said.
"It is at least possible that the very small amounts involved got on those objects in some domestic and unremarked way.
"There was evidence that Leanne Holland some five or six weeks prior to her death had come to her father, having cut her foot on a piece of glass in the house – she told him there 'had been a lot' of bleeding. There is at least a chance that there was some contact between her blood and the items if they were for some reason out of the boot, or that there was some transfer of blood to them in some other unnoticed way."
Justice Holmes also expressed concern about the limited time Mr Stafford had to move the body to Redbank Plains, about 10km from their home, on September 25.
"And, on any view, whether the removal of the body was on the Monday or the Wednesday, it is extremely difficult to fathom why Mr Stafford, having killed the girl in an open-air location . . . then shifted her body to another open-air location where it was not far off a main road, with no attempt at concealing it.
"If Mr Stafford were the murderer, that explanation does not hold."
The Crown could never explain why there was so little blood at the family home, in his vehicle, or indeed on him, despite experts saying there would be a massive amount of impact splatter from the blows to her head.
"Mr Stafford also showed extraordinary competence in managing a brutal murder without leaving evidence of it on his clothing or his shoes, which were seized by police," Justice Holmes said.
"Melissa Holland's evidence was, consistently with Mr Stafford's, that he was wearing Broncos shorts when she left for work that morning and was wearing them still when she arrived home in the evening. There was no obvious staining on them, nor on the Reebok shoes that Mr Stafford wore."
Justice Holmes said the evidence was that Mr Stafford had always had a "normal and affable relationship with Leanne".
"The sudden killing of the girl, with indicia of sadism, with no clue to be found in Mr Stafford's previous blameless and unremarkable history and no suggested motive, simply seems unlikely."
Mr Stafford, now 46, enjoyed his first Christmas as a free man after the Court of Appeal decision. He was released on parole in 2006 after serving 15 years of a life sentence and has lived with his parents Eric and Jean, at their Sunshine Coast home.
Director of Public Prosecutions Tony Moynihan will review the court's judgment.
If Mr Stafford was subsequently acquitted or the charges dropped, he could pursue a multimillion-dollar taxpayer-funded compensation payout."
The story can be found at:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26545379-3102,00.html
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
