"Things had gone awry right from the start. As news spread of the murder, colleagues came running. The crime scene filled up with detectives, anguished and upset, who trampled the ground, touched and moved things and failed to properly record what was happening and why. Even the coroner pottered about; no one told him not to. Those who knew crime scene forensics and the importance of keeping scenes pristine protested, but were ignored by their seniors.
It was ''amateur hour'', as a number of those who were there have privately conceded.
Not until much later were two shells recovered. According to the police theory, these were ejected by the gunman or his weapon after the shooting. Some evidence could have been lost, other bits compromised; a good deal was not even recorded or kept. The investigators were all close colleagues of the victim; and most had worked alongside him all of their police lives, generally back in the old ACT Police. There was joint determination to find whoever had killed a brother. Yet most were not greatly experienced, least of all in sophisticated investigations; the ACT does not have a lot of sophisticated crime. With what passed for experience, including some recent murder investigations which had been badly botched, the omens were not good."
REPORTER JACK WATERFORD; THE CANBERRA TIMES;
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"Colin Winchester, shot twice from close range while about to emerge from his car near his Deakin house about 9.20pm in January, 1989, was the most senior cop ever to be murdered in Australia," the Canberra Times story by reporter Jack Waterford published on November 9, 2011 under the heading "Not an exemplary investigation," begins.
(A sub-heading reads: "Solving the murder of a top cop should have been the model of the detective's art. It wasn't, and that is why the doubts remain.")
"It is generally assumed that he was killed because he was a cop rather than because of any personal or private dispute with another. So it was not merely a murder but an assassination, an assault not only on the man and his family, but on the very institutions of the state," the story continues.
"The investigation which followed should have been an exemplary one, with all involved acutely aware that the way they investigated, the resources they brought to bear, and the expertise which was employed would be the subject of close scrutiny. Not only by an alarmed public, or a critical media, but by other professionals ready for a tutorial on how a proper investigation is done.
David Harold Eastman was convicted of the murder in 1995. There was a strong prima facie case against him, a plausible suggested motive, a long chain of circumstance seeming to link him to events. Eastman failed to expose some of the apparent weaknesses: repeatedly during the trial he sacked counsel, including his solicitors, briefed others, sacked them, often being unrepresented and refusing to participate in the trial by cross-examining witnesses, at other stages forgiving lawyers before again becoming exasperated with them and sacking them again.
The trial judge, Ken Carruthers, believed that Eastman's antics were fake, a cunning ploy to disrupt and ultimately abort the trial, and was determined not to be provoked.
Meanwhile the Crown had psychiatric evidence suggesting a paranoid Eastman was unfit to plead. Indeed detectives had used it in a strategy designed to provoke him, in the hope that he might respond by doing or saying something that suggested guilt. But the prosecutor thought Eastman a fake and would not raise fitness to plead. Defence counsel could not, because Eastman would not let them.
But it was not only the trial which had gone wrong. And the weakness of the case went beyond understanding that even strong chains of circumstantial evidence depend on their weakest links.
Things had gone awry right from the start. As news spread of the murder, colleagues came running. The crime scene filled up with detectives, anguished and upset, who trampled the ground, touched and moved things and failed to properly record what was happening and why. Even the coroner pottered about; no one told him not to. Those who knew crime scene forensics and the importance of keeping scenes pristine protested, but were ignored by their seniors.
It was ''amateur hour'', as a number of those who were there have privately conceded.
Not until much later were two shells recovered. According to the police theory, these were ejected by the gunman or his weapon after the shooting. Some evidence could have been lost, other bits compromised; a good deal was not even recorded or kept. The investigators were all close colleagues of the victim; and most had worked alongside him all of their police lives, generally back in the old ACT Police. There was joint determination to find whoever had killed a brother. Yet most were not greatly experienced, least of all in sophisticated investigations; the ACT does not have a lot of sophisticated crime. With what passed for experience, including some recent murder investigations which had been badly botched, the omens were not good.
''People too close, too emotional, not sufficiently detached were involved (and perhaps that was all of us),'' one of a number of retired cops admits. He thinks Eastman guilty, but can see the weaknesses of the brief. ''It would have been far better if it had been investigated by another police force, particularly as it always must be seen as a possibility that it was an 'inside' job''.
In many other countries there are standing arrangements for independent inquiries when there are real or perceived conflicts of interests. In the ACT, this could have introduced superior homicide and forensic experience. But there are fierce rivalries among Australian forces; and the AFP is often criticised - a reason, perhaps, for not thinking of going outside it, even to non-ACT detectives. Other state forces did offer help; some of it, particularly that of the Victorian police forensic science unit was accepted.
The ballistics ''expert'' on offer, Robert Barnes, was self-confident about his abilities, but his expertise, his tendency to certainty, and his scientific methodology have come under considerable attack. Unknown to the Eastman jury, he had been dismissed from Victoria's forensic science unit before he gave his evidence, after his credibility had been questioned by a number of Victorian judges.
In a Victorian inquest, his evidence had been described as ''at best grossly negligent, and at worst deliberately deceptive. It is apparent that he has set out to prove Mr Parker fired the shots, and lied and misled to achieve that aim and protect himself from criticism for having done so.''
After the ensuing review, the unit's director wrote of ''the totally unacceptable operational behaviour of Barnes as a senior and trusted scientist'', and, in another memo, said that ''in an as yet to be established number of cases involving Mr Barnes, case reports cannot carry the centre's guarantee of quality.''
It is still not clear whether the AFP, or the prosecution team, knew of Barnes' fall from grace. Between inquest and trial, Barnes changed his mind about whether a silencer was used, but was not examined on his shifting, but always confident, conclusions. It was said FBI and Israeli forensic scientists ''reviewed'' his evidence, but they did this from the paperwork, not by attempting to reproduce his findings. A Northern Irish ballistics expert who has looked more closely at the forensic findings has been much more scathing. With scientific examination now light years ahead of what was possible in 1989, it would be interesting to see it repeated, though it is understood that many of the materials are now lost, and that many, even then, faced cross-contamination by being stored with material from other cases.
Another policeman involved in the case commented to me this week that my criticism of a ''bit'' of the evidence tended to ignore how strong the case ''as a whole'' was. Yet he admitted, sheepishly, that the story of the mystery witness and civilian member of the police fishing club, able, miraculously, years after the event to patch a hole in the fabric did not ''look good''. Nor did the presentation of extracts of buggings of Eastman's chatting to himself - mostly unintelligibly.
The Eastman case, like the 1980s Lindy Chamberlain case, has long had its groupies - theorists and doubters - many of whom have seen it in wider stories about drugs, organised crime, and alleged police corruption. Some evidence still, 22 years later, wrapped in suppression orders, suggests that members of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta wanted to take revenge on Winchester who had been leading a major operation against them, in which he had pretended to be corrupt and to have given them the green light for a major marijuana project. There are other theories. None were ever investigated to the level of the case against Eastman, but that, some suggest, is a reflection of an investigative mindset, rather than dry gullies.
This is not a case warranting yet another artificially limited judicial inquiry, nor one focused only at a reversed onus of proof. It needs some fresh sets of eyes - professional and sceptical ones: policemen, scientists and lawyers, working probably more from the papers than public hearings or a search for witnesses whose evidence is not in contention. And, if indeed, Eastman is a patsy - one who made things ever worse for himself by his rages, his madnesses, his intelligence, his guile and his complete lack of self-awareness or of where his interests lay - he need not even be present. Not, at least until a detached mind can determine there is a case for him to answer. If there isn't there is, of course, a big case, and 22 wasted years, for others to answer."
The story can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
