BACKGROUND: Since the year 2000 Dr. Robert Moles and Prof Bibi Sangha, both adjunct associate professors at Flinders University in the College of Law, have continued to put pressure on the government of South Australia to own up to its wrongdoing after discovering that Dr Manock, who had been employed as the Chief Forensic Pathologist in South Australia between 1968 and 1995, was not actually qualified for the job. While in that position he completed 10,000 autopsies and helped to secure over 400 wrongful convictions. Robert and Bibi have uncovered a series of major cases in South Australia where convictions may need to be overturned. As passionate advocates for individuals wrongfully convicted, particularly due to Dr. Manock's involvement in these cases, they have contributed extensively to raising awareness. Their work includes numerous books, news articles, and appearances on over 170 television and radio programs.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I have learned a great deal from this transcript of the ABC Radio Adelaide Mornings illuminating interview by broadcaster Rory McClaren, in which Dr. Moles provides insights into what he has learned while pursuing South Australian Former Chief Forensic Pathologist Colin Manock for years. I am eagerly awaiting publication of Bob Mole's and Bibi Sangha's up-coming book: False witness: The Disgraceful Dr. Manock.
Harold Levy; Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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Rory: Joining me now in our prime-time segment is Dr Bob Moles, Adjunct Professor in law
at Flinders University. Good morning Bob.
Bob: Good morning Rory, good to be with you.
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Rory: Oh, look, I really appreciate your time today. Let's start by talking about Colin
Manock. Who was Colin Manock?
Bob: He was the Chief Forensic Pathologist in South Australia between 1968 and 1995.
During that time, he completed, according to his own evidence, about 10,000 autopsies and
helped to secure around 400 criminal convictions.
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Rory: And what do we know about his work?
Bob: Well, what we know is what the ABC Four Corners broadcast in October 2001, and that was that Dr Manock was never qualified to do autopsies, and he was never qualified to give evidence in court as an expert witness, which is really quite astounding, isn't it?
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Rory: So how did a person like Dr Colin Manock end up in a role like he ended up in?
Bob: A bit of a mystery, isn't it, really? What Dr Bonnin said in his evidence when they [the
Forensic Science Centre] had a dispute with Manock about his employment, was that they
had advertised in Australia and Britain for a Chief Forensic Pathologist, and he said Dr
Manock was the best applicant that they had. So that would mean out of all of the forensic
pathologists in Australia and Britain, not a single qualified pathologist had actually applied
for the job, which would sound a bit strange, wouldn't it?
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Rory: And for context, Dr Bob Moles, what qualifications do you need to be a forensic
pathologist?
Bob: You need to have engaged in study or training that would give you a specialised
knowledge on the issues that you are dealing with. Dr Manock had done four years as a kind
of apprenticeship doing autopsies in Leeds. He'd never undertaken any formal study ortraining. And after that he was then appointed without having had any previous employment as a proper forensic pathologist - he was then appointed to be the Chief Forensic Pathologist in South Australia.
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Rory: So, Bob Moles, let's go to you now. Where do you fit in and how do you become
engaged in the work of Colin Manock?
Bob: I was working at Adelaide University at the time, and I was engaging students to work
on projects with people in the community. So, companies, barristers, solicitors, a whole range of things. And one of the solicitors at the time asked me if I'd have a look at a case in which he was involved - a fellow called Henry Keogh. I'd never heard of him at the time, but I said ‘yes’, I'd get some students together and have a look at it. And within a short while we realised that it wasn't just Keogh's case that was suspect - but it was the actual pathologist
behind it who was suspect. And just to give you an idea, we'd been working on the project for about nine months.
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Rory: What timeframe are we talking here, Bob Moles, how long ago are we talking?
Bob: We're talking about 2000. So, I've just been appointed to Adelaide University as a law
professor, and we're doing a bit of research on this to find out about Keogh and the
background to it. And then I was put in touch with Four Corners through a fellow called John Singleton, who's the advertising champion, the…
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Rory: chap who - the John Singleton?
Bob: … the person who did the Magic Millions [major horse racing event]. And he said that
Kevin Borick, who was the lawyer in Adelaide, had been a good friend of his for many years and had been going on about this pathologist in South Australia. And so, he thought he'd contact some people at Four Corners and ask them to have a look at it. We were then very fortunate because Sally Neighbour came down as the journalist to take charge of the project. And she did very meticulous research, checking everything that we had put to her and a great deal more, and then broadcast the program in October 2001.
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Rory: From your early interactions with the Keogh case, what stood out to you?
Bob: Well, the main thing was the evidence of the forensic pathologist because he was saying that there were bruises on the leg that had indicated that there had been some sort of a hand grip. Just for your listeners, the allegation was that Keogh had come across his fiancée in the bath and whilst he was chatting in a friendly sort of way, he grabbed one of her legs and thenpushed her legs in the air and then pushed down on her head so as to drown her in the bath. Because they were due to be married about six weeks later, and he'd decided not to go ahead with the wedding. So, he decided to kill his girlfriend instead. Which is quite horrible, really, as a scenario. And as we looked into it, Manock had some black and white photographs of bruising to the leg, which he said were the signs of a hand grip. The photograph actually didn't identify whose legs they were, and when we put the photographs eventually to a specialist forensic photographer, he said, I can't see any bruising on the legs here. There's no evidence of that at all. And Manock also claimed that he had tissue slides - you take tissue slides at an autopsy and look at them down the microscope - which showed evidence of bruising. And when we got a specialist to look at the slides, he said there's no evidence of bruising at all. Eventually, of course, when Keogh's case went back to the Court of Appeal many years later the Court of Appeal agreed with those findings. There was no evidence of a homicidal assault. And it was in fact, they said, most probably a slip-and-fall accident in the bathroom.
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Rory: That's the voice of Bob Moles, Adjunct Professor in law at Flinders University, who
has joined me today for Crime Time. We know, obviously, the history of the Keogh case and
Henry Keogh later getting an ex-gratia payment from the state government, more than 2.5
million dollars. How much of that was as a result of that finding you just mentioned there in
the Court of Appeal?
Bob: Well, of course, it was directly as a result of that finding in the Court of Appeal. And
now many people might say, well, $2.5 million sounds like a lot of money. And other people
would say it doesn't sound like very much. And round about that time a fellow called David Eastman had a conviction [for murder of an Assistant Police Commissioner] overturned in the ACT and he’d been in prison for about the exact same time as Henry Keogh. He went to prison about the same time, came out about the same time and he got about 7.5 million dollars having been in prison for roughly the same
length of time.
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Rory: If we step back again. Let’s go back to Manock and there’s another high-profile case
that you’ve been involved in.
Bob: Yes
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Rory: Derek Bromley
Bob: Correct
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Rory: And what did you learn about Manock’s handling of that matter?
Bob: Well, Derek Bromley, it was alleged had had a drink on the bank of the River Torrens –
had propositioned some fellow for sex who didn’t want to. And the story is that Bromley
bashed him, dragged him along the ground and drowned him in the river. There was an eye-
witness who said he was there at the time who was extraordinarily unreliable. He’d been
having hallucinations, and he had all sorts of fantasies about being a top league football
player and a minster of religion and all of that. So, we had a very suspect eye-witness and we had Dr Manock’s evidence about bashing and drowning. The interesting thing about Bromley is that the body in that case had been in the water for five days. It had suffered a lot from putrefaction.
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Rory: I was going to say what impact did that have?'
Bob: A huge impact because the decomposition had taken place. It was very significant. All
of the experts who gave evidence on the appeal in both the Keogh and the Bromley cases said that Dr Manock did not know how to diagnose a death by drowning. Which is extraordinary for somebody who has been the chief pathologist for so many years.
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Rory: I didn’t know that - it’s the first time I’ve heard that.
Bob: If I can just explain briefly. The problem with drowning is that there are no specific
signs that you can find at autopsy which will tell you this is definitely a drowning case.
People often think, well there is frothing at the mouth, isn’t there? Well, there is and that
could be a sign of drowning. But it could also occur if you’ve had a heart attack or stroke.
And so, with all the other signs, water on the lungs could be a sign of drowning but it could
also occur in other forms of agonal death which take place from heart attacks and so on.
So, the correct procedure is to do a complete autopsy. Check all the major organs to see if
there are any signs of drowning, stroke, heart attacks, all that sort of stuff. And, if you can’t
find any other cause of death, and if the body’s found immersed in water, then your default
conclusion is that it’s a death by drowning. Dr Manock in both the Keogh and Bromley cases said as soon as I saw it was a drowning case I didn’t bother to look for anything else.
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Rory: And so, in both cases potentially, that leads to other missing potential causes?
Bob: Absolutely, because if he hadn’t looked for them, hadn’t looked for any signs of them,
he couldn’t possibly exclude them. And the experts in both Keogh and Bromley have said -
and that means we don’t actually know what the cause of death is in these cases - because the autopsy was incomplete. The best that we can say in Keogh was that it was most likely a slip- and-fall accident in the bathroom - but we can’t be sure of that. But in any event, there are no signs of a homicidal assault. And in Bromley’s case they actually said that because of the putrefaction, Dr Manock had given detailed descriptions of the injuries at the time of trial about - well I can see that this was where he was kicked, and this was where he was punched, and this was where he was dragged along the ground! All of that happened to coincide with the evidence of the eye- witness who had described the assault in that way.
The experts said well, that’s simply not possible. Because of the putrefaction, you cannot
identify any possible causes of the damage to the body - and in fact you can’t distinguish
between damage to the body and putrefaction. They also said that Manock had said the
injuries were caused at or about the time of death. And the experts said, but that can’t be true
- because all of the injuries in this case could have been caused in the post mortem period.
We can’t assert any timing with specification in this case. The Crown’s own witness said,
look the best I could say is that I don’t think the injuries would be more than six months old!.
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Rory: Dr Bob Moles is my guest on today’s Crime Time chat. Dr Bob Moles are there still
cases being impacted by the work of Dr Colin Manock?
Bob: Well of course. We did a whole series of cases in the book that we wrote A State of
Injustice [the full text of the book is available at the link free and online] which followed up
on the cases which were covered in the 4 Corners program. Cases like Van Beelen, Emily
Perry,
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Rory: Frits Van Beelen,
Bob: Yes, Frits Van Beelen who was supposed to have murdered a girl on the beach. Mrs
Emily Perry who was supposed to have poisoned her husband with arsenic and of course the
notorious baby death cases where Dr Manock said the babies had died from bronchial
pneumonia and so therefore no crime had been committed. And afterwards, when the
Coroner had conducted an inquiry, he found the babies had suffered from very extensive
injuries. One of them had fifteen broken ribs for example, one had two fractures of the skull,
one had a fractured spine. Manock said that the deaths in all of those cases had been causedby a lung infection of which the Coroner said there was no sign at all. So, what we know is that Dr Manock had helped to secure over 400 hundred criminal convictions. We know that in each of those cases the evidence should not have been admitted because he wasn’t qualified as an expert.
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Rory: In each of them?
Bob: In every case. He was never qualified to give expert evidence in criminal trials. And
therefore, the evidence that he gave should not have been admitted. What that means is, if
there was the remotest likelihood that his evidence made some contribution towards the
verdict of the jury, then that alone would warrant the convictions being overturned. Now it’s
hard to imagine a circumstance in which Manock would turn up and give evidence which had no effect at all. And so, we have got potentially 400 wrongful convictions.
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Rory: On that there has previously been suggestions that there should be a Royal
Commission.
Bob: Yes
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Rory: To look into the Manock issue.
Bob: Yes.
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Rory: Is that something that you think should be considered by the Government?
Bob: Without a doubt. We have made that call since the program went out in 2001. Of course there has to be an inquiry into this. Just to put it into context – over the last 25 years if you look at the USA, Canada, Britain and Australia there have been 4-5,000 wrongful convictions identified. Out of all of those there has never been a case like this. There has never been a case where the state itself has gone into the Supreme Court – the head of the Forensic Science Centre on behalf of the state declared this man is not qualified to certify cause of death, he has no expert qualifications so he can’t give expert evidence in court - and after that they then continued to employ him for the next 20 years doing autopsies and helping to secure convictions. The important thing about that is that if you have any legal case that comes before the court, the prosecutor has a very clear duty of disclosure. If there is any evidence known to the prosecution which might undermine their case or undermine the competence or credibility of their expert witness, they must disclose that evidence to the court. And in all of the recent appeals and applications made to the court, including the recent Bromley appeal, theprosecutor went to the High Court and said you can rely on Dr Manock’s evidence as given at trial - and clearly he should have disclosed Manock’s history.
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Rory: Just for people who are listening where is the Bromley matter sitting right now?
Bob: He had an application to the Court of Criminal Appeal, and despite the fact that he had
five of the country’s leading experts who said the eye witness evidence really shouldn’t have
been admitted - and had three of the country’s leading experts saying Manock’s evidence
about the drowning was false and misleading, Two of the experts were the same experts who
gave evidence in the Keogh appeal. Despite all of that the Court of Criminal Appeal said yes
well we don’t think that is sufficient for the grant of leave to appeal. So, we are not actually
going to hear his appeal. So that was quite extraordinary, I’ve never heard a case quite like
that in any of the other countries or indeed in Australia. If any evidence had gone to the court which may have influenced the jury and it shouldn’t have been admitted, that is quite sufficient for the conviction to be set aside. So, we had an overwhelming case, but the judges for some reason decided to refuse him leave to appeal. It then went to the High Court and in the High Court they said they would refer the application to the Full Court which is before five judges in the High Court for the leave application. But then they specified that when we hear the application for leave to appeal, we don’t want anyone saying anything about the forensic pathology evidence. And you have to scratch your head and say why not! That is the key issue in the case. But they did allow the prosecutor to say they could rely upon Dr Manock’s evidence as given at trial. But he didn’t fulfill his duty of disclosure and say the man is not qualified to give evidence at all.
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Rory: Dr Bob Moles, thank you so much for your time this morning for coming in and
sharing your knowledge of Colin Manock and the Henry Keogh and Derek Bromley cases. I
feel like we've only just scratched the surface here, so I might have to get you back for
another chat.
Bob: I should look forward to it. Thank you.
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Rory: That is Dr Bob Moles from Flinders University who joined me for Crime Time just
then.
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The entire interview can be heard at:
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/adelaide-mornings/mornings/104879586
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
