QLD:Alan Leahy denies double murder

AAP General News (Australia)
12-02-2011
QLD:Alan Leahy denies double murder

By Laura Harding

BRISBANE, Dec 2 AAP - Alan Leahy is a convicted criminal who admits he's made bad choices
in life, but insists he had nothing to do with his wife's violent death on a lonely bush
track.

Those bad choices include his decision to begin a sexual relationship with his wife's
half-sister, when she was just 16 and living under the couple's roof.

At a fresh inquest into the death of his wife and her best friend, he denied suggestions
that his wife's discovery of that relationship drove him to kill the two women and make
it look like a murder-suicide.

The bodies of Julie-Anne Leahy and Vicki Arnold were found in a four-wheel drive parked
in remote bushland on the Atherton Tableland, west of Cairns in far north Queensland,
on August 9, 1991.

Two weeks earlier, Mr Leahy had told police they pair had failed to return from a late-night
fishing trip.

The two women's families have always disputed the murder-suicide findings of two previous
inquests, and believe a third party murdered them.

But they fear they'll never know exactly what happened to the women because police
botched the initial investigation.

The previous inquests found Ms Arnold killed her friend by shooting her with a sawn-off
rifle, bludgeoning her with a rock and slitting her throat before shooting herself in
the chin and behind the right ear.

Queensland Assistant Police Commissioner Michael Condon told the latest inquest, which
sat in Cairns this week, that police errors meant there was no complete forensic picture
of what occurred 20 years ago.

He said police too quickly decided it was a case of murder-suicide, and didn't properly
preserve the scene.

Counsel assisting the coroner, Ralph Devlin, told the inquest the police failings were
a "lotto win" for Mr Leahy.

"There were egregious faults that affected the viability of the investigation," he said.

"The crime scene was not preserved, the bodies were removed before the forensic examination
had concluded, the car was removed before the forensic examination had concluded."

Mrs Leahy's half-sister Vanessa Stewart told the inquest Mr Leahy began grooming her
before his wife disappeared.

But Mr Leahy said his sexual involvement with the teenager did not begin until after
Julie-Anne vanished.

Ms Stewart, who is now 36, told the inquest Mr Leahy woke her for oral sex on the night
her half-sister went missing, and that he coached her in giving him an alibi, something
he denies.

Mr Leahy also denied he'd been challenged by the two women about his relationship with
Ms Stewart on the night they disappeared.

He denied then taking the women at gunpoint to a remote spot at Cherry Tree Creek,
a place the women had never been to before.

He disputed suggestions he'd surprised them with a gun so that his wife, who was a
pack-a-day smoker, left behind her cigarettes and Ms Arnold left behind the glasses she
always wore.

He denied shooting his wife as she drove and shooting Ms Arnold when she tried to flee
before dragging her back to the vehicle.

Asked for an explanation about why Ms Arnold's shoes were found about seven metres
away from the car, Mr Leahy said he couldn't explain that because he wasn't there.

The inquest was also told Mr Leahy had handed police True Crime magazines detailing
how convicted English murderer Jeremy Bamber killed his family and attempted to make it
look like his sister had done it, before turning the gun on herself.

Despite the fact they had the name Leahy written in them, Mr Leahy denied the magazines
belonged to him and his wife, and said they belonged to Ms Arnold.

Mr Devlin asked, "Did you, like Jeremy Bamber, make it look like a murder-suicide?"

to which Mr Leahy replied, "No, I was not there".

"Can you see why there is concern in the community that you may have played a part
in your wife's death?" Mr Devlin asked.

"No, I can't see that. I didn't have a part in my wife's death. I made some bad choices
but I didn't have a part in it."

Ms Stewart told the inquest Mr Leahy told her to "keep it cool" when police asked questions,
and instructed her to conceal their sexual relationship.

The inquest heard Mr Leahy had robbed houses in broad daylight and had stolen from
shops by hiding in them overnight when he was a young man.

Ms Stewart said he once bragged to her about how he'd thought of committing the "perfect
bank robbery" by using a getaway van with a secret compartment for the robbers, something
Mr Leahy denied under questioning.

Coroner Michael Barnes has adjourned the inquest to a date to be fixed.

The families of both women hope his findings will give them some answers after 20 years
of anguish.

AAP lh/tnf/it/wjf

KEYWORD: LEGAL: LEAHY (NEWSFEATURE)

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