Gayle Woodford murder: Husband Keith wants to know why her murderer was allowed to roam free

OUTBACK nurse Gayle Woodford died at the hands of Dudley Davey, a vile man who had an extensive rap sheet for assaulting women. Her husband, Keith, wants to know why he was always allowed to roam.

Gayle Woodford with husband Keith.

GAYLE Woodford refused to leave her post as a nurse on the APY Lands when she was indecently assaulted about a year before her abduction and murder, the Sunday Mail can reveal.

Mr Woodford has spoken of his fears after the initial assault of Gayle in broad daylight outside their Fregon home – and his fury at the justice system which allowed her eventual killer to roam free despite his escalating pattern of sexual violence.

He believes Gayle would be alive today if the court system had acted on the warning signs displayed by sex predator and murderer Dudley Davey.

Davey had a lengthy criminal record for randomly attacking women over nearly 20 years and was sent back to the Far North without any supervision after his release from jail for assaulting a woman in the Adelaide CBD in 2012.

“It stinks. He had that many chances, he got let out that many times and just seemed to be getting slapped on the wrist,” Mr Woodford said.

“He was just a nasty, nasty man. He was twisted in his head; just an evil, evil man. On that night, it could have been the nurse next door or another nurse, but Gayle was call.”

The 36-year-old is now serving life behind bars with a 32-year non-parole period for the abduction, rape and murder of Ms Woodford, who he lured from their Fregon home late on the night of March 23, 2016.

Murderer Dudley Davey being led away by police. Picture: Channel 7

While the sexual predator’s chances of ever being released are slim, that is of scant comfort to Mr Woodford.

“(Sex offenders) like him need to be monitored. But they just let him loose back up there, where the people were scared of him, because it was out of mind, out of sight,” Mr Woodford said.

He said serial sex offenders should be subject to conditions and monitoring similar to parole when they are released into the community.

Mr Woodford is campaigning for the Federal Government to implement mandatory protection for remote health workers – known as “Gayle’s Law” – and says assaults against nurses continue.

He said his wife’s passion for nursing and commitment to Aboriginal women in the troubled APY Lands outweighed any concerns for her own safety.

Mr Woodford said his “angel” was grabbed and assaulted by a man who had approached her as she raked the garden outside their Fregon home about a year before her murder.

“This car came up and this fella got out and he wanted a band aid. But then he grabbed Gayle ... she went off her brains at him and he ran off,” he said.

The man – who was off his psychiatric medication – was already wanted on a parole warrant in the Northern Territory and assaulted three nurses before being caught.

“That was when I sat down with Gayle and I said ‘we should leave’ – but she didn’t want to,” Mr Woodford said.

“She just said ‘my work’s not finished here and I’m not letting one person push me out’ –so that was it.”

Gayle Woodford with husband Keith.

WHEN police found Gayle’s body in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Fregon more than two days after her murder, another chapter in the Woodford family’s nightmare began.

Mr Woodford said the early stages of the court process made his family feel as though Davey’s rights and needs were more important than theirs.

“Early on, it felt like the only ones looking out for us were John (Detective Senior Sergeant John Schneemilch) and the Major Crime team. Later on, the DPP was also very good, though,” he said.

Davey sat silently in all court hearings wearing a jumper standard for all inmates, many of whom have made threats against him in both Port Augusta and Yatala prisons.

Gayle and Keith’s son, Gary, still bristles when he recalls having to sit metres from Davey, separated only by a clear perspex screen.

“I just wanted to jump that thing and rip his head off. He just sat there like a smart-arse and it infuriated me,” Gary said.

“It was hard. I didn’t take my eyes off him the whole time and every time I caught his eye I would just stare him down and he would just stare at you and then look away like he didn’t care less.”

Keith Woodford was worried Gary’s simmering disdain could boil over in court – yet it was his own stoic silence which cracked during sentencing submissions earlier this year.

Amid submissions by Davey’s lawyer, Nick Vadasz, Keith Woodford stormed from the court saying “I can’t sit here and listen to this crap”, before gesturing and speaking to a taken-aback Davey in the dock.

“I was angry and I needed some fresh air and as I walked out I said ‘wiya story’ which is “I don’t believe your story, it’s bullshit’,” Mr Woodford explained.

Despite Davey receiving one of the longest minimum terms seen in recent years, Mr Woodford said a current appeal against his non-parole period prolonged his family’s ordeal.

“I honestly don’t think he will see the light of day again but I don’t want his sentence reduced. I did want the death penalty but obviously that wasn’t going to happen,” he said.

Mr Woodford does not know whether his family could have coped with a trial if Davey had not admitted to the rape and murder.

“There are things we don’t know about what happened to Gayle. We are allowed to know, and can get a full Coroner’s report ...” he said.

“I don’t think that I would’ve wanted to know exactly what happened to her and I still don’t.

“I visualise in my head what happened to her and that’s bad enough. But to know the actual facts of what he did…”

Keith and Gary are still dismayed that their mother and family’s name are now synonymous with a mindless and vicious act of savagery.

But their fierce focus remains on pushing for Gayle’s Law which, they say,, will help prevent such a despicable fate from befalling those helping some of Australia’s most remote and troubled communities.

Gayle was the green fingers of the desert

GAYLE Woodford showed others what could be achieved through hard work and determination – such as the green garden oasis she sculpted amid the ochre, arid dirt of Fregon.

The “handyman” of the Woodford home, Gayle would tinker with special projects such as the garden when she was not on call as a nurse.

Husband Keith, who moved to the APY Lands to be with his intrepid wife, still speaks in the present tense of his adoration for Gayle.

“Well, she is quiet but when she gets going she is motivated and she motivates others,” he said

“People were always coming around to ask about the garden and she would tell them ‘just add water’.

“It was the only green place in Fregon and Gayle did all that herself. I used to do the housework and she used to do the outside work.”

Mr Woodford recalled what immediately drew him to his future wife.

“I turned around it was the smile. She had a special way where she would smile when she would walk into a room, and that smile would melt steel,” he said.

Gayle’s energy and sharp mind ensured she could almost always get her way without the need for stern words.

“I reckon I could count on one or two hands the arguments we had over all those years. We would have disagreements but she just had a way to get her way ... and sometimes make it feel like it was my idea,” he laughed.

Raising their children, Gary and Alison, at Stansbury on Yorke Peninsula, Mr Woodford recalls his wife and son having much in common such as their carpentry skills – and headstrong determination.

When they renovated a garage into a teen retreat, Keith was smart enough to stay well out of the way.

“I’d just sit under the pergola and listen to them and they would fight. She’d come steaming out and say ‘I can’t work with that, he won’t bloody listen’,” he said.

“Then, three hours later, he’d come out and say ‘I can’t work with her anymore, she won’t listen’.”

Keith said Alison spoke to her mother almost every day, often for hours on end, and followed her into a nursing career.

“Ali and Gayle had a special bond, one of the main reasons Gayle wanted to stay within travelling distance was that she believed Ali would have our first grandchild at some point,” he said.

Gary’s affection for his Mum remains obvious.

“She was pretty lenient with me – if Mum said jump I would sort of say ‘how high’. I probably did more stuff with mum than dad,” Gary said.

Keith has returned to live alongside his children in Stansbury, where Gayle was buried at a funeral attended by more than 1000 mourners from across Australia.

Her entire immediate and extended family continue to grapple with their loss, and some are coping better than others, Keith said.

“It’s not quite as daunting now but it’s still there and it doesn’t take much to bring it to the surface,” he said.

“We all have those moments where we don’t want to talk to anyone, we just want to be in our own space or you think of something and you start crying.”

Any murder is tragic, yet the senseless death of a woman who could turn the desert into an oasis is an unfathomable loss for the entire Aboriginal and remote nursing communities which desperately need more like her.

“She thought she was making progress at getting people to take their medication and bring their kids in when they’re sick and they really did respect Gayle, especially the women,” Keith said.

“They would tell her things that they wouldn’t tell anyone else. She touched people in a special way – she was just an angel.”