The Snitch: Accused killer John Bowie’s arrest all in the family
One of NSW’s most experienced detectives united with his media officer daughter to potentially crack a cold case this week. PLUS which two high-profile inmates have been playing chess in the slammer?
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NSW Police has its own father and daughter dream team.
One of the most experienced detectives in the force, detective Chief Inspector Russell Oxford, united with his daughter, Jessica, this week to potentially crack a cold case.
Following a gruelling investigation, police arrested 69-year-old John Bowie in Queensland on Friday over the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Roxlyn Bowie.
While Chief Insp Oxford has been on the case for decades, his daughter — a diligent and hardworking media officer — was behind the scenes this week organising the coverage and handling the feverish press pack.
They both looked calm in the line of fire as Chief Insp Oxford, with one hand on the arm of a handcuffed Bowie, steered him through the bustling Sydney Domestic Airport terminal after his extradition from Brisbane on Saturday.
Snitch correspondent Jeremy Piper captured the pair in a precious family moment they will remember forever — squeezed inside an elevator with an accused murderer in handcuffs.
Ms Oxford joined NSW Police as a civilian staffer and has been working as a media officer at the State Crime Command, the home of NSW’s biggest, baddest and most challenging investigations.
But given her dad’s career, including locking up disgraced cop Roger Rogerson to six-year-old Kiesha Weippeart’s killer, we suspect it would take a lot to shock Ms Oxford.
CELL BLOCK CHESS BUDDIES
You never know who you’ll be rubbing shoulders with when you get locked up in one the state’s prisons.
For Graeme Curran, the ex-magistrate jailed for indecently assaulting an underage boy, it’s former NSW Labor minister Eddie Obeid.
Although they are not quite cellmates, Snitch has been told Obeid and Curran are guests of the same section of Kirkconnell Correctional Centre, near Bathurst.
A prison source said they weren’t passing the time by pumping iron together but “they might have had a few games of chess”.
Curran spent a career on the other side of the legal equation as a NSW magistrate who occasionally sentenced people to jail terms.
His world was turned upside down in August when he was sentenced to two years and four months for indecently assaulting a boy in the 1980s.
Obeid, 75, is almost at the end of his minimum three-year sentence for misconduct in public office, related to his failure to disclose his family’s business interests in cafe leases at Sydney’s Circular Quay, while lobbying a senior bureaucrat about the rights of waterfront retailers in 2007 when he was a member of the NSW upper house.
SUSPICIOUS FLOATER
It was the greatest scoop that never was.
On Friday morning, a Channel 7 reporter was midway through a weather live cross on the banks of the Parramatta River when she noticed a suspicious mass floating in the water.
Snapping a photograph of what looked like a body wrapped and bound, the reporter alerted her newsdesk.
Within the hour, Seven’s crime reporter Laura Banks was on the scene.
“It looked like a child’s body rolled up in a blanket,” she said. “You could see the zip ties and rope.”
Keen to leave the retrieval to the experts, Channel 7 alerted local police.
Half an hour later, the shore was swarming with general duties officers and police divers were slowly wading through the murky water towards the bobbing ‘body’.
You can imagine the confusion when the divers hauled the object on to the river bank and it started shedding white fluff.
The grim discovery was in fact a giant, child-sized teddy bear, wrapped in a blanket and bizarrely tied to a bicycle.
“I was hysterically laughing but relieved,” Ms Banks said.
The teddy’s killer is still at large.
IS THAT CLEAR? NO? GOOD
Given the backlog of cases clogging the District Court, it makes sense the state government might be too scared to find out how many judges are actually on duty.
The answer is 75 — but they had to check first.
Then again, the answer might not be 75.
We reached this juncture because of a recent government estimates committee when Labor MP Adam Searle asked: “What is the full strength of the District Court now?”
The triumphant answer from NSW Justice deputy secretary Catherine D’Elia was: “There are 75 District Court judges, which is the highest number there has been for 25 years.”
The wheels fell off when Mr Searle asked for clarification. Did this mean 75 judges exclusively attending to the work of the district court or did it take into account people working in other legal jobs that are qualified to sit as district court judges?
Ms D’Elia responded: “I will have to take that on notice to clarify the number.”
A written answer was later provided that was about as unclear as the original answer.
“I am advised: Currently there (are) 75 District Court judges (including the Chief Judge) attending to the work of the District Court,” Ms D’Elia wrote.
But the figures provided under that answer said the number did not include the chief judge.
The discrepancy was picked up by opposition legal affairs spokesman Paul Lynch, who wrote to Attorney-General Mark Speakman: “These answers are inconsistent … could you please indicate which of the answers is correct?”
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Originally published as The Snitch: Accused killer John Bowie’s arrest all in the family