Guardians of the Dead podcast: How tiny clues led to big breakthrough in 2003 murder of Samantha O’Reilly

Forensic pathologist Roger Byard always does a lot of swabbing for evidence when investigating a horrific crime. Mostly, it leads nowhere. But in 2003 it helped lead police to a killer’s door.

WARNING: This podcast series features graphic descriptions of forensic pathology techniques, and descriptions of violent crimes, accidentsand traumatic incidents that some listeners may find distressing or upsetting.

An Adelaide forensic pathologist has told how tiny but crucial clues on the clothes of 2003 schoolgirl murder victim Samantha O’Reilly eventually led police to her killer’s door.

Prof Roger Byard recalled his work helping solve the shocking murder of the Blakeview teenager 18 years ago in the first episode of Guardians of the Dead, a new podcast from The Advertiser and the University of Adelaide.

EPISODE 1: THE MURDER OF SAMANTHA O’REILLY

The 15-year-old teen went missing on January 3, 2003 before her partially-clad body was found dumped at a property in the Adelaide Hills a few hours later.

“I drove up to the area and of course the scene was completely chaotic,” Prof Byard recalls.

“There were police cars everywhere. Police tape was around the scene. Media were over on one side of a paddock and there was the body of this young girl, just looking so vulnerable and partially clothed.

“And I remember the sound of the wind in the trees and just the radios and you’re just looking at her thinking this is just... this is a terrible thing.

In the mortuary, Prof Byard immediately set to work looking for answers.

Murder victim, Samantha O'Reilly. The 15-year-old went missing on January 3, 2003. She was murdered by Kevin John Hender and her body was found several hours later at a property in the Adelaide Hills.

“What we’re looking for in the autopsy is clues that might point to somebody. What’s actually caused her death? Has she been bludgeoned? Has she been stabbed? In this case she’d been strangled. Has there been a sexual assault? Her clothing had obviously been taken off and put back wrongly.”

“I do a lot of swabbing at autopsy because I figure that a negative result doesn’t matter but a positive result can be really important,” Prof Byard said.

“And under her clothes I did find a couple of pieces of evidence that did link her to his place.

The subject in that sentence was Blakeview man Kevin John Hender, a 47-year-old father of two, who lived two streets from Samantha’s family and is now serving a life sentence for her murder.

A police flyer appealing for information surrounding the 2003 murder of 15-year-old northern suburbs teen Samantha O'Reilly.

“There was a bit of fluff that came from the back of his car, there were some paint flakes from the back step. So even if we didn’t have the DNA, we had this back up,” Prof Byard says.

Hender knew Samantha’s family through the local football league and offered her a ride as she was walking home from her local shopping centre.

But Hender didn’t take her home. He took her to his house where he tried to rape her, panicked, then strangled her to death.

“He’s a house husband. His whole life revolves around his family and his home,’’ Defence Counsel Craig Caldicott told the court at the time. “He panicked ... it was going to be discovered he had sex with this girl and his whole family would disintegrate.”

To cover up his terrible deed, Hender bundled Samantha’s body in his car, drove to a property 12km away and dumped her there.

Almost two decades later, Prof Byard remembers the Samantha O’Reilly affair as not just another case but the sad and senseless killing of an innocent little girl.

Kevin John Hender at Adelaide Magistrates Court on October 10 2003.

He says he still vividly recalls a fleeting moment that sheeted home the senselessness of Samantha’s killing.

“It was about three or four o’clock in the morning and all the police had gone and the crime scene officers had gone, it was just the mortuary attendant and me and Samantha.

“I was just looking at her and he said to me ‘you know something about her?’ I said ‘yeah, yeah, her ears are not pierced’. Which I think just reflected what an unsophisticated little kid she was.

“And I think I read in the papers afterwards that she used to spend her time going to the shopping centre and looking at the bridal shop and looking at the gowns and imagining that she was going to get married in Bali one day.

“And of course, you know, thanks to him, that’s never going to happen.”

Originally published as Guardians of the Dead podcast: How tiny clues led to big breakthrough in 2003 murder of Samantha O’Reilly