Kirra McLoughlin’s unsolved death haunts country cop, Australian Story reports
Kirra McLoughlin, 27, was found brain dead at her home in a brutal unsolved death that haunts a country cop and devastated a community.
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It’s the brutal unsolved death that haunts a country cop and has devastated a family and town since young mum Kirra McLoughlin, 27, was found brain dead at her home.
In the small but close-knit community of Wolvi, 200km north of Brisbane, Kirra was known as a bubbly and energetic mum of four who had “the biggest smile and a beautiful face”.
In 2014 at the Beenham Valley town east of Gympie, Kirra was separated from her husband and had been living with another man for around eight months.
During that time, local police officer Jamie Pulz remembers Kirra as a charismatic young mother he had met on a domestic violence call-out.
By the time he got there, however, Kirra was standing outside the house and saying, “sorry I shouldn’t have called you. It’s all right”.
Pulz said she was adamant she didn’t want any help.
“I looked her in the eyes and said, ‘has he threatened you?’,” Pulz told the ABC’s Australian Story in part one of its investigation into Kirra’s death, Beenham Valley Road.
Kirra responded “no”, so Pulz continued questioning her, “Has he hit you? ‘No.’ Like, do you need us to help? ‘No’.”
“I felt helpless,” he recalled, “I really did. I felt, you know, like, is this what being a police officer is? We had to drive away.”
Months later, when he heard Kirra McLoughlin had died, Pulz was hit hard.
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He was the same age as Kirra – 27 – and he doubted her death was due to natural causes.
At the time, investigating police believed Ms McLoughlin suffered head injuries during a gathering at her Beenham Valley Road home on the night of Wednesday, July 16, 2014.
Paramedics were only called to the property the following afternoon, and the 27-year-old was taken to hospital where it was discovered she was brain dead and she died the following night.
“This case has been haunting me,” Pulz told Australian Story.
“You look at other suspicious deaths and there’s plenty of coverage about them. But this just seemed to go by the wayside.”
After Pulz left the police, he joined forces with another young ex-cop, Tom Daunt.
Together, they launched their own podcast investigation into why no one had been charged with Kirra’s death.
“It’s a rabbit hole we have gone down to make sure Kirra’s death is not forgotten,” Pulz said.
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“Neither of them would anticipate the dark paths they would go down or their startling discoveries,” the ABC reported about the case.
Ms McLoughlin’s devastated mother, Alison Kirkness, told the program, “Something about it has been not right from the beginning.
“No-one’s charged six years down the track. What was done to her was brutal. It was disgusting.”
The ABC interviewed several of Kirra’s friends who feature on the podcast, including a woman identified as Genevieve.
She described her late friend as “a firecracker, cheeky, sassy … one of the most fun people I’ve ever met, she really was the life of the party”.
But Ms McLoughlin’s friends and others also told the program about how her new partner had isolated her from friends and family and how police were called several times to arrest him after fights.
Last week, an inquest into Kirra McLoughlin’s death held at Gympie Coroner’s Court was told of allegations her de facto partner at the time had later admitted he attacked her “in a violent rage” the night she suffered critical brain injuries.
The allegations came from another woman who was in a relationship with Ms McLoughlin’s former partner.
The woman alleged in the court her boyfriend had confessed to shaking Ms McLoughlin’s head against either the floor or wall of her Beenham Valley Rd home late on July 16 or early the next morning.
She said the man did not show her how he had shaken Ms McLoughlin, just that he was “in a violent rage” and indicated he had done so more than once.
When pressed by one lawyer about why she could not remember the specifics of the revelation, the woman said she knew there had been a physical altercation and that the man had struck her head against either a wall or floor.
The man allegedly told the woman Ms McLoughlin was “fine” after that incident, and that they had made love and gone to sleep afterwards.
He did not tell her Ms McLoughlin had lost consciousness.
He told her he had woken up early on the morning of July 17 and noticed Ms McLoughlin had urinated on herself, and when he was unable to wake her up he took off all her clothes and put her in the shower.
The man allegedly told the woman he had called someone else and asked them what to do, before eventually calling an ambulance that would later rush Ms McLoughlin to Gympie Hospital.
He told police Kirra had overdosed on antidepressants.
The court heard Ms McLoughlin’s body had 105 bruises or signs of injury according to a 27-page autopsy report conducted after she died in the Gold Coast University Hospital.
Her cause of death was recorded as a traumatic brain injury.
Originally published as Kirra McLoughlin’s unsolved death haunts country cop, Australian Story reports