Spear Creek investigation to shed light on 40-year-old triple murder

The public is crucial to the successful outcomes of cold cases. As the police re-open an investigation into a triple homicide in Queensland’s outback, The Courier-Mail launches a new true crime podcast to help bring long-overdue justice.

KAREN Edwards, Tim Thomson and Gordon Twaddle would have been aged in their 60s and 70s now.

Possibly married with children. Grandparents even. They might have been looking back on successful careers. Almost certainly, they would have built up lots of memories from travel adventures – because that’s the sort of people they were.

We will never know because they never got the chance.

Their young lives, and all the promise they held, were stolen suddenly and brutally 40 years ago as they were gunned down in cold blood and left to rot in the harsh Outback of northwestern Queensland.

The trio’s heartbroken parents all died without answers to the questions which still haunt the victims’ families, or seeing their murderer brought to account

And for 40 years, a killer has walked free believing they have literally got away with murder. But now, all involved might finally get what they deserve.

Officers from Queensland Police’s Cold Case Investigation Team and Mount Isa Criminal Investigation Branch detectives are reviewing the triple murder and say it is “definitely solvable”.

The Courier-Mail will be doing all we can to help ensure that it is.

Advances in technology have played an important role in reactivating long-closed cases, generating evidence impossible to produce decades ago.

Likewise the determination, energy and fresh thinking of detectives committed to solving cases.

But the public is absolutely crucial to the successful outcomes of these lingering mysteries, to bringing some clarity and closure for families and to bringing perpetrators to long-overdue justice.

The Courier-Mail’s crime editor Kate Kyriacou. Picture: Steve Pohlner/AAP

So often it is a clue, a memory, a long-held suspicion, a conversation kept secret which has provided the key to unlock a case. As the police re-open the triple homicide, The Courier-Mail launches our Spear Creek podcast. Starting on Monday, crime editor and Queensland Journalist of the Year Kate Kyriacou will examine every aspect of this long-forgotten mystery over the next four weeks.

The Courier-Mail has spent several months speaking with witnesses, relatives and current and retired officers, following the 40th anniversary of the killings. The series will tell the stories of the three victims via their families. It will retrace the journey of the young couple, Ms Edwards and Mr Thomson and their friend Mr Twaddle, as they travelled from Alice Springs across the Northern Territory/Queensland border to Mount Isa filled with excitement at their plans for a trip around Australia.

The helicopter that crashed during the investigation of a triple murder at Spear Creek near Mount Isa in 1978

We will examine the early police investigation, including a helicopter crash that left some of the initial team too injured to continue, and the various leads and theories detectives have followed over the years – including the now debunked possibility of a serial killer.

The series will look at the mysterious Toyota LandCruiser driver who drove the trio from their campsite into the Outback, only to return alone later to pack up their camp.

And it will take a fresh look at the Mount Isa man charged with theft after he was discovered hiding a motorbike belonging to one of the victims.

The Courier-Mail is proud of the proactive role it has taken in shining fresh light on other cold cases and the results achieved.

The tireless investigative journalism of Matthew Condon into the seedy 1970s and ’80s era of Brisbane’s criminal underworld and police corruption helped lead to the convictions of Garry “Shorty” Dubois and Vincent O’Dempsey in 2017 for the triple murder of Barbara McCulkin and her daughters Vicki and Leanne.

So, too, his work and pressure from the newspaper triggered the Queensland Government to order a new inquest into the 1973 Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub firebombing in Fortitude Valley which claimed 15 lives in Queensland’s worst ever mass killing.

The painstaking work of Kyriacou and her colleague Peter Hall on our Dead Wrong podcast series last year told the story of Jeffrey Brooks, a young scientist who died from a gunshot wound at a crayfish farm 20 years ago and raised the questions which had troubled his family every day since. As a result, his death will be examined in the Coroner’s Court, bringing his loved ones closer to finding the truth.

The Spear Creek podcast aims to help three other families to do the same.

Take up birth-rate challenge

Peter Costello with new born babies at Royal Women’s Hospital.

COUPLES are leaving it later to have children, or not having them at all, leading to a sharp drop in the fertility rate. The reasons are understandable. People tend to marry or partner later. There is an imperative to establish some level of financial security, including a foothold in an increasingly expensive property market.

For many couples, the decision to start a family has to be balanced against the desire to build careers and have the time to juggle both work and parenthood.

These are deeply individual issues and decisions. But it is also a challenge for society as a whole.

The number of people aged 65-plus will more than double by the middle of this century. Many will be keen and able to work longer than people currently do. Some will be able to fund their own retirements. But many will not, putting pressure on a shrinking pool of working-age people to support them.

While we tussle with the concentration of population in a few major cities, underlying growth is a key driver underpinning our economic prosperity. Falling birth rates will have an inevitable impact on immigration trends. We don’t advocate the return of Peter Costello’s baby bonus, but Scott Morrison’s population plan must include measures to support couples to start families.

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