An urban legend evolves into reality

IT'S the trial that has left us captivated and yesterday justice was finally delivered.

Vincent O'Dempsey court drawing. Courtesy of the Courier Mail. Picture: Brett Lethbridge/CourierMail

IT'S the trial that has left us captivated and yesterday justice was finally delivered.

Forty-three years after killing a woman and her two young daughters, Warwick man Vincent O'Dempsey has been convicted.

A jury found O'Dempsey guilty of taking Barbara McCulkin and her daughters Vicki and Leanne into bushland and killing them.

This is a case that, though four decades old, intrigued so many of us for its duration.

Stories about the missing family and rumours of a body in the dam wall are urban legend many Warwick kids have grow up listening to and sharing with others.

While these tall tales have often been told, it is only just now we have been able to hear some of the real and grisly details of what happened that night.

And some of it is truly shocking.

Definite answers of what happened to Barbara, Vicki and Leanne on that night may never come and their remains may never be uncovered. But a guilty verdict is a start.

There is at least some closure in having O'Dempsey and his co-offender, Gary Reginald Dubois, deemed responsible for the heinous murders of a mum and her little girls.

It has been both fascinating and heart-wrenching to see our local urban legends evolve from being schoolyard stories to a reality that is much darker and tragic than some of us ever imagined.

Kerri Moore, editor