Tiahleigh Palmer killer Rick Thorburn called as witness at inquest
A coroner is considering charging Tiahleigh Palmer’s killer with contempt after he swore and threatened to walk out of the inquest into the girl’s death just moments after confessing he had ‘accidentally suffocated’ her. READ THE FULL CONFESSION
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Convicted murderer Rick Thorburn has explosively claimed he accidentally suffocated 12-year-old schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer to death as he tried to stop her leaving their home.
But in a bizarre turn of events, he then told the inquest into her death moments later, ‘you can go f--k yourselves’ before threatening to walk out when his confession was questioned.
It comes as his wife, Julene, admitted to the court she was no longer close to her husband and that she called it “an obligation in a lot of ways because he doesn’t have anybody else”.
READ RICK THORBURN’S FULL CONFESSION BELOW
The pre-inquest hearing was told Thorburn murdered his foster daughter after discovering his son Trent had sex with the girl and feared she was pregnant after she complained of stomach pains.
On the night of her death, Thorburn’s wife and children came home and he told them: “Tiahleigh is no longer with us. I hope you know what that means.”
She said he told them he had taken care of it and they were not to ask questions.
Trent Thorburn was sentenced to four years’ jail in 2017 after pleading guilty to incest, for having sex with Tiahleigh, attempting to pervert the course of justice and two counts of perjury.
He was released in 2018, after serving 16 months.
Julene Thorburn was sentenced to 18 months’ jail in November 2017, after pleading guilty to perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice. Her sentence was suspended in May 2018.
Joshua Thorburn was sentenced to three months’ jail for attempting to pervert the course of justice and perjury.
Deputy state coroner Jane Bentley has asked that he not be sent back to prison straight away and is considering charging him with contempt.
Thorburn sobbed as he read the one-page confession to the Brisbane Coroners Court.
He told the court he and foster daughter Tia had been alone at home on the night of her death when they had an argument. He said she was “being stubborn” and refused to go to bed.
Thorburn claims the argument escalated and Tia packed her things and left the house and that he grabbed her tightly around the waist and mouth to drag her home.
He said when they got to the veranda and he let her go, the little girl dropped to the ground.
He claims he then picked her up and put her in a chair but she slumped sideways with her eyes closed.
“She didn’t respond to me when I spoke to her,” he said.
“Her eyes were closed and I didn’t think she was breathing
“I must have accidentally suffocated her with my hand over her mouth … and my hand so tight around her waist.”
Thorburn sobbed as he delivered the confession.
“I know that I’m responsible for Tia’s death and it is something I struggle to live with,” he said.
“I know sorry can’t take away the pain it has caused a lot of people but I am truly sorry.”
Under cross-examination from counsel assisting the coroner, Thorburn said he wrote the confession in prison four years ago at the encouragement of a psychologist.
He said he now had no independent recollection of the events of that night.
“When did you dig it up?” Ms McMahon asked of the confession.
“About a month ago when I found out I was coming here and I was going through what paperwork I had,” he replied.
He said he could not recall how he disposed of Tiahleigh’s body.
He claimed he had a breakdown and suffered significant memory loss.
But Ms Bentley pointed out that none of the prison psychologists believed he had memory loss and there was no physical evidence of a brain injury that would cause memory loss.
“I don’t care,” he said.
Thorburn became agitated under cross-examination after Ms McMahon began to pick holes in his confession.
He claimed he found the handwritten document in his prison cell about a month ago but a typed version was presented to the court.
When asked where the original handwritten document was, he claimed to have thrown it out early this morning because: “this is the end of it, I don’t need it any more”.
He has threatened to “f---ing walk out” telling the court “you can go f--k yourselves.”
The court has been played a recording of a phone call between Thorburn and his wife Julene in which he says that the coroner in today’s proceedings will have to do what he wants otherwise “I’ll go to the grave with what I’ve got”.
“If the Coroners Court don’t like that, that’s their f---ing problem,” he says.
When questioned about whether his tactic was to pretend not to remember anything as discussed in the phone call, Thorburn said: “Not afraid for anyone to hear anything I’ve got to say.”
“So you’re not holding back any other information or anything else,” Ms McMahon asked.
“No,” he said.
Thorburn has finished giving evidence and has been excused from the witness stand but Coroner Bentley asked for him not to be sent back to prison because she is considering whether to charge him with contempt.
She said she was going to “give some consideration as to whether (he) is in fact in contempt of this court”.
She said he would be excused for now but may need to return later to be charged if she decides that is an appropriate course.
The two-day inquest into the 12-year-old schoolgirl’s death on October 29, 2015, began in Brisbane Coroners Court this morning.
The inquest will investigate what Thorburn took with him when he killed her, how he disposed of her body and what happened in the hours and moments before her death.
Counsel assisting the coroner Kate McMahon last month told a pre-inquest hearing that while Thorburn had pleaded guilty to murdering Tiahleigh, he had never revealed how she was killed.
Tiahleigh was placed in foster care with the Thorburn family in January, 2015, but was murdered nine months later.
When her body was found on the banks of the Pimpama River, six days after she went missing, it was so decomposed no cause of death could be determined.
Thorburn’s wife, Julene Thorburn and their sons, Trent and Joshua Thorburn, will be among inquest witnesses called.
Julene Thorburn attempted to distance herself from her husband during questioning at the inquest into their foster daughter’s death, saying she felt an “obligation” to be there for him because he has nobody else.
When asked if she was still close to her husband, she responded: “I wouldn’t, I don’t know if you would really call it close, I call it probably an obligation in a lot of ways because he doesn’t have anybody else,” Mrs Thorburn said.
“Yeah I’m still married to him.”
She said she visited her husband in prison weekly and spoke to him on the phone regularly.
“He doesn’t have anybody else and I feel you take vows over 30 years for better or for worse and he doesn’t have anybody else so I tend to feel an obligation.”
When asked if the marriage was a chore she said: “In some ways, it’s been very difficult.”
Mrs Thorburn told the court her husband never disclosed how he killed Tiahleigh.
She recounted to the court a “nightmare” he regularly had in the wake of her death which bore a striking resemblance to the ‘confession’ he read to the court earlier in the day.
“The dreams are he told me that he’d written you a letter and in fact before he lost his memory before he had his mental breakdown in September two years he had told me that he’d spoken to psychologists around his dreams because he was having these horrible dreams nightmares and it was something about her running out of the house and down to front gate and him trying to stop her and holding his hand on her mouth and forcing her to come back down to the house so she didn’t wake the neighbours up screaming or something,” Mrs Thorburn said.
“Yeah several times he was dreaming it all the time.”
Mrs Thorburn said she never asked her husband how he killed the little girl.
“All he ever said to me was … these mightn’t be the exact words … ‘what you aren’t told you can’t repeat’ so he never told me anything around the circumstances anything on the night, he never has,” she said.
“He was never going to tell us anything about the circumstances on the night and what happened and what we don’t know we can’t repeat sort of things so he didn’t want anybody else to know about how it happened.”
When asked if it was her understanding that Thorburn killed Tiahleigh to protect Trent: Mrs Thorburn said: “He never really said that to me as such, like he was definitely concerned about Trent going to prison and whatever but he never came out and ever said anything as such that he killed her for that reason so he never discussed anything about those sorts of things.”
“All he really said from what I remember when we walked in the door and I think my mind is really just stuck on the statement that, something about ‘Tiahleigh is no longer with us and I hope you know what that means’.
“So my mind is really just stuck on that statement and I think my mind was in such a tizz and I just couldn’t think straight.”
She said the family didn’t talk about Tiahleigh’s murder in the days that followed.
“It was a very quiet, very sombre household so there wasn’t a lot of conversation around anything,” she said.
“I would say it was the most distant our family had ever been and we were all treading water.
“There just wasn’t a lot of discussion of anything in our family.”
Mrs Thorburn told the court in the months before she died, Tiahleigh told her she had a “secret” but that she could not share it because the family would “get rid of her” if they knew.
The foster mother said she raised the issue of Tiahleigh having a secret with the foster agency but the girl never disclosed what it was.
When asked by the coroner if she had any other information to disclose, Mrs Thorburn said she was happy to help the inquest but could not think of anything else to add.
“This has been a very long drawn out process for us too and there’s not a day goes by that I don’t remember everything about not having Tiahleigh with us but you know I want this to be settled and done as well and I’m happy to help in any way I can,” she said.
Julene changed her entire outfit and left court in a fake red wig after giving evidence.
Trent Thorburn told the inquest he believes his father killed Tiahleigh to prevent him from going to jail if it was discovered he’d had sex with the 12-year-old girl.
“He’s my father and I believe he would do anything to protect his family,” Trent Thorburn said.
He said his father never made a statement to that effect but that was his “guess” based on his knowledge of the situation and his father.
A Facebook message Trent sent to a family member before Tialeigh was read to the court in which he says he just wanted “the kid gone and out of my life” but he knew she was a source of ‘income’ for his family and he couldn’t risk them losing money if she was gone.
His younger brother Joshua Thorburn told the inquest he believed his dad had killed Tiahleigh to “protect” his son from going to jail if it was discovered he’d had sex with the young girl.
The police officer who ran the police investigation into Tiahleigh’s murder Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Knight was the final witness called to give evidence and expressed doubt about the credibility of Thorburn’s ‘confession’.
“My opinion is that, and I’m not in a position to comment on what he can and can’t recollect I want to be clear about that, but I don’t believe the account that was provided today is consistent with the known information,” he said.
Det Snr Sgt Knight said that information included evidence Julene had already put Tiahleigh to bed before she left.
He said he also had “trouble accepting” the allegation Tia packed her bag and tried to leave because it was not consistent with her previous behaviour.
“As to how Tia actually passed away I still truthfully don’t know,” the officer said.
“I don’t believe it was, I don’t mean to sound to lack compassion I don’t believe it was a bloodletting event.
“There was forensic examination done in that house I don’t believe that I could give any evidence of it being the sort of violence that would lead to her bleeding extensively.”
He said the statement delivered by Thorburn at the start of the inquest did not “sit well” with him.
“I don’t know how Tia died unfortunately but when you put it in context that Rick knew what happened between Trenton and Tia and then when they come home in fact in Julene’s statement she described Rick making a statement to the effect of “I’ve fixed it”,” he said.
“That to me, again I’m only drawing inferences here, I don’t know if that’s consistent with someone who accidentally killed her as he described in that statement. He fixed it, my understanding is he fixed the problem being Tia.
“That’s my opinion but it doesn’t sit well with me what I heard earlier today in terms of those circumstances.”
Det Snr Sgt Knight said he believed Tia was killed on the night of October 29 when only she and Thorburn were home.
“I believe Tia was most likely stored in the back shed of their property and then Tia’s body was moved after Rick had reported her missing at the Browns Plains police station on the 30th, her body was still at the property and it was removed later that evening on evening of Friday the 30th at which time she was taken to the Coomera River where she was ultimately found six days later,” he said.
The officer also revealed that the police investigation had been hindered by government agencies refusing to release “very relevant records”.
He said despite legislation allowing for the release of the information requested, police needed to obtain search warrants to access documents needed from the Department of Community Safety, the Public Guardian and Evolve Therapeutic Services.
He said it caused a delay in the investigation and was an unnecessary obstacle that needed to be overcome.
No more witnesses are expected to be called at the inquest but parties will return tomorrow to make submissions to the coroner.
The coroner said she will consider overnight whether to charge Thorburn with perjury.
RICK THORBURN’S FULL CONFESSION
There’s been a lot of speculation about the cause of Tia’s death.
I was never given an opportunity in court to give an account of what happened.
On the night that Tia died she and I got into an argument.
She was messing about and she wouldn’t go to bed.
She was being stubborn and it escalated into her running away again.
She packed her bag and she headed off down the driveway.
I tried to talk her around to get her to come back to the house and told her that she was being silly.
I followed her down the driveway to the front gate which is about 200 metres and I decided I would bring her back to the house.
I got my arm around her and tried to walk her back.
She started struggling and I had to hold her tighter
She started screaming at me and swearing at me and I told her to stop because our neighbour was close to our driveway and it was very late at night.
It got worse so I put my hand over her mouth and kept going.
When we got to the veranda I let her go and she fell to the ground. I picked her up and put her on the seat she fell to the side again.
She didn’t respond to me when I spoke to her.
Her eyes were closed and I didn’t think she was breathing.
I must have accidentally suffocated her with my hand over her mouth and my hand so tightly around her waist.
I don’t remember anything that happened after this.
I don’t know if I tried to resuscitate her.
I know that I’m responsible for Tia’s death and it is something I struggle to live with
I know sorry can’t take away the pain it has caused a lot of people but I am truly sorry.
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