AT 11.52pm on August 10, 2002, David Breckenridge called his best mate from a phone box - he was on his way over to watch the international rugby match that was about to start. Eight Minutes later he was dead. In chapter three of this exclusive podcast series, the Daily Telegraph examines the family’s concerns that key errors were made.
ELEVEN days after David Breckenridge’s murder, family and friends packed into his memorial service at Barker College on Sydney’s leafy North Shore. Hundreds of people turned out to pay their respects — a crowd snaked outside the building.
It was August 21, 2002 and Stephen and Karen Breckenridge had endured the unimaginable pain of their son’s brutal stabbing in a laneway at St Leonards.
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But now, at last, they would have a chance to say goodbye and just a small amount of closure — or so they thought.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal the funeral director was forced to halt David’s cremation in search of samples not collected during the autopsy.
“We had already said goodbyes and expected David to be gone, cremated,” Stephen said.
“We were told the police had forgotten to do scrapings of his fingernails and that they had opened the casket without any consultation whatsoever to us.”
Detective Stewart Leggat, now the investigations co-ordinator for the Unsolved Homicide Squad, said he did not remember the last minute bid to gather evidence from David’s body.
“I don’t recall that happening,” Detective Leggat said.
“Like anything forensic, any samples taken from David, fingerprints or the like would have been taken at post-mortem.”
The Breckenridges, however, are adamant.
“You would have thought that in a policing environment, where it’s a homicide, that their standard operating procedure would have saved the family of this,” Stephen countered. “Clearly that didn’t happen”.
UPDATE (April 16, 2018): Homicide boss Scott Cook said the cremation was interrupted to collect finger prints not nail clippings “so he could be eliminated from the crime scene ... to prevent a false “unknown suspect”.
Karen Breckenridge said the first red flag for the family was when they were informed that the Homicide Squad would not be handling David’s case.
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“A collection of police were in our lounge room and at the end of the discussion the homicide police said ‘of course we won’t be handling this case because it’s not a high profile case and he’s not a small child, so we’re handing this over to the local police, the Chatswood Police Station’.
“We felt like David doesn’t count. That he wasn’t worthy of their (Homicide Squad’s) investigation.”
THE FIRST 24 HOURS
THE local police who were assigned to the investigation immediately began looking at those close to David. They believed he made a last-minute change of plans the day he was killed, which he only alerted a few people to.
Among those to know about the change were Phil Noyce and another close mate Rob Laird.
Phil said he clearly remembered the shock of being questioned by police. At 6am on the Tuesday following David’s murder he was hauled out of bed by detectives and brought down to the police station.
“They really went hard on me, you know the classic good cop bad cop, and I vividly remember which was which,” he said.
“It felt pretty awful to be honest. And I was pretty scared because you just don’t know what they’re thinking and I thought ‘oh my God, this could go anywhere, this is crazy’.”
Rob Laird, a close friend of David’s from Barker College, said he knew he would be one of the first people police would come after.
“It was something I had to come to grips with too, because I knew enough about police process that they’re going to trace back steps and, because I spoke to Dave at whatever time, that probably I was the first person they needed to rule out,” he said.
“And I was like ‘f**k, I’m a suspect in a murder case’.”
NO LEADS
DETECTIVE Leggat said it quickly became clear that catching David’s killer would be difficult. No hard leads had presented themselves and no suspect identified.
“Look, I think the fact that within the first couple of days we had no firm line of inquiry, I knew that it was going to be a challenging case,” he said.
“It was a brutal attack that didn’t seem to make any sense.”
After an 11-month investigation, NSW Police concluded David was attacked at random, by a stranger.
Without any leads from the police investigation, David’s friends and family started to consider whether his murder was random or not.
“It doesn’t make sense that he was brutally murdered and not just a gunshot, not just one stab in the heart.,” Georgina Noyce said.
“This was like they were going to kill him and they had no hesitation in doing it in on the Pacific Highway. Their aim was to kill David.”
Stephen said there were too many questions left unanswered.
“Putting aside the fact that it’s a bit weird that there are people walking around with knives in their pocket, David doesn’t strike us as being the type of person that would be attacked,” he said.
“And why does David get attacked outside the North Shore Medical Centre? We don’t think it’s random, we think his murder was targeted.”
IN THE NEXT CHAPTER
PART Four of Eight Minutes: Who killed David Breckenridge? examines the eight-day coroner’s inquest into David’s murder. Who is the jealous boyfriend and where was he the night David was stabbed to death? And why did David’s on-again, off-again girlfriend leave the country and refuse to give evidence?
Do you know something about what happened to David Breckenridge? Even the smallest detail could help bring a murderer to justice and help bring some closure to David’s family and friends.
Help us catch a killer.
Email eightminutes@dailytelegraph.com.au or call Crime Stoppers 1800333000.
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