AT 11.52pm on August 10, 2002, David Breckenridge called his best mate Phillip Noyce from a phone box five minutes’ walk from his flat on Sydney’s north shore. The pair — best friends since their days at prestigious Barker College — planned to watch the All Blacks take on South Africa in a Tri-Nations Test. Eight minutes later he would be dead.
“I loved him and I lost him and somebody took him …” These are the anguished words of David Breckenridge’s former girlfriend Vanessa Baylis.
Her pain is still as raw today as it is for all of David’s family and friends who endured his brutal murder.
In a groundbreaking five-part podcast special investigation — Eight Minutes: Who killed David Breckenridge? the Daily Telegraph is lifting the lid on a horrific crime that makes no sense.
LISTEN TO CHAPTER ONE
The six-month special investigation reveals, at one level, the seemingly normal life of a young man with the world before him tragically cut short in a few short minutes of almost inconceivable violence.
It marks the start of a new appeal for information and offers his grieving parents fresh hope of an answer that has been eating at them for a decade and a half: Who killed David?
THE CRIME
It’s been 15 years since David organised to watch the late-night kick-off of a Tri-Nations rugby Test between the All Blacks and South Africa at his best mate’s place. David, 28, and Phillip Noyce were rugby fanatics from their days at Barker College in Sydney.
It was Saturday night, and Breckenridge, a medical student at UTS had just finished a double shift at Moreton’s Hotel in the city.
But David didn’t make it for the kick-off. Then halftime came and went. When the full-time whistle sealed New Zealand’s win over the Springboks, David still hadn’t showed.
“I’m thinking okay, it’s a five-minute walk, Dave’s not here, what’s going on?” Phil said.
“After about an hour or so, I thought well Dave, he knows everyone, he’s probably just chatting to someone or he’s gone back to the pub.
“I watched all of the rugby, about two hours passed when I thought, something’s not right.”
The All Blacks beat the Springboks 30-23 in Durban, South Africa. It was 2am in St Leonards, Sydney, and David still hadn’t showed.
Phil started to panic.
Two hours earlier David had called Phil from a public telephone just a few hundred metres from Phil’s house to tell him he was on his way.
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FIRST LOOK AT CRIME SCENE PHOTOS
EIGHT MINUTES: THE KEY PLAYERS SO FAR
Phil was a bit rough around the edges — the remnants of extensive celebrations for David’s 28th birthday the night before. The hangover had finally subsided but was now replaced by another feeling — dread for his friend.
Phil couldn’t sit still, he headed outside to see if he could find David.
He searched the cul-de-sac near his home, cutting through the overgrown bushes and neighbouring hedging. Worrying scenarios started playing out in his mind.
“I had a look around, thinking perhaps he was drunk and had fallen over or he was asleep, I don’t know what’s really going through your mind,” Phil said.
“I thought well, perhaps he’s been hit by a car crossing the road or something like that, but I couldn’t see any police or ambulances or anything out of the ordinary.”
Increasingly concerned, Phil returned to his apartment and told his girlfriend Georgina he was worried. Georgina’s first instinct was to call the local hospitals.
They tried Royal North Shore Hospital, located just metres away from the phone box David had used to call Phil.
The nurse who took the call was evasive and told them to hold the line. After what felt like an eternity, a voice came back on the line and dropped a bombshell. David had been in an accident and was still in surgery.
“Right at that stage, that’s when the panic and terror hit and I’m thinking, what the heck has happened?,” Phil said.
They sat back down on the couch not knowing what to do, having no idea what was going on. Then came a knock on the door.
Not even having time to process the unfolding situation, Phil and Georgina were confronted with a swarm of police officers.
BODY IN THE LANEWAY
Helen McMullen was driving her VW Kombi van along the Pacific Highway just before midnight when she spotted what looked like a person lying in the middle of an adjoining laneway.
Looking back over her shoulder, she was concerned the person might have had too much to drink and had fallen over.
Helen drove around the corner to get back to the lane and parked her van so no one would come down the road and run the person over.
As she approached, she could see it was a young man. His body was in an awkward position, like he had fallen down, unconscious, and hadn’t moved.
His right arm was buckled underneath him, his legs twisted, blood covered his face and the length of his body.
Resting neatly on top of his body was a black satchel. It looked undisturbed. As did a sixpack of beer neatly resting on a low brick wall.
Realising the young man’s desperate state, Helen raced back up to the Pacific Highway and tried to flag down a motorist who could phone for help.
Eventually Serken Akdag stopped. He too did not have a phone but drove back to his pizza shop, where he had just finished work. He called triple-0.
EARLY WAKE-UP
Detective Stewart Leggat was at home asleep when his phone rang at 2.30am.
A colleague told him a man’s body had been found on the corner of the Pacific Highway and Berry Lane, St Leonards.
He got dressed and headed to the scene.
“I saw what appeared to be areas of concentrated pool blood staining on the road surface at Berry Lane,” Detective Leggat said.
The blood belonged to David Breckenridge.
Det Leggat was informed by officers from the Chatswood Homicide Squad that David had what appeared to be several defensive lacerations to both arms, lacerations to his head and puncture wounds to his back.
An autopsy revealed David had been stabbed 24 times with a large knife in a brutal attack, which left him with a severed spinal cord, wounds to his head, his chest, his back, both arms and left leg.
Two of the stab wounds to his back caused a perforated aorta and left lung. He suffered blunt force trauma to his head and a boot mark to his rib area.
BREAKING THE NEWS
Grappling with the shock their best friend had just been savagely murdered, Phil and Georgina were now tasked with the horror of telling friends and family.
“His parents were still tucked up in bed asleep,” Georgina said.
“His friends were still tucked up none the wiser of what was going on, that really hit me that night, I just felt that there was Phil and I knowing what happened, and no one else knows, and it just made me feel really sad.
“It’s an eerie awful feeling and Phil and I were the ones who had to tell a lot of his friends, so the first person they had to hear from was either Phil or myself, so that was hard.”
It wasn’t long before Phil was shocked to find he was considered as a person of interest and Georgina had to set the police straight over accusations of a “love triangle”.
IN THE NEXT CHAPTER
Part two of Eight Minutes: Who killed David Breckenridge? examines David’s background, his friends, his lovers, his lifestyle and questions why would someone want to murder him?
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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