Former NSW State Coroner Derrick Hand dies aged 86 after cancer battle

He led the inquiries into the death of INXS star Michael Hutchence, Anita Cobby’s murder and the deadly Thredbo landside. Now, former state coroner Derrick Hand has died aged 86.

Former NSW Coroner Derrick Hand has died aged 86. Picture: Paul Dawson

The former NSW State Coroner Derrick Hand, who presided over investigations into some of the worst disasters that have rocked the state, has died aged 86 after succumbing to cancer.

Known as a down-to-earth plain talking coroner, he even gained international recognition conducting the inquest into the death of Michael Hutchence who was found naked in 1997 in his Double Bay hotel room.

Mr Hand dismissed Hutchence’s girlfriend Paul Yates’ claims that her lover had died in an act of auto-eroticism which would have given her access to his life insurance.

Mr Hand found the INXS frontman had committed suicide, and then sealed the coronial file for ever.

It was Mr Hand who investigated the Thredbo landslide when 18 people died after the collapse of two ski lodges and the 1994 Seaview air crash when nine people including honeymooners died when the plans taking them from Williamtown, NSW to Lord Howe Island crashed into the ocean.

Derrick Hand, coroner.

He committed the five killers of nurse Anita Cobby to stand trial and oversaw the inquest into the mysterious death off North Head of model Caroline Byrne. Mr Hand also sent “granny killer” John Wayne Glover to face a jury after he killed six elderly women in a reign of terror on Sydney’s north shore and face his own terror when his family was threatened during a notorious drugs case.

Born and raised in country NSW – growing up in for a time in remote Yarrabandai near Parkes – in 1988 when the Office of State Coroner was created in NSW, he was appointed the state’s first Deputy State coroner, working with Kevin Waller who was State Coroner.

Mr Hand oversaw the inquiry into Michael Hutchence’s death.

As well as the inquiry into the murder of Anita Cobby.

In February 1995, Mr Hand was appointed State Coroner.

He was Deputy State Coroner during the 1989 Newcastle earthquake and the Down under Hostel Fire in Kings Cross in which five young backpackers died.

When he retired in 2000, it was after 47 years in the court system.

In 2004 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the administration of justice particularly in the coronial jurisdiction, and to the community.

Mr Hand, who died in Brisbane on Sunday, leaves a widow, to whom he had been married for 64 years, two children John and Megan and grandchildren.