From Anita Cobby to Janine Balding, Glebe morgue has seen some of Australia’s worst cases

GLEBE morgue has been the scene of inquiry into some of Australia’s most horrific disasters and murders, including those of Sydney women Anita Cobby and Janine Balding.

Inside look at the examination room in Glebe Morgue.

• Glebe Coroner’s Court to get new home at Lidcombe

It has seen the worst disasters that have rocked Australia and witnessed some of its most notorious murderers.

At Glebe Coroners Court, former State Coroner Derrick Hand said the smell was worse than the formaldehyde used to preserve body parts in the morgue downstairs. The smell of the morgue, that would filter out of the air conditioning system, was the smell of death.

Today the Telegraph revealed the facilities at Glebe are being closed down and moved to a new hi-tech, $100 million facility in ­Lidcombe.

1989: THE MOST HORRIFIC YEAR

Since it was opened in 1968, Glebe morgue was at its busiest in 1989 with the 35 victims of the two-bus crash at Kempsey following the 21 victims from the Grafton bus crash just three months earlier into its chilled rooms.

In the early hours of Friday October 20 1989, a southbound truck crossed onto the wrong side of the Pacific Highway near Grafton and slammed into a bus travelling north.

The horrific scene of the Grafton bus crash where 21 people were killed.

The morgue had its busiest days when 35 people were killed in the Kempsey bus crash

At the time it was the worst road accident in Australian history and the inquest into the crash was set to be held at the Glebe Coroner’s Court. But before it could begin the morbid road toll record would be beaten after two buses collided just outside of Kempsey on December 22. Thirty-five lives were lost and 41 were seriously injured.

Before the year was out another tragedy would strike the state, with Newcastle being hit by a 5.6 magnitude earthquake just three days after Christmas. Thirteen people were killed, including nine who died when the floor of the Newcastle Workers Club collapsed.

The tragic year had also seen six tourists killed in a fire at the Downunder Hostel Fire in Kings Cross, the blaze deliberately lit by Gregory Alan Brown who was sentenced to 18 years for manslaughter.

THREDBO LANDSLIDE

Late on the night of July 30 1997, 18 people were killed when the Bimbadeen and Carinya Lodges in Thredbo were destroyed in a landslide. The rescue efforts and the incredible survival of ski instructor Stuart Diver, who was found alive days after the disaster, captivated the nation. It would take days for the bodies to be located and removed from the debris and when the Coroner’s report was released three years later, it would be determined that the main cause of the landslide was a leaking water pipe from the Alpine Way above.

Stuart Diver is miraculously pulled out from the rubble of the Thredbo landslide which left 18 people dead.

THE HORRIFIC AND VIOLENT DEATHS

Many victims of horrible violent deaths have passed through the doors of the Glebe morgue.

One of the murders that captivated not only the city but the entire country was that of Sydney nurse Anita Cobby.

Abducted and murdered from Blacktown, she was dumped on a farm in Prospect, her injuries were so horrific they couldn’t be printed in newspapers at the time.

In 1991, Wade Frankum killed seven strangers in a shopping centre in Strathfield, eventually killing himself on the roof of the complex as police closed in.

There were the eight men who humiliated mother-of-three Dianne Brimble both the night she died on the cruise ship Pacific Sky and at the inquest into her death.

Murder victim Anita Cobby.

Anita’s killer Michael Murphy arrives at court.

Janine Balding was sexually assaulted and murdered in Minchinbury in 1988.

One of several teenagers charged over the murder of Janine Balding, is escorted by police.

THE WORST ARE THE CHILDREN

The five little bodies, the youngest just six weeks old, carried to the morgue after they were trapped in the cabin of the grossly-overcrowded N’Gluka when it capsized and sank off Nelson

Bay in 1990 and their parents on deck couldn’t save them.

The unknown baby girl whose body was found buried in the sand dunes in 2014 at Maroubra, Kiesha Weippeart, six, killed by her mother and step-dad in 2011, and two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth, killed and put in a suitcase which was tossed into a duck pond.

Dean Shillingsworth.

Kiesha Weippeart.

Inquests are usually more sobering. Wheelchair-bound Ginger Jiang broke down as she recalled how she and her friend Connie Zhang had to leap from their burning Bankstown apartment in 2012. Ms Zhang didn’t make it.

Then there was the case of the member of the right wing National Action whose body lay one of the stainless steel tables in the morgue after being shot eight times. He wore a singlet bearing the message; “No to the new gun control laws.”

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