The key players in the Eight Minutes podcast series
DELVE into detailed profiles, images and video of the people who appear in the Daily Telegraph’s special investigation Eight Minutes. Find out more about their relationship with David Breckenridge and his murder case.
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DELVE into detailed profiles of the people who appear in the Daily Telegraph’s special investigation Eight Minutes
Find out more about their relationship with victim David Breckenridge and his 15-year-old murder case that has never been solved.
PHILLIP NOYCE
David and Phillip had known each other since they were eight years old when they attended Barker College — one of Australia’s oldest and most prestigious private schools for boys. Their friendship was founded on a mutual rugby union obsession — they represented their school and continued years after for the Barker Old Boys Rugby Club.
Most weekends were spent together at each other’s flats, going to sporting events or hanging out with their large circle of friends. “We were good time guys, liked having fun, drinking beer, singing songs and getting merry,” says Phillip.
He says Dave was his closest friend, that they confided in each other. They had that kind of relationship where Phillip would tell David everything and David would tell Phillip everything.
Phillip describes David as being a peaceful guy, who saw the best in everyone. “He really warmed to people and avoided conflict. He knew how to handle himself and perhaps talk himself out of potential situations or get people to back down”. Phillip says David was good looking. “He was certainly popular with the ladies and had various relationships during his 20s, but he was never the type of guy who was always looking for action or trying to pull. It was just that he met people and was very friendly.”
Phillip didn’t have any brothers and says David was like a brother. “It’s the closest I’ve had to having a brother and although I have a lot of other mates, Dave was unique and we had a special friendship.”
Phillip had celebrated David’s 28th birthday with him on Friday, then Saturday they spent a few hours at Phillip’s flat before he dropped David off at 5pm to finish his shift as a barman in the city. David said to Phillip then that he would come back to his place later to watch the rugby, when he finished work. That was the last time Phillip saw his best mate.
GEORGINA NOYCE
Georgina Hartley and Phillip Noyce met through work. As Phillip’s best mate, David became close friends with Georgina as they spent most weekends together. “Dave was always so lovely to me. Out of all Phil’s friends I felt like we had a special connection.” Georgina says she saw another side to David, that she felt like she wanted to protect him. “I cared very deeply about him because I felt he was vulnerable. I remember when Phil and I were going to buy a unit in Wollstonecraft and we got a two bedroom because I wanted that spare room for Dave. I just very much wanted to care for him, nurture him.”
Georgina says David always wanted to try to better himself and she thought he felt like he wasn't on the right path in life. “I think he probably would have loved to have been on a farm and I think that’s what would have eventually happened, he was getting there when he died. He had started to look for other jobs and look at other avenues.”
Georgina describes David as a lovely guy who would talk to anyone and would often spark up friendships with strangers. “He didn't like to see anyone sitting by themselves”.
Phillip used Georgina’s phone to call Royal North Shore Hospital in her frantic effort to find David the night he was attacked.
She says what hurt her most was seeing other people suffer. “Phil was in a state of shock. After the police told us what happened, Phil went and had a shower and I thought, what are you doing? But he was in complete shock.”
Georgina wants to see the police investigation reopened. “I’ve always believed we will find who did this to Dave. Even if we’re 80 years old and grey, we will find who did this.”
STEPHEN BRECKENRIDGE
David’s father Stephen was a partner at one of Australia’s most renowned accountancy firms. He is an astute man who appreciates protocol, attention to detail and sense of urgency.
“I had just started my own private consultancy business when David was murdered,” Stephan says.
“I had to terminate that to try and hold the family together.”
Stephen learned of his son’s death as the family were preparing to celebrate David’s 28th birthday.
“It was the morning of the city to surf. Karen and I were expecting the whole family to come over for a barbecue for David’s birthday,” he said.
“We had just returned from a walk down the Manly Heads and it was about eight o’clock.
“We were washing the dishes after breakfast when our eldest son Keiran arrived at the back door and he said David had been killed and the police were here to ask questions.
“My first reaction was ‘is this even real? How is this possible’.”
Stephen says he wanted answers straight away, but they never came.
“I needed to know details, what and where and why? When you are in that state of shock, you have no point of reference, you have no basis of comparison.”
He has led the charge to find his son’s killer and has been critical of the murder investigation.
Stephen says coming from an industry where risk is a high point in our life, he believes the police standard operating procedures including risk assessment weren’t apparent to him.
Stephen personally thinks there are enough unresolved issues that the police shoud be encouraged to examine this matter again.
Stephen says he sees flashes of David in the appearance of other young men as he walks through shopping centres, or along the street or at the beach, asking himself with ‘what if,’ and thinking they might have ‘come back and seen David.’ He just wants to know, ‘why?’
He says it may be silly, but both he and Karen wonder if, when a relative passes away, they might ‘catch up’ and have a beer with David and send us a message, telling us he is OK and what happened.
Stephen says he does not want to die not knowing what happened to his son.
“When you lose a child, it is the worst thing that can happen to you.”
KAREN BRECKENRIDGE
David’s mother Karen says it was her husband Stephen who stepped in to help her and their family to cope with David’s murder.
“I did feel a little out of control in some ways,” she says.
Karen credits Stephen for looking after her saying he was always the frontman.
She says she just stepped into the background to shield herself and that it was a difficult time — that never really goes away.
She avoids telling people about what her family have been through.
“I had to start telling people I have only two children because if I said three, the obvious question would be what does your youngest child do? and then that would lead to me having to explain what happened to David — which is upsetting for everyone,” Karen explains.
She says most people she knows wouldn’t know what her and her family have been through. Karen and Stephen speak about David every day and remember him how much joy he brought them.
“He was a wonderful son. Very easy, he was never a problem,” she says.
Karen explains how she and Stephen had built a special retreat for David to study for his final year exams, however he never used it.
‘He didn’t really study at all but I can still remember the day he opened his results and he beamed at me,” Karen remembers.
“He said ‘Wow mum you’ll never guess, I got 93.4. Imagine what I could have got if I tried!’”
Tragically, Karen had to endure her son’s death twice after David was crushed by a truck when he was just 20 months old. She nursed him back to health and then lost him again the day after his 28th birthday.
“I have felt all along that David was targeted, his brutal murder cannot be random.”
Karen pleads with anyone, someone now who may have kids of their own, to please come forward with any information that could be helpful in solving her son’s murder. “It’s very important, any little bit of information could be the key to solving this.”
ROB LAIRD
Also a Barker College boy, Robert Laird was a few years younger than David and they had first met him through the Barker College Cadet Unit (BCCU).
According to their website, the BCCU’s emphasis is on personal development and the promotion of leadership. Rob says David was the officer of his platoon when he was eight years old and David was about 11 or 12. Rob saw him as an elder and as time went on David became like an older brother figure for him.
Rob recalls when he was in year nine he was at a party with his older sister and David was there.
“He gave me some beers and then I guess from then on the age gap dissolved and as we got older became equals, very good friends,” Rob says.
Rob says they would share lots of in jokes about their shared history — “We would salute each other in the pub and that sort of thing.”
Rob describes David as being quirky, carefree and a kindred spirit.
“It was always a celebration, nothing ever went pear-shaped. I would talk nonsense and he would indulge me in my drunken garbles,” he adds.
Rob was one of two people David called just minutes before he was brutally murdered and was subsequently grilled by police as being one of few people who knew David’s whereabouts the night he was killed.
Rob says he’s had to come to terms with the fact they might never know who killed David.
VANESSA BAYLIS
David and Vanessa met each other through mutual friends when they were 18. She says their connection was almost instant.
“I thought he was weird and he thought I was hot,” she says.
Within five minutes of meeting each other they knew they were falling in love.
“It was one of the first times in my life that I met somebody who saw me. I just understood him and he understood me,” she says.
“There were parts of me that were seen for the first time, so there were parts of his soul that illuminated parts of my soul and I think when he died, those parts, they died with him.”
Vanessa says David set the bar very high for her in terms of what she expects from the people who love her and how she expects to be loved.
She describes David as being good, important and special.
“He didn’t want to kill anything or hurt anything. I am really scared of sharks, so he would go and swim around the harbour to make sure there were no sharks so I could snorkel,” she says.
“I felt very protected when I was with him.”
The couple lived in the inner city and she says David was incredibly street smart.
“He would always tell me to keep walking, not to talk to anyone, just to keep walking,” she says.
Vanessa doesn’t believe he would have provoked an argument with anyone. She was in a relationship with David for seven years and she had remained close with him, they spoke regularly on the phone about what was happening in their lives.
Their last conversation was on his birthday, the day before he was savagely attacked. She says she will not stop looking for answers as to who murdered David and questions whether the homicide investigation was thorough enough.
STEWART LEGGAT
The lead detective on David’s homicide investigation. Mr Leggat began his career in 1990 as detective constable at North Sydney station. He moved to the fraud squad in ‘95.
Mr Leggat spent six years with the fraud squad before being transferred to the Chatswood local area command when he was given the task of investigating David’s murder. It was Leggat’s first homicide case and today he remains linked to the cold case as the investigations co-ordinator for the Unsolved Homicide Squad.
Leggat says he is disappointed he has not been able to provide answers to David’s family or himself.
He says they did everything they could in the 11-month investigation to try and identify the offender.
Former NSW Coroner John Abernethy commended Leggat’s efforts on David’s murder investigation, saying Leggat was often alone and under-resourced.
Mr Leggat has 30 years experience in the NSW police force.
HANNAH ORLIK
Hannah met David in 2001 at the University of Technology Sydney where they studied medical science together. As lab partners in biology, their platonic friendship grew and a few months after meeting they moved in to share a flat together in Leichhardt.
Hannah was 18 years old when she met David, who was eight years her senior.
She says her relationship with David was special and she always hoped it would develop into something more. They both had partners during the time they knew each other, but Hannah admits to holding a candle for David, and admits now that she loved him.
Hannah had spent the night with David two days before his murder. They had gone out to celebrate his birthday, meeting at The Steyne in Manly and from there to another pub where they played pool with some locals until the early hours of the next morning.
She says because they had started drinking at 2pm, she was feeling drunk and David said she could stay at his parents house. Hannah admits they kissed that night.
Her boyfriend at the time, Paul Stapleton, had called her mobile phone at least six times that night before she turned her phone off.
When she turned it on at 6am, Paul accused her of cheating on him and told her ‘I hope he was worth it’.
Hannah and Paul ended their relationship a few days after David’s death.
Hannah contacted police two months after David’s murder, asking police to discount Paul as a suspect. She says when she heard a dark car was seen in the area that night, it sounded similar to Paul’s car and that’s why she contacted the police.
Hannah says she asked Paul whether he had anything to do with David’s death and he told her he was offended to be asked that.
TEALL BARNES
David and Teall were a couple for two years and had an on-again, off again relationship at the time of David’s murder.
They had met while studying at UTS and working part time as bartenders at a pub in Sydenham.
Teall says David was her first love, that they had a real, passionate love affair and they had lived together in Leichardt. She explains the reason she moved out was because she wanted ton focus more on her studies and David was more interested in socialising.
On the night David was murdered, David had called Teall from his work to say he might catch up with her after he finished his shift at Moreton’s Hotel in the city. Teall says she didn’t hold him to that as he often would plan to do things and then change his mind or not show up.
She describes him as being flighty and often said one thing and did another.
David’s parents had to wait 15 years to find out what was said in that last phone conversation as Teall left Australia to study abroad and did not want to return to Australia in 2005 for the inquest into David’s murder.
Teall’s parents told police she had a heart condition and could not travel back to answer questions. She also says she couldn’t defer her studies.
Teall says she is a big believer in ‘things happening for a reason, because as a victim of crime you have to look at things that way otherwise pain and anger become a really real thing’.
Today, Teall travels the world as a social media influencer covering luxury accommodation, fashion and music festivals.
PAUL STAPLETON
Paul was in a two-year relationship with David’s flatmate and university lab partner Hannah Orlik. Paul was 19 years older than Hannah — he was 38 years old at the time of David’s murder, Hannah was 19.
Paul worked for an IT company based in St Leonards and Paul often went for after-work drinks at Gilroys Tavern and St Leonards Tavern.
Two days before David’s murder, Hannah spent the night with David. Paul had called her mobile phone at least six times that night before she turned her phone off. Paul said during the inquest into David’s murder that he was with three friends watching the rugby the night David was murdered.
However none of those people could verify Paul’s alibi. The coroner said because Paul didn’t know David’s whereabouts on August 10, 2002, it makes his involvement in his murder ‘a very remote possibility’.
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