Kevin John Mannix: Police falsely accuse Barry Mannix with murder of his father in Palm Beach in 1984

A sex shop owner was found brutally murdered outside his Gold Coast unit. What police did next was so outrageous it changed the state forever. THE SHOCKING STORY

Tweed Heads sex shop owner Kevin John Mannix was found brutally murdered outside his Palm Beach unit.

He had been abducted and was found blindfolded and gagged with his throat cut.

It was 40 years ago next week that the murder which shocked the nation occurred.

Mr Mannix’s body was discovered at 6am on June 22, 1984 by his son Barry.

Gold Coast CIB chief, Inspector Roy Graves, said Mr Mannix had been found with “a deep cut to his throat, stab wounds to his chest and a cut on his left hand”.

“He was blindfolded and gagged and his hands had been bound with plastic wire,” he said at the time.

Barry Mannix, Photographed the day he discovered his father’s body. Picture: Gold Coast Bulletin

The 50-year-old’s white Toyota Supra with a personalised registration, KJM triple-0, had also been taken.

The younger Mr Mannix was just 18 years old at the time and lived with his father at his Gold Coast Highway shop, while working in his shop Ward and Wilson Associates’ adult bookshop.

He told police the last time he had seen his father was leaving the shop the previous night.

“He just said he was tired and was going home. There was nothing out of the ordinary,’’ he said.

“The shop was well-established _ it was his life. He has always been in this business for as long as I can remember.

“There was no rivalry or anything like that. Sex shops are perfectly legitimate in New South Wales.”

Police soon zeroed in on Barry Mannix as their chief suspect in the crime.

Gold Coast Bulletin 1984, June 23. Front page.

Gold Coast Bulletin 1984, June 26. Front page.

He was arrested on July 6 1984 and charged with his murder. In a statement tendered in court during his September 1984 committal hearing, the younger Mr Mannix was said to have claimed he gagged and bound his father after he killed him “to make it look as if I hadn’t done it’’.

The statement claimed he had carried his father to the bottom of the back steps, where he cut his throat.

He then went to the beach at the rear of the unit and threw the knife into the sea, the statement claimed.

However doubt soon emerged, with police technical officer Roylene Wolski giving evidence in court that bloodstains found at the alleged murder scene were inconsistent with Mannix’s confession.

Craig Andrew McConnell’s mugshot from his arrest in 1985.

Craig Andrew McConnell, pictured in 2018

The case against Barry Mannix collapsed and in November that year when Craig Andrew McConnell was charged with the murder of Mr Mannix and Surfers Paradise callgirl Lovina Cunningham.

Attorney-General Neville Harper ordered the hearing halted while the facts of Mr Mannix’s alleged statement were made.

Mr Mannix’s lawyers said the young man had been “verballed by Queensland Police and been forced to make the “confession” under duress while being interrogated over a 12-hour period at the Broadbeach Police Station.

Gold Coast Bulletin Front page Friday April 21, 1989

Opposition police spokesman and future premier Wayne Goss blasted the handling of the case.

Barry Mannix was freed from custody and cleared of any involvement in the crime.

He moved to New Zealand to escape the injustice.

McConnell was convicted of both murders and spent decades behind bars before being released in 2003. Queensland Police in the late 1980s were forced to begin taping interviews with suspects in a bid to end the practice of ‘verballing’.

One of those who welcomed the new system was Raewyn Mannix, Barry’s mother.

McConnell, who had also previously been accused of the 1983 murder of shop worker Linda Reed was later found in 2018 to be living in New Zealand and operating an auction house.

Barry Mannix was innocent of the crime police charged him with.