Cold Case Files: Victoria Police secretly starts fresh investigations into 63 unsolved murders

AN elite new Victoria Police squad has secretly started fresh probes into 63 old unsolved homicides going back as far as 1975. | Search our Cold Case Files

AN elite new Victoria Police squad has secretly started fresh probes into 63 old unsolved homicides going back as far as 1975.

Cold case and missing persons squad head Jill Dyson said preliminary work already done on the murders suggested there would be some arrests.

“There are definitely solvable cases among them,” Det-Insp Dyson told the Herald Sun.

She and the squad’s Acting Det-Insp Boris Buick said that for “operational reasons” they were not able to identify most of the 63 cases.

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But in their first media interview since the squad was formed in July, Det-Insp Dyson and Acting Det-Insp Buick revealed:

ONE of the 63 reinvestigations was launched after police received new details relating to the 1997 murder of Jane Thurgood-Dove, 34, who was shot dead in front of her three children.

HOMICIDE cold case detectives are also reinvestigating the 1999 execution of Vicki Jacobs, 37, who was shot six times as she slept beside her then six-year-old son at their Bendigo home.

THE 1975 disappearance of Maryborough schoolboy Terry Floyd is another one of the 63 cases being re-examined as police believe he was murdered by a paedophile.

SEVERAL new suspects have been nominated for the 1984 rape and murder of six-year-old Kylie Maybury following last month’s publicity about the case in the Herald Sun.

IF new information given to police about the 1976 disappearance of eight-year-old Eloise Worledge from her Beaumaris home checks out it could lead to a full reinvestigation of that case.

A CONFESSION in which a man named his co-offender before dying is being treated as genuine and detectives are “fairly confident” it will lead to the murder being solved.

THREE recent missing persons cases are now being treated as murders, including that of Paul Kingsbury, 27, who disappeared from Moolap, near Geelong, on July 6.

Det-Insp Dyson said the new squad now had the manpower and resources to fully investigate the 63 unsolved homicides it had prioritised from the more than 500 cold cases on its books.

“It is up to full strength as of this week after various people were brought in from other areas of the crime department,” she said.

“We have an inspector, two senior sergeants, five sergeants, 21 detectives and three intelligence practitioners.”

Acting Det-Insp Buick said while every cold case was equally important it made sense for the squad to initially concentrate on those which were most likely to be solved.

The 63 cases currently being investigated were prioritised for reasons such as promising new information, a likely suspect or advances in technology making new forensic evidence available.

Acting Det-Insp Buick said while the homicide squad had achieved some great results with cold cases in the past, the constant pressure to respond to new murders as they happen meant resources had to be removed from cold to “hot” cases.

“Part of the reason the cold case and missing persons squad was created was because of the realisation that the reactive homicide squad crews were having difficulty advancing the cold case investigations with all the reactive jobs they were attending,” he said.

Acting Det-Insp Buick said having a dedicated and well-resourced cold case squad was a much more efficient way of operating and it was already tackling a large number of old unsolved homicides.

“We are conducting 63 investigations at the moment, the oldest of which goes back to 1975,” he said.

“What I don’t include in that number is that from time to time we get information in from Crime Stoppers and elsewhere on an old job that we are currently not working on.

“When we get an information report that doesn’t necessitate a full blown rework of the job I don’t include that as one of the 63.

“The 63 I am talking about are jobs where we actually are doing a full blown investigation on an unsolved homicide or suspicious missing person.”

Acting Det-Insp Buick said recent publicity in the Herald Sun about the unsolved 1984 rape and murder of Kylie Maybury had led to several suspects being nominated to police.

He said Kylie’s killer’s DNA had been obtained from material he left on the body of the six-year-old and that DNA sample would be compared with DNA police intended getting from the newly nominated suspects as well as previously nominated suspects who hadn’t yet been DNA tested.

“A number of people were identified, not all had been identified previously, so we are pursuing those leads,” Acting Det-Insp Buick said.

“Not all the people who had been identified had had their DNA taken so we are now going through the process of who has been DNA tested and who hasn’t and then we will go about getting DNA from all those people.”

Another high-profile case the new squad is investigating fully is the 1997 shooting murder of Niddrie mother Jane Thurgood-Dove.

Police are confident they have identified the pot-bellied gunman who executed her in front of her three children as now-dead John Mordy, as well as the man who organised the getaway car, James Reynolds, who is also now dead.

But they are still chasing the getaway car driver and the man who funded and organised the murder.

Acting Det-Insp Buick said the Thurgood-Dove murder wasn’t the only unsolved case where one of a number of people known to be involved in a homicide had died before being able to be brought to justice.

“There is another where a party has confessed, implicating their co-offender, and then died,” he said.

“We are working to advance that investigation. That’s one I am more confident than others that we will solve.”

The new cold case and missing persons squad handles all missing person cases as well as cold case homicides and sex crimes.

Det-Insp Dyson heads up the entire squad, with Acting Det-Insp Buick handling cold case homicides.

Set Sen-Sgt Deb Bennett looks after cold case sex crimes.

At present the cold case homicide and sex crimes crews work from separate buildings, but will be housed together at the new Spencer St Police Complex when it is completed in June next year.

“We will be sitting on the same floor as the homicide and sex crimes squads so we will all be working closely together,” Det-Insp Dyson said.

She and Acting Det-Insp Buick are working on establishing a formal prioritisation process for the 500 cold cases the new squad is responsible for.

“Boris has been travelling around looking at what other jurisdictions do,” Det-Insp Dyson said.

Acting Det-Insp Buick said he had spent time with homicide cold case units in New South Wales, Western Australia, Queensland and elsewhere.

“NSW have had an unsolved homicide unit running since 2008, WA has been running an unsolved homicide capacity since the Claremont murders in 1996 and 1997, they established their unit in response to that, and Queensland also has a separate cold case investigative capacity,” he said.

“We have had an informal cold case unit sitting within the homicide squad.

“We are probably the last to formally detach ourselves and create our own cold case investigative capacity and now we are doing that we are looking at the best practice across Australia.

“I have spoken to each of the other jurisdictions and I am currently developing our own investigation prioritisation process.”

Acting Det-Insp Buick said the process would be guided by such things as whether the exhibits from the case still existed, whether the principle witnesses and suspects were alive and if there was unidentified offender DNA that had yet to be processed

“They are some of the categories that will allow us to decide whether it’s more worth advancing some cases than others,” he said.

Anyone with any information on any cold case is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential crime report at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au