IBAC hearings into misconduct during investigation into the Silk-Miller police murders
Former top homicide detective Ron Iddles has been questioned by the state’s corruption watchdog, saying he believed there were “failings” in the taking of witness statements in the Silk-Miller police murder investigations.
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Former top homicide detective Ron Iddles told the state’s corruption watchdog he believed there were “failings” in the taking of witness statements in the Silk-Miller police murder investigations.
He was the first witness at the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission’s hearings on Monday.
He said there was no reason why a “dying declaration” of a wounded officer was not recorded on the morning of the Gary Silk and Rodney Miller murders.
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“We’re talking about the homicide of two police officers, right: you put as much in the statement as you can,” Mr Iddles said.
“I just can’t explain why that information wasn’t in the statement, it beggars belief.”
The hearing, presided over by Commissioner Robert Redlich, QC, is into alleged misconduct by Victoria Police.
An allegedly falsified statement obtained by the Herald Sun in 2017 was the focus of the first day of proceedings.
Assisting counsel, Jack Rush, QC, said the exclusion of the evidence “potentially undermined the integrity of the investigation at the outset”.
Mr Iddles agreed there was a “failing” in the recording of crucial evidence within hours of the murders.
“Something went wrong in the initial stage,” he said.
Commissioner Redlich asked Mr Iddles why he didn’t raise his concerns during the investigation.
“This was a very difficult thing for me, you’re being critical of your fellow colleagues,” he said.
“I took the middle ground, I could’ve gone further. I probably failed the OPP, I probably failed the Silk-Miller family, I don’t know.”
An investigation by the Herald Sun unearthed a buried statement in which officer Glenn Pullin, who was among the first at the scene and comforted the dying Sen-Constable Miller, did not refer to multiple offenders.
Mr Iddles told the hearing that in a conversation with Mr Pullin in 2015 he detailed how detective George Buchhorn had approached him to change his statement, saying “for all this to work we need you to make another statement”.
Sen-Constable Pullin was told never to refer to the original statement, the hearing was told. The second statement is believed to have been made two years after the original it replaced, and was crucial to convicting Jason Roberts and Bandali Debs.
The discovery of the original statement along with new alibi evidence has thrown doubt over the case and raised questions as to whether Roberts was at the crime scene.
Mr Rush said IBAC had obtained evidence of a “pattern of systemic behaviour” by police of “such gravity that it has the potential to pervert the course of justice”.
Mr Iddles told Mr Rush that in more than four decades of policing he was only aware of one other investigation in which statements deliberately excluded descriptions of offenders. “It was not a common practice,” he said.
But the hearing was told officers Graeme Thwaites and Helen Poke, who were first responders at the scene of the Silk-Miller murders, were instructed by another detective, Grant Kelly, to exclude descriptors, including the words of Sen-Constable Miller.
A running sheet — notes from the scene — made by Sen-Constable Thwaites and referencing Sen-Constable Miller’s last words, was not included in his subsequent statement.
The Herald Sun’s explosive front page report on November 21, 2017, which detailed the discovery of the buried police statement, was also produced at the hearings.
Several meetings held between the Herald Sun, Mr Iddles and homicide detective Charlie Bezzina before the report were examined.
Other documents provided to IBAC by the paper also form part of its investigation. The hearings continue on Tuesday.