Dying Rose: Here are the bombshell moments from Walkley-winning podcast
Six deaths. One national shame. Compelling true crime podcast Dying Rose follows a team of reporters as they piece together the untold story of how the authorities react to the deaths of Aboriginal women and girls. These are the bombshell moments from Dying Rose.
Dying Rose
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Six deaths. One national shame.
Compelling Walkley Award-winning podcast Dying Rose follows a team of reporters from The Advertiser as they piece together the untold story of how the authorities react to the deaths of Aboriginal women and girls.
Based in an Australian city best known for its churches and festivals, the team traces the twists and turns of a growing scandal, travelling across state and international borders to document the voices of those dying to be heard.
This podcast goes deep inside their investigation – and the shocking stories they uncovered.
These are the bombshell moments from Dying Rose.
A YOUNG MUM’S LAST CALL TO HER SISTER
On September 18, 2021, Theresa Warrior received a call from her sister Charlene – a young mum who was sitting on a park bench alone, sobbing.
Charlene had been trying to leave the tiny South Australian town of Bute with her baby daughter, but hadn’t been able to find $20 for the bus fare.
Theresa didn’t know it, but that was the last time she would hear from her sister. She said she reported her missing the next day – but, in bombshell revelations, Dying Rose revealed that the police search wasn’t launched until 13 days later.
That, her family would learn, was too late to save Charlene.
AN UNCLE’S HORRIFYING FIND JUST METRES FROM FAMILY HOME
When Merle Dutton walked through the backyard of his mother’s remote NSW home in late March last year, nothing could have prepared him for what he would find.
“I looked and I spotted a dog chewing on what I thought was a kangaroo, but it wasn’t a kangaroo,” Merle said.
“I didn’t think anything of it until I got up a bit closer, then I realised it was a human being. I just ran out screaming and screaming.”
It was the decomposed body of Merle’s 31-year-old niece and mother-of-two, Lasonya Dutton, who had not been seen or heard from in four days.
Her father, Keith Dutton, has spent more than a year fighting for answers from police and asking how his daughter could possibly have been there for so long without her family seeing her.
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500 MESSAGES, 45 CALLS: TEEN’S TURBULENT FINAL HOURS
It was three agonising years after Rose Hunter-Hebberman was found dead in the back shed of a suburban Adelaide home that police returned the 19-year-old‘s belongings to her mum Courtney.
Among them was Rose’s phone – which Courtney learned had been smeared with blood.
But it was what was inside that would finally unearth what happened in the hours before Rose’s body was found.
Rose‘s phone revealed that she and Jared* (*name have been changed) had a volatile argument and exchanged more than 500 messages and 45 calls in the hours before her death, some of which showed Rose becoming more and more distressed.
In a breathtaking moment, Courtney reads those messages for the first time – and learns about her daughter’s final pleas.
Police concluded Rose’s death was a suicide, and Jared did not respond to the Advertiser’s questions.
AN EX-BOYFRIEND’S INCREDIBLE DRUG CONFESSION AFTER MUM’S DEATH
For years, police told Sue Nowland that they could never prove that her daughter Lyla Nettle’s then-boyfriend had injected her with meth in the lead-up to her death.
Until he told the Dying Rose team himself.
When reporter Kathryn Bermingham tracked down Jason* four years after Lyla was found facedown in a culvert on the side of an Adelaide highway, she expected denials.
She never thought she would get such candour.
Jason, now 52 and still using drugs, said he still “feels responsible” for Lyla’s death – but adamantly denied having any involvement in her final moments.
In a stunning twist, he admitted he expected he would be under more scrutiny following her death.
A BROTHER DRAGGED SCREAMING JUST METRES FROM HIS SISTER’S BODY
In one of Dying Rose’s most shocking moments, video captured police dragging Justin Goldsmith screaming out of his Alice Springs home – while his sister lay dead just metres away.
His mum, Lena-Rose Campbell, called triple-0 after discovering that her daughter Shanarra Bright Campbell had taken her own life in the family’s backyard, believing there was still hope to save the 23-year-old.
She expected an ambulance – but instead was met by five police officers.
In the haunting video, Justin can be heard screaming at the officers, “you’re breaking my arm … you’re breaking my f****** arm.”
Almost four years later, Shanarra’s family is still traumatised by that day – and the battle with authorities that followed.
POLICE OFFICER’S STUNNING WORDS AFTER TEEN FOUND
When 17-year-old Charli Powell’s body was found inside a men’s toilet block in Queanbeyan, near Canberra, by her abusive boyfriend, there was a warrant out for his arrest.
The teen girl had been subject to violent abuse at the hands of Logan* (name has been changed), her first serious boyfriend.
But, when police arrived to find him huddled over her body, they didn’t arrest him over the warrant
Instead, a senior constable told him to “go home (and) have a cup of tea” – and didn’t see him again for more than eight months.
The shocking oversight was lashed by the NSW Coroner’s Court, but was only the beginning of Charli’s mum’s years of heartache and fight for justice.
The Coroner ruled that Charli’s death was a suicide, in the context of an abusive relationship with Logan.
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