Investigator of suspected gay-hate crimes says police destroyed his reputation

A former NSW police officer once praised for his investigation of a series of potential gay-hate murders in Sydney has told an inquiry his reputation was destroyed by police who accused him of tunnel vision in an internal report.

Former detective sergeant Stephen Page was the officer in charge of Operation Taradale, an investigation into the death of John Russell and the disappearances and suspected deaths of Ross Warren and Gilles Mattaini in the 1980s around Bondi’s Marks Park, a known gay beat.

Former police officer Stephen Page outside the LGBTIQ hate crimes inquiry on Tuesday.Credit: Rhett Wyman

His investigation, described by then deputy state coroner Jacqueline Milledge in 2005 as “thorough” and “impeccable”, informed an inquest that found Warren and Russell died after meeting with foul play and Mattaini had died but his manner and cause of death was undetermined.

Milledge said there was a “strong possibility” Mattaini died in similar circumstances to Warren and Russell.

Threats to throw victims off the cliff face “was a modus operandi of some gay hate assailants” around Marks Park at the time of the men’s disappearances and death, she said.

“This strongly supports the probability that Mr Warren, Mr Mattaini and Mr Russell met their deaths this way,” Milledge said.

Despite those findings, NSW Police set up the secretive Strike Force Neiwand in 2015 to reinvestigate the Bondi deaths, the special commission of inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crimes has heard in Sydney. Neiwand effectively reversed the coroner’s findings.

Neiwand said in internal police documents in 2017 that Operation Taradale was infected by “tunnel vision” and had “relied on investigation confirmation bias which was a major factor that ultimately limited the validity of the coroner’s findings”.

In a statement tendered at the inquiry, Page rejected those claims. He left the force in 2004 and first learnt about Neiwand late last year, he said.

“I think my reputation was absolutely professionally destroyed in those reports,” Page said in the witness box on Tuesday. “It feels like I wasted a lot of time with Taradale. A lot of the gains that we had along the way were almost for nothing.”

He said he had “broad shoulders” but his main concern was for the families of the men.

In March 2006, Page attended Manly Police Station with Steve Johnson, brother of US national Scott Johnson, to seek a reinvestigation of Scott’s 1988 death on the basis it exhibited parallels with the Bondi cases. Scott’s naked body was found at the bottom of a 60-metre cliff near Manly’s North Head.

The inquiry has previously heard NSW Police assessed the “solvability” of Scott’s death as zero in 2012 and submitted to an inquest in 2017 that suicide was the most likely cause of death.

Sydney man Scott Phillip White pleaded guilty to Scott’s manslaughter in the NSW Supreme Court last week.

A 2017 police email tendered at the LGBTIQ hate crimes inquiry.

The inquiry heard Page was described in an internal police email in 2017 as being “attached to team Scott”, in a reference to the Johnson family. A police officer sought Page’s records to assess his “credibility” for criticising the police investigation into Scott’s death.

Detective Sergeant Steve Morgan, an investigation supervisor of Strike Force Neiwand, spent days in the witness box and concluded his evidence on Tuesday morning.

Mark Tedeschi, KC, for the NSW Police, asked Morgan on Monday: “Do you agree that the allegation of tunnel vision or confirmation bias is unjustified?”

“Yes,” Morgan replied.

Detective Sergeant Steve Morgan outside the LGBTIQ hate crimes inquiry last week.Credit: Nick Moir

Morgan told the inquiry he did not write the Neiwand reports but agreed he read them and took full responsibility for them at the time.

“Obviously I didn’t read through them in enough detail,” he said.

He said it was “most unusual and, on reflection, it’s not a good look” for the police to criticise Operation Taradale and Page.

Morgan said Neiwand was not directed by senior NSW Police officers to make any particular findings or to criticise the coroner’s findings.

OPERATION TARADALE: THE BONDI CASES

• The body of John Russell, 31, was found on rocks below the Bondi to Tamarama walking path in November 1989. He had human hairs on one of his hands that were lost by police well before an inquest.
• Ross Warren, 25, was reported missing earlier in 1989. His friends found his car in Bondi near Marks Park, with his keys discovered nearby on rocks near the water’s edge.
• French national Gilles Mattaini, 27, was last seen walking on the track at Bondi in September 1985.

Morgan, who became investigation supervisor of Neiwand in 2016, said police started with an “open mind” but agreed the strike force ultimately put far more effort into finding evidence that might indicate suicide or misadventure in the Bondi cases than homicide. Dozens of persons of interest were not pursued.

But Morgan said finding fault with Operation Taradale and Page “wasn’t something we deliberately set out to do”.

Later on Tuesday, a former associate professor at Flinders University, Dr Derek Dalton, gave evidence about his role in a university team scrutinising a NSW Police review of deaths suspected to be gay-hate crimes.

He said the project had been “a poisoned chalice” and became emotional as he said he was “not a police apologist”.

“I’ve spent years of my life documenting hate against gay people,” he said.

The inquiry continues.

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