One crash killed three soldiers, the other three boys. Both featured this strange detail

When Robert Farquharson’s car was dragged from a dam near Winchelsea on the night his three sons drowned, police noticed something strange – the headlights, ignition and fan on the heater were all switched off.

Farquharson is serving a 33-year sentence for the triple murder of his children but has always maintained his innocence. A number of scientists and experts, including the Australian Academy of Science, have now voiced concerns that the evidence against him might be unreliable.

Police at the scene were suspicious of Farquharson’s claim that he coughed after turning the car heater on and passed out before driving into the dam by accident. One of the key elements prompting that early suspicion was that the headlights, the ignition and the heater fan were all off. If he had the time and the presence of mind to switch these off, didn’t he have the time and mental capacity to at least make an effort to rescue the boys?

Senior Sergeant Jeffrey Smith, the acting head of the major collision investigation unit, wrote in a notebook, tendered at both of Farquharson’s murder trials, that night: “Not happy with this job; a number of troubling aspects such as lack of skid marks, instruments in off positions etc.”

At Farquharson’s first trial in 2007, prosecutor Jeremy Rapke suggested it was incriminating evidence. “When you and your family are drowning, you might think that the condition of the ignition switch and the headlights will be the last thing you’d have on your mind,” he said.

In the retrial in 2010, prosecutor Andrew Tinney said, sarcastically: “So what do you do [when you are floating in a dam]? Well, of course you turn off the ignition and you turn off the headlights, and with them the dashboard lights, because the last thing you would want out there in the middle of this dark dam is any light.”

The juries in both trials found Farquharson guilty. In the Court of Appeal after the second verdict, the judges said of the headlights and ignition that the jury were entitled “to conclude that these were deliberate acts of the applicant, done at some point after the vehicle left the road”. These facts were “relevant to the critical issue of the applicant’s intent”, the three judges found, vindicating prosecutors’ decision to present that evidence at the trial.

Police quizzed Farquharson on these questions, but he said he could not give an explanation. “I honestly don’t remember. I don’t know what happened,” he said in his formal interview, conducted two days after the crash.

About 18 months after Farquharson crashed his car into the dam, there were some remarkably similar features in another tragedy. Three SAS soldiers died when their car went into Port Phillip Bay, just off Swan Island, a military training base near Queenscliff in Victoria.

The men were on a training course that was described in a subsequent military commission of inquiry as being for “senior, experienced soldiers”. On the Saturday night, five soldiers went in two hire cars to the pub for a drink.

In the early hours of April 9, 2007, the five were returning to the base when the first car, containing three soldiers, missed a turn and drove off the road into the bay.

The second car, following about 30 seconds behind, stopped, and the two SAS soldiers got out and waded and swam after their mates to try to help them escape the car. One of those two men told the inquiry the water was about two metres deep at the point where the car was found.

Despite their efforts, which ultimately included breaking the car’s back window with a large rock, the two SAS soldiers outside the car could not help their colleagues, and the three inside the car drowned.

The commission of inquiry revealed that when police retrieved the car from the water, they found the gearstick was in the park position and the handbrake was on. The ignition key was broken off in the lock and the rest of the key ring was lying in the driver’s footwell.

The two key investigating officers who attended the SAS soldiers’ crash, from Victoria Police’s major collision investigation unit – Senior Constable Glen Urquhart and Sergeant Brad Peters – had also investigated the Farquharson case.

The tragic crash at Swan Island had one strange similarity with Robert Farquharson’s case.Credit: Nine

At the military commission, Urquhart was asked about the handbrake and gear selector. He said: “I couldn’t possibly hypothesise as to what was occurring, but from the time the vehicle was travelling to when it was recovered, an occupant within the vehicle has – either deliberately or inadvertently – put the handbrake on and put the gear in park.”

He was also asked why he thought the soldiers, from inside and outside the car, could not save the three who died. “I just can’t offer as an explanation as to why no one was able to escape the vehicle,” he said.

Peters said that opening the doors in a sunken car was “a fairly arduous task that they’re trying to perform”. Asked if there was any reason that the three senior SAS members might not have been able to get themselves or their mates to safety, he said: “I’m afraid I’d have to say that in respect to that your guess is as good as mine.”

Urquhart told the military inquiry that the video test conducted by the homicide squad in Farquharson’s case had shown that “once a door was opened, the vehicle sank in about three seconds; it sank very, very quickly once the water came in”.

This issue of how long Farquharson had to get his children out of the car was an important one for police.

The homicide squad investigator in Farquharson’s case, Senior Sergeant Gerard Clanchy, told a documentary crew after Farquharson was ultimately convicted and sentenced that in the case of a car with closed doors: “You had time where you could collect your thoughts. Collect the boys, work out a plan and say, ‘Well, this is how we’re going to get out.’ He could have saved at least one of the boys.”

In the Swan Island case, the military commission of inquiry found that speed and alcohol consumption had been factors in the crash. The men’s funerals were conducted “with appropriate regimental and other military and DCO support”.

The soldiers’ families received compensation because their deaths were “connected with the soldier’s defence service”. Nobody suggested they had committed a crime.

The Swan Island incident happened on April 9, 2007, and the commission of inquiry reported in September 2008. The inability of the soldiers to survive, and the facts about the handbrake, gearstick and ignition key were not referred to in Farquharson’s second trial, which took place in 2010.

Psychologist and trauma specialist Rob Gordon said actions such as turning off headlights and the ignition were “consistent with automatic behaviours that come into play” during a traumatic situation.

“I can think of a lot of automatic actions people undertook in bushfires and floods,” he said.

Scientist and lawyer Chris Brook, who has published a number of peer-reviewed articles on the intersection of science and the law, has written a book, Road to Damnation, questioning the evidence in the Farquharson case.

He said the Swan Island incident was “really a tragic illustration of the reality of the Farquharson situation”.

Clanchy and other investigators from the case declined interview requests for this story.

Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Glenn Weir said in a statement that the organisation “stands behind the rigorous investigation which led to the 2010 conviction of Robert Farquharson … we consider this matter finalised and will not be commenting further”.

He said police would respond “as required” if Farquharson launches an appeal.

Watch the 60 Minutes special episode here.