Trial By Water, Episode 1: Father’s Day

Trial by Water, Episode 2 is available right now. Click here for access the episode.

If you were in Australia after about 2005, you’ll probably remember the Robert Farquharson case. He was the dad who drove his three sons into a dam on Father’s Day. He got out of the car, but the boys didn’t. All three of the children drowned.

The case was in and out of the courts for years. And for the whole time, Robert Farquharson insisted it was an accident. Police were equally sure he drove them into the water deliberately.

In 2010, Farquharson was convicted of triple murder. But 14 years after the gate slammed on Farquharson, he and a small band of supporters continue to insist he’s innocent. In the past few years, a group of scientists, lawyers and doctors has joined them. They’re suggesting that the evidence doesn’t stack up, and asking: what if the system got it wrong here?

This question, and many others, are the basis of Trial by Water, a new five-part podcast investigation from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Bryan Kennedy was the best mate of Tyler, Farquharson’s middle son. He told us on the podcast of his disbelief when it was first suggested to him that Farquharson was suspected of murdering the boys.

“[My father said:] ‘Listen, Rob’s in trouble.’ I was like, ‘What the f--- do you mean he’s in trouble?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, they reckon he might have done it deliberately.’ And I was like, ‘Wow – what?’

“Because I know what Rob was like. And I cannot imagine him doing it.

“I want to believe Rob’s guilty. That would make things so much easier for me ... But I can’t. It just does not add up to me.”

In the first episode, Father’s Day, you’ll also hear from Luke McMahon, the acerbic lawyer who first brought this story to my attention eight years ago. He’s now signed up Farquharson as his client, which means he has got a professional interest in the case.

And Chris Brook, an astrophysicist and lawyer who has written the most comprehensive document that exists on the science used in the Farquharson case, which he describes as fundamentally flawed.

“I kept expecting that moment where I read something that gave me some doubt. But every time I started looking into it a little bit further, it fell apart,” Brook says.

“And then just to have everyone turn on him and end up in jail. I mean, it’s just unimaginable. You know, it’s like a true Australian nightmare.”

You will also hear crucial audio tapes from 2005, including the distressing triple-zero call first made by the boys’ mother, Cindy, in addition to police interviews, and never-before-heard audio of Farquharson telling his story for the first time to police in hospital hours after the crash.

It’s in that interview that their suspicions are first raised because Farquharson, instead of asking about the welfare of his sons, asks multiple times: “What’s going to happen to me?”

Watch the 60 Minutes special episode here.