Trial By Water, Episode 4: How Robert Farquharson failed the Dad test

In the story of Robert Farquharson there’s one thing that’s the hardest to understand. It’s the thing the public and the media found they just couldn’t accept about him. And it’s what made the police in the first hours of their investigation believe that there was something terribly wrong.

This was to become the sixth strand of the evidence against Farquharson. It was his behaviour during the crash, and in the minutes and hours that followed.

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More than the technicalities of how his car got from the road to the dam, more than the scepticism over cough syncope or the emotional power of the car sinking video, and more even than the witnesses, it was Farquharson’s own disturbing behaviour that turned police, and the community against him.

On that night, his actions seemed so far outside normal behaviour for a father that they must point, inevitably, to him having murdered his three sons. In the formal interview with police, it was the subject that preoccupied them more than anything else.

But what does all of this really tell us? And does it point with certainty to Farquharson’s guilt? Or is there some other explanation for his unsettling behaviour that night?

If you’re new to this podcast series, catch up on Episodes 1, 2 and 3 below.

More from this investigation

• His story never changed, but the science has – Good Weekend
• ‘I want to believe he’s guilty, but I can’t’ – Episode 1 of the Trial By Water podcast
• The ‘strands of the rope’ that convicted Farquharson – Episode 2 of Trial By Water
• The problem with memory evidence – Episode 3 of Trial By Water
• One crash killed three soldiers, the other three boys. Both featured this strange detail