ABC’s airing of allegations in Juanita Nielsen case “never happened”

The ABC was ‘duped’ into airing allegations that an undercover operation extracted information on the disappearance of Juanita Nielsen, an expert says.

The ABC has removed a miniseries investigating the 1975 disappearance of Juanita Nielsen from its streaming platform

The author of a definitive account of the 1975 disappearance of ­Sydney activist Juanita Nielsen says the ABC has been “duped” by “preposterous” claims that an undercover sting had found her murderer.

Peter Rees, who has followed the cold case for decades and authored Killing Juanita – the winner of the 2004 Ned Kelly Award for True Crime – said the lawyer who made the claim was a minor figure in the matter whose allegations had been refuted by police more than 30 years earlier.

The ABC late last week removed a miniseries investigating the murder of Nielsen – the founder of alternative newspaper NOW – from its streaming platform after it said new information had emerged that cast serious doubt on those claims.

The program, Juanita: A Family Mystery, broadcast claims from retired lawyer John Innes that he was placed in Long Bay Gaol as an undercover investigator in an ­attempt to extract information from Eddie Trigg, an associate of Sydney crime figure Abe Saffron.

Nielsen, whose father was heir to the Mark Foy’s retail fortune, had gained prominence for her newspaper’s opposition to developments in Kings Cross. She was last seen alive on July 4, 1975, at the Carousel Club owned by Saffron.

Juanita Nielsen.

Trigg was one of three men charged in 1977 over a failed ­attempt to kidnap Nielsen four days before she disappeared.

But Rees said: “There was no such undercover operation ever mounted by the investigating police whereby they put somebody into the metropolitan ­remand centre so that information could be extracted out of Eddie Trigg through a ruse.

“It just did not happen, my police sources have reaffirmed that. It does show the need for the ABC to look at its fact checking.”

Innes had, at a 1983 coronial ­inquest into Nielsen’s disappearance, claimed that $70,000 had been set aside for Triggs in a solicitors’ trust account as payment for a guilty plea. The police, at the time, rejected that account.

“He (Innes) never featured in any of the police running sheets on this investigation over the years at all,” Rees said. “The first I was aware he was going to be in the program was when I saw the story about it that was published … and it was the first I had ever heard of John Innes, not only in connection with this case, but I had never heard of him as a person.

“His name has never come up in any form or fashion in connection with this, except when he gave evidence at the inquest on ­November 3, 1983, and that was in connection with his claim about the purported $70,000 being set aside for Trigg.”

The inquest pronounced Nielsen dead but found insufficient evidence about how she died.

The ABC referred The Australian to its previous statements. The series was commissioned by the ABC and produced by Wildbear Entertainment. A spokesman for the broadcaster on Sunday said the content would be reviewed “in order to ­address concerns about the accuracy of Mr Innes’ claims”.

“We acknowledge that additional steps should have been taken to verify his claims,” he said.

Former Sydney Morning Herald editor Milton Cockburn accused the broadcaster of “double standards” after the ABC left online a documentary alleging former NSW premier Neville Wran had connections to Saffron and the 1979 Sydney Ghost Train fire.

“The independent review commissioned by the ABC found significant flaws in the Luna Park documentary but ABC management has simply doubled down,” Mr Cockburn, who had also worked for Wran, said.