Call for justice for dead cousins Mona Lisa and Cindy Smith

The NSW Coroner urged to reject the exoneration of a white, middle-aged man over the road deaths of two Aboriginal girls and the sexual molestation of the younger girl’s body.

Mona Lisa Smith.

The NSW Coroner has been urged to reject the exoneration of a white, middle-aged man over the horrific road deaths of two Aboriginal girls, and the sexual molestation of the younger girl’s body, 36 years ago in Bourke, NSW.

Counsel assisting the Coroner, Peggy Dwyer, said in her closing submission at an inquest into the deaths of Indigenous cousins Mona Lisa Smith and Jacinta Rose Smith, also known as Cindy: “The truth is that it was ­(exonerated defendant) Alexander (Ian) Grant who was responsible for the girls’ deaths.’’

Grant walked free from his 1990 trial after convincing a jury that 16-year-old Mona Smith was driving the crashed utility vehicle in which both girls were killed. However, Dr Dwyer rejected the jury’s verdict, and recommended to the NSW Coroner, Teresa O’Sullivan, that “the evidence points in one way – to Mr Grant being the driver of the vehicle’’.

Dr Dwyer said: “In my submission, Mona was not the driver of the vehicle. And it’s a terrible ­injustice … It started with a lie told by Mr Grant, and that lie has been allowed to sit and fester for decades now.

“And the perpetration of that lie ends, in my respectful submission, with this inquest.’’

Dr Dwyer said the Coroner may find that racial bias had influenced the initial, flawed police investigation into the girls’ deaths, and that in some respects, their grieving families “were treated ­differently’’ because they were Aboriginal.

“There was racism in the police force at the time,’’ Dr Dwyer said, adding that the police initially failed to conduct “an independent, thorough and unbiased investigation”.

The Smith families have called for a resumed inquest into the girls’ deaths since Grant escaped conviction, despite admitting he had lied to police.

“This family and community have been thoroughly vindicated in the holding of this inquest,” Dr Dwyer said.

In a further twist, she revealed that when a 2021 request for a resumed inquest was rejected by former NSW attorney-general Mark Speakman, his decision was based on “incorrect information” provided by former NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller, indicating “that an independent investigation had already been carried out’’.

That incorrect police information “is of genuine and deep concern’,’ she said and had led to her recommendation that NSW Police should “ensure that that doesn’t happen again’’.

Christine Melis, counsel for the NSW Police Commissioner, denied the inquest had unearthed robust evidence of “systemic racism or cultural bias” in the original police probe, while conceding the process was “deficient”.

The inquest has heard Grant told police he was driving the crashed ute, before changing his story when he realised the girls were dead. It has heard evidence that Grant’s ute was not properly seized by police, that the crime scene was not secured, that first witnesses to the crash site were not formally interviewed and that the ute’s steering wheel was not examined for fingerprints.

Appearing for the Smith families, barrister Julie Buxton said the failings of the original police investigation were “overwhelming’’.

Cindy Smith.

The excavator driver was found at the crash site drunk and uninjured, with his arm across the near-naked body of 15-year-old Cindy Smith. Yet he escaped a jail sentence for interfering with the child’s corpse when the charge was controversially withdrawn by prosecutors shortly before his 1990 trial.

They did this because of a technicality: medical experts could not determine the exact moment of Cindy’s death. Ms Buxton said the withdrawal of this charge had been devastating for the family and they had requested that such a technicality never be relied on again.

Dr Dwyer said in her closing submission on Wednesday that there had been “ample evidence” from witnesses that Grant had molested Cindy’s corpse.

Earlier, Cindy’s mother, Dawn Smith, told the inquest she “felt sick in my stomach” when Grant was acquitted. In a devastating ­impact statement that was read to the Bourke Court House by one of her granddaughters, Dawn Smith, who is now 81, said the jury’s verdict had made her feel enraged and as if “no one cared about Cindy or Mona’’.

She threw her shoe at the all-white jury when they announced their 1990 verdict, and chased the acquitted Grant to the local police station. “I felt so hopeless and ­defeated,” she said.

“It was unbelievable, unbelievable, that these charges (the interfere with corpse charge) would be dropped,’’ she said, calling Grant’s alleged actions that led to the charges “evil” and “disgusting”.

She said that the defendant “got to lie and walk away’’.

Dawn Smith is a mother of eight plus two adopted children, who has buried five children, including Cindy. She still works at Bourke’s Aboriginal Legal Service, and she recalled how she was pulled out of church in December 1987 and told by a cousin that her 15-year-old daughter, Cindy, “had gone’’.

“I went into shock and I couldn’t think straight,” she said.

“ When we got to the hospital, I was praying it wouldn’t be her, but it was. It was her. It’s something I will never forget.

“There was my daughter’s injured, lifeless body laying there. It broke my heart to see her like that and it still hurts so much today. Remembering my daughter is something I try to forget, but … it will never leave me.’’

Ms Smith said that for years after Grant – who died in 2017 – was acquitted, she smoked and drank heavily “to numb my pain’’ although she turned this around following an operation.

For her, the inquest had not opened old wounds, “because how can you open up a wound that has never healed?’’

The inquest also heard from Mona Smith’s sister, Fiona Smith, and her mother, June Smith.

With people attending the inquest already reduced to tears by the women’s testimony, a song written and performed by June, called My Heart is Broken in Two, was played to the courtroom. An Indigenous dance performance was held outside court once the day’s proceedings concluded.

Ms O’Sullivan, who thanked the Smith families for their grace and courage, will hand down her findings in 2024.