Shandee’s Story: I re-enacted a killer’s footsteps – and proved the ‘impossible’

Forty-five seconds. The defence said it couldn’t be done. I was about to prove them wrong.

I looked towards the street corner where Shandee Blackburn was stabbed to death nine years ago and tightened the laces on my running shoes.

Forty-five seconds.

That’s enough time for Shandee Blackburn’s probable killer to run across four lanes of traffic and a grassy paddock, launch a frenzied knife attack and then run all the way back.

Less than a minute to end the life of a bright and bubbly young woman who was just starting to feel happy.

A new episode of Shandee's Story is out this week.

I know this because I travelled to Mackay for the investigative podcast series Shandee’s Story and ran the killer’s route myself, proving it was possible.

Blackburn’s murder remains unsolved but most bets on her killer are with the mysterious figure springing from the nearby bushes of a Girl Guides cottage and running hard towards her, and then running back.

Because what else would the person hanging around in foliage at a quarter past midnight possibly be doing? Out for a midnight jog seconds and metres from where a girl is murdered?

The running man, as he became known in later court proceedings, was captured in CCTV footage but the murder happened out of view.

The whole event took 45 seconds, enough time for the running man to launch a frenzied stabbing, according to homicide cops and a coroner. Not everyone agrees.

It’s been well documented in this investigative podcast series that Blackburn’s former boyfriend John Peros was charged with her murder and acquitted by a jury at a Supreme Court trial in 2017.

He denies any involvement.

Police built a circumstantial case alleging Peros was the running man in the footage but at his murder trial, his barrister, Craig Eberhardt, said police had got it all wrong. There just wasn’t enough time for the running man to cover all that distance and launch a frenzied knife attack, he argued.

Irons with Shandee’s Story creator Hedley Thomas and Shandee’s mother, Vicki Blackburn. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

He told jurors if the running man was the killer, he would have to be as fast as the fastest running man of them all, the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.

I’m not Usain Bolt. I’m not a champion amateur boxer either, as Peros was in February 2013, having come third in a national competition months earlier.

I’m a university student studying journalism and thanks to weekend touch footy games, I’m in decent shape but I’m no elite athlete. If I could do the run, someone else of average fitness could definitely do it too. And so I tightened up my laces and got ready to test the theory myself.

Forty-five seconds or less – could it be done? Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen / The Australian

Blackburn’s mother, Vicki , met us at the Girl Guides cottage one night in Mac­kay and pointed to the spot where she believes her daughter’s killer had crouched that night, hiding in the foliage.

“Watching and waiting,” she said. For Blackburn to walk past on her way home from a late-night shift at the local country club before sneaking up behind her and catching her unaware.

Vicki Blackburn doesn’t like this street. “Gives me the creeps,” she said. “Don’t push it,” my mentor the investigative journalist Hedley Thomas said as I prepared to set off. “And don’t face-plant,” Vicki Blackburn said. “We don’t want that.”

Retired photogrammetrist Lee Smith, an expert who appears in the podcast series, waved to me from the corner of Boddington Street where he waited with a stopwatch for my arrival. “Go!”

I set off, paying attention to what the running man might have felt that night.

I noticed that the bitumen, slippery from recent rain, made it hard to run at full tilt.

I noticed that the grassy paddock was a better surface to run on and muffled my footsteps.

I noticed all I could hear was my own heart thumping as the corner of Boddington Street got closer and closer and I was suddenly standing right where Blackburn was caught all those nights ago.

Proving `the impossible’. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Lee Smith started his timer.

Twelve seconds to rain down blow after blow, the time the attack could have taken, according to biomechanics expert Zach Couper.

Then back again. Straight across the grassy paddock this time, towards the open mouth of Sydney Street where police alleged the killer’s car had parked six minutes earlier.

I was in full flight, running hard towards Vicki Blackburn and Thomas. I arrived, breathless.

Forty-two seconds. That’s how long my run had taken. Three seconds faster than the running man in the footage.

Amateur boxer John Peros was acquitted of Shandee’s murder and has consistently denied involvement. Picture: Lee Constable

“It’s indisputable isn’t it,” Vicki Blackburn said. “There’s no way they can say it can’t be done. It was done.”

It can’t have been easy for her to watch the actions of her daughter’s probable killer re-­enacted that night, but she persevered through it as she’s always done in the pursuit of answers.

Now, at least, one theory about what happened to her daughter can be put to rest.

Anyone with information about the murder of Shandee Blackburn can contact Hedley Thomas at [e-mail]