‘I went through hell’: Millionaire Paul Hatton rejects daughter’s inquest call

Millionaire grazier Paul Hatton says there is no mystery to the gunshot death of his first wife, and a coronial investigation should never have been ordered.

Paul Hatton and late wife Julie Hatton with Natalie as a baby.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

A millionaire grazier says there is no mystery to his wife’s death from a gunshot wound to the forehead, and the tragic case from almost half a century ago should never have been reopened.

Paul Hatton said his first wife, Julie, had severe postnatal depression and shot herself with a rifle in despair at Queensland’s Darreen Station in 1978.

“I was months, years, getting over this,” Mr Hatton said, making his first public comments on the death after a coroner formally ruled out an inquest.

“I went through hell. You wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anybody.”

Natalie Hatton is appealing against a coroner’s decision to refuse an inquest into her mother’s death. Picture: Paul Beutel

Former Labor attorney-general Shannon Fentiman ordered a coronial investigation in April 2023 at the request of Natalie Hatton, the daughter of Julie and Mr Hatton, who was a 10-week-old baby when her mother died.

Coroner Donald MacKenzie has now told Ms Hatton that a thorough police reinvestigation found no evidence to suggest the death of her 22-year-old mother was suspicious.

An inquest was not in the public interest, the coroner ruled, with some records and evidence that could have shed light on the tragedy no longer available.

The gun was recorded as being a Winchester .22 rifle but could not be found.

Police advised the coroner that a lack of information about the gun and ammunition, and about the exact height and arm span of the deceased, meant it was not possible to do a viable re-enactment.

Ms Hatton is appealing to the state coroner to overrule the refusal to hold an inquest.

She has cited ongoing concerns about issues including a lack of evidence of powder or burn marks around the gunshot wound that she believes would have been expected from a shot at point-blank range.

Darreen Station, near Eidsvold, remains in the hands of the Hatton family. Mr Hatton and second wife Ingrid have spent years restoring a century-old homestead there.

“Ask the attorney-general, ‘what evidence did they have to open this inquiry?’,” he said.

“This is an absolute tragedy turned on its head. My wife (Julie) was in a very, very bad way. She was diagnosed with … postnatal depression. She couldn’t even mix the (baby) formula. That’s how bad she was. But you don’t realise what’s going to happen.”

Born and raised on the Gold Coast, the only daughter of bookmaker Kevin Clifford and wife Lillias, Julie married Mr Hatton when she was 19.

Julie Hatton was born and bred on the Gold Coast and died aged 22.

Mr Hatton says she asked how to use a gun, and he showed her.

“In those days, you never locked the guns up because of snakes and crows and all that sort of thing,” he said.

“You can blame us. Maybe we should have put the gun (away). We didn’t think. You don’t think of those bloody things.”

Until the age of 10, Ms Hatton believed her stepmother, Ingrid, was her biological mother.

Mr Hatton said his parents and other elders in the family had stopped him telling his daughter sooner about her birth mother.

“I wanted to tell her from day one but nobody would let me. They all made me wait until she grew up, to make it easy on her. That’s what they thought. All her life, we tried to protect her, tried to let her grow up without hurting her. All it’s done is come back and bite us.”

After the shooting Mr Hatton went without eating, he said, to the point his sister warned his health was in danger.

“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I nearly took my own life,” he said.

Julie “was a lovely person” who could ride a horse, was very active and loved the property, he said.

“She didn’t want to go into this state of mind. Today, they would have more help for her. They understand it today. In my day, they didn’t understand it, that was the problem.”

As a result of the renewed questions about his wife’s death, he demonstrated to his family and police how it was possible for a person to take their own life using a similar rifle.

“It’s as easy as falling off a log. I’ve handled guns all my life. I didn’t realise how easy it was,” he said.

Natalie Hatton with father Paul Hatton on her wedding day.

Since the case was reopened, Ms Hatton has launched a separate civil claim seeking a declaration she is entitled to possession with her father and stepmother of one of the family properties, Delubra.

As of 2019, the Hatton family ran about 20,000 head of cattle across 10 properties spanning more than 40,000 hectares.

“If I had no money, mate, this wouldn’t even be happening,” Mr Hatton said, adding that he had the support of the rest of the family.

Ms Hatton said her civil case was “totally different” to her questions about her mother’s death.

She has been supported in her call for an inquest by a policeman who attended the death scene.

When he was a young constable, John Raatz wrote in a 1978 police report that “it would appear that the deceased was in depressed state of mind”.

Now 79, Mr Raatz says a sergeant he went to the property with on the day Julie Hatton died decided not to call in detectives.

“I wanted him to follow up and get the CI (criminal investigation) branch out there. He just said, ‘no f..king way anyone’s going to come here’ and ‘I’m handling the case’ and ‘no suspicious circumstances’,” Mr Raatz said.

“He was out there for half an hour. Hopped in the ambulance with the now deceased, and didn’t do anything. Why wouldn’t there be an inquest into the … full circumstances as to what happened?”

Mr Hatton angrily rejected the comments, saying they were in direct conflict with what a young policeman told him the day after the shooting.

“Is this the same copper that said to me … ‘you’re lucky you’re still here, that you haven’t been taken out, you and your baby’?,” Mr Hatton said.

On the day of the shooting Mr Hatton was out riding a lawnmower. He says it’s possible his wife, in a disturbed state of mind, also fired at him.

“When I was mowing, something went past my head, and it’s come back a couple of times in my life. We’ll never know,” he said.