New police probe into death of Simon Gaskill ordered
A man’s body is found in sand dunes and police leave a courageous family to conduct its own investigation. Now their search for answers has been rewarded.
Victoria’s coroner has reopened an investigation into the death of a man whose body lay undiscovered for weeks in sand dunes amid claims by his family that police ‘‘shut down’’ the original inquiry.
In ordering the investigation to be reopened, Deputy State Coroner Jacqui Hawkins said ‘‘new facts and circumstances’’ revealed in The Weekend Australian about the death of Simon Gaskill had compelled her to set aside the first finding.
Ms Hawkins referred the case to the Criminal Investigations Unit of Victoria Police and detectives have now been directed by the court to mount a fresh investigation as part of the new inquiry.
‘‘Having reviewed the application (from the Gaskill family) and the article in The Weekend Australian Magazine ... I am satisfied that the application and the article constitute new facts and circumstances that were not known to me at the time I finalised my finding,’’ Ms Hawkins stated in her five-page decision sent to the family on Wednesday. ‘‘I am satisfied these new facts and circumstances make it appropriate to set aside some or all of my findings and reopen the investigation.’’
Ms Hawkins, in her original finding handed down on July 25, 2022, concluded the cause of Gaskill’s death was ‘‘unascertained’’ and closed the case.
A magazine cover story published by The Weekend Australian on April 15 – on the first anniversary of the 51-year-old’s seriously decomposed remains being found at Ocean Grove beach on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula – raised serious questions about the professionalism of the original police investigation.
‘‘We see this as a significant development in our search for answers,’’ Gaskill’s sister Amanda said on Wednesday.
‘‘For us, this is about trying to get some answers around what happened to him. I also think it is a bit of an acknowledgement that the police could have done more to get those answers.
‘‘When you don’t have an outcome and you don’t have any answers, it just goes round and round and round in your head until you can answer those questions.’’
The Australian understands it is extremely rare for the Coroner’s Court of Victoria to reopen a case and that the new inquiry is expected to take several months.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the court said: ‘‘Her Honour has determined that it is appropriate to reopen the investigation and has subsequently directed Victoria Police to compile a brief of evidence. As this is an open investigation, no further comment can be made.’’
Victoria Police said it would ‘‘continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death ... after receiving direction from the coroner’’ but declined to comment further.
Childhood friend Cameron Miller, who has been helping the Gaskill family search for answers, welcomed the Coroner’s Court’s decision.
‘‘From the very beginning, I said something didn’t feel right about this,’’ he said on Wednesday. ‘‘We owed it to Simo not to give up on him, and now we will hopefully get some answers.’’
April 15, 2022, was Good Friday, and around 2pm a teenager holidaying at Ocean Grove stumbled across the remains of Gaskill, just metres from a busy blue-gravel path to the beach.
His body was found lying face down, near a tent in which he had been living for weeks, and his backpack was still strapped to his back.
Mr Miller revealed in the magazine story that he had been in text contact with his friend as late as March 26, 19 days before his body was found.
In The Weekend Australian’s April 15 report, the Gaskill family voiced concerns that local police ‘‘shut down’’ and ‘‘brushed aside’’ the investigation because they considered him to be a ‘‘homeless guy who just died in the dunes’’.
‘‘They had no interset in it. They didn’t see my brother as important,’’ Amanda Gaskill said.
The Gaskill family says the police investigation was negligent and failed to locate his mobile phone or search his call and text data, which the family hopes will provide some clues about what he was up to – and to whom he was speaking – in the weeks before his death.
Gaskill’s father, Chris, said: ‘‘The police just ticked the boxes they needed to tick and that was the end of it.
“It was very dismissive.’’
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