Shandee Blackburn murder suspect John Peros’s DNA to be kept on file

The DNA of John Peros – the man found by a coroner to have killed his girlfriend Shandee Blackburn – will be kept in police files indefinitely.

Shandee Blackburn with John Peros.

The DNA of John Peros – the man found by a coroner to have killed his girlfriend Shandee Blackburn – will be kept in police files indefinitely.

Peros last week learned he had been found guilty of common assault against a colleague at a mine site in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region.

While he was fined $2000, the result also means Peros and his legal team will not be able to compel WA police to destroy the DNA they collected from him as part of that investigation.

Peros in 2017 was acquitted by a jury of murdering Blackburn as she walked home from work in February 2013. A subsequent 2020 inquest concluded that Peros had killed her, with Coroner David O’Connell declaring she had died from injuries sustained “during an incident involving violence with Mr John Peros, who used a bladed instrument”.

The coroner also found there was no fresh or compelling evidence to re-charge Peros.

Peros and his lawyers would have been able to write to police after his 2017 acquittal to demand any DNA collected from him as part of that case be destroyed, and would have been able to take the same action in WA if he had been found not guilty. But criminal law experts who spoke to The Australian said there would be no such avenue available to Peros this time, given the verdict.

The amateur boxer is understood to have had his DNA collected as part of the WA investigation into the mine site assault, and that DNA could potentially enter databases that could be searched as part of future cold case reviews around the country.

Forensic analysis of DNA has been central to the Blackburn murder case. The Australian’s podcast about the case, Shandee’s Story, uncovered failings within the Queensland state-run lab responsible for crime scene forensics in the state.

The Queensland lab had failed to obtain useful DNA from the Blackburn case, despite significant amounts of biological material and blood at the crime scene and potentially in the car Peros was driving.

Presumptive tests detected the possible presence of blood in Peros’s car in 2013, however, DNA tests carried out at the time the lab was running poor-quality testing found that it was not blood as it did not yield DNA. Numerous samples are now being retested by another laboratory.

An inquiry into the bungled forensics testing handed its final report to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Tuesday, recommending a major restructure of the department.

The inquiry’s interim recommendations, released earlier this year, included a call for the re-examination of samples from potentially thousands of major crime cases.

In sentencing submissions made in the wake of Friday’s guilty verdict, Peros’s lawyer, Craig Eberhardt KC, who also represented him in the 2017 murder trial, attacked The Australian’s podcast, saying it had caused his client significant stress and reputational damage. He also defended the not guilty verdict from the murder trial.

Mr Eberhardt successfully argued for his client to be granted a spent conviction, given a criminal record would prevent him from resuming his job as a diesel fitter in the mining industry.

Peros has always denied any responsibility for Blackburn’s death.