Shandee Blackburn’s accused killer John Peros lodges lawsuit over Facebook posts
The man accused by a coroner of killing Mackay woman Shandee Blackburn is suing a Walkley Award-winning journalism student for defamation over derogatory comments other people made on Facebook.
The man accused by a coroner of killing Mackay woman Shandee Blackburn is suing a Walkley Award-winning journalism student for defamation over derogatory comments other people made on Facebook.
Former champion amateur boxer John Peros filed a claim against full-time university student Isaac Irons in the Federal Court last month for being an administrator of The Australian’s official Shandee’s Story podcast Facebook group.
Mr Peros now has four separate and active defamation claims running concurrently, including one in the Federal Court against Blackburn’s mother, Vicki, for being an administrator of a different Facebook group devoted to achieving justice for her murdered daughter.
Irons, 22, was a student researcher on Hedley Thomas’s Shandee’s Story podcast that investigated Blackburn’s unsolved 2013 murder and that exposed shocking scientific failures in Queensland’s DNA lab, earning him a Walkley in 2022.
He is still studying dual degrees in journalism and arts at the University of Queensland.
Mr Peros’s legal documents were served at the home of Irons’ parents.
The statement of claim alleges that as an administrator of the Shandee’s Story Podcast Official Discussion Group, Irons is responsible for comments made on the site by the group’s 11,000 members.
In 2020, coroner David O’Connell delivered findings that Mr Peros viciously stabbed his former girlfriend Blackburn, 23, to death as she walked home from work in the sugar and mining town on Queensland’s central coast.
A jury had in 2017 found Mr Peros not guilty of the murder and he has always denied any involvement.
Despite the coroner’s public findings, Mr Peros alleges he was defamed by a post on the podcast’s official Facebook group page by an account under the name Lyse Ergic.
The post referred to Mr Peros’s barrister, Craig Eberhardt KC, and to The Australian’s separate investigative podcast The Teacher’s Pet, focusing on schoolteacher Chris Dawson’s murder of his wife Lyn, who vanished from Sydney’s northern beaches in 1982.
“Craig Eberhardt’s argument against The Australian’s podcast just don’t (sic) wash. The Teacher’s Pet by Hedley Thomas has set the precedent for uncovering the truth and sentencing the real criminals,” the post stated.
“I’m waiting for the day Peros goes to jail which will be justice for Shandee. Everyone knows he did it.”
Mr Peros alleges a second post on the official podcast group by a Facebook account under the name Alyson Lewis also defamed him.
“John has a huge sense of entitlement. As well as being an egotistical narcissist. I wonder if Poppy would want her daughter dating a man like her brother?” the post stated, allegedly referring to Peros and his sister.
During the podcast series, Irons travelled with Thomas to Mackay, where Blackburn was savagely assaulted walking home from work, suffering more than 20 stab and slash wounds to her face, neck, chest and arm.
Irons was filmed re-enacting the alleged killer running towards and away from Blackburn just after midnight, as recorded on CCTV footage.
The actual murder happened out of view.
Mr Peros’s barrister, Mr Eberhardt, argued the “running man” in the footage could not be Blackburn’s killer because there was only 45 seconds to reach her, launch the frenzied attack, and sprint back.
The running man would have to be as fast as Jamaica’s Olympic legend Usain Bolt to be the killer, Mr Eberhardt told jurors. Irons’ re-enactment contradicted this.
Mr Peros is also suing Vicki Blackburn over Facebook posts from members of the Justice for Shandee group which called him a murdering sociopath and a narcissist.
Ms Blackburn is fighting the defamation claim, alleging in her statement of defence that Mr Peros is a remorseless killer, had no reputation to lose and suffered no serious harm from the Facebook posts.
The case would effectively be a murder trial if it went ahead, Ms Blackburn’s barrister Patrick McCafferty KC told the Federal Court last month.
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