Shandee Blackburn’s mother calls for Queensland DNA inquiry to be reopened
Vicki Blackburn, whose daughter’s unsolved murder prompted last year’s inquiry, said the government owed it to victims of crime to reopen investigation into DNA testing.
The mother of murdered Mackay woman Shandee Blackburn has called for Queensland’s DNA Inquiry to be reopened to investigate catastrophic problems with an extraction method that has been blamed for the failure to identify her daughter’s killer.
Vicki Blackburn, whose 23-year-old daughter’s unsolved murder prompted last year’s landmark inquiry, said the government owed it to victims of crime to reopen investigation into DNA testing.
A flawed extraction method, used in some form between 2007 and 2016, has raised doubts about results from thousands of criminal cases including the 2013 frenzied knife attack on Shandee Blackburn.
The timesaving method, that used robots to recover DNA rather than scientists doing it by hand, was not canvassed during the initial inquiry and was discovered by independent forensic scientist Dr Kirsty Wright after the inquiry had finished.
The abstract or executive summary for the “Project 13” method report falsely stated that the results of an automated method were “comparable” to a manual method.
Evidence in the body of the report revealed that the automated method was recovering up to 92 per cent less DNA than the manual method.
The method was used on almost all the samples of concern in the investigation into Blackburn’s savage 2013 stabbing murder in Mackay, including one from a fresh pool of blood that returned a result of “no DNA detected”.
Ms Blackburn said despite tireless work of Commissioner Walter Sofronoff and his team, the full impact of Project 13 remains a mystery to the public.
“There are potentially thousands upon thousands of victims who have no idea this happened or if it even affects them,” she said.
“Not once in over 10 years since Shandee’s death had I heard any mention the Project 13.”
Shandee, 23, was left to die after a frenzied knife attack on her walk home from work at the Harrup Park Country Club in the early hours of Saturday February 9, 2013.
A 2020 inquest concluded she was killed by her ex-boyfriend John Peros but found no “fresh and compelling evidence” required to charge Mr Peros with murder under the state’s double jeopardy laws. A jury had acquitted Mr Peros of the murder in 2017. He has always strenuously asserted his innocence.
Ms Blackburn joined LNP Leader David Crisafulli at Harrup Park Country Club on Monday morning to call for the DNA inquiry to be reopened.
“I‘m here to request all political parties get behind the call to reopen this commission of inquiry, specifically into the implementation of Project 13 and the resulting yield failures,” she said.
“All political parties must be dedicated to open public scrutiny.”
Mr Crisafulli said problems with the Project 13 report must be examined publicly by a commission of inquiry, rather than a closed-door review, to rebuild trust in the lab.
“It was the work of Dr Kirsty Wright who first brought the failings of the lab to light. I believed her back then and I believe her now,” he said.
“The significance of the DNA debacle cannot be overstated and we cannot rest if the job isn’t done.
“If there is even the slightest chance this could capture even one, let alone tens of thousands of criminal cases, then we need to reopen the inquiry.”
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