Key murder evidence destroyed by police

A 13-YEAR-OLD murder mystery took another strange turn yesterday when it was revealed that all of the key exhibits in the case had been destroyed by police, prompting the accused's lawyer to call for the charges against his client to be dropped.

A 13-YEAR-OLD murder mystery took another strange turn yesterday when it was revealed that all of the key exhibits in the case had been destroyed by police, prompting the accused's lawyer to call for the charges against his client to be dropped.

Jeffrey Gilham, 36, was charged in February this year with the murders of his parents, Stephen and Helen Gilham, at the family home in Woronora, in Sydney's south, in August 1993.

He told police he came home to find his older brother Christopher standing over the bodies of his parents. Admitting that he had killed his brother in a fit of rage, Jeffrey Gilham pleaded guilty to manslaughter and in 1995 was given a five-year good behaviour bond.

At the time, the NSW Crown prosecutor accepted Gilham's explanation that his brother had set alight the bodies of his parents after stabbing them.

An autopsy showed that his mother had been knifed 17 times and his father 29 times.

After their deaths, Jeffrey Gilham inherited the $900,000 family estate.

Despite repeated approaches from relatives of Stephen Gilham, and a recommendation in 2000 from coroner Elwyn Elms that there was sufficient evidence to satisfy a jury that Gilham had killed his parents, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions twice refused to pursue murder charges against him.

That decision was reversed earlier this year, after the reopening of the case in 2004 by the NSW homicide squad.

It is believed new evidence has been uncovered that challenges Gilham's version of events. But defence lawyer Phillip Boulten told the NSW Supreme Court yesterday that his client was severely disadvantaged by being charged with the murders so many years after the event.

He said all the physical evidence collected from the crime scene had gone missing or been destroyed.

Mr Boulten called for the case against his client to be thrown out. If a trial proceeded, it would be an abuse of process, Mr Boulten told the court.

The hearing, before judge Roderick Howie, continues.