The Night Driver podcast: False confessions muddy the waters

Few people want Janine Vaughan’s murder solved more than Brad Hosemans but the former detective cautions against seizing too hastily on false confessions.

Former detective Brad Hosemans. Picture: Adam Yip

Few people want Janine Vaughan’s murder solved more than Brad Hosemans but the former detective cautions against seizing too hastily on false confessions such as the one proffered by self-proclaimed killer Denis Briggs.

“Often it’s (them) wanting some sort of notoriety, wanting to make themselves out to be something they’re not. It’s quite a fanciful, fantasy type thing that they embark upon. (It) makes investigations quite difficult when it happens of course,” Hosemans tells The Australian’s podcast ­series reinvestigating Janine’s murder, The Night Driver.

“You have to disprove what they’re saying in order to get to the bottom of it, where more often than not, you’re trying to prove something.”

■ Subscribers of The Australian will be able to hear The Night Driver podcast before the rest of the nation, exclusively in The Australian app. Episode four is live now. Subscribe to The Australian here, and download the app via: Apple App Store | Google Play Store

Hosemans was the investi­gations manager at Bathurst police station when Janine went missing after a night out with friends in the rural university town in early December 2001, but he was pulled from the case when rumours began circulating that he was somehow responsible.

The young clothing store manager was last seen getting in a small red car with an unknown driver after leaving the late-night Metro Tavern shortly before 4am; successive investigations concluded she was abducted and murdered, although by whom has remained a mystery.

The town, three hours’ west of Sydney, was consumed by gossip that Hosemans was behind the wheel of the car that night, having snapped after developing an obsession with Jan­ine only for his advances to be ­rebuffed.

Despite Hosemans strenuously denying he had anything to do with her disappearance, the vicious speculation about him became so rife that the detective left Bathurst, in part as a result of the ongoing rumours.

Even then, he continued to be pursued by accusations he was a murderer and was called as a person of interest at a coronial inquest into Janine’s death in 2009, with no adverse findings made against him.

Briggs was also called as a person of interest at the inquest.

Unlike Hosemans, who had done his best to distance himself from speculation he was Janine’s killer, Briggs had openly boasted to friends and his former partner, Julie Cleave, that he had done it.

The former aged-care home wardsman claimed he had picked up Janine, driven her out of town and tried to rape her before stabbing her with a knife, cutting her throat and burying her body near a creek outside Bathurst.

While he later recanted his confession, detectives working the case were unable to discount him entirely.

Like the mystery driver, Briggs had a small red car at the time Jan­ine disappeared. He had also stopped taking his prescription anti-psychotic drugs, been drinking heavily and become obsessed with Janine, visiting the men’s fashion store she ran on an almost daily basis.

The case against Briggs collapsed under scrutiny, with the authorities unable to find any proof he was responsible for the 31-year-old’s abduction and death — or that she had ever been in his car — and he was ultimately cleared by the coronial inquest.

■ READ MORE: The Night Driver — the new podcast from the investigative journalist who brought you The Teacher’s Pet

Briggs has since maintained he made the confessions while suffering delusions of grandeur while off his medication and been “hounded” into it by a former friend, Peter Barker.

As much as he would like his name completely cleared, Hosemans says confessions like those made by Briggs were a perplexing proposition for police, who needed to treat them with a high ­degree of scepticism.

At the same time, he says such confessions should not be discounted until they have been categorically proven to be untrue.

Former criminal defence lawyer Peter Murphy SC spent his career sizing up the credibility of witnesses and their testimony, and while he agreed it was impossible to discount Briggs, he says the body of the evidence suggested he was most likely telling the truth when he said he was not responsible for Janine’s death.