The Night Driver podcast: Janine Vaughan’s killer ‘off scot-free as ex-cop’s name ruined’

Rumour and innuendo has claimed another another ­victim in the Janine Vaughan investigation.

Former detective Brad Hosemans has been cleared of killing Janine Vaughan, despite rumours in Bathurst. Picture: Supplied/Ross Schultz

In quiet country towns, the only things that spread faster than bushfire are rumour and innuendo, and the damage done can be equally devastating.

When menswear store manag­er Janine Vaughan vanished after a late night out at Bathurst’s Met­ro Tavern, it soon sparked speculation detective Brad Hosemans was somehow respon­s­ible­.

There were persistent rumours that he had been spotted at the club in the hours leading up to her disappearance; that the red car she was last seen getting into belonged to his mother and was later found torched and abandoned; that he had been hopelessly infatuated with the missing 31-year-old; and, that his copper mates were all covering for him.

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The stories were shared over beers at the pub, in the aisles of Bathurst’s supermarkets, and in the back seats of taxis such as the one driven by Barry Cranston, who further circulated them as he ferried his passengers around.

Eventually the myth proved murder, at least in the eyes of some townspeople.

“I’m the one that said Brad Hose­mans did it,” Cranston­ tells The Night Driver, a podcast by The Australian re-exam­ining the murky details surrounding Jan­ine’s death. “I know it was him.”

Now in his 70s, Cranston has gone from uncertain eyewitness two decades ago to fervent disciple of the notion Hosemans abducted and murdered Janine after she ­rebuffed his advances.

He claims she confided in him during taxi rides around town that she was being pursued by the former­ detective and that he saw them together at the Metro Tavern­ the night she disappeared.

For his part, Hosemans has always fiercely denied any involvement in Janine’s disappearance, and a Police Integrity Commission inquiry and a coronial inquest found there was no evidence he had ever even met or talked to her.

Analysis of the CCTV footage from the Metro Tavern — by the police, Janine’s family and, most recently, The Night Driver — has discredited Cranston’s claims Hosemans was at the club when she went missing in December 2001.

But the retiree insists anything that contradicts this version of events is all part of the elaborate conspiracy. “The police have cleaned three hours of it (the CCTV vision),’’ he says.

“Three hours that he was inside the pub. They are the most corrupt police in Australia. He was with Janine at the Metro. I’m 100 per cent sure. Everything that’s gone missing and all the people’s statements (that) were changed has all been by the police.”

Some of Janine’s friends and colleagues tell The Night Driver many people in the community have jumped on the rumour­-driven bandwagon against Hose­mans, effectively running him out of town when there had never been credible evidence he had done anything wrong. Several friends say they feel sorry for the former cop because of the way he has been unfairly blamed.

One of Janine’s best friends, Rebecca Howell, says she believes the murder investigation was derailed­ because of the distracting focus on Hosemans, while the true killer got away scot-free.

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“Many people ask me about the whole Brad Hosemans thing. Janine­ never went out on a date with him, or never had any phone contact with him, or any lunch dates with him or anything like that,” she tells The Night Driver.

“We had had a conversation about him and she had disclosed to me that he was interested in her and that she was quite flattered. He was quite good-looking.

“But to my knowledge, I was never aware that she went out on a date with him, that he sent her flowers at the shop. I would have known. Bathurst is too small of a town. If she had gone out on a date with him or she’d gone for lunch with him or something, someone would have seen her and said something to me.

“I feel really sorry for him. Because­ he’s basically been forced out of town. He’s lost his career. Being such a small, close-knit town, people will get on the bandwagon. Most of the town thinks that Brad Hosemans had something to do with Janine’s dis­appearance.

“Which only hinders, you know, and makes it harder for us to get to the bottom of this. Because the rumours and innuendo, that’s not helping. That’s just leading­ us off the garden path somewhere. I think that because everyone had it in that it was Brad … whoever the real person is has gotten away scot-free with this, because there are probably other avenues that should have been more properly followed up and leads that should have been followed that weren’t.”

Brad Hosemans.

Peter Murphy SC is equally troubled by the rumours. The retired­ Family Court judge, who is working with The Night Driver in the hope of shedding new light on the case, has spent his career assessing­ the credibility of witnes­s­es and says Cranston’s claims are far from reliable.

“He’s got (Hosemans) hung, drawn and quartered … but we know it didn’t happen, because we’ve got the CCTV footage,” the former criminal defence silk says.

“It’s one thing to see a witness’s version change over time and we know his version has changed over time. But it’s quite another thing when somebody says something has happened as a matter of absolute certainty and we know it didn’t happen.

“You know, in terms of conspir­acy theories, they don’t get much better than the way Cranston­ constructs­ a conspiracy theory about the Bathurst police force. Is it just hatred of the police? Is it (that) he’s got something in for Hosemans­ in particular?

“Or is it just that (as a) taxi driver­, driving around Bathurst day and night over many, many, many years who hears things, he talks about things, he comes up with opinions about which he’s abso­lutely certain and over time — guess what? — they’re facts now, they’re not opinions, they’re not queries, they’re not questions that you ask, things have become facts.”

The widely circulated rumour that Hosemans’s mother owned a small red car and that it was later found burnt out after Janine’s disappearance is also false.

Anne Hosemans tells The Night Driver that she has never owned a red car, never had a vehicle go missing or be torched, and could never understand why “anyone would say that”.

Still, it has been treated as a hard fact for years in the Bathurst community. The rumours have found a receptive audience in a town desperate to uncover the truth, with many swayed by Cranston’s steadfast conviction.

But even he has not always been so certain. When asked by Detective Sergeant Danielle Rogerson back in May 2007 whether he was positive he saw Hosemans at the Metro Tavern the night Janine­ vanished, Cranston said there was no way he could be sure.

“No. As I said, I thought it was Brad Hosemans but he didn’t look at me. And from the back it could have been a lot of people. But as I said, he never looked at me once so I didn’t see his face,” he said.

“As I said, I thought it was him, but it would be very hard to swear in court that it was him.”

In a town engulfed by gossip and speculation, only one thing is certain. The rumours have done nothing to help solve Janine’s murder and only served to claim another ­victim: the former cop burned by the unfounded accus­atio­n that he is a ruthless killer.