The Night Driver podcast: Nothing fishy about parishioner, says pastor

As a church pastor, David Coy believes he has a good bead on telling the sinners from the saints.

Janine Vaughan.

As a church pastor, David Coy believes he has a good bead on telling the sinners from the saints. And he says he had no cause for concern when a committed parish­ioner, Andrew Jones, became a key person of interest in a homicide investigation.

“I’m not perfect, but I’m not a bad judge of character,” he told The Night Driver podcast series re-examining the events around Janine Vaughan’s abduction and almost certain murder.

“I never detected any reason for concern about any dodgy behaviour or suspicious behaviour. Sometimes you smell with people there’s something just not right — I’ve never had any reason to suspect Andrew.”

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Deeply religious, Jones had joined Coy’s Bathurst Evangelical Church after relocating to the country town in the NSW central tablelands, three hours’ west of Sydney, in January 2000.

Coy said while Jones maintained a somewhat solitary lifestyle outside his job as a locum pharmacist, he became a highly engaged member of his congregation, taking part in all aspects of church life from the weekly ser­vices and morning teas to Bible studies session after work.

Jones would later tell police he had visited the minister for one such session on the evening before Janine vanished and had long been tucked up in bed by the time the 31-year-old was last seen getting in small red car after leaving the town’s Metro Tavern shortly before 4am on Friday, ­December 1, 2001.

Successive investigations concluded Janine was abducted and murdered, though her body has never been found and the driver of the car has not been identified.

In the days after Janine’s dis­appearance, Jones was questioned by police following a tip that he owned a small red Renault sedan. He told detectives he had been on locum duties at a pharmacy in Lithgow — a smaller town 45 minutes from Bathurst — on Thursday, December 6.

After finishing work about 6pm, he had dinner alone across the road at the bowling club.

He said he then drove to Coy’s home in Bathurst, arriving about 7.30pm before returning to the Scots School where he lived on-campus as a housemaster about 9.30pm and going to bed.

He has always vigorously denied any involvement in Janine’s disappearance and while he was called a person of interest at a coronial inquest into her death in 2009, no adverse findings were ever made against him.

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“I have never picked up Ms Vaughan in any car at any time,” he told The Night Driver. “The suggestion I did is false, based on conjecture and simply not true. I had nothing to do with her disappearance or suspected murder.”

Coy said he had no reason to doubt Jones’s version of events but suggests “I would have probably visited him at his place”.

Andrew Jones.

“I did visit him quite a number of times at his place and I think we met up and prayed and read the Bible together,” he said. “We hung out. He was a lonely sort of guy. He’s a bit of an awkward personality, but a genuine guy. He was part of the church and was involved in the church activities and I just tried to connect with him out of compassion for him.

“But I can understand why possessing a red car and being a single guy, people like that are often treated as suspects.”

Meanwhile, a third woman, speaking on the condition of anonymity, has told The Night Driver podcast Jones tried to persuade her to get in his car as she was walking alone in Bathurst about seven months after Janine went missing.

Jones has strenuously denied trying to persuade any young women to take a ride in his car around the time Janine vanished.

“Andrew has never asked any woman to get in his car,” his lawyer, Karen Espiner, said. “Andrew categorically denies that these claims are true.”

Her account comes after Trish Salt told The Night Driver podcast Jones tried to coax her into his car as she left the Metro Tavern with a friend about 2am on Saturday, December 1, 2001, just days before Janine vanished after leaving the same venue.