IN DEPTH: Missed opportunities, violence, footage and phone calls detailed at inquest into missing Kowanyama mum Allison Neridine Bernard
A young Indigenous mother goes missing from remote Cape York quarry in the middle of the night. Nine years later, no trace of her has ever been found. Now, a Coronial Inquest into her disappearance is seeking to provide answers for her heartbroken family.
Cairns
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IN THE footage, a young Indigenous woman and an older white man can be seen sitting out the front of the Exchange Hotel in Coen on February 10, 2013, drinking and smoking together, as the man fishes something out of his wallet.
The man leans in with the item in his hand, and the woman reaches forward to take it from him.
But he pulls back, and then places it under an ashtray in the middle of the table.
They converse for a couple of minutes, and the woman moves her drink aside and lifts up the ashtray.
The woman is missing Kowanyama mother-of-two Allison Neridine Bernard.
The man is Archer River Quarry caretaker Thomas Byrnes, the last person to see her alive that evening.
Ms Bernard was in Coen that day after arriving from Lockhart River, and was planning to travel to Kowanyama for her son’s birthday.
Giving evidence to a coronial inquest into Ms Bernard’s disappearance on Monday and Tuesday last week, Mr Byrnes repeatedly denied he had anything to do with her going missing.
Footage of the interaction was played at the inquest in Cairns this month, and questions put to the lead investigator, Detective Senior Constable Byron Worth.
Asked what he made of the exchange by counsel assisting the coroner Melia Benn, Det Snr Con Worth said: “Something’s been handed to her. I’m assuming it was money or cigarettes.”
Police did not have the footage at the time of their original interview with Mr Byrnes on February 13 as they commenced their investigation into Ms Bernard’s vanishing.
But they did during two subsequent interviews with him in 2015 and 2021.
The inquest also heard that early on in the investigation, witnesses had provided statements that Mr Byrnes had given Ms Bernard $20, but that he had denied doing so in a formal police interview.
But Det Snr Con Worth told the inquest the footage of the interaction at the pub that night was never put to Mr Byrnes.
“I expect his answer would be he doesn’t remember. His versions have always been very poor as far as he says he doesn’t remember,” Det Snr Con Worth said.
Missed opportunities
Several police witnesses at the inquest, including Det Snr Con Worth have variously agreed that Mr Byrnes’ account of how Ms Bernarddisappeared was“highly suspicious”, “unlikely” and “unusual”.
In a nutshell, his account is that after urinating herself, having a shower, and a subsequent consensual sexual interaction at the remote Cape York quarry where he was caretaking, without saying a word and while he was out of the room, Ms Bernard walked off into the night wearing nothing but a towel, never to be seen or heard from again.
Det Snr Con Worth told the inquest that in his mind, Ms Bernard’s disappearance had always been a potential homicide.
Yet the inquest also heard of other situations, such as the previously mentioned CCTV footage, where aspects of the investigation were not followed up.
The inquest heard police still have no idea who spoke to Ms Bernard or what she spoke about when she made a 10 minute call from the quarry landline to the mobile phone of her stepmother Dellis Burns on the night she went missing.
There were two other people at Ms Burns’ house that night – an adult and a child – and neither of them were interviewed about the phone call.
Nor did they chase up what the barrister acting for Ms Bernard’s family Andrew Hoare described as a “critical” feature of the investigation, in circumstances where Mr Byrnes said Ms Bernard had urinated herself and he had washed her clothes in the washing machine.
On February 19, 2013, it came to the attention of former Coen Police Station officer in charge Sergeant Matt Moloney that the quarry caretaker replacing Mr Byrnes had said there was no electricity to the washing machine.
No statement was ever taken from the caretaker by police.
Asked if he regretted not taking a statement from the caretaker, Det Snr Con Worth said: “It’s certainly a point I would have preferred to have covered at the time.”
Det Snr Con Worth was also taken to task by Mr Hoare about the decision by him and his senior officer, former Weipa Criminal Investigation Branch Detective Sergeant Jock O’Keeffe, not to apply for a forensic procedure order given an asserted consensual sexual interaction between a young woman and a much older man.
In the context of these things which the inquest heard were not done or not followed up on, the footage at the pub was played to Mr Byrnes on his first day of giving evidence on Monday.
“Thomas, can you please explain what we’ve just seen on the screen?” Ms Benn asked.
“Mmhmm. Umm. I gave her $10 to buy a can of rum and coke,” he replied.
Mr Byrnes went on to explain that it would be embarrassing for both of them if people had seen him give her $10.
“I know it was $10 because I remember doing that,” he explained.
Ms Benn asked him why he would then deny to police that he had given her money.
“I have no idea why I didn’t say anything,” he said.
The evidence of Thomas Byrnes
Mr Byrnes spent almost two full days in the witness box in the Cairns Coroner’s Court last Monday and Tuesday, being asked questions predominantly by Ms Benn and Mr Hoare.
Mr Byrnes’ evidence to the inquest is protected by privilege against self-incrimination – meaning it cannot be used against him in a criminal proceeding.
He has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
He could not recall a lot of the detail he was asked about in relation to events around the time Ms Bernard disappeared.
“I haven’t got much of a memory of any of that time. I’m flat out remembering what I did three days ago let alone nine years ago,” he told the inquest.
Mr Byrnes was also quizzed over phone calls he made to police the day after Ms Bernard went missing, where he reported she had stolen a car, only to ring back 13 minutes later to say he had simply forgotten where it was.
He told the Policelink operator he had a sleep in the afternoon, had woken up, and the car was gone – but then as he was heading down to the front gate of the quarry remembered it was “stuck down a hole in the gravel pit”.
It was in the process of removing the vehicle from where it was bogged at a dam on the quarry that Mr Byrnes told police he had received injuries to his chest and forearm, caused by small shards of stone flying off a rock he was breaking with a sledgehammer.
At no stage did he call police to report Ms Bernard missing, even when he was told to do so by his friend Scott Templeton the morning after she disappeared.
When asked by Ms Benn why he did not, Mr Byrnes said: “I don’t know. I can’t answer you for a reason why I didn’t do it there and then.”
It wasn’t until three days later that police first visited the quarry, off the back of a missing persons report from Ms Bernard’s family.
The first thing Mr Byrnes said to since-retired Coen Police Station OIC Matt Moloney, unprompted, was: “I haven’t done anything with her. I haven’t murdered her or anything else.”
The inquest also heard of threats Mr Byrnes had made to people in the months and years since Ms Bernard went missing, and of violence in his past.
Mr Hoare asked Mr Byrnes if he could get angry and lose control of his actions.
“I have flown off the handle at times and not realised what I was doing until it was too late – yes,” he replied.
Referencing three incidents in Byrnes’ past where he had strangled people – one of them a 15-year-old boy – Mr Hoare said there was a commonality between them.
The inquest heard one of those incidents was where Mr Byrnes had pleaded guilty to an assault in 1995 where he was drunk and abusing a man, before running toward him and grabbing him by the throat.
“Your first mechanism of violence against these other people is choking and strangulation – do you see that?” Mr Hoare asked.
“Yes,” Mr Byrnes replied.
“And that’s accompanied by rage and it’s a rage you cannot explain rationally?” Mr Hoare asked
“Yes,” Mr Byrnes replied.
“Is there a fourth incident with Ms Bernard?” Mr Hoare asked.
“No, Mr Byrnes replied.
The inquest had previously heard of alleged threats made by Mr Byrnes against former barmaid Rachel Ruano, Northern Territory resident Janene Mackay, and former Exchange Hotel workers Michael Barry and Dean Lloyd.
Mr Barry and Mr Lloyd in December 2021 during the first sitting of the inquest told the court of a drinking session at the Exchange Hotel in September or October 2020 where Mr Byrnes allegedly told them words to the effect of: “I could bury you next to her and you would never be found”.
Mr Byrnes last week told the inquest his comments had been misconstrued and what he actually said was that he wished he could say something like that to “shut people up”.
“I’ve lived with being called a murderer in a pub with 70-80 tourists, with somebody standing up pointing at me across the room, across the bar, things like that,” Mr Byrnes said.
“I’ve got to live with that. I walk down street in Coen – I go into the shop in Coen – and certain people will point the finger: You’re a murderer, you’re this, your that.
“There’s nothing I can do about it … They know nothing … yet I’m still copping it all the time.”
The inquest heard he told police the two men were nutcases, and that he had previously described Ms Mackay and Ms Ruano in similar terms after they raised allegations against him.
“So Ms Ruano, Ms Mackay, Mr Barry, they are all strange, slightly odd, abnormal in thinking and actions. That’s what you’re trying to convey?” Mr Hoare asked him.
“In my opinion,” Mr Byrnes said.
Ms Bernard’s disappearance
It was in the final part of his evidence that Mr Byrnes came under intense scrutiny from Mr Hoare as to what was said and done in the hours before Ms Bernard disappeared.
He explained to the inquest how after expecting to drop Ms Bernard off at the Archer River Roadhouse where he had dropped his friend David Port, she asked if she could come out to the quarry with him.
“Nothing at that point was indicating some type of sexual interest in you?” Mr Hoare asked.
Mr Byrnes told the inquest she had not said or done anything to that effect at that point.
“When was this conversation (that was told to investigating police) when she said I like white men?” Mr Hoare asked.
“I think that was on the way from Archer back to the quarry,” Mr Byrnes replied.
Mr Byrnes told the court they had arrived at the quarry, and he washed her urine-soaked clothes while she had a shower.
Mr Hoare put it to him that it was impossible for him to have washed the clothes because there was no power to the machine.
Mr Byrnes did not accept that proposition.
“We’d probably had another couple of beers, mucked around on the lounge for a while, knocked the beer over. I went and got some more beer and when I came back she was gone,” he said.
He then clarified that by “mucking around” he meant a sexual interaction had occurred.
At some stage, Ms Bernard had made the phone call to her stepmother’s phone.
“What conversations did you have with Ms Bernard after the conclusion of that sexual interaction,” Mr Hoare asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr Byrnes replied.
In response to a question about how he knew the act was consensual, Mr Byrnes said: “Oh I don’t know, we didn’t have conversations. A few words here and there, actions maybe. A cuddle, a kiss, one thing led to another. I don’t know. There’s no real conversation.”
Mr Hoare suggested Mr Byrnes couldn’t go into detail because an honest answer would indicate he was responsible for Ms Bernard’s death.
“Do you accept that suggestion or not,” Mr Hoare asked.
“No,” Mr Byrnes replied.
What next?
Ms Bernard’s family arrived at the start of the second part of the coronial inquest into her disappearance late last month hoping for answers.
They left the Cairns courthouse precinct last Tuesday empty-handed, with tears in their eyes.
Addressing the Kowanyama mum’s family, Ms Wilson said that unfortunately, Tuesday’s hearing would not be the end of the matter.
“But I’m sure after having sat through what I’ve previously called very challenging and distressing evidence, and understanding there are still some loose ends that I feel we will all benefit from and most importantly that I think (Ms Bernard) will benefit from, it seems to me that it will be time well spent and it has a very specific and very clear direction,” she said.
The inquest is likely to resume for a third sitting in November or December 2022.
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