Dan Box (1)

In remote Bowraville, over a few months in 1990-91, three aboriginal children were killed. The youngest victim, Evelyn Greenup, was just four years old. The other two, Clinton Duroux and Colleen Walker, were 16. Two of the bodies were found along the same back road; Walker's has never been found, only her clothes.

From the outset, the crimes were treated as missing persons cases, with the police claiming that the two older victims had just "gone walkabout". When an investigation was mounted, it was headed by a detective who had never investigated a homicide. A local white man (given the pseudonym James Hide by Box) was identified as a suspect and arrested.

Hide was eventually charged with the murders of Greenup and Duroux. In a decision that was to give rise to decades of agony, the judge refused to combine the cases and prevented evidence about one murder being used as probative in the other. Evidence of similarities between the two murders was inadmissable. Hide was found not guilty in the Duroux trial, and the Greenup trial was abandoned.

The families and the lead homicide detective refused to take that decision lying down. They fought for years to get justice for their children, resulting in a trial on the Greenup case, where Hide was again cleared. This meant the end of the road, due to double jeopardy.

Except that the families still fought, going through the coroner, local MPs, Parliament, the press, the Attorney-General and the Premier. Their fight ultimately led to legislation overturning the principle of double jeopardy in NSW, potentially creating another opportunity to get the not guilty verdicts overturned and putting Hide on trial for all three murders.

This is a story about a decades-long fight for justice for people who were treated appallingly, considering that their children had died. Box makes no bones about the fact that the murder or disappearance of white children, or even foreign backpackers, warranted investigative teams of more than 100 detectives, whereas three indigenous children only warranted two or three part-time investigators with almost zero supporting resources.

This book is a very hard, confronting read and you can't help but feel sorry for these families. At times it feels just like a sickening gut-punch; one is constantly reminded of Cory Booker's saying that "our legal system is not a justice system".… (meer)