← Australian True Crime
Loading summary
Transcript55 lines
- [00:00]
Host of Australian True Crime
Before we begin today's episode of Australian True Crime, I want to tell you about a new project we've been working on behind the scenes. It's called she Matters. It's a new podcast from award winning journalist and femicide researcher Sherrelle Moody. Each week Sherrelle speaks with families of women and children killed in Australia, sharing who they were, the joy they brought and the love they left behind. She Matters isn't a true crime podcast, but it's about lives lived, lives loved and lives lost. She Matters is produced by Dash Made Podcasts in association with bravecasting Media. She Matters is available wherever you get your podcasts. This is a preview of a full length bonus episode available for subscribers of Australian True Crime. Plus subscribers get access to all of our bonus episodes as well as early and ad free access to every episode of the podcast.
- [00:59]
On a warm evening in 2019, three year old New Zealand boy Lockie Jones was found deceased in an oxygenation pond about a kilometre from his house. Local police quickly declared it an accidental drowning, but the boy's father was unconvinced and remained so he pursued the help of seasoned investigative journalists Melanie Reed and and Bonnie Sumner. The show is called Delve the Boy in the Water and in the most recent season they took us, their listeners, inside the Coroner's court for a long awaited inquest. Melanie Reed and Bonnie Sumner join us on this special subscribers only episode of Australian True Crime to talk about the case. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
- [02:01]
Adam Grant
Hey, it's Adam Grant from ted's podcast Work Life and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies use the ServiceNow AI platform. While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows and AI connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters Most. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people@servicenow.com.
- [02:39]
Chief LEAD ON Advertiser
Dear Career Ladder, you've had your moment. You're linear and one dimensional. Ambition doesn't just go up anymore. It zigs and zags and squiggles where CEOs, executives, founders. We're Advising companies, launching side hustles, taking breaks, defining our next act ambition on our terms. The possibilities are endless. Chief LEAD on Join us at the end@chief.com.
- [03:15]
Zynn Nicotine Pouches Advertiser
If you're a smoker or vaper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zynn Nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons. Zynn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus Zynn offers a robust rewards program. There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zynn. Check out zynn.com find to find Zynn at a store near.
- [03:41]
This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [03:45]
Sarah Gibson Tuttle
Raise your hand if you want your nails to look perfect all the time. Me too. I'm Sarah Gibson Tuttle, the founder of Olive and June, and this is exactly why we created the Gel Mani system. We wanted to make it possible for everyone everywhere to give themselves a beautiful manicure at home with our tools and our gel polish that lasts up to 21 days. Each manicure with our system comes out to just $2. That's right, $2.
- [04:09]
Melanie Reed
No more.
- [04:10]
Sarah Gibson Tuttle
60, 70, $80. Salon trips that take hours. Now you can paint your nails on your time and love them more than ever. And by the way, when people ask you where you got your nails done, you're going to proudly brag that you did them yourself. And here's a little something extra. Head over to oliveandjune.com and get 20% off your first gel mani system with code DIYGEL20. That's code DIYGEL20 for 20% off your first mani system at oliveandjune.com DIYGEL20.
- [04:43]
Melanie Reed
It's about a little boy who was found face up in a sewage pond and the police said that he had drowned. He left home, apparently, according to the police, and went 1.2 ks down the road over the fence and he was found face up, which is highly unusual. No water in his lungs. Highly unusual. The police dog found no scent, so it became a kind of pretty intriguing tale. What happened with us is that we just kept getting called by the little boy's father who's saying, look, something doesn't stack up here. I don't believe he's. You'll never in your wildest dreams, you know, be able to tell me or even imagine that he walked all that way with a full nappy at nine o' clock at night, barefoot, by the way, and with no marks on his feet. So just none of that sort of stacked up. And so every which way he turned, he was to close down. The police said, no, you know, get on with your life. The pathologist did it with a drowning. And so he basically almost sort of bordered on harassing me.
- [05:53]
Host of Australian True Crime
Yeah.
- [05:53]
Melanie Reed
He decided I was the journalist, he wanted to do it. And then he just rang at me repeatedly until 1. There was a period where I was down in Southland covering another story. And look, essentially I thought, look, I'm just gonna go and see this guy. So it was one of those situations where I kind of turned up and he took me on this walk. It was just this incredibly gray, cold day. I don't think I've ever been so cold in my life. And I grew up in a cold climate. And we sort of did this kind of miserable wander through the mist from the little boy's house, Locky, where he'd been living, all the way out over the gate, through the pickles, up the bank, da, da, da. All the way down into them for ages. And it was just like, wow, this doesn't stack.
- [06:41]
Bonnie Sumner
Just in close to the bank here he was found.
- [06:46]
Narrator/Voice Actor for Michelle Officer's Statement
And you were here that night.
- [06:48]
Bonnie Sumner
I actually didn't see where he was found, but they put a stick out here where he was located.
- [06:56]
Host of Australian True Crime
Having read the recent inquest findings, the coroner's findings, a lot of people have successfully disputed the father's ideas about what may have happened. A lot of other people's ideas. There's a lot of rumours. It's one of those stories, isn't it, where a lot of people have weighed in and said, oh, the body was cold when they found it. I think it was in a freezer. I think that he was killed earlier in the day. There's lots of wild rumors around the place. If we can go back to the relationship between Lockie's parents, because I think that's key in our understanding how this has become so contentious when the police have sort of said, well, it's Occam's razor, really. It's pretty simple. What can you tell us about Michelle, Officer Locky's mum, and Paul Jones, his dad, and where they were at when this happened?
- [07:44]
Melanie Reed
Well, Paul is a bit of a rough diamond, let's put it that way, or he's like a likable rogue.
- [07:50]
Bonnie Sumner
I know my son didn't walk out there on Was dad, and I know what he was capable of. And not running out of a house at 9 o' clock at night and jumping over some fence and jumped in a bloody pond was not what he was capable of. He used to go to the swimming pool and sit on the edge because he knew he wasn't allowed in the water until someone was with him. So why would he suddenly change his mentality?
- [08:15]
Melanie Reed
I think they'd had a bit of a tumultuous relationship and there had been a court hearing where he was accused of being abusive and he wasn't allowed near the house, et cetera. He wasn't allowed to see Lockie, but that had all been revoked at the time. So things had brought out and at the time he'd stayed two nights at the house and they were planning to go to Dunedin, which was a few hours away, to stay the weekend in the motel. So by all accounts that looked like things were kind of improving.
- [08:49]
Host of Australian True Crime
Well, he says that they were actually working on reconciling, doesn't he? She, Michelle disputes that, says, no, that was never the case. But at least they were talking.
- [08:57]
Melanie Reed
They were definitely talking. He'd stayed the night and the texts between each other were kind of bordering on. Kind of bit flirtatious as well. So I don't think at the time when Lockie disappeared that it wasn't a hostile situation between them it that way.
- [09:16]
Narrator/Voice Actor for Michelle Officer's Statement
According to her police statement, this is what Locky's mother says happened.
- [09:22]
At around 9pm she'd looked at her clock. Lockie ran out of the house. He had a soiled nappy. She caught up with him at her friend's house. The friend said she never actually saw him, but while they were talking he ran off again. Both women returned to the mother's house before heading to the playground. They returned to look again around the mother's place and then at the friends. The women went along the street towards the river, speaking to people along the way before going down Grasslands Road.
- [09:59]
The mother says she climbed over a wooden fence beside the gate and went up on the bank looking for a bright yellow vest. At 9:36 she called 111. It was roughly half an hour that he'd been gone.
- [10:18]
At 11.15pm, around two hours since he'd gone missing, an officer and his police dog found Lachie floating in the water. There was no chance of reviving him. His little replica police hat was a few metres from his body.
- [10:36]
Host of Australian True Crime
It does come across to me and I've come in at the very, not the end of the story, but very late stage story that it appears that it's at least possible that this terrible tragedy has happened and that Lockie's dad Paul is looking to blame somebody and is perhaps chasing Shadows.
- [10:56]
Melanie Reed
Well, I think the difficulty with the case is that there are so many things that are improbable. Okay, did he walk 1.2 K? Yes, it's possible, but it's not probable.
- [11:10]
Host of Australian True Crime
But also, in the inquest it was suggested that it wasn't that far, for one thing, that it was about 800 or 900 meters. If he went into the pond at the north end, that kids do that. And I must admit, when I was reading that, that evidence from his kinder teacher and other people just sort of saying, look, you know, yeah, a toddler can run that far if he takes the mind to it. I kept thinking about the fact that my daughter stuffed a battery up a nose when she was two and a half. And after that I thought, okay, there's no rules here. These kids can do weird shit.
- [11:40]
Melanie Reed
That's exactly right. But what we've got is a pylon of improbable sort of propositions, I suppose, like, they're all possible, but when you pile them up, they're possible, but they're not probable. That's why I think the story's been quite intriguing for people because you have to accept all of those things that he was found face up, that he had no water in his lungs, that the dog found no scent, that he went 1.2 ks with a full nappy, no marks on his feet. Now, you can, you can write off all of those things, like individually, but collectively it's pretty interesting when you stack them all up.
- [12:22]
Host of Australian True Crime
I think also perhaps what maybe muddies the water and creates this Swiss cheese effect that you're talking about. That would have to work out perfectly for the Crown's case to make sense. What adds to that is Michelle, Officer Lockie's mum's evidence, which again the coroner said was unreliable. He stopped short of saying she was lying about everything. But he said in particular, he found her evidence around her parenting unreliable. He felt as though she was ashamed of elements of her parenting, embarrassed, and so gave answers that were inaccurate because she thought it was what you were meant to do, for example. Oh, yes, Locky had a very strict routine. We had dinner at 6pm every night and he was in bed at 7:30pm And. And her eldest son disputed that. Her older son disputed all of that. So then the coroner said, well, it makes it hard then to know how accurate her evidence is around the night, doesn't it? Around what time she realised he was missing and how long he was unsupervised and all of those things.
- [13:27]
Melanie Reed
I mean, that's what he found having listened to her on the stand for a couple of days now, we haven't had the privilege, I suppose, of being able to interview her. So it was pretty interesting for us as well because we've repeatedly asked her to participate and she's refused. And so it was pretty interesting for us being in that coroner's hearing hearing, how she responded to some of the allegations and to the coroner's questions and indeed Paul Jones, her ex's lawyer, how she responded to him, which wasn't particularly favorable. We're going to talk to Paul Jones, the father of Lockie now your lawyer. He asked Lachlan's mother, your former partner, Michelle Officer, and her two older sons, that they were involved potentially in the killing of the boy and storing his body in a freezer before dumping it and devising fake alibis as well as neglecting her son. Now, those propositions were put to Michelle Officer and her two sons.
- [14:39]
Host of Australian True Crime
There's a lot of evidence to dispute that the coroner concluded his mother, Michelle Officer, had nothing to do with his death.
- [14:47]
Melanie Reed
I accept that a morally moribund mother who accidentally killed her child in a momentary fit of violent exasperation might well panic and try to cover it up.
- [14:57]
Host of Australian True Crime
But I do not think a natural.
- [14:59]
Melanie Reed
Reaction would be for her to pick up the phone in order to a.
- [15:02]
Host of Australian True Crime
Pizza with extra aioli because she says that she it was a normal night around the place. Long, long day. She's trying to change Locky's nappy at about 9ish, I think, or maybe just before 9. He's doing again something toddlers do, which turns it into a game, which is very frustrating for parents trying to just get it done. So she abandons the nappy change, she leaves him at the table watching YouTube and she goes to help her older son Jonathan with his weights. When she comes back to the kitchen, she realises he's gone and she sees him out the kitchen window, running down the street. She knows it's his high vis vest that everyone talks about, his little vest. So part of again, part of the weird stuff that has to happen is that Locky has to figure out how to open the door to get out, which apparently he'd never done before. And then when she catches up with him down the street, by the way, she decides to drop in on a neighbour down the street. The neighbour never actually spotted Locky in the kitchen while they were chatting, all of that. But again.
- [16:01]
You have to wonder so how much of this unlikely scenario is actually down to inaccuracies in Michelle office's Telling of how the night played out. Like, is it possible she left the door open because it was really hot? She said she left the front gate open because she went to buy pizzas. Is it possible she left him unattended for a while as all possible? Yeah, yeah.
- [16:26]
Melanie Reed
I mean, that's why, I guess people find the story so compelling, because all of these things are, is that possible? Is that likely? Could that have happened? Could this have happened?
- [16:38]
Host of Australian True Crime
And it's what invites theories, isn't it?
- [16:40]
Melanie Reed
Indeed.
- [16:41]
Paul Jones' Lawyer
And I mean, also what invites theories is, and this is the reason we really did this case in the first place was because police really made such a rash conclusion that he had drowned. I mean, it was almost immediate, really. And, you know, our job as journalists is really to ensure that we are putting these checks and balances in for the police and for, for, for the establishment, essentially. And so what we discovered was that the police case was very substandard. And that's really where we came in.
- [17:18]
Melanie Reed
If something did happen to that little boy and there has been a third party involvement, other people know.
- [17:26]
Host of Australian True Crime
Yeah.
- [17:27]
Paul Jones' Lawyer
I mean, I think the coroner put it quite well when he said, I do not accept that the police investigations correctly outline what occurred that evening. Indeed, I have found in many instances that the evidence does not support the propositions which the police presented as concluded fact. So that's what he said in his inquest findings. And so, you know, you just have to hope that the referral to the Independent Police Conduct Authority, the pathologist to the Medical Council and of course to the police for a third investigation, that we might get somewhere a bit further than we have right now.
- [18:09]
Host of Australian True Crime
Thank you to our guests Melanie Reed and Bonnie Sumner. Their podcast Delve the Boy in the Water is available wherever you get your podcasts. If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org AU. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org AU.
- [18:50]
Adam Grant
The producers of this podcast recognize the.
- [18:54]
Melanie Reed
Traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded.
- [18:59]
Adam Grant
They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and.
- [19:04]
Melanie Reed
And those emerging.
- [19:09]
Sarah Gibson Tuttle
Take control of the numbers and supercharge your small business with Xero. That's X E R O.
- [19:18]
With our easy to use accounting software with automation and reporting features, you'll spend less time on manual tasks and more time understanding how your business is doing. 87% of surveyed US customers agree Xero helps improve financial visibility. Search Xero with an x or visit xero.comacast to start your 30 day free trial. Conditions apply.
- [19:40]
Chief LEAD ON Advertiser
Dear Career Ladder, you've had your moment. You're linear and one dimensional. Ambition doesn't just go up anymore. It zigs and zags and squiggles where CEOs executive founders we're advising companies, launching side hustles, taking breaks, defining our next act ambition on our terms. The possibilities are endless. Chief LEAD ON join us@chief.com.
- [20:16]
Zynn Nicotine Pouches Advertiser
If you're a smoker or vaper ready to make a change. You really only need one good reason. But with Zyn Nicotine Pouches, you'll discover many good reasons. Zynn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus Zynn offers a robust rewards program. There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zyn. Check out zyn.com find to find Zyn at a store near you.
- [20:42]
This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [20:46]
Adam Grant
AI Agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R-I K.com.