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Hello, this is Jessie and Lenny Ware from Table Manners, a podcast direct from our dining table where we talk all things food, family, growing up and everything in between.
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And everything in between.
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This season we've had Reese Witherspoon reveal the greatest cookie recipe. We had Gary Oldman, who's freshly knighted Sir Gary Oldman.
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Sir Gary Oldman.
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We did some singing with Gloria Estef and Jeremy Allen White has shared some.
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Culinary stories with us.
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And it's not just this series. We've had plenty of other brilliant guests where you can listen back to all the episodes. People like Cher, Dolly Parton, Kate Winslet, SA, Paul McCartney, John Legend, Benny Blanco and Selena Gomez. We've had them all and we fed them very well. Come and listen to Table Manners, the podcast with me, Jesse Ware and Lenny Ware.
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Acast.com this podcast contains content that may be upsetting to some listeners. Before continuing, please prioritise your own wellbeing and mental health. Please check the show notes for more detailed descriptions of the episodes. It was a Monday morning when Jo woke with a sudden realisation. Louisa hadn't returned home since running out the front door the night before. The events of that fateful night must have been replaying in his mind, as, after all, it had been an unsettling night for him. In this episode, we'll continue with Joe's account of events. There are two key areas we will explore here. Firstly, testing the statement that Jo was able to see Louisa running towards Darebin Creek that night. And secondly, well, it's about what Joe claims he did in the morning when he woke up and found her missing. Episode 7 Where did she go? If you recall, it was around 9:45pm the night before when Jo claimed to be standing in the backyard patting the dog, when Louisa suddenly bolted out the front door in her pink dressing gown headed towards the nearby creek. We've said this in previous episodes. It's important to remember that Jo did not want to speak with us for this podcast. So all we have to go from is his statement to police. In the aftermath of Louisa's death, the purpose of this podcast is is to ask questions that we think should have been asked, not to provide answers. So why did Louisa leave without warning? Was she seeking solace at a friend's house, hoping for support after the alleged recent breakup? Was she overwhelmed with emotions because she hadn't been able to get a Flight at the airport? Was she headed back to George's house since arguing with Jo? Was it some kind of psychosis? Whatever it was, the reality remained. Louisa had not returned and it was now morning. Joe would tell police that he began looking for clues as to where she may have gone. As he looked around the house, he noticed everything had been left behind. Her make up, wallet, clothing, even the bag she had packed with a few essentials for her impromptu trip to the airport the day before. As he kept searching, he came across Louise's journal, the pink one we learned about earlier, adorned with Louise's notes written on the COVID that had been used for both schoolwork and her musings before she had abruptly stopped writing in it. As he held the journal in his hands, Jo stopped, grabbed a pen and opened up a page. He wrote the date 3rd October 2011 at the top and began jotting down his feelings about George. The specific details of what Jo wrote in Louisa's journal were never disclosed to Louisa's family. And although the journal was handed back to them, that specific page has been retained by police. What I can tell you, though, is looking through the journal Jo appears to have never written in a journal before. Considering Jo's actions, such as calling George at 2am and documenting his feelings in Louise's journal the morning he realised she was missing, it's natural to wonder if the initial investigation thoroughly explored whether Jo had some involvement in Louisa's death. If this line of inquiry was explored, at what point was it discounted? After all, both the police and the coroner concluded no third party was involved in Louisa's death. This is something we should and will revisit later. But for now, we're still left asking questions such as, where was Louisa running to that night? How did she end up in the creek? And perhaps the most haunting question of all, how on earth do you even drown in there? Of course, we're not the only ones asking these questions. In the early days after her body was discovered and her friends and family were grappling with the shocking tragedy, they naturally expected over time, their questions would be answered by the investigators involved. But even the coroner in their findings couldn't definitively answer these. They concluded that the evidence does not enable me to be satisfied to the appropriate standard of proof whether she intentionally.
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Took her own life or whether she.
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Died from accident or misadventure.
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As it stands, the evidence does not.
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Support a finding that any other person.
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Caused or contributed to her death.
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So where was Louisa headed that night? Was her intention all along to go to the creek or was she going somewhere else? Keep in mind we only have Jo's word for it that she had left the house and headed to the creek. Speaking to her friend Indigo. Louisa's connection to the creek seemed non existent.
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You would never see her at that creek. She wouldn't even wag school and hang out there. She would hang out and this is the dumb stuff she'd do. She would wag school and go to Northlands and hang out at the front of the restaurants. Well, you're going to get caught there, boy. And mum, you live around the corner. But she would do it like that's the kind of stupid stuff she'd do. She'd sneak out of home and go to the drag races and then be in a car that's doing a drag and then get caught by the police and they would call her mum in the middle of the night and say, we'll we've got your daughter here. And her mum would walk in her room and check if Louise was in bed and then realise, no, she's not in bed. She went to the drag races. She was like naughty in that sense. Yeah, she was. She always pushed and done what she wanted to do, but in no way, shape or form do I think that she would hang out at the creek. No, never.
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Was she headed back to George's? If she was, then her choice of direction is unusual as there was a more direct route. This would mean travelling by foot for an hour, mostly on concrete and gravel, likely only in socks. Is it plausible that she could have veered off course within such a short distance around six minutes into her journey? According to Jo, Luisa was running faster than he had ever seen her run before. Maybe she did run out of puff and in her exhaustion took a misstep and ended up in the creek. After all. The creek was believed to have been at elevated levels due to heavy rainfall. Could she have been running to hide in that case, there were several options closer to her than the creek that would have provided better hiding spots, such as dark front yards, side streets, a large shopping centre or a school. These locations would have seemingly been more logical choices if her intention was to avoid being seen or or to seek refuge. Her direction seems simply an odd choice considering the lack of close friends or assistance in that area. If she was running for help, it also raises the question of why she didn't simply go to the nearby neighbours who would have been more than willing to assist her. Perhaps Louisa became disorientated, her mental health reaching the point where Going to the creek actually made her no logical sense. Could her visit to the creek have been influenced by some kind of psychosis due to the drugs she'd smoked earlier that day? Let's keep exploring this. Firstly, if Jo's timing is accurate, it was only an hour before when Louisa appeared to be composed and polite while requesting to use the neighbour's phone. This suggests she wasn't showing any obvious signs of delusions or paranoia during that interaction. Nonetheless, mental health conditions can manifest and escalate rapidly, so we can't make any definitive conclusions either way. Coming back to the phone call Louisa made at her neighbours around 8.45pm that night, she was overheard saying on the phone, jo, where are you? I'm waiting for you. Although it sounds as perhaps they had plans later that night, this was never mentioned by Jo in his statement. After all, according to Joe, he had broken up with her earlier that day. Perhaps Louisa was ringing to try and get him to come back home. Perhaps, yes, but it seems like the statement I'm waiting for you wouldn't seem to quite fit under those circumstances. Speaking with domestic violence experts such as Jolene Allitt from Dart Institute Australia, another theory has also been inadvertently raised.
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So when survivors are calling or monitoring, they do so for safety planning reasons. So we know that survivors are safety planning and monitoring their abusers behaviours ongoing. They're the experts in the abusive behaviour that's been perpetrated towards them and they know the patterns of behaviour. So this can happen minute by minute, can happen within seconds and a survivor can monitor perpetrators voice tones, their statements that meant that they're making even the way they're breathing and then we can talk about, you know, how they come home. So how the abuser drives into the driveway, was the car going faster than usual? Did the brakes hit harder than usual? What did the car door shutting sound like? Are the steps to the front door heavier than usual? And so on. So we know that survivors are constantly safety planning and preparing for what may take place based on the perpetrators responses. So in terms of phone calls, in terms of text messaging, in terms of seeing where they're at, you know, whether or not they've got Snapchat or whatever it might be, where you can see locations or they're posting pictures on Facebook, survivors will be monitoring that for their own safety and wellbeing and also to prepare. If we know that a user of violence is coming home at 10pm and we may, you know, have protective factors that we use to ensure that we feel safe enough and that might be through self medication. You know, a survivor may have two glasses of wine. It might be through putting the kids to bed earlier or ensuring that there's no access to any heavy metals around the bed. Whatever that might look like, the survivor will do to ensure that they are safe.
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We will be back after a short break.
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Could this have been why Louisa rang Jo that night? To try and understand what mood Jo was in and when he was coming home so she could prepare herself for what was yet to come? Perhaps. But we must add that despite facing assault charges at the time of her death journey, Joe said in a statement to police that he never once hit Louisa. So here we are trying to piece together the puzzle of Louisa's final moments. We know she was awake when Joe arrived home, although the exact time of his arrival is still uncertain. At this point, all we have to work with is one time. The time of approximately 9:45pm, when according to Jo, after having a disagreement with her, Louisa ran out the door when he was distracted. To get a better understanding of how this may have played out that night, producer Claire and I decided to recreate Louisa's final evening based on the information available. This was how we found ourselves standing outside Louisa's former residence in Preston at 9.45pm, exactly 12 years to the day, armed with a replica pink dressing gown.
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So it is 2nd October 2023. It's really now or never to reenact the events of that night. I'm here with producer Claire trying to.
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Work out and our security.
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Yeah, so we have brought some team members along with us. We've roped in family because we're working on a big budget here. We've got the husband who's camera crew and the dog who is sleeping in the car.
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But he's there if we need him.
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Yes, it's true. While we were working on a limited budget, we had a very simple and straightforward experiment we wanted to test.
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So the point of the exercise tonight is once it hits 9:45pm, we are going to reenact the events that Jo has provided to the Police in his statement to see if that's even plausible for Jo to be standing at the end of Seston street, looking down Tyler street and he was able to see Louisa in her pink dressing gown headed towards the creek.
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To be specific about what was in Jo's statement, it read, it was about.
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9:45Pm I went out the door into the letterbox and looked left and right, up and down Seston Street. I then went right to Tyler Street. I looked left and right and I saw her all the way to the end of Tyler Street. I whistled but she ignored me.
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She was bolting.
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I have never seen her run that fast in my life. She was on the left hand side of the footpath. I didn't go out of Seston street and I didn't chase her. I saw the robe under the street light as she ran away. It was done up, it wasn't raining.
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So in order to recreate the events Jo speaks about, back on 2nd October 2011, around 9.45pm, we needed to stand on the corner of Seston street and look all the way down Tyler street to where the road ends and the parkland surrounding Darebin Creek begins.
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And according to his words, I saw her all the way to the end of Tyler Street. So for an idea of exactly what this looks like, the distance from Seston street to the dead end of Tyler street is approximately 370 metres. It's flat, there's no curvature in the road, it's just a single straight line. So if you're running down Tyler street to get to the parklands, there's actually another street you can turn off before you get down to the parklands.
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Just a note here, this side street that you can turn left into before reaching the parklands at the dead end of Tyler street becomes more important. During our experiment, I'll be referring to it by its title, Davis street.
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There are 17 houses between Seston street and the end of Tyler Street. On the other side of the street is the Islamic college with a rather large fence. So it doesn't seem plausible that Louisa would try to jump over that. There's a total of nine street lights between Seston street and the dead end of Tyler Street. It's these nine streetlights on one side of the road. The streetlights face the road so the pavement is concealed from the light. As such, it's only going to be the backlight. Now, Claire and I have done some digging around these street lights as best we can and we've established that after 2011, these particular bulbs in the street lights changed to LEDs, which means that the lighting is actually better in this day and age and that there's better colour balance. So anything we see today is going to be more enriched than it was back in 2011. As far as Clare and I can find out, there were no known outages of any of these streetlights on the night of 2nd October 2011. It was a clear night, there was no indication of rain that night. So at the end of Tyler street it's a dead end which enters Parklands where the Darebin Creek is.
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What are we now?
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Okay, we're five minutes away.
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Alright.
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Five minutes away till 9:45pm the approximate time recorded on Jo's statement when he believed Louisa made her dash to the creek.
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The plan is clear and our backup support are going to be standing on the end of Seston street, the T junction between Seston street and Tyler Street. And they're going to be looking out down Tyler street towards the dead end to see at what point will they be able to identify the girl in the pink dressing gown? I'm going to be standing in the pink dressing gown. I'm roughly the same height as Louisa with additional 20 kilos on me. But hey, look, we're hoping that's not going to make too much of a difference. We're going to keep this experiment simple. We're just going to test it out. And this is something that the police have made no mention of doing themselves. So what harm is it to try it out and see what we can find out from doing this?
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It's now 9:45pm While Claire stands on the corner of Seston Street, I I set up 370 metres straight down the road where the dead end of Tyler street meets the entrance to the parklands. Given the distance we're apart, my audio quality isn't the best, but we quickly determine we can't see each other from where we're both standing.
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I've got the tape. Yep, recording is recording.
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All right. Can you see anything?
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Nope.
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Okay, I'm starting. I'm standing outside, literally the entrance to the creek now.
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Okay.
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And I'm coming towards you guys now.
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Okay.
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I can't even see you guys.
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No, because I feel like there is a slight incline, but maybe not in the night. It does look like there's a slight incline. We can't see anything.
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Like I can see shadows, but I don't know if that's you guys or not.
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Could be trees as well. Do you know what I mean?
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So far it seemed very unlikely Jo would have been able to pick up Louisa at the dead end of Tyler Street. But for the sake of this reenactment, if I kept approaching towards Seston street, at what point would Jo most likely have been able to spot a figure dashing down the road? Okay, I am now at Davis Street.
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You're at Duncan now.
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The corner of the road.
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Cannot see a thing. And I can't even see any movement. Oh, hang on. I feel like.
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Yeah, I'm gonna go back.
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There's a car coming. There's a car coming.
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Okay. All right, let's wait. All right. Wait for their lights to clear all together.
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Okay, I've passed one.
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Two lights.
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Stay where you are for a minute because the car lights are helping. Do you know what I mean? So stop for a minute. I think I can just see a figure. Can you maybe put your arm above your head or something? No, I think I can see you, though. I can see something lighter than the dark, if you know what I mean. And I think it's you. But I cannot tell that there is anything pink on you. And I can't even tell it's a human.
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And this was the difficulty we continued to have, no matter how many attempts we did. Walking forwards, running back towards the park, standing still, cars coming, cars going, no cars. The fact of the matter was Claire just couldn't see me. All my robe, anywhere near the end of the street. At best, she was barely making out shadows.
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Pretty sure I can see something, but it.
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Can you see me now?
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No.
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As I kept moving closer towards where Claire was, the response remained the same.
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We can see a shape and it is a lighter shape. I wouldn't say to someone, that's a pink dressing gown, though, but we can definitely see something.
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In fact, what this experiment was proving was that neither Clare nor my husband, who was also there filming, could work out where I was, what I was wearing, or more importantly, what direction I had taken.
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Ok, tell me if you see this.
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Are you ready?
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I'm ready. Ok. Yeah. Something illuminated your head.
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I'm running towards the creek.
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You're running? Yeah. Okay. Well, we just saw something and then now it's gone.
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I repeated the same exercise, each time choosing a different direction across Davis street to the Parklands. Then I would change direction and turn into Davis Street. Then the next time, just standing still and hiding in a driveway. But each time the response was the same. They couldn't see the direction I was taking and they definitely weren't making out the pink dressing gown. They could barely make out anything beyond some sort of possible object. And if you're wondering how close I got before Claire was able to accurately make out my shape in the pink dressing gown, it was only 145 meters down the road, nowhere near the end of the street.
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Now I can see.
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See you.
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Well, I can see again, a shape. Definitely. Yep. And it's definitely pink.
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Yeah. See you.
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Now, this is. This is probably pink. This is the first time that it's obvious that it's pink.
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Absolutely.
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Definitely.
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For Claire to see me, I had to be much closer to her and to home. I was nowhere near the end of the street or to the parklands.
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Okay, Claire, it's getting late.
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Let's finish up. What do you think the key takeaways are from this?
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From where I was standing, you could have headed in any direction and I wouldn't have been able to see you, even though I was trying to spot you. I don't know how Jo was able to pick Louisa out from so far away. If you ran down that side street. There is no way I could have seen that. Even standing here on Seston Street. If I was running from her unit, my natural instinct would be to turn right, which is in the other direction to the creek, because then I wouldn't have had to cross the road. This simple test doesn't appear to support.
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The claims Jo's made following this reconstruction. We couldn't help but wonder if the police investigators had undertaken a similar approach. How was Jo so sure Louisa had ran towards the creek and not down the side street? Based on the difficulties we had, perhaps it was just a lucky guess. This leads to what he did the morning after she ran out. Now, we don't know exactly what time he woke up, but we do know at some point he wrote in her journal and started to look for her. In addition to searching for clues within the house, Joe decided to go out and search for Louisa himself. Taking the dog with him, he stated he walked down the street into the surrounding parklands of Darebin Creek, the same place Louisa had last been seen running towards. Standing on the footbridge that stretched over the Darebin Creek connecting the banks of Preston to Heidelberg, he claimed his eyes were drawn to something. It was Louise's pink dressing gown, alone and without any other belongings, snagged on a branch and floating in the middle of the water, about four metres downstream from him. Had Louisa intentionally thrown it into the creek? Possibly to make him think she had run away? Or that she was overheated from running? The unsettling truth is that it wouldn't have been just Louisa's dressing gown floating in the water that day. Because, of course, wrapped within the confines of it was Louisa's lifeless body, her head and lower limbs apparently submerged in what must have been the murky depths of the creek. So rather than approach the dressing gown, Jo claims he decided to turn around and go home. Over the next few days, he would ring people and let them know Louisa was missing and her dressing gown was in the creek. But he claims never to have returned back there. Tragically, her body would remain undiscovered for an additional eight days, undetected, until it was ultimately stumbled upon by passersby, Diane and Alice. One thing seems certain. The only person who knew Louisa, or at least her dressing gown, was in the creek before the tragic discovery was Jo. We asked the police whether a reconstruction of Jo's account of seeing Louisa running towards the creek or reviewing her dressing gown in the creek was ever undertaken. And if not, why not? Their answer was simply that they considered there to be no value in conducting a reconstruction. The police may have been satisfied that there was no third party involvement, but for others, like Indigo, they were harbouring serious doubts, not only as to what happened, but even convincing themselves that Louisa was even dead.
A
I didn't really know who to contact, so I started messaging these randoms who were posting on her wall on Facebook, like, what are you talking about? Is this true? I was driving from my house to my dad's for dinner and I rang and he answered the phone and I remember, like, the fear in me wasn't there for that call. And I said to him, what the f has happened? Where's Louisa? And he said, she was at the creek, she slipped, she hit a rock. She, like, drowned or she fell, she fell, she slipped, she hit a rock. Never forget that. Because he said it like that. And I was just screaming at that point because I'd realized that's kind of when the penny had dropped, that she was dead.
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Coming up on Troubled Waters, there's only three ways you can enter any environment. One is purposeful, one is accidental, and the third way is by the hands of another.
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Would she go jumping into a creek? No. Disgusting.
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If they can't come up with any logical reasons, then by the hands of.
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Another is something that absolutely needs to be investigated.
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In this podcast, we've looked into whether Louisa's death was properly investigated and all explanations considered, we're not suggesting that Joe had any involvement in her death and we're not aware that he was ever a formal suspect. As he has chosen not to participate in an interview, something that he is perfectly entitled to do. Beyond his police statement, we don't have the benefit of his responses or insights. Casefile Presents Troubled Waters is written and produced by Julia Robson and Claire McGrath. Audio production by Mike Megus Audio editing by Anthony Telfer Special thanks to Jolene Allitt. If you need any support regarding any of the topics raised in this podcast, please reach out to services such AS Lifeline on 13 double 1141800 respect or the Men's Referral Service on 1300766 491. Listeners outside of Australia should refer to their local services.
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Release Date: June 16, 2024
Host: Julia Robson (PI & Narrator)
Producer: Clare McGrath
Theme: A critical re-examination of the last night of Louisa Ioannidis’ life, the plausibility of witness accounts, and the unresolved questions still haunting her loved ones.
This pivotal episode scrutinizes the final hours of Louisa Ioannidis, whose mysterious death in 2011 was swiftly ruled accidental despite numerous lingering questions. Host and investigator Julia Robson and producer Clare McGrath challenge the accepted narrative, reconstructing events and exploring whether key witness statements hold up to scrutiny. Their focus centers on two main questions:
Personal accounts, forensic doubts, and an on-location experiment combine to create a compelling, uneasy portrait of a case that might not be as closed as authorities once declared.
"The purpose of this podcast is to ask questions that we think should have been asked, not to provide answers."
— Julia Robson, [02:09]
"The evidence does not enable me to be satisfied to the appropriate standard of proof whether she intentionally took her own life or whether she died from accident or misadventure."
— Coroner’s Remark, paraphrased by Julia, [05:55]
“In no way, shape or form do I think that she would hang out at the creek. No, never.”
— Indigo, Louisa’s friend, [06:25]
“We know that survivors are constantly safety planning and preparing for what may take place… minute by minute, within seconds, [monitoring] their abusers.”
— Jolene Allitt, [10:07]
The Experiment Setup ([13:44]–[16:28]):
Practical Findings ([18:56]–[23:41]):
“I don’t know how Jo was able to pick Louisa out from so far away. If you ran down that side street, there is no way I could have seen that.”
— Clare McGrath, [23:56]
“The only person who knew Louisa — or at least her dressing gown — was in the creek before the tragic discovery was Jo.”
— Julia Robson, [27:11]
“She slipped, she hit a rock ... She drowned or she fell ... I’ll never forget that. Because he said it like that. And I was just screaming at that point ... the penny had dropped, that she was dead.”
— Indigo, [27:39]
| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|-------|---------| | [02:09] | "The purpose of this podcast is to ask questions that we think should have been asked, not to provide answers." | Julia Robson | | [05:55] | "The evidence does not enable me to be satisfied... whether she intentionally took her own life or whether she died from accident or misadventure." | Coroner (paraphrased) | | [06:25] | "In no way, shape or form do I think that she would hang out at the creek. No, never." | Indigo | | [10:07] | "Survivors are constantly safety planning and preparing for what may take place... minute by minute, within seconds..." | Jolene Allitt | | [23:56] | "From where I was standing, you could have headed in any direction and I wouldn't have been able to see you, even though I was trying to spot you." | Clare McGrath | | [27:39] | "She slipped, she hit a rock ... She drowned or she fell ... I’ll never forget that. Because he said it like that." | Indigo |
The episode’s in-depth reenactment exposes significant flaws and unanswered questions in the police investigation of Louisa’s death, particularly regarding Jo’s statement and the practical realities of that fateful night. Despite insistence from authorities, the hosts and Louisa’s loved ones remain unconvinced that all avenues—especially third-party involvement and the realities of domestic violence—were properly explored.
The story closes with a lingering sense of loss and injustice, reinforcing the need to keep asking hard questions, especially when official narratives fall short.
Trigger Warning:
This episode discusses domestic violence and death. If you or someone you know needs support, please contact Lifeline (13 11 14 in Australia) or your local support services.