I Know Who Killed My Father | 1 - Witness: Sex, Lies and Streaming

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[00:06]
A
When I first arrived In Cardwell in 1990, it was a wonderful place. The fishing was fantastic, the people were wonderful. It was one of the best places on earth.
[00:17]
B
In the early 90s, Cardwell in far North Queensland was a sleepy tropical paradise. A small village on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, surrounded by mountains of lush rainforest and waterfalls. Not much happened there which suited Ian and Ness just fine.
[00:33]
A
I bought myself a boat and I could go out on the reef for a whole day and no one would even know I wasn't in town. It was a lovely town.
[00:40]
B
He was officer in charge of the local police station. Quite possibly one of the most relaxed policing jobs in the country.
[00:47]
A
The crime rate was very low, I think in the first year. I had three reported crimes and we solved a lot of them.
[00:54]
B
But there's one crime Ian never solved. More than 30 years later, it remains a cold case. It all started one Friday night in May 1993. Ian picked up a call at the local police station from an 18 year old woman called Lachelle.
[01:11]
C
I said, can you check on my father? He's an elderly man, he may have had a fall. I was thinking something caved in at his house or something and he's fallen. Can you go and check on him, please? I just want to make sure he's okay.
[01:23]
A
She told me that he had recently bought a property in Cardwell and he was always regularly in contact with her and she hadn't heard from him for some time.
[01:34]
B
Ian agreed to go to Les's new house and check in on him. Cops do that sort of thing all the time. It's called a welfare check. It's garden variety policing. So when Ian pulled up at Les's home in Cardwell, he had every reason to believe this would be another routine job. It was possible Les would open the door and explain it was all a big misunderstanding. But when Ian knocked on the door, a woman answered.
[02:00]
A
She was renting the property. She was aware that it had been sold to Mr. Ball, but had not heard from him at all.
[02:07]
B
The tenant heard that the sale hadn't gone through, which was strange because a stream of mail addressed to Les had started arriving.
[02:16]
A
There were bank statements, Social Security, Veterans affairs letters and things like that. I started opening some of the mail up just to see if there's anything that would assist me in finding him.
[02:27]
B
Nothing in the letters offered any clues about where Les might be. So Ian spent the next couple of days making some inquiries.
[02:35]
A
At that point, you know, it was still just a welfare thing. I was looking for this Fellow. I spoke to solicitors, I spoke to. I spoke to the real estate. I spoke to the people at the house that he was buying.
[02:47]
B
48 hours after he took Lashelle's call, Ian called her back and told her Les never moved into his new home. On the day he was supposed to collect the keys, he never showed up.
[03:00]
C
It was the worst feeling in life. Like, I just felt sick in the stomach because, like, my dad wanted to move into that house. He was not, not moving into that house. So I was like, where is my dad? Something's happened to him. I was just, like, hysterical.
[03:15]
B
There's something Ian didn't tell Lachelle.
[03:18]
A
I thought he was dead. Someone's done this bloke in. And that was my feeling.
[03:30]
D
It's now been more than 30 years since Lachelle Ball made that phone call, and no one has seen or heard from Les Ball. The police don't have the answers. Two coronial inquests have failed to find any answers. But we've spent more than two years digging into this cold case. We've uncovered clues that cops and coroners have missed. We've found fabricated evidence and uncovered fraud. And our investigation has taken us from the suburbs of Townsville right down to the Melbourne underworld. And not only do we believe Les Ball was murdered, we think we can prove who did it. I'm Jo Townsend.
[04:15]
B
And I'm Callum Tenness. You're listening to Witness, the home of investigative podcasts for news.comau this is our newest series, Perfect Alibi. You're the only constant. Things change and I don't wanna blame you.
[04:36]
C
Orange for.
[04:50]
B
Like Ian, I first met Lachelle over the phone. I'm a journalist and TV producer and I mostly make true crime. Lachelle wanted me to look into her dad's disappearance.
[05:00]
C
I wanted someone that would actually, like, look at it and delve deeper into it, because obviously, the justice system had failed us.
[05:08]
B
Three police investigations and two coronial inquests have failed to find out what happened to Les or who's responsible. So I wasn't sure how I could help. But Lachelle's faced bigger obstacles than a skeptical journalist. Her whole life has been consumed by seeking justice for Les.
[05:26]
C
I'll solve it one day. I'm never going to give up now. Not having it. I won't let it rest.
[05:34]
B
So, on a stinking hot day, Lachelle rode a bike to my house and dropped a thumb drive containing hundreds of documents into my letterbox. And suddenly, it seemed like there might be more to this Cold case than I first thought. That's when I brought in my colleague Joe Townsend to help me investigate. And since then, we haven't stopped.
[05:54]
C
You look well.
[05:56]
D
No, you don't need to be sorry in the slightest. Cal and I have been gas bagging.
[05:59]
B
Me and Jo have gotten to know Lachelle pretty well in the two years we've been working on this story. Guys, excuse the mess.
[06:05]
D
Just shut your eyes.
[06:07]
B
If you've ever been to Bondi and observed the locals, you'll have a pretty good sense of what Lachelle looks like. She's tanned, clad in activewear with a sleek black ponytail and bright white smile. And she has a tattoo on her left wrist. The letters LB in curly writing.
[06:24]
C
I just wanted something of my dad and I thought, well, I'll get his initials. L.B. les Ball. And it's my initials as well. Just something on my body to have. Memory.
[06:35]
B
Lashelle doesn't have much to remember Les by. Just an old wristwatch, some photos and childhood memories.
[06:42]
C
He was a fantastic dad. Like he was always there for me. He was, yeah. Great childhood father. Anything I wanted or taking me to like the football matches, taking me to sports matches. He was just a good dad, you know, a fun loving dad.
[06:57]
B
Les was a World War II veteran and like a lot of men of that generation, he was frugal and handy. The kind of guy who could build or fix anything.
[07:07]
C
Built a cricket pitch for me to play cricket with at home. Flying Fox, anything I ever wanted.
[07:12]
B
Apart from the shell. Les's great love in life was golf. If the game means anything to you, he played off a handicap of two. And if you don't know what that means, just consider the fact that Les single handedly built himself a nine hole golf course on their family property.
[07:28]
C
He was golf crazy. He loved it. He used to teach me how to play golf. I wish he'd kept it up.
[07:34]
B
Les was a slight fella, but fit and active. Also, he was very good looking.
[07:39]
C
Blue eyes, full head of hair, quite muscly, athletic. Because he's always doing something. Always into his sport. Very tan because he was always outdoors.
[07:50]
B
Les had Leschelle with his second wife, Ethel Ison. Everyone calls her Et. She lives on the Sunshine coast in Queensland. Early one morning I flew up to
[08:00]
A
meet her local time here at 7:25am
[08:05]
B
driving up the highway from Brisbane. I was excited to meet Etta because I'd been reading her diaries from when Les disappeared. I'm not a creep. Lachelle gave them to me from her forensic entries. I got the Sense that she was whip smart and fiercely protective of her daughter. Ferrell's Road, where are you? After a few wrong turns, I found her modest unit in a retirement village where she now lives.
[08:32]
E
G'.
[08:32]
C
Day.
[08:32]
B
S good. As a typical male, I did not listen to your instructions. No, no, I found it in the end. Not at all. You're a Queensland. Sitting in an armchair in her small living room, the walls covered with family photos, musical instruments. It's exactly the person I'd imagined.
[08:58]
E
I'm 80 now, you know, and I'm sort of. I'm what they call an old lady now, you know, I don't like it, but that's what I am. Oh, God, I hate that tag.
[09:08]
B
And she's still fiercely protective of her daughter.
[09:11]
E
I worry that Lachelle's never going to let it go and she's always going to hope for the best and hope that something will come out. I pray about it all the time, but, yeah, she will never let it go. Not in my day, she won't.
[09:32]
B
Ed and les married in 1975 when Lachelle was four months old. Les was in his 50s and had four kids from a previous marriage, but was devoted to Lachelle as if she was his first.
[09:45]
E
He was absolutely obsessed with that child. From the moment that she was born. When we were coming home from the hospital with this tiny baby, he was so anxious about looking at her and he was so obsessed with her that he almost ran. Well, he did run off the road a little bit and I had to scream at him, watch the road, you know, you can watch her when you get home. Yeah. But he was obsessed with that little girl.
[10:11]
B
Et Les and Lachelle, along with Ed's two other children from a previous marriage, lived on the Sunshine coast for a little while.
[10:19]
E
He was sort of king of the kids in the street because if they wanted anything fixed or anything, bring it down to Les and he'd fix it, you know, no worries at all.
[10:30]
B
Ed still has plenty of affection for Les, but the marriage wasn't great. Les was retired, which meant that it was the breadwinner. So he spent his time playing golf and surprising his wife with half cooked schemes.
[10:44]
E
He went out for a loaf of bread one day and came home and told me he'd bought a house. Oh, God, I nearly killed him. And he bought this big house that was partly finished and he actually finished that house and it was magnificent. A beautiful big home with a swimming pool.
[11:04]
B
Once that scheme had come off, Les cooked up another a plan to breed racehorses without Telling his wife Les sold the family home, kind of.
[11:14]
E
I'm telling you, he swapped that house for opals and I had to trade out of them because he wasn't going to do it. Where's the money to build another house? Oh, well, I don't know. He didn't think of that. Oh, he was a sucker for a good deal, you know. And I remember being so furious with him that it was unbelievable.
[11:37]
B
In 1991, after 16 years together, the marriage ended.
[11:42]
E
I was feeding horses and I got Jack of that, but you couldn't speak sense to him. Yeah, golf and horses was all he ever wanted to do.
[11:52]
B
Les was 70. With two failed marriages behind him, he was flush with cash from the divorce and ready for a change. So he decided to move up north to Townsville to live with Leanne Phillips. She's one of his daughters from his first marriage and so she's Lachelle's half sister. Les packed all of his things into a big light blue trailer, hand built by Les, of course, and set off for townsville. Lachelle was 17 and at that age, most teenagers would do anything to avoid spending time with their parents. But she volunteered to join him and rode passenger on their trip north.
[12:28]
C
And then we pulled up out the front of the Phillips house a week later and we come in and then, well, Leanne wasn't too happy to see me with dad because dad hadn't told her, I don't think.
[12:39]
B
Leanne lived with her husband, David and their four kids. Les and Lachelle shared a room in one of the kids bedrooms. The half sisters had never been close, but now they were under the same roof. They were at each other's throats.
[12:52]
C
We were always arguing. We just never got on, I suppose. I was a teenager, wasn't I? And she was in her 30s.
[12:59]
B
Lachelle didn't like Leanne's husband either. She found David, a former cop from Victoria, intimidating.
[13:06]
C
He was a man of not many words and like you were a little bit scared of him. There was something about him. I didn't argue with him. I never really spoke to him, to tell you the truth. Yeah, he didn't really speak to anyone.
[13:18]
B
On Lachelle's 18th birthday, the tension that had been building up for a couple of weeks boiled over.
[13:24]
C
They were singing Happy Birthday and I ended up throwing the birthday cake in her face and running out and ringing my mum.
[13:29]
B
It arranged for Lachelle to leave the Phillips and return to the Sunshine coast, and she left the house that night. It was relieved she'd been Uneasy about Lachelle living in David's house. Call it a mother's intuition.
[13:42]
E
She'd got a bit frightened of David up there. It was more of gut feeling. She knew she needed to get out.
[13:50]
B
Lachelle went back to live with ETT and life became quieter in the Phillips household. Les shifted from one of the kids bedrooms into the garage. He and Leanne had a close relationship and Les would often pick up the four kids from school. In December 1992, he put a deposit on a block of land not far from where the Phillips were renting. The plan was to build a house for the family to live in. Les was a builder. That's what he did. It's not clear if it was a gift or a loan. But just a couple of Months later, in February 1993, things began to sour. That's when Les first ex wife Margaret, the one he was married to before it came to stay with the Phillips to help out around the house while Leanne was in hospital.
[14:35]
C
Our dad couldn't stand her and didn't want anything to do with her. They'd have a lot of fights, like Margaret would be screaming at him. He'd be screaming.
[14:43]
B
This isn't just Lachelle's characterisation. Everybody from every warring faction of Les family agrees that he and Margaret couldn't stand each other. And so just a couple of weeks after his ex came to stay, Les tried to hit the eject button. He decided he'd move out of the Phillips house and buy a home of his own. He told his real estate agent that he was sick of being the Phillips family babysitter.
[15:07]
A
He obviously wasn't happy in his living arrangements. It appeared that the situation wasn't harmonious in that household. And basically this was one of the main reasons that he was moving to Cardwell, to get away from that situation.
[15:20]
B
Les wasn't looking for long. He bought the second house he saw.
[15:25]
C
It was an old Queenslander house, two levels. It was behind a golf course. He had the beach around the corner. He was very happy and excited to be moving in there. It was absolutely perfect for him. His dream house, basically.
[15:42]
B
So, Joe, how much do you reckon a two bedroom freestanding home in tropical paradise cost les back in 1993?
[15:49]
D
Okay, so it's the early 90s. I'm going to go with $300,000.
[15:53]
B
Well, you're only a few hundred grand off. It actually cost $70,000. I know. It actually hurts. So it was a cash sale. He put down a $7,000 deposit and when the settlement date Came around and he picked up the keys, he'd pay the rest of the balance, which was $63,000.
[16:10]
D
He must have been so keen to move if he only looked at two houses and bought the second one.
[16:16]
B
Yeah, and he was really planning on moving too, because he changed all his addresses over. He opened a new bank account in Cardwell. He even volunteered to pay for 12 months of home insurance up front.
[16:26]
D
Yeah, you're not going to pay 12 months of home insurance upfront if you have no plans of living in the house. And for me, the idea of changing your address with really important things like Veterans Affairs. He was a World War II vet and he really would have wanted people to know where he lived. It just seems, unfortunately, so unlikely that he would have gotten cold feet on this sale after doing all of that and paying all that money.
[16:51]
B
Exactly. And he was also really eager to move because he actually tried to bring the whole thing forward, but he couldn't quite get the money together. So the settlement date was set for Monday 19th April, which is just after Easter in 1993.
[17:05]
C
I spoke to my dad at Easter time and I said, where can I send your present? I had photos of myself that I wanted to send him. And he goes, send it to my new address. Cause I won't be here. Just send everything to my new address, and gave me his address.
[17:17]
B
Lachelle posted Les's present and photos to his new address in Cardwell, but there was no reply.
[17:24]
C
After a week, I'm like, gee, dad hasn't like, rung me or anything. It's really weird.
[17:31]
B
When Lachelle tried to call Les's new home, she discovered the phone hadn't been connected. So Lashelle wrote him another letter and she paid for Priority post so it would be in his letterbox the next day.
[17:43]
C
My second letter was like, dad, I'm really worried about you. You never got back to me. You haven't rung me, you haven't, like, sent me anything back. Please, I'm really, really worried. Can you just get in contact with me? No reply.
[17:55]
B
Lachelle's now frantic. Les hadn't called her for weeks or replied to two of her letters, or even connected the home phone to his new house. And back then, connecting the landline was the first thing you did when you moved in.
[18:09]
C
I rang Phillips House and David got on the phone and I said, where's my father? He's not getting back to me. And he goes, I don't know. He visited Leanne in hospital about a week ago. I went oh, okay. Well, he's not at his new address. And so then I hung up on him.
[18:23]
B
Lachelle's next call was to Ian and Ness in cardwell. Lachelle's mum, E.T. jumped on the phone too. She called everyone, Les's family, police, even David and Leanne's family, to try and locate her ex husband.
[18:37]
E
Now, that was never any love match between Les and I, but he was the father of my child and it was my responsibility to help her find him because she loved him, he loved her, and that was all I needed to know.
[18:57]
B
Lachelle, meanwhile, kept on replaying in her head something Les had said, said to her back at Easter.
[19:03]
C
He whispered to me on the phone, I can't wait to get out of here. It's haunted me for years because I didn't really think about it, like, I just thought it was just they were sending him crazy and if I'd asked him, like, what was the real reason or just. I don't, I don't know. Yeah. Now thinking about it's very daunting like that my dad might have felt threatened or something, I don't know.
[19:40]
D
It was now six weeks since Lachelle had heard from Les. And on 22 May 1993, she filed an official missing persons report. And that meant Townsville Detective Noel Powers took up the investigation. Noel's retired now and spends his time driving a bus for people with disabilities.
[20:02]
F
I'll try and sort of keep it nice and even and everything. And definitely no police speak, ok?
[20:07]
D
But old habits die hard. He still sounds like a cop from central casting.
[20:12]
F
So Lachelle instigated a, you know, instigated a call to Cardwell police. They made a couple of inquiries. One of them was with the local real estate agent and it turned out that he hadn't turned up. The settlement hadn't been made on Monday
[20:29]
D
19th April, the settlement day, when Les was supposed to pay the remaining $63,000 and collect the keys to his new home. He never showed up. Being a no show meant losing his $7,000 deposit. And this wasn't at all like frugal Les, especially since he'd already tried to bring the settlement forward before Easter.
[20:52]
F
He'd poured a bit of money into the house in Cardwell. It was quite obvious that he intended to settle down there and make that his, you know, forever home. And then all of a sudden it just, it stopped, basically dropped off the earth and there was no sign of his account being active.
[21:10]
D
Noel Powers needed to work out when and where Les had last been seen and so he started with the people Les had been living with his daughter Leanne and son in law David Phillips.
[21:22]
F
So we kicked off with them. They provide a bit of background information when he'd last been seen.
[21:28]
D
Finding out where and when Les was last seen sounds simple but it turns out no one could agree on the exact day he'd gone missing. David told police that he last saw Les as he left for work on a Friday morning. Leanne said she saw Les a week later when he visited her in hospital in Brisbane.
[21:51]
F
She said he didn't stay all that long just inquired about how she was going and that he was going to visit Lechelle up on the Sunshine coast and according to her that's the last he's ever been seen of.
[22:02]
D
Brisbane is over 1300 kilometres from Townsville. It's not an easy trip to make. Leanne told police that Les said he'd made the journey by train which would take about 24 hours. When Noel checked her story he found that on Monday 19 April, the same day Les was supposed to be in Cardwell for settlement he was instead in Townsville collecting his train ticket and he did something odd. He booked an onward journey from Brisbane to.
[22:36]
F
To Dalby and you know, for the information of listeners Dalby's probably a good four hours west of Brisbane.
[22:45]
D
What on earth would Les be doing in Dalby when he told Leanne he was going to the Sunshine coast to visit Le Shelle?
[22:54]
F
When we put that to both David and Leanne later on they were unaware they didn't know where Dolby is.
[23:00]
D
Les's ex wife at Isen was just as confused when she heard about the train ticket to Dalby.
[23:08]
E
Now you know where Dalby is. It's in the middle of nowhere.
[23:12]
D
In fact Dalby seemed like the last place on earth Les would be travelling to. He'd been there once as a young man working on a farm as a jackaroo on a station and he hated the place so much he vowed never to return. ETT thought the whole idea sounded absurd so she got on the phone.
[23:35]
E
I rang the station master. Did he remember anybody of that description getting off? No, he didn't remember it rang all
[23:44]
D
the hotels in Dalby. Nobody had seen Les. Nobody at Townsville train station could recall seeing Les either But they'd seen his car because it had been abandoned in the car park. The car bothered Noel for two reasons. First, why wouldn't Les just leave his car parked at the Phillips house? It'd be safer there than at the train Station. And second, where was his distinctive looking homemade trailer that was usually attached to his car? It wasn't at the Phillips house or the train station. The trailer had just vanished.
[24:24]
F
There was no sign of that trailer. There was no indication where it could be. So again, that was something of concern for us.
[24:31]
D
Ten days after she saw Les in hospital, Leanne arrived back home in Townsville. But her dad's car, his trailer and all of his possessions were gone. And the garage, which had contained all of Les possessions, was empty. By the time Lachelle filed that missing persons report with Noel, it had been five weeks since the Phillips family had seen him. So why didn't they report him missing? They told Noel it was because Les had a habit of going missing, taking impromptu off grid trips and returning home to his worried family whenever he felt like it.
[25:14]
F
Prone to just packing up and going off on his own, not keeping contact with anyone, go away for, you know, periods of time, not long periods of time, but then just rock up again as if nothing had happened. And I think they seem to believe that this is just simply another one of these instances.
[25:32]
D
If this was true, it wouldn't just explain why the Phillips never reported Les missing, it would present police with another explanation, explanation for what could have happened to him. Maybe the trip to Dolby was another one of his frequent unannounced trips away. And maybe while on that trip he met some sort of misadventure, like a snake bite or a bad fall. But ETT and Lachelle, they reckon Les would never just take off and disappear.
[26:00]
E
Leanne told them that all her life her father had gone wandering. Well, maybe he had when they were all younger and they were married, I don't know, but we knew where he was and he would ring and wanna talk to Lachelle. He never went away for weeks on end.
[26:17]
C
I would always know where my dad was. Not once would my dad ever take off and I wouldn't know where he was, ever.
[26:24]
D
It's worth pointing out here that both things can be true, that Les always told ETT and Lachelle where he was going, but would often take off without telling David and Leanne. What stood out to Noel Powers as a police officer, though, was that the Phillips family didn't seem to take Les disappearance all that seriously from memory.
[26:46]
F
There was, there wasn't a great deal of concern. Lachelle in particular was in contact with me and with us quite frequently, wanting to know what was going on, asking how we're going. Did you do this? Did you do that? That's what you're to expect of a family involved in this sort of situation, whereas Leanne and David was nothing. There was no contact.
[27:11]
D
Everything Noel had learned up to this point, Les forfeiting his deposit, the business with the car and the trailer fell into the something doesn't feel right here category. Take the supposed train trip to Brisbane. Noel couldn't explain why Les, a thrifty pensioner, was at Townsville collecting the ticket when he was supposed to be in Cardwell. Seven grand was a lot of money back in the 1990s, especially for Les, the thrifty pensioner. There was no way he'd forfeit that or his dream retirement home. But then the investigation unearthed a piece of evidence that screamed foul play. Les had booked a pension affair, so when he picked up the ticket, he had to show the cashier his pension card and sign for the ticket.
[28:04]
F
We had the handwriting analysis of the signature done and obviously was not.
[28:11]
D
Les's handwriting analysis sounds very csi, but it doesn't take a trained eye to see that this is a forgery when you line it up with Les. Authentic signatures. These two signatures at the top are lezzes.
[28:26]
B
Yep. So they're pretty uniform. It's LR ball in quite neat kind of cursive handwriting.
[28:33]
D
And you see how the R is written really neatly in that open style. Now this signature is forged. Look at the bottom one there, that R. Oh, yeah.
[28:43]
B
It's completely flubbed. It's like someone panicked halfway through doing it and gave up.
[28:47]
D
But there was a chance that Les had just disguised his signature for whatever reason. So Noel looked into the train journey itself.
[28:56]
F
We had a booking reference number. He'd used his pension card. And then as enquiries progressed, we found out that the ticket had been marked with fail to show FTS.
[29:06]
D
In the 1990s, train tickets were checked by hand by a conductor. The process was really thorough. They walked up and down the aisle ticking names off their seating plan. When the conductor on the trip to Brisbane reached seat 39, Les's booked seat, he wasn't there. They walked the length of the carriage looking for Les and checked his seat again in eight hours. He never got on that train to Brisbane or the next trip from Brisbane to Dalby. Police were just as thorough as those 1993 train conductors, checking with airlines and bus companies to see if they had any reservations in Les's name.
[29:53]
F
We even went so far as to interview a lady, young English backpacker who'd been travelling around. Hers was the seat next to where Les was allocated, where he was booked and she was quite chuffed, obviously, because she had two seats to herself all the way down to Brisbane.
[30:08]
D
The question of why Les was in Townsville collecting a train ticket when he was supposed to be in Cardwell collecting the keys to his new home was solved. It wasn't Les. It was someone impersonating him at the ticket booth and forging his signature.
[30:27]
F
This is probably your aha moment,
[30:33]
D
of course, that raised all sorts of different and more troubling questions.
[30:40]
F
So what's happened to him? What's going on? Who's hiding? Who's not telling us what's going on?
[30:46]
D
Les hadn't blown off his house settlement to go traveling, but somebody wanted to make it look like he had.
[30:55]
F
And it sort of turns the investigation more or less from a missing person into a potential homicide. And inquiring Les has disappeared off the face of the earth. It's as simple as that.
[31:11]
D
Coming up on Perfect Alibi. And he said, don't hang up, it's me. He said, I'm being bugged, and you're probably being bugged as well. All he wanted to do was tell
[31:22]
C
the truth and use words.
[31:24]
D
The fact of he almost ripped his windpipe out. And I truly believed that he was the person that murdered Les Paul, that
[31:34]
C
he died being bashed to death, it was just horrific. It was terrible.
[31:39]
D
If you've got more information on this case, you can contact us at lesball podcast protonmail.com that's L E S B A double L podcast protonmail.com.

Summary5 min read

Witness: Sex, Lies and Streaming

Episode 1: "I Know Who Killed My Father"

Date: August 9, 2026
Host: News.com.au
Series Focus: Investigative podcasts uncovering the hidden truths and human stories behind sensational headlines.

Episode Overview

This first episode of a new season called "Perfect Alibi" pivots from the usual coverage of the sex industry and OnlyFans to an in-depth cold case investigation. The story centers on the mysterious disappearance of Les Ball in 1993, a World War II veteran and beloved father. What begins as an ordinary welfare check spirals into a decades-long search for truth, as journalist Callum Tenness and colleague Jo Townsend uncover threads of family dysfunction, forgery, and likely murder. Through rich interviews with Les’s daughter Lachelle, ex-wife Ethel ("Et"), retired detectives, and analysis of cold case evidence, the episode paints an intimate portrait of loss and persistent hope—and hints at a breakthrough in the quest for justice.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Disappearance: Setting the Stage

The Crime-Free Paradise:
- [00:05] Cardwell, early 1990s: An idyllic, sleepy town with virtually no crime, setting up the unusualness of Les Ball's case.
- Ian, the local police officer, recalls:
  "The crime rate was very low... I had three reported crimes and we solved a lot of them."
  [00:47]
The 1993 Welfare Check:
- [01:11] Les’s daughter, Lachelle, asks police to check on her missing father who has recently bought a property and fallen out of contact.
- The officer finds the property occupied by a tenant who never saw Les, with his mail piling up.
- Les never picked up the keys to his new dream house, despite pre-paying and making plans for the move.

Lachelle’s Perspective: A Daughter’s Desperation

Immediate Emotional Impact:
- [02:59] Lachelle:
  “It was the worst feeling in life... my dad wanted to move into that house. He was not, not moving into that house. So I was like, where is my dad?”
Lifelong Search for Truth:
- [05:25] Lachelle’s resolve:
  “I’ll solve it one day. I’m never going to give up now. Not having it. I won’t let it rest.”
Personal Memory & Tribute:
- [06:23] Lachelle describes her tattoo with Les’s initials and recalls his love for golf, his fatherly attentiveness, and special memories:
  “He was a fantastic dad...He used to teach me how to play golf.”

Family Dynamics & Tensions

Blended and Fractured Families:
- [11:03–11:36] Les’s impulsive financial decisions (buying houses or trading for opals) put strain on his marriages.
- Divorce from Ethel spurs his move north to Townsville with his daughter from a previous marriage (Leanne) and her intimidating husband, David.
- Lachelle’s fraught relationship with her half-sister and brother-in-law is detailed, including a dramatic birthday blow-up:
  [13:23] “They were singing Happy Birthday and I ended up throwing the birthday cake in her face and running out and ringing my mum.”

The Timeline & Investigation

Les’s Mysterious Last Days:
- Les buys a dream house in Cardwell, changes his addresses, pays for insurance—shows clear intent to move.
- [17:04] Lachelle last speaks to Les at Easter; then, nothing.
  She mails, calls, leaves messages—no response.
- David and Leanne (half-sister and brother-in-law) last spot Les at odd, disputed times; their accounts increasingly contradict.
The Forged Train Ticket:
- Police find Les’s car abandoned at the Townsville train station (not at family’s home). His unique trailer also vanishes.
- [22:02] Leanne claims Les trained it to Brisbane to visit Lachelle. Police discover Les booked a ticket to Dalby—an implausible destination he openly disliked.
- Handwriting analysis reveals the signature for the ticket was forged.
  [28:04] Detective:
  “We had the handwriting analysis of the signature done and obviously was not [Les’s].”
- [29:05] Conductors confirm Les never boarded the train—the ticket is marked FTS (“fail to show”).

Family Responses & Motivations

Care and Indifference:
- Police note how only Lachelle (and Et) show intense concern and proactive inquiry, while David and Leanne seem nonchalant about Les's vanishing.
  [26:45] Detective on the contrast:
  “There wasn’t a great deal of concern. Lachelle...was in contact with me and with us quite frequently...whereas Leanne and David, there was nothing.”
Financial & Emotional Stakes:
- Les stood to lose $7,000 deposit and his dream retirement home; highly unlikely for a frugal pensioner.
- Changing all financial, government, and residential addresses is cited as proof Les meant to move—not disappear by choice.

The “Aha!” Moment & Turn to Homicide

Forgery as a Smoking Gun:
- The realization that someone actively impersonated Les to cover their tracks reframes the disappearance as almost certainly murder.
- [30:27] Detective:
  “This is probably your 'aha' moment.”
- [30:54]
  “It sort of turns the investigation...from a missing person into a potential homicide.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Lachelle’s Appraisal of Her Father:
[06:41]
"He was a fantastic dad. Like he was always there for me. He was, yeah. Great childhood father." — Lachelle
Detective Powers on the Family's Indifference:
[26:45]
"There wasn't a great deal of concern...whereas Leanne and David, there was nothing." — Detective Noel Powers
The Importance of the Forgery:
[28:04]
“We had the handwriting analysis of the signature done and obviously was not [Les’s].” — Detective Noel Powers
The Aha Moment:
[30:27]
"This is probably your 'aha' moment." — Detective Noel Powers
Turning Point to Homicide:
[30:54]
"It sort of turns the investigation more or less from a missing person into a potential homicide." — Detective Noel Powers

Important Timestamps

00:54: Introduction to the unsolved case of Les Ball
05:25: Lachelle’s vow never to give up
13:23: Lachelle's birthday clash with half-sister Leanne
17:04: Lachelle mails her father, never hears back
22:02: The train ticket anomaly emerges
28:04: Handwriting analysis exposes forgery
29:05: Confirmation Les never boarded the train
30:27: The “aha” moment for the investigators
30:54: Case shifts from missing person to likely homicide

Tone & Storytelling Style

The reporting is compassionate, persistent, and methodical, balancing skepticism and empathy.
The hosts, Callum Tenness and Jo Townsend, thread investigative rigor with emotional insight, foregrounding the heartbreak and hope of those left behind.
Lachelle’s raw determination and the stark, sometimes wry reminiscences from family conjure a story that is both gripping and tragedy-tinged.

Conclusion & Next Episode Tease

The episode closes with the revelation that Les’s disappearance centers around a fraud and potential cover-up, and the investigation is now a possible murder case. The hosts hint at new evidence and confessions uncovered—promising listeners that after three decades, answers may finally be within reach.

"All he wanted to do was tell the truth...he died being bashed to death, it was just horrific."
[31:33] — Lachelle, on the possible fate of her father

If you have information on the Les Ball case:
Contact: lesballpodcast@protonmail.com

For more news, exclusive videos, and updates, follow News.com.au on [socials].

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Transcript141 lines

[00:06]
A
When I first arrived In Cardwell in 1990, it was a wonderful place. The fishing was fantastic, the people were wonderful. It was one of the best places on earth.
[00:17]
B
In the early 90s, Cardwell in far North Queensland was a sleepy tropical paradise. A small village on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, surrounded by mountains of lush rainforest and waterfalls. Not much happened there which suited Ian and Ness just fine.
[00:33]
A
I bought myself a boat and I could go out on the reef for a whole day and no one would even know I wasn't in town. It was a lovely town.
[00:40]
B
He was officer in charge of the local police station. Quite possibly one of the most relaxed policing jobs in the country.
[00:47]
A
The crime rate was very low, I think in the first year. I had three reported crimes and we solved a lot of them.
[00:54]
B
But there's one crime Ian never solved. More than 30 years later, it remains a cold case. It all started one Friday night in May 1993. Ian picked up a call at the local police station from an 18 year old woman called Lachelle.
[01:11]
C
I said, can you check on my father? He's an elderly man, he may have had a fall. I was thinking something caved in at his house or something and he's fallen. Can you go and check on him, please? I just want to make sure he's okay.
[01:23]
A
She told me that he had recently bought a property in Cardwell and he was always regularly in contact with her and she hadn't heard from him for some time.
[01:34]
B
Ian agreed to go to Les's new house and check in on him. Cops do that sort of thing all the time. It's called a welfare check. It's garden variety policing. So when Ian pulled up at Les's home in Cardwell, he had every reason to believe this would be another routine job. It was possible Les would open the door and explain it was all a big misunderstanding. But when Ian knocked on the door, a woman answered.
[02:00]
A
She was renting the property. She was aware that it had been sold to Mr. Ball, but had not heard from him at all.
[02:07]
B
The tenant heard that the sale hadn't gone through, which was strange because a stream of mail addressed to Les had started arriving.
[02:16]
A
There were bank statements, Social Security, Veterans affairs letters and things like that. I started opening some of the mail up just to see if there's anything that would assist me in finding him.
[02:27]
B
Nothing in the letters offered any clues about where Les might be. So Ian spent the next couple of days making some inquiries.
[02:35]
A
At that point, you know, it was still just a welfare thing. I was looking for this Fellow. I spoke to solicitors, I spoke to. I spoke to the real estate. I spoke to the people at the house that he was buying.
[02:47]
B
48 hours after he took Lashelle's call, Ian called her back and told her Les never moved into his new home. On the day he was supposed to collect the keys, he never showed up.
[03:00]
C
It was the worst feeling in life. Like, I just felt sick in the stomach because, like, my dad wanted to move into that house. He was not, not moving into that house. So I was like, where is my dad? Something's happened to him. I was just, like, hysterical.
[03:15]
B
There's something Ian didn't tell Lachelle.
[03:18]
A
I thought he was dead. Someone's done this bloke in. And that was my feeling.
[03:30]
D
It's now been more than 30 years since Lachelle Ball made that phone call, and no one has seen or heard from Les Ball. The police don't have the answers. Two coronial inquests have failed to find any answers. But we've spent more than two years digging into this cold case. We've uncovered clues that cops and coroners have missed. We've found fabricated evidence and uncovered fraud. And our investigation has taken us from the suburbs of Townsville right down to the Melbourne underworld. And not only do we believe Les Ball was murdered, we think we can prove who did it. I'm Jo Townsend.
[04:15]
B
And I'm Callum Tenness. You're listening to Witness, the home of investigative podcasts for news.comau this is our newest series, Perfect Alibi. You're the only constant. Things change and I don't wanna blame you.
[04:36]
C
Orange for.
[04:50]
B
Like Ian, I first met Lachelle over the phone. I'm a journalist and TV producer and I mostly make true crime. Lachelle wanted me to look into her dad's disappearance.
[05:00]
C
I wanted someone that would actually, like, look at it and delve deeper into it, because obviously, the justice system had failed us.
[05:08]
B
Three police investigations and two coronial inquests have failed to find out what happened to Les or who's responsible. So I wasn't sure how I could help. But Lachelle's faced bigger obstacles than a skeptical journalist. Her whole life has been consumed by seeking justice for Les.
[05:26]
C
I'll solve it one day. I'm never going to give up now. Not having it. I won't let it rest.
[05:34]
B
So, on a stinking hot day, Lachelle rode a bike to my house and dropped a thumb drive containing hundreds of documents into my letterbox. And suddenly, it seemed like there might be more to this Cold case than I first thought. That's when I brought in my colleague Joe Townsend to help me investigate. And since then, we haven't stopped.
[05:54]
C
You look well.
[05:56]
D
No, you don't need to be sorry in the slightest. Cal and I have been gas bagging.
[05:59]
B
Me and Jo have gotten to know Lachelle pretty well in the two years we've been working on this story. Guys, excuse the mess.
[06:05]
D
Just shut your eyes.
[06:07]
B
If you've ever been to Bondi and observed the locals, you'll have a pretty good sense of what Lachelle looks like. She's tanned, clad in activewear with a sleek black ponytail and bright white smile. And she has a tattoo on her left wrist. The letters LB in curly writing.
[06:24]
C
I just wanted something of my dad and I thought, well, I'll get his initials. L.B. les Ball. And it's my initials as well. Just something on my body to have. Memory.
[06:35]
B
Lashelle doesn't have much to remember Les by. Just an old wristwatch, some photos and childhood memories.
[06:42]
C
He was a fantastic dad. Like he was always there for me. He was, yeah. Great childhood father. Anything I wanted or taking me to like the football matches, taking me to sports matches. He was just a good dad, you know, a fun loving dad.
[06:57]
B
Les was a World War II veteran and like a lot of men of that generation, he was frugal and handy. The kind of guy who could build or fix anything.
[07:07]
C
Built a cricket pitch for me to play cricket with at home. Flying Fox, anything I ever wanted.
[07:12]
B
Apart from the shell. Les's great love in life was golf. If the game means anything to you, he played off a handicap of two. And if you don't know what that means, just consider the fact that Les single handedly built himself a nine hole golf course on their family property.
[07:28]
C
He was golf crazy. He loved it. He used to teach me how to play golf. I wish he'd kept it up.
[07:34]
B
Les was a slight fella, but fit and active. Also, he was very good looking.
[07:39]
C
Blue eyes, full head of hair, quite muscly, athletic. Because he's always doing something. Always into his sport. Very tan because he was always outdoors.
[07:50]
B
Les had Leschelle with his second wife, Ethel Ison. Everyone calls her Et. She lives on the Sunshine coast in Queensland. Early one morning I flew up to
[08:00]
A
meet her local time here at 7:25am
[08:05]
B
driving up the highway from Brisbane. I was excited to meet Etta because I'd been reading her diaries from when Les disappeared. I'm not a creep. Lachelle gave them to me from her forensic entries. I got the Sense that she was whip smart and fiercely protective of her daughter. Ferrell's Road, where are you? After a few wrong turns, I found her modest unit in a retirement village where she now lives.
[08:32]
E
G'.
[08:32]
C
Day.
[08:32]
B
S good. As a typical male, I did not listen to your instructions. No, no, I found it in the end. Not at all. You're a Queensland. Sitting in an armchair in her small living room, the walls covered with family photos, musical instruments. It's exactly the person I'd imagined.
[08:58]
E
I'm 80 now, you know, and I'm sort of. I'm what they call an old lady now, you know, I don't like it, but that's what I am. Oh, God, I hate that tag.
[09:08]
B
And she's still fiercely protective of her daughter.
[09:11]
E
I worry that Lachelle's never going to let it go and she's always going to hope for the best and hope that something will come out. I pray about it all the time, but, yeah, she will never let it go. Not in my day, she won't.
[09:32]
B
Ed and les married in 1975 when Lachelle was four months old. Les was in his 50s and had four kids from a previous marriage, but was devoted to Lachelle as if she was his first.
[09:45]
E
He was absolutely obsessed with that child. From the moment that she was born. When we were coming home from the hospital with this tiny baby, he was so anxious about looking at her and he was so obsessed with her that he almost ran. Well, he did run off the road a little bit and I had to scream at him, watch the road, you know, you can watch her when you get home. Yeah. But he was obsessed with that little girl.
[10:11]
B
Et Les and Lachelle, along with Ed's two other children from a previous marriage, lived on the Sunshine coast for a little while.
[10:19]
E
He was sort of king of the kids in the street because if they wanted anything fixed or anything, bring it down to Les and he'd fix it, you know, no worries at all.
[10:30]
B
Ed still has plenty of affection for Les, but the marriage wasn't great. Les was retired, which meant that it was the breadwinner. So he spent his time playing golf and surprising his wife with half cooked schemes.
[10:44]
E
He went out for a loaf of bread one day and came home and told me he'd bought a house. Oh, God, I nearly killed him. And he bought this big house that was partly finished and he actually finished that house and it was magnificent. A beautiful big home with a swimming pool.
[11:04]
B
Once that scheme had come off, Les cooked up another a plan to breed racehorses without Telling his wife Les sold the family home, kind of.
[11:14]
E
I'm telling you, he swapped that house for opals and I had to trade out of them because he wasn't going to do it. Where's the money to build another house? Oh, well, I don't know. He didn't think of that. Oh, he was a sucker for a good deal, you know. And I remember being so furious with him that it was unbelievable.
[11:37]
B
In 1991, after 16 years together, the marriage ended.
[11:42]
E
I was feeding horses and I got Jack of that, but you couldn't speak sense to him. Yeah, golf and horses was all he ever wanted to do.
[11:52]
B
Les was 70. With two failed marriages behind him, he was flush with cash from the divorce and ready for a change. So he decided to move up north to Townsville to live with Leanne Phillips. She's one of his daughters from his first marriage and so she's Lachelle's half sister. Les packed all of his things into a big light blue trailer, hand built by Les, of course, and set off for townsville. Lachelle was 17 and at that age, most teenagers would do anything to avoid spending time with their parents. But she volunteered to join him and rode passenger on their trip north.
[12:28]
C
And then we pulled up out the front of the Phillips house a week later and we come in and then, well, Leanne wasn't too happy to see me with dad because dad hadn't told her, I don't think.
[12:39]
B
Leanne lived with her husband, David and their four kids. Les and Lachelle shared a room in one of the kids bedrooms. The half sisters had never been close, but now they were under the same roof. They were at each other's throats.
[12:52]
C
We were always arguing. We just never got on, I suppose. I was a teenager, wasn't I? And she was in her 30s.
[12:59]
B
Lachelle didn't like Leanne's husband either. She found David, a former cop from Victoria, intimidating.
[13:06]
C
He was a man of not many words and like you were a little bit scared of him. There was something about him. I didn't argue with him. I never really spoke to him, to tell you the truth. Yeah, he didn't really speak to anyone.
[13:18]
B
On Lachelle's 18th birthday, the tension that had been building up for a couple of weeks boiled over.
[13:24]
C
They were singing Happy Birthday and I ended up throwing the birthday cake in her face and running out and ringing my mum.
[13:29]
B
It arranged for Lachelle to leave the Phillips and return to the Sunshine coast, and she left the house that night. It was relieved she'd been Uneasy about Lachelle living in David's house. Call it a mother's intuition.
[13:42]
E
She'd got a bit frightened of David up there. It was more of gut feeling. She knew she needed to get out.
[13:50]
B
Lachelle went back to live with ETT and life became quieter in the Phillips household. Les shifted from one of the kids bedrooms into the garage. He and Leanne had a close relationship and Les would often pick up the four kids from school. In December 1992, he put a deposit on a block of land not far from where the Phillips were renting. The plan was to build a house for the family to live in. Les was a builder. That's what he did. It's not clear if it was a gift or a loan. But just a couple of Months later, in February 1993, things began to sour. That's when Les first ex wife Margaret, the one he was married to before it came to stay with the Phillips to help out around the house while Leanne was in hospital.
[14:35]
C
Our dad couldn't stand her and didn't want anything to do with her. They'd have a lot of fights, like Margaret would be screaming at him. He'd be screaming.
[14:43]
B
This isn't just Lachelle's characterisation. Everybody from every warring faction of Les family agrees that he and Margaret couldn't stand each other. And so just a couple of weeks after his ex came to stay, Les tried to hit the eject button. He decided he'd move out of the Phillips house and buy a home of his own. He told his real estate agent that he was sick of being the Phillips family babysitter.
[15:07]
A
He obviously wasn't happy in his living arrangements. It appeared that the situation wasn't harmonious in that household. And basically this was one of the main reasons that he was moving to Cardwell, to get away from that situation.
[15:20]
B
Les wasn't looking for long. He bought the second house he saw.
[15:25]
C
It was an old Queenslander house, two levels. It was behind a golf course. He had the beach around the corner. He was very happy and excited to be moving in there. It was absolutely perfect for him. His dream house, basically.
[15:42]
B
So, Joe, how much do you reckon a two bedroom freestanding home in tropical paradise cost les back in 1993?
[15:49]
D
Okay, so it's the early 90s. I'm going to go with $300,000.
[15:53]
B
Well, you're only a few hundred grand off. It actually cost $70,000. I know. It actually hurts. So it was a cash sale. He put down a $7,000 deposit and when the settlement date Came around and he picked up the keys, he'd pay the rest of the balance, which was $63,000.
[16:10]
D
He must have been so keen to move if he only looked at two houses and bought the second one.
[16:16]
B
Yeah, and he was really planning on moving too, because he changed all his addresses over. He opened a new bank account in Cardwell. He even volunteered to pay for 12 months of home insurance up front.
[16:26]
D
Yeah, you're not going to pay 12 months of home insurance upfront if you have no plans of living in the house. And for me, the idea of changing your address with really important things like Veterans Affairs. He was a World War II vet and he really would have wanted people to know where he lived. It just seems, unfortunately, so unlikely that he would have gotten cold feet on this sale after doing all of that and paying all that money.
[16:51]
B
Exactly. And he was also really eager to move because he actually tried to bring the whole thing forward, but he couldn't quite get the money together. So the settlement date was set for Monday 19th April, which is just after Easter in 1993.
[17:05]
C
I spoke to my dad at Easter time and I said, where can I send your present? I had photos of myself that I wanted to send him. And he goes, send it to my new address. Cause I won't be here. Just send everything to my new address, and gave me his address.
[17:17]
B
Lachelle posted Les's present and photos to his new address in Cardwell, but there was no reply.
[17:24]
C
After a week, I'm like, gee, dad hasn't like, rung me or anything. It's really weird.
[17:31]
B
When Lachelle tried to call Les's new home, she discovered the phone hadn't been connected. So Lashelle wrote him another letter and she paid for Priority post so it would be in his letterbox the next day.
[17:43]
C
My second letter was like, dad, I'm really worried about you. You never got back to me. You haven't rung me, you haven't, like, sent me anything back. Please, I'm really, really worried. Can you just get in contact with me? No reply.
[17:55]
B
Lachelle's now frantic. Les hadn't called her for weeks or replied to two of her letters, or even connected the home phone to his new house. And back then, connecting the landline was the first thing you did when you moved in.
[18:09]
C
I rang Phillips House and David got on the phone and I said, where's my father? He's not getting back to me. And he goes, I don't know. He visited Leanne in hospital about a week ago. I went oh, okay. Well, he's not at his new address. And so then I hung up on him.
[18:23]
B
Lachelle's next call was to Ian and Ness in cardwell. Lachelle's mum, E.T. jumped on the phone too. She called everyone, Les's family, police, even David and Leanne's family, to try and locate her ex husband.
[18:37]
E
Now, that was never any love match between Les and I, but he was the father of my child and it was my responsibility to help her find him because she loved him, he loved her, and that was all I needed to know.
[18:57]
B
Lachelle, meanwhile, kept on replaying in her head something Les had said, said to her back at Easter.
[19:03]
C
He whispered to me on the phone, I can't wait to get out of here. It's haunted me for years because I didn't really think about it, like, I just thought it was just they were sending him crazy and if I'd asked him, like, what was the real reason or just. I don't, I don't know. Yeah. Now thinking about it's very daunting like that my dad might have felt threatened or something, I don't know.
[19:40]
D
It was now six weeks since Lachelle had heard from Les. And on 22 May 1993, she filed an official missing persons report. And that meant Townsville Detective Noel Powers took up the investigation. Noel's retired now and spends his time driving a bus for people with disabilities.
[20:02]
F
I'll try and sort of keep it nice and even and everything. And definitely no police speak, ok?
[20:07]
D
But old habits die hard. He still sounds like a cop from central casting.
[20:12]
F
So Lachelle instigated a, you know, instigated a call to Cardwell police. They made a couple of inquiries. One of them was with the local real estate agent and it turned out that he hadn't turned up. The settlement hadn't been made on Monday
[20:29]
D
19th April, the settlement day, when Les was supposed to pay the remaining $63,000 and collect the keys to his new home. He never showed up. Being a no show meant losing his $7,000 deposit. And this wasn't at all like frugal Les, especially since he'd already tried to bring the settlement forward before Easter.
[20:52]
F
He'd poured a bit of money into the house in Cardwell. It was quite obvious that he intended to settle down there and make that his, you know, forever home. And then all of a sudden it just, it stopped, basically dropped off the earth and there was no sign of his account being active.
[21:10]
D
Noel Powers needed to work out when and where Les had last been seen and so he started with the people Les had been living with his daughter Leanne and son in law David Phillips.
[21:22]
F
So we kicked off with them. They provide a bit of background information when he'd last been seen.
[21:28]
D
Finding out where and when Les was last seen sounds simple but it turns out no one could agree on the exact day he'd gone missing. David told police that he last saw Les as he left for work on a Friday morning. Leanne said she saw Les a week later when he visited her in hospital in Brisbane.
[21:51]
F
She said he didn't stay all that long just inquired about how she was going and that he was going to visit Lechelle up on the Sunshine coast and according to her that's the last he's ever been seen of.
[22:02]
D
Brisbane is over 1300 kilometres from Townsville. It's not an easy trip to make. Leanne told police that Les said he'd made the journey by train which would take about 24 hours. When Noel checked her story he found that on Monday 19 April, the same day Les was supposed to be in Cardwell for settlement he was instead in Townsville collecting his train ticket and he did something odd. He booked an onward journey from Brisbane to.
[22:36]
F
To Dalby and you know, for the information of listeners Dalby's probably a good four hours west of Brisbane.
[22:45]
D
What on earth would Les be doing in Dalby when he told Leanne he was going to the Sunshine coast to visit Le Shelle?
[22:54]
F
When we put that to both David and Leanne later on they were unaware they didn't know where Dolby is.
[23:00]
D
Les's ex wife at Isen was just as confused when she heard about the train ticket to Dalby.
[23:08]
E
Now you know where Dalby is. It's in the middle of nowhere.
[23:12]
D
In fact Dalby seemed like the last place on earth Les would be travelling to. He'd been there once as a young man working on a farm as a jackaroo on a station and he hated the place so much he vowed never to return. ETT thought the whole idea sounded absurd so she got on the phone.
[23:35]
E
I rang the station master. Did he remember anybody of that description getting off? No, he didn't remember it rang all
[23:44]
D
the hotels in Dalby. Nobody had seen Les. Nobody at Townsville train station could recall seeing Les either But they'd seen his car because it had been abandoned in the car park. The car bothered Noel for two reasons. First, why wouldn't Les just leave his car parked at the Phillips house? It'd be safer there than at the train Station. And second, where was his distinctive looking homemade trailer that was usually attached to his car? It wasn't at the Phillips house or the train station. The trailer had just vanished.
[24:24]
F
There was no sign of that trailer. There was no indication where it could be. So again, that was something of concern for us.
[24:31]
D
Ten days after she saw Les in hospital, Leanne arrived back home in Townsville. But her dad's car, his trailer and all of his possessions were gone. And the garage, which had contained all of Les possessions, was empty. By the time Lachelle filed that missing persons report with Noel, it had been five weeks since the Phillips family had seen him. So why didn't they report him missing? They told Noel it was because Les had a habit of going missing, taking impromptu off grid trips and returning home to his worried family whenever he felt like it.
[25:14]
F
Prone to just packing up and going off on his own, not keeping contact with anyone, go away for, you know, periods of time, not long periods of time, but then just rock up again as if nothing had happened. And I think they seem to believe that this is just simply another one of these instances.
[25:32]
D
If this was true, it wouldn't just explain why the Phillips never reported Les missing, it would present police with another explanation, explanation for what could have happened to him. Maybe the trip to Dolby was another one of his frequent unannounced trips away. And maybe while on that trip he met some sort of misadventure, like a snake bite or a bad fall. But ETT and Lachelle, they reckon Les would never just take off and disappear.
[26:00]
E
Leanne told them that all her life her father had gone wandering. Well, maybe he had when they were all younger and they were married, I don't know, but we knew where he was and he would ring and wanna talk to Lachelle. He never went away for weeks on end.
[26:17]
C
I would always know where my dad was. Not once would my dad ever take off and I wouldn't know where he was, ever.
[26:24]
D
It's worth pointing out here that both things can be true, that Les always told ETT and Lachelle where he was going, but would often take off without telling David and Leanne. What stood out to Noel Powers as a police officer, though, was that the Phillips family didn't seem to take Les disappearance all that seriously from memory.
[26:46]
F
There was, there wasn't a great deal of concern. Lachelle in particular was in contact with me and with us quite frequently, wanting to know what was going on, asking how we're going. Did you do this? Did you do that? That's what you're to expect of a family involved in this sort of situation, whereas Leanne and David was nothing. There was no contact.
[27:11]
D
Everything Noel had learned up to this point, Les forfeiting his deposit, the business with the car and the trailer fell into the something doesn't feel right here category. Take the supposed train trip to Brisbane. Noel couldn't explain why Les, a thrifty pensioner, was at Townsville collecting the ticket when he was supposed to be in Cardwell. Seven grand was a lot of money back in the 1990s, especially for Les, the thrifty pensioner. There was no way he'd forfeit that or his dream retirement home. But then the investigation unearthed a piece of evidence that screamed foul play. Les had booked a pension affair, so when he picked up the ticket, he had to show the cashier his pension card and sign for the ticket.
[28:04]
F
We had the handwriting analysis of the signature done and obviously was not.
[28:11]
D
Les's handwriting analysis sounds very csi, but it doesn't take a trained eye to see that this is a forgery when you line it up with Les. Authentic signatures. These two signatures at the top are lezzes.
[28:26]
B
Yep. So they're pretty uniform. It's LR ball in quite neat kind of cursive handwriting.
[28:33]
D
And you see how the R is written really neatly in that open style. Now this signature is forged. Look at the bottom one there, that R. Oh, yeah.
[28:43]
B
It's completely flubbed. It's like someone panicked halfway through doing it and gave up.
[28:47]
D
But there was a chance that Les had just disguised his signature for whatever reason. So Noel looked into the train journey itself.
[28:56]
F
We had a booking reference number. He'd used his pension card. And then as enquiries progressed, we found out that the ticket had been marked with fail to show FTS.
[29:06]
D
In the 1990s, train tickets were checked by hand by a conductor. The process was really thorough. They walked up and down the aisle ticking names off their seating plan. When the conductor on the trip to Brisbane reached seat 39, Les's booked seat, he wasn't there. They walked the length of the carriage looking for Les and checked his seat again in eight hours. He never got on that train to Brisbane or the next trip from Brisbane to Dalby. Police were just as thorough as those 1993 train conductors, checking with airlines and bus companies to see if they had any reservations in Les's name.
[29:53]
F
We even went so far as to interview a lady, young English backpacker who'd been travelling around. Hers was the seat next to where Les was allocated, where he was booked and she was quite chuffed, obviously, because she had two seats to herself all the way down to Brisbane.
[30:08]
D
The question of why Les was in Townsville collecting a train ticket when he was supposed to be in Cardwell collecting the keys to his new home was solved. It wasn't Les. It was someone impersonating him at the ticket booth and forging his signature.
[30:27]
F
This is probably your aha moment,
[30:33]
D
of course, that raised all sorts of different and more troubling questions.
[30:40]
F
So what's happened to him? What's going on? Who's hiding? Who's not telling us what's going on?
[30:46]
D
Les hadn't blown off his house settlement to go traveling, but somebody wanted to make it look like he had.
[30:55]
F
And it sort of turns the investigation more or less from a missing person into a potential homicide. And inquiring Les has disappeared off the face of the earth. It's as simple as that.
[31:11]
D
Coming up on Perfect Alibi. And he said, don't hang up, it's me. He said, I'm being bugged, and you're probably being bugged as well. All he wanted to do was tell
[31:22]
C
the truth and use words.
[31:24]
D
The fact of he almost ripped his windpipe out. And I truly believed that he was the person that murdered Les Paul, that
[31:34]
C
he died being bashed to death, it was just horrific. It was terrible.
[31:39]
D
If you've got more information on this case, you can contact us at lesball podcast protonmail.com that's L E S B A double L podcast protonmail.com.