Court in the Act

On August 2, the Linda Reynolds and Brittany Higgins defamation trial will begin in WA’s Supreme Court. Senator Reynolds is suing Higgins over a series of social media posts she claims were part of a deliberate attempt to ruin her career and reputation. Higgins argues the posts were justified, given how Senator Reynolds treated the junior staffer.  Both women have something to prove and everything...

How’s about this for a guest list?  The Chief Justice of Western Australia. The Attorney General of Western Australia. The former DPP of Western Australia, turned Supreme Court judge.  Two of the richest people in Australia. The former chairman of the West Coast Eagles. More lawyers. More judges. Former judges.   You would think that only the most pressing and potentially career defining legal iss...

A decade since Amy Wensley’s suspicious death, her family are no closer to answers.  The mother of two little girls was found in her bedroom with a fatal gunshot wound to the head. Despite first responders’ suspicions, within one-hour detectives deemed Amy’s death a suicide. What Police did - or didn’t do - in those crucial first hours have been the subject of intense scrutiny. Joining Tim on Cour...

Thirty years ago this coming weekend, The Sunday Times fully exposed paedophile priest Reverend Michael Roderick Painter for the first time.  Painter had been an Anglican priest in Perth and beyond since the early 60s.   He was revered for his charisma and charm, his pastoral skill, his common touch, and was adored by his parishioners and fellow clergy alike.  So much so that when it emerged that...

Who, how and why.  Put brutally, those are the three questions a coroner has to answer when investigating a death.   Seemingly simple questions. But sometimes so hard to answer. Sometimes impossible.  In the coming weeks and months in Western Australia, headlines will be writ large about inquests set to be held.  Cleveland Dodd – the young man who died by his own hand in the custody of WA’s Depart...

On a quiet and idyllic street in the leafy suburb of Floreat, in Western Australia, the actions of a man intent on revenge, sent shockwaves throughout the small community and beyond. Mark Bombara had been searching for his estranged wife, instead he found her best friend Jennifer Petelczyc, 59 and daughter Gretl, 18, fatally shooting them both, before turning the gun on himself. A senseless, bruta...

Serial stalker Kobi Jane Langshaw, whose obsessive contact with two men had chilling similarities with the Netflix smash-hit Baby Reindeer, has been banned for life from ever contacting her latest victims again. This is the TRUE story of a case that has eerie similarities to the Netflix smash hit. Like Martha, Kobi Jane Langshaw had a background in the law, presented as affable, intelligent, and p...

In December 2020 one WA’s most fearsome bikie heavyweights was assassinated in front of hundreds of people at the Kwinana Motorplex, sparking an unprecedented response from both police and politicians.  Taskforce Ravello smashed in doors, raided properties, locked up people in the hunt for Martin’s killer.  Meanwhile, Martins lavish and at times bizarre funeral was livestreamed as a procession of...

This month, Donald J Trump became the first president, present or former, to face a criminal trial in the United States. And the allegation was that he, and his minions, along with the National Enquirer “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election”.  A scheme involving a porn star, a publisher called Pecker, and an Australian sports reporter turned gossip king.  Joining us to break...

It began with a man, and then a boy.  The massacre at Bondi Junction. And the stabbing of a bishop during a Wakeley church service.  Both horrific actions were captured in real time, and the images of the knife, of the death, the horror the shock and the grief, then broadcast to the world.  The mainstream media showed what they needed to amid the strict controls which govern what can be shown by a...

Just after 2am on October 12, 2023 an ambulance raced to WA’s main maximum security prison Casuarina.   A 16-year-old boy had self-harmed inside his cell at the notorious Unit 18 – the juvenile facility located within the grounds of the adult prison.   The teen was rushed to hospital where was put on life support. One week later, surrounded by family, he took his final breath.   After his death wa...

Kimberley Heptinstall was 32, the life of party. Everyone’s friend.  She and her partner Travis Barnard met online and got engaged in June 2017.   Until, after a planned elective surgery, Kim lost her life. Suddenly, tragically.  The loss devastated her family. And left her partner bereaved, and apparently grieving.  What Barnard did on the day his partner died in 2019 led him into court this week...

Blood, violence and death seem to follow the name Edhouse.  Father and son Andrew and Robert are both bikies and linked to a string of gruesome crimes – including the disappearance of Kalgoorlie woman Lisa Govan. Andrew Edhouse, one of WA’s most notorious bikies in the late 90s,  was a member of one of the “most secretive” bikie clubs in Australia - the Club Deroes. In the late 1990s Perth was in...

It started as a way to create memories to last a lifetime. An experienced pilot, two excited 12-year-old girls and a family friend on a joy flight over Broome’s iconic coastline. But it quickly turned into every parent’s worst nightmare as the Robinson R44 Raven chopper plunged to the ground seconds after take-off, right in front of their loved ones eyes. On board that flight was award-winning tou...

Versace is a name dripped with glamour, and wealth, and glitz, and fame.  But the reality of the death of a man who bore it was a lot grimier than the Italian fashion house which made it famous.   Joseph Rodney Versace. A man with bikie links. Shot in the head. Dead – in a shed, north of Perth.  The gunman, Joshua Duperouzel, also with bikie links, made his escape in a black Beemer with the number...

It’s the case that’s dominated the Australian consciousness. The alleged murders of a couple – Jesse Baird and Luke Davies – by another man. A NSW cop. Beau Lamarre-Condon.   A double homicide, in Jesse’s home. In cold blood. With a gun, that was police issue. Jesse Baird was allegedly Mr-Lamarre Condon’s obsession. A love interest spurned, which has allegedly led to the unthinkable.  Seven Networ...

Peter Greste – the journalist who spent more than a year locked up in an Egyptian prison – has said the Australian government took too long to finally call for the release and return of Julian Assange. Assange took his final appeal against extradition to the United States to the UK’s highest court this week – a last bid to stop him being sent across the Atlantic to face espionage charges. Those ch...

It’s a spin-off from the original drama Brittany Higgins versus Bruce Lehrmann. Veteran TV presenter Lisa Wilkinson took on her former employer Network 10 over her decision to get her own lawyers. And over what those lawyers cost. It all stems from the interview Wilkinson conducted with Higgins on The Project in 2021, where Lehrmann was accused of rape. And that Logies speech, which forced the del...

He was one of the biggest figures in Melbourne’s Underbelly. She was his lawyer. And, as it turns out, the biggest snitch of all.   Tony Mokbel is widely regarded as the organiser of Melbourne’s methamphetamine business. And in 2006 he became Australia’s most wanted man, escaping the country on a yacht bound for Greece. He was caught a year later, wearing what would become the most famous wig in A...

On October 1, 2000 two shots rang out in the darkness in the middle of nowhere. The handful of Gypsy Jokers sitting around a campfire near the pub in the tiny Goldfields town of Ora Banda hit the deck. One wasn’t so lucky. Billy Grierson caught a bullet in the chest and bled to death. The owner of the pub, former CIB detective Don Hancock insisted he had nothing to do with the death. The Jokers we...

A decorated policeman is revealed to be a murderer. Detective Roger Rogerson was once a legend of the NSW police force. He scooped up robbers, shot up bad boys, solved murders and never said sorry. But as it turned out, he was as corrupt as they came. And even committed murders himself. Roger Rogerson died on January 21, 2024 aged 83, after suffering a brain aneurysm in his cell at Long Bay prison...

It’s the contentious murder investigation everyone has an opinion about. Lloyd Patrick Rayney vs The State of Western Australia. One of the most scrutinized murder trials in living memory ended with Mr Rayney being acquitted of the murder, and manslaughter of his wife Corryn. Mr Rayney also won one of the biggest defamation payouts in Australian legal history AGAINST the WA Police.  In part 2 of o...

It’s a case that rocked WA’s legal community and etched itself into the State’s memory. A toxic marriage on the rocks, allegations of phone tapping, gambling, cheating and murder. Multiple court cases. A family in pieces. On the evening of August 7, 2007, Corryn Rayney, a Supreme Court registrar and mother of two, went boot scooting. She was never seen again. A week later after a tip from the publ...

There are plenty of fish in the sea, so the saying goes. But looking for love online can sometimes  be a terrifying and dangerous experience. Just ask one of the Perth victims of “campaigns of terror and punishment” at the hands of a serial dating app stalker. Adam Geoffrey Rybicki looked like any other young man looking for love on apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, Red Hot Pie, WhatsApp, Snapchat...

The Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial continues and this week has featured the most explosive evidence from the woman who conducted the interview with Brittany Higgins.   Journalist, editor, presenter and author Lisa Wilkinson.   She, along with her employer Network Ten, are being sued by Mr Lehrmann, who alleges they defamed him with that piece on The Project in February 2021.  She, and they deny t...