Pod Insights Casefile True Crime Case 309: Lindsay Jellett About this episode When 41-year-old Lindsay Jellett failed to return home from his evening walk around the Victorian town of Ararat in May 1994, staff at his residential care unit were immediately worried. As well as being intellectually disabled, Lindsay had epilepsy, which required nightly medication, and it wasn’t like him to lose track of time. As daybreak emerged, a grim discovery led to the question – who would want to hurt this innocent man?
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Narration – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/
Research & writing – Vikki Petraitis
Creative direction – Milly Raso
Production and music – Mike Migas http://mikemigas.com/
Music – Andrew D. B. Joslyn http://www.andrewjoslynmusic.com/
Audio editing – Anthony Telfer
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2:27 Speaker 00 On the evening of Tuesday, May 10, 1994, staff at a home on Granau Street in the regional Victorian town of Ararat served up dinner at the usual time of 6pm. The home was a residential care unit for people with disabilities. The unit’s five inhabitants were cared for round the clock by live-in staff from the Department of Health and Community Services. It was their job to support and empower the residents to live as independently as possible. But, as the staff and residents gathered around the dining table to eat their dinner together, one chair remained empty. The cheerful and gentle fifth resident of the unit,
3:10 Speaker 00 41-year-old Lindsay Jellett, was nowhere to be seen.
3:39 Speaker 00 Lindsay Jellett was a creature of habit. Shortly before 4 o’clock that afternoon, he asked the staff at Granau Street for permission to go for his daily walk. This was Lindsay’s favourite part of the day, the only time he was free and unrestricted. Although it was rare for Lindsay to be late, he loved food, and his carers were sure he’d be back before long. They put his plate in the microwave so they could reheat his dinner as soon as he showed up. But by 6.30, there was still no sign of Lindsay. His carers checked his bedroom and the backyard in case he’d returned without them noticing. One of the staff drove around the streets on the lookout,
4:24 Speaker 00 but had no luck finding him. By 7 o’clock, they were really worried. It was dark and cold outside, and Lindsay had never come home this late. The police were promptly called.
4:41 Speaker 00 Lindsay was last seen by Granow Street staff at 3:45pm as he set off for his afternoon walk. While a traumatic head injury at the age of two had left Lindsay with cognitive disability and developmental delays, he was more than capable of navigating his daily routine. He could shower, feed and dress himself. He couldn't read or write, but he could communicate coherently, count to thirty and knew the value of money to ten dollars.
5:13 Speaker 00 Lindsay particularly loved walking to a nearby golf course, where he'd collect lost golf balls and bring them home to clean and give to his friends. His other favourite walk was to the main street of town. Lindsay had a sweet tooth and he'd spend his five dollar daily allowance on cigarettes, coffee, Coca-Cola and biscuits. One of his legs was shorter than the other, so he tended to shuffle along slowly, often stopping to talk to people in the streets. In the first few months of living at Granow Street, Lindsay walked so much that he wore out several pairs of shoes. He walked for hours each day, but was always home in time for dinner.
5:59 Speaker 00 With Lindsay now failing to return home, time was of the essence. It was a frosty rainy night and he was ill-prepared for the weather, having left home in just a pair of trousers and a blue fleece top. Adding to the urgency was the fact that at eight o'clock each night, Lindsay took the drug Tegretol to treat his epilepsy. A missed dose could put him at risk of a seizure. As luck would have it, the Ararat branch of the State Emergency Service were in the middle of a training session and could be deployed immediately to help police with the search. They were advised that Lindsay was timid and there was a possibility he might hide if approached by someone he didn't know.
6:45 Speaker 00 Search units scoured the town by car and on foot, with the SES truck driving slowly along the back roads using a search light to sweep the surrounding paddocks and farms. Sheds and outbuildings were checked in case Lindsay was seeking shelter from the bad weather.
7:03 Speaker 00 But he was nowhere to be found.
7:07 Speaker 00 The following morning of Wednesday, May 11, police narrowed in on Lindsay's home. They rechecked the residence and the surrounding area, just in case he'd returned and was too frightened to come inside because he knew he was late. Yet, there was still no sign of him. All available crews from police stations in neighbouring towns joined the search, with the air wing dispatched to search overhead. With no reports coming in about a lost or disorientated man, police contacted all the local radio stations to broadcast Lindsay's details, so the entire community would know to keep a lookout.
7:49 Speaker 00 A local farmer heard the reports and set on a drive around the roads that bordered his property. As he made his way along Down Road, a dirt stretch roughly two kilometres north-east of Lindsay Jellett's home, the farmer saw what looked like a white running shoe on the grassy verge at the side of the road. He kept going, but the image of the shoe worried him. He did a U-turn and drove back towards it. As he approached, he realised there were actually two shoes. The farmer pulled over on the opposite side of the road and got out of his car. Lying on the grassy verge was the body of Lindsay Jellett.
8:34 Speaker 00 Lindsay's blue fleecy top was pulled up, exposing his thin, white torso, which was stained with a liver-coloured patch of congealed blood under the skin. His eyes and mouth were half-open, his left cheek grazed, and his nose unnaturally bent. While his belt was still buckled, it had been melted apart on the left-hand side. His white running shoes were still on his feet, but the right one was crushed, its sole bursting from torn stitching.
9:07 Speaker 00 Three packets of cigarettes and a cigarette tin lay next to his body, with a five-dollar bill discarded at his right elbow. Nearby was an empty beer can.
9:19 Speaker 00 It appeared as though Lindsay Jellett had been struck by a car. Not only were there obvious crush injuries to his legs and torso, tyre tracks in the dirt road led straight to his body. But as soon as the crash investigators arrived from Melbourne, they knew this wasn't a standard hit-and-run. There are six elements that correlate with this type of impact. The first three are injuries to the shins, hip and head as the victim strikes the vehicle's bumper bar, bonnet and windscreen or roof. Then there's the scene itself. Blood from the victim, as well as some trace of the car involved, such as broken glass or paint flakes, are expected to be found.
10:05 Speaker 00 The sixth element is that the victim is usually shoeless. It is a little known phenomenon, but when people are hit by cars, they are generally knocked clean out of their footwear. In fact, the crash investigators had never attended a hit-and-run where the victim was still wearing shoes.
10:27 Speaker 00 A cursory examination of the scene showed that none of these six elements were present. Furthermore, Lindsay's body was arranged too neatly by the side of the road. If he'd been hit by a car while walking, his body would have been flung and landed awkwardly. His top being pulled up also indicated that someone had gripped him under the arms and dragged him along. This was supported by marks in the road, with two parallel lines appearing to have been made by the heels of Lindsay's shoes. Lindsay might not have been hit by a car, but from his injuries, it was obvious that he had indeed been run over.
11:10 Speaker 00 He had abdominal bruising consistent with a car tyre, and the lower parts of his legs had severe crush injuries. There were smears of grease on his body and clothing, as well as burn marks where he'd come into contact with the hot exhaust section underneath the vehicle. Yet, the lack of blood at the crime scene intrigued investigators.
11:38 Speaker 00 This indicated that Lindsay was already dead when his body was run over. A lack of bleeding confirmed this theory. Marks in the dirt showed that Lindsay had most likely been dumped from a vehicle before being dragged to the side of the road and then run over on the verge.
11:58 Speaker 00 Fibres consistent with his trousers were found near the drag marks, and there were acceleration scuff marks alongside his body.
12:07 Speaker 00 The resulting spray of gravel, coupled with the tyre tracks, indicated that a vehicle had reversed to where Lindsay's body lay, and then backed right over him, twice. After running over Lindsay, the car then turned around and headed in the direction of Ararat. The pathologist conducting Lindsay's autopsy couldn't determine what had caused his death. Given Lindsay's history of epilepsy, she considered a syndrome known as sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, or SUDAP. This is where an otherwise healthy person with epilepsy dies prematurely, typically in their sleep. In cases of SUDAP, a post-mortem examination shows no cause of death.
12:53 Speaker 00 Sometimes there are signs that a seizure has occurred, such as the individual losing control of their bladder, but Lindsay's autopsy showed that his bladder was full. Furthermore, if Lindsay had died from SUDAP, it didn't explain why someone would drag him to the side of the road and run him over with a car. Crash investigators sought to identify the type of car that had run Lindsay over. The owner of a local tyre shop agreed to accompany police to the scene. Upon seeing the tracks, he was certain they'd been made by Bridgestone Eager S340 tyres. Smears of red fluid on Lindsay's white running shoes were suspected by one investigator to be automatic transmission fluid.
13:38 Speaker 00 If he was correct, this meant police were looking for an automatic car, probably an older model which would be more likely to leak. Leaking transmission fluid didn't necessarily drip out. Instead, it formed a film over the car's transmission pan located in its undercarriage. The fluid could have been transferred to Lindsay's shoes when the car ran over him. The fact that Lindsay's body was smeared with black grease also suggested an older car.
14:11 Speaker 00 Slowly but surely, a picture of the wanted vehicle emerged: an automatic, older-style car with Bridgestone Eager S340 tyres.
14:22 Speaker 00 If the vehicle had left traces on Lindsay, then he'd likely left traces on the vehicle. The only problem was that the evidence would largely be underneath the car, rather than obvious visible damage to the car's exterior.
14:39 Speaker 00 Detectives began looking into Lindsay's life for clues as to who could be responsible. By all accounts, Lindsay Jellett was a harmless and friendly man who was well-known and well-liked in his community. The more the detectives learnt about Lindsay, the harder it was to imagine why anyone would want to kill him.
15:01 Speaker 00 They did a door-knock of the houses surrounding Lindsay's, many of which housed residents with disabilities, but no one had a bad thing to say about him. On the afternoon that Lindsay's body was discovered, a roadblock was organised on Granow Street for the same period of time that Lindsay went missing, with detectives stopping all cars to ask if anyone had seen Lindsay walking the previous day. Granow Street is one thoroughfare through Ararat, and 4pm is a change of shift time for workers for the local prison and railway, as well as health and community services staff.
15:39 Speaker 00 One man stopped at the roadblock, knew Lindsay by sight. He told detectives that at around 4pm the day before, he'd seen Lindsay climbing into a car that was parallel-parked to the curb a short distance away from his house. It was an older-model brown-coloured sedan with a red LPG gas sticker on its number plate.
16:02 Speaker 00 The man had caught a glimpse of the driver. It was a middle-aged woman with dark hair who he didn't recognise.
16:11 Speaker 00 This description immediately gave investigators pause.
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20:44 Speaker 00 In 1955, when Lindsay Jeller was two and a half years old, his mother was pushing him and his twin sister along in a pram. As she edged the pram out between two parked cars, a truck suddenly struck the front of it.
21:00 Speaker 00 The force of the collision threw Lindsay heavily onto the road. While his twin sister Judith was unhurt, Lindsay suffered severe brain damage and was in a coma for nine weeks. By the time he was finally allowed to return home from the hospital, his behaviour had changed significantly and his parents struggled to control him. He was eventually diagnosed with epilepsy and an intellectual disability.
21:28 Speaker 00 When Lindsay was seven, his parents made the difficult decision to place him in a live-in care facility. They visited him often and he was occasionally allowed home. In time, Lindsay grew into a gentle and loving man. He'd pick flowers from the garden to give to visitors and was always quick with a hug and a joke. When Lindsay's parents passed away, his twin sister Judith became his closest living relative. Even though she had her own health problems and priorities in life, Judith always made time to visit her brother. She'd often take her four children with her, making the four-hour round trip to Ararat from their home in the suburb of Melton.
22:13 Speaker 00 They'd take Lindsay out to lunch or to visit a museum or park. Judith bought Lindsay clothes and anything else he needed, treating him to chocolate, lollies and sweet drinks.
22:26 Speaker 00 While the drive there and back with a car full of kids was grueling, it was never a chore. A friend of Judith said she had more patience, love and understanding for Lindsay than she did for her own children.
22:43 Speaker 00 In late 1993, the facility that Lindsay had lived in for 20 years was shut down as part of the Victorian Government's commitment to move residents from institutions into the community. Lindsay made the move to the Granow Street Residential Unit, where Judith continued to visit every month or so. On Tuesday, May 10, 1994, Judith scheduled a 1 o'clock meeting with Granow Street staff, followed by a 3 o'clock meeting with support staff from a nearby organisation that ran a day programme Lindsay attended. She did this every so often, to check how her brother was doing.
23:24 Speaker 00 Judith picked Lindsay up at 11:30am, then took him to the Ararat RSL to play the pokies. After having lunch together, they headed to Lindsay's Granow Street unit for their 1 o'clock meeting. The staff told Judith that her brother's epilepsy was under control, but that he should avoid beer in case it triggered a seizure. Beer wasn't really an issue with Lindsay, he mainly drank coffee or coke. With an hour to kill before their next appointment, Judith took Lindsay to the shops to buy him a couple of things. Then they attended their 3pm meeting, after which Judith dropped Lindsay back at Granow Street at around 3:40.
24:07 Speaker 00 She bid Lindsay goodbye, just as he was preparing for his afternoon walk. Before leaving, Judith left some treats in her brother's bedroom for him to enjoy later. When Lindsay was reported missing later that evening, his carers attempted to call Judith at her home in Melton, but there was no answer. They left her a message, and she called them back at 8pm. They informed to Judith that Lindsay hadn't returned home after his walk. She shared their concerns, but offered a simple explanation: she'd given Lindsay $25 that afternoon. It might have been possible that he was spending it in town.
24:51 Speaker 00 Fifteen minutes later, Judith called back having just remembered a significant incident. Years prior, Lindsay had run away and was found wandering down a highway into Melbourne en route to Judith's home. She recommended that the search party keep an eye out for him on the outskirts of town and along the railway lines, before asking if it was raining. Her voice was tinged with worry when she remarked, "He doesn't have his coat with him." When Lindsay was found to dead, detectives paid Judith a visit in Melton. Having already been delivered the news, she was visibly upset, but she managed to tell
25:33 Speaker 00 the detectives about her final encounter with her brother the afternoon prior. She detailed their lunch, errands and meetings, before recalling one notable moment. While in town, Judith ducked into a pharmacy, leaving Lindsay waiting outside. When she came out, Lindsay was talking to a woman parked in a battered old van. He told her that he'd just won money at the pokies. To the detectives, this was a solid lead. Could Lindsay have been targeted by someone who thought he might be in possession of some winnings?
26:15 Speaker 00 Wondering whether drugs or alcohol could have also played a role in Lindsay's death, the detectives asked Judith about the medications her brother had been taking. As far as Judith knew, the only thing Lindsay took was his anti-seizure medication, Tegretol. In regards to the beer can found near Lindsay's body, Judith said she didn't think her brother really drank beer. He had done so on occasion, but it left him sleepy.
26:44 Speaker 00 But there was one incident that raised Judith's concerns. A few months earlier, Lindsay had been visiting Judith when she ducked across the road to visit a neighbour. When she came back, Lindsay said he was tired and didn't feel well. He went to lay down, telling his sister he was having a fit. She took his pulse, but it was normal. Judith called one of Lindsay's carers, who advised her to roll him onto his side, but by this time, Lindsay appeared to be sleeping.
27:19 Speaker 00 The carer assured Judith he was probably fine, but when he wouldn't wake up after twenty minutes, Judith called an ambulance.
27:29 Speaker 00 After the paramedics took him away, Judith noticed a drawer had been opened in her bedroom, and she wondered if Lindsay had taken some of her medication. Judith suffered from chronic back pain and a litany of other health problems, for which she kept a wide assortment of medication in her home. Detectives had noticed this for themselves, as hundreds of bottles of medicine lined her shelves. Judith said she'd rang the hospital and shared her suspicion that Lindsay might have taken Valium or painkillers. The doctors gave him an antidote for Valium, after which he was fine. For detectives, this was another interesting lead.
28:11 Speaker 00 They wondered if Lindsay had a habit of taking medication that didn't belong to him.
28:19 Speaker 00 Judith told the detectives that on Tuesday, May 10, she left Granow Street just as Lindsay set off for his afternoon walk, and she didn't see him again after that. But detectives were curious about this. The witness who claimed to have seen Lindsay climbing into a car at 4pm, a short distance from his house, had described the driver as looking exactly like Judith.
28:45 Speaker 00 The car they described, an older model brown-coloured sedan with a red LPG sticker on its number plate, also looked just like her vehicle.
28:55 Speaker 00 Detectives had given Judith's car a once-over when they saw it parked in her driveway. It was a two-tone brown 1982 Ford Fairmont Gia sedan with a red sticker on the number plate to show that the car had been converted to gas. It also had Bridgestone Eager S340 tyres, the same type identified at the crime scene. A cursory look over the vehicle revealed no obvious fresh dents or signs of recent damage.
29:27 Speaker 00 Judith told the detectives that on the drive home from visiting Lindsay, her car overheated and she had to park by the side of the road for thirty or forty minutes while the engine cooled down. She arrived back in Melton at 7:20pm. After collecting her young children from the babysitter, Judith drove to the local petrol station, filled her car and took it through a car wash. She said she always did this after visiting Lindsay.
29:58 Speaker 00 This was another red flag for detectives. The trip that should have taken just over two hours had taken Judith three hours and twenty minutes. Not only was Judith the last person to have seen her brother alive, there was an unaccounted-for period of time in her journey home. Police impounded Judith's car and took it to the forensic science centre for a thorough examination. As was expected of a car that age, the undercarriage was covered in dirt, grease and oil, plenty of sauces that could have caused the smears on Lindsay's body. The automatic pan was also leaking and covered in a film of automatic transmission fluid.
30:42 Speaker 00 Near the front and rear driver's side wheels, examiners found spots of blood. Caught in a screw head and in various other sections of the undercarriage were fabric fibres. Several fabric impressions were also visible in the grease and dirt from the front end to the rear, and a burn mark on the engine pipe was consistent with the melting of Lindsay's belt. Police had no doubt about it. This was the car used to run over Lindsay Jellard.
31:18 Speaker 00 Although this was concrete evidence that tied Judith to the crime scene, Lindsay's autopsy revealed he'd already been dead at the time he was run over. Therefore, it didn't necessarily mean that Judith had killed him. Detectives began examining Judith's timeline from the day her brother had died, starting with the pharmacy in Ararat she already told them she'd visited. Inquiries revealed Judith had filled a prescription for rehypnol, a powerful sedative only offered to those with severe insomnia. With the post-mortem proving that Lindsay was dead before he was run over, detectives wondered whether his sister could have poisoned him with an overdose.
32:03 Speaker 00 The contents of Lindsay's stomach showed that he was killed within 60 to 90 minutes of eating a substantial meal. Due to digestion, it wasn't possible to tell what he'd eaten. Judith said she'd taken Lindsay to lunch around midday and then for ice cream around 2pm. However, the food in his stomach could only have been consumed after leaving for his walk.
32:30 Speaker 00 Police canvassed eateries in town, but no one remembered seeing Lindsay at that time. It was possible Judith had given him some food herself. Had she done so as soon as Lindsay got in the car, his time of death could have been as early as 5.30pm.
32:49 Speaker 00 When the results of Lindsay's toxicology tests came back, they showed two drugs were found in his system. The first was his anti-seizure medication, Tegretol, which was as expected. But surprisingly, the other wasn't rehypnol. It was Noctec. Noctec is the commercial name given to chloral hydrate, a powerful hypnotic prescribed by doctors to treat insomnia or calm patients before a surgical procedure. It can be dangerous because the treatment dose is close to the toxic dose.
33:27 Speaker 00 The problem was that the amount found in Lindsay's system was listed as a therapeutic dose. In other words, there was not enough in his system to kill him. The detectives wondered if the Noctec could have reacted with the Tegritol Lindsay was taking for his epilepsy. Medical advice suggested that these two drugs should not be taken together. Small traces of alcohol were also found in Lindsay's system, another substance that shouldn't be mixed with these medications. Detectives wondered whether the combination of Tegritol, alcohol, and Noctec could have been toxic.
34:07 Speaker 00 And if Judith was responsible, did she give her brother alcohol on purpose only hours after his carers told her it could cause a seizure? To make things more complicated, it couldn't be said with certainty that Lindsay had consumed alcohol. When bodies begin to decompose, they produce alcohol as part of the natural decomposition process. The empty beer can found near Lindsay's body was tested, but it revealed no traces of Noctec or any other drugs. Inquiries at Granow Street showed no residents were prescribed to Noctec, meaning Lindsay couldn't have accessed the drug at home.
34:50 Speaker 00 Detectives asked local pharmacists to go back through their records, but there had been no prescriptions written for Noctec in the last two years. There was little chance Lindsay could have come upon the drug by accident. Police confiscated hundreds of bottles of medication from Judith's home, but found no sign of Noctec. They drove across town and visited medical clinics near where Judith used to live. One doctor recalled prescribing Noctec to one of Judith's children five years earlier when they were having trouble sleeping. The police visited local pharmacies and found the chemist who had dispensed the Noctec prescription to Judith.
35:35 Speaker 00 It was the break they were looking for. Now they had the proof that Judith filled a prescription for Noctec, and even though it wasn't found in her house, it was clear from the volume of medications scattered all around that she didn't throw anything away. The detectives theorised that Judith could have given her brother food or drink laced with Noctec and waited until he passed out. She could have then smothered him with something soft, like a pillow, which would have left no trace.
36:09 Speaker 00 An eminent forensic pathologist also said that the Noctec combined with Lindsay's Tagretol could have stopped him breathing. Then, either to make it look like an accident or to make sure she'd finished the job, she ran him over, twice.
36:27 Speaker 00 Although this seemed like a solid theory, without hard evidence, detectives knew they'd have a hard time proceeding with charges against Judith. Yet, one major question still remained. Judith appeared to be a loving sister who had always been there for her twin brother. What reason could she have to want Lindsay dead?
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40:03 Speaker 00 Speaking with staff at Lindsay's Granow Street unit, a motive emerged. Two years after the accident that irreversibly changed the course of Lindsay's life forever, the truck driver who hit the pram faced court. The judge took pity on the plight of the Jelet family and awarded Lindsay £15,000. At the time, that was a small fortune, enough to buy four or five houses. The judge ordered that the money be invested for Lindsay's future use. By 1994, the original award of £15,000 had grown into a significant nest egg in excess of $120,000.
40:49 Speaker 00 An examination of Lindsay's financial records revealed that in recent years, his trust fund balance had dropped from £128,000 to $107,000. This depletion was due to the fact that Lindsay had moved out of Government Care and had bought into the Granow Street unit.
41:09 Speaker 00 A clerk from the trust fund had written a letter to Judith, explaining: "I have recently reviewed Lindsay's file and have noted a rapid depletion of his funds, particularly in the past six months. This rate of depletion is such that the capital is eroding and will continue to do so even if his funds only make payment of the service charge and household expenses for Granow Street. I have enclosed a financial statement which shows the expenditure for the previous seven months. Could you please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss this matter?"
41:48 Speaker 00 Detectives contacted the clerk, who said that Judith had complained in response. She said that she visited Lindsay every five to six weeks, during which she was forced to buy him everything he wanted using money from his account. If she didn't, Judith said that Lindsay became very aggressive and would steal instead. Judith told the clerk that Lindsay's demands had become worse since he'd moved to Granow Street, and that was why her requests for reimbursements had drastically increased.
42:22 Speaker 00 With dire predictions about Lindsay's rapidly depleting trust fund, the clerk's memo was dated three weeks before Lindsay was killed. With Lindsay's death, his money would pass to his next of kin: his sister, Judith.
42:43 Speaker 00 Although the forensic examination of Judith's car proved this was the vehicle that ran Lindsay over, it didn't prove that she was behind the wheel at the time. Detectives set out to discover if anyone else had access to the vehicle. Judith stopped cooperating with the police, but she told family and friends she had her own suspicions about who was responsible. After arriving home from visiting Lindsay on May 10, Judith claimed that her ex-husband, Ilya Kafiriuk, must have taken her car from the driveway and driven it to Ararat. Police went to speak with Ilya, who explained that he'd met Judith six years earlier,
43:26 Speaker 00 after migrating to Australia from Romania in 1987.
43:32 Speaker 00 The pair married a year later and he moved in with Judith, but it was an odd arrangement. As soon as Ilya moved in, Judith told her oldest son, Greg, to move out. Greg began sleeping in his car in the front yard of the house. A week later, social security stopped Judith's pension payments, so she told Ilya he would have to move out again. Ilya knew Judith was still seeing her ex-husband. She had retained his surname, Jen Gears, but when she told Ilya she was pregnant, he accepted responsibility when she said the child was his. They split up shortly after the child was born,
44:17 Speaker 00 but Ilya agreed to pay child support of $183 per week. Ilya didn't understand the Australian court system, so he signed any papers Judith gave him without question.
44:32 Speaker 00 Ilya continued to pay for anything Judith needed, but it was never enough. She rang him so often at work that his employer complained. The calls were always about money. When Ilya came to visit his child, the fridge was always bare and he would buy groceries. Judith was nice to him at Easter and Christmas, so he would come over and buy all the children's gifts and stock the cupboards.
45:02 Speaker 00 Ilya claimed that on the day Lindsay went missing, he'd been sent home early from work with an infected tooth and had gone straight to the dentist for a lengthy appointment.
45:13 Speaker 00 His alibi checked out, but the police already knew there was no weight to Judith's claim that Ilya could be responsible for her brother's death.
45:23 Speaker 00 By the time she'd returned to Melton, it was 7:20pm and Lindsay had already failed to return home from his walk.
45:32 Speaker 00 By casting suspicion on Ilya, Judith inadvertently revealed a bombshell. Ilya told the detectives that four months earlier Judith had invited him to her place for dinner. He'd felt fine at the time, but the next day he felt so sick that he spent nine days in hospital. The doctors suspected he had some type of poison in his system, but they weren't sure what type. Ilya was a bit vague on the details, because Judith had been the one talking to the doctors on his behalf. Now, speaking to the detectives, he was certain that Judith had put something in his food.
46:17 Speaker 00 According to Ilya, Judith treated Lindsay's money as though it were her own. She kept receipts for her own groceries and car expenses and cleaned them from Lindsay's account every month. This could be anything from five hundred to one thousand dollars. When the care facility that Lindsay had lived in for twenty years closed down, she was angry that Lindsay had to spend seventeen thousand dollars from his trust to pay to live in the residential accommodation on Granau Street. Had he been on a pension, the government would have given him a place to live for free. Not only was there a buy-in cost, but there was a weekly cost of sixty dollars as well.
47:01 Speaker 00 Everything Judith bought for Lindsay, from clothes to sweets, was purchased with his own money. Judith talked to Ilier about bringing Lindsay to live with her at Melton. She said the government would pay her three hundred dollars per week to look after him, and she could use his money to buy her house from the Housing Commission. The only catch was, she wanted Ilier to do the actual caring for Lindsay.
47:30 Speaker 00 Judith did a test run and brought her brother home a couple of days before Christmas. But it didn't work. She returned him to Granow Street by Boxing Day. In that time, she used Lindsay's money to buy presents for her children.
47:48 Speaker 00 Detectives asked Ilier if Judith had been in the habit of washing her car after driving to Ararat to visit her brother. Ilier had gone with Judith half a dozen times. She had never washed her car once.
48:03 Speaker 00 As for the Noctec, Ilier knew all about the syrup Judith gave her children at night. The last time he'd seen it happen was on the New Year's Eve just passed. Ilier had arrived at Judith's house at ten PM, so he wouldn't be alone for the occasion. The lights were on, but her car wasn't in the driveway.
48:26 Speaker 00 He went inside, only to find Judith's small children asleep in the house alone, with Judith nowhere to be seen. She returned home around one AM, saying she'd just popped out to play the pokies. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Ilier said. Judith gave the children syrup to make them sleep. I don't know what this syrup is called, but I saw her give it to them.
48:59 Speaker 00 If these revelations weren't significant enough, Ilier then dropped another bombshell. He told detectives that Judith had illegally purchased a blank prescription pad for a hundred dollars and could write herself any prescription she wanted.
49:17 Speaker 00 Police spoke to Judith's eldest son, 24-year-old Greg, who confirmed that his mother had always spoken of Lindsay's money as being hers after he died.
49:29 Speaker 00 Greg had found out about Lindsay's death from a neighbour, rather than his mother. He assumed she was too upset to call him. When he did speak to her, Judith allegedly told Greg that when she visited Lindsay on the day he died, she had taken him for a drive around the dirt roads of Ararat. At one point, she stopped so that Lindsay could relieve himself on the side of the road.
49:56 Speaker 00 Judith hadn't mentioned this when she gave her original account to the police. The detectives suspected she was trying to lay the groundwork for explaining why her tyre impressions were on down road. Greg was also candid about a phone call with his mother where she talked about washing her car. She apparently said to him: "You know I always wash the car, and under the car, after I have been to see Lindsay." Greg told the detectives: "It was as though she was asking me to confirm this over the phone. I thought this was unusual. I know that she washes her car, but I have never seen her wash under the car."
50:42 Speaker 00 Greg said it was impossible that anyone could have stolen his mother's car to drive it to Ararat and kill Lindsay. He had recently fitted an alarm to it, which operated automatically once the key had been removed from the ignition. Even if the car was left unlocked, the alarm would sound if someone opened the door.
51:07 Speaker 00 After four months of gathering evidence, detectives felt they finally had enough to present their case to the Department of Public Prosecutions. But they still faced a challenge. From a legal standpoint, because the cause of Lindsay Jellid's death couldn't be determined, it would be legally difficult to convict Judith Jen Gis of killing him. As such, when Judith was charged with murder and the committal hearing went ahead in Ararat, the magistrate threw it out of court. Normally, a person goes through a committal hearing and then is sent to trial. But another option is for the Crown to present them directly to trial without testing the evidence at a committal hearing.
51:52 Speaker 00 After much discussion, this is what the Office of Public Prosecutions decided to do. Judith was recharged with murder and summoned to trial.
52:04 Speaker 00 However, in a major blow to the prosecution, the judge ruled the Noctec evidence as inadmissible. While Judith had purchased a Noctec on three separate occasions in 1989, he ruled that there was no evidence to suggest she was still in possession of it five years later, despite the fact that she had hundreds of bottles of medicine in her house from years earlier.
52:29 Speaker 00 The judge ruled that if the jury knew that Lindsay had therapeutic doses of Noctec in his system, they would assume that it was part of a plan to kill him. This, according to the judge, could not be established. The possibility couldn't be ruled out that Lindsay took the medication from somewhere and administered it to himself. Based on the evidence, the judge had no doubt that Lindsay was already dead when his sister allegedly ran him over. What was unclear was where and when his death had occurred. Judith's lawyers argued that Lindsay could have died following a seizure or from SUDAP.
53:11 Speaker 00 But, as the prosecution pointed out, if Lindsay had died from natural causes, why would Judith go to the trouble of dragging his body to the side of the road, running him over, fabricating a story and lying to the police?
53:26 Speaker 00 The only logical conclusion, they argued, was that Judith believed Lindsay was still alive at the time. Without knowing for sure how Lindsay had died, the judge ruled that the murder charge be thrown out in favour of a charge of attempted murder.
53:45 Speaker 00 This meant that if the jury were convinced by the evidence under the car and Judith's motive to inherit her brother's money, they only had one option: to convict Judith of the attempted murder of a dead man. And that's what they did. Judith Genghis was declared guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 10 years with a six-year non-parole period. Judith appealed against both conviction and sentence. Her lawyer argued that the judge should have thrown out the attempted murder charge since the only thing the Crown could
54:24 Speaker 00 prove Judith did was run Lindsay over, but he was clearly dead when this happened. In June 1997, three Supreme Court judges rejected Judith's appeal, with one concluding:
54:41 Speaker 00 "The deceased was vulnerable. He had been brain damaged as a young child. He trusted the applicant. She, however, being concerned that the fund invested on behalf of the deceased was dissipating steadily, was determined to obtain possession of it. The applicant was prepared to kill to satisfy her greed. She did everything possible to affect her end. The evidence is that, had her brother not been dead when she drove her car over him, he would have died as a result. She has shown no remorse."
55:21 Speaker 00 Judith Genghis was released from jail in February 2002 after serving her minimum sentence. Two years later, an application was made to the Masters Fund that held Lindsay Geleth's money. Surviving relatives agreed among themselves as to how the money would be divided. Who got what is sealed in confidential court records.
55:47 Speaker 00 When Judith was first being questioned about her brother's death, she told detectives she'd seen him talking to a woman about his recent winnings on the pokies. She'd framed it in a way that sounded somewhat sinister, when in reality, the woman Lindsay was speaking to was the former employee of a local kiosk. With his love for biscuits and his addiction to cigarettes, Lindsay had been a frequent customer, and the woman liked him from the moment they met. He was always happy and very friendly. On the day Lindsay died, she had been in the main shopping centre of Ararat when she heard Lindsay call to her. They got chatting, and he told her that he'd had the best day ever,
56:32 Speaker 00 because he was out with his sister.
56:37 Speaker 00 Lindsay's gravestone says just one thing about him: Cherished twin brother of Judith.
56:45 Speaker 00 Judith passed away in 2017. She was buried alongside Lindsay, their shared gravestone declaring: "Dearly loved, always remembered, reunited." Always remembered. Reunited.
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