Casefile Revisited: Pamela Lawrence

When Mosman Park jewellery store owner Pamela Lawrence was late to return home from work on May 23 1994, her husband Peter went to check if everything was okay. There, he found Pamela clinging to life with serious head injuries, which she later succumbed to in the hospital. Despite a lack of physical evidence or any DNA tying him to the crime scene, accused thief Andrew Mallard was soon arrested for Pamela’s murder. But was the hypothetical murder scenario that Mallard described a confession, or did the police have the wrong man? Casefile Revisited features newly re-recorded versions of classic episodes, revisiting the stories with enhanced production, fresh narration, and updated research where possible. --- Narration – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/ Research & writing – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/ Additional writing & editing – Elsha McGill Production & music – Mike Migas http://mikemigas.com/ Audio editing – Anthony Telfer Sign up for Casefile Premium: Apple Premium https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/casefile-true-crime/id998568017?ign-itscg=30200S&ign-itsct=casefile_podcastsSpotify Premium https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/9gSwcv7USsbPatreon https://www.patreon.com/casefileFor all credits and sources, please visit https://casefilepodcast.com/casefile-revisited-pamela-lawrence Pamela Lawrence episode was originally released in May 2016. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 2:59Speaker 00

  As it neared 6:00 PM on the evening of Monday, May 23, 1994, Peter Lawrence was starting to worry. Peter lived in Mosman Park, an affluent suburb 11 kilometres outside of Perth in Western Australia, and that afternoon, a violent storm had hit the city. Gale-force winds raged while thunder and lightning clashed and heavy rain pummeled down. It was the type of storm that knocked down power poles and blacked out traffic lights. Worryingly, Peter's wife, 45-year-old Pamela Lawrence, still hadn't arrived home from work, nor had she called to say she was running late.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Pamela owned an upscale jewellery store called Flora Metallica, which was located on Glide Street, a few minutes' drive from the couple's home. It wasn't a typical jewellery store, but instead offered a variety of quirky giftware and original items handmade by Pamela in her small shed-turned-workshop at the rear of the property. She specialised in dipping everyday objects into decorative metals, such as gold, silver, or copper, to create unique items that were cherished by her customers. Flora Metallica was part of a small cluster of shops near the Mosman Park train station. Some other shops around the area had recently been broken into, and while Flora Metallica hadn't been targeted,

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  a brick had been thrown through the front window, putting Pamela on edge. Given the recent criminal activity, she had instructed her staff that if anyone tried to rob them while they were working, to just hand over whatever they wanted. Money and material objects weren't worth getting hurt over.

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  When Peter still hadn't heard from Pamela by 6:15 PM, he called Flora Metallica to see what time she thought she'd get home. But there was no answer.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  His concern increasing, Peter decided to brave the storm to go down to the store and to check on her.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  At 6:39 PM, a call came through to Australia's emergency services helpline 000, requesting an ambulance to the Flora Metallica jewellery store in Mosman Park. When the paramedics arrived, they found Pamela Lawrence lying on the ground in the kitchen area near the back door, unconscious and covered in blood. She had sustained severe head wounds, which were bleeding profusely, and although she was still alive, she was barely breathing. Her husband, Peter, was kneeling by her side, trying desperately to stop the bleeding by holding a piece of material against her scalp. Pamela was loaded onto a stretcher and rushed to hospital. A visibly shaken Peter Lawrence told the police

• 6:14Speaker 00

  that he'd arrived at Flora Metallica to find the front door was locked, but the shop hadn't been closed up for the night. The lights were still on, and an A-frame sign and a pot plant, which Pamela typically brought inside overnight, were still out the front. Peter had unlocked the front door using his own key and had taken the items inside, at which point he'd heard a strange noise coming from the rear of the shop. That's when he'd found Pamela in a pool of blood, clinging to life.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  After surveying the scene, Peter pointed out that no money appeared to have been stolen from the cash register, nor had any jewellery or inventory been taken. However, Pamela's purse, which she typically carried a couple of hundred dollars cash in, was missing from her handbag.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  Despite all the efforts of the paramedics, Pamela Lawrence didn't survive her injuries, and at 7:15, she was pronounced deceased upon arrival at the hospital. Peter was allowed to return home to break the tragic news to his two grown daughters. They were soon joined by distraught loved ones as they collectively struggled to come to terms with what had happened.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  The Major Crime Squad was called in with the investigation led by Detective Sergeant Malcolm Sherwell. A cursory search for the murder weapon turned up nothing, and before long, a blackout hit the area, putting the store into complete darkness. Unable to properly assess the crime scene, the decision was made to lock and guard the store overnight, with a thorough forensic examination scheduled to take place the next day. Given how heavy it was raining, investigators reasoned that any footprints in the ground outside of the store would already be long gone.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Meanwhile, an autopsy revealed that Pamela Lawrence had died as a result of severe head wounds caused by an unknown blunt object. All up, she had sustained 12 blows. There were no defensive injuries, indicating she'd been caught off guard.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  A trail of blood leading from Flora Metallica's service counter suggested she'd been hit there first, before being dragged to the space towards the back of the shop, where she was struck again. The forensic pathologist examined Pamela's injuries under a microscope and discovered that seven of the wounds contained specks of an unknown bluish-green material, as well as a peculiar pattern. He was informed that the police were considering the possibility that Pamela could have been killed using a tool taken from her workshop, such as a copper anode, a metal bar Pamela used in her jewellery-making process. The forensic pathologist believed it was possible that their anode could have caused her injuries.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  Copper sulfate can produce a bluish colour similar to the specks found in Pamela's head wounds, and the copper anodes in Pamela's workshop were partly covered in blue-green crystals.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  However, the coloured material was sent to a forensic chemist, who identified it as an oil-based enamel paint containing Prussian blue pigment. Whatever weapon had caused Pamela's injuries remained unknown.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  When Pamela’s coworker Jackie Barston heard what had happened, she couldn’t believe it. Jackie had spent the day working alongside Pamela, and it had been a completely normal workday before she’d clocked off at around 3pm. But, when Jackie’s 13-year-old daughter Catherine later arrived home from school, she had an odd story. Catherine had been picked up that day by her grandmother. As they were driving home down Glide Street, they’d stopped at a set of traffic lights directly outside of Flora Metallica. Catherine looked inside and saw a strange man standing behind the counter.

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  She described him as being Caucasian, around 30 to 35 years old, around six feet tall, and of medium build. He had a slight orange or strawberry blonde-coloured beard, and it looked like he was wearing some type of scarf, like a bandana on his head.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  As Catherine stared at the man, the two made eye contact, and he quickly crouched down behind the counter. Catherine had never seen the man in the shop before, and, thinking it was strange that he was behind the counter, she made sure to check the time. It was 5:02pm. When she got home, she told her mum Jackie about it, who agreed that it sounded strange. Jackie picked up the phone to call Pamela and make sure everything was okay, but then changed her mind at the last minute, deciding it was probably nothing.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  When the police were informed about this sighting, the forensic pathologist concluded that the timeframe fit. If Pamela Lawrence had been attacked at around 5 o’clock, he believed it was possible that she could have still been alive by the time her husband Peter discovered her just after 6:30pm. This timeline was narrowed down even further after phone records revealed that Pamela had spoken to a customer between 5:10 and 5:20pm.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  The man Catherine witnessed immediately jumped into the position of prime suspect, and an identikit drawing was created based on her description and is sent out to the media. But, there was other information for the police to consider too. Although Mosman Park was a prestigious area dotted with high-end luxury homes and well-to-do residents, it also had its share of government housing units, and was home to many unemployed people who were struggling with substance abuse issues. Many of these people turned to crime to support their habits, and reports had come in about other people who had been seen acting suspiciously in the area. Questions were also raised as to whether the attack on Pamela could be related to one of the recent break-ins,

• 12:35Speaker 00

  or to the brick that was thrown through the window of her store. Before long, the police had over 100 names on their list of persons of interest. Although Peter Lawrence had been at home with one of his daughters before making the grim discovery at Flora Metallica, being Pamela’s spouse and the one to find her body, he came under suspicion too.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  The police had allowed him to leave the scene in his blood-soaked clothing, and when the forensic team requested that he bring the clothing back in for examination two days later, there was bad news. Peter had already thrown the clothes in an outside bin, and it had been raining heavily ever since, thwarting any chance of a reliable blood pattern analysis. The police looked into Peter and Pamela’s relationship and learned that they’d been happily married for 23 years. Their two daughters, aged 17 and 20, were both university students who still lived at home. They told the police there had never been any violence or any other issues in their household, and that their parents were still very much in love.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  By all accounts, Pamela was a friendly, bubbly, and well-liked person. Naturally caring and affectionate, she was a former theatre nurse who had decided on a career change several years earlier, opening Flora Metallica with the full support of her husband. Pamela’s creativity and talent was well-regarded, and her store had recently attracted statewide attention. With the police concluding that she was in a loving and stable marriage and had no known enemies, the motive for her murder remained unclear.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  Money seemed the obvious reason, but nothing besides Pamela’s purse had been taken, despite a container of cash being visible on a shelf behind the counter.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  An examination of Flora Metallica revealed several fingerprints, but all of these were successfully attributed back to employees of the shop or those who had attended the crime scene. The only unidentified print was a partial bloody palm print that was found on top of one of the glass service counters. This couldn’t be attributed to anyone. Police continued searching for the murder weapon and for Pamela’s missing purse, but with no luck. Three days after the murder, on Thursday, May 26, they continued their extensive door-knock of the surrounding area. Each officer was armed with a questionnaire and the identikit sketch made up using Catherine’s description.

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  Detective Sergeant David Capehorn knocked on the door of 23-year-old Michelle Englehard, a woman who lived in a unit block just a few minutes’ walk from Flora Metallica. It turned out, she had an interesting story to tell. A couple of weeks earlier, Michelle had met an English backpacker who introduced himself as Andre and said he needed somewhere to crash while he waited for some money to be transferred from England. Michelle allowed Andre to sleep on her couch for a couple of nights, but he quickly outstayed his welcome. Whenever Michelle started hinting that it might be time to move on, Andre did whatever he could to find her some cannabis.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Michelle enjoyed a smoke, and when she was stoned, she stopped talking about Andre moving out. But, Michelle quickly realised that her house guest had been lying when she found a copy of his resume in his backpack and discovered that his name was really Andrew Mallard, and he was a 31-year-old unemployed man who lived in Perth. When she confronted him about it, Andrew said he was really an agent from Interpol working to break an organised crime syndicate in Fremantle. He said his real name was Michael Faraday, and that the resume for Andrew Mallard was part of his cover.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Michelle accepted this story and reluctantly agreed to let Andrew stay at her house. But, after telling him about a former friend who had recently stolen from her, Andrew tried to impress Michelle by getting the items back. On Sunday, May 22, he went to the friend’s unit block and started bashing on the caretaker’s door, demanding to be let into Michelle’s friend’s unit.

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  Andrew claimed he was a drug squad detective who had just received information there were drugs stashed inside. When the caretaker told Andrew she didn’t have a key, he broke into the unit instead. Andrew didn’t find Michelle’s stolen items, but he did steal a guitar, a pushbike, and a few jackets.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  It didn’t take long for Michelle’s old friend to piece it all together, and very soon, the police came looking for Andrew. He was arrested the next day, Monday, May 23, for the break-in as well as impersonating a police officer. He was taken to the East Perth lockup before being granted bail and released later that afternoon.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Michelle told the police that Andrew didn’t get home until around 6:30 that night. She recalled that he hadn’t been wearing a bandana or any other headgear, and that the cap he typically wore had been on a hook at her home.

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  Shortly after arriving home, at around 7pm, Andrew left Michelle’s place with another friend and caught a train to Fremantle.

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  Detective Caporn wanted to speak with Andrew, but he was no longer living at Michelle's. He had already attended court for the break-in charge, and the judge had recommended that he be sent to the Franklin Centre, a state-run mental health facility within Greyland Psychiatric Hospital that provides involuntary treatment of patients within the criminal justice system. There, he was required to undergo a 28-day assessment. Detective Caporn's interest was officially piqued.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Thirty-one-year-old Andrew Mallard was born in England to parents Roy and Grace Mallard. His father, Roy, had a long career in the army, and the Mallards were a hard-working, well-respected, and law-abiding family. Andrew also had a sister named Jackie, who was 10 years his senior.

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  The Mallards had left England in 1967 and moved to Western Australia, but Andrew struggled to fit into his new country. He was exceptionally tall for his age, which, combined with his British accent, made him a target for bullies. Kids would mimic his accent, call him names, and some even attacked him physically. As a child, Andrew never felt like he belonged, and in high school, things got even worse. Bullies felt safe hitting him because they knew he would never fight back.

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  Andrew left school at 16, with no plans or career path in mind. As he got older, he started hitting the nightclub scene, where at 6'6" tall, he stood out in a crowd. It was through this scene that he was introduced to cannabis, which he started smoking regularly.

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  Andrew's parents didn't approve of where their son was heading in life. He was broke, unemployed, and living at home. In a bid to impress them, he enlisted in the army at the age of 20, but he never made it through basic training, instead being offered a medical discharge due to a mild case of the sleeping disorder narcolepsy. Andrew returned to Perth and back to his old ways. With no sense of purpose, he felt lost in life. Convinced he didn't belong in Australia, he pestered his parents to buy him a plane ticket to England. They eventually agreed, but he didn't do much good over there either, and it wasn't long before his parents were paying for his airfare back to Perth.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  By this stage, Andrew's mental health was declining, and he was on the verge of a complete breakdown. He suffered from extreme anxiety and panic attacks, and could barely go outside. Andrew also struggled with personal relationships and a general feeling of inadequacy. His father, Roy, sent him to a psychologist, who Andrew met with every week for a few months. It really helped him and got him back on track. He stopped smoking cannabis and felt like he was ready to move out of his parents' house and face the world again. Andrew moved into a share house in South Perth, but his newfound optimism was short-lived when he was unsuccessful at a number of job interviews.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  When one of his housemates lit up a joint, Andrew couldn't resist his old habit. Within a few months, he was broke and borderline homeless, wandering the streets of Perth and telling fanciful stories in order to secure a place to sleep for the night.

• 21:54Speaker 00

  By the time he was living at Michelle's house, Andrew was in the middle of a manic episode. He survived off social security payments and by selling items that he either came upon or stole. He dressed oddly in layers and spoke often about his interest in Celtic design and spiritualism, telling people he was a Viking or a warrior who could speak multiple languages. He came under the attention of police due to his ever-increasing erratic behaviour.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  While at the East Perth lockup after his arrest for the break-in, Andrew was left at a desk unattended for a period of time. He helped himself to a police tie pin and a badge, thinking they would come in handy to help bolster his Interpol story to Michelle and impress her. A sergeant from the East Perth lockup nominated him as a person of interest in Pamela Lawrence's murder, telling the detectives that he was “a bloke you need to be interested in”.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Detective Caporn went to the Franklin Centre to speak with Andrew Mallard. Upon seeing him, he thought he bore a resemblance to the identikit picture of the man Catherine had seen in the store.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  Asked for his whereabouts at the time of Pamela Lawrence's murder, Andrew said that after being released from the East Perth lockup at around 3:45pm, he'd waited around for a while before catching a taxi back to Michelle's unit in Mosman Park, arriving about 5pm. This contradicted Michelle's account that Andrew had returned home around 6:30pm.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Andrew also said that he used to wear bandannas, but had stopped doing so several months earlier.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Detective Caporn visited the taxi company that Andrew had used and spoke to the driver who had picked him up on the evening of Monday, May 23. The driver had no trouble remembering Andrew because he'd told him that he was a rock star from England. And he hadn't dropped him off at Michelle's unit, but at a different unit block, a little further down Michelle's street. They'd arrived at 5pm, and Andrew had told the driver he was just running in to collect St. France and would be right back. When Andrew still hadn't returned by 5:20pm, the driver realised that Andrew had done a runner on him.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Eager to question Andrew about this new information, Detective Caporn returned to the Franklin Centre the following day. He wanted to know more about the 90-minute gap between when the taxi driver dropped Andrew off and when Michelle said he arrived home. Andrew came clean, admitting that he'd run off without paying the taxi and that he'd gotten dropped off at that particular unit block because he knew people there he could score dope off of. He gave the names of numerous people who he said could vouch for his whereabouts. Detectives canvassed the unit block to verify Andrew's story, but none of the people he mentioned remembered seeing him during the time in question.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Police obtained a warrant to take his clothes for forensic testing. There was no blood on any of his clothing, but his right shoe tested positive for two different blood groups. One was undetermined, the other was type B. On average, type B blood is only found in 4% of the population. It just so happened to be Pamela Lawrence's blood group.

• 25:49Speaker 00

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  The discovery of the blood, combined with Andrew Mallard’s inconsistent stories, lack of alibi, admitted drug use and recent criminal history, had Detective Caporn convinced that he’d found Pamela’s killer. While the blood was tested for DNA, he briefed the rest of the team about what he’d so far uncovered. Then, on Friday, June 3, the results of the DNA test came back. It was the moment Detective Caporn had been waiting for. But, the initial tests showed that the blood wasn’t Pamela’s. It was Andrew’s.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  A week later, on Friday, June 10, Andrew Mallard was released from the Franklin Centre, two days later than scheduled, with a diagnosis of manic depression and bipolar disorder.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  His condition was deemed manageable, so long as he agreed to keep up regular appointments for treatment. Andrew was put back before a magistrate with the result, and was officially free to go. Detective Caporn was waiting for him outside the courtroom. He approached Andrew and asked if he was prepared to go back to the station to answer a few more questions. If so, Caporn said he would give him back the clothes and shoes that had been confiscated for forensic testing. Having no other clothes of his own, Andrew agreed and was taken to an interview room at police headquarters. Given that he had agreed to the police interview voluntarily and wasn’t under arrest,

• 31:00Speaker 00

  his rights weren’t read to him, and despite his mental illness, he wasn’t offered a lawyer or support person. Although the interview room was equipped with recording equipment, the police did not record their conversation.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Asked again about his movements on the evening of Monday, May 23, Andrew Mallard reiterated his story about taking a taxi to the unit block in Mosman Park, where he did a runner and tried to score some cannabis, before returning to Michelle Engelhardt’s flat.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  He also informed the detectives that he’d actually been inside Flora Metallica in the days leading up to Pamela’s murder. He said he was trying to sell some of his jewellery, but was told they weren’t that type of store.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  The detectives started questioning Andrew’s story, saying they’d spoken to the people he said could verify his alibi, and no one recalled seeing him at the unit that Monday evening. They prodded him with questions. “How come you can’t remember where you were or what you were doing, Andrew? Why are you lying, Andrew? What are you trying to hide, Andrew? Just make it easier on yourself and tell us the truth about what really happened. We can help you.”

• 32:20Speaker 00

  Pressed about the inconsistencies in his story, Andrew said he was either confused or couldn’t remember. He also claimed that he was a police informant, described himself as a “flim-flam man”, and made grandiose statements about his skills and intelligence.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  The detectives knew about the tie pin and police badge that Andrew had stolen to impress Michelle. Asked about these items, Andrew said a friend had given them to him, not knowing that they had serial numbers, which proved he was lying.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  The interview went on for about five hours, before it was put directly to Andrew that he might be responsible for Pamela Lawrence’s murder. He emphatically denied it, stating: “I didn’t murder her. I didn’t do it. I swear to God, I didn’t murder her.” Told that a witness had placed someone matching his description in the store around the time Pamela was killed, Andrew said: “You can put me in the store when I ask that woman about jewellery, but no way did I do the murder.”

• 33:28Speaker 00

  He became increasingly upset, saying: “I have been cooperative and you were trying to pin me for the murder. That’s it. I didn’t do it. I’m innocent. I swear I didn’t do it.” As the pressure continued to mount, Andrew told the detectives that he had gone into Flora Metallica on the night Pamela was killed, but only to case it for a potential robbery. He claimed to have locked eyes with a girl in a passing car, before hearing a noise and leaving.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  Andrew then immediately retracted this story, saying that he’d made it all up to get the detectives off his back.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Asked then how he knew about the girl in the passing car, Andrew said: “I am a very intelligent man. I worked it out from the things you said to me.”

• 34:20Speaker 00

  By the time the interview had reached the six or seven hour mark, Andrew had reached a breaking point. He started crying, saying that the person who had murdered Pamela Lawrence was very scared and didn’t want to get caught. He then started giving a strange third-person account of what he believed could have happened, saying that he could get into the killer’s head, and that the person responsible was evil.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  According to Andrew, the killer had just kept hitting Pamela and couldn’t stop.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  With that, Detective Caporn began reading Andrew his rights, but Andrew continued talking about the hypothetical killer.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Andrew said that the killer was looking to steal something and had entered the store via the back door, only to find that Pamela Lawrence was still there, locking up. The killer got scared and started hitting Pamela on the head with a wrench. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. He then looked outside and saw the teenager in the car looking at him, so he realised he had to get out. He dragged Pamela’s body to the back door and realised she was making gurgling noises, so he hit her again before running out.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  “He murdered her. He’s very scared. He doesn’t want to get caught,” Andrew said. “This person, the evil person. I don’t know his name.”

• 35:49Speaker 00

  When the detectives asked where the wrench was, Andrew said the killer had caught a train to the nearby suburb of North Fremantle, and thrown it into the ocean.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Outside of the interview room, Lead Detective Malcolm Shervell spoke to Peter Lawrence on the phone. Peter confirmed that a 10-inch Sid Chrome brand wrench could possibly be missing from Pamela’s workshop.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  As far as the detectives were concerned, Andrew’s hypothetical third-person account was actually a confession. Detective Caporn asked if the evil person he was talking about was himself, to which Andrew responded: “No, this evil person is not me.”

• 36:34Speaker 00

  The detectives asked him to go back through the story again, wanting to know how he could possibly know these details if he wasn’t the one responsible. Andrew lost it and started yelling and swearing. He emphatically denied any involvement in Pamela’s murder, reasoning that he’d just been telling the detectives what he thought they wanted to hear, so he could leave the interview room. He repeatedly protested his innocence, but his aggression led to a physical altercation in which he bit Detective Caporn on the upper thigh.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  The interview was over. Andrew Mallard was charged with assaulting a police officer, and after being examined at the hospital, was granted bail and allowed to leave the station.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  He never got his clothes back as promised.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  No longer welcome at Michelle Engelhardt’s flat and not wanting to go home to his parents, Andrew was forced to sleep in a park.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  A few days later, while hanging out in the park, he met a man named Gary. The two immediately hit it off, and Andrew was impressed when Gary drove him around to score some dope. He was even more impressed when Gary treated him to a couple of nights in a hotel room. Gary said he was writing a book about Pamela’s murder, and that he wanted Andrew’s help. He was curious to know Andrew’s theory about what had happened. Andrew told Gary the same story he’d told the detectives. Gary then started mentioning possible weapons, asking Andrew if he believed a Sid Chrome brand wrench could have been used in the murder. He also asked if Andrew thought there had been a lot of blood,

• 38:20Speaker 00

  what the killer did with his clothes, where the killer could have got the weapon from, and where they disposed of it afterwards.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Andrew was happy to speculate. With Gary taking note of all his answers, he said the motive of the murder was likely robbery. The murder weapon was a wrench, which had been thrown off a bridge into the Swan River. The killer had washed the blood off his clothes using the salt water in the river, which, in Andrew’s words, “would fuck with the forensics”.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  It was clear that Andrew was not mentally well. Between the in-depth discussions about Pamela’s murder, he was also smoking a lot of cannabis, and his behaviour was becoming more and more erratic. He started talking about how he had passed through several dimensions, and saying that his soul could enter different bodies. He also told Gary he was really a Viking warrior. With that comment, Gary encouraged Andrew to participate in a makeover. He bought Andrew a second-hand pair of boots, an army jacket and a kilt, and then took him to get his head partly shaved. “There you go, Andrew. You look much more like a Viking warrior now.”

• 39:40Speaker 00

  In reality, Gary was an undercover police officer who had been sent to befriend Andrew.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  The reason Andrew had been allowed to leave the police station after being charged with assaulting an officer in the first place was that the detectives wanted to run an undercover operation on him. Other than the unrecorded ramblings about how he believed Pamela’s murder could have happened, they had no evidence against him. They hoped Gary could coax something out, but again, while Andrew hadn’t confessed directly, the police believed the story he was giving contained information that only the killer could possibly know. Fearing Andrew really was the murderer, and seeing his behaviour become increasingly erratic, Gary started to fear for his safety. The undercover operation was called off,

• 40:32Speaker 00

  with no admissions of guilt or any other evidence that could tie Andrew to the crime.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  On the morning of Friday, June fourteen, Andrew Mallard was due to attend court for the assault charge against him, but failed to show up.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  A warrant was therefore issued for his arrest, which was enacted upon by Detective Francis Brandom, an investigator who was working on Pamela’s murder case. Brandom took Andrew back to the station for another round of questioning. Again, Andrew revealed his third-person theory of what he believed could have happened. This time, he added in a description of Pamela’s injuries, saying he was able to do so because the police had shown him a photo during his first interview. When asked directly about the bandana that thirteen-year-old Catherine had seen the man in the store wearing, Andrew said he wasn’t wearing a bandana that day, but he had been wearing a backwards cap.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  He agreed that when turned around, it might look like a bandana. The detectives then handed Andrew a piece of paper and asked him to draw the wrench he believed the killer had used. Andrew did as he was told, and, remembering what Gary had told him, he even wrote the brand name Sid Chrome on it. All up, Andrew was interviewed for eleven and a half hours, only thirty minutes of which was recorded on video. Throughout the remaining eleven hours, the detectives merely took unsigned notes, just like they did during the first interview. When the tape was turned on, the detectives went back over Andrew’s story and asked

• 42:17Speaker 00

  him various questions based on the information he’d given them, mostly while speaking in the third person, but also speaking in the first person at times.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Okay, now, I’ve told you that you don’t have to be... ...undergo a video-recorded record interview, is that correct?

• 42:33Speaker 04

  You told me that. And what’s your... My response to that is I want to be video-recorded so that I can be... ...cleared.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Okay, all right, this, okay. We brought you in this morning and we had a conversation in relation to the murder of Pamela Lawrence at Mosman Park. Do you agree with that?

• 42:53Speaker 04

  I do.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  During the course of those discussions, you told us certain things. Okay, you said that you, um, needed money?

• 43:05Speaker 04

  I did.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  Okay, and that... And you told us that, um, you went in the rear... Went in through the rear of the shop at Flora Metallica. Is that what you told us?

• 43:14Speaker 04

  I told you that.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Okay, okay, I’m just gonna go through that now, okay? What you told us. All right, we’ll sort the rest out later, okay? So you told us that you went on the front on Glass Street, and that you were looking back and you saw that the Flora Metallica, the door was shut?

• 43:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  And that you thought that it was closed so it was safe to do a break? Is that what you told us?

• 43:33Speaker 04

  That’s correct.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Okay. You described the steps to us and you described the rear door and the fly-screen door?

• 43:40Speaker 04

  I did. May I ask you something else?

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Okay. Yeah, go on.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  If Pamela Lawrence was locking the store up, maybe she came in through the back way, like, the front door was already locked, maybe...

• 43:51Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Yep. And she left the key in the back door, and that’s why he had easy access, and that’s why she didn’t hear him until he was much...

• 43:57Speaker 03

  We’ll go on, still, we’ll go on with what you told us earlier, okay? Before we go into anything else. You happy with that?

• 44:02Speaker 04

  Very happy with it.

• 44:03Speaker 03

  Okay, no problem. You told us that she became hysterical and started screaming.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  That’s right.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Okay. And that you said that you didn’t mean... This is again, this is difficult, because this is what you said...

• 44:14Speaker 04

  I didn’t mean to...

• 44:15Speaker 03

  You said you didn’t mean to...

• 44:17Speaker 04

  Cause any further injury.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  Because it panicked, I panicked, and at the time, I thought I was on speed or drugs, but maybe not.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  You thought, I think you said initially that you only meant to knock her out?

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Uh, that’s right.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  Okay. You told us that she was, um, dressed in what?

• 44:34Speaker 04

  A skirt of some sort. Again, being a woman of taste and sophistication, she would have had to be more... A... Not a skirt like this, but one that joins up.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  All right. Okay, but the... The fact is that, um, the fact is that you told us all these things, and you now say that that was a complete pack of lies, that all that things that you told us was...

• 44:54Speaker 04

  I say that is my, my version, my conjecture of...

• 44:59Speaker 03

  Of what?

• 45:00Speaker 04

  ...the sin of crime.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Okay, all right. We’ll leave it at that.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  The detectives pressed on, saying... “You told us you went in through the rear of the shop at Flora Metallica. Now you said you went into the shed.” “Yes,” Andrew responded. “I told you that.” “You told us you got a wrench, is that correct?” the detectives asked. “A wrench from the toolbox,” Andrew replied. The detectives pointed out that Andrew had told them he went into the store to rob Pamela. He responded... “This is what I imagined this person would say.” The detective replied... “Okay, what I’m saying is, this is what you told us, and you said to us you hit her how many times?”

• 45:50Speaker 00

  To which Andrew replied... “I would say six to twelve at the max.”

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Although the detectives maintained that only the killer could possibly know this information, a lot of the details Andrew gave were actually incorrect. His description of Pamela’s person handbag were wrong, as was his description of the car thirteen-year-old Catherine had been in. His description of Pamela’s workshop at the back of the store and what was inside was also wrong.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  After the interview ended, Andrew Mallard still had to face court over the assault charges against him. Again, the judge sent him back to the Franklin Centre for an assessment. Meanwhile, the detectives working on Pamela’s murder presented their case to one of the state’s top prosecutors, John McKechnie. Their case relied mostly on Andrew’s supposed confessions, which had been given mostly in the third person and without being recorded. All up, Andrew had been interviewed for a total of nineteen hours, but less than an hour of that was captured on tape. The rest of his account relied on detectives’ notes.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Given that Andrew had never signed those notes, it meant he hadn’t corroborated what was said, but McKechnie felt that what was captured on tape was enough to proceed with a murder charge. On July nineteen, eight weeks after Pamela was killed, Andrew Mallard was released from the Franklin Centre and into the custody of detectives. He was charged with the murder of Pamela Lawrence. This time, he wasn’t sent back to the hospital, he was sent to prison.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  At a subsequent preliminary hearing, the judge ruled that the unsigned records of Andrew’s supposed confessions would be admissible at trial, and that therefore, the prosecution had enough evidence to proceed. A trial date was set for November two the following year. Given that Andrew had no money, he was represented by a government-appointed public defender. Not convinced that the public defender assigned was up to the task, Andrew requested the more specialised skills of a senior barrister. The public defender actually agreed with him and applied for funding to get a barrister onto the case.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  But because they had left it so late, to make that happen, they would need an adjournment. The judge didn’t allow them one, and the trial was to proceed as scheduled.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  When the trial commenced, the case was prosecuted by Ken Bates. In his opening address, he presented Pamela’s murder as a robbery gone wrong. Bates’s case was that Andrew went to the jury store with the intention of breaking in, thinking no one was there. He was surprised to see Pamela still there, working late. He panicked and bludgeoned her to death with a wrench. He stole her purse, but then due to his panicked state, he left before he could steal anything else. The video of Andrew’s police interview was presented. Although the video started and ended with Andrew protesting his innocence, Bates described

• 49:18Speaker 00

  it as a confession, intricate in nature, with details only the killer could know. Detective Caporn took the stand and gave evidence over several days.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  He went through the first eight-hour interview with Andrew, reading his unsigned written notes. Bates didn’t call the undercover officer Gary as a witness. In fact, the undercover operation wasn’t mentioned by the prosecution at all. And it wasn’t mentioned by the defence either, because they didn’t know what had ever happened. Andrew Mallard took the stand and gave evidence in his own defence, denying everything the prosecution was alleging. At one point, he even looked at Peter Lawrence directly and said... “I did not kill your wife, Mr Lawrence. I had nothing to do with it.” Andrew denied, saying that he had killed Pamela with a wrench, claiming it was just

• 50:16Speaker 00

  his theory about what the killer might have used.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  The trial lasted for two weeks, and it didn’t take the jury long to reach their verdict: guilty. Andrew Mallard was sentenced on December twenty-one, nineteen ninety-five, with the judge declaring...

• 50:36Speaker 00

  “You showed no sign of remorse during your trial, or now. At trial, you displayed confident, assertive behaviour, and displayed clear evidence you were a manipulative individual prepared to lie, cheat, steal, and defraud if the need arose. You went to the shop to commit burglary, but when you realised that you would be identified, you panicked and struck Pamela Lawrence repeatedly with a heavy wrench.”

• 51:05Speaker 00

  Andrew stood up and screamed, insisting, “I did not.” But the judge continued... “The blows were delivered until you were satisfied she was dead. Your sentence will be twenty years of strict security, life imprisonment.”

• 51:24Speaker 00

  Andrew continued to scream and protest his innocence as he was dragged away. The twenty-year sentence was just the non-parole period, which meant it was possible that Andrew would never be released, especially when a big factor in securing parole is remorse.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Andrew Mallard appealed his sentence and it was heard at the Court of Criminal Appeal in June 1996 before three Supreme Court judges. By this point, Andrew was being represented by a barrister who attacked the so-called confessions. He labelled them as unreliable, given that although a video camera was available in the room the entire time, less than one hour was recorded out of the 19 hours that Andrew was interviewed. He also heavily attacked the inaccuracies of Andrew’s supposed confession, such as the descriptions of Pamela’s purse, the car Catherine was driving past in, and Pamela’s store itself.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  He highlighted the fact that there was no forensic evidence, no positive ID, and no murder weapon to tie his client to the crime. The barrister also said it was extremely unlikely that Andrew would have had enough time to exit the taxi at the unit block in Mosman Park at 5pm, only to make it roughly 350 metres to Flora Metallica to be seen by Catherine at 5:02pm. The prosecution relied on what they called the 15 things in Andrew’s confession that only the murderer could have known. But, some of these details had been told to Andrew, such as the fact that the murder weapon was a Sid Chrome wrench.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  There was no proof that a wrench had been used, and no murder weapon had ever been uncovered, but this detail formed part of the 15-point case against Andrew regardless. The appeal judges listened to both sides before retiring to reach their verdict. Three months later, they unanimously dismissed Andrew’s appeal and his conviction was upheld. However, the ruling did come with a warning to police: unrecorded confessions would no longer be allowed. The ruling also stated that while there had been some unsatisfactory aspects of Andrew’s case, there had been no miscarriage of justice.

• 53:53Speaker 00

  This ruling meant there was only one court left for Andrew to go: the High Court. But, you couldn’t just take any old case to the High Court. Generally speaking, the High Court is only interested in severe miscarriages of justice or matters of national importance. Andrew would have to convince three judges that his appeal had grounds to be heard there. His barrister pleaded the case to the judges, but they weren’t convinced that the case had merit to be heard in the High Court. With that, it was done. Andrew Mallard would be imprisoned for life.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  Andrew struggled to cope with the ruling. He demanded to take a light detector test, and even demanded to be injected with truth serum. As time went on, he started to believe he was the victim of a big conspiracy. He was convinced the authorities must be trying to brainwash him. The real killer must be a powerful man, and Andrew was set up as a patsy. He started to believe that everyone was in on it: the murderer, the police, the lawyers, the judges, the prison guards, everyone. He became convinced that the long police interviews were actually brainwashing sessions, designed to convince him he was responsible for Pamela’s murder.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  He went to the prison library trying to find anything he could about brainwashing and hypnosis, convinced this could be the only explanation. The idea continued to grow in Andrew’s head. He started to see the jail as a brainwashing facility, in which the lights were actually cameras recording his every move, and the live feed was being sent back to Detective K. Born. The distress alarm in his cell was a speaker where messages were whispered to him in his sleep. He saw other prisoners as actors, whose job was to convince him he was in prison, when really, they were part of the brainwashing conspiracy. Andrew became obsessed with this idea, refusing to speak to any other prisoners, and even

• 56:05Speaker 00

  cutting off all visits from his family. He even put a sign in his cell that read: “My name is Andrew Mark Mallard. I will not speak to any police or member of the justice system, prisons department, or any other authority without proper legal representation. I have nothing to say.” Despite this, Andrew was known to be a passive, well-behaved prisoner who kept to himself, and he was therefore generally left alone. Andrew’s parents, Roy and Grace, as well as his sister Jackie, never believed that Andrew was guilty. Convinced that the story didn’t add up, Roy dedicated himself to studying court transcripts,

• 56:48Speaker 00

  witness accounts, and legal books to try and find a hole in the case against his son. While obsessing over Andrew’s case, Roy started to experience pain in his stomach. A trip to the doctors revealed it was cancer, and that Roy didn’t have long to live. Roy told Grace not to tell Andrew. Already concerned about his mental state, he didn’t want to give him something else to worry about. Grace agreed, and Roy died less than four weeks later. Having cut off all visits, Andrew hadn’t seen his family for years. When his mother broke the news to him about his father’s death, Andrew didn’t believe

• 57:32Speaker 00

  her. Still running with his conspiracy theory, he believed the powers at play had gotten to his family, and the story of his father’s death was designed to finally make him crack. “Don’t worry mum,” Andrew said. “I know you’ve been told to say this. Tell dad I know he’s alright. Don’t worry about me, okay?” His sister couldn’t convince him either. In Andrew’s view, his dad was the strongest man he knew and was in great health. There was no way he was dead. Although Andrew was upset that the authorities had gotten to his family, he was determined not to let them break him.

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• 59:39Speaker 00

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• 59:55Speaker 00

  Grace Mallard never wavered from her belief that her son was innocent. She spoke to anyone she could about his case, including Colleen Egan, an investigative journalist for Channel 7’s current affairs programme Today Tonight. While Colleen wasn’t interested in covering the story for Today Tonight, she was interested in it personally. What caught her attention was a letter that a well-known barrister named Malcolm McCusker had written to the Mallard family. As a former court reporter, Colleen knew who was who in the legal circles, and McCusker was well-respected. He had written that he found Andrew’s case very unsettling, but nothing could be done unless fresh evidence emerged.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  Only then, if presented to a jury, might the outcome change. That was enough to encourage Colleen to take a look at the court transcripts. She soon became convinced that Andrew had been given a raw deal, and agreed to help, enlisting the assistance of his defence barrister who offered his services for free. When Andrew’s family went to tell him that a reporter was interested in helping them, he was far from impressed. Convinced this was just another part of the conspiracy, he refused to talk, saying that he didn’t want any help. Colleen advised Andrew’s family that they should worry about getting Andrew psychiatric

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  help before they worried about fighting the case against him. The prison was initially reluctant to force Andrew into any treatment. Sure, his behaviour was odd, but he wasn’t violent, and he wasn’t causing any trouble. Eventually, they changed their stance, and Andrew was once again sent to the Franklin Centre for an assessment by a psychiatrist. Being in the hospital for the third time seemed to snap Andrew back to reality. He realised there was no way his fellow patients could be actors, and that he was in a real hospital. It suddenly became clear to him that this was not a conspiracy, this was real.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  The switch was flicked. Andrew was back.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Putting an end to his conspiracy thinking, Andrew wanted to cooperate with the psychiatrist and prove he was innocent. After a few months of treatment, his condition greatly improved and he was sent back to prison. Andrew apologised to his family, saying his conspiracy theory was the only way he could rationalise what had happened to him. Andrew’s sister Jackie called Colleen Egan and told her the good news: Andrew was ready. But it was a long process. Colleen worked on the case for four years with the help of Andrew’s barrister and many others, but they couldn’t find the fresh evidence they needed to launch a new appeal.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  At a standstill, Colleen decided to approach an unlikely ally. John Quigley was a well-known lawyer who spent 25 years working with the Police Union, defending police officers accused of wrongdoing. Rarely losing a case, he’d earned an exceptional reputation as one of the best lawyers you could get. He was also a big personality who didn’t mind the limelight. Quigley knew everything there was to know about police procedures and practices; that’s what made him such a good person to approach. But it was risky. Having spent 25 years defending police officers, he’d developed some solid relationships and contacts.

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  He was the only non-police officer to be given a life membership of the Police Union. Colleen knew this from her crime-reporting days, and she also knew that Quigley had recently quit law and had taken up politics, becoming a Labour Party backbencher. During the four years she’d been working on Andrew’s case, Colleen had also changed her jobs. It just so happened she was now working for the Australian newspaper, covering politics. Colleen approached Quigley and let him know that she strongly believed an innocent man was behind bars. What better start to his career in politics than to help get an innocent man out of prison?

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  Although Quigley didn’t make any promises, he told Colleen he would have a look at the case and get back to her. Quigley immediately saw a problem. The case against Andrew relied strongly on the belief that he had killed Pamela using a Sid Chrome wrench. But the forensic pathologist who performed Pamela’s autopsy, Dr Clive Cook, said he wasn’t convinced that Pamela had been killed using a wrench, and that he hadn’t yet seen a wrench that would cause the injuries she had sustained. Something else didn’t sit right with Quigley. After Andrew’s first police interview, when he was charged with assaulting a police

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  officer, he’d been allowed to leave despite having nowhere to live at the time. It was very unusual for an accused offender to be released on bail if they were experiencing homelessness. Quigley compared this fact with the evidence given by Detective Francis Brandom, who had arrested Andrew after he failed to show up in court for the assault charge. According to Detective Brandom, he’d just been driving around when he happened to see Andrew in the park he’d been sleeping in, so he’d arrested him on the warrant and conducted the second interview in relation to Pamela Lawrence’s murder. Quigley was able to put two and two together pretty quickly. He realised that Andrew had initially been released because the police were running an

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  undercover operation on him, and that they knew where he’d been the entire time. He also found it unusual that there had been no mention of the undercover operation at Andrew’s trial. Colleen’s idea to approach John Quigley had paid off, as these were things that stood out to him that Colleen and the others hadn’t seen. Assuming that more had probably been hidden, Quigley decided to meet with the forensic pathologist, Dr Cook. Quigley asked him how it came to be that a wrench was determined to be the murder weapon. Dr Cook said he had no idea. He told Quigley the same thing he had told the detectives in charge of the case, as

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  well as the prosecutor. “I find it hard to believe a wrench would have caused these injuries.” Quigley showed him the sketch that Andrew had drawn of the Sid Chrome wrench that had been presented as evidence during his trial. Dr Cook had never seen it before. Despite having testified himself, the sketch had never been shown to Dr Cook, nor had he been asked on the stand if a wrench could have caused Pamela’s injuries. This was enough for the ball to start rolling. Colleen Egan started writing articles about the potential miscarriage of justice, while John Quigley started making some noise about it too.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  Up until that point, all they had were the court transcripts, so he used his political connections to get a hold of the prosecution file. One thing immediately stood out. Back in 1994, tests had been done on a pig’s head to see if a wrench could make the same wounds suffered by Pamela Lawrence. They didn’t match. The results of this test were never disclosed to the defence or mentioned at the trial. Given that the wrench was the only weapon ever mentioned in Andrew’s so-called confession, and it was incapable of inflicting Pamela’s injuries, this alone was enough for Quigley

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  to realise that there were some grave doubts about the reliability of Andrew’s confession. The prosecution file also confirmed Quigley’s suspicion that an undercover operation had taken place. By this point, several years had passed since Andrew’s trial, and the prosecutor, Cam Bates, was now highly respected and esteemed in his field. John McKechnie, who was the top prosecutor in the state at the time and who gave the detectives the go-ahead to charge Andrew, was now a serving Supreme Court judge. Detectives Shervell and Capehorn, who had been central in the case against Andrew, were now assistant police commissioners.

• 1:08:47Speaker 00

  Detective Brandom, who arrested Andrew and conducted the second interview, was now a superintendent. Not surprisingly, there was resistance to what Quigley was saying about the case. Headlines read that Quigley was trying to get a vicious murderer off on a non-disclosure technicality. Those who had been involved in the investigation and trial maintained that the case against Andrew Mallard was strong. They argued that he had made a solid confession and a jury had been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the killer. But enough had been uncovered for the case to be referred back to the Court of Criminal Appeal. Prosecutors were determined to fight.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  While they conceded that they should have disclosed all of the information, they maintained it was just an oversight and wouldn’t have affected the outcome of the trial. Barrister Malcolm McCusker, whose letter had initially sparked Colleen Egan’s interest in the case, was defending Andrew. And because the case was back before the court and full disclosure had now been made, there were a few more issues that came up. Michelle Engelhardt, the woman Andrew had been living with at the time of Pamela’s murder, had given several statements to police. Each one was slightly different to the one before it, with details either added in or

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  taken out to better fit the theory that Andrew was responsible for the crime. Only Michelle’s last statement had been given to the defence, which conveniently made no mention of crucial details that Michelle had previously given, such as the fact that the baseball cap Andrew often wore had been hanging on a hook at her home at the time Pamela’s murder took place. This was the same cap that the prosecution alleged Andrew had been wearing backwards at the time he killed Pamela, which 13-year-old Catherine had mistaken for some type of bandana. Catherine had made her own sketch of the suspicious man she’d seen in the store as soon as she’d arrived home, and had also written her own account about what she’d

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  witnessed. In those, Catherine had described the man’s bandana as being “blue, green and creaming colour with an orange border”. Eight weeks later, when giving another statement, she was shown Andrew Mallard’s cap, which was red, yellow and black with gold braiding around the edge. After this, a detective added a note to her statement which read: “I have been shown a cap by the police, and I cannot say if it was what I saw on the man in Flora Metallica on Monday 23 May 1994. I can say that it has the same colours of what I saw the man wearing in the shop that day.”

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  Catherine’s final statement simply described the suspect’s headwear as being “mixed-coloured and patterned”, and made no mention of the original sketches she had drawn in the immediate aftermath.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  Andrew was also taller than the man Catherine had described, and didn’t have a beard but a moustache. When Catherine had been shown a photo line-up that included Andrew, she had failed to pick him out as the man she’d seen. None of these details were mentioned in her final statement, nor were they presented at Andrew’s trial.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Some vital information had also been removed from a forensic report, and only the amended version had been supplied to the defence and presented as evidence at Andrew’s trial.

• 1:12:28Speaker 00

  The information that had been removed was that there was no trace of salt water on Andrew’s clothing. This was significant because when Andrew had given the police his theory about Pamela’s murder, he said that the killer had washed his clothes in the Swan River because the “salt water fucks with the forensics”. Given the investigators had treated Andrew’s third-person rants as a confession, the fact that there was no salt water on his clothes, nor any of Pamela’s blood, didn’t look good for their case against him. Prosecutor Kent Bates had told the jury that Andrew had washed his clothes in the river regardless.

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  Andrew’s new defence team therefore argued that evidence had purposely been withheld, altered or omitted in order to strengthen the prosecution’s case. The case was heard for the second time in the Court of Criminal Appeal on December 3, 2003, by which point Andrew had spent eight years in jail. Neither detectives Shervell or Caporn were called as witnesses by the prosecution during the appeal, meaning the defence could not cross-examine them. The panel of judges ultimately agreed that there had been non-disclosure issues, but they didn’t think these details would have affected the outcome of the trial.

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  Their ruling was unanimous: Appeal dismissed, conviction upheld.

• 1:13:58Speaker 00

  Undeterred, Andrew’s defence team applied to have their case heard in the High Court, and this time, their application was successful. On October 27, 2004, almost a year after their appeal was rejected, the High Court judges granted special leave to hear Andrew’s case. While this meant his legal team had gotten a foot in the door, there was still a long road ahead, and it would still be another year before the case was heard. The High Court operates separately to the state systems and is located in Canberra, the nation’s capital. Andrew’s team were far more optimistic that they’d get a fair hearing outside of Western Australia.

• 1:14:43Speaker 00

  The High Court hearing went ahead on October 6, 2005, and Andrew’s team outlined the same evidence and issues which they believe amounted to a wrongful conviction. Again, the judges reached a unanimous decision. But, unlike the appellate judges before them, they believed that the only evidence linking Andrew to the crime were admissions to police, which they labelled as “bizarre and fanciful statements”, and concluded that he had indeed suffered a miscarriage of justice. Andrew’s conviction was quashed and a retrial was ordered, with the Corruption and Crime Commission subsequently launching an investigation into the allegations of misconduct by the lead detectives and the prosecutor.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  The prosecution didn’t back down, declaring they had every intention of pursuing the retrial. But, their attitude changed when a judge ruled that Andrew’s alleged unrecorded confessions and the accompanying unsigned interview notes would not be admissible in the second trial. On February 20, 2006, the prosecution cited this ruling as their deciding factor not to go ahead with a retrial.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  The police agreed, saying that the case would remain closed, and that Andrew Mallard remained their prime suspect in Pamela’s murder, and that he’d only been let off on a technicality.

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  After being locked up for 12 years, Andrew Mallard was free.

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  A blood spatter expert was in Perth testifying in an unrelated trial when he saw the media coverage about Andrew’s release. Intrigued, he studied the photos of Pamela’s bloody clothing and formed an opinion about who had killed her.

• 1:16:32Speaker 00

  He believed the real person responsible for her murder was her husband, Peter Lawrence.

• 1:16:39Speaker 00

  Despite the police saying the case would remain closed, public pressure mounted, and they were forced to reopen the case and have another look. A special crime squad was formed to reexamine every piece of evidence using technology that didn’t exist 12 years earlier, in the hopes it would uncover new information. And it did.

• 1:17:02Speaker 00

  The partial palm print that had been found on the glass countertop at the crime scene was fed through the computer system, and it quickly produced a match.

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  But, it wasn’t what anyone was expecting.

• 1:17:20Speaker 00

  In July 1994, just seven weeks after Pamela’s murder, an English backpacker named Simon Rochford was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Bridgetta Dickens. Simon had been in Perth for only six months at the time, having met local woman Bridgetta shortly after he arrived. Simon had spun a whole heap of lies to Bridgetta about who he really was and what he was doing. He told her grand tales of being rich and successful, when really, he was a criminal who had overstayed his tourist visa.

• 1:17:56Speaker 00

  Bridgetta had caught on to his lies and confronted Simon, threatening to report him to immigration. But, Simon was the prime suspect in a stabbing murder back in England, and he didn’t want to risk being deported. To save himself, Simon had bludgeoned Bridgetta to death with a crude instrument he had made himself using a weight collar and an old saw handle, causing traumatic brain injury. He then dumped her body in the boot of her car along with the murder weapon, which he had painted blue.

• 1:18:31Speaker 00

  Simon didn’t put up much of a fight when he was arrested for Bridgetta’s murder. He was interviewed by Detective Brantam, the same detective who had conducted Andrew Mallard’s second interview just a month earlier, during which Simon made a full videotaped confession. Simon Rochford was subsequently sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 15 years, which was five years shorter than what Andrew received. Bridgetta’s wounds were the same as Pamela’s. The unknown pieces of blue material in Pamela’s wounds were a perfect match to the paint from Simon’s handmade weapon.

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  Bridgetta’s autopsy had been conducted by the same forensic pathologist who conducted Pamela’s, and some of the same detectives had worked on both cases. The same public defender who had defended Simon Rochford also went on to defend Andrew Mallard at his first trial. Despite these factors, and the short amount of time between the two crimes, no investigators had ever linked them, nor had any members of the public ever nominated Simon Rochford as a person of interest.

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  At the time of Pamela’s murder, Simon’s fingerprints hadn’t yet been put into the police computer system, and after he was arrested for killing Bridgetta, no one had checked his prints against those found at Pamela’s crime scene because the police were laser-focused on Andrew Mallard.

• 1:20:02Speaker 00

  But, it was now obvious to the special crime squad that the police had been wrong from the get-go.

• 1:20:09Speaker 00

  The blood spatter report that had named Peter Lawrence as the killer was criticised, as it was now undeniably clear that Peter had nothing to do with his wife’s murder. But, neither had Andrew Mallard.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  Andrew had actually crossed paths with Simon Rochford in jail. Although they never spoke, Andrew recalled that Simon would sit and stare at him all day. Some of the other prisoners even got the cases the two men were serving time for mixed up, saying to Andrew: “You’re in here for that girl in the boot murder, aren’t you?” Andrew would reply: “No, that’s the other guy. I’m innocent of my crime.”

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  A detective was sent to Albany Prison to interview 38-year-old Simon Rochford. Simon denied having anything to do with Pamela Lawrence’s murder, and was placed on temporary suicide watch. We will never know what really happened inside Flora Metallica on the day Pamela died, and why Simon Rochford did what he did. Because eight days after that police interview, after the media publicly named him as the prime suspect in Pamela’s murder, Simon took a putty knife from the prison garden and hacked through his wrist and neck, ending his life.

• 1:21:33Speaker 00

  In 2008, the Corruption and Crime Commission completed their inquiry, with the commission finding that Andrew's false confessions could only be explained by the mental illness he was suffering from at the time. The psychiatrist who had treated Andrew before and after his interviews with the police told the inquiry that Andrew's bipolar disorder had been exacerbated by his cannabis use, and that he'd been having trouble distinguishing fact from fiction around the time he made the so-called admissions. Had he been questioned about the confessions at Andrew's trial, the psychiatrist said he would have raised some serious doubts about their reliability.

• 1:22:13Speaker 00

  According to the commission's findings, detectives Malcolm Sherwell and David Caporn had been so blinded by their tunnel vision on Andrew that they had changed aspects of the case to make it fit him better.

• 1:22:26Speaker 00

  A comprehensive report of the investigation was released to the public, which stated: "The commission is satisfied that detectives Caporn and Sherwell, who were together involved in the process, either by persistent and repeated questioning, or by deliberately raising doubts in the witnesses' minds until they became confused, uncertain, or possibly open to suggestion, were instrumental in causing the witnesses to change their statements by being less particular as to clothing and headwear colour, so that more general descriptions could apply to Mr Mallard. The process demonstrates a pattern which the commission is satisfied cannot have been accidental or coincidence."

• 1:23:10Speaker 00

  The commission ruled that detectives Sherwell and Caporn, who were now assistant commissioners, be disciplined for misconduct, and that there were reasonable grounds for termination of their employment. Prosecutor Ken Bates got the same recommendation. Despite these findings, the police commissioner couldn't just go ahead and sack the officers involved, he had to conduct his own inquiry. Before that could happen, Malcolm Sherwell resigned with full benefits, while David Caporn resigned and took up another government job. Ken Bates resigned and received a six-figure payout. The judges involved in the trial and appeals process carried on with their careers.

• 1:23:56Speaker 00

  In May 2009, it was announced that Andrew Mallard would be receiving a $3.25 million payout from the government for the 12 years he spent in prison. A spokesperson for the Attorney General specified that it wasn't compensation, but a gift, and that if Andrew wanted compensation, he would have to continue his fight. Despite being one of the highest exgration payments made in Western Australia at the time, it was half of what Andrew had been seeking, and he found it woefully inadequate, telling reporters he felt extremely disappointed. His disappointment was shared by his longtime supporter, John Quigley, who told reporters:

• 1:24:41Speaker 00

  "This man was taken from the streets as a totally innocent person, imprisoned for 12 and a half years, bashed in prison, sent to a psychiatric hospital where he was injected because he wouldn't accept his guilt. This is enormous, what's happened to him. For a man who has had to fight against the system, the DPP, the police, and the government for over 12 years to prove his innocence, it's a bitter and cruel blow to be told for the rest of your compensation, 'Keep on fighting, sunshine.' That is not fair."

• 1:25:16Speaker 00

  The years Andrew had spent in prison, and the entire ordeal, had taken a great toll on him. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and underwent years of psychotherapy. He also continued to face scrutiny and abuse from certain members of the public, who continued to believe he was guilty. In 2010, he told ABC's Australian Story that there would always be a stigma that went with being wrongfully imprisoned. "People don't know the full story," Andrew said. "They think I'm some sort of psycho, some sort of mentally ill patient. I had done nothing wrong, I was innocent, and protested my innocence from the word go."

• 1:26:02Speaker 00

  Tired of being recognised in Perth and eager for a fresh start, Andrew moved to England. He had recently graduated from university with a degree in fine arts and planned to start a master's degree in London. More than anything, he wanted to meet his soulmate, someone with whom he could settle down and have a family.

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  By 2019, things seemed to finally be working in his direction. 56-year-old Andrew had met a woman who lived in the United States and was head over heels in love. He travelled frequently to meet up with her, and on the evening of April 18, 2019, he called his mother and sister to say that he was getting married. The next day, his family received a call from the authorities to advise them that Andrew had been involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident while crossing Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard. The driver fled, leaving Andrew to die from his injuries.

• 1:27:07Speaker 00

  For Andrew's family, friends, and those who had dedicated years to supporting him, the news came as a complete blow.

• 1:27:16Speaker 00

  Five days after Andrew's death, a 20-year-old Los Angeles resident named Christopher Smith turned himself in to police. He faced four years in prison, but later struck a deal, receiving 30 days of weekend detention, 30 hours of community service, and three years probation.

• 1:27:37Speaker 00

  Andrew's family told the prosecution it's what Andrew would have wanted, saying: "Andrew knew only too well, as do we, the trauma, both emotional and mental, that imprisonment brings." Speaking to Australian Story about Andrew's death, John Quigley said he couldn't adequately explain the feeling of grief that washed over him when he heard the news. Reflecting on the first time he'd ever met Andrew, Quigley said: "I held that man in my arms in prison and promised I'd never leave him. I felt just a little bit of me die when I heard this news."

• 1:28:18Speaker 00

  He described Andrew as "a gentle man, an honest person," saying: "I just think it's so unfair, so sad what happened. I'd like to think that Andrew's soul is resting in peace."

• 1:28:35Speaker 00

  Andrew's death came as a painful shock for Pamela Lawrence's family as well. Speaking publicly about the case for the first time, Pamela's youngest daughter, Katie, told Australian Story that before Andrew had been cleared for her mother's murder, it had never occurred to her family that the justice system could fail so dismally. Katie said: "I have enormous regrets at how long it took me to realise that Andrew was innocent. I really want people to know that my family believe Andrew's innocent 100%, and we have nothing but regret for what he's been put through, what his family and his supporters have gone through.

• 1:29:17Speaker 00

  If it wasn't for them, I don't think we would ever have known the truth." Despite everything that the Lawrence family had endured since Pamela was cruelly taken from them, Katie said: "The last thing that mum would have wanted was for the wrong person to be punished over her death, and for another family to have to be put through such an unbelievable ordeal."

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

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