08 Wheelie Bin Murder | The questions we couldn't answer

With the jury dismissed, we dive into the questions we couldn't answer during the trial. Did the media treat the victim fairly? Why didn't we use the term 'domestic violence'? What do we know about Geoffrey McLean's other body parts? Eva and Stocky answer all your most pressing questions, and Eva reveals a surprising exchange she had with one of the four accused in court. The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There was a chook who was left something like 10 million pounds in a will. She was called Jiju, but she was rich, so maybe posh, like Jiju. Anyway, does that mean I can leave my car to my cat or my daddo to my dog? What the Duck is presenting Nature's Most Wanted, the intersection of animals and the law. You know, pigs being tried for murder or ducks getting speeding tickets. What the Duck on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  For more than two months, the biggest courtroom in Adelaide hosted a huge trial. Four defendants, two of them accused of murdering a man called Geoffrey McLean and cutting his body up, putting it in a wheelie bin. And then it was called off, which means we can tell you some secrets. I'm Stephen Stockwell, this is episode eight of the case of the wheelie bin murder.

• 1:06Speaker 03

  A gruesome discovery on vacant land in Adelaide's north. Police say the remains belong to missing man Geoffrey McLean. When Geoffrey's body was located, it had been dismembered. It was located in a wheelie bin.

• 1:18Speaker 04

  Four people have been arrested in relation to his death. A woman who's accused of murdering her ex-partner. They're hopeful they can provide relief to his family.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  A dramatic but incredibly disappointing end to the trial of Cherie Glastonbury and Mark Murphy. A mistrial was declared last week and there is much to discuss and many questions that we are now a little bit freer to answer. And to help us through all of that, we have Adelaide court reporter Eva Blandis with us. G'day Eva. Hi Stocky. Eva, this is a fascinating case, the case of the wheelie bin murder. We had four people on trial, two people were on trial for murder after Geoffrey McLean's body was found in a wheelie bin, his torso found in a wheelie bin, then two more on trial for kind of helping them basically after the fact. But there was very little coverage on this in Adelaide. We had a huge response to the podcast as we were talking through this and producing episodes on it. But there were very few stories in Adelaide about it.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  I mean, am I right in thinking that people in South Australia just weren't that interested in hearing about this?

• 2:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, so there wasn't that much local coverage. I think it was for lots of reasons. I wonder as well if people weren't reading these stories as much because of the gruesome nature of it. And we were also in the midst of a state election, so I think that contributed to it as well.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, part of me did wonder whether or not, you know, there's just a kind of reluctance in South Australia to engage with anything that kind of resembles a body in a barrel scenario. So I had that in the back of my mind, but was it also that, you know, Geoffrey McLean wasn't a very sympathetic victim?

• 2:54Speaker 05

  Look, I, I think that would have played into it. We obviously sort of in those first few days and in our first few days of coverage, there weren't very nice things said about him, well, what the prosecution said. I mean, we heard he was a meth user and he was a drinker. So that really, I think, changes the public perception of this person. So I definitely think that played, played a part in it as well.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and something else that I, I wonder about, and you know, we talked a lot about Geoffrey McLean through the podcast as well. Um, I mean, did, were there many kind of family members, supporters of Geoffrey McLean, you know, people kind of from his, yeah, friends and family in the courtroom throughout this trial?

• 3:37Speaker 05

  No, not at the stage we got to. I think, um, a huge issue with that was not that his family didn't want to come, but I think a lot of them were witnesses. So they obviously, um, couldn't come into the courtroom to watch. Um, there was a application at the beginning by prosecution to have, um, no witnesses in the court until they'd given evidence. So, um, that I think sort of meant that we didn't see a lot of his supporters and family. There were a few people here and there in the court. I would see Poppy and I'm not sure if they were just there to watch or if they were family. Um, but there was sort of no day to day presence of a group of people or anything.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  Um, but I think that's mainly because they were going to be witnesses.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 4:26Speaker 05

  And also I was just thinking on that top Family not being allowed in the courtroom. It always fascinates me because if I was a family member, I would be so frustrated not being able to sit in there. And I know that that's just the way it is, but it would just be so, it would be like torture, wouldn't it?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah, it'd be really challenging. Um, having a kind of just n- not be in the room and not know what's going on, but I also.

• 4:49Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  I also feel if I was a family member, being in the courtroom, I would feel probably kind of frustrated as well because of the.

• 4:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  The way the court process unfolds, like it it is so impersonal, it removes so much of a person from the process because it's not about. The individuals, it's about.

• 5:04Speaker 05

  No.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  The act and if there's guilt associated with that act. So that becomes the focus. Um, of a courtroom and that again is how kind of people get get lost in these, in these moments and, and why as well, we needed to be kind of careful. During the coverage of this trial, not to talk too much about anything outside of the courtroom or. Or not to try and make Geoffrey McLean a sympathetic victim. It's not our role to kind of be like, oh, look, he's this. Person that you should feel sorry for. It's, it's our role to kind of report what's going on and for people to understand. How this is being explained in a courtroom. So.

• 5:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  That's the purpose of of what we're doing as well. And, you know, while there weren't family in the courtroom, we actually got a number of emails from people who knew. Geoffrey McLean. We also had someone email the pod, say they had, um, dated Cherie Glastonbury and said they had some stories that they could tell, uh, they claimed. So. Eva might be someone that we, we link you up with. But also the one that stuck with me was the person who actually emailed and said, hey, look, I, I knew this guy. Um, and, you know, I've heard you mention that there's not friends and family there. I'd like to go down and I'd like to be in the room to, to kind of be that support as well. And. So, yeah, we did have kind of a number of messages about that too. Um, first though, we've had so many questions since a mistrial was called last week, uh, sent to the case of at abc.net.au.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  So I'd love to spend a bit of time kind of working through some of them. You know, we talked last week about how a juror had been. Doing their own research into perjury. Um, we don't know what exactly that was, but that was enough for Justice Kimber to decide that. The trial couldn't continue and declared a mistrial. And so many people have questions about how this has unfolded. What happens to the juror now? All of these things that I'd love to roll through a little bit as well. So. A really interesting one that's come in from from Shelley. She's kind of noted how much of a waste of time and energy this has been, which we spoke a little bit about last week, Eva. But she wonders if the juror who broke the rules can be fined or prosecuted, noting that they came forward in this case.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  So, you know, the courts might not want to discourage the honesty of them saying, hey, look, I was actually doing my own research and I think that might not have been allowed. What's the go here, Eva? What could happen?

• 7:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I think that is a really good point because this juror has obviously done the wrong thing, but then has done the right thing. So it's like they've initially not followed the judge's direction and then they've followed the direction by reporting their mistakes. So in South Australia, jurors can be charged with contempt of court, but it's not actually the judge who charges them or it's not police or anything. It's the registrar of that court. So in this case, the Supreme Court. From my understanding, this happens once a judge chooses to report them to the registrar. So it's sort of up to them to decide what to do.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  But then maybe this juror's realised their huge mistake and has then fessed up. So they've sort of in a way corrected their mistake.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  I do feel for the jury a little bit though, because, you know, as we'd spoken about Eva, it's been a couple of weeks of no court. Right. And so they'd been just sitting in the jury room, kind of waiting to hear some evidence. I can see how you would end up maybe just kind of, you know, you're in a court this whole time, you're like, how does perjury work again? You know, is this something that's going on out there?

• 8:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  I can really see how they've ended up in this situation. So I do feel very sorry for for them. And I'm sure that juror feels terrible as well.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  Well, Justice Kimber sort of touched on that when he addressed the issue and he sort of said, you know, he wouldn't be surprised if they were feeling really upset and disappointed. So.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. There may have been other jurors who were like, oh, thank God, I was going for two months.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  Exactly. It's over. It's over.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  So, yeah, we'll see. Another question, Eva, that we've been sent in from Liz. And this is on the, you know, kind of basically on on this juror doing their own research. She's wondered how these jurors ended up doing this research themselves, but more importantly, how could they have found out this information without causing a mistrial?

• 8:58Speaker 05

  So what the jury should do is when they have a question, they should write it on a note and then they give it to the sheriff's officer who hands it to the judge's associates. And then in this case, Justice Kimber will read the question to the counsel when the jury isn't there and they will then sort of discuss how to answer the question. I mean, if it's a really simple question like, can I leave early? There won't be much, you know, discussion about that. But as we did see in this trial, there were a few questions that did result in lengthy discussions.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the, what you're describing there, where there's the parties kind of discussing with the judge how to answer a question. I remember a really specific example from this case because it's something that we answered on the pod in a kind of very cheeky way. Uh, there was a question from the jury to the judge asking about whether or not blood found at Sri Glastonbury's house matched Geoffrey McLean's blood. So we'd heard during the trial that police had gone to Sri Glastonbury's house. They had done the, the investigation there and they'd found a tiny spot of blood uh, near one of the posts of the carport. And the jury was asking, was that Geoffrey McLean's blood? And Justice Kimber said to the barrister in the room, he said, hey, look, what I want to do when I answer these questions, I want to point to the prosecution opening and say, hey, in the prosecution opening, you heard that you got to see evidence that this blood was Geoffrey McLean's.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  And Mari Shaw, who was the defence barrister for Sri Glastonbury, kind of opposed that answer, saying, well, no, I don't think you should answer the question like that. Um, we wouldn't support you answering that question. And I guess that's kind of, as you mentioned, about happening all the time through the trial, these kind of challenges, these discussions. And often when the jury's out of the room, these are the sort of things they're talking about, right?

• 10:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Um, so just sort of the best ways to answer these questions to keep everyone happy. Because again, I'm sure on every defence lawyer's mind is, you know, what's an appeal point? You know, or maybe not exactly on their mind at that, at that stage, but they're definitely sort of taking note. And as we've discussed, there are four different defendants. We've got so many lawyers, we've got so many opinions. The discussions to simply answer a jury's questions took a lot longer than usual because you've got to take the opinions of four people, not just one or two.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Eva, you mentioned in our last episode, I mean, this is a mistrial now. So it's basically another trial that will need to occur for Shuri Glastonbury, Mark Murphy, and also Peter Murphy, Mark Murphy's twin brother and Lynette Sexton, with Peter and Lynette accused of assisting an offender. You mentioned in our last episode that that retrial is not likely until 2028. You're two years away. Why is it going to take so long to get there?

• 11:36Speaker 05

  So at the moment, there's a massive backlog in the S A courts. I'm not exactly sure. I mean, I think there are a lot of factors that contribute to that, but I think mainly this date, this possible date is, comes down to council availability, courtroom availability. There is a chance that it could be heard earlier. There could be a trial set for next year that someone pleads guilty in the next few months. So it's sort of a chessboard. But like, is this something that usually, have you ever found this happen sort of around Melbourne or anywhere else?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  The, the delay of a couple of years for, for a trial. I mean, you know, something that we know, so we get a lot of emails when someone is charged. So when there's a high profile person, you know, charged with an offence, the example that I'll give at the moment, which is very current, is Ben Robert Smith. We've had a, a whole, a huge number of emails sent in about whether or not we will cover the, the war crimes trial of Ben Robert Smith. It is on our, our list when it comes up, but for something like that, Eva, I would assume it's going to take them years to get to trial. So, you know, a couple of year delay between charges and a trial isn't unusual. You know, another trial that we've got our eye on at the moment is the trial of Patrick Stevenson in Ballarat accused of murdering Samantha Murphy. And so that's something we've been watching for a long time. That trial is coming soon. There's still some pre-trial stuff that they're working through there, but that's been a couple of years since Patrick Stevenson was charged

• 12:58Speaker 02

  to get to this point. When it comes to a retrial, I haven't seen a delay like this previously. I mean, we had a retrial with Rajwinder Singh accused of murdering Toy Corning, convicted of murdering Toy Corningley at the end of last year. First run of that had happened kind of early twenty twenty five. Uh, and the prosecution originally wanted to turn that around and have another jury in quite quickly afterwards. Kind of within a number of weeks and that ended up being delayed until kind of the second half of twenty twenty five. So, yeah, sometimes it can take a number of months, but you know, when you're looking at the trial of Raju Winder Singh. One defendant, one legal team. So you've got two defence barristers, two prosecution barristers in that room. In this trial, Eva, as we've spoken about, four defendants, four different legal teams for the defence.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  So you've got eight barristers, all of their associated lawyers, the prosecution barristers. So you need the biggest room in Adelaide. So obviously there's the challenges around getting that as well.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Um, something that we've had a lot of questions about, Eva, you know, we've now got um Sri Glastonbury and Mark Murphy have been in custody for a couple of years. Uh, since being charged with um the murder of Geoffrey McLean. Um, they'll now potentially be in in custody for another couple of years while they wait for this retrial to come around. Um, Jane, Anne Marie, a number of others are wondering, are they able to apply for bail?

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, so look, anyone can apply for bail whenever they want. So that option is definitely not closed off. Whether they'll get it or not, I I don't think it's very common for murder accused to be released on bail. But it definitely has happened before, but I would imagine that there may be some bail applications coming up. Because they've got something in their favour, I think, having been in custody for so long. And if they're in custody without having a full trial in twenty twenty eight, that's five years. So, look, it's at the end of the day, it's up to them, obviously, to apply. Then it's up to the judge to decide if they're the right fit for bail.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, as you mentioned, very unusual for um people accused of murder to get bail. Often they'll apply for bail and yet it's just not something that uh the courts are uh usually or the judges are usually inclined to inclined to grant. But yeah, as you say, such a long time in this situation, you know, kind of looking at five years from from being placed in custody. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how the courts deal with it, um if a bail application is made. Um, now, Eva, because this trial is a little Further away, the the risk of us prejudicing a new jury is quite low, which means we can get into some of the questions we couldn't answer during the trial. And there's one that I have thought about a lot since it's been sent in. It's from Ellen, a social worker in Melbourne. And we did briefly touch on this during the trial, but we can now talk a bit more kind of expansively about about the question Ellen sent through. They've

• 15:42Speaker 02

  asked why we use the term tumultuous to describes what sounds like a history of family violence between Cherie Glastonbury and Geoffrey McLean. Ellen says that language minimises the victim's survivor's experience of abuse, and it really stood out to her. Eva, why did we use that language?

• 15:59Speaker 05

  Look, I can totally understand that this would raise a lot of questions. And it's not the first time that I've covered something in court and I've been criticised or someone's asked about why I haven't labelled something domestic or family violence. Now, it's simply because we have to report what is said in court. If it's not said in court that this is family or domestic violence, I can't, as a reporter, can't make that assumption. In this case, when the relationship between Cherie and Geoffrey McLean was being described, the phrase family violence wasn't used. To sound a bit like a boring journalist, I'm

• 16:43Speaker 05

  here to report the facts put in front of me and put them before you guys, and you guys just can make your own conclusions. But we are just very, very limited in what we can say.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just sort of stuck to what was said in court. And that language, tumultuous, was what was being used by the prosecution barristers as they were going through their openings. And, you know, when they were going to the detail around, you know, that police had attended and they'd witnessed bruises on Cherie Glastonbury, we mentioned that. We made sure that was kind of information that everyone had and, you know, hopefully giving you enough context to to decide on that. The one of the reasons I I was trying to be so careful about it as well is because, you know, there were no charges that were brought up in court or mentioned in court around Geoffrey McLean and a history of family violence or charges that he had faced in there as well. In fact, when he had gone to prison, that was something that was mentioned in court, it was kind of clarified that that wasn't to Do with any kind of domestic violence scenario in court. So we need to be careful to not prejudice

• 17:38Speaker 02

  or not have the jury, you know, if they had heard this, maybe thinking or wondering if that was something that was involved in this situation. So.

• 17:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Um. Something else that we got a few emails about as well, Eva, was that, you know, there was a bit of a lack of dignity for the victim, uh, Geoffrey McLean in this scenario that, you know, we weren't showing as much sympathy for Geoffrey McLean as we, we may have for other people that we covered on the case of. I mean, was that a deliberate choice by us, Eva?

• 18:04Speaker 05

  No, of course not. Again, we just report the facts of what we heard in court. We can't sort of go out and do some more research about Geoffrey or, or, or, you know. Yeah, it's hard. And look, I think this is an issue, the public find it really sort of jarring that, you know, these people, these victims are referred to as, you know, um, the deceased or, or things like that. But again, it is a courtroom and, um, things are portrayed differently and, and we, there's only so much we can do with that. And we also, again, can't report anything other than what's said in front of that jury.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And even when we were hearing from Geoffrey McLean's friends as well, we were talking, you know, about everything they were sharing about, about him. Um, so to give you a clear picture of who this guy was. And I thought it'd be the interesting, uh, email after one of the, uh, the episodes. So we, we explained that Geoffrey McLean had used ICE, uh, that was mentioned in court. Um, and someone was quite critical of us including that information, um, you know, in portraying Geoffrey McLean for, for who he was. And I mean, I don't think any, think any differently of anyone for, for using ICE. There's lots of complex situations that people live through and, you know, they're kind of whole human beings for all of those parts. And, you know, we're not going to omit information to kind of create a character for someone,

• 19:25Speaker 02

  to kind of make someone seem more sympathetic, you know? Geoffrey McLean was an ICE user. That's something that, you know, is, is being told to the court and is part of the kind of fair and accurate reporting of what's unfolding in that room, right, Eva?

• 19:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. And like, we, we have to be fair. We can't just, like you were saying, we can't pick and choose. I can't decide, oh, that doesn't sound good. That doesn't fit with, you know, the picture I have of this victim or the picture I have of this defendant. You know, it's not about that. We just have to report what is put in front of us. Um, so yeah, it's, it, it may seem quite jarring to the audience or confusing, but we really are quite limited in what we can do, but also have to be fair. We can't pick and choose.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, one of the questions we had from, uh, from Catherine, um, sent into the case of at abc.net.au was around the way this trial was kind of run. We had four defendants in court. We had Mark Murphy and Sheree Glastonbury accused of murdering Geoffrey McLean, along with a few other offences as well, and Lynette Sexton and Peter Murphy accused of assisting an offender, allegedly helping, uh, Mark Murphy and, uh, Sheree Glastonbury, uh, in the, in the murder and the, the movement of Geoffrey McLean's body following his death. Um, Catherine was wondering, did the defendants decide to go to trial together? Or was that something that was decided by the courts?

• 20:49Speaker 05

  Um, so in South Australia, every defendant is able to apply for severance. So it's sort of just like a bail application in the way that you can make an application. It's up to you. It's then, of course, up to the court to grant that application or deny it. These discussions would have been had in pre-trial hearings that I'm not privy to. I'm not exactly sure what happened in this case, um, whether there were, whether there was an application or not, I'm not certain, but ultimately if there had been, it was the court's decision to have them tried together. Um, and look, this isn't to say that there may not be an application to sever these trials

• 21:31Speaker 05

  coming up, you know, for the second round, so to speak.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah, yeah. It's, I've thought a lot about the way this trial was run in this way. I mean, four defendants seems like so many people. And even just from the prosecution opening, the story the prosecution was. Telling went for so long. It was a story that started in 2022, right? And then it was one that ran all the way through until early 2023. And so, you know, we were going to be hearing evidence from that whole period relating to four different defendants, which is why the trial was going to go for so long. But the thing I was wondering about is like, look, is that the right decision? But again, if you sever these trials, if they don't run at the same time, how do you tell this story? How do you look at explaining what has allegedly happened to Geoffrey McLean throughout this period?

• 22:17Speaker 02

  And, and the way that Shree Glastonbury and Mark Murphy and Peter Murphy and Lynette Sexton have behaved through that time in a way that relates to everyone, because it's all so intertwined. You know, if you're a prosecution team, I can see the, the kind of the drawer of having that all together, because it's so much easier to tell that story when those four people are in the room to, to one jury, as opposed to breaking them apart and having to try and do them in bits. Um, there's a question, Eva, that we've had a whole bunch of times, uh, sent to the case of inbox. And it's not something we could answer because the jury hadn't heard about it. But I really do want to ask you this question that's been sent. I'll use the one that Joanne's emailed. We talked a lot about the torso of Geoffrey McLean being recovered in the weedy bin. Um, but we never talked about the, the head, the arms or the legs.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Joanne's asking, do we know if these were ever recovered?

• 23:03Speaker 05

  Well, again, I feel like I'm answering all these questions the same way. But no, we couldn't say because it didn't go before the jury. So we, we couldn't say anything, but we haven't heard in or outside of court about them being found. So we can make our own conclusions.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, thank you, Eva. Um, this leads me to another thing that I've been thinking a lot about. And that we had not so much emails directly to us about, but that we heard from kind of other parts of the ABC. We actually ended up with some complaints about, uh, case of promos that were, uh, put on other ABC podcasts, where we kind of explained what was happening here when we described that, you know, the torso of a man was found in a weedy bin without its head, arms or legs. And people found that a bit confronting, uh, a bit challenging. And it got me thinking that I hadn't realised that might be problematic. But I mean, Eva, when we were talking about this in the pod. You know, we were describing, and this is going to get a little bit graphic for a second.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  So it's a warning if you're a little bit squeamish, but there were moments here when we were talking about, you know, the bin being found in the park and the smell that was coming from the bin when it was found in this vacant lot. Also, when it was being kind of examined by the forensics officers, because that was important for the jury to kind of understand, right? Like, there's a reason that this is being talked about in court. It's, you know, it's helping the jury kind of get to their decision, right? So is there, is there a value in, in this kind of being discussed and explained?

• 24:28Speaker 05

  Look, I, I'm a huge believer of if horrible things happen, people need to know about that. Um, and in order to tell this story completely and accurately, I mean, that's a huge part of it. The fact is that his torso was found in a wheelie bin. Um, I can understand it can come across as a bit insensitive in the way that we're focusing on that. But at the end of the day, it's the fact of the matter. We have to report the facts. This is what unfortunately happened and it's extremely difficult to hear, but it is what it is.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think I'm probably a little bit desensitized to it as well. And it's actually been through doing this case and working on the case of the wheelie bin murder that kind of realized maybe how desensitized I've become. I grew up, you know, mum and dad, mum's a nurse, dad's a paramedic. And so we were kind of having conversations about stuff like this while we were having dinner, uh, a lot of the time. So I think I've got a slightly skewed approach to it. But there were decisions we were making. There were things, you know, while we're talking about, um, you know, some of the stuff we did include in podcast. There were things that we, we spoke about that we didn't end up including in the podcast because

• 25:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  We realized that actually, look, that's very confronting and the jury's heard that, but it doesn't add much to kind of what we've explained and what we've done here. So some of those things were taken out. So there is a decision that we're having and we're not just including every single thing just for the sake of gore. It has to add to the story and needs to be a reason that, that we're including it and we're, we're talking about it, right, Eva?

• 25:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. And it's, it paints the full picture, as ugly as that is.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, Eva. And this kind of leads into the next question that we've been sent from Izzy. I mean, there was so much confronting evidence, uh, presented in this trial and Izzy emailed wondering kind of what sort of mental health supports available to jurors who, who witnessed this, who had to sit through and hear all of this?

• 26:15Speaker 05

  There are counselling services available to the jury. So there is that support there um for them. And in this case, we saw, you know, Justice Kimber was very sympathetic to the fact that these details were horrifying. And as we've touched before on the pod, there was that option to have a break when they saw the photos of inside the wheelie bin and at other moments. So yeah, there is that support there.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Wonderful question, Izzy. And it's nice to know that the listeners to the case of are, you know, have this care for the jury and the people that are experiencing this stuff as well. And we've really appreciated everybody's feedback, not just the emails that have been sent to the case of Eva. Also had some quite direct feedback in the courtroom as well, right?

• 27:03Speaker 05

  Yes. So Peter Murphy leant over one day and told me that he loves the podcast. So

• 27:12Speaker 05

  everyone's listening.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Yes. I think it's the first time a an accused person, a defendant in a trial has has registered their knowledge of the case of. But you never know who's listening.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  No.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  The reason that we are so careful when we're talking through live trials, and you know, also the reason that we can talk a bit more freely when there's a break in proceedings like there is here, Eva. What are the what are the next steps in the in the case of the wheelie bin murder?

• 27:39Speaker 05

  So there'll be a few administrative hearings. The first one I'm aware of is in June. So that will start deciding when that retrial will be set for, and then we will go from there.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, bit of a bit of a break. Should we catch up in 2028, if not before?

• 27:55Speaker 05

  Sounds good. Sounds like a plan.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Eva, thank you so much for joining us for the case of the wheelie bin murder. It's been a real pleasure having your knowledge and insight from the Supreme Court in Adelaide. So yeah, thank you so much for being a part of this.

• 28:08Speaker 05

  No, thank you for having me.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  The case of the wheelie bin murder is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by Eva Blunderson, presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rollinson. This episode was produced on the land of the Ghana and we're on tree people.