Pod Insights Unravel 06 Blood On The Tracks | Revelation About this episode Allan and the team shift their focus to Tamworth and the truth starts to emerge from a fog of rumours. As Allan builds on the case, he discovers the police aren't far behind.
An eyewitness comes forward. Key witnesses are confronted for the first time. An alleged confession emerges which takes the investigation in a completely new direction.
If it turns out to be true, this new lead could help finally solve the 30-year-old mystery.
Blood on the Tracks is the first ever series we made for Unravel, back in 2018.
But we're re-releasing it now with a new episode because the NSW Deputy State Coroner is currently holding a fresh inquest into this case.
Keep listening to the end of this series to find out about the new information that's recently been revealed in the inquest hearings.
This season of Unravel is intended to be listened to as a whole. If you haven't heard all the episodes, you shouldn't draw any conclusions, because you haven't heard all the sides of this story.
To binge more great episodes of Unravel, the ABC's award winning investigative true crime podcast documentary series, search 'Unravel podcast' on the ABC Listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.
There you'll find previous series covering various crimes and crime-related topics including solved and unsolved murder cases, forensic analysis, gangland crimes, love scammers, con-artists, drugs, terrorism, neo-nazis, and miscarriages of justice — all investigated by some of Australia's best reporters and people who know the story best.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hey, I'm Erin Park, host of the new podcast series Expanse: Nowhere Man. This story has taken me from the searing heat of the great sandy desert to the freezing heart of Alaska, as I try to understand why American Robert Bogukey plunged into the Australian wilderness on purpose, pushing himself right to the brink of death.
0:20 Speaker 01 They'll be looking for a body. Death will come. You've got your scorpions, you've got your spiders, you've got your snakes. Be careful.
0:25 Speaker 00 You can binge the entire season now, just search for Expanse: Nowhere Man.
0:33 Speaker 02 This is an ABC Podcast.
0:36 Speaker 03 Just a note before we start: this case is currently being looked at by the New South Wales coroner. After this podcast was first released in 2017, the coroner agreed to launch a fresh inquest. Keep listening to the end of this series to find out about the new information that's recently been revealed in the inquest hearings. This season of Unravel is intended to be listened to as a whole. If you haven't heard all the episodes, you shouldn't draw any conclusions because you haven't heard all the sides of the story. And a warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, this series contains the names of people who have died.
1:24 Speaker 03 Tamworth's become my second home during this investigation. I've been spending more and more time in the town as more and more people come forward with crucial leads. And as I get closer to the truth, I'm finding I'm not the only one who's hot on the trail. I'm starting to hear that police have been speaking to the same people, going to the same places, sometimes just a day before or a day after me.
1:52 Speaker 04 He's coming to the house to talk in a few days.
1:56 Speaker 05 Ask him pretty much the same stuff, what you just asked.
1:58 Speaker 04 He was looking around the house, saw the family photo, and he said, "Is that Terry?"
2:05 Speaker 06 I've spoken to some detectives, told them about the conversation we'd have with [BLEEP] and the fact that we'd run crime stoppers.
2:12 Speaker 03 I'm Alan Clark, and this is Unravel. Our season one story is Blood on the Tracks, an investigation into the death of Aboriginal teen Mark Haynes.
2:25 Speaker 03 We're almost at the end of the season and if you haven't listened from episode one, this will spoil everything for you. So you should go back to the start. In this episode, Mark Haynes' case finally starts to give up some of its secrets. We find out about a water hole on the outskirts of town where important evidence could be hiding in the depths. And an alleged confession turns the case upside down.
2:52 Speaker 06 She said, "Look, I've had to come around and see you guys. Told me something and it's really concerned me and I need to tell you."
3:11 Speaker 03 We've decided to set up camp in Tamworth to track down the remaining people we haven't been able to speak with. A couple of days after arriving, Susie Smith, our senior investigative producer, has got her hands on a phone number that could crack the case wide open.
3:32 Speaker 07 Okay, I'm just dialing 061. Okay, here we go.
3:43 Speaker 03 Remember in the last episode, we heard about how Terry Souda was seen standing over Mark's body on the tracks? And the young boy, the relative, who witnessed that scene? Well, we found out who that person is.
3:57 Speaker 07 Hey, is this Mick Souda? Oh Mick, it's Susie Smith. Is this a good time or?
4:05 Speaker 03 Turns out, this important witness is Fay Souda's other son, Mick. That's why Fay was so protective of his identity.
4:15 Speaker 07 Listen, I work at the ABC with Alan Clark. We're doing a story for the True Crime Unit and we came across your brother's name. And we've got some unanswered questions and I know-
4:28 Speaker 03 The morning Mark died, Fay's two sons, Terry and Mick Souda, went out to the tracks. Mick saw Mark's body and he saw his brother Terry moving around the body.
4:41 Speaker 03 If he agrees to meet us, he'll be the first eyewitness we've found who saw Mark's body out on the tracks that night.
4:48 Speaker 07 I'm at the duck pond at Bicentennial Park. I've got a black top on. Okay, all right. Well, I'll just wait for you. Okay, mate. I'll see you then. Bye.
5:01 Speaker 03 Mick's a bit reluctant, but he also sounds interested in what we're doing. He agrees to meet us in a park in the centre of town.
5:11 Speaker 03 Mick's made a name for himself as a bush poet, and he's pretty keen to read us some of his work.
5:19 Speaker 04 Hello. My name's Mick Sudo, also known as Mick the Poet.
5:22 Speaker 03 He's got a thick, wiry beard, and he's wearing a pretty beaten-up akuba hat.
5:27 Speaker 04 I wrote a poem a few years back called 'Brother's Love', which I wrote about my feelings towards my brother that I lost suddenly years ago through suicide, which my theory is life is to live it, not to take it.
5:43 Speaker 03 As we heard last episode, Mick's older brother Terry took his own life six months after Mark was found dead.
5:52 Speaker 04 A brother's love. A brother's love is a thing young boys look up to. Some things aren't right, but this is through and through.
6:01 Speaker 03 When we touch on his brother, Mick thumbs through a dog-eared notebook of handwritten poetry and recites a verse. It seems to be his way of coping, almost like a kind of meditation.
6:13 Speaker 04 A brother's love will always be. The Lord calls, and he has to flee. Mick the Poet.
6:22 Speaker 03 Mick was 14 years old when Terry died, and it's hard for him to talk about what he saw that night in the summer of 1988.
6:31 Speaker 04 I have worst haunts in my head, but...
6:37 Speaker 04 I've seen some pretty arse shit.
6:40 Speaker 03 Mick says he has PTSD because of the things he's seen in his lifetime. When I start asking specific questions, his answers aren't always clear. And sometimes he goes back to reciting poetry.
6:53 Speaker 04 The years are young and they will live. And stories of your precious life, to them I will give. The time had come and I have decided to stand upon a wall. And tell some stories of our lives of the years have passed with poetry I call.
7:11 Speaker 03 This back and forth in the park goes on for almost an hour. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever hear about what he saw that night. But then he starts to open up.
7:25 Speaker 04 Just remember seeing a boy lying on the tracks.
7:29 Speaker 03 I just remember seeing a boy lying on the tracks.
7:35 Speaker 03 So Mick confirms the story told to us by his mother Fay. He says his brother woke him up and took him out to the tracks. It was dark and Terry told him to wait a few metres back from the railway line.
7:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, he said, hey, wait, wait here a minute. So what are you doing? He said, just wait here a minute. I told you I'll clear out the air.
7:57 Speaker 03 Terry didn't want him to see what he was doing.
7:59 Speaker 04 And then he went.
8:06 Speaker 04 Just remember, thought I'd want and had a bit of a look, but I couldn't have, um. I couldn't have identified the person or anything. It wouldn't have been possible. I wasn't in that position, honest.
8:20 Speaker 03 Mick believes that his brother went back out to the tracks to provide some kind of comfort to Mark.
8:27 Speaker 04 I thought, and I still thought to this day, that Terry had put his jacket under his head as comfort.
8:35 Speaker 03 But police never found a jacket under Mark's head at the crime scene. Mick, could it have been a towel he put under his head?
8:44 Speaker 04 Could have been. It was something.
8:50 Speaker 04 Because that's how I am with my PTSD. If I look back at a memory thirty years ago, sometimes it happens that way. I can remember a thought, and then thoughts will be mixed. I had big problems with it growing up.
9:04 Speaker 03 Even though some of Mick's memories are cloudy, his family members say that for decades, the basics of his story haven't changed. Terry wakes Mick, they go out to the tracks, and Terry puts something under the head of a body. Do you think maybe when he went, took you out to the tracks, that he was going to check whether Mark was alive?
9:27 Speaker 04 I think his conscience would have played on, because he did have a big heart. So if he was a part of the wrongdoing, he wouldn't have been able to walk away.
9:37 Speaker 03 Mick says that after that night, he and his brother never spoke about what happened out there. And six months later, Terry was gone.
9:47 Speaker 04 Where are you, thou art brother? Or did you fly away? Or was it that got stuck in your head, you couldn't bloody stay?
10:05 Speaker 03 A few hours after meeting with Mick, I get a call from his mum, Fay. She's been speaking to the police, and she has a new revelation for us. There was another car involved that night, and she thinks it was Terry's.
10:21 Speaker 04 And the description of what the police have told me about cars that are involved, I'm pretty sure that one car is Terry's.
10:33 Speaker 03 All this time, people have focused on the Tirana crash near Mark's body. But now Fay says that her son's car was also there.
10:47 Speaker 04 They had to get from out there, where Mark was, back into town. And that's a long walk from out there. And I do believe my son was the driver.
11:04 Speaker 03 Was the driver of?
11:05 Speaker 04 His car, but involved with Mark's death. We've just come to realise that Terry's car had disappeared, just off the face of the earth. We don't know what happened to it.
11:23 Speaker 03 And here's the other huge thing. Faye thinks she knows where Terry's missing car could be.
11:29 Speaker 04 There's a waterhole that's been brought to mind. I'm not sure if it's got too much to do with Mark, but to do with my son's car. And it was called Rocky Waterhole, out at Warril. And out there is where Mark passed away.
12:03 Speaker 03 We find out that the waterhole is just out of town. It's on Aboriginal land, and these days there's a locked gate at the entrance. But I know who can get me a key.
12:16 Speaker 03 It's Saturday morning, and we've come here to meet Duck. He has a mate that can get us close to Rocky Waterhole, which is where Faye believes her son's car was dumped, Terry's car. That's significant because people believe Terry drove the second car that was with Mark that night. And Faye can't remember seeing that car sort of after Mark died. It just sort of vanished. And now there's some new information that it was dumped at this place called Rocky Waterhole.
12:50 Speaker 03 We drive out there with Duck and sure enough, it's right near where Mark died.
12:58 Speaker 03 From the waterhole, you can actually see the spot on the train tracks where Mark's body was found.
13:07 Speaker 03 Duck, tell us what this place is.
13:09 Speaker 06 Well, this is called Rocky Waterhole. This is where the rainbow serpent stuck his head above ground.
13:16 Speaker 03 It's a significant gomri.
13:17 Speaker 06 It is very, very significant.
13:20 Speaker 03 And you say it's deep?
13:21 Speaker 06 Yes, yes, it's bottomless, it's bottomless. You can keep going down, down, down. And then you'll get so far down, you think, hang on, am I gonna come up from this?
13:30 Speaker 03 Back in 88, was this more accessible? Because we just had a bit of a drive video.
13:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah. Back in the 70s and the 80s, we were able to access here, straight from the road, straight here. I have been told way back there in the 80s, that this has been used for a dumping ground for stolen motor vehicles.
13:52 Speaker 03 And that's common knowledge back then?
13:53 Speaker 06 Yes, it was very much common knowledge. Everyone knew about it. Most young peoples came out here and partied out this way.
14:00 Speaker 03 Do you think Terry's car is in there?
14:03 Speaker 06 Well, it wouldn't surprise me.
14:06 Speaker 03 We're not the only ones who've been visiting Rocky Waterhole. We find out the police were out there just the day before. It seems like we're on the same trail.
14:20 Speaker 03 It feels like I'm finally getting somewhere. We know Terry Sudo was probably the driver of one of the cars, and his brother saw him put something under Mark's head. We know at least three people are likely to be involved, a driver for each car and Mark. And remember, Mark couldn't drive. But what we still don't know is what happened to him after he said goodbye to Tanya White at 3.30am. Tanya, Mark's girlfriend, was the last known person to see him alive.
14:54 Speaker 03 She might have a small, seemingly insignificant bit of information that could help me piece together this case. Then again, she might not. But either way, it's important I talk to her.
15:07 Speaker 03 After a lot of hard work, Susie and I find out where she lives and we make contact. But Tanya doesn't want to talk about Mark.
15:17 Speaker 03 I feel like with all the movement that's happened in the last few months in Mark's case, I have no choice but to try as hard as I can to find out what she thinks about everything we've discovered.
15:30 Speaker 03 It's something I'm not comfortable doing, but I'm hoping if Susie and I go and see her face to face, she might change her mind.
15:42 Speaker 03 I'm heading out of Tamworth to a small town. That's where Tanya lives. She was Mark's girlfriend, yet she's the one that really hasn't spoken about the case. All of Mark's other friends have all been willing to come forward and speak because they all say that Mark's family needs closure. I hope that I find her. And I've been waiting five years to see her because her name is so attached to Mark's case.
16:16 Speaker 03 We arrive in town and by sheer luck, we spot Tanya straight away. She's having a smoke next to her car on the main street. I walk up to her and introduce myself, hoping she agrees to have a chat. But our interaction is short and in some ways, we're both shocked to see each other. Hi, are you Tanya? I am. Hi, I'm Alan from the ABC. Can I just ask you a few questions, just about Mark Haynes? As soon as Tanya realises who I am and why I'm there, she jumps into her car. I know this is the last chance I'm gonna have to put a question to her, but I'm desperate to know what her theory is. How does she think Mark died? I just want to ask a couple of questions, that's all.
17:01 Speaker 03 What happened to Mark? Yeah, you don't know? What was...
17:09 Speaker 03 "I don't know", just those three words, and she's gone.
17:17 Speaker 03 Since then, a lawyer sent us a letter on Tanya's behalf. It said that she hopes Mark's family will get the answers they're looking for and that she is not capable of assisting us further. The letter made it clear that she doesn't want to hear from me again.
17:37 Speaker 03 We've heard nothing about whether the police are going to search Rocky Water Hole. My leads for this case are quickly cooling off. At this point, we're stuck. So producer Susie Smith and I go back to basics. From the very start of my reporting, I've kept a list of people connected to this case, collecting names from police statements, inquest documents and sources. We've been trying to whittle this list down to just those who might have been there that night. Susie and I go back to the list.
18:11 Speaker 07 So we don't have many people left from that, most of them are dead.
18:14 Speaker 03 Terry Suda's dead. Most of them are dead. I mean, we have a whole list of people we've been chasing and they're dead. Either through overdose or accident.
18:27 Speaker 03 And they weren't that old.
18:31 Speaker 03 I mean, and I had a source tell me that Terry Suda was the last one left in town who was involved and he couldn't take it, so he killed himself.
18:51 Speaker 03 There's been so many moments like this. Moments when it seems like I've turned over every last stone, spoken to everyone, chased down every lead. And all of them are dead ends.
19:04 Speaker 03 But something new always comes along, eventually. A new little bit of information, a phone call, and then the investigation is moving again.
19:18 Speaker 03 As Susie and I are trying to work out what to do next, I get a call from Jason Wan, the guy everyone calls Waney, Mark's best friend from school. You might remember him from previous episodes.
19:32 Speaker 06 We're both from Coldar and grew up together and we used to call ourselves the Veggie Vandals.
19:39 Speaker 06 We weren't Vandals, but it was a cool thing to say.
19:43 Speaker 03 I've spoken to Jason briefly before, and now that he knows me a bit better, he's happy to do a proper interview. He's got something he wants to get off his chest.
19:54 Speaker 03 We meet up at a hotel in Tamworth. He seems to be in a more serious mood than the last time we spoke, more determined.
20:02 Speaker 06 I think Mark's family have been through so much. I mean, Mark's mum and dad are gone, his nan's gone.
20:10 Speaker 06 Duck's not getting any younger. He's fought for 30 years for justice, and he deserves it. He deserves his nephew to rest in peace. And that's why I'm speaking to you, Alan.
20:27 Speaker 03 Jason tells me he's been holding on to something, something about Greg. Greg was one of the friends out at Domino's nightclub hours before Mark was found dead. Remember, we're beeping out Greg's real name.
20:42 Speaker 00 That's when I seen walking up and down outside Domino's. And that's I just yelled out, "What are you doing?" And he said, "Ah, nah, nothing."
20:53 Speaker 03 Jason starts telling me a story about Greg. It's a story that will change the course of my entire investigation.
21:01 Speaker 06 A girl came around to my house. I remember her being, I guess, highly concerned, not distressed, but highly concerned.
21:10 Speaker 03 This woman is someone that Jason trusts, and she says Greg confessed something to her.
21:17 Speaker 06 She said, "Look, I've had to come around and see you guys. I've just [BLEEP] told me something and it's really concerned me and I need to tell you." She said that [BLEEP] had gotten drunk, had become very emotional, and had told her that he was there the night that Mark was dead and that he'd placed Mark's body on the tracks.
21:41 Speaker 03 Time seems to slow down as I realise the gravity of what Jason's saying. The interview keeps going, but I'm having trouble focusing. An alleged confession, this is a huge revelation. Immediately, I know I have to find this woman. And I have to find Greg.
22:09 Speaker 03 In the next episode of Unravel, the explosive final chapter of our season one story, Blood on the Tracks.
22:17 Speaker 07 So I just went and saw.
22:21 Speaker 07 And she said that he got very drunk one night and burst into tears. And basically described to her that he'd been there that night.
22:35 Speaker 03 So I'll just ask you one last time, did you have anything to do with Mark's death?
22:43 Speaker 03 If this story has raised concerns for you or someone you know, you can call Lifeline on 131114 from anywhere in Australia. To follow the investigation, search for ABC True Crime. You can contact us at [email protected] . Download the ABC Listen app or subscribe to Unravel wherever you get your podcasts.
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