Pod Insights Unravel 07 Blood On The Tracks | Face To Face About this episode Years of investigation have led to this moment … a major breakthrough in the case, a potential answer to thirty years of mystery and pain for the Haines family.
An alleged confession has revealed who might have placed Mark's body on the train tracks on that summer night in 1988.
Now it's time to put the question to him — did he have anything to do with Mark's death? Will Allan Clarke finally have some answers for Uncle Duck?
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 You ever watch the news and think, whoa, this seems...
0:03 Speaker 01 Unprecedented?
0:04 Speaker 02 Unprecedented?
0:05 Speaker 03 It's unprecedented.
0:06 Speaker 04 This has never happened before. This is unprecedented.
0:10 Speaker 00 Well, that's not always quite true. I'm Matt Bevan and my show, If You're Listening, is about finding times that what's happening now has happened before and figuring out what we can learn from it. Learning from history. I mean, who could imagine? Find new episodes on ABC Listen every Thursday.
0:31 Speaker 05 This is an ABC Podcast.
0:35 Speaker 06 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 06 One of Mark's closest friends, Jason Wan, is halfway through an interview with me at a hotel in Tamworth. He's just given me the biggest lead in my five-year investigation. And if it's true, this lead could solve the case.
1:41 Speaker 07 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.
1:50 Speaker 06 It's a story that comes from someone He trusts completely.
1:54 Speaker 07 She said that **** had gotten drunk, um, had become very emotional and had told her that he was there the night that Mark was dead and that he had placed Mark's body on the tracks.
2:09 Speaker 06 So Greg allegedly confessed years ago to putting Mark's body on the tracks. He was Mark's friend. He was out with Mark that night at Domino's. We're beeping out Greg's real name. Jason has another story about him from the day of Mark's funeral.
2:27 Speaker 07 Um, Mum gave us a yellow rose each to place down Mark's grave. And, um, I remember that **** was quite hesitant to do that. For some reason, whatever, he had his own reasons. And on the way home from the funeral, we had to stop the car. **** was sitting in the back, he'd become quite nauseous and, um, actually vomited on the way home from the funeral.
2:53 Speaker 06 People experience grief in different ways, so that doesn't really amount to anything. Maybe Greg really was sick, or his reaction to grief was a physical one. But what I can't get past is this allegation that Greg confessed to putting Mark's body on the tracks. So I asked Jason again, what exactly is Greg supposed to have said?
3:18 Speaker 07 Uh, basically, he said that he was there that night. Um, the night that Mark was killed and that he, um, had put his body on the tracks.
3:33 Speaker 06 Put Mark's body on the train tracks?
3:35 Speaker 07 Yeah, yeah, and put a box over him.
3:37 Speaker 06 And put a box over him?
3:39 Speaker 07 Yeah, yeah, that's what he said.
3:42 Speaker 06 As Juan is saying this to me, I'm immediately thinking, if that's true, why didn't they go to the authorities? Why didn't they turn him in? But the next thing he tells me is that they did go to the authorities, straight away.
3:57 Speaker 07 We decided the best course of action was to contact Crime Stoppers, which we did that night. So I remember calling Crime Stoppers and telling them that. Apparently there's no record of that phone call, although I've spoken to some detectives in recent months that state that they have no record of that phone call being made.
4:17 Speaker 06 This is a crucial lead that emerged years ago. And as far as I know, it wasn't followed up until now. Jason's glad that this allegation is finally seeing the light of day, because it's weighed heavy on him ever since he heard it.
4:35 Speaker 07 It makes my stomach turn and it disappoints me. Because we were close friends. You know, and we'd had conversations in relation to Mark. We'd mourned him together, you know. I mean, if he's got information that can put this all to rest, or information that can get justice, give Mark justice, he should come forward. He should speak to the police, he should speak to somebody.
5:13 Speaker 07 My opinion is if he has information and he's not coming forward, he's a coward.
5:23 Speaker 06 I'm Alan Clark, and this is the final episode of Unravel, Season One, Blood on the Tracks.
5:32 Speaker 06 As I speak to people in Tamworth, it feels like I'm closer than ever to cracking the mystery of Mark Haynes' death. This investigation has covered so much ground. I started with nothing, except the strong convictions of Duck and the family, five years ago.
5:52 Speaker 02 Our boy has met with foul play.
5:54 Speaker 06 Since then, the family and I have uncovered flawed police work.
5:59 Speaker 02 And the police are saying that he turned around and lied down, you know, in the middle of the track. Now, that was their story, you know what I mean? But it wasn't our story.
6:08 Speaker 06 People have come forward who've never spoken before.
6:11 Speaker 05 And I do believe my son was the driver.
6:16 Speaker 06 Just remember saying, "Boil on on the tracks." And now, in this episode, I sit down face to face with Greg, the man who made that alleged confession.
6:48 Speaker 06 Back at my hotel after the interview with Jason Wan, my mind is racing as I go over what he just told me. So I record what I'm thinking.
7:00 Speaker 06 One of the moments that my ears really pricked up during Jason's interview was when he said that, um, that this man had allegedly put a box on Mark's body. And so I immediately thought, "I've read that somewhere." And it's from the testimony of a train driver coming into Tamworth on the morning that Mark was found. And he said that there was a white box on the train tracks. And they noticed it and they hit it and they kept going. That same crew came back out and they said, distinctly said the white box was gone, nowhere to be seen, and there was Mark's body.
7:42 Speaker 06 And so that level of detail just immediately had me interested. And it's the first time I've ever heard anyone outside of that train driver testimony actually talk about a box on Mark's body.
7:57 Speaker 06 These kind of details just make me more determined to find out whether this confession really happened. We need to speak to the person who heard the alleged confession firsthand. And it's not long before our senior producer, Susie Smith, has tracked her down. The woman doesn't want to do an interview, but she's happy to have a chat. I'm stuck out of town following up other leads, so Susie heads straight over to talk to her alone. As soon as I can get back to town, I meet up with Susie to hear about what she's found out. Hey.
8:33 Speaker 05 So I just, um...
8:35 Speaker 06 Yeah.
8:36 Speaker 05 ...got in and saw...
8:37 Speaker 06 We've beeped out the woman's real name.
8:39 Speaker 05 And she said that, um, he got very drunk one night.
8:46 Speaker 06 Hmm.
8:47 Speaker 05 And burst into tears and basically described to her that he'd been there that night. He was with those guys, it'd been a terrible accident, that they'd laid him on the railway tracks. And they'd put a big white box on top of him.
9:04 Speaker 06 A big white box. So if it was an accident, I mean, did she think that it was just an accident or was it connected to some drug trade?
9:13 Speaker 05 Well, she seems to think there was a car accident, so that would also... Wouldn't that fit with the police trying to find Terry Sutter's car in that waterhole?
9:22 Speaker 06 Possibly, yeah.
9:23 Speaker 05 Maybe that's the car that had the accident.
9:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, that could be the key. We don't know how Mark died, and we're not suggesting that anyone intentionally harmed him. In fact, this new information has me replaying that night in a completely different light. We know Greg was at the nightclub with Mark earlier in the evening. That's when I seen walking up and down outside, dominated.
9:56 Speaker 06 And that's I just yelled out, "What are you doing?"
10:01 Speaker 06 After everyone left the club, Mark walked his girlfriend Tanya back to her house. A car was seen hooning around that area.
10:12 Speaker 05 There was a white Taurana sedan coming up the street now and left. It was going pretty fast.
10:21 Speaker 01 Next minute, I heard this car come flat out up Churchill Street. And I didn't think it would make the corner. It almost hit the house. I thought it was going to hit the house.
10:38 Speaker 06 And maybe the people in that car weren't standover men or people involved in the drug trade. Maybe they were Mark's friends. And one of them could have been Greg. There's a little piece of information of no one for a while. And it's niggled at me, but it didn't seem that important until now. Greg had a link to that stolen Taurana crashed at the tracks. It was owned by Greg's boss.
11:06 Speaker 06 It could be that a group of friends started mucking around with this car and another one owned by Terry Souda. I've recently learned that people would sometimes have drag races or joyride out on the roads near the railway track.
11:27 Speaker 06 At some point, one or both of those cars were involved in an accident.
11:39 Speaker 06 Some of Mark's injuries didn't look like they were caused by a train. And in episode four, an expert told us that it's likely he sustained a head injury earlier in the night. The new scenario could explain that subdural hematoma pulled on Mark's brain and the lack of blood around his body.
12:00 Speaker 06 And maybe after that crash, a group of teenagers made a decision that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. A decision to cover up this tragic accident, to make Mark's death look like a suicide.
12:15 Speaker 06 Maybe they carried Mark's body and put him in Terry's car. Then they took the white box full of presents and drove further up the track. Then they might have climbed up onto the tracks and put Mark's body between the rails. The white box full of presents could have been placed on top of Mark as a way to hide him from the oncoming train. As we go over this scenario, Susie and I are wrestling with a new question. Why would someone cover up a car accident?
12:48 Speaker 01 And if it was just an accident, why didn't they go to the police?
12:51 Speaker 06 I think the retribution, the fear of retribution would have been a factor as well. Because those boys would have been, when we're talking about Dark Jack, Don and Mark's late father Ron, I mean, they were tough. Like, you wouldn't want to muck with that family.
13:08 Speaker 01 They'd be frightened?
13:09 Speaker 06 I think they'd be terrified, you know?
13:11 Speaker 01 Why do you think people are talking now because they, um, they're not afraid anymore?
13:16 Speaker 06 I think once the reporting has been out there and more and more people come forward, it lets others feel safer to do that. And a lot of people who've come forward have said to me, "I've come forward because I want to help", you know? And that's really quite powerful. Yeah, there must be a lot of people who are feeling really guilty out there.
13:38 Speaker 06 Knowing all this, I have to find Greg. I have to put these allegations to him. I'm not saying Greg did anything to cause Mark's death. The allegation is this, that he confessed to being there, putting Mark's body on the tracks and placing a white box over him. To my surprise, after months of back and forth and false starts, Greg agrees to an interview.
14:22 Speaker 06 When I started this investigation five years ago, I never imagined it would lead me here. I'm a long way from Tamworth. I'm actually in a well-off neighbourhood, full of McMansion-type homes with double garages, near the Queensland coast. And I'm about to sit down with Greg. I'll admit, I'm really nervous. We thought this interview would never happen. I walk down his long driveway and knock on the large white doors, where he meets me. He's a middle-aged white bloke, tall and solidly built. He leads me through his modern home and we sit down on his back patio next to a pool. He's been cooking a roast for the family
15:06 Speaker 06 and he says they'll be back soon, so I know we don't have much time. Thanks for agreeing to have a yarn with me.
15:13 Speaker 03 No worries, mate.
15:14 Speaker 06 I get the sense that Greg just wants me to get on with it. Look, I just want to start off and get a little bit about your history with Mark. Like, you know, yeah, what was your relationship to him?
15:25 Speaker 03 Oh, mate, when Mark got to high school, he comes, sort of, I think it was in maybe year nine, end of year eight, year nine, something like that.
15:31 Speaker 06 Hmm.
15:31 Speaker 03 Um, mate, we were just all mates at school, playing footy together.
15:37 Speaker 03 That's about it, mate, I'll bet. Yeah.
15:40 Speaker 06 The night before Mark died, he was at Domino's. Um, do you... What was Domino's like? Tell me about that.
15:46 Speaker 03 Domino's, the nightclub.
15:47 Speaker 06 Yeah.
15:48 Speaker 03 Well, we were all underage, we used to go there occasionally, so...
15:50 Speaker 06 Hmm.
15:51 Speaker 03 Um, yeah, just a normal sort of nightclub.
15:54 Speaker 06 Yeah.
15:55 Speaker 03 Nothing too dramatic.
15:56 Speaker 06 No.
15:56 Speaker 03 No, just... Oh, it was a bit of a rough sort of place at times, but nothing, nothing dramatic.
16:03 Speaker 06 Do you remember the night before, like?
16:05 Speaker 03 No, I don't, like, I don't remember that really at all. I've actually read back over my police statement, I can't remember any of where it says we went to a different club earlier in the night and then walk over the street and, uh, blah, blah, blah, whatever it was, but, mate, that could have been any given night, so...
16:23 Speaker 06 So you don't remember, um, uh, who else was out that night?
16:27 Speaker 03 Not really, mate, no, no.
16:29 Speaker 06 Um, and did you hear any rumours at the time about what might have happened to Mark?
16:33 Speaker 03 Nah, not for years and years after. We heard, like, a rumour that he was caught up in some sort of drug scandal, but that's not Mark, mate.
16:40 Speaker 06 Hmm.
16:42 Speaker 03 No, he wasn't a criminal, mate. He was not a, he was just a kid. We're all just kids.
16:47 Speaker 06 Yeah. And shortly after Mark died, he, the police came up with this theory and told the family that Mark had gotten drunk, stole a car, crashed it out near the train tracks and walked concussed onto the railway and laid down. What do you say to that theory?
17:07 Speaker 03 Nah, not a chance, mate. Mark couldn't drive.
17:11 Speaker 06 So Mark couldn't drive?
17:12 Speaker 03 Yep.
17:14 Speaker 03 That's what I said at the inquest. I did say that at the inquest and I put that in my police statement. Mark couldn't drive a car, mate.
17:21 Speaker 06 Yeah, and.
17:22 Speaker 03 And it's plain and simple.
17:24 Speaker 06 And it was a manual car, wasn't it? So, yeah.
17:27 Speaker 03 Yep.
17:28 Speaker 06 Nah, he couldn't. Yeah, just couldn't drive. At the time of Mark's death, were you working for?
17:34 Speaker 03 Yep.
17:35 Speaker 06 Yeah. And owned the Taurana? Did you know that? Yeah. Were you shocked when you found out that Taurana had been found near Mark?
17:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, a little bit, yeah. Yeah. I've no idea how that's happened, mate.
17:49 Speaker 06 Hmm. There are some people who have told me that they think you were involved in Mark's death. Have you heard that?
17:57 Speaker 03 No, I haven't heard that, but, mate, people can think what they want. I know the truth. I wasn't there, so.
18:02 Speaker 06 Yeah. You weren't out there on the train tracks that night?
18:05 Speaker 03 Absolutely not.
18:06 Speaker 06 This might be the last time I get to talk to Greg, so I have to ask him one more time. So I'll just ask you one last time. Did you have anything to do with Mark's death?
18:17 Speaker 03 Absolutely not.
18:18 Speaker 06 Were you there on the train tracks when Mark died?
18:20 Speaker 03 Absolutely not.
18:22 Speaker 06 We have a source that says that you had spoken about being out there. Um, what do you say?
18:29 Speaker 03 Absolute lie. If I knew something, I would one hundred percent, I can tell you, right? No, no word of a fucking lie, no doubt at all. If I knew something, I would tell you.
18:56 Speaker 06 I drive away from the sprawling suburbs around Greg's house, trying to work out where this leaves my investigation. Greg strongly denied every one of the allegations I put to him. So right now, we have a woman saying Greg confessed to her about putting Mark's body on the tracks and placing a white box on him. But Greg flat-out denies it. He says he can barely remember the night because it was so long ago. Someone's not telling the truth.
19:36 Speaker 06 We looked into Greg's alibi. Here's what we know. According to Greg's police statement, he says he had a beer with Mark at Domino's nightclub and left at 2:45am. He said that he shared a cab home with a mate called Michael Biddle. So, Michael was Greg's alibi. I did ask Greg about this in the interview. And you left with Michael Biddle?
20:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, with Michael Biddle, yeah.
20:01 Speaker 06 And around 2:45?
20:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, so if you asked me right now, I couldn't honestly tell you that. I can't remember getting in a cab with Michael Biddle. It's 30 years ago, mate.
20:13 Speaker 06 We found Michael Biddle. He doesn't want to be interviewed for this podcast, but he does tell me that he can't remember if he was at Domino's that night.
20:23 Speaker 06 We've also been able to confirm with police that in the original 1988 investigation into Mark's death, Greg's alibi was never checked.
20:36 Speaker 06 The things I've found out in the last few days could be the biggest breakthroughs in the history of the case. So I do what I always do. I head to Uncle Duck's garage in Tamworth.
20:50 Speaker 06 We sit down next to the big old filing cabinet filled with traces of Mark's 30-year-old case. And I tell Duck what I found out, the allegations about Greg in the car, and how I think Mark ended up on the tracks. What I feel is that there were a bunch of people in that car and they've taken off and they're, they've gone joyriding or cruising around. They've come out Girai Road, they've turned under Tim Bumberei Bridge. Yep. To the right, at speed, come up that dip and then they've lost control and the car has flipped and I think Mark has gone through the windscreen. Okay. And.
21:35 Speaker 06 All right, all right. Um, they panic and put him on the tracks. I tell him about the alleged confession that Greg made, the story about him putting Mark's body on the tracks and covering it with a white box. Well, it would not surprise me, uh, that motor vehicle. Duck begins to unpack this new information in the way that he usually does, working through the theories, weighing up the likelihood of each scenario. So anyway, with the sub Dural hemorrhage within two hours, you know, lights are out. So, hang on, what are we gonna do now it's pan- it's panic time, um, uh, he's not gonna wake up, he's getting worse, he's dying. What are we gonna do about this? We're gonna
22:19 Speaker 06 make it look like an accident? How are we gonna do that? After 30 years of waiting and so many false starts in this investigation, he's not about to rule anything in or out. Not until the final proof is sitting in front of him. This new scenario, this possible explanation for his nephew's death, is still just one of many theories for Duck. Look, I cannot, um, discount it.
23:06 Speaker 06 So I'm back in Sydney and it's freezing here. It's just been raining non-stop since I got back from Tamworth. I'm just sitting at my desk, just looking back over all of my notes and there's like a huge pile of notepads. And it's full of information that I've collected over the past six months on Mark's case. And there's a real sense that they're just around the corner. We're going to have the answers we've wanted for so long.
23:45 Speaker 06 And the police have asked us to give them some information. And so we've handed over some of the things they wanted. And what's really interesting is that for the first time in a very long time, there is now a detective working on Mark's case full-time. And that's a really great thing. You know, it's almost like the truth is just right there. It's almost like I can just reach out and touch it.
24:24 Speaker 06 And I just think back to when I first met Duck five years ago in his garage, when he kind of overwhelmed me with all of this information about the case and sort of thrust those inquest documents into my hand. I just think, oh, wow, like, you know, at that time, I could never have imagined that five years down the track, we would be, you know, within reaching distance of the truth.
24:56 Speaker 06 And the thing is, this story isn't about me though, and I don't want it to be about me or my investigation. This story is about a dead Aboriginal boy whose suspicious death was never investigated because he was black.
25:18 Speaker 06 I truly believe if Mark was a white boy, things would be very different. And if you travel across Australia and speak with Aboriginal communities, everyone will have a similar story to this.
25:40 Speaker 06 The difference is not everyone has an Uncle Dark. Not everyone has such a staunch family who feel they can speak out against the justice system. A lot of my mob feel powerless, voiceless within the judicial system. They feel it's an insurmountable wall. And I guess the question really, after all of this is,
26:09 Speaker 06 do we as a country have the guts to confront some of these ugly truths? The truths of our past, you know, the ones that we keep denying, the ones that we don't like to talk about.
26:25 Speaker 06 Because I can tell you now,
26:29 Speaker 06 my family and all Blackfellers across this country deserve justice and they deserve better treatment within the justice system.
26:57 Speaker 06 I've come to know Mark because of his tragic death. But to those who knew him, he was so much more than a cold case.
27:07 Speaker 06 To his brother and sister, Ron and Lorna, he was the ultimate big brother.
27:13 Speaker 00 He was the best big brother.
27:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, and I always looked up to him and everyone loved him.
27:20 Speaker 06 To his best mate, Jason Wan, he was a friend who always had your back and was someone you could always count on for a laugh.
27:28 Speaker 07 Just great fun to be around, always had people laughing. Excellent smile, big smile, and I think that's what won a lot of people over, was that big smile.
27:39 Speaker 06 And to his uncles, Jack, Craig and Duck, Mark was their boy, whose unsolved death has weighed on the family for too long.
27:48 Speaker 02 So he was virtually like my own son. I felt that way.
28:07 Speaker 06 Can you imagine the day when they arrest someone and then...
28:10 Speaker 02 Yes, I can, and in the very foreseeable future.
28:15 Speaker 06 You think it'll happen soon?
28:17 Speaker 02 Soon.
28:19 Speaker 06 It's been long enough.
28:22 Speaker 02 Yes, but I've got time. Time is on my side, not theirs. No, it's not me who needs to look over my shoulder. They have to. Because it's not just me. Like I said before, I ain't alone anymore.
28:39 Speaker 06 Do you think the truth will...
28:42 Speaker 02 Truth is out there, all right. It's out there.
28:49 Speaker 06 If you know anything about this case, please let us know. Our email is [email protected] . And thanks to everyone who has already sent us tips. We're following up on your leads. A few people have asked me if we've received any official response to the podcast from the police. We did reach out to the police earlier this year. We requested interviews and sent written questions, but we're yet to receive a response to those questions.
29:22 Speaker 06 Thanks for listening to Blood on the Tracks, season one of the ABC's true crime podcast Unravel. This is our final episode, for now, but I'm not done yet.
29:42 Speaker 06 Yes, hello. Hey, Doc, how you going? Yeah, not too bad, mate. What's happening? Oh, look, Doc, I just wanted to call you because I've, um, I, I've found someone that I think is, that could be really important to this story, and I think she wants to talk to me. Yeah, well, that's very interesting. Yeah, now, now, that's good. I'm glad she, and she wants to talk to you.
30:13 Speaker 06 Our season one story, Blood on the Tracks, is produced and reported by me, Alan Clark, with additional reporting from our senior investigative producer, Susie Smith. Unravel's supervising producer is Tim Roxburgh, with help from Alex Mann. Producers are Emma Lancaster and Ellen Lee Beater. Sound designer and composer is Martin Peralta.
30:38 Speaker 06 Our digital team is led by Gina McEwan with Yael McGilvray. Additional sound and vision from Greg Nelson. Unravel's executive producer is Ian Walker. Thanks once again for listening.
31:39 Speaker 06 An hour.
31:39 Speaker 05 One hour.
31:40 Speaker 00 So I've had this pig and I'm rubbing its stomach.
31:43 Speaker 06 Two mics.
31:44 Speaker 05 Two microphones.
31:45 Speaker 02 So Soundwave travels into the ear canal and it hits the eardrum.
31:47 Speaker 05 Unforgettable stories.
31:49 Speaker 04 Strutting, fluffing up your neck feathers, making booming sounds in your throat.
31:54 Speaker 06 And you use the word "really", and the answer to these "reallys" is always "yes".
32:01 Speaker 05 Hear the latest from conversations. Find it on the ABC Listen app.
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