Alva Beach: Death At The Door

What if the full story behind Australia's most notorious serial killer Ivan Milat has never been told?
In episode one of this special series of Motive&Method, forensic scientist Dr Xanthe Weston and criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro break down the unsolved missing & murdered cases being re-examined in a landmark parliamentary inquiry.
Tim & Xanthe have been working for years, alongside family members, on many of these cases. Now they're being called to give their expert submissions, highlighting the evidence and potential links in some of the investigations. 

In Australia's Killer Secrets, Tim & Xanthe are taking you inside the hearings to explore the evidence -  talking to family, police and politicians - in this new search for answers in some of Australia's most enduring mysteries. 

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What if the full story behind Australia's most notorious serial killer Ivan Milat has never been told? And what if more recent cases point to a copycat killer - or worse?
In this special series of Motive&Method, forensic scientist Dr Xanthe Weston and criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro take you inside a landmark parliamentary inquiry examining dozens of unsolved murders and disappearances.
From new evidence to long-overlooked links, Australia’s Killer Secrets explores the mysteries that continue to haunt a nation.

Series launches Wednesday June 10. 

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Australia was left in shock when four young police officers were ambushed on the driveway of a property in the Queensland outback town of Wieambilla: two were executed in cold blood, two were forced to fight for their lives, and an innocent neighbour was murdered. Before the coronial inquest begins, we take you back to the 12th of December, 2022. How did a routine missing persons callout end in the deaths of Constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow, and neighbour Alan Dare? And how did two officers survive?

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If you've finished Alva Beach, here's another podcast to dive into over the holiday break.
In The Ultimate Sacrifice, Melissa Downes takes us inside Queensland’s deadliest police shooting. When four young officers were ambushed, two escaped, two were executed in cold blood and an innocent neighbour was also murdered.
This podcast first retells the shocking events of 12 December, 2022, before taking you inside the Coronial Inquest.

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As many implore the families of the victims to "let it go", a shocking revelation reignites their fight for a second inquest. In a stunning final twist - it’s revealed the Coroner who led the first inquest did refer Dean Webber to the Director of Public Prosecutions suspecting he may have committed an indictable offence.
Though prosecutors found no reasonable prospects of success in charging Dean Webber with Murder, and hopes for a second inquest were denied, the Davy and Christensen families remain defiant.

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The 2020 Coronial Inquest into the Alva Beach deaths was meant to bring answers, instead it left confusion and outrage in its wake. As the week spiralled into chaos, lawyers stormed out of the Cairns courthouse, the Coroner was asked to stand down over fears of bias and the key witness - Dean Webber - was excused from giving evidence. 

Retired Coroner David Heilpern joins the podcast with an independent and expert legal view - and a damning assessment: the inquest failed in its purpose to get to the truth.

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This episode unravels the lies, contradictions and missing pieces in the stories of the only two surviving witnesses to Alva Beach, aside from Dean Webber -  Louis Bengoa and Candice Locke.
Through police interviews, sworn statements and inquest testimony, their changing accounts reveal a tangled web of embellishment and uncertainty. But can their words ever truly explain how, and why, two men ended up dead that night?

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Could police have missed a second knife the night Tom Davy and Corey Christensen were killed?
In the lead up to the inquest, internal investigators probe paramedics and police. For the first time, unreleased interviews shed light on what was uncovered - startling claims of a missing weapon, critical failures in the response and mistakes that left Dean Webber’s desperate calls for help a low priority until it was far too late.

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Police walk Dean Webber back through the scene, but were they ever intending on charging him? Adam Hegarty tracks down the lead detective on the case, Gavin Neale, to put key questions to him on the delayed response, the investigation and the decision to never lay charges. 
As the Davy family lawyer argues why the forensic investigation should have gone further - it raises the question; Who does a lack of evidence support in this case?

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Never heard by the public until now - Dean Webber’s police interview, in the hours after the fatal stabbings, raises more confusing questions about what exactly happened. In this episode, Dean’s account is put under the microscope - challenged by the lawyer representing Tom Davy’s family, and scrutinised by Justin Luke, the officer sitting next to him in the interview room. 
Now no longer in the force, Justin Luke offers a damning insight into how police handled this case - and why this investigation may have gone so wrong.

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