06 Lies in Lismore | Strange decisions

This podcast contains audio advertising. To hear it without ads, head to the ABC Listen app now. This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's called free nights in cool summer. You get free nights every night all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan, created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with free nights in cool summer. TXU Energy for everything. Visit TXU.com for more information, rep #100004. Hank joined BJ's wholesale club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now, coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks, and that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home coach, Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com/maskeet and save 10 cents per gallon for six months, open soon limited time offer new members only. BJ's Home of the Save. Have you ever wondered why everyone's worried about microplastics? Well, what the best time of day is to exercise? And why are some people left-handed, Tegan? Well, the best people are. Anyway, we've got the show for you. It's called What's That Wrath? Where we answer the health questions everyone's asking. I'm physician and journalist, Dr. Norman Swan. And I'm health reporter, Tegan Taylor. And we promise we're not here to sell you supplements. It is surprisingly hard to find podcasts hosts who aren't. But we do want you to search for What's That Wrath in the ABC Listen app? And we might answer your question next. ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more. As Simone Strobell's coronal inquest played out at the Lisbon Courthouse, a woman named Virginia Peters sat in the public gallery, watching and listening intently. Virginia had never met Simone or Tobias, or anyone involved in the case. It might sound unusual, but going to watch court cases was something Virginia had first done when she was only small. My mother used to take me to the courts when I was a child. I would drop a nail and a murder case or a violent assault or something like that. Virginia was a creative writing student. She was living in Byron Bay and working on her masters at the time of the 2007 inquest. She first heard about Simone two years earlier before Simone's body had been found. When she saw her missing person's poster at a cafe in Byron. I really did identify with her in that moment when I first saw her and then later on that day, I kept seeing her face. And she just seemed to be everywhere for the following days before they found her body. Virginia said there was something about Simone that captured her. It seemed like somebody had snuffed her out. And at the time, I was feeling a little bit voiceless myself. There's no comparison, obviously, with what I was going through and what happened to Simone. But there's that sense of somebody took her voice away. When the inquest came around and she went to watch it, she became even more invested in the case. In this interview I found in the ABC archive, Virginia explained what happened next, how she made a snap decision that would change her life. I just thought, I have to go to Germany and I'll have to write a book. So as bizarre as that sounds, it really was extremely impulsive. That day in Lisbon, Virginia said she struck up a conversation with a police officer who was working on the case. They made a very unusual arrangement about the case, a deal like nothing I've seen in my 27 years as a journalist. And in the years that followed, Virginia would become connected to the police investigation. To the point that according to her, one officer said she was the only hope of solving the case. The involvement of a budding writer in detective work isn't even the strangest thing I've found out about the police investigation into Simone Strobel's murder. There's lots of things about this investigation that are confusing, even bizarre. This episode, I look at how the investigation unfolded and then put all my questions to a detective who worked on the case. I'm Richard Baker, and from unravel, this is Lise in Lisbon. The courthouse in Lisbon is down in the town centre, right near the banks of the Wilson River. When the coronal inquest started there in 2007, the lawyers and the coroner were gathered with one goal to establish what happened to Simone. A coroner's inquest, is supposed to bring all of the facts together to build the most accurate picture of the truth. But the preparation for that inquest and what happened in its aftermath makes me wonder if the whole thing was destined to fail. I keep coming back to a report written by a criminal profiler. The report goes into the evidence at the crime scene and what it might say about the perpetrator and what it might say about the perpetrator. In my experience, it's pretty rare for these reports to be spoken about in open court. I decided to ask an expert about it. I was curious about the crime analysis report because normally the cap secret. Mark Kebel is a practicing psychologist and professor of forensic psychology at Griffith University. He's worked closely with police in the UK and Australia on over 70 criminal cases, mostly murder and sexual assault. He says crime scene analysis reports aren't usually revealed publicly. And after seeing it, you can see why people keep them secret. Are you something you wouldn't want people to have a critical eye over? At first glance, the crime scene analysis might seem like a standard police document. It's based on information provided by detectives investigating a crime. In Simone's case, it was written by a detective sergeant from the forensic services group who specialised in criminal profiling and it came to a series of conclusions. It said Simone was most likely asphyxiated because there were no other obvious injuries that explained her death. At least none that could be determined in the condition Simone's body had been found in. It also said she was most likely suffocated in the caravan park, possibly with a pillow or a plastic bag by someone she knew. Not outside the park by a stranger. And although Simone's body was found naked, it found that Simone's killing didn't have a sexual motive. That was partly because it said she had no defensive wounds that would suggest sexual attack. Forensic tests had been done to find out if Simone had been sexually assaulted, but they were inconclusive. Mark Kerbal said crime scene analysis reports were usually used by police for intelligence purposes only. They're often not admissible in court. But at the 2007 inquest, a detective inspector Wayne Hayes presented the conclusions in the report as a key plank of the whole police theory about how Simone had been killed. I thought this is nonsense. One of the reasons why these reports aren't admissible in court as expert evidence is the science isn't there. Mark Kerbal actually first saw this report in 2008. Funnily enough, the report was given to him by that aspiring author, Virginia Peters, who decided to write a book on the case. She got some experts to review the evidence. One of them was Mark. But when he saw the report, he was worried. He thought it had one major flaw. He put it bluntly in a report he wrote for Virginia. We use Toby's old name to buy a sulkful from the time. The crime scene analysis report shows a clear bias against Mr. Suckfell. The fact that the contents are referred to the coronal inquiry by detective inspector Hayes suggests this report may have had a considerable and biasing impact on the investigation. There was something else about the report. The profiler doesn't talk about any of the other early suspects, which makes me wonder if the profiler had any information about them at all. From what I can tell, it seems like the profiler might not have known him. about the other men in the area that night. Jamie Vidler, the Green Brothers, or Gus Parker, all the fact that they allegedly confessed to killing Simone. The profiler then produced that report pointing to someone known to Simone as the likely perpetrator. That report was heavily relied on by police to construct their theory of who killed Simone. And that theory was then accepted by the coroner. The coroner said in the absence of any other rational explanation, the profiler's version had considerable merit. And he accepted it as the most likely cause of Simone's death. He found that Simone was more likely than not, killed by suffocation or smothering asphyxia, and that there was a very strong suspicion that Tobias, and maybe his sister, Katrin, were involved. But like the profiler, the coroner might have had all the relevant information either. As you already know, those are the men were never asked to come and give evidence at the inquest. (dramatic music) Two of the men who allegedly confessed to killing Simone had given police false information about where they were the night she died. Jamie Vidler gave different versions of where he was and who he was with in those crucial hours. Initially, he said he never left his tent that night, except to buy cigarettes at a service station across the road from the caravan park. But the CCTV footage shows Jamie outside the Metropolitan Hotel in Lisbon at 11.52 pm that night. Remember, the Germans said Simone had walked away between 11.30 and 11.45. The botchy courts where Simone's body was found was about a four minute walk away from the metropole and Lisbon's other night spots. Thomas Green initially denied being in Lisbon that night. He said he was in Byron Bay. His brother, Alan Green, also told police at first that Thomas was in Byron that night. But both brothers were seen on CCTV in the Lisbon CBD hanging around the city's night spots between around 12.30 am and two in the morning. I have found one clue as to why police might have dismissed some of these potential suspects. The Green Brothers are part of the large Aboriginal community in Lisbon. In 2006, one of the police officers working on the case wrote a strange statement about what he described as Aboriginal crime in the area around where Simone's body was found. It was written by Dave Mackey, the officer who'd worked on the case for almost 20 years and charged Tobias. In the statement, Dave Mackey talks about how he's investigated serious offenses involving Aboriginal people in Lisbon in the past. He says the area around the Botchy Club was a spot where Aboriginal people would gather to drink and a place where violent crimes occurred. He says the area wasn't well lit and considered unsafe after dark. And he says it's not uncommon for the people drinking in those areas to quote, wait for potential victims to wander into the area so that they can victimize them. But then he contradicts himself and makes an even stranger statement. He says quote, "It is my opinion that the death of Simone Strobel is not consistent with Aboriginal crime in the area." Weirdly, the statement doesn't say why he thinks the crime isn't consistent with these broad stereotypes around quote, Aboriginal crime. The whole thing's odd. Needless to say, these broad generalizations don't seem to me to be a very good reason to rule anyone in or out. But this statement by Dave Mackey was sent to German investigators. Presumably, to help explain to them why he didn't think the brothers were involved. Neither Dave Mackey or New South Wales police answered any of the questions I sent them about this statement. Even if the statement is a clue around the police thinking about the green brothers, it still doesn't make much sense. Regardless of their reasoning, by the time of the inquest, police had narrowed down their persons of interest to Toby and his sister. But as the inquest wrapped up, they still didn't have enough evidence to charge anyone. Then a police officer saw an opportunity to try something that police wouldn't usually do. When a creative writing student walked up to him and said, she was going to write a book. When I turned up that day and said, "Well, I'm going to go to Germany." And I think that's really what did it for the officer in charge. He thought he would like to be going to Germany, but I guess that's what the opportunity for me to perhaps shift things a little bit by going over there. This is a recording of Virginia Peters speaking at a writer's festival event in Byron Bay in 2014. It's the launch of her book, Have You Seen Some Own? She's talking about a conversation she had with police officer, Shane Deam, years earlier in 2007, not long after the inquest finished. He was the officer in charge at the time. They met at a cafe in Lisbon, where she said they struck up a deal that was highly unconventional, something I've never seen a police officer do. According to Virginia, Shane Deam said he'd help her with her book by giving her access to police case file information, but it would be a two-way street. In return, if she found anything out, she should tell him as well. Virginia described it as a quid pro quo arrangement. She would share what she learned in Germany, and police would give her access to their files. Yeah, I was really very surprised. And I did apply to the coroner also for access to the evidence and the police did that to their own channels as well. So it was all clear, but I couldn't quite believe the access I got. I can't quite believe it either. It's basically unheard of for a journalist or writer to get access to a police file during an active murder investigation. But according to Virginia, that's just what happened. When I was originally going through the evidence at the police station, I couldn't believe how much there was. There's like 10 leveraged folders and hundreds of pages. And I really had no idea of what I was doing. And it was just basically putting the time and the product we go through and eventually things start to make sense. Virginia said she was given access to the case file and left unattended at Lisbon Police Station to look over the paperwork. She remembered there were crime scene photographs showing Simone's body and statements from suspects and police officers. She said she was also given an office to work from and was able to access recordings of the police interview videos of Tobias. Virginia didn't want to be interviewed for this podcast. So I can only tell you the story from what she said and written about it. I didn't have to be, you know, was staying at what I was doing. I was allowed myself to be a green horn. You know, I wasn't being, you know, the crime writer. I was being sort of the novice, yeah. And I gave myself permission to be there. Once I did that, I found I took the pressure off and it was just easier. This sharing of the case file gave Virginia access to extensive information about what suspects and witnesses had said to police. I thought this was extraordinary, but I wanted to ask someone else with experience in this area, whether they thought it was strange too. From an investigative perspective, that's certainly unusual, given it's still an active case. An unsolved homicide brief contains highly sensitive material. Graham Simpson-Dorfer is a former detective with Victoria Police, who's investigated his share of homicides and serious crimes in a career spanning almost three decades. I guess the question is not necessarily, it wasn't lawful, but I guess is it operationally prudent? Is it in the best interest of the case? And it's just hard to wrap my head around that. It's certainly an unusual set of circumstances to afford that access to a student whilst that murder investigation remains both, I guess, domestically and internationally unsolved. What are some of the potential impacts of providing that type of access on an ongoing case? You risk the opportunity for other avenues of inquiry as an investigator. If the information is in the public domain, you know, for arguments sake, if you've got one of these people that have come forward and said, "I did kill her," well, you want to know information from that person that only the killer could know. But if someone's gone through the entire case violence input in the public domain or into a paper, that's for everyone to see. You lose that opportunity to test their own events or test a witness, whether it be a suspect or a witness, so to the validity of their evidence. So it just complicates things and it may rule key pieces of evidence or key witness testimony ruled out. I contacted Shane Dem to ask why he decided to share the case information from an open murder investigation with someone who wasn't a police officer. He's not with the police anymore. Shane left the force 14 years ago. He'd been caught using cocaine and lying to the police integrity commission. The incident wasn't related to this case. Shane said he'd like to help me, but he couldn't go back to that time in his life, so he didn't want to be interviewed about the Simone Strobel case. In the years after the Inquest, Virginia kept researching the case and continued to share information with the police. Virginia's written about how she went to Germany and met with Simone's parents. She shared details with them of what the coroner's Inquest heard about what happened to Simone. This was after the Inquest hearings, but before the coroner had made his official findings. In her book, Virginia said the Strobels were in the dark about Simone's probable cause of death, so she told them what she heard at the Inquest that Simone may have been suffocated with a pillow or a plastic bag. She told them she had questions for Tobias. It wasn't until years later that Virginia convinced Toby to do an interview with her. She told him it was for her creative writing PhD and her book, and it wouldn't be shared with the media. Virginia writes in her book that she called the New South Wales Police Detective Wayne Hayes before she went to do the interview. She said she wanted to let him know where she was for her own safety. Then, after the interview was over, she called Detective Hayes back. She said he wanted the recording. In her book, she writes about reasoning with herself over whether it was ethical to give the recording to him. In the past, she'd had that quid pro quo arrangement with a different officer, but this was specifically an interview for her research, and Toby hadn't been asked if the recording could be shared with police. Ultimately, she said she decided it was a murder investigation, and Toby was the prime suspect, so she handed it over. She kept working on her book, but just before she was about to release it in 2014, Toby took legal action in an attempt to stop the book going to the printer. Toby failed in his bid to have the publication stopped, partly because the judge said the media had already reported widely on the suspicions around him, so it was too late to stop the damage to his reputation. After the book was published, Toby sued Virginia for defamation. The case was settled, and Toby was ordered to pay costs to Virginia. After all that, the book stayed on the shelves. It all came back to that inquest. With the finding that Toby was the most likely murderer, it was difficult for him to argue that people shouldn't report on the suspicions surrounding him. The ripple of consequences from that inquest made me all the more concerned about how it went down. Remember, the coroner didn't even hear from any other potential persons of interest. The police ruled them all out before the inquest got underway. I want to ask the police why they did that, and I want to ask them about all the other decisions that I don't understand as well. Why did they get someone to do a crime scene analysis but apparently not tell them about all the other potential suspects? Why did they rely so heavily on that crime scene analysis at the inquest? Why did they allow an aspiring author access to all that information from the police file? And why did they arrest Toby when they didn't have any compelling new evidence? New South Wales Police declined to answer any of my questions. But there's one retired officer who was involved at the very beginning who's willing to answer some tough questions about the case. Wayne Hayes, I'm a retired detective inspector from the New South Wales Police Force. Wayne Hayes comes across as a gentle-mannered friendly guy who's efficient with his words. But not far below the surface is a steely determination that comes from years of dealing with hardened criminals. You first heard from him in episode 1, when he talked about being part of the homicide squad investigating Simone's death in 2005. I spoke to him across two interviews as I tried to find answers about what happened in this case. Officially, he moved off it in late 2006 when he went to a different police unit. But he was still liaising with the German police on this case for years afterwards. He was at the 2007 inquest and he told the coroner directly he thought Toby was Simone's killer. By that point, all the other men had been ruled out. They're either eliminated by one while the other and you came back to basically from what I understand at that time that to be as was the prime person of interest because of the relationship because of the lies being told. But how were they eliminated? I know police said they were just big noting themselves and it makes sense to me that they didn't have enough evidence to charge them. What's not clear is why they so quickly discounted their alleged confessions. We run through the suspects individually starting with Alan and Thomas Green. Well, the Greens, for example, I think it was all second hand. The Greens never said to anybody that we could find. I did it. It's all somebody said that they were told. Wayne also had his doubts about Gus Parker. The guy that said, "Oh, you know, her body will be found near the devil's rocks or something." The devil's stones are like a landmark, sort of near the box. Really, what does that mean? Yes, certainly go, "Well, wait a minute. How does he know that?" Also, this man was, as I remember correctly, was head psychiatric issues as well, I think from memory. So again, it doesn't take you very far. It's all very nice that it certainly goes ding in your head. So, "Well, wait a minute. How does he know that information?" But on the other hand, the devil's stones or the botched corners from round figures, what 100 meters from the Caravan Park, which you went missing from. We continue to Jamie Viddler, Viddler saying, "I never left the Caravan Park." And then he's on CCTV outside of public, 10 to 12, 10 to midnight, on that night. Yep. Is that a lie? Is that, you know. Is it a mistake or is it a law? Exactly. That's my point. I'm just saying, you know, so we can read into things. My view is at the time of the inquest, nobody could be in my view. And it was obviously the case because we didn't, nobody was chargeable. I still don't understand why they would take these suspects out of the equation completely, to the point that the coroner didn't hear from any of the witnesses who said they heard these men confess. I tried to push Wayne to answer questions about why none of these men were asked to appear at the inquest in 2007. The bulk of information about those men and their alleged involvement or link or possible was known by the time of the 2007 inquest. But they weren't even. None of it was put on the table. Was that a mistake? What did you put on the table, you think, if I. Considered, well, nothing was went into about none of the people that they allegedly confessed to or said involvement to. It was just said that there were other suspects, our persons of interest, and they've been eliminated via various means of elimination. That's up to the council assistant coroner who he or she calls. Wayne's right. While police compile a brief of evidence for the coroner, it's the job of council assisting the senior lawyer tasked with directing the course of the inquest to call witnesses. That said, council assisting is operating off the information they provided by the police. I can't see how any of those guys could have been said to have been positively eliminated, because they still can't. Can't roll out. Not to the same extent as I understand it. Well, Tobias is an intimate partner. and we do know from statistics and experience that intimate partners, the surviving intimate partner, I can use that term, in many cases is the offender, okay? Now, that's as far as you can take it with the bias. Now, you're trying to eliminate the bias. Unfortunately, he cannot be eliminated. On the other hand, also, he cannot be confirmed as the offender, there's, in my view, from what I know, not enough evidence to amount to, about the convicted. These other people, they go past that stage. They do have people saying, I was there at the time war. Yes, you know, he was there or with the Green Brothers, I think for example, there were confessions, but it's always second or third party. That's true. Jamie Viddler, Gus Parker, and the Green Brothers didn't make any admissions directly to the police, but they were all known to police before this. And Jamie Viddler and the Green Brothers did have violent backgrounds. Should they have at least stayed in the picture as possible suspects to be investigated further, like Toby? - There were alleged confessions or a lot of information coming through from these guys with serious criminal records for violence and assault. It just seems to be an oversight or is it more than that? Because if you, from Tobias' view, and those who would support him would say that that is evidence of a tunnel vision early on. It's not evidence at all, that's what I'm trying to say. Certainly, it's certainly indicators, okay? As I've said before, alcohol and et cetera, and lies are indicators. It was information that was known at the time. And as I've said to you, the coroner's court is run by the council assisting who calls whatever it is. He or she wants, and they have access to police brief. - I contacted the council assisting the coroner. She said, "Ultimately, it's up to the coroner "to decide who gets asked to appear." I also tried to contact the coroner, but he didn't respond in time for my deadline. Whoever made the decisions about the witness list for the first inquest, the focus was firmly on Tobias. - I know what you're saying, that it, Tobias remains the prime suspect or person interested in what you're saying, right? More than the other people. - Well, yeah, I mean, it was charged. - Yeah, it was charged, but it was also there to be drawn. So the system worked if I can use that term. - But is the system working if the state charges someone without reasonable calls like the court found? Could that all have been avoided? Wayne felt there wasn't enough evidence to charge Toby after the 2007 inquest. So I'm curious to know what his reaction was when Toby was charged 15 years later in 2022. How did you find out that news? - News paper. - What'd you think? - Shit. It became a shock to me because bear in mind that I hadn't been involved in it at all, but I half expected when I read it, I thought, I thought to them what if I'm up and said, you know, we're going to an arrest phase or we have arrested or something like that, right? - It was the first thing I thought, shit. The evidence, yeah, there must be evidence here for this. - Yeah, what sort of things would you go through? I'm like, would it be like, oh, there's a DNA? That's like-- - DNA was what I was thinking. Yeah, DNA was what I was thinking. It must be a DNA. - And what about when the charges were dropped? What did you think then? - Shit again, yeah. - Does that happen often in a home? - No. Normally, my personal view, and I think it's probably a reasonably common view among homicide investigators and bear in mind the lower change to my time there, I think, for memory. You don't charge somebody into the comfort of winning. You don't want, you don't like to lose these cases. So you don't charge into, you can win. - I told Wayne about the press conference when New South Wales police superintendent Scott Tanner announced Toby's arrest. The press conference where he said the charges had already been run past the state's prosecutors and they believed there was sufficient evidence to charge Toby. I was curious about that because I've confirmed that the office of the director of public prosecutions hadn't been consulted. Wayne said that isn't normal. - From my experience, normally you would submit the, the brief of the DPP, you don't want to prosecute and have the chance of being withdrawn because the effect on the family is quite extreme that you might have charged somebody and then had to withdraw it. So I'm not sure what superintendent, I think it was Tanner was talking to about the time where it's been put to the DPP, whether he's gone wrong, I don't know. But he clearly says it was put to the DPP. - I asked Wayne about the access arrangement with Virginia Peters. He said he was aware of it. Is it unusual? Well, I'm gonna say it, I'm in my roles, I've been journalisticly 27 years to give a person doing an academic course or writing good inside access to an open murder case. Like that. - No. - Shouldn't have that access. - Coroner McMan agreed to let her inspect the file, see the file, the officer in charge was okay with that too. - At that time. - Yeah, at that time. - Yeah, would I have done it? No. - He says that was for similar reasons to what the expert Graham Simpson doorfer described because it could put information out there that only the killer would know. I wonder if now, all these years later, Wayne feels differently about whether Toby was involved. Does he stand by what he said in the coroner's court in 2007? If you asked your opinion again, would you say he's the killer? - No, I won't keep it my opinion again, because I don't have the protection of the court or my former occupation. And to put you, unfortunately, it's quite litigious. - I tell Wayne that Toby thinks the police focus on him has got in the way of finding Simone's real killer. - I think he accepts that they should have always been a focus on him, but the extent of it was overwhelming. And to the detriment of not enough being evident, and not enough work or evidence going into other possibilities. From where he stands, is that a valid criticism? - I would say yes, because as I said, he's in that no man's land, not enough to confirm or eliminate. There has been in, from what I know at the time and from what I read from the, in the coroner's finding, there's been an always better work done on this. So it's just a problematic inquiry, you know, you don't have, as I've said, good timelines, you don't have good witnesses. - If you were, if Devils advocate here or in Tobias' shoes with the way things have panned out, do you think he's got a valid criticism that there has been a case of tunnel vision on him here to the detriment of other viable suspects who were within a couple of hundred meters of that area at that time on that night? - Well, again, all purses of interest, there were more than one person of interest, the bias is not the only person of interest. - But he's the only one at the place have really gone after for any length of time. - Well, the other, the other person of interest, the bulk of them have been more or less eliminated, and you might not be set, they may not be satisfactory in elimination from what I read or know, but they are still eliminations. - What's clear to me about everyone I've mentioned in this episode is that they seem to be trying to do the right thing. The police want answers for Simone's family, they want the case solved. Virginia Peters seems committed to uncovering information while being respectful to a family living with immense grief. Although Virginia didn't want to be interviewed for the podcast, she did send a statement in response to questions. She said quote, "As a private citizen, "I have had to carry personal and legal risk "for the past 20 years. "Unlike police and journalists who do similar work "under the protection of large corporations "and government bodies." Virginia said she believes information from the police case files was released to her because the progress of the case had stalled in Germany and Australia. She said detective Wayne Hayes had been supportive of her work and that her research and interviews had contributed new evidence to the case. She said he was the officer who said she could be the only hope for solving the case. Although Wayne Hayes told me he doesn't remember saying that. Virginia said she does not regret the access she was given. The fact remains, it's a very unusual decision for police to share the case file information with an author. And that's not the only unusual decision they made. I'm still confused about why they completely ruled out other people who were seen nearby that night so early in the investigation and why those people weren't under scrutiny at the inquest in 2007 like Toby was. And here's where it gets stranger. After ruling the map, years later, the police quietly started to do something interesting. They took DNA samples from some of these men who'd allegedly made confessions. They tested Jamie Viddler's DNA in 2012 and Gus Parker's in 2024. If these men had been eliminated from the investigation, why were they suddenly back in the picture so many years later? And then, in 2024, almost two decades after Simone had been killed, there was a huge development in this case. The New South Wales coroner announced a fresh inquest, a second inquest, and everything was back on the table. All of those other potential suspects, along with witnesses who said they'd heard them confess, would finally be asked to appear. That's next on Lysin Lysmore. An earlier version of this episode said that the West Australian Supreme Court agreed with Tobias Miran that the Virginia Peters book implied he was guilty. What the judge actually said was that an imputation of guilt is arguably capable of being made. But he said the book must be read as a whole and it wouldn't be straightforward to assess if the whole book conveys an imputation that Tobias was guilty. The judge said that Tobias had an argument, but as he assessed it, not strong, the affirmation case. 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 yet. If you saw anything that night in Lysin Lysmore, or if you know someone else who did, get in touch. Unravel true crime at abc.net.au or you can call crime stoppers on 1-800-Triple-3-Triple-0. You've been listening to an ABC podcast. Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.