Hello I'm Susie Smith from the ABCs true-crime project. Over the next two
weeks Australian story and the Unravel podcast series will be exploring the
mysterious death of Gomeroi teenager Mark Haines.
When Mark's body was found on train tracks near Tamworth 30 years ago police
were quick to dismiss any notion of foul play.
Journalist Alan Clark has been investigating the case for five years
and in the last few months we've discovered startling new evidence to
suggest that Marks death is more than a mere misadventure.
[Clock ticking]
I started work at
West Tamworth Station at 11 o'clock and my shift went through till 7 o'clock in
the morning. My duties included my usual trains got through safely.
The passenger train went through at 5:50 in the morning going through to Armidale.
And at about 6:05 I've got a call from the driver on the freight train to say
that he had passed over a body.
I thought to myself I better go out just in case the person is still alive.
- Glenn was actually the first person to see Mark's body up close. He felt like there
was some really strange things about about what he was seeing
He immediately thought that the head wound on Mark did not look like it had
been caused by a train. - It was a massive head injury just on the hairline, and it
was like that crushed eggshell, would be a good way of putting it.
Normally if you're struck by a train it really
does make a mess of you. There was no tissue, there was no matter,
there was no hair scattered anywhere. There just wasn't enough blood.
- Glenn noticed a towel underneath Mark's head. - The towel was sort of folded in half in half again.
I thought it was very unusual, really strange that the person would be
on the track with a towel under his head.
- Glenn was actually an investigator for the railways, and so he's seen every
imaginable impact a train could make on a human body. He point-blank says I have
never seen an injury like that on Mark's caused by a train.
Not once. - Then something is stuck in my head for
many years. I feel he was put there by someone whilst he was
dead to try and make it look like he had committed suicide.
For the past five years I've been on my own
looking at Mark's case, and it all started when I was sent to
Tamworth as a news reporter to cover an appeal to the public. I knew that the
family were calling out for any information and they felt the police
weren't listening to them and they believed it was because they were Aboriginal.
One of their main concerns was in the beginning that Mark's death
wasn't treated as suspicious but they have always claimed it was murder.
- The police; their initial views were this was a cold case or piss it off sooner or later.
No, family will die, it'll all go away,
hard to find witnesses, this will all just disappear.
Well it hasn't
- And then I met up with "Duck" and I guess the story starts there.
"Duck" is Mark's uncle and he was very very close to Mark. "Duck" had just been
waiting for so long for someone to listen to his questions regarding the death.
- It was the first time I was able to get someone to take an interest in
something that me and my family believed was terribly amiss.
We have said look this is right out of character for our boy.
- This is Mark obviously.
- Yeah, yeah. - When was that taken?
Well I daresay that
would have been taken '87 at sister Barb and Aunty's house on Worrell Road.
- This story just really hit a chord with me. I think the similarities to Mark and
his family and my family and the Gomoroi connection, we're both Gomoroi people, and
I'm related to Duck's wife.
- He shared the bedroom with my two elder sons. He slept
on the top bunk and was like well yeah one of my own children were taken away.
Allan can understand where we're coming from, what we're going through, and he was
able to empathise with us.
After that first meeting with Duck I had so many documents; in fact it was really overwhelming.
I think the reason why I got hooked was a few things. I like a
good story, I'm an Aboriginal boy, I grew up in a small community just like Mark.
Some part of me wanted to see it through and get justice for them because
everyone that had come and gone before me had had not seen it through. All of
them had kind of tapered off and forgotten about Mark.
Everyone I speak to
has such fond memories of Mark. He was incredibly popular,
he was very good at school.
- He was good at cricket, he was really good at
basketball, I think he would have been good at anything he turned his hand to.
- We were close. I always stuck with my cuz.
Always went you know everywhere with him.
He was just a happy-go-lucky guy, lovely teeth, always smiling and enjoying
himself all the time he just liked his friends like Jason Wann, Glenn Mannion,
I never saw Mark have an enemy. His personality was so gregarious and so
outgoing that people just had no choice but t o be friends with him.
- Yeah he had this 'ere, he had this 'ere way of talking. He had this like a slow
drawl. Reminded me a bit about John Wayne. He had this slow drawl.
"Aaw Uncle Duck," you know.
- Speaking with his best friend Jason Wann he told me that he actually
named him Stoney because when he spoke he sound like he was stoned because he
had this low gravelly drawl. And he was quite softly spoken.
Most regional cities and towns are often divided down racial lines and in
Tamworth it's physically divided by a train track. On one side you had the
white community, on the other side you had the Aboriginal community which was
Coldale. Coldale was known as Vegemite village
- We were proud of it though. We were proud of
where we came from. We used to call ourselves the "Veggie Vandals".
We weren't vandals, but it was a cool thing to say.
Mark was dating a girl named Tanya White. She was a really popular local girl, a
white girl. Mark was one of a kind in the fact that he could move between the
two worlds here in Tamworth, the white and the black communities and it's not
everyone that could have done that.
January 1988 it was a typical summer for kids in the country it was blisteringly
hot and Mark was like every other teenager on school holidays what a piece
together about marks last movements all come from his friends and families
police statements plus testimony they gave at the Kerr O'Neil inquest into his
death
mark he left his house with his cousin Liam she was older and her partner
Raymond was gonna give mark an ID so he could get into clubs cuz he was only 17
he was happy he was in a good mood he was just wanting to get over town
you know I to go out and catch up with probably tenure and all the boys I
believe that Mark was at Domino's nightclub that night
mark and Tonya then leave sometime after midnight with another couple
they say goodbye to their mates and then they head to East Ham Earth
then they get to the corner of world vitrine Edward Street which is only a
few houses from where ten years living
Tonya told the Caronia lien quest later that she said goodbye to mark around
3:30 a.m. and watched him jog up Wilbur tree Street in the direction of West Ham
Worth where he lived after that she went home around the same time that mark was
saying about a Tanya a witness who actually told the chronal inquest about
this says she was woken up by loud noises I could hear two voices
distinctly really arguing and I thought they were two males she had a really
distressed young man that's her words he was at the end of his tether and he was
gone leave me alone if off like I thought someone was hurting him she
tries to go back to bed and then she hears a car come flying up the street
seemed to just stop screeched on the brakes and stopped
then it took off very very quickly
there's a lot of speculation that whoever was in that car picked up mark
or maybe even forced him to get in
no one knows exactly what happened between Tanya saying goodbye to mark and
the train driver finding him around three hours later and that's been the
big mystery ever since
we were just stunned just stunned that yeah this could have occurred I couldn't
believe it was him I had to go to the mall myself in ever look at him myself
I felt that I was responsible for him what happened he
I was at home with mom and the place came knocking on the door
and then mum just started crying and I started crying and left the front door
so sad I knew straight away that something
adverse had happened to ignore onion did something you know horrible have
happened I mean he would not walk out there and and lay down on railway tracks
the next day we went straight up to the site and just try to work out what
happened they were wanting to get out there and find some answers find some
clues there's strong fellas for my uncle's
what we found sort of stunned me at first generally what you see nowadays is
that police mark spots where people die with pain or whatever arm there's none
of that when mark was found his body was lying
between the rails so it wasn't across them it was between them and his head
was on a towel that towel was folded and looked like he'd been placed on a Marx
head we know that there was very little blood out there
in fact reports say there was just a spot about the size of a 50-cent coin
and that's strange because Mark had a massive head injury and he also had a
really big gash on his thigh and that was noted by Glenn Bryant gash was quite
quiet and then he had torn his James there was no blood at the scene so I
would assume that he had sustained the injury after his heart had stopped
pumping
in the beginning marks family have absolute faith that the police will do
their job and in fact when they go out to the train tracks they don't want to
taint potential evidence so they keep going and they look around the brothers
start to find all these other anomalies and they have a lot more questions
we found remnants of cardboard boxes and wrapping paper a black comb and a pink
lighter and when I finally spoke with tenure a week later I said tenure Marc
had a calm yeah he probably would have had a calm
I said I'm a pink cigarette law she said no way no way Mike wouldn't have a pink
cigarette Laura that's what her words a
few weeks after marks death the family feel like the police haven't done a very
thorough job at all so they go out there and they collect what they think is
potential evidence
myself and me brothers went into the police station as we hand it over the
pink lawyer and the black comb the police reacted by saying ah we thought
we placed these in the evidence bag the train crew pointed out to the police
that there was a car crash nearby and they didn't think that was very
important at the time the family went to this tirana looked inside it at the time
we really didn't associate too much that the car was so lengthy obviously it had
it had rolled the windscreen was out on the ground it was wet it was a laminated
windscreen it was it had a lot of cracks in it we was going to get it ourselves
and put it in storage and get a fingerprint later down the track we were
back at the next day and it was gone and I remember the following couple of weeks
that duck was really really persistent and angry in regards to that car he
family believed in the car and had something to do with Marc's death and I
think he felt that the police at the time weren't taking him seriously
this vehicle was not secured the booth was never opened and the police never
opened it we prized it open and took the tire and
a mat out that looks like they had blood stand on and we took that to the police
station and I said to him I said I think this is blood on the eye he said it
could be animal blood the car was left exposed the elements the police didn't
even bother to fingerprinted and their excuse was it would have been too wet to
actually lift a print they told the family they told other people that mark
may have stolen the car and drove it out here crashed it walked across that
railway line in the pouring rain current presence and they turn around lie down
with his head on his how such a bizarre scenario no that was their story you
know what I mean but it wasn't our story it was foul play and it was a cover-up
right from the word go
but where they went wrong he couldn't drive a car there is not an odd chance
that he could drive a manual car I mean not even under instruction he just
didn't have it he didn't have it he didn't have the basic skills the uncle's
also went and retraced Marc's steps to see if he could get from that car to
where his body was and there's a rail bridge in the middle and at the time
there was no safety barrier so it's a very steep drop between big holes in
this rail bridge to walk over that would have been almost impossible at night
without falling they tried to walk across it in broad daylight and they
couldn't do it I'll never forget what duck said to me and he said I won't give
up I'll never give up as long as I live I will find out what happened to my boy
he wanted justice and he never believed the official story
the explanation from the police about this young man's death never held water
even the most cursory scrutiny would have said that it was a farcical
explanation you couldn't describe this investigation as anything other than
racially biased when it went off there is no conceivable way that if this was a
young white person that the investigation would have ended in the
dead end it did case closed I didn't want to do the paperwork it was a young
Aboriginal boy that was it out for a joyride it seemed
mark gets buried at the end of January and the uncles are absolutely desperate
for answers doc he promised Mark's parents that he would see justice
for them unfortunately they passed away a few
years ago and so they never got to see any of that justice well the police they
must have got sick of me and duck going up to the police station they more or
less said just go out and do your own investigation just see what you can find
out they'll talk to you they won't talk to us
and then halfway through the year they find out that mark might have been
killed because he was planning to steal some marijuana crops and that it was a
warning or an assault gone wrong by some stand over men in the town and to cover
it up mark was put on the train tracks there was a lot of cops around table for
that time from what are he back then it was quite openly great
there were some heavy dudes around at the time I mean big muscles tattoos you
know beads all that kind of stuff getting around on Harley's about 400
plants were found in the plantation many measuring all those three meters in
height how big was the drug racket in town life at that time
are you talking millions back then millions of million dollars was a lot of
money someone was going to steal some marijuana from a plantation
what would their retribution be how will you kill your the Meza right
it's all on something and how do you know enough cases like that yeah yeah
how many would you say probably three or four people just disappear this world is
very violent and very sinister the family are trying to figure out how
Mark had never been in trouble with the law in his life smokes marijuana
occasionally got caught up in all of this far as I know and gathered he
smoked occasionally and that was his business you know he was 17 and not like
you lot of other young kids you know they all smoked I mean he wasn't hiding
away in a room somewhere you know being a chronic pothead he that didn't affect
his life at all well in the story started coming out that he knew about a
drug crop which was up in London and he was supposedly getting organizing a
couple of people to go and write it that was what I've heard and so therefore he
was put get caught well I thought it was a joke because it was just right in a
character Amy wasn't a thief anyway he was an honest kid
everybody says no way could mark have been connected to the drug trade there
was no way that he was a drug dealer there was no way he was involved in any
of that murky underbelly it's a pretty bizarre world the brothers find
themselves in they're deep in grief but at the same time they're smack bang in
the middle of this DIY investigation and they feel like they're actually getting
more clues than the police at this point and on top of that the rumors in town
are going wild
and then a name emerges and when the uncles go and confront this person all
hell breaks loose what they believe is that mark was not aligned on the night
that he died they believed that there was foul play with my pains and that my
son was involved in some way there was the suicide now but no reason
for why I think I'm coming close to my answer he said did you know why I killed
himself and I said no it didn't what why and he went on to tell me that Terry was
the last one left and he couldn't deal with it
and he said well he was in that car that night is getting a little bit too hot
out there we eat a nerve and that's why they wanted this meeting to try and tell
us to back off you know doctor even back off
he hasn't given up Freddie's letter I just wish he'd get his answers I just
want him to have face I want my dad face
did you kill my kinds I didn't kill my kinds I didn't do him any harm I didn't
know him
you
For more infomation >> பெண்ணை கவ்விச் சென்ற சிறுத்தை அடுத்து நடந்ததை பாருங்க | Tamil News | Latest Seithigal - Duration: 1:30. 
For more infomation >> 'ஸ்பைடர் மேன்' போல பாய்ந்து குழந்தையை காப்பாற்றிய வாலிபர் | Tamil News | Latest Seithigal - Duration: 1:55. 
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