Popular American podcast series “Serial” has helped lead to a murder retrial of a potentially wrongly convicted man.
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A groundbreaking series closer to home is now also putting pressure on the Australian justice system to look at new evidence in the case of Kevin “Curtain” Henry.
We have not seen any piece of evidence in two years saying he was involved.
- Martin Hodgson
Created by Kalaru’s Martin Hodgson and Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire in 2016, the Curtain podcast investigates the murder of a woman named Lynda in Rockhampton in 1991.
This week the series was named by online magazine Vulture as one of the top 52 true-crime podcasts available on the platform.
“The police could have solved the murder the morning Lynda’s body was found by fishermen. They didn’t even look in the boot of a burnt out car found nearby, which was probably full of blood,” Mr Hodgson said.
“It’s not even about beyond reasonable doubt, there is no case against him.”
The investigation has uncovered new witnesses and new evidence, all pointing to Henry’s innocence, and an alleged conspiracy by authorities to pin the death on the then 21-year-old, who has now spent 26 years in prison.
In fact, there has never been any forensic evidence found linking Henry to the murder, Mr Hodgson said.
And what he describes as a “false confession” in the days following the murder, was deemed inadmissible during the trial as Henry had been denied access to a lawyer.
“Once Kevin was charged, was there a conversation among police that they got the wrong guy?” Mr Hodgson asked.
“The women who brutally assaulted Lynda were covered in material evidence, they admitted the assault and there was witnesses.
“The way Kevin is supposed to have committed the murder is impossible based on all three postmortems.
“I’ve always thought we might find a piece of evidence that would at least make us doubt his innocence, because every other case I’ve worked on in 15 years something has come up.
“We have not seen any piece of evidence in two years saying he was involved,” he said.