{"id":756,"date":"2020-06-23T13:14:13","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T03:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/?post_type=articles&p=174476"},"modified":"2020-10-31T19:53:56","modified_gmt":"2020-10-31T19:53:56","slug":"the-bowraville-murders","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/the-bowraville-murders\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bowraville Murders: This Is The Families Asking You, The GRAZIA Readers, For Urgent Help"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Clinton
Clinton Speedy-Duroux. Credit: Supplied.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

AUSTRALIA: Helen Duroux, the aunt of murdered Indigenous teenager Clinton Speedy-Duroux, has pulled over on the side of the road in Armidale in country New South Wales to talk to me this morning. \u201cThank you to your people for actually wanting to help. I appreciate it and I feel honored that you want to hear my thoughts,\u201d she says through tears.<\/p>\n

“Honored.” It became apparent to me in this moment that the woman on the other end of the phone line deems it normal for people to not really have a lot of time to listen to what she has to say. For Helen, the extraordinary happenings in her life and her family\u2019s lives have been considered unimportant and swept aside by our country\u2019s criminal justice system. And it\u2019s just so wrong.<\/p>\n

On January 31, 1991, Helen\u2019s 16-year-old nephew Clinton went missing following a party that he attended with his girlfriend in Bowraville in northern New South Wales.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was foul play because we found out that he didn\u2019t take his shoes and Clinton was very, very fussy about always having his shoes wherever he went,\u201d explains Helen.<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE MAKING OF THE DOCUMENTARY ‘THE BOWRAVILLE MURDERS’<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

His disappearance was the third in just five months and all were Indigenous children who vanished from the same stretch of road. Colleen Walker-Craig, also 16, had disappeared on September 13, 1990. She was last seen alive at a party in the same area that Clinton would go missing months later. Her clothing items \u2013 but never her body \u2013 were found weighed down with rocks in the nearby Nambucca River.<\/p>\n

\"Colleen
Colleen Walker-Craig. Credit: Supplied.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A couple of weeks later, on October 3, four-year-old Evelyn Greenup was reported missing. After a similar party, her mother put her to bed but come morning, she was gone.<\/p>\n

\"Evelyn
Evelyn Greenup. Credit: Supplied.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eighteen days after Clinton went missing, his remains were discovered in bushland about seven kilometers outside of Bowraville. He was wrapped up in a blanket and a pillowcase, items that matched linen in the suspect\u2019s caravan. \u201cThe shock and horror of [finding this out] \u2013 it\u2019s something I\u2019ll never forget. We were devastated,\u201d Helen says, her voice breaking.<\/p>\n

Evelyn’s skeletal remains were found nearby a couple of months later.<\/p>\n

On April 8, 1991, a local man, who we can\u2019t name for legal reasons, was charged with Clinton\u2019s murder \u2013 but was acquitted of any wrongdoing at his 1994 trial. The same man was charged with Evelyn\u2019s murder but prosecutors decided not to proceed with the murder charge after seeing the outcome of Clinton\u2019s case and given Australia\u2019s double jeopardy laws, they were unable to try the man for both crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe that we all get really emotional 30 years later. It just shows how much this guy was loved and how much it hurts that there\u2019s a guy out there who did this. Where\u2019s the justice in that? He got off scot-free,\u201d says Helen.<\/p>\n

\"Bowraville
Friends and family of the victims of the Bowraville murders react to the High Court\u2019s decision to not have a man stand trial for the murders at the High Court, Sydney on March 22, 2019. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After changes to the double jeopardy laws came into force in 2006, the Duroux family held out hope as an acquitted person could now be retried for serious crimes in certain circumstances. But multiple Attorney Generals rejected their appeals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just devastating sitting up in the high court in Sydney and somebody decided that these children weren\u2019t worth it. They weren\u2019t worth justice. That they weren\u2019t worth another look,\u201d says Helen. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was three little white kids from the North Shore and it was a black man that did it, they would have been in jail rotting.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the legal labyrinth is a tricky one to navigate at the moment, Muruwari and Gomeroi filmmaker Allan Clarke is making a documentary – commissioned by the SBS – which investigates the Bowraville Murders: the longest unsolved serial murder case in Australian history. He needs a few more thousand dollars to make the final sum to complete the film by next year.<\/p>\n