Former homicide detective Ron Iddles told the hearing when he was asked to review the Silk-Miller investigation he saw “something was not right”. “This was a very difficult thing for me, you’re being critical of your fellow colleagues ... I took the middle ground, I could’ve gone further,” he said. In 2015 Iddles, then police association secretary, spoke with former policeman Glenn Pullin, who was one of the first on scene to the murders. Mr Iddles said Mr Pullin told him a detective, George Buchhorn, asked him to make another statement “so everything fitted in”, the hearing was told. Only Pullin’s second statement made it into the brief of evidence. Mr Pullin said he was told “not to mention the fact I had made the first statement”, Iddles said.

“I had an obligation to tell a superior officer,” Mr Iddles said. Former senior police officer Ron Iddles. Credit:Simon Schluter Mr Iddles said he told Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton who responded: “You do what you have to do.” Mr Iddles went to IBAC, but the first inquiry collapsed after Mr Pullin claimed what he told Mr Iddles “was all bullshit” to help him with his workers compensation claim. IBAC’s second investigation began after the two conflicting statements emerged in the media.

In Mr Pullin's first statement, there was no mention of Senior Constable Miller's dying words, IBAC heard. Yet in the second statement, signed by former homicide detective Charlie Bezzina, extra sentences were added, including Mr Pullin asking a dying Senior Constable Miller: “Were they in car or on foot?” IBAC heard that Mr Pullin said Senior Constable Miller replied, “They were on foot”. Another police officer Sergeant Helen Poke wrote in a Facebook post, shown in the commission hearings, that she was asked by a detective to omit information from her statement, but she told him to “stick it up his arse”.' “It was my statement, not his sanitised version. So in the end I did not make a statement that night,” she said in the post.

“I wrote up what I saw and did and most importantly what I heard from Rod [Miller] when I cradled him.” The hearing was shown notes Sergeant Poke made soon after the murders that a dying Senior Constable Miller told her there was "Two, one on foot, 6 foot 1, checked shirt, long dark hair” and repeatedly said “Get them”. Jason Roberts, pictured in 2002, who was convicted of murdering two police officers, is making a plea for mercy. Credit:Joe Armao A transcript of evidence given by one of the Silk-Miller investigators, Detective Grant Kelly, to the first IBAC inquiry was also read on Monday. In it, Detective Kelly said he told another policeman first on scene, Graham Thwaites, not to put a description of the offenders in his statement.

Detective Kelly said that was the way he was taught at the academy. “I don’t know if the practice was across the board or if it was just my practice at the time,” he said. Mr Iddles said information about the offenders was “vital” and not including it in statements undermined the investigation from the start. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video “We’re talking about the homicide of two police officers; you put as much information in as you can,” he said.

Mr Rush said earlier in his opening the disclosure of all relevant material was fundamental to a fair trial. “The use of such practices [adding or omitting information from police statements] by police not only impacts on the integrity of the police investigation but has the very real potential in trial circumstances to amount to a perversion of the course of justice,” he said. Roberts is attempting to make a plea for mercy in the Supreme Court, which is separate from the IBAC hearings. What emerges from the commission’s investigation could assist Roberts’ push for a re-trial. Witness statements form a large part of a brief of evidence to prosecute people accused of crimes.