Lynda was from South Australia, and had been missing for eight days before her death. Her non-Indigenous husband, who she was separated from, lived in the town with their four sons.

Educated and accomplished, Lynda had been at the forefront of early childhood education in South Australia, helping set up the state’s first Aboriginal pre-pre school in the 1970s. At the time of her death, she was being treated for schizophrenia.

Lynda had come from a strong Aboriginal family in her home state, but had not escaped trauma. Seven years before her death her brother had died in custody, and had become one of the most high profile cases investigated by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The report was handed down only a few months before Lynda’s death.



Within a week of her death, four people had been charged over her murder — three women and Henry — related to two separate sets of circumstances: three women for brutally assaulting Lynda; and Henry for allegedly placing Lynda in the river. The women later had their charges of murder downgraded to grievous bodily harm and were convicted of these charges.



The assault was witnessed by up to 35 people who were at Toonooba House, a local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre, run by an Anglican church charity.

The building was on the banks of the Fitzroy River, and was known as a sanctuary for Aboriginal people, with many of them sleeping underneath the house on mattresses during the night.

On the night of August 31, 1991, it was not a sanctuary for Lynda. The assault was perpetrated over a period of more than an hour, and Lynda sustained horrific injuries. She suffered severe trauma and bleeding to her head, body and perineum. It is likely she could have died of these injuries.

There is no suggestion that Henry was involved in the assault. Instead, police allege that after the assault he dragged Lynda to a nearby clearing, where he sexually assaulted her then placed her in the river where she drowned.

There were no witnesses, and new analysis of historic tidal records by Hodgson, as well as analysis of the forensics in the case by international experts — which state she may not have died by drowning — cast doubt on this version of events.

Henry was visiting Rockhampton that weekend from his home in the Aboriginal community of Woorabinda, a two-hour drive away.

Not only did Henry have an alibi — he was drinking at a local pub with a group of Aboriginal people from Toonooba House — he didn’t have any of Lynda’s blood or DNA, or river mud, on his clothes.

Instead, Henry’s conviction was reliant on a confession three days after Lynda was found in the river. Henry was picked up off the street in Rockhampton, and taken to the watchhouse where he was questioned by two detectives for two and a half hours, during the course of which he confessed.

The judge at Henry’s trial threw out a large portion of the confession, stating it was not admissible as a “voluntary statement”; that a large portion of the statement was “tainted”; and that police had “ignored” Henry’s right to silence.



“Clearly enough, the accused is exercising his right to decline to answer any further questions,” the judge said at trial. “The exercise of this right is ignored by the investigating police, and the accused is put in the position where he is effectively told he has no such rights.