Chapter 1: What questions arose after the trial of Geoffrey McLean's murder?
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For more than two months, the biggest courtroom in Adelaide hosted a huge trial. Four defendants, two of them accused of murdering a man called Jeffrey McLean and cutting his body up, putting it in a wheelie bin. And then it was called off. which means we can tell you some secrets. I'm Stephen Stockwell. This is episode eight of the case of the wheelie bin murder.
A gruesome discovery on vacant land in Adelaide's north. Police say the remains belong to missing man Jeffrey McLean. When Jeffrey's body was located, it had been dismembered. It was located in a wheelie bin. Four people have been arrested in relation to his death. A woman who's accused of murdering her ex-partner. They're hopeful they can provide relief to his family.
A dramatic but incredibly disappointing end to the trial of Cherie Glastonbury and Mark Murphy. A mistrial was declared last week and there is much to discuss and many questions that we are now a little bit freer to answer. And to help us through all of that, we have Adelaide Court reporter Eva Blandis with us. G'day, Eva.
Hi, Stockie.
Eva, this is a fascinating case, the case of the Wheatley bin murder. We had four people on trial. Two people were on trial for murder after Geoffrey McLean's body was found in a Wheatley bin. His torso found in a Wheatley bin. Then two more on trial for kind of helping them, basically, after the fact. But there was very little coverage on this in Adelaide.
We had a huge response to the podcast as we were talking through this and producing episodes on it. But there were very few stories in Adelaide about it. I mean... Am I right in thinking that people in South Australia just weren't that interested in hearing about this?
Yeah, so there wasn't that much local coverage. I think it was for lots of reasons. I wonder as well if people weren't reading these stories as much because of the gruesome nature of it. We were also in the midst of a state election, so I think that contributed to it as well.
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Chapter 2: Why was there a lack of media coverage about Geoffrey McLean's case?
She's kind of noted how much of a waste of time and energy this has been, which we spoke a little bit about last week, Eva.
Hmm.
but she wonders if the juror who broke the rules can be fined or prosecuted, noting that they came forward in this case. So, you know, the courts might not want to discourage the honesty of them saying, hey, look, I was actually doing my own research and I think that might not have been allowed. What's the go here, Eva? What could happen?
Yeah, so I think that is a really good point because this juror's obviously done the wrong thing but then has done the right thing. So it's like they've initially... not followed the judge's direction and then they followed the direction by reporting their mistakes.
So in South Australia, jurors can be charged with contempt of court, but it's not actually the judge who charges them or it's not police or anything. It's the registrar of that court. So in this case, the Supreme Court. From my understanding, this happens once a judge chooses to report them to the registrar. So it's sort of up to them to decide what to do.
But then maybe this juror's realised their huge mistake and has then fessed up. So they've sort of in a way corrected their mistake.
I do feel for the jury a little bit, though, because, you know, as we'd spoken about, Eva, it's been a couple of weeks of no court, right? And so they'd been just sitting in the jury room kind of waiting to hear some evidence. I can see how you would end up maybe just kind of, you know, you're in a court this whole time. You're like, how does perjury work again?
You know, is this something that's going on out there?
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What role did public perception play in the trial's coverage?
It's over.
It's over. So yeah, we'll see. Another question, Eva, that we've been sent in from Liz, and this is on the, you know, kind of basically on this juror doing their own research. She's wondered how these jurors ended up doing this research themselves, but more importantly, how could they have found out this information without causing a mistrial?
So what the jury should do is when they have a question, they should write it on a note and then they give it to the sheriff's officer who hands it to the judge's associates. And then in this case, Justice Kimber will read the question to counsel when the jury isn't there and they will then sort of discuss how to answer the question.
I mean, if it's a really simple question like, can I leave early, there won't be much discussion about that. But as we did see in this trial, there were a few questions that did result in lengthy discussions.
Yeah. And what you're describing there where there's the parties kind of discussing with the judge how to answer a question, I remember a really specific example from this case, because it's something that we answered on the pod in a kind of very cheeky way.
There was a question from the jury to the judge asking about whether or not blood found at Shree Glastonbury's house matched Geoffrey McLean's blood. So we'd heard during the trial that police had gone to Shree Glastonbury's house. They had done the investigation there and they'd found a tiny spot of blood near one of the posts of the carport.
And the jury was asking, was that Geoffrey McLean's blood? And Justice Kimber said to the barrister in the room, he said, hey, look, what I want to do when I answer this question is I want to point to the prosecution opening and say, hey, in the prosecution opening, you heard that you got to see evidence that this blood was Geoffrey McLean's.
And Marie Shaw, who was the defence barrister for Cherie Glastonbury, kind of opposed that answer saying, well, no, I don't think you should answer the question like that. We wouldn't support you answering that question. And I guess that's Kind of, as you mentioned, they're happening all the time through the trial, these kind of challenges, these discussions.
And often when the jury's out of the room, these are the sort of things they're talking about, right?
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Chapter 4: Why didn't the trial label the violence as domestic violence?
Ellen says that language minimizes the victim-survivor's experience of abuse, and it really stood out to her. Eva, why did we use that language?
Look, I can totally understand that this would raise a lot of questions and it's not the first time that I've covered something in court and I've been criticised or someone's asked about why I haven't labelled something domestic or family violence. Now, it's simply because we have to report what is said in court. If it's not said in court that this is family or domestic violence, I can't
as a reporter, can't make that assumption. In this case, when the relationship between Cherie and Jeffrey McLean was being described, the phrase family violence wasn't used. To sound a bit like a boring journalist, I'm here to report the facts put in front of me and put them before you guys and you guys just can make your own conclusions. But we are just very, very limited in what we can say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just sort of stuck to what was said in court. And that language, tumultuous, was what was being used by the prosecution barristers as they were going through their openings. And, you know, when they were going to the detail around, you know, that police had attended and they'd witnessed bruises on Cherie Glastonbury, we mentioned that.
We made sure that was kind of information that everyone had and Hopefully giving you enough context to decide on that. One of the reasons I was trying to be so careful about it as well is because there were no charges that were brought up in court or mentioned in court around Jeffrey McLean and the history of family violence or charges that he had faced in there as well.
In fact, when he had gone to prison, that was something that was mentioned in court. It was kind of clarified that that wasn't to do with any kind of domestic violence scenario in court. So we need to be careful to not prejudice or not have the jury, you know, if they had heard this, maybe thinking or wondering if that was something that was involved in this situation.
So something else that we got a few emails about as well, Eva, was that, you know, there was a bit of a lack of dignity for the victim, Geoffrey McLean, in this scenario that You know, we weren't showing as much sympathy for Geoffrey McLean as we may have for other people that we covered on the case of. I mean, was that a deliberate choice by us, Eva?
No, of course not. Again, we just report the facts of what we heard in court. We can't sort of go out and do some more research about Geoffrey or, you know... Yeah, it's hard. And, look, I think this is an issue the public find it really sort of jarring that, you know... These people, these victims are referred to as, you know, the deceased or things like that.
But again, it is a courtroom and things are portrayed differently. And we, there's only so much we can do with that. And we also, again, can't. report anything other than what's said in front of that jury.
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Chapter 5: How did the courtroom dynamics affect the presence of Jeffrey McLean's family?
And I mean, I don't think any, think any differently of anyone for, for using ice. There's lots of complex situations that people live through and, you know, they're kind of whole human beings for all of those parts. And, you know, we're not going to omit information to kind of create a character for someone to kind of make someone seem more sympathetic. You know, Jeffrey McLean was an ice user.
That's something that, you know, is, is being told to the court and is part of the kind of fair and accurate reporting of what's unfolding in that room. Right, Eva?
Yeah, exactly. And, like, we have to be fair. We can't just, like you were saying, we can't pick and choose. I can't decide, oh, that doesn't sound good. That doesn't fit with, you know, the picture I have of this victim or the picture I have of this defendant. You know, it's not about that. We just have to report what is put in front of us. So, yeah, it's...
it may seem quite jarring to the audience or confusing, but we really are quite limited in what we can do, but also have to be fair. We can't pick and choose.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. One of the questions we had from Catherine sent into the case of at abc.net.au was around the way this trial was kind of run. We had four defendants in court. We had Mark Murphy and Cherie Glastonbury accused of murdering Geoffrey McLean, along with
a few other offences as well, and Lynette Sexton and Peter Murphy accused of assisting an offender, allegedly helping Mark Murphy and Cherie Glastonbury in the murder and the movement of Geoffrey McLean's body following his death. Catherine was wondering, did the defendants decide to go to trial together or was that something that was decided by the courts?
So in South Australia, every defendant is able to apply for severance. So it's sort of just like a bail application in the way that you can make an application. It's up to you. It's then, of course, up to the court to grant that application or deny it. These discussions would have been had in pre-trial hearings that I'm not privy to.
I'm not exactly sure what happened in this case, whether there were... Whether there was an application or not, I'm not certain. But ultimately, if there had been, it was the court's decision to have them tried together. And look, this isn't to say that there may not be an application to sever these trials coming up, you know, for the second round, so to speak.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've thought a lot about the way this trial was run in this way. I mean, four defendants seems like so many people. And even just from the prosecution opening, the story the prosecution was telling went for so long. It was a story that started in 2022, right? And then it was one that ran all the way through until early 2023.
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Chapter 6: What happened after the mistrial was declared?
Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson. This episode was produced on the land of the Kaurna and Wurundjeri people.
Thank you.