Chapter 1: What led to the brutal murder of Irma Palacic?
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One woman died a brutal death, two men were charged with her murder, a jury convicted them of manslaughter. Now we can tell you what we really think. I'm Stephen Stockwell, welcome to episode 14 of The Case of the Two Intruders.
Irma Palacic's brutal murder rocked her family and has haunted them for 24 long years.
This wasn't the average robbery.
The brutality of the attack shocked the community. They were virtually tortured that night.
Violently assaulted before the two men ransacked the premises and stole cash and jewellery. My grandparents were beaten and my grandmother was left to die on the lounge room floor. During the trial, we can only tell you what the jury hears. But now the verdict is in. We've got much more freedom. We're going to break down the trial that found out who killed Irma.
To do this, we're joined by ABC court reporter Elizabeth Byrne. Liz, I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts on this trial. Thank you for joining us.
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Chapter 2: What were the significant pieces of evidence in the trial?
And so they convicted them I suppose I wasn't surprised, but I would qualify that as sort of a relatively inexperienced opinion.
Yeah, James, I was a bit like you. I have this real recency bias when I'm listening to arguments. So I'll hear the prosecution opening and I'll be like, oh, well, look, this seems pretty open and shut, doesn't it? And then I hear the defence and go, oh, actually, well, you know, there's some good points there. The thing that sort of surprised me a little bit was that manslaughter was an option.
You know, I wasn't expecting... the jury to be kind of given that option. Given what we talked about with the family, the history of this case, I thought that maybe the prosecutors wouldn't allow the jury to kind of make that selection. But Liz, as you've explained, it's sort of the next step down basically from murder. And so that option was given to the jury.
And I think the thing I was wondering was whether or not the jury would have reached murder if manslaughter wasn't on the table. I mean, Liz, do you think they would have?
It's possible. The final question the jury asked was they wanted some clarification of the elements of the charges, particularly manslaughter and murder, in circumstances where it's unclear who attacked Irma. So this goes back to the Joint Commission charge. But that question said to me that that's what they're struggling with. Is it murder or is it manslaughter?
I may be completely wrong because the jury can't tell us, but that's what it suggested to me. And I've seen this a few times. They may not have gotten to murder because it was unclear who attacked Irma. And quite often with juries,
who are faced with a circumstance like this and it's drummed into them, you have to find it beyond a reasonable doubt that they end up saying, we can't reach a verdict on that particular question. I think all the other charges about the burglary and the assaults, that all stood up and I think they had already made up their mind on those charges before they got to this final bit.
Yeah, I found myself wondering, you know, when I heard initially that it was, you know, guilty of manslaughter, kind of what the family would think of that. I personally thought, well, look, this was a murder trial. I think that was obviously what the prosecutors were pushing for. And my initial reaction was, you know, how does the family feel about that?
But, you know, hearing from John Makita, yeah. Irma's grandson and also Elizabeth, Irma's daughter, outside of court, that they were kind of, you know, just happy that this was over and they were satisfied with the manslaughter charge. For me, I guess kind of gave me some peace that, you know, there was still the closure for the family and this is what this was really all about.
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Chapter 3: How did the verdict of manslaughter come about?
I mean, Liz, it's sort of incredible that, you know, they were able to do that and then get this verdict all those decades later.
Well... probably unlike you, I remember 1999. And I had already been covering courts for quite a while at that time. And we thought DNA evidence was, you know, quite advanced. But what the scientists knew was that techniques were advancing all the time. It was getting better and better. I have seen a few trials collapse on the basis of DNA evidence that didn't stand up.
But as time went on, the sort of rates of how you could tell if it was one person against another increased. really improved the techniques for even uncovering that there was DNA there improved. And they would have known that that was the trajectory of this science. And so the foresight was, you know, probably quite a reasonable thing to expect of them.
But, you know, it is pretty incredible that they did go – Exactly to the right place. And that's because Gregor had remembered seeing somebody take a swig out of something from the fridge and they knew to test anything you could drink from.
Yeah, there's sort of a humility to it, isn't there? with those scientists in that moment, knowing that just because they are working at the sort of ragged edge of their science today, in a year, five years, 10 years, they know it will be better because it wasn't as good before them, if you see what I mean. So it's kind of built into that science that You know, we will improve. It will improve.
The science will improve. And so it's sort of, you know, hopeful for the future. Then they'll keep those samples, those epi tubes at minus 80 just on the off chance that it can solve them.
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Chapter 4: What were the reactions to the jury's verdict?
You know, a murder manslaughter in a decade's time, two decades time. And so it proved to be.
Yeah, it makes me wonder how much stuff they've got in a freezer at the moment that we'll be talking about in 10, 15, 20 years, maybe. Who knows? Something I noticed throughout, not just this part, but also kind of the whole defense of Steve Fabrizzi and Joseph O'Koney was really Sky Jerome, you know, Steve Fabrizzi's barrister.
We spent a lot more time talking about her work than we did Joseph O'Koney's barrister, Travis Jackson. Liz, did Sky Jerome kind of lead the defense for both of these men in a way?
Well, yes, she did. This isn't unusual. It often happens in cases where there's an overlap in what the defence will be. Now, in this particular case, it was poking holes in the forensic evidence. That was sort of the best part of the best chance to get their clients off and to introduce, you know, doubt about things that the police had put forward and the prosecutors had put forward.
So Sky Jerome did take the lead. She covered all the common ground and then covered some extra ground for her own client, which was, you know, that he had admitted being there, even though he says he was only the lookout. So Travis Jackson was left with the job of pointing out that the only evidence against his client was the DNA evidence, and that was what he focused on mostly as well.
But they tried not to traverse the same grounds because then you could run the risk of driving the jury and everyone else mad.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I was, yeah, I was kind of surprised to see how much work Sky Jerome was doing over Travis Jackson. It really did feel like she kind of, yeah, was taking the lead and making sure that, you know, the right things were getting into the jury's mind.
And, you know, my thinking was throughout the trial was if, you know, either of these men are found not guilty, I would probably imagine that it was more of Sky Jerome's work than Travis Jackson's. James, what were your thoughts, you know, first trial seeing the way these two barristers worked?
Yeah, it definitely stood out in the pie chart of the heat map of who had more game time. Sky Jerome definitely was in the lead there. I don't know, Liz, and you'd be able to tell me this, but there was certainly, I think, performative whispers to solicitors, instructing sitting behind the bar table and performative head shakes and laughs and all of this. from the defence barristers.
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