Episode 1: The Suitcase

0:00Speaker 1:Listeners are advised that this podcast contains course language and adult themes. The Poisoned Wife is a podcast investigation brought to you by me Headley Thomas and The Australian Subscribers to The Australian Here. Episodes first on the Australians app at the Poisonedwife dot com and Apple Podcasts.

0:35Speaker 2:Every single piece of paper I got about this case you have now got.

0:39Speaker 3:You would have known that she had died a really painful death.

0:43Speaker 4:She always wanted to be a mother always.

0:47Speaker 5:I didn't do it.

0:48Speaker 3:I had nothing to do with Rosalind's death. I was a sixteen year old girl who had a crush on an older, married man. I just think it's also cruel.

1:00Speaker 1:How would you have been trying to protect him? One afternoon four years ago, a photograph attached to a text message.

1:15Speaker 6:Appeared on my mobile phone.

1:18Speaker 1:It was an image of a gray and black suitcase which had seen better days. It had turned up at the Brisbane office of The Australian newspaper. Transparent sticky tape was wrapped around the suitcases zippers and handle to ensure that whatever was inside did not spill out. The zippers were padlocked an Australia poststicker warned that anyone trying to lift the suitcase should.

1:43Speaker 6:Bend their knees.

1:45Speaker 1:My friend and colleague, Sarah Elks, was in the office when security brought it around to my desk there.

1:52Speaker 6:Sarah texted me at home.

1:55Speaker 7:Just wanted to let you know there's a very mysterious, very heavy suitcase that's arrived for you, apparently from a mister Rex Bakes from South Australia. I mean to have a look inside to see if it's worth you picking it up.

2:10Speaker 1:It sounded intriguing, I suggested to Sarah it might be crammed with documents, perhaps for a case. I knew nothing about it because I wasn't expecting it. There was an envelope on my desk at work. Sarah picked it up. It had some weight in it. She felt something solid inside.

2:32Speaker 6:It was a key.

2:34Speaker 1:Sarah Elks tore off the sticky tape and opened it up. She photographed the first page of a handwritten letter, dated October five, twenty twenty two, that was almost four years before the launch of this podcast.

2:48Speaker 6:The letter began like this.

2:51Speaker 8:I want to know whether you can help bring a cold case to a close. I help prepare defenses for people for murder as well as rapes. This is where the wheels fell off. I found the death of Roslin McQueen near Bendigo was carefully planned and to this day herkuler walked free.

3:12Speaker 1:Sarah sifted through the contents of the suitcase and she soon understood the key facts and the reason for the delivery.

3:20Speaker 7:Seems to be from an investigator who worked on the case of Roslyn McQueen. Her husband had his murder trial canceled in nineteen eighty eight. It seems the husband was also attempting to have an affair with the babysitter. It's filled with documents and a lot of handwritten notes.

3:40Speaker 1:Five weeks earlier, the murder trial of Chris Dawson had ended with an emphatic verdict delivered by Justice Ian Harrison in the New South Wales Supreme Court.

3:50Speaker 9:Christopher Michael DAWs On the charts the door about eighth January nineteen eighty two, o'clave you or elsewhere in the state of New South Wales, you did murder Lynette awesome.

4:01Speaker 2:I find you guilty.

4:03Speaker 1:Many people who knew the story of Lynn and Chris and the teenage babysitter who was groomed and exploited by the notorious school teacher, and former Newtown.

4:13Speaker 6:Jets rugby league star were delighted.

4:16Speaker 1:Because despite the passage of time since Lynn's nineteen eighty two disappearance, despite nobody having been discovered in the forty years since, despite hopeless police work in the early years, and despite faulty reasoning by those prosecutors who had repeatedly refused to put the case before a jury, the twenty twenty two verdict showed that old cold cases could still be solved, Justice could still be done. A multi episode podcast series could help. People, including former police who had listened to the Teacher's pet started sharing their knowledge and suspicions about other cold cases. They wrote email with information about alleged murderers who had gotten away with a terrible crime for far too long, and a bloke called Rex Bakes went out on a limb. He gathered the contents of his own investigations into a suspected murder, one in which he first became involved in nineteen eighty seven. Rex got an old suitcase and filled it with those files.

5:24Speaker 1:His files about an insurance salesman called Gray McQueen Ray's second wife, Roz and Roz's death by strychnine poisoning, and he went to a post office near his home in a town called Barma in South Australia, where he paid fifty four dollars and ten cents in postage. He put a key that would open the padlock on the suitcase in a separate envelope, and he posted the bag and the envelope on separate days to reduce the chances of the suitcase falling into the wrong hands and being opened.

5:57Speaker 1:A week later, the envelope and the suit case arrived at my employer's offices in Brisbane.

6:08Speaker 5:Oh hi, is Rick Spakes available? That's me okay, Rex, It's Headley Thomas Collin from Brisbane.

6:16Speaker 2:Oh, Hardley, it's good to hear your voice at last.

6:19Speaker 1:This suitcase of material that you've sent to me, These thousands.

6:23Speaker 2:Of documents, every single piece of paper I've got about this case you have now got. Are you all right?

6:29Speaker 1:If I run a recorder over our conversation at the.

6:32Speaker 5:Moment, I may use it or may not.

6:36Speaker 2:Back in the eighties, it seems to me that the DPT was far too conservative. If they didn't they have a one hundred per cent chance at winning. They dropped the body case. That's what seems to have happened with this. You know this is deplorable. I'm really really annoyed with Victoria police. This case is easily so they're just not interested. It's just frustrating. But you will work your way through that suitcase.

7:08Speaker 1:Rex's entire file on Roz was in that suitcase, handwritten jottings, personal and official correspondence, formal court documents, articles about Strict nine, even medically focused abstracts about teenage sex and virginity. In important ways. That suitcase, its contents is the story of Ross's short lived life, and it's the story of Rex's efforts to make a difference in the twilight now of his life.

7:41Speaker 5:Why have you let it all go? Rex?

7:43Speaker 2:That got to the point that I thought, this case is now going to go to someone with a fresh outlook. I've done my best. That's cost me a hell a lot of money. We need fresh eyes to do something that I haven't been able to do. I've tried to go down every avenue I can, but I failed.

8:07Speaker 1:The death of Pregnant Rosalind Joey McQueen is well known to longtime Bendigo locals. Some wins when they reflect on it. For much of the four decades he has known about this case, Rex has pushed for it to be solved. He is adamant that someone got away with murder. According to Rex, it's the man for whom he once worked as a private investigator. As Rex dug into the case, he started to see things differently. These things weren't adding up for him. His client wasn't looking that innocent to him anymore. So Rex went to the other side.

8:48Speaker 2:So I worked for between twenty five and thirty murderers, but this McQueen he lied to me well, I was set up to file.

8:56Speaker 1:Really three and a half years we received a police statement. It was made by ros McQueen's best friend, Wendy, four decades ago. Rex didn't have this statement. It wasn't in the file.

9:13Speaker 10:We would discuss most things together.

9:16Speaker 6:Of all Rosa's friends, Wendy was the closest.

9:20Speaker 1:They had been tight for fifteen years since meeting in their hometown of swan Hill Bankwork drew them to Bendigo and the two young women were sharing a flat. While on a local bus one day, Roz struck up a conversation with the driver.

9:36Speaker 6:Ray McQueen.

9:38Speaker 10:Roslin had come home one day and she told me that she had met this gorgeous bus driver and she wondered how she could get to know him. She rang the bus depot and they put her straight onto him. I was there when she rang. Roslin would tell me that McQueen did not get on with his wife. I was in no doubt that Roslin was in love with McQueen, and she was confident that he felt the same way about her.

10:00Speaker 1:After they were married, Rose would disclose to Wendy that her husband had a cavalier approach to spending money, even though they were close to broke.

10:10Speaker 10:Roslyn used to complain to me that Ray McQueen would spend money on things they didn't really need, so that sometimes she would not be able to buy food. She made it clear that they were short of money most.

10:22Speaker 3:Of the time.

10:23Speaker 1:Ray McQueen would blame his first wife, Jeanette, and their inevitable divorce for his financial struggle. The former farmer would tell detectives that the mother of his first two children got almost everything.

10:37Speaker 6:Shortly before he married Roz.

10:39Speaker 1:In April nineteen eighty one, Roz did her best with what little she was given. She adored their two year old daughter, Jody. Wendy said Roz wanted another baby, and we know from other witnesses that she was elated on learning she was pregnant again.

10:59Speaker 10:I found out as soon as she knew, Rosin was overjoyed about the prospect of another child.

11:05Speaker 1:Right around this time, Wendy's best friend started confiding some troubling problems in her marriage with Ray. Roz was voicing the same concerns to other friends and family, including her mother, Joy Craig and Ray's mother, Beryl McQueen. It was more than a nagging feeling. Roz believed that her husband had become completely infatuated with the teenager Donna, who was unhappy in her family home. She was an increasingly regular visitor and babysitter at the McQueen house in Lockwood.

11:42Speaker 10:It first started off that she felt sorry for Donna. Roslin would refer to Donna frequently in conversation. It was always referenced in a friendly nature. Until around November nineteen eighty five.

11:54Speaker 1:Roz told Wendy there was something going on between Ray and the girl less than half his age. Something Roz could neither control nor properly understand. Wendy and Roz talked a couple of times a week about it, right up until her best friend's sudden death.

12:13Speaker 6:Roz revealed Ray's.

12:14Speaker 1:Lack of interest in her as his fascination with Donna became impossible to overlook.

12:20Speaker 6:The two were in.

12:21Speaker 1:Each other's company a lot, increasingly without Roz. Others in this rural community outside Bendigo had seen things too. Ray and the girl he was coaching there looked like a couple to the members of the tennis club in Lockwood.

12:39Speaker 6:Behind Ray's back, the club's.

12:41Speaker 1:Members, some of whom knew Roz, were shaking their heads and sharing their observations. They knew that Ray had a pregnant wife at home.

12:50Speaker 10:Later, on probably February and March nineteen eighty six, Roslin became visibly anxious about McQueen's attentions to Donna.

12:59Speaker 6:They didn't use the word grooming that we do many would.

13:04Speaker 10:She told me of her worry that McQueen was paying too much attention to Donna. Roslin would be in one room whilst Donnor and McQueen were in another room, and McQueen would be Tickling Donna.

13:16Speaker 1:In the suitcase and in scientific and medical journal stories online, there are harrowing descriptions of the agonizing deaths of stryct nine victims. These victims remain fully conscious as the powerful poison derived from seed pods of the STRYCTNSS tree caused the body to go into uncontrolled and back arching convulsions.

13:40Speaker 6:Death is usually unavoidable.

13:43Speaker 1:After a minuscule dose of the bitter tasting strychnine is ingested. Ros McQueen was poisoned with strychnine at her home in Lockwood on April one, nineteen eighty six. She was five and a half months pregnant with a baby. Her two year old daughter, Jody, was at home with her. Her husband, Ray McQueen, had left home that morning to go to work as a salesman at National Mutual Insurance in nearby Bendigo. Of course, ray McQueen has the presumption of innocence. He has not been convicted over his wife's death, but the coroner did make striking findings as the inquest reached its climax.

14:28Speaker 6:It was nineteen eighty seven.

14:31Speaker 11:And I further say that the said Kevin Raymond McQueen did thereby murder. They said of Roslin Joy McQueen, would you stand please, Are you guilty or not? Guilty of the church?

14:48Speaker 5:Not guilty.

14:49Speaker 3:I have nothing further to say at this stage.

14:53Speaker 1:And he has steadfastly maintained that position to this day. Rex told me about his visit to the home of the former babysitter Donna.

15:04Speaker 2:And she got a hell of a surprised to see me with terrible buddy. Whether I remember. You could say it went well, and you're going to say it went bad. The reason why it went well was I established a working relationship, and the reason why it went bad was because her husband was present when I was there. McQueen proposed to her days after the death of his wife, and he proposed in writing, have.

15:31Speaker 5:You got a copy of that document?

15:33Speaker 2:Well, we wish no, I asked her, and she said she destroyed it.

15:38Speaker 1:Here's some of what the then teenager told police during their investigation into Rosa's death.

15:45Speaker 12:I realized I loved Ray from about twelve months ago. That's the reason I spent so much time with him. I wanted to be with him all the time. I am still in love with him, and as soon as I turn eighteen. I'll go away with him, live with him, go anywhere he wants me to. The only reason why I'm waiting till my eighteenth birthday is because of my promise to my parents.

16:09Speaker 1:When I first spoke to Rex Baks, we did not have witness statements like this. We had Rex's eclectic collection of papers with his distinctive handwriting. We had a suitcase of his own workings, including hard copies of flyers in which Rex set out a handful of facts about Ross's death and about his own investigations and how anyone with information could contact him. And Rex would put these flyers in letterboxes and public places in regional communities within an hour and a half's drive of Bendigo.

16:46Speaker 2:The Shallow as you'll read it, had me in court three times. Every time the coin wanted me to go to courtA to get in the car drive seven hundred and fifty k, they'd had to find somewhere to stay.

16:59Speaker 1:It became clear to me in this first conversation with the indefatigable Rex Bakes, that he wasn't going to court on those occasions in the service or defense of his one time client Ray McQueen. Rex was going to court in Melbourne to represent himself in response to legal action brought at the behest of Ray McQueen, the alleged murderer who has always denied wrongdoing and who was once briefly a client of Rex Bakes. Ray McQueen had asked a lawyer to bring an application in the Heidelberg Magistrates Court in Melbourne in twenty seventeen in a bid to stop Rex from continuing to scrutinize this cold case.

17:45Speaker 2:As you read through it all, you'll see what sort of a boke McQueen is too in the file. It's been a big commitment, but that's what dotting an investigator is all about.

17:56Speaker 1:I asked Rex Bakes about Ray McQueen's first wife, Jeannette.

18:01Speaker 2:I went to interview her. She wasn't home. In a case like that, what you do is you get the local rag and you put it on the driveway and you go back the next day see if it's still there. And I went back the next day and it was gone, so I knew there was someone there, and I knocked on the door. Her daughter answered, and the conversation lasted all of two minutes. The daughter said, I trust my father.

18:29Speaker 1:Ray McQueen has two daughters. The woman who spoke to Rex on the occasion that he's just described was Ray McQueen's daughter with his first wife, Jeanette. Rex has tried to make contact with Ray's younger daughter, Jody. She's Rosa's daughter.

18:47Speaker 2:What I did is, on one of my trips to Melbourne to court, I got the coroner's findings and all the newspaper clippings which will see this, plenty of them, and I dropped them on her front Verandah missed him. Mccoen was not a happy veggievide, and he told the magistrate as soon as the hearing was over he was going to have to go and see his daughter of Bendigo.

19:07Speaker 5:Sounds like it's got fairly personal between him.

19:09Speaker 2:Boy Well had twenty of time to think about his makeup. And I have no hatred for McQueen, but i've got him summed up. I can doubt myself at times. For McQueen, he must have bloody skin, as sick as an elephant.

19:28Speaker 5:What's he doing now.

19:31Speaker 2:He's supposed to be retired.

19:34Speaker 1:I pressed Rex about what his own family made of his longtime quest.

19:39Speaker 6:How did his wife.

19:40Speaker 1:Evon feel about him going off on his own to try to talk to witnesses in regional Victoria. In money and in time, the costs must have been hefty. When Rex owned a private investigation business, clients paid for his time and they covered his expenses. But nobody has been paying Rex's bills for his work on the ros McQueen case for about forty years. It has been a personal quest for justice for a woman he's never known, never met.

20:12Speaker 2:My wife has seen how it's gobbled up a lot of time and money. I've also got post traumatic stress disorder. Even when I went home spattered with blood one day after a bike out of garp me with a shotgun, that didn't deter me from wanting to be a good investigator.

20:30Speaker 5:You've been shot at.

20:32Speaker 2:Yeah, folk named Frank Spatieri shot me. The shotgun wounds were only superficial, but they still produced a nice site for my wife when I got home.

20:42Speaker 5:What happy with Frank's butteria?

20:45Speaker 2:Nothing? Because I wouldn't have him charged. I'd been in Frank statii's house under a pretext, and I just thought it was going to get pretty sticky in the witness box when the came out.

21:00Speaker 6:This he reminisces about lots of cases.

21:04Speaker 2:After the buddy shot me, they've chased me down. I wasn't dearly, and the other boker was going to kill me. He pointed a twenty two between the eyes, and I was actually looking up the barrel that he's chickened out.

21:18Speaker 1:We talked about the possibilities in a renewed investigation of Ross's death and what sort of cooperation I might get from the community where Roz lived.

21:29Speaker 2:Very good, it's going to.

21:31Speaker 5:Be done effectively, walking in your footsteps.

21:34Speaker 2:Naming you. Yes, I understand, going.

21:38Speaker 5:To Victoria and driving with you.

21:41Speaker 2:Yes, I'm happy. I just want to see justice done.

21:46Speaker 1:It was a deeply disturbing story, and I soon understood why Rex Bakes had toiled for years with fierce commitment. Many layers of this unsolved case will be investigated and sheard in detail in this podcast series.

22:03Speaker 2:I'm not obsessed that as an investigator, I always dealt very seriously with the matter. Stop before me. I've had to be able to finance it and also have the time to go away. It's not like a cat turning it on and off. You're either on or you're off, and I'm on.

22:47Speaker 1:Three months after the death of ros McQueen, the Melbourne Homicide Squads Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Blackshaw brought a charge of murder against Ray McQueen was granted taxpayer funded legal representation, and that's when the then private investigator Rex Bakes first became involved. Ray McQueen's solicitors asked Rex to get evidence to try to show that there was no animosity between Ray and his wife Roz and.

23:20Speaker 2:What they were trying to bring out was the fact that McCoy would never kill his wife because our loving couple expecting another child. That's what they were hanging their hat on.

23:31Speaker 1:Rex reckoned that he'd worn out tires looking for a farmhouse which he first visited in nineteen eighty seven. Rex recalled having gone there to talk to a couple who were apparently visited by Ray and ros McQueen.

23:47Speaker 2:I stuck rigidly to my instructions at the time to interview that couple.

23:52Speaker 1:And Rex believes the strychnine was possibly sourced from the shed in that farm.

23:58Speaker 2:The word strychner was used and the farmer said to me, have you ever seen strick than I said no, it's when he ushered me into that shed. That's exactly how I saw the strickenon in that shed the day I visited that couple. And it's never left me that I can't find it. People have not only driven on me, but they've flown me in their own aeroplanes looking for that farmhouse.

24:25Speaker 1:As Rex had interviewed the mystery couple and taken the statement from them on behalf of the then murder suspect Ray McQueen, then there should be clues about it in Rex's nineteen eighty seven notebook, perhaps even copies of statements in Rex's possession, but he ruled that idea out.

24:46Speaker 2:I sold my investigation business to a new owner in Melbourne, but he took over all my files and I haven't been able to find them. How's your health, Well, I've got to avoid is stress and talking to you. There is no stress. It's never been out of my mind. But it gets more intense, and then you go for another trip, and then you come home and write everything up. Then it settled for a while, and then you do other work at home and then you're off again. And that's the way it's been all these years. In between those trips, there's been a lot of thinking. There's been a lot of letter writing. That's the way investigations are.

25:25Speaker 2:You find out something and your head off down that avenue to see where it leads, and nothing has ever changed.

25:32Speaker 5:And you don't do email. You don't use the internet either, Nah, and your wife she doesn't. No, have you got a computer?

25:43Speaker 2:Long All of my work was always done in long hand on Fool's cap pads, and I was really brought undone in the witness box one day through notes that were a bit underdone. That's why you've got a suitcase for paper.

25:58Speaker 5:It's amazing that you're both don to stay free of that technology.

26:02Speaker 2:Well, it's choice, mate.

26:05Speaker 1:I think it's an amazing case and what you've done on it is really quite incredible, so I'd like to follow through.

26:14Speaker 2:I'll stick with you. But what did you think when the buddy suitcase arrived? Like what about the key on my letter?

26:21Speaker 5:I thought it was pretty interesting. My colleagues at work were a bit more anxious.

26:25Speaker 2:That went through my mind. I determined in the finish that it was safe to do it. But that's a suitcase I used to drag around with me, and I started off with a bloody satchel and a clipboard that just grew into that.

26:42Speaker 1:Rex regretted his failure to get from officials a complete record of the inquest, which examined Roslin's death closely.

26:51Speaker 2:His file was missing everywhere, which is a story this case.

26:56Speaker 1:A full transcript of the nineteen eighty seven in quest would be essential for a new podcast investigation.

27:04Speaker 6:We would be.

27:05Speaker 1:Behind the eight ball too without the insights and leads that we can glean from hundreds of pages of evidence of numerous witnesses who received subpoenas to appear at the inquest. For years, Rex has had to make do with the jottings of a helpful woman who knew ros McQueen and went to the inquest in nineteen eighty seven.

27:27Speaker 2:And you will see some tiny handwritten notes in that file in the suitcase, and that's written by Missus Dixon, the Queen's neighbor at the time. You know, were buried in her wardrobe underneath a lot of family tree stuff, but as furners, she found them, she rang and she was just there jumping through the phone. There's still people around it, believing justice that sometimes at the hard Buddy wrote that that's.

27:56Speaker 5:Life, and you think all these people will talk to.

27:58Speaker 2:Me trouble it all.

28:01Speaker 1:For Ray McQueen, Rex bakes must have been a constant nuisance. He told me he had talked to the brother of Ray McQueen's third wife, Carmen, in a farming community about a two hour drive northwest of Bendigo. And Rex also tracked down one of Ray McQueen's nineteen eighty six work friends at National Mutual Insurance and.

28:24Speaker 2:He said, I was with McQueen and I broke the news to him about his wife, and McQueen more or less broke down. But that's what these people do. It's all part of the facade to break down and look, oh they're terribly sorry their wife has just died. But what else do you want to do? Do you want to jump up the air and say you ran Now I can nick off with the babysitter.

28:47Speaker 1:I told Rex back then that I was going to be helped by a fastidious researcher, Tom Williams. We went through all the files and Tom is going to categorize everything and file all properly and highlight all the most relevant documents, your notes and so on. He's going through all with a fine tooth comb.

29:07Speaker 5:He's also going to develop.

29:10Speaker 1:A very detailed timeline. Karina Berger, the highly motivated former lawyer who left the Camera Coroner's office to join me in investigating cold case murders, wouldn't come on board for a couple more years before we could team up for an investigation into Oz and her death by strychnine poisoning.

29:31Speaker 6:I had other commitments.

29:34Speaker 1:Rex has snail mailed more than thirty handwritten letters to me in Brisbane. He's found me and sometimes pestered me with numerous calls to my mobile from his landline. They are all calls in which he's pressing for things to happen.

29:52Speaker 8:Just a little bit concern some of these people are getting a bit older, like both of us.

29:58Speaker 2:Got a twist around a bit.

30:01Speaker 1:The first two seasons of our podcast investigation into Bronwyn Winfield's disappearance and murder in lennox Head took all of twenty twenty four, and we still weren't finished with this remarkable case. But in January twenty twenty five, I met Rex and his wife Yvonne face a face for the first time in a hotel in Adelaide. Rex doesn't say it, but he is thinking about his own mortality. He's writing down his ideas and sharing them in case he dies before we can start our investigation. I met Rex a second time when we flew him to Brisbane in late twenty twenty five to hear more of the story of Roz and Ray and of Rex sitting down with us that day, an elderly man looked like he might shed a tear.

30:52Speaker 8:I feel very honored to be invited into this team. This has never happened to me before. That's why I'm so nervous. My life became getting to the bottom of the death of Rosslyn the Queen. New people keep trying to talk me into computer literacy, and that's not going to happen. But look at the twol What a wonderful tool the podcast is and their thorough You only need one little piece of evidence that blows out like an atomic bomb. I can't stay strongly enough how glad I am that this is finally coming to a head, because this is wrong and something going to be done about it.

31:43Speaker 2:And I don't want to get into.

31:44Speaker 8:A situation where we say should have could have have it.

31:50Speaker 1:But now mid twenty twenty six, we are no longer talking about just the possibility of joining up in a case sometime in the future. We are final on it, We are fully immersed in it and in the town where it happened. Rex has driven half a day from a small town of Little Rain in South Australia to meet us in the gold rush boom town of Bendigo. Karina Berger has her eyes peeled.

32:19Speaker 4:There is Hello, Rex, nice to see you again.

32:22Speaker 2:You too when we are last here.

32:26Speaker 8:I've never been to this airport and you want to see the goat track to get here got more zigzags in it than a crossword puzzle.

32:34Speaker 1:Rex has our undivided attention since our first contact four years ago. The long retired private investigator has been thinking about these days, about this assignment now unfolding in Bendigo.

32:49Speaker 4:How does it feel to finally be here?

32:52Speaker 8:It's just so good? Edily said, Oh, you don't see it excited, but a bigger look inside and say that they know it. In bed, I said to Wavon, I just want to be there there. I want to go, She said, or go, and I said, I'm not going in the dark, no dangerous.

33:10Speaker 1:Karina has been searching the electoral role to find people. Rex has seen the exhaustive efforts of our volunteer researcher Tom Williams. Tom's done a great job, amazing. He went through every piece of paper in Rex's old suitcase in Brisbane, indexed all of it and wrote incisive summaries. And Rex has read for the first time a transcript of the days of public hearings from a coroner's inquest into the death of ros McQueen. We received this precious document from the archives of Victoria's State Coroner after her positive consideration of our request for access. Witnesses turned up at the inquest to give evidence over six days. There were numerous statements and experts evidence the lead detective, the season cop from the homicide squad in Melbourne, Detective Senior Sergeant Ronald Blackshaw told Coroner Jeffrey Haw in his summary of the case that accompanied the police brief.

34:14Speaker 13:The witness Donna Mannallack, became involved with the deceased and the man before the court approximately three years prior to missus McQueen's death, when Donna was fourteen years of age. Manellick would occupy her time in company with the mcqueens by babysitting their daughter going on outings, then later accepting an offer from McQueen to teach her to play tennis. A relationship between Manellick and the McQueen certainly developed. The intensity of the relationship between the man before the court and Manellik became the subject of considerable comment by friends and relatives. McQueen was, in fact, rather overt in his attentions towards Manellick. The deceased woman had declared to Manallick just two weeks prior to her death her fears that her husband intended to divorce her.

34:56Speaker 1:When Donna was nine, her stepfather Alf Manallick and Ray McQueen became friends as drivers for Kangaroo flat bus lines. Donna's mother, Glennys, along with her husband Alf, befriended Ray and Roz over the ensuing years. Donna was fourteen when her parents went away for a brief holiday in the town of Mildura. That was the catalyst for Donna to stay at the McQueen house for a sleepover, lasting a couple of days. After that weekend, Donna became a regular presence there, and she told police that she enjoyed her visits to the home in Lockwood hanging out with Ray and Roz and playing with Jody.

35:39Speaker 13:The man before the court denies any romantic or sexual involvement with Donna Manellick prior to the death of his wife. He did, however, invite her to join him in a full heterosexual relationship a short time following her death.

35:53Speaker 1:Karina Berger and I talk every day about different angles in this case.

35:59Speaker 4:They didn't find the strict name in the house. There's no evidence of it at the property, So how did she ingest it? Was it in an iron capsule she was taking for her pregnancy. We don't know how she consumed it.

36:13Speaker 1:In phone chats after long days spent reading files of evidence, We've talked about where a breakthrough might come the case of Lynn Dawson around that same time. They don't know how Lynn died. They don't have a body, but they have all the circumstances. They're the same elements. There's an infatuation that an older man has.

36:36Speaker 2:Ray taking off with someone much much.

36:38Speaker 1:Younger, professing his absolute love and dedication to her.

36:43Speaker 6:Ray is trying to get her to move in with him.

36:47Speaker 5:It's so bold, isn't it.

36:49Speaker 14:They kind of had more in this case because they have the body and they know that it's strictly in poisoning that's the cause of death.

36:55Speaker 2:There are just so many things that are.

36:57Speaker 6:Suce I would put.

36:59Speaker 5:It before a jury. He looks fortunate.

37:02Speaker 14:Has Roslin been a victim of the times in the eighties where they just weren't old enough to pursue these cases. Would they take a different approach today and look at all of this and say, well, let's give it a crack and see what happens.

37:18Speaker 1:This is a cold case with significant challenges forty years later.

37:24Speaker 6:Do you believe that we can make a.

37:27Speaker 5:Difference with it?

37:29Speaker 4:Can we make a difference by telling the story and shining a spotlight on it and reminding people about it? Yes, I think it would be something pretty extraordinary that would have to come out of the woodworks for us to solve it.

37:42Speaker 1:Though, someone coming forward during the podcast, I'm.

37:46Speaker 15:Saying my strict name was missing from my shed, or Roslin's poisoner confessed to me, or some other facts come out and they contradict the coroner's finding that Ray did it.

38:06Speaker 6:Oh, Hi, Ray, it's Headley.

38:07Speaker 5:Thomas calling again. Could you please give me a call. I'm happy to talk on background.

38:13Speaker 1:In telephone calls and text messages to Ray McQueen. I asked for his side of the story. He was offered an interview, but I received no reply from him. We wanted to ensure that he was fully aware and had every opportunity to talk the Australians. Liam Mendez spoke to Ray McQueen near a public car wash in Melbourne, and you'll hear more from Ray in upcoming episodes. My colleague Headley Thomas has been trying to get in touch with you to tell your side of the story.

38:47Speaker 5:I've come here with the same offer I've always been.

38:51Speaker 2:My league team to edwit respect to the media.

38:56Speaker 5:Did you kill Rosalin?

38:58Speaker 6:No?

38:58Speaker 5:I did not.

38:59Speaker 2:And what about why don't recall herver kissing?

39:04Speaker 5:That sounds like something you would remember, though, so you don't recall I don't recall ever kissing one.

39:11Speaker 1:We've talked a lot about Donna and we know where this married mother leads a quiet life. Donna left Bendigo many years ago. She's tried to make her peace with what happened. Most people who know her these days don't know about a married man called Ray McQueen's infatuation with Donna. When she was just sixteen, and then the poisoning by strychnine of Ray McQueen's wife, roz.

39:38Speaker 4:She told the court that she'd gotten over it. So that's like a year after Roslin's death. She changed her mind and she wasn't running off with Ray anymore.

39:47Speaker 3:She didn't love him anymore, got.

39:49Speaker 5:On with her life.

39:52Speaker 1:We knew we would need to approach Donna and Ray and tell them what we were investigating. We would need to offer to an to questions that they would have and invite them to be interviewed to answer our many questions. For Ray, the stakes and the risks would be higher because in nineteen eighty seven, the coroner ruled that Ray murdered was at a time when he was infatuated with Donna. But a year later Ray avoided a full blown murder trial. There is no statute of limitations when it comes to murder.

40:30Speaker 1:At any time, this cold case could be restarted. But one thing did change fundamentally back then, after everything, Ray didn't get the girl Donna.

40:44Speaker 4:Imagine if he's murdered her and then she's changed her mind within a year, Oh my god.

40:50Speaker 3:It's terrible.

40:51Speaker 1:I mean, if Ray's done it, I don't think we are looking at a case where Donna is the fem fatale who's been an accessory in honor.

41:00Speaker 4:She just comes across as so naive, doesn't She.

41:04Speaker 5:Just completely naive about the whole thing.

41:07Speaker 1:Donna had been groomed for about two years before Roz died. She was at sixteen, a vulnerable child and deeply unhappy in her own home. And Donna had anxieties. She was a long way out of her depth when Ray McQueen zeroed in on her, and I think.

41:26Speaker 4:She was playing with fire. But she may not have known that, but I think by then she's falling in love with him.

41:32Speaker 1:We knew that Rex Bakes had visited Donna years ago, and he told us that he had a lengthy conversation with her in her husband's presence, and in.

41:43Speaker 4:Fact, Rex said in his notes that he really thought she needed to be separated from her husband when someone's talking to her to try to get her to be more candid. His view was that she wasn't going to open up in front of her husband.

41:57Speaker 1:One cold afternoon, Karina and I travel interstate far from our respective homes, far from Bendigo. We rented a car at an airport and we turned up unannounced at Donna's family home. She was out at work. Her husband, Kevin, asked us inside.

42:17Speaker 6:There were murder.

42:18Speaker 1:Mystery games on the kitchen table, and the family's musings about the latest mystery were pinned to the wall. We told Kevin why we were there. He invited us to leave our phone numbers, and he said he would speak to Donna when she got home. And that's when Karina and I drove away and slid into suburbia. It's about three o'clock on a weekday. We've parked off a nearby road to just get a few ideas and thoughts down. We've been left wondering whether Donna's going to talk to us.

42:55Speaker 1:Her husband is very protective of her. He obviously knows a lot about the case, and he told us that their children also know about this case. Whether Donna will talk to us, though, I don't know, what do you think.

43:09Speaker 4:I've got a feeling that she will. I've just got this sense that maybe she's ready to tell her story. She'll want to at least hear us out and find out why we're here and what this is all about.

43:22Speaker 1:And moved away from Bendigo a long time ago. He did say that when he first met Donna, she told him this is what had happened.

43:30Speaker 4:On their first date, he said, she disclosed what had happened to her.

43:35Speaker 1:I guess we'll just have to wait for a call when she gets home from work.

43:38Speaker 4:I'm hoping we might hear something by about five today, and then we decide what to do next and.

43:43Speaker 6:Where we go next, whether we go back to Bendigo yep.

43:48Speaker 4:And also whether we go and knock on Ray McQueen's store.

43:53Speaker 1:Corarina's intuitive prediction was spot on. Donna rang my mobile at two minutes before five pm. We met a short time later to explain what we were doing, and the next morning we sat with Donna for an interview lasting four hours as Kevin looked on quietly supporting his wife.

44:15Speaker 5:Why have you decided to talk to us?

44:18Speaker 3:I'd still visit Roslin's grave whenever I got the chance, when I'd return to Kangaroo Flat. I made a promise to Ross on her grave some years after that if I ever found out that he was in some way responsible, that I would time the hardest to make sure that he was brought to justice. But I'd do anything I could to make sure that he paid the price. She was my friend and people are going to go the list still, Yeah, sure, look what you did to her, but she was she was a beautiful French. He would have known that she would have died a really painful death.

45:00Speaker 3:That person what type of person.

45:03Speaker 5:That's obviously stayed with you, Donna.

45:06Speaker 3:Well, you think you've dealt with it, in processed the emotions and things like that, but there's big emotional impacts because this is horrible, the anxiety that comes up and the fear of facing everything all over again. He's just got to do it because if he's done it, he's lived a lovely life, hasn't he and a long life. And it's not just poor Rosalind that's been affected. That's her family and their friends. It's his family, it's my family.

45:53Speaker 2:No, it's not.

45:55Speaker 3:Fair because there's a lot of guilt that comes with age. You don't feel it at the time because you're young and certainly have no full understanding. But I've had a lot of years to think about it, and a lot of years of guilt. A lot of years is self analyzing as to what type of person I was back then and what part I played, but.

46:25Speaker 1:You were a sixteen year old girl being groomed by a man more than twice your age.

46:34Speaker 4:That's quite common in grooming that the groomer ingratiates themselves within the family unit, so that then the young person is able to spend time with that person without supervision and without concern.

46:48Speaker 1:Can you give yourself a break and say, I shouldn't feel guilt.

46:54Speaker 2:No, even though.

46:58Speaker 3:I know that I was young and naive, it's still really hard. You feel guilt, ashamed, embarrassed. But it's not about us. It's about her, and I think we've just got to get over.

47:18Speaker 5:It and do it.

47:20Speaker 3:That's why I'm doing it. And if he's responsible for her death, he did this, he got the idea, he got the strycken, and he put it in the capsule. If that's the way the police think he did it, and he ended her life, I just think it's all so cruel.

47:41Speaker 1:Donna told us the homicide detectives back then looked closely at whether she was directly involved in Ross's murder.

47:49Speaker 3:I certainly got treated that way by the police as a suspect. I was in there for eight hours one day, just being interviewed.

47:58Speaker 4:Possibly a bit of a tuck to exert pressure and try to get you to crack.

48:03Speaker 1:He told the truth that you did have strong feelings for him.

48:08Speaker 3:I never ever said let's get together, Hey, let's bump your wife off. I was a sixteen year old girl who had a crush and an older married man who then asked me to go into a physical relationship and to share a home, which then scared me to death. Even though I may have thought more or fantasized that there could be more, I was like, whoa when he brought it up to me about moving into a physical relationship and moving into his home. Then you've got the police coming in telling me that they think he killed his wife.

48:57Speaker 4:And did you get a lawyer or your mum or your dad accompany you when you saw the police or take any steps like that.

49:04Speaker 3:They were never in the interview room with me at all.

49:11Speaker 1:One of the senior detectives, Mick Furlong, had made his views clear to her during the murder probe.

49:18Speaker 3:He believed that Ray killed Rosalind and I either helped him do it or I was the reason he did it. Very upfront, he did say that I had had him stumped, said I've interviewed a lot of criminals, but you've got me fucked, he said, was very frightened at the fact that I might be going to jail.

49:41Speaker 1:Did Furlong think that you were trying to protect Ray?

49:44Speaker 5:Yes? And were you?

49:47Speaker 3:Probably, but not to the point where I'd lie.

49:50Speaker 1:How would you have been trying to protect him? In the next episode of The Poisoned Wife, a neighbor of Ray and ros McQueen disclosers might.

50:01Speaker 8:Have been three or four or four of those afterwards, and you've burned all the clothes.

50:05Speaker 5:How did you know that was going well? I could say, just smoking it coming up.

50:22Speaker 1:The Poisoned Wife is investigated and written by me Headley Thomas and Karina Berger. Police statements and some other material have been voice acted in the episodes.

50:34Speaker 6:In this podcast series.

50:36Speaker 1:Anyone with information about the death of Roslin McQueen can contact me confidentially at The Poisoned Wife at the Australian dot com dot au. Our editorial director is Claire Harvey. Audio production for The Poisoned Wife is by Wassabi Audio and Slade Gibson. Special thanks to Tom Williams, Sean Callenan and Taylor Greg Brown Rowan, Williams Brittany English and the Content Division, Adelaide Kennedy, Tarney Strowart, Sophie Renee, Liam Mendez, Sarah Elks, Erica Rutledge, Lydia Lynch, Chloe Barr, John Paul Cashan, will Seitem, Lilliana Melina, Lara Kamenos, Sue's Roll, Chantelle Love, Patrick McKee, Byron Wilder, Stefania Di Nicola, Cushy Chandani, Jonathan Barhame, Lachland Clear, Harry Hughes, Milan Skapanovich, Rex Bates.

51:34Speaker 6:And Wendy Beatty.

51:36Speaker 1:And of course, to the Australians Editor in Chief Michelle Gunn and the Editor Kelvin Healy for affording us the time and resources to tackle these important stories.