MURDER ARREST
Long-time suspect Karl Hague charged over 22-year-old cold case I never thought this day would come, says heartbroken mum
THERE is conjecture about whether 16-year-old Ricky Balcombe was in a gang.
Coroner Frank Moloney, who oversaw Ricky’s inquest, certainly believed he was.
He said the Newcomb teenager was part of a group dubbed the Main Street Criminals, who were involved in numerous assaults and robberies.
On the street, Ricky and his mates were also referred to as the Red Bandanas, for their signature headwear.
Whether he was in a gang or not — and some police believe the label is unwarranted — the teen was known to be skirting trouble in the lead-up to his shocking death.
Police believed Ricky had been “on the fringe of a number of violent incidents”, and suspected the fatal attack in Market Square could have been motivated by revenge.
According to police, Ricky had regularly carried a knife, because he was in fear of his safety and knew so many other people were prepared to not only carry but wield them.
But Ricky had been unarmed when he was repeatedly stabbed with a boning knife outside the central Safeway supermarket at 3.20pm on May 5, 1995.
As the time and location suggests, the mall in the midafternoon was full of visitors and potential witnesses.
Police declared within three weeks that they had identified a number of people of interest.
However it would be more than 17 months before the Homicide Squad laid a charge on their prime suspect.
Karl Hague was later committed to stand trial for Ricky’s murder. The accused would remain in custody for more than year, before he was sensationally released just nine days before the trial was to begin in February, 1998.
The deaths of three people close to the case was said to have hampered the police investigation.
Other witnesses had earlier blamed drugs for their inability to remember details of the day.
Nineteen years later, Ricky’s mother Christine Loader had lamented that no new witnesses had come forward since that time.
“The difficult part of everything is knowing how close we got. It just stopped, we were al- most there, and it just stopped,” she said in March this year.
The combination of a $1 million reward — and high-profile exposure on Channel 7’s new Million Dollar Cold Case — put the unsolved murder back in the spotlight.
On March 22, the night the television investigation into Ricky’s death screened, police received an anonymous tip.
The mystery caller provided some details about the murder weapon and clothing said to be worn by Ricky’s hooded killer.
Five months later, Karl Hague has again been charged with Ricky’s murder.