DOUBLE MURDER

VICKI ARNOLD

THE Atherton Tablelands are known for bucolic farm stays, Yungaburra’s Curtain Fig Tree, the alternate Kuranda lifestyle and weekend markets that draw day trippers up the Gilles and Kuranda Ranges.

But the rural communities that sit on the fertile plateau have a dark underbelly that occasionally rises to the surface in the most violent of ways; the Clarke double murder in 1981, the Gane double shooting at Mt Garnet last year, and most recently, an alleged stabbing on the outskirts of the same town that left Mark Miller bleeding out on a concrete footpath in the town’s ambulance station in June.

One case that has lingered in the public imagination and was the subject of books and a docu-drama stage production, was the deaths of best friends Vicki Arnold and JulieAnn Leahy at Cherry Tree Creek in 1991.

Jim Chapman was Atherton mayor when trail bike riders found the Atherton women’s decomposing remains in a Nissan four wheel drive parked in scrubland 27 years ago.

Ms Leahy’s husband Alan had reported the pair missing at 8am on July 26.

He told police the women had gone fishing and had not returned.

“I can’t recall anything like it in my time as Mayor or while I have lived in Atherton, and I have been here all my life,” Mr Chapman said. “It was confronting. “It was something you don’t expect to happen in the community.”

‘Confronting’ is an understatement.

The scene that greeted the five teenage riders at Cherry Tree Creek, 800 metres west of the AthertonHerberton Road, was grim.

Julie-Ann Leahy was found sitting in the driver’s seat.

She had been shot twice in the head, bashed with a 1.5kg rock found under the Nissan Patrol. Her throat had been slashed. Vicki Arnold lay slumped between the front passenger seat and the dash, almost sitting in the floor well.

Wedged between the door frame and her left leg was a serrated steak knife, its blade bent short of 90 degrees.

Ms Arnold’s right hand rested on the passenger seat around a sawn off .22 Ruger semi automatic rifle.

Her index finger rested on the trigger.

Ms Arnold had been shot twice in the head and once in her left thigh.

“It was a horrible thing to happen,” Mr Chapman said.

“It is the worst crime we experienced while I was mayor.”

Aside from the gruesome state of the women, the crime is remembered for the hasty assessment by police investigators.

“Without any specialist forensic examination, the senior officer quickly concluded Ms Arnold had killed Ms Leahy and then taken her own life,” Queensland coroner Michael Barnes said in his 2013 report.

“There was a discussion about ‘budgetary overtime’ whereupon they were told it was obviously a murder-suicide, that the bodies should be moved, and that things should be cleaned up.”

Mr Chapman remains generous about the investigation.

“The police did their jobs and came up with the answer they did — we have to respect the police and what they do,” he said.

“We can’t condemn the police themselves.”

After three coronial inquests the case remains unsolved.