KILLER REACTS TO COLD CASE ARREST
THE man police tried to blame for the Linda Reed murder 35 years ago was selling watering cans and table lamps in a sleepy town in New Zealand yesterday.
Double killer Craig Andrew McConnell (right) has owned an auction house after serving sentences for the killings of Tweed Heads brothel owner Kevin Mannix and prostitute Lovina Cunningham in 1984. He was later acquitted at a trial for the murder of newlywed Ms Reed, who was abducted and killed in December 1983. McConnell was aware of the arrest of Troy James O’Meara this week when contacted by the Bulletin. “If you went through my situation how would you feel?”
THE man police tried to blame for the Linda Reed murder 35 years ago was selling watering cans and table lamps in a sleepy town in New Zealand yesterday.
Double killer Craig Andrew McConnell has owned an auction house in Timaru in the South Island since 2003, after serving sentences handed down in the Supreme Court in 1985 for the killings of Tweed Heads sex shop owner Kevin Mannix and prostitute Lovina Cunningham.
In 1986, he also went to trial for the murder of newly wed Ms Reed, who was abducted and killed during her lunch break as a retail assistant at Pacific Fair on December 13, 1983.
McConnell was acquitted after the chief witness died of a heroin overdose shortly before the trial, leaving the jury with insufficient evidence.
Police this week arrested and charged Troy James O’Meara with Ms Reed’s death, alleging DNA and fingerprinting technology had helped unravel one of the most intriguing cold cases on the Gold Coast.
McConnell was aware of O’Meara’s arrest when contacted by the Bulletin yesterday.
“How do you think I’d react to it?” he said.
“If you go and look back at the trial and look at the evidence the police brought up and all the rest of it, there’s your answer. “How would you feel? “If you went through my situation how would you feel?”
McConnell was jailed after confessing to the other two murders committed in 1984.
He pleaded guilty to killing Mannix with three accomplices.
According to a police statement presented to court over the Mannix death, McConnell held a knife to the victim’s throat as another man held his feet.
The men then bound and gagged Mannix and pushed him down stairs before McConnell stabbed him and slashed his throat.
McConnell also admitted that months later, after being low on cash, he and some friends found a prostitute. He had sex with her, then robbed and killed her by cutting her throat with a steak knife.
A detective said in court at the time McConnell was “the greatest argument for the death penalty there ever was’’.
Gold Coast solicitor Chris Nyst represented McConnell for a period in 1984 over the two murders.
When Mr Nyst first consulted with McConnell at the Southport Watchhouse, he was informed by his client that police had been putting pressure on him to confess to Ms Reed’s murder too.
“I had grave concerns that that had just been dumped on him because he was a likely prospect at that time,” Mr Nyst said yesterday.
During trial, McConnell admitted to killing Mannix and Cunningham in 1984, but not Ms Reed.
Under cross-examination, he said: “The reason I am pleading not guilty (to the Reed murder) is because I am not guilty.”
Mr Nyst said he understood the logic.
“McConnell is clearly a murderer,” he said.
“He confessed to the murder of both Mannix and Cunningham and they were pretty ugly murders, as murders tend to be.
“He was serving two life sentences. There wasn’t reason for him to lie.
“I’ve got to say that was his point. He was saying ‘I’m a killer, but I didn’t kill her’.”
Mr Nyst’s view was that when McConnell was acquitted, police did not seem motivated to continue to investigate.
“What is the bigger question in these things, whenever somebody who is wrongly convicted, it’s not only a matter of punishing them, but you punish the rest of society because the person that actually did the crime goes free,” he said.
“I was disappointed later on when the coroner’s inquest (into Ms Reed’s death, held in 1987) came along when the police gave evidence saying that in fact McConnell was the murderer.
Mr Nyst said he had the impression that police had “given up on it and they weren’t going to do anything about it.
“I remember at the time feeling deep sympathy for the family who really were left to think well, the person who did it got away with it.
“Well that wasn’t the case thankfully. Luckily someone had the courage and tenacity to pick it up and run with it.”
On Wednesday, a scrunched up pack of cigarettes and a fingerprint on a car window led police to the man now charged with her murder, Troy James O’Meara.
Ms Reed’s body and car were found in bushland at Gaven after she went missing from Pacific Fair in 1983.
Police publicised an empty pack of cigarettes found in Ms Reed’s car.
Police will allege that days later, a man driving a Toyota HiAce picked up a hitchhiker in the area. The hitchhiker was smoking the same brand of cigarettes as the pack found in Ms Reed’s car, but didn’t have the packet.
The driver contacted police who took a fingerprint from the passenger-side window.
Nearly four decades later, police will allege the fingerprint is O’Meara’s.