Pain behind cases that shocked the Far North
Worst offences of the past decade
CAIRNS detective Senior-Sergeant Ed Kinbacher has seen enough heartbreak, betrayal and horror to fill the next 10 years, there is still one case – beyond the constraints of a decade – that sticks with him as unfinished business.
Sen-Sgt Kinbacher said two tragedies in the last 10 years still stood out for the seasoned detective.
“You have the recent Toyah Cordingley case and obviously the children at Murray St – they are the most severe of the murders,” Sen-Sgt Kinbacher said.
He said with experience came an unquantifiable feeling – that some cases were going to stick with him.
“You can get a sense of it to some degree. It is obviously difficult to see, as Toyah was,” he said. “You must go in there and approach it with an open mind. Obviously with Murray St, the number of children leaves everyone scarred.”
But one of the cases he considers unfinished business happened closer to 20 years ago than 10 – the disappearance of Bevin and Brad Simmons on June 5, 2003.
Mr Simmons, the trawler captain of the El Dorado, was last seen departing to check off shore shark nets near the Coleman and Mitchell rivers, just south of Pormpuraaw, with son Brad, 10.
They disappeared and remain missing.
“But there would have to be new and compelling information for that to be reopened,” Sen-Sgt Kinbacher said.
Still, he works in the hope that in this decade something “new and compelling” may land on his desk.
LEEANN LAPHAM – 2010
The 2010 disappearance of Leeann Maxine Lapham was solved in 2017 when her partner, Graeme Colin Evans, led police to the spot where he dumped her body.
He had bashed Ms Lapham to death in an Innisfail motel during an argument sparked by a packet of bacon.
Ms Lapham’s body was found in dense, steep terrain about 20m off the side of a private driveway on Cowley Beach Rd.
Police said if Evans hadn’t revealed the location, her body would not have been found.
For almost eight years, he denied involvement in her disappearance.
Evans was sentenced to nine years in jail for manslaughter and six months for interference with a corpse.
He will be eligible for parole on February 8, 2021.
MURRAY STREET – 2014
Schizophrenic mother Raina Thaiday thought God wanted her to stab her children. So she did.
Suffering a chaotic spiral of disintegrating mental health, Thaiday thought the chirping of a bird was a divine signal to stab her seven children and niece in their Murray St home on December 19, 2014.
Her eldest son, Lewis Warria, 20, found the bodies throughout the house.
The Mental Health Court ruled that Thaiday had a defence of unsound mind and would not face prosecution over the children’s deaths.
When the moment of horror revealed itself, Cairns was stunned. Eight children – aged 2 to 15 – were dead.
The court would find that Thaiday – already susceptible to schizophrenia – was in a psychotic state.
The judge said there was no sign Thaiday was affected by drugs or alcohol at the time of the killings. The judge noted that in Thaiday’s mind, her actions were “the best thing she could do for them”.
GORDONVALE SLAYING – 2016
In a moment of vodka-fuelled rage and pent-up frustration,
Balwinder Singh Ghuman, 46, stabbed his wife, Manjinderjit, and mother-in-law, Sukwinder Kaur, to death at Wiltshire Drive, Gordonvale.
The arranged marriage of Balwinder and Manjinderjit had been troubled by his heavy drinking, paranoid delusions and resentment towards her family.
The spark that ignited the
brutal inferno was Manjinderjit’s demand that Ghuman leave the family home.
Two days before their wedding anniversary, on March 14, 2016, he stabbed Manjinderjit more than 20 times.
The prolonged horrific episode was so ferocious that a piece of the kitchen knife that Balwinder wielded broke off in his wife’s face.
He was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in a Cairns Supreme Court trial last year and has been jailed for life.
CANE FIELD GANG RAPE – 2017
Four men – Aaron Anau, 34,
Francis Peter, 35, Jeffrey Tibau Banu, 39, and Tom Banu Ingui, 45 – raped a 16-year-old girl in the boot of a four-wheel-drive, parked in a cane field at Machans Beach in December 2017.
The court heard the drunk, unconscious girl woke as she was being raped by Anau.
A Cairns District Court trial heard the girl had tried to escape but was dragged back to the car and later dumped on a Cairns street.
All the men bar Banu were jailed for 10 years, with Ingui earning a further six months due to his lengthy criminal history.
Anau, Peter and Ingui will serve at least 80 per cent of their sentence.
Banu received seven years jail as he was only found to be present during the rapes, but did not have sex with her.
MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR BETRAYAL – 2017
Former office manager Wendy Ann Aspinall managed to pull off a multimillion-dollar fraud under the noses of her employers at Down to Earth Demolitions between 2007 and 2017.
Aspinall is now behind bars, serving at least three years of an 11-year sentence.
It is believed to be the biggest fraud sentence in recent Far Northern memory.
Aspinall, 56, was sentenced in Cairns District Court for 10 years of fraud she committed while employed by Down to Earth Demolitions, embezzling $3.16 million through cash withdrawals, phony cheques and electronic transfers between 2007 and 2017.
The vast majority of the money – nearly $2.9 million – was lost to poker machines at the Reef Hotel Casino.
When the fraud was discovered, Aspinall instead accused her employers of “financial irregularity” and claimed they
“were using her as a cover”.
TOYAH CORDINGLEY – 2018
Toyah Cordingley’s memory lives on in countless car window stickers, banners, tattoos and a beach memorial.
The pharmacy worker did not return from a walk with her dog on October 21 in 2018 and when her father, Troy, found Toyah’s body on Wangetti Beach, 42km north of Cairns a day later, the city, state and country were stunned.
She had suffered visible and violent injuries and her killer remains at large.
The homicide investigation to hunt down whoever killed the 24-year-old “beautiful soul” is ongoing.