Where’s Julie, Clive?
KILLER CHANGES STORY NEARLY TWO DECADES AFTER MURDERING WIFE
FOR 16 years a cold-blooded killer told police he murdered his wife with a hammer in his Southport home, wrapped her “in a plastic drop sheet” and dumped the body off The Spit.
During a lengthy battle for release from prison, however, Clive Anthony Nicholson now says he drove to Cedar Grove, Logan in July 2003, dug a hole about twofeet deep, buried Julie Rose Nicholson’s body, and placed a timber pallet on top of the grave.
He went with police to the site, a private property, in January 2019. It was searched using cadaver dogs, but no remains were found.
Authorities say his new tale is “implausible”.
Nicholson’s about-face was revealed in his bid for parole. It was refused under the “no body, no parole” laws.
Under the laws, Nicholson could only be released on parole if the board was satisfied he “co-operated satisfactorily in the investigation” to locate his wife’s body.
Nicholson was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006 after being found guilty of murdering the mother of his child.
He tried to cover up his wife’s death with a “myriad” of lies including filing a missing person’s report, according to the parole decision, released on Tuesday.
The lies were “elaborate and detailed”.
He later confessed to killing her with a hammer on or about July 15, 2003 and dumping her body in the Southport Spit through a series of letters to friends, family, his lawyer and detectives.
He said he took his wife’s body to The Spit, wrapped “in a plastic drop sheet”, and “floated her into the water”.
Nicholson wrote about his daughter, then three: “I have now robbed her of both parents – One by way of accident. One by way of broken heart.”
The letters demonstrated his “suicidal intention” in which he stated “at least for a while Julie and I will again share the ocean we loved”.
Nicholson repeated the line about dumping Mrs Nicholson’s body at The Spit to police in 2017, but sensationally changed his story in 2019 – three days before his initial parole hearing.
In his latest version,
Nicholson said he drove to The Spit, but changed his mind and travelled to the rural Cedar Grove.
He said the body was wrapped in a sheep-skin mattress cover, a bed sheet and then in a tarpaulin ground sheet.
The Parole Board rejected
Nicholson’s parole as it was not satisfied that he co-operated “satisfactorily with the investigation of the offence to identify the victim’s location”.
The board found his latter version was “implausible” as the area was unfamiliar to him and he had a young daughter at home.
“It is right to say that the applicant’s admission that his previous account of a burial at sea was a lie puts his credit in issue. What the board is then left with is, on the one hand, a long-held account that is ostensibly plausible but said by the applicant to be a lie,” the report said.
“And on the other, an implausible account in relation to which the board cannot find credibility to any degree of satisfaction.”
Lawyers for Nicholson argued “to damn his present cooperation with reference to his past lies is to defeat the purpose of the provision …”.