Beenham Valley Road Part 2: The truth about Kirra's final moments unravels | Australian Story

[Music] we were called to kiera's house in bingham valley road she had called triple zero and told us that her partner had gone off i looked her in the eyes and said has he threatened you no has he hit you no a few months after one of my mates said did you hear keira died this was a young mother of four children who has presented to a hospital brain dead on arrival with multiple impacts to her body i think my biggest question is why has nothing been done no one's charged six years down the track but what was done to her was brutal kira had been with her new partner who we're calling jason for 10 months when she died my brother is charming he's all those things that you really really like when you first meet a dude it's like dr jekyll mr hyde this case has been haunting me so when i left the place i thought now i could do something about it jamie said look i want to start a podcast are you in what was he like with you was he vicious yeah probably the only way you can explain it is vicious kira actually told me that he had beaten her up we had grave fears for the safety of the children i was gonna go back for her i just didn't have time so a short time before kyra died alison and the ex-husband roger actually took the kids away from kyra they gave her an ultimatum get rid of jason and you can have your kids back but as long as you're with him you're not having the kids it wasn't a case of taking them away from her permanently because she was unfit you know that wasn't the point it was 100 the right thing alison wholeheartedly believed as well as i did that it wouldn't take her long she would want her kids back before she would want this situation i think kira's mindset was that she felt like she may have made the wrong decision and she wanted out of that relationship you know she'd given her kids up for this guy i think she wanted her husband back to have her kids back sometime early evening on wednesday the 16th of july 2014 kira called roger to say goodnight to the kids she speaks to them on the loudspeaker so i could hear her and she just sounded just sad broken-hearted it wasn't until the next afternoon about 18 hours later that i got a call to say the ambulance had taken kyra away [Music] the ambulance arrived at keira's house on bender valley road at about 2 25 pm on their arrival jason gave him the version that she had taken a bunch of her antidepressant tablets that he couldn't awake her and she was taken to gimpy hospital she what they call coned on the way to hospital that means her brain was so swollen that it had extended down into her spinal cord i called and i spoke to the doctor there and he told me that her glasgow coma scale that i used to measure consciousness was three the nurse in me knows that that's the lowest score you can get but my panicked mother brain was saying oh three there's still a chance they didn't find any signs of an overdose or any alcohol in a system but due to the lack of facilities at gimpy she was uh flown to the gold coast university hospital and allison arrived and had to say goodbye and the doctor just looked at me and she said there's nothing there's zero brain activity she said that the the x-ray looked like as if it was shaken baby syndrome where it's like this considering the marks on her face um it seems to me that she was bashed into the ground continuously you could tell straight away by walking in the the damage to her face um the bruising and the swelling into the frontal part of her face i said to allison i know this is confronting but i want to take a photo of her my mind went straight into what we were about to face we might need some evidence of what she looked like it still didn't quite do the justice of exactly how intense the bruising and the impacts were to her face and body and it's very quite confronting to see somebody who is physically breathing but not alive and you could tell that she had no life in her body they told us when we were nursing that the hearing is the last thing to go you talk to a person who's unconscious as if they can hear you and that's what i did i had all that time with her they set me up a recliner so i could lie down next to her and hold her and i promised her that i would make sure her children were taken care of and that'll get the bastion who did this to her [Music] kyra's friend katie was in an abusive relationship with jason before he got together with kira when kyra died katie was shocked she was flawed to the core jason's dad called me and then he had told me kyra had passed away i was just a broken mess it had been approximately 10 months since the children and i had escaped from jason the entire time i was with him i was fearful for my life trying to escape trying to leave is the most dangerous time because they've lost their control they become more aggressive more violent more persistent on gaining that control again so if that control that they've lost is over you they will try and kill you because they've lost the control i warned her a few times and she did confide in me that he was being physically abusive to her i do hate myself because i survived encouraging it's something that always sits with me his it should have been me and not her so after our first interview with allison for the podcast she emailed us a copy of the autopsy report and it made for some pretty confronting reading kira died of head injuries i shared bruises on her body some old some new some big some small i was reading the list of injuries i got to 27 i rang my sister and i said i need someone on the phone while i read this it kept going and it kept going got to 105. you realise it's serious stuff and it shouldn't have just been ignored reading the summary of the police report in the autopsy there was just no mention of any domestic violence relationships between jason and kira i would have expected it to be in there kyra's partner who's well known to police many interactions you know from gold coast up to gympie and he had a lot of domestic violence with different women jason had told police that kyra had overdosed on antidepressants but reading the autopsy there was no evidence of that overdose with an antidepressant the toxicology showed only therapeutic levels so i mean his story just wasn't believable after kyra died i needed to move up here to be closer to my grandchildren i was waiting for the police investigation to see whether or not jason would be arrested and it seems either he wasn't or he was and was then released the detectives sat in my lounge room and said to me we know he has a terrible horrible very bad history with women but he didn't do this and at that point i thought what is the point in talking to these guys alison was up against the wall she wanted answers for kyra peter boyce is a sunshine coast lawyer he's fairly well known he was involved in the daniel morgan case and so she reached out to him bless his cotton socks he's doing it pro bono which is just as well because i don't have the money to pay him so it's just nice to know that there's someone out there who wants justice not just money peter here's a mum trying to find out what happened to my daughter in her last moments how you been yeah okay she'd be entitled to say i'm very suspicious about what happened there's a lot to be levelled at the police about what sort of priority was this getting we're dependent on them as a society to make sure that they act responsibly quickly and reasonably but i would say if you ask me i'd find it difficult to say they've met any of those tests and that's pretty poor well the end goal is to get justice yeah because of her circumstances of her death and the autopsy report it's a matter that needs to go to the coroner peter boyce nelson have been pushing for a coronal inquest since day one it's taken a long time to get to this path in july this year a date for the inquest has finally been set so it's taken six years but it's finally happening i must say i think the podcast has been helpful unbelievable what they've come up with he did tell me that he felt that you know there was a case there and you know to go ahead and investigate and see what we can come up with [Music] it's just hard to get your head around what actually happened that night and why has there not been you know a result or a charge or a criminal proceeding but then you gotta you take a step back and remember that the police need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and to get that level of evidence it's not always easy and i don't know what the police know um none of us do the events of the 16th and 17th of july 2014. it's confusing that's conflicting and trying to just navigate your way through those two days it's hard it's a feat in itself one of the accounts that i had to work with was from katie jason's former partner jason's dad told katie everything that jason had told him [Music] he said that they had had a get-together at cura's house everyone had been drinking or something along those lines at the house that night there was jason chase and sister tamika her niece her daughter and jason's mother and they're having a good time having a dance everything's good but tamika says at some stage keira and her just start to have a fight about something and her mood changes i think drinking and her and jason not getting along probably overwhelmed her a lot more and made it a lot worse i could sense like something was going to happen but i'm pretty sure i said something disgusting like put your dog on a leash or something like that pretty much saying like that she was burning up you know and starting to cause [ __ ] and to go stop it kyra had flicked a switch she was hysterical she was mad she was like in a rage she glassed to make her all i felt was like a ch and then i looked down and there was glass everywhere and it took me a second to even comprehend what had happened and she smashed the glass over my head so and then it was really fast from there like she was really emotional really emotional then carrie threw a bike chain at her there was a red can of paint somewhere in there that got thrown around and to make her admits to punching um kyra four times i honestly don't know if it was three or four times i know that she felt backwards each time she sprung up really fast where did you hear her um on the side of the head pretty pretty much there i'd say if i could go back and not hit her i would i probably would have just copped it and i would have walked away apparently kyra was standing up she was alert she was awake kira had enough she told them all to get off her property off all of you get out they head back to gympie and they're going to jamaica and jason's brothers at some point later that night kiera and jason were home alone and from then on there are conflicting accounts mum said he rang before he went to sleep and told her that everything was all good that she was dancing around the lounge room and they were alright and settled and he'd give her a call in the morning but i thought that was weird because he wouldn't normally call mum jason told emergency services that there was a fight between keira and another woman and during that fight kira might have hit her head on a wardrobe and then kyra has taken a overdose of antidepressants then jason went to bed and he woke up at 1pm he found kara was unresponsive so he picks her up puts her in the shower tries to wake her up still nothing so he calls for medical help and this is where the family's account starts to vary it was jason's dad that told me jason had woken up thursday morning at about seven o'clock gone and sat on the veranda having a joint and then he's proceeded to go back to bed woke up in between 12 and 1 o'clock realized that kyra hasn't stirred and he had apparently called his brother nakota i've got a phone call asking me what he should do should he call the ambulance cure is not right and i could hear her moaning and groaning like she was in pain i said you're an idiot what are you doing calling me you should be calling an ambulance that's your partner and then we found out that afternoon it wasn't until two something or three something that he actually called the ambulance from our interviews and reading the news reports after kyra died we understand that keira may have lied for up to 12 hours with her injuries without any medical attention she died from hypoxia from brain injury if an ambulance and be called the night it happened or even the next morning she more than likely would still be alive whilst we were researching the podcast i got in touch with jason's sister tamika she wanted to talk about what happened that night and her potential role she played she told me in messages that she had felt responsible for kyra's death because she did punch her a few times and if she's in fact to blame that she'd happily go to jail and pay her time jason would just say that i did it and i destroyed his life and i took the one person that he loved away from him and i think he just knew that there's not much that i'll back down from but every time he said it it just crushed me i met tamika at a pub on the sunshine coast with alison it was pretty nerve-wracking to me he was very nervous about it i was surprised she actually showed up i put a mic on her and alison just gets involved and starts asking questions she was so fragile to me it was very obvious she looked like you know you touch her and she just yeah smash into a thousand places alison was really understanding i thought that she was gonna hate me i remember thinking at the time i'm literally trying to tell this lady that there's a possibility that i did this and she's still saying it's okay are you aware that she died as a result of basically shaken baby syndrome it's where the brain hits the skull you didn't do that she kept saying to me but i killed her and i said no you you didn't i mean four punches from a girl who weighs probably 55 kilos ringing wet i don't think so but i could have done it do it you didn't oh sorry if i did whatever part you played i forgive you i know where i hit her i know it was the same spot every time and if there's 105 bruises on that girl i know that that wasn't me which tells me that there's only one person that that it could be this girl had been led to believe that she killed my daughter how can you not feel for someone like that she's been carrying this burden for all these years one of the things about this case is the truth just kept changing it does make it very murky and hard to trust at that point we started to get to a bit more of the media part of the narrative and i don't know if it's the truth but it's definitely more than we had ever heard before it all started to make sense and it all just slotted in like a jigsaw puzzle we are here at evelyn's house who at one point lived next door to kyra but she has since moved we've been given access to this house um by the new owner and we are here to see what evelyn saw that night she didn't want to appear on camera because she'd been threatened by jason so she didn't feel comfortable from here this view you can clearly see kyra's house it's about 300 meters in the weeks leading up to this evelyn told me that she could hear fighting constantly between jason and kyra and the fight's always about the same thing is that kyra wanted jason to leave and she wanted her kids to come back the day that all this come worse it was late afternoon they were down the back at the gazebo behind the house i could hear the loud arguing the loud fighting and the next thing later on when she got up to go up the stairs he was right behind her i could see him belting or hitting into her back the accounts i got from the neighbours on both sides i think incredible on the right hand side there was nikki and she had several kids about 10 30 at night um the tear cutting up firewood could hear all the commotion coming from over that damo was only 15 at the time he was only young so he knew jason new kira and that night you know he's chopping wood in the shed pretty close to kiera's house and he heard he heard how serious this was and so what what did you hear when you were cutting firewood the first few minutes of it i think i had my earmuffs on because i was using a drop saw i remember walking out here so i could get a sort of a better hearing of what i could hear yeah and i could hear a lot of tin smashing kira was screaming ferociously like it was a blood curdling screen like a proper proper painting yeah like there was something bad going on next door and it's not that far is it it's really not it wasn't nearly this overgrown either what time do you reckon this was don't worry um i made about 10 30. yeah and it was fairly late and then it all went silent it was completely silent for about two to three minutes okay and then i could hear down towards the bottom of this shed and from everything i could tell i believe he was making a phone call right and um like i can remember the words he said clear and stay still it was i [ __ ] up i don't know what to do i need help right okay i've done something bad i need help right now i heard a car door closed and a car drive away i remember um walking up to tell mom that this one sounded a lot worse than what any of the other ones have she couldn't hear it nearly as predominantly she said this is just another argument our last time we called the police i couldn't do anything so it was pretty really pointless to call him again so neighbors up to a kilometer away heard blood-curdling screams the reality is no one called the police they got complacent i guess so after i met tamika she told me some pretty shocking information and tamika had heard that from someone who was close to sally jason jason's ex-girlfriend they started dating after kyra died he met her on facebook and was talking to her on facebook and she was actually a crucial part of this sally is not her real name she was too terrified for us to use her real name she didn't want to be interviewed on the podcast but she was happy to talk to me over text messages this is tameka reading one of sally's text messages babe i know what he'd done to her at the house he told me he broke down because he couldn't deal with it he told me everything he'd done to her she would still be here today if it wasn't for him sally told me that he confessed to killing kyra and he told her in explicit detail that he banged her head against the ground repeatedly in the bathroom and that's how she died she wanted me to know that i didn't do it and that she was going to tell the police in the homicide that he'd done it and that he told her that he was smashing her head into the tiles and he didn't mean to and she was unconscious and he freaked out and he didn't know what to do sally she told me that he tried to kill her twice she lives with the fact that she knows what that poor girl meaning keira must have been through because she's been through it twice herself with jason [Music] my brother is currently in prison for offences some of those are deprivational liberty he went to jail in august 2018. i think he's eligible for parole he just needs to get an address for it so as soon as he gets an address he can get out pretty much i feel sorry for him now because he's my brother you know but i'm like you can't do that to people you know you can't be out in the world if you're just gonna hurt people that's not human well more than five years after kieran mclaughlin died in her home outside gimpy a colonial inquest and will attempt to cut through the mystery surrounding her death the 27 year old had 105 bruises on her body no one has ever faced charges over her death her mother says she hopes the inquest finally brings some answers the inquest is really just the first step in a whole lot of things that i hope will happen [Music] i spent so long beating my head against a brick wall that i didn't ever think it would reach this point hopefully we'll end up with a criminal conviction but i do know that's a long way off so it's been six years in the making it's pretty exciting for the family the reason we did this case was because we had that personal connection that i felt a responsibility almost because i had met her and in a way the system led her down and i was a part of that system i did hand all my tapes over to the coroner definitely that'd be great if if that could assist in any way for sure what do you think will be some of the you know really um i guess important parts that might come out uh hearing what the medical professionals might have to say about her injuries definitely that's going to be interesting kira lee mclaughlin died of a traumatic brain injury police were first told she'd been in a fight then fell and hit her head but a top neurosurgeon said it was unlikely that's how she died we heard from top neurosurgeon terry coyne who told the court that it was more likely the catastrophic head injury which caused kyra's brain to swell and ultimately killed her it happened later in the night rather than the fight with tamika earlier that night we also heard from sally who told the court the confession that jason told her today a former girlfriend of miss mclaughlin's de facto partner told the gimpy hearing he confessed to hurting the deceased the night she was fatally injured shaking her and banging her head on the floor or wall while in a violent rage do you have any feelings on why this was so hard to investigate for police beyond reasonable doubt might not have quite been there it's obviously a very circumstantial case and it can come down to what he said against what she said and obviously she's deceased so she can't speak um so his version is obviously very different to what i've been told the inquest today will hear from seven witnesses including the deceased's former de facto partner who last saw her alive jason was going to testify via video link from jail but the coronal was adjourned which was very frustrating i'm really disappointed that i didn't get to hear uh his version of events that night but i guess it'll happen in a few weeks time so it's not over yet [Music] yeah i was never expecting the podcast to kind of take off the way it did it doesn't really surprise me though because you you're so devoted to the story really you've changed my life you've given me back some of me that i'd lost all of me there's definitely a change in you yeah well i i would like to think so you know i i feel certainly more alive [Music] for there to be change there needs to be a social and cultural shift towards domestic violence [Music] i have had to suppress a lot of trauma that i have from the violence i went through [Music] if it wasn't for my martial arts experience i do not think i would have survived what i survived ciara deserves justice her life has been cut short because of being in a situation that she can't escape and it's unfair for keira it's unfair for her mum and it's unfair for her children i want changes to be made because this happens every day kira's just one person if we can save one woman from ending up like kira did then i'll feel like i've achieved something if she didn't achieve something in life or maybe she's going to achieve it in death you can't just snuff her out and forget she ever existed she's she was too special having his dinner by his lovely mother [Music] look at the smiles i'd have to say a bit of a messy boy no fine dining for you for a little while no no if you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this program please contact the following services lifeline 13 11 14 1 800 respect 1 800 737 732 you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 304,484

Keywords: news, abc, abc news, australia, Australian Story, Kirra McLoughlin, Beenham Valley Road, Beenham Valley Road podcast, Australian true crime, Australian documentary, domestic violence, Gympie, podcasting, best australian podcasts

Id: 9wvrn_0Zu3k

Length: 31min 55sec (1915 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020