Catching A Madman: tracking down Sydney's family court bomber | 7NEWS Spotlight

viewers are advised the following program includes course language and violence tonight innocent people were killed over me the story no one was game to touch he is the manifestation of pure evil a little girl her violent deranged are you a violent man serial killing father i used to shoot rabbits i suppose that's pretty violent the most frightening man in australia people have to understand how bad this man was possessive it's mine is mine and i'm going to have what's mine [Music] and five bombings he was spitting in the eye of justice in australia i've been framed by police he almost got away with it he's a very very credible now the riveting inside story you are in danger this man is a total psychopath the vital breakthrough he's bled everywhere that trapped the family court bomber how this confrontation changed everything and in a major new development is there a new victim defectively disappeared off the face of the planet well let me terrify you some more hello i'm ross coulthard of all the investigations i've covered this is the one that's given me the greatest satisfaction to solve a serial killer who came so close to getting away with it he maimed children widowed wives and assassinated judges and tonight in a sinister new development did leonard john warwick murder his own sister [Music] warwick was the madman amongst us a former soldier former fireman a crack shot with a very big grudge the family court bomber for detectives the question was not so much who done it but how do we prove it and for 30 years they didn't have an answer then on a cold winter's morning len warwick walked in front of channel 7's cameras and the coldest of cold cases suddenly got very hot i've got a red dot that means you're rolling you want me yup yes please quick the day i confronted len warwick was the beginning of the end for him [ __ ] off [Applause] the moment my team and i began investigating this madman we were warned we were putting our lives at risk you are in danger this man is a total psychopath [Music] leonard warwick's mind is an evil place and few people know it better than retired detective kevin woods for more than 30 years warwick was more than a nemesis to woods he was an obsession different from every other suspect the decorated cop had ever pursued because he was the one the only one that got away and for woods in more ways than one it nearly killed him i was extremely worried because a witness that i interviewed said he was looking for my address so he is very very concerned this boy didn't muck around i've never met a person as dangerous as what leonard warwick is he stopped at nothing in his quest to get custody of his daughter he took it personally because everybody that stood in his way be it judges or lawyers or the church members who helped to hide the daughter he went after all of them he fought very very hard to keep you didn't he yeah why what is it about your dad's personality that made him fight do you think he really loved you oh yeah and possessive it's mine is mine and i'm gonna have what's mine forty years ago trudy warwick was a little girl at the center of a bitter custody dispute her mother andrea battled for years to keep her but her father lynn continually defied orders of the family court why was leonard warwick so motivated to murder i believe he is a psychopath who wouldn't take no for an answer he stopped at nothing in his quest to keep custody of his daughter he took it personally innocent people were killed over me two shootings four murders and five bombings so what i've got here is an interview that lin warwick did back in 1986. i just want you to watch it and oh look at him oh my god when lynn warwick was named as prime suspect for the family court attacks he gave one interview what sort of a person do you think would want to kill a family court judge a person that was probably disturbed very upset have you ever been upset at a decision against you in the family court not quite that upset terry are you a violent man no tearing i'm not i remember that question violent thing you've done well i used to shoot rabbits i suppose that's pretty violent herb island was lynn warwick very violent very mind controlling very physical and is that why you chose to leave him yes i wouldn't be alive today if i didn't leave him he'd come home and if he didn't have a a good day he'd come straight in and walk start working um the night i left him he had me pinned down in the lounge room and he he had his foot with his fire brigade boots on stomping it kicking into me fearing for her life andrea fled from the house leaving her young daughter inside i just ran i ran out i got the keys and i unlocked the door and i just ran it was the last straw for andrea who'd married lynn five years before for her own protection she asked her brother stephen to go back with her to collect trudy stephen went up knocked on the front door then opened the door and steve steve said look mate we just want the baby just hand the baby over and that was it and len just slammed the door eventually with the help of the family court andrea got trudy back they moved in with stephen who now became a target of lynn warwick's anger let's go back to february 1980 what happened that night my brother my brother was killed in the house and taken from the house while my daughter and i slept in the house late that night stephen finished work at reeves bee workers club and walked home andrea and trudy slept in the front bedroom closest to the front of the house and steven slept in the back bedroom stephen came home went to bed and somebody came in and shot him in the head and carried him out he was shot dead in his bed at night and his body carried away and dumped in the hawkesbury river was lynn warwick strong enough to do that was he capable of doing that yes he was a solid firefighter he's gonna be she's gotta be he'd hit him over your shoulder and carry him out of a building building they all failed that when andrea awoke the next morning she wasn't concerned thinking that stephen must have stayed over with his girlfriend it was only later that the police found tiny specks of blood on stephen's bedroom wall stephen was missing for six days so where was stephen found cowan creek [Music] he'd been in the water for a few days and uh flooded the surface despite having 11 house bricks tied around him so it was pretty rugged clearly murder clearly yeah no doubt about that no doubt about it you can see the uh the gunshot wound in the head mick mcgann was a local detective on the case at the time how would a murderer conceal the noise and the platter and the the clamour that's made when somebody's being killed probably there's the way i'd think about it is putting a cushion or some other device over the uh over the end of the barrel did your dad ever show you any weapons in the house oh show me any weapons we used to go rabbit shooting fox shooting you know so yeah i saw rifles and bullets and whatnot it was a crack shot yeah if lynn did murder stephen why would he have murdered him well what better way to get back at the family who were helping andrea to get away from him than to kill the only son and stephen was the first one who approached him to try and get the child off him four months after stephen died there was a judge murdered in warlora that's right judge opus shot at point blank range at his front door while his children are having dinner justice david opus was married to christian they had two children joshua and persia who were then eight and six a fearful christian asked that her face not be shown in full she and david had been married for 10 years he was absolutely delightful he was had the most beautiful sense of humor um he was such a loving loving father before the children arrived he was a lovely boyfriend and then husband and he was just full of life did you have any reasons to be angry at judge opus no i don't think so uh did he preside over the early part of your divorce he did yes one month after justice david opus had briefly taken away lynn warwick's access to his daughter for defying court orders someone came to the judge's front door the doorbell rang josh said to david dance in the door daddy eat your tea he left the room went out shut the front door an alarm was going off in the street muffling what happened next we waited and waited and i said to the children that is a long time i think i'll go out and see what's what what's going on i went out open the front door and lying on the ground was dated justice opus was shot with a 22 caliber long rifle when you heard that judge opus had been murdered what did you think he's he had involvement in it a judge murdered on his doorstep in front of his family never before in australian history have sitting judges being the target of lethal force in this country never before that shows you the makeup of this person the murder happened at 7 10 pm 33 year old lynn warwick had finished his fire fighting shift at least 70 minutes earlier there is no physical evidence linking len warwick to this crime scene no blood no fingerprints no dna but minutes after the opus murder there is an eyewitness account of a man running away from the scene carrying a long canvas bag with white handles under hypnosis the witness described a man about 5 foot 10 in height 25 to 30 years old of solid build with dark hair and a medium complexion this is the identicate shown at the inquest warwick's army record shows he was five foot eight and a half with a solid build and olive skin this is vision of len warwick six years after justice opus was killed he has a moustache but for all of his marriage he was clean-shaven so let's remove it here again is the identicate now let's add sunglasses and cap lynn warwick refused a police request to appear in a police lineup before any witness [Music] andrea and len warwick had a very significant conversation in may of 1980 which she later detailed in evidence to the coroner's court they were both appearing here before justice opus at what was then the parramatta family court during the luncheon adjournment warwick allegedly told andrea she wouldn't have to worry about justice opus because he won't be there much longer she said why is he going on holidays warwick allegedly replied no he just won't be there at all five weeks later justice opus was dead now that's pretty compelling evidence that he he intended to kill the judge did you shoot him no did you have any knowledge of them no not at all no idea that might happen to him no here at the fire station where lynn warwick worked police did a search and in the locker used by warwick they found news articles detailing the murder of justice opus they also searched his home where they found a number of firearms none of them the murder weapon do you feel that the police at this stage were aggressively pursuing len for the murder of judge opus and the murder of stephen yes yes yes he was number one so he was their number one prime suspect main number one sub-suspect we suspected it was warwick from the beginning yes he knew that you knew it was him yes and even when he knew you were on his tail he still thought he could get away with it didn't he oh absolutely yes he's a very clever man [Music] after justice david opus was murdered justice richard g a father of two took over his family court caseload alison his daughter was 12 and scared well i knew that justice opus had been shot dead and then dad said they've offered me the job to replace him and i just had this well i don't know call it sixth sense that um something was gonna happen to us march 1984 alison's mum was ill in hospital alison her dad and her fifteen-year-old brother stephen were asleep at home i just had a really loud clap of thunder the loudest i'd ever heard but then i turned into my room and i just went into shock just saw debris all covered in my room my drawers had fallen in everything had just crashed into the center of my room and it was just like i'd woken up in a movie or a nightmare i went into the hallway once i'd climbed over my furniture and i just saw the hallway wasn't there anymore it was just fully caved in um are you thinking about your father at this stage i did hope that dad was okay that stephen said well look we'll find him once we get out of the house so we went through his window came around the back of the house and we met dad on the back deck he was covered in debris dust over his whole body looked like a ghost except that he had blood pouring down his legs from his thighs he'd been cut in his legs yes yes with glass there was a beam that fell over my mum's side of the bed which narrowly missed him tell me what you thought as soon as you saw the front of your house i just cried i just felt really sad just looks like a war zone in suburban sydney yeah had judge g ordered you to hand over your daughter to your former wife during the divorce i'm not too sure terry justice g had previously issued orders for the sale of len warwick's home after his divorce he restricted access to his daughter and even issued an arrest warrant when he failed to return trudy after an access visit when you heard about that bomb what did you think felt really sick that another person's been hurt a week before that we appeared in that court in front of him [Music] this was an attack on the administration of justice in australia judges would make a ruling against him and he responded with lethal force sunday night the following month [Music] the family court at parramatta is blown up all of warwick's proceedings were heard here miraculously no one dies the bomb at the parramatta court was set the night before he was due to appear there he didn't want to appear there the next day and he didn't the bomb went off the court was destroyed but the bombing doesn't stop three months later justice ray watson who's taken over from justice g is about to leave his greenwich home for will his wife pearl is killed instantly [Music] pearl watson's bomb was at the front door as soon as she opened that door an inch the bomb went off and blew her through the back wall justice watson survives their front door had been booby-trapped the bomb exploded at 8 15 a.m it contained several kilos of gelignite lynne warwick's father was an expert in explosives and almost certainly passed that knowledge on to his son so there's no doubt in your mind he knew how to make a bomb absolutely when you heard that the wife of a judge had been murdered what was your reaction chopped hurt another person's been hurt because i'm sorry justice watson left hospital to attend his wife's funeral in march he'd made orders restricting lynn warwick's access to his daughter the police have said that it's a mathematical improbability that the same person was the common link in so many explosions and murders and every time we appeared in each in front of each judge the only thing that connected all of those crimes was lin warwick yes that's true i believe that he is the manifestation of pure evil after pearl watson's death family called judges bob hawk and new south wales premier neville ran offered a ha a million dollar reward we don't intend to stand idly by and tolerate these sorts of attacks uh not merely on individuals but on the very basis of the system that operates in this community a joint federal state police task force was also established all eyes were now focused on the prime suspect we had federal surveillance officers and state surveillance officers we used up virtually every surveillance officer in new south wales in australia but no matter how hard they tried the police couldn't catch him in the act warwick thought he was invincible in 1985 another bomb was found under the bonnet of a car outside a house here in north me near parramatta the intended victim had recently moved from the address but was still listed in the phone book the significance of it was that the car was outside the home of what used to be the house of your then family court solicitor mr watts yes yes and a bomb was placed in that car this is why our task force was still going what did mr watt say to you at the time i got a phone call and he said i won't be able to yeah act on your behalf and that was it basically he was saying he was too frightened for his own safety to act for you any longer that's right [Music] have any knowledge of that no jerry what sort of a person is this person is he mad he's absolutely mad he's a psychopath but for many years len warwick presented as a harmless retiree living with his new wife in southwest sydney in 1985 his former wife andrea was living in fear on the 9th of february lynn came to her home and bashed her that night a bomb was planted in her lawyer's car andrea's sister judy was also threatened freddie phone caused to kill her and her children who was making those phone calls then the police said that it was a good idea for me to get out of sydney because i was probably next on the list judy belonged to a jehovah's witness congregation near where lynn warwick lived she asked church members to help move her andrea and andrea's daughter to a secret location hundreds of kilometers away greg hahn drove the removal van do you remember when you helped move andrea's possessions yes you came to her house she opened the door do you remember anything about her features that day she had a black eye um looked like she'd had some violence did she say who'd done that to her yes she said it was lynn had done this with her words [Music] what i remember about that sunday morning was it was spectacular was one of those mornings in sydney in winter you know where the sky is blue blue blue not a cloud the gum trees look fabulous also with sue and peter schultz in the jehovah's witness hall that day were graham and joy whites and two of their three daughters joy had been married to graham for over 15 years he was always calm and loving quiet man um but we could be lots of fun yeah was he a a good father he was an excellent dad people this week we were reading from john of six of 68 there were 125 people in the church that died including 25 children therefore jesus said to the 12 you do not want to go also do you it was an older building so it was it was in the middle of july so it was quite cold and we were holding hands and i thought oh his hand would be really cold so we had a small rug over her knee and i pulled it up over our hands and he knew of course why i was doing it to warm his hand and he turned to me and and whispered i love you and that was the last thing i remember and we have believed could you remember a bane no just went your ears just went numb and and remember it's a flash yeah flash heat i don't remember heat no just a lot of debris and just bits of like little fine bits of wood falling after the bomb it was dead silent there was no noise the air started to thin out it virtually blew half the kingdom hall away i thought i'm having a nightmare it must be a nightmare so i started to call out for peter because i thought if if peter will just wake me up everything will be fine and then she started calling out in a sort of a muffled way peter peter her upper lip was cut right across and was hanging down near her chin uh her eyes her whole face everything was swelling up so quickly so i tried to tend to her just to the side of sue was one of our friends a woman and she was calling out for her husband who was who was killed that's great that's great graeme wykes dies instantly [Music] joy likes and sue schultz suffer terrible injuries dozens more are badly hurt [Music] fourteen-year-old elaine weitz is carried to an ambulance were you looking for your mum and dad at that stage um i knew where they were to towards my left and so i did look around as that as they were carrying me out then um and i did see a blanket sort of put out to cover obviously which i realised later was my dad's body you know i heard um one of the eldest in our congregation say yeah her father graham's died and i prayed to um god and said if that was the best thing because he might have suffered and and been in a lot of pain that might have been the best thing i understand in two weeks time august the second you're about to celebrate your 16th anniversary that's right yes he was a fine fine man and he's missed out on life because somebody um done a very bad thing it was obvious that he set it there with deliberate intent to kill probably the whole congregation because the congregation of that church assisted leonard warwick's wife to take away the daughter and move them up the north coast to get away from leonard warwick the bomb was triggered by an alarm clock the same explosives were used in the attempted car bombing of andrea's lawyer five months earlier the night before there had been a break-in at the church i believe it was a ricky because he was looking for somewhere to place his bong on that day leonard warwick broke a plane of glass on a side window of the church he reached in through that broken glass and there was a window winder he wound the window out so that he could gain access to the church in so doing he lacerated part of his body and upon entering the church in the dark his bled everywhere it's important for people to understand that back in the 1980s dna evidence did not exist we knew that that blood was o positive but a large proportion of the society has i think it's 38 percent have a positive blood so it wasn't sufficient to charge him [Music] it's just four minutes drive from lynn warwick's then house in casulla to hear the jehovah's witness hall the bombing of the jehovah's witness hall the same church the same congregation which offered your white sanctuary not a coincidence isn't it connecting with you well i now know about the activities of the jehovah's witnesses in relation to the hiding of my daughter i didn't know that at the time he'd been asking people in the congregation where you and andrea and trudy were hadn't he yes he approached people in that congregation and friends sort of contacted me and said that he's been making phone calls asking where we so you're saying that at the time of the the church bombing you didn't know of your wife's involvement with the jehovah's witness no you knew nothing about it yeah nine days after the deadly explosion federal police went to warwick's home with a search warrant he refused to be interviewed and refused to give a blood sample the police discovered three handwritten pages containing the phone numbers of prominent jehovah's witness members after the bombing of the church hall andrea's life was in turmoil in hiding and scared she took the heartbreaking decision to hand her seven-year-old daughter trudy back to lynn so you gave len warwick full-time custody of trudy at that point yes how was that decision [Music] i didn't want to do it but i thought well maybe you'll leave everybody alone leave leave us in peace maybe he might change with her and be appreciated to have his daughter with it with him interesting then isn't it that ever since trudy was given back to lynn full time yeah everything stopped everything stopped everything stopped for 35 years leonard warwick literally thought he'd got away with murder yes i believe so i believe that he thought he'd got away with it [Music] he thought he'd been able to beat you yes and i must face fact he had at that stage yes so one of australia's most violent serial murderers remained at large and the cool cunning prime suspect at the center of the family court killing spree showed no signs of putting a foot wrong or changing his story leonard warwick got lucky he almost got away with it but then we came calling we're recording you at the moment because what we are doing is preparing a story sir obviously from the very first time he was called in for questioning len warwick said little you were accused in a court stupid and bombings you were the prime minister he consistently played one card his right to silence on the basis that his answers might incriminate him why don't for five years warwick was placed under constant surveillance his car home and phone were bugged the police helicopter was used to track him when he went into the national park adjoining his then home warwick was seen carrying suspicious police suspected he had a hiding place they just didn't know where we got some information that uh warwick used to frequent a cave in the national park near helensburg which is where he was from um do you remember the name of the cave our my memory was it was jimmy the black's cave did you find the cave no we didn't is that the rocks up there acting on information we went to the bushland south of sydney our guide who knows len warwick was a local who insisted on not being identified [Music] he knows the area and knew of the cave after two hours he brought us to the spot police failed to find well the police couldn't find this cave what they thought might have been lynn warwick's hideout and it's not hard to see why we only found it with the help of locals but that's not all the locals have told us we've uncovered quite extraordinary new evidence we understand local youths knew that if you came into this forest just two kilometers from lenwarix then home if you knew where to look you could find and steal explosives in the mid 70s demolition crews were blasting rock for a reservoir expansion close to helensburg near warwick's home to those in the know security was lacks our guide revealed how on one occasion he and mates stole fuses detonators and explosives len warwick knew this place like the back of his hand his father worked in a nearby mine where explosives were often used i know you don't want to talk to us but there's a lot of people out there victims names victims family your own daughter they wanted to know whether or not you did this do you think that lynn warwick would be convicted today if we hadn't made that story i think it would be difficult your story convinced me your story set out very clearly and concisely in chronological order these horrific murders and bombings and it brought to the attention of the hierarchy of the police force that these crimes did need some attention by the coal coast unit len warwick of course knew nothing of this renewed interest and also unknown to him and at first forgotten by police was his crucial mistake that was about to bring him down it was buried deep inside a box of evidence here at the sydney police center remember on the night before a fatal bomb blast ripped apart the jehovah's witness kingdom hall in 1985 somebody had broken in shattering a window cutting themselves in the process there was no dna technology back then but there is now after years of killing everybody in his way it would be a self-inflicted wound that would bring leonard warwick undone thirty years later the cold case unit found the long forgotten blood they sent it to an independent laboratory to analyze the blood and compared it with a blood sample from leonard warwick's daughter and found that the the samples were identical the dna evidence was the conclusive part that left no doubt that he was the offender [Music] lynn warwick thought he was invincible he never saw it coming twelve thousand eight hundred and nineteen days after judge david opus was shot dead on his doorstep the family caught bomber the man who left so many dead and so many more living in fear was finally taken down about 11 30 this morning we arrested a 68 year old man in relation to seven incidents that occurred between february 1980 and july 1985 these incidents include four murders and a number of attempted murders there will be 32 charges laid against that individual including four murder charges the new south wales police cold case unit had done their job and got their name you need to realize the door will never be closed on a murder investigation [Music] lynn warwick finally a captive but still no contrition defiant to the end as defiant as he was the day i confronted him how could you have lived with yourself and how did you get away with it leonard warwick showed no remorse no guilt no empathy towards his victims whatsoever he stopped at nothing [Music] after his arrest came his trial before justice peter garling len warwick's lawyers argued he was innocent the family called bomber was someone else warwick was up against mountains of evidence and the righteous anger of good men like kevin woods i was at the supreme court for 10 days and i was cross-examined for eight i realised did you [ __ ] are desperate to try to increase improve your ratings you're absolutely desperate aren't you no sir what we are so [ __ ] off yes you are your daughter and all of the victims bombings and promoters i find and return a verdict of guilty that on 6 march 1984 that the accused did by the explosion of an explosive substance destroy a building with intent to murder richard g i find and return a verdict of guilty you're absolutely desperate aren't you on the 15th of april 1984 at parramatta in the state of new south wales that the accused maliciously placed an this was the justice system reasserting you do not get away with a blow at the heart of the justice system like lynn warwick tried exactly right on count six that the accused on 4 july 1984 at greenwich in the state of new south wales did murder pearl watson i find and return a verdict of guilty i find and return a verdict of guilty did you murder stephen blanche okay that the accused did murder stephen blanchard i find the accused and return a verdict of not guilty it was a shock to many including kevin woods not guilty of the murder of his brother-in-law stephen blanchard the brave young man who was executed with a single shot to his head after helping his sister escape warwick's violence my gut feeling is that he murdered stephen blanchard and i firmly believe he did but what the test is here that we failed to produce enough evidence to convince a judge beyond reasonable doubt that he had committed that offence did he do it yes of course he did but stephen blanchard isn't the only mystery remaining tonight there's a sinister new development did leonard warwick murder his own sister there's another mystery isn't there in this case the sibling used eileen muriel warwick eileen muriel warwick yes where is she i don't know we checked birth deaths and marriages and taxation records and we just couldn't find it do you think she's dead i won't make the call on that but there's no record of who is leading the country no there's no record of her leaving the country there's no record of her marrying no there's no record of her dying no lynn warwick's sister has effectively disappeared off the face of the planet she has yes we couldn't find her no in 1993 the father of len and eileen died in his will he left his son and daughter assets to be split evenly between them eileen hasn't been seen since i think for the purpose of history it'd be great if eileen if she's still alive did come forward if anyone out there knows of her whereabouts you can contact us confidentially leonard john warwick the family court bomber will be sentenced on september 3rd when justice will finally be served on this serial killing madman if you could imagine everything that means anything to you being taken away in one minute everything my best friend he was the most beautiful father just gone out of your life and and then your life is in total pieces we were in fear of our lives for years and you can drive yourself nuts worrying about it and i did he is going to have to go to jail and pay for all the distress and terror that he's caused [Music] lemon everybody 73 so he possibly will spend the remainder of his life in prison which is where he deserves to be so you'd like to see him die in jail yes leonard warwick better known as the family court bomber has been sentenced to life behind bars warwick terrorized sydney in the 1980s murdering three people including a judge but he was undone thanks in part to the reopening of the case by 7 news spotlight investigative reporter ross coulthard ross joins me now and ross you were actually in the court as he was being sentenced what was his reaction no remorse no emotion what he did do the judges talking to him from here he turns and looks down like that i'd love to think it was a shameful expression you know he's remorseful but i don't think so he'll never be remorseful and you are one of the few people who would know you're one of the few people who've actually spoken to him what is he like he's an evil grub he's a monster he's a man who is wired differently from the rest of us just because he was upset with family court judges because they'd done he perceived the wrong thing by him in relation to the custody of his daughter he decided to sit out on this murderous campaign attacking murdering judges and then when he couldn't kill the judges he thought the jehovah's witnesses are helping my wife i'm going to kill them as well and he led a bomb off in a whole church of innocent parishioners which is just absolutely outrageous led a bomb off outside the parramatta family court incredible risks played with people's lives and the tragedy is that to this day he still says he's innocent which he's not the evidence against him is absolutely overwhelming and he maintains this fiction that he's an innocent man and quite frankly he can rot in jail i know for the the families the the victims and indeed for the people in the judiciary and the justice system this man going down today is very very important because it was a blow right at the heart and of the administration of justice it was an attack on democracy itself and it's so important even though what it's 35 40 years since those crimes it's so important that he's been brought to justice in that shot that we've seen of you your interactions um what was he an arrogant man it certainly seems that way he called our show a crummy show and he called me a maggot um he was really angry i don't think he'd ever expected that somebody was going to catch up with him because we'd been investigating him for months and he had no idea and what we've done is we'd interviewed all the victims we we'd gone to america to interview somebody who was a victim in the jehovah's witness case we've gone all over the world to find people who were victims and the thing that struck us when we were doing the research i've never had a story before where we're going oh my god you know we were literally looking at the evidence going how can this guy not be in jail the evidence was just overwhelming based on the circumstantial evidence but then i think as a result of our story there was a moment when the police decided to review the evidence they found a blood sample from the jehovah's witness church he'd done a break-in at the jehovah's witness church and he'd left blood at the scene and because they hadn't been able to do that kind of dna testing 40 years ago they hadn't really put it through the right sort of tests when they finally did they got him the dna nailed him and and that was the moment for the police a great bit of police work that finally brought this evil guy to justice great police work also great journalism the judge acknowledged your reports helped police realize how much evidence they had do you think if it wasn't for police campaigning so heavily and your reporting that he could still be a free man i i dread the thought i mean i i think it's nice to know that journalism can still be of use and is valued in society these days it's really important this is one story i'm very very proud of certainly the police investigation was initiated after our report and i think what our report did was it made people focus on the evidence it made them sit back and go hey why haven't we cracked this case and when they finally did go through the boxes of evidence and review the case with the help of a wonderful old detective who's become a mate of mine kevin woods they did they discovered they had an absolute ironclad case against this guy and it was possible to bring an evil murderer to justice which is fabulous well ross you're a humble man but you deserve to be proud along with those police officers thanks so much for your time thanks very much you

Channel: 7NEWS Spotlight

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Keywords: News, Channel 7, Australia, Australian News, Current Affairs, headlines, story, stories, documentary, interview, Leonard Warwick, Catching A Madman, Sydney, family court bombings, family court murders, Ross Coulthart, 7news, investigation, 7news spotlight

Id: pR2WMIgEU5g

Length: 53min 2sec (3182 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020