MP calls for third murder inquest

The police conclusions about this have always stunk: Too lazy to do a proper investigation

A North Queensland MP has called for a third inquest into the brutal deaths of best friends Vicki Arnold and Julie-Anne Leahy, whose bodies were found near Atherton in August 1991.

Mulgrave MP Curtis Pitt told Parliament police found Ms Leahy in the driver’s seat of her Nissan Patrol, propped up by a tightly wrapped seatbelt around her neck, bashed with a large rock, shot twice in the head and with her throat slashed.

Beside her, Ms Arnold was sprawled across the passenger side floor, her hand resting on a sawn-off .22 gun. She had been shot in the thigh, upwards through her chin and fatally behind her right ear.

“Vicki Arnold has been written off as a murderer with no opportunity to defend herself,” Mr Curtis said. “This crime remains unsolved due to an unwillingness to acknowledge that it was virtually impossible for Vicki Arnold to have killed her friend in such strange circumstances and then take her own life.

“I believe a third inquest into this matter is warranted to make sense out of Iong-time confusion and to seek answers for a family still grieving,” Attorney-General Cameron Dick said: “I am currently taking advice on whether to direct the State Coroner to reopen an inquest.”

The article above appeared (print only) in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on 24 October, 2010