- 53 minutes ago
Outback Murder Highway Season 1 Episode 2
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00...is a brutal execution-style triple murder.
00:03Back in 1978, three friends on a motorbike trip throughout back Australia,
00:09Karen, Tim and Gordon, were shot dead on the murder highway.
00:13Three people were murdered.
00:16That's a real killer.
00:19Three heinous execution-style murders.
00:24It remains one of the most difficult unsolved murder cases
00:28for more than 40 years in Australia.
00:32Could this be a highway killer?
00:35Or a murderous local?
00:38Our investigators will unearth new clues, new witnesses and new leads.
00:45There were several things that struck me when I started reinvestigating this case.
00:49In my view, killers don't want to run risks.
00:53This fourth man was last seen that evening
00:57and had never been seen since that time.
01:00A crucial witness.
01:02We tracked her down.
01:03This man clearly was the killer.
01:35Flinders Highway
01:37The highway starts in Townsville.
01:38It goes all the way to Mount Isa and it joins on with the Barclay Highway,
01:42which continues on to Northern Territory.
01:48Our remote highways do attract murderers with psychopathic tendencies.
01:56They're out there.
02:00In 1978, this stretch of road was the perfect place for people trying to stay under the radar.
02:20The triple murder at Spear Creek remains one of Queensland's most baffling cold cases.
02:25So we're bringing together a team of investigators to shed new light on this mystery.
02:33This story starts in 1978 with two Kiwis, best mates, Tim Thompson and Gordon Twaddle.
02:41They were living and working across the ditch in Alice Springs.
02:49My name's John Twaddle, brother of Gordon Twaddle and friend of Tim Thompson.
02:57Gordon was the youngest.
02:59We got on very well because I got into motorcycling when I was 15 and then Gordon followed.
03:06He was easy going.
03:08He was very keen on life, keen on doing all sorts of things, motorcycling, cars, chasing women.
03:15Tim was very adventurous.
03:16He'd been around the world a bit and he'd brought back motorcycles, rare ones, from overseas.
03:27The two motorbike nuts wrote to John about their plans for a cross-country adventuring trip.
03:35This letter's from Tim, sent from Australia and a photo of his motorbike and the sidecar he's just bought.
03:43This is from my brother Gordon telling me that he had bought a GS 750 Suzuki, almost brand new, $1
03:53,750.
03:58There was a third person on this motorbike adventure, Karen Edwards.
04:05She was the Aussie of the group and Tim's girlfriend.
04:11She joined the boys in Alice Springs on the 30th of September, 1978.
04:20It was going to be a trip of a lifetime to go across to Mount Isa and then across to
04:26the coast
04:27and make their way back down to Melbourne for Christmas.
04:32But their journey ended in bloodshed on the notorious murder highway.
04:41I'm Mike King and I spent a career investigating serial predators, primarily focusing on geography.
04:50You know, I've had the opportunity to look at the Flinders Highway murders for more than five years.
04:58This is a place where people are traveling that are not from the area.
05:03They are passerbys, another face that's quickly forgotten.
05:08Which equates to the fact that they can then become targets of opportunity.
05:13That they can simply disappear off the face of the map and nobody knows that they've come and gone.
05:18And not only is the victim anonymous, the people traveling along this highway are anonymous.
05:25To unlock this mystery, we're retracing their journey step by step.
05:33The three friends left Alice Springs on the 2nd of October.
05:39Tim rode a red motorbike with a sidecar for Karen.
05:42And Gordon followed behind on his bike.
05:48From Alice Springs, they made several sightseeing stops.
05:53This is the last known photo of the trio taken on their journey days before they disappeared.
06:01They arrived in Mount Isa on the 4th of October.
06:06And then they vanished.
06:14My father told me that Gordon hadn't been in touch with him for some time.
06:19And I said, don't worry, Dad.
06:21Those boys can look after themselves.
06:22They're big boys.
06:24They'll be fine.
06:24They're probably just having a good time and forgetting to ring home or send a letter.
06:38I'm Ken Gamble.
06:39I'm a private investigator that specializes in criminal investigations.
06:42And I'm reinvestigating the Spear Creek murders of 1978.
06:48There were several things that struck me when I started reinvestigating this case.
06:52And I believe that the case was always solvable.
07:03On the 24th of October 1978, 22 days after Karen, Tim and Gordon set out on their adventure,
07:15a couple walking their dog made a gruesome discovery.
07:22In a dry creek bed just off the Flinders Highway,
07:27they found Tim's body.
07:35It was a gruesome discovery.
07:42He was lying down essentially where he had fallen.
07:49It would appear that he was running away at the time that he was shot.
07:56The next day, police returned to the scene in the morning.
08:02And they found two more bodies,
08:05which was Gordon and Karen, and their bodies were located quite close together.
08:12They were both executed also at close range with a .22 rifle.
08:22The same rifle that had been used to murder Tim.
08:27This was a brutal execution style murder of three people.
08:32But identifying the victims was no easy task.
08:37Police at the time didn't know yet that this was Gordon, Tim and Karen.
08:42They had no way of identifying these people at all.
08:48There was very little evidence other than a couple of personal items.
08:52There was no shell casings found at the scene.
08:56When they found Tim, Tim's thongs had come off.
09:00He'd been trying to scale the sandbank. He was running.
09:06It appears that robbery was the motivation for this crime.
09:11At least because their property was missing.
09:15Police were baffled by the brutal highway murder on Mount Isa's outskirts.
09:21What sort of person would execute three people in cold blood? And why?
09:27Because so many of itinerant people go this through Mount Isa,
09:31police possibly thought it was someone travelling through.
09:39Was the killer just passing through and his victims were simply in the wrong place
09:44at the wrong time? Or was he a local just lying in wait?
09:52Early on in the investigation, there was a huge dramatic setback.
09:57Within seconds, we struck the ground.
10:02Made it even more difficult to track down the killer.
10:13It's been dubbed the murder highway, a deadly 900-kilometre stretch of road
10:19with more unsolved murders than anywhere else in Australia.
10:25The Flinders Highway.
10:28We're investigating the 1978 execution-style highway murders of three friends.
10:35Karen, Tim and Gordon.
10:40So this triple murder at Spear Creek remains one of the most difficult unsolved murder cases
10:47for more than 40 years in Australia.
10:51Was it a killer passing through? Or a murderous local?
10:59Police had no idea who these victims were,
11:03let alone who murdered them.
11:09I'm Amelia Overhart, I'm a Queenslander, and I'm an investigative journalist.
11:14The only clue that was left by the killer was Karen's watch.
11:18Police put ads in papers right across the country,
11:21hoping they could identify who it belonged to.
11:24But early on in the investigation, there was a pretty dramatic setback.
11:33On the second day of the investigation,
11:35it was decided to conduct an aerial search of the crime scene.
11:41I'm Jim O'Donnell, and in 1978, I was a homicide detective.
11:49We hired a helicopter for a 30-minute surveillance of the scene.
11:57Within a matter of seconds,
12:03we struck the ground.
12:10I slipped out of my seatbelt straight out onto the ground behind me,
12:17and started to crawl away from the crash.
12:22The first 48 hours of any police investigation are critical.
12:27It's a crucial window to collect evidence
12:29and track down suspects before they have a chance to flee.
12:32So that helicopter crash was a major setback for detectives.
12:37Because those vital 48 hours at the start were lost.
12:41And the investigation never really regained the momentum it needed.
12:49It couldn't have happened at a worse time.
12:51The weeks that went by made it even more difficult to track down the killer.
13:01The chopper crash delayed investigators,
13:03giving the killer, or killers, a head start.
13:07And time to cover their tracks.
13:11Gordon's bike was found dumped in Mount Isa on October 16th.
13:15But this was eight days before the bodies were discovered,
13:18so no-one raised the alarm.
13:22In my view, killers don't want to run risks.
13:26I'm Dr Louise Stedding.
13:28I'm an archaeologist and a criminologist.
13:31In my spare time, I look at cold cases.
13:37Louise looks at these crimes through a different lens.
13:40She's intrigued by the effort the killer took to conceal their crimes.
13:46Somebody rode out on one of those bikes.
13:52They parked it outside a motel.
13:56God, how clever.
13:58That bike won't be found for ages, because it'll be assumed it's somebody in the motel.
14:03Buys them time.
14:07But on the 30th of October, there was a turning point.
14:12A Melbourne watchmaker reading the newspaper recognised Karen's watch.
14:17Police could now identify the bodies as Karen, Tim and Gordon.
14:23Their families were given the devastating news.
14:26Well, I didn't really believe it, actually.
14:29I thought, no, they're two strong guys.
14:34They're not going to be just murdered by somebody.
14:37But they were.
14:47The next day, another discovery.
14:50The trio's property was found discarded at the Mount Isa tip.
14:57Now, police had to work out how they ended up on the notorious murder highway.
15:05Mapping predatory behaviour and routes is much easier today than it was in the 1970s.
15:12But detectives in 1978, they had no physical or electronic evidence to track the trio's movements.
15:20Luckily for them, members of the public who saw the three friends on their trip came forward.
15:27Police put together this sort of timeline of their final movements, and it started with Mount Isa.
15:39If you wanted to get lost in Australia, you came to Mount Isa.
15:46The remoteness of the place and the cheap accommodation attracts people who are on the run.
15:52You can hide away there and not be noticed.
15:57We did have a real rough and ready persona.
16:05Mount Isa in the 1970s was an isolated outpost on the Flinders Highway.
16:12Our investigation is focused on a caravan park just outside of town, where police got their first big lead.
16:22Moondara Caravan Park is the last place that Karen, Tim and Gordon were seen alive.
16:30They arrived at the park on October 4 on their motorbikes and they checked into the park.
16:41Detectives discovered that a mystery fourth man had visited the three friends here right before they disappeared.
16:51So it became evident quite early in the investigation that this man gained the trio's trust
16:58at the Moondara Caravan Park or possibly before there was already some sort of relationship,
17:03some sort of trust between them.
17:07The three friends left the caravan park in the fourth man's Toyota Land Cruiser and went to a pub in
17:14Mount Isa.
17:16The next morning, that same man with the Land Cruiser came to the campsite about 8am and he picked them
17:24up.
17:25A short time later, this vehicle was seen to drive out as if they were going out for a day
17:31trip.
17:33And this is the last time Karen, Tim and Gordon are ever seen alive.
17:46It's what happened next that made police pretty sure they were murdered on this same day.
17:54Witnesses told police that 12 hours after leaving the campground with the three friends,
17:59the man returned without Karen, Tim and Gordon.
18:05He came back alone.
18:07That man packed up all their belongings and left the area.
18:13So this fourth man was last seen about 8pm on that evening of the 5th of October
18:20and had never been seen since that time.
18:25Police now have a prime suspect, the fourth man.
18:29Was he a local or did he follow them all the way to the murder highway?
18:36This fourth man clearly was believed to be the killer.
18:41This was a crime, not just of violence, but certainly of betrayal.
18:48It looked like the mystery of the fourth man was finally solved.
18:53It wasn't a deranged highway killer, it was the local motorbike thief.
18:58When they arrested him, we thought, finally, justice is going to be done.
19:11In 1978, three friends on a motorbike trip through Outback Australia were found shot dead
19:21on the notorious and deadly Flinders Highway.
19:25Police had a suspect, the mystery fourth man,
19:30the man last seen with the trio.
19:38When the three bodies were found on the banks of Sphere Creek,
19:42that was really upsetting to the community. We were in shock.
19:47I'm Kim Marie Burton. I'm a local local, a very proud one.
19:51And by default, I've become a local historian.
19:54Kim Marie's archive is a treasure trove of photos that haven't been seen for decades.
20:00We're looking for clues in the photos released by police at the time of the triple murder in 1978.
20:08When the police released photographs of the motorbike and the sidecar,
20:14everyone knew they'd seen somebody in that motorbike.
20:18It wasn't a very pleasant time in the town.
20:26Back in 1978, Mount Isa, it's the sort of place where everyone knows everybody.
20:31And that's how a young guy named Bruce Preston came to police attention.
20:36On the 13th of November, police acted on a tip-off. Tim's stolen motorbike was found in the garage of
20:43a local couple with a son by the name of Bruce Preston.
20:47He was a young person of 23 years of age. He gave full answers to all the questions that we
20:54asked of him.
20:56He didn't appear nervous at any stage.
20:59Not only was Bruce Preston in possession of the motorcycle, but his father owned a Toyota Land Cruiser,
21:08fitting a very similar description to the Land Cruiser that had been seen at the campground.
21:15The Mount Isa local had been away on a motorbike trip and took the same route from Alice Springs to
21:21Mount Isa,
21:22around the same time as the three friends.
21:26So this was extraordinary coincidence that this man was believed to have been riding
21:33on the same road all the way from Alice Springs. His father happened to own a Land Cruiser
21:40that was identified as very similar to the Land Cruiser that attended the campground.
21:45And he was now in possession of one of the motorcycles of the victims.
21:52The Twaddle family was sure that Preston was the fourth man.
21:58Well, we thought that the courtless young bloke stolen the motorbike.
22:03He must be the guy that's done the murders.
22:08At first, Bruce Preston lied to police about how he got Tim's bike.
22:14He took it and rode it around the town. He was seen. And then the trio were found.
22:24And with the trio having been found murdered, would not anyone freak? What do you do?
22:30You're holding a dead man's bike. The version Bruce Preston settled on was he found the bike
22:40dumped in Mount Isa and saw two hippies trying to steal it. And then he scares them off and stole
22:46the bike for himself. Now, of course, Gordon's bike had also been dumped in Mount Isa.
22:53So to police at the time, Preston's story, it stacked up.
23:00Bruce Preston might have been a thief, but to police, he didn't fit the profile of a cold-blooded
23:07triple murderer. He was in his early 20s and he had a clean criminal record.
23:13It's hard to believe that he would be capable of a triple murder.
23:20But then again, the circumstantial evidence, it all pointed to him. He had Tim's bike and he'd taken
23:27the same route as the three victims to get to Mount Isa. Despite the circumstantial evidence,
23:33police couldn't find any proof that Bruce Preston was in town when the friends were murdered.
23:42Bruce Preston has always maintained that he arrived in Mount Isa 24 hours after the trio had arrived
23:48at the Moondara campground. The fourth man was seen with the trio the same day they arrived at the
23:56campground. So if Bruce Preston did arrive in Mount Isa a day after the trio, then he couldn't have been
24:05the fourth man. There was no forensic evidence to link Bruce Preston to the crime scene.
24:12And there was really no evidence whatsoever that he was actually in the company of the trio at any
24:17stage. Police had no hard evidence to tie Bruce Preston to any of the murders other than the stolen
24:26motorbike. They charged him with theft, but ultimately ruled him out as a multiple murder suspect.
24:36He was discounted as a suspect, that is Preston we're talking about, mainly because we could not
24:43put him in Mount Isa at the time of the murders.
24:47The thing is, three people were murdered. That's a real killer. There's a huge leap
24:56between being a serial killer or being a thief.
25:03He stole a motorbike. That doesn't mean that he murdered people.
25:07Police ruled out Bruce Preston as the killer, but Gordon's brother John didn't buy it.
25:14We were pretty sure that he was the person that did the crime.
25:20And now the police, for some reason, were letting him off. It got free. It just didn't make sense.
25:35The Flinders Highway in Queensland is a hot spot for unsolved murders.
25:43We're focusing on a 1978 triple murder at Spear Creek. For decades, the case sat gathering dust.
25:52But John Twaddle, the brother of one victim, was sure he knew who the murderer was and insisted the
25:59police act on it. Nothing had happened for several years. I decided to write a letter to police and said,
26:08you want to look at Bruce Preston and this is the bloco I think it is.
26:16John's letters went unanswered. The unsolved triple murder was a stain on Queensland for more than 40 years.
26:26But after increasing public pressure, police opened a cold case investigation in 2019.
26:38The cold case unit firstly re-examined all of the evidence from the initial investigation
26:44by the Mount Isa CIB. They obtained a lot of witness statements. They also re-interviewed a lot
26:51of the witnesses to confirm the contents of those statements.
26:56When the cold case team went over these old statements and re-interviewed witnesses,
27:02they formed this view that Bruce Preston was actually in Mount Isa earlier than he'd originally
27:08told police, which meant he could have been in town when the three were murdered.
27:17But that's not all. Police claimed witnesses saw Bruce Preston travelling with the trio through the
27:24Northern Territory and even identified the motorbike he was riding. They also claimed to have seen him
27:30with the trio in Mount Isa at the Caravan Park and at the local pub.
27:38Police claimed to have witnesses that had cited Bruce Preston with the trio and that was very
27:45important because a positive identification by a witness is very compelling evidence.
27:5741 years after Karen, Tim and Gordon were murdered in cold blood, there was a bombshell.
28:06John Twaddle's wish was granted. Bruce Preston was charged with their murders.
28:12Live across Queensland, this is Live's Afternoon News with Alison Ariotti.
28:18We begin with breaking news. Police have just charged New South Wales man Bruce John Preston
28:25with three counts of murder over the deaths of three people in rural Queensland over 40 years ago.
28:34Under questioning from detectives, Bruce Preston finally admitted he could have been in Mount Isa on the day
28:42the three friends were murdered. In a new police interview, Bruce Preston has now changed his story,
28:48accepting he could have been at the relevant place at the time.
28:54I firmly believe now that Preston was trying to distance himself from being anywhere near the
29:00deceased people on their journey from Alice Springs to Mount Isa.
29:07Back in 1978, police knew Bruce Preston had stolen Tim's bike and that his dad drove a Land Cruiser,
29:15the same model car seen with the trio right before they were murdered.
29:22Now in 2019, police discovered Preston could have been in Mount Isa earlier than he claimed
29:29and witnesses said they saw him travelling with the trio.
29:39It looked like the mystery of the fourth man was finally solved.
29:43He wasn't a deranged highway killer, it was the local kid, Bruce Preston, the motorbike thief.
29:53When they arrested him, we thought, find me, maybe justice is going to be done after 40 years.
30:03New evidence blows the investigation wide open.
30:07The fourth man, you can see the black hair and dark features.
30:10And this is the photo of Preston, our documentary uncovered.
30:14Bruce Preston looked nothing like him.
30:27In 1978, three friends were executed beside the Flinders Highway.
30:35Police at the time cleared local bike thief, Bruce Preston, as a suspect.
30:41But in a bombshell, a new police investigation in 2019 charged Preston with triple murder.
30:50Detectives assured John Twaddle they had a solid case.
30:55I questioned them whether they had enough evidence after 40 years and they assured me that they did.
31:03They told me that they had enough information to convict them.
31:09Bruce Preston was caught with Tim's bike.
31:12His father owned the same model of Land Cruiser seen with the murdered trio.
31:18And cold case detectives from the 2019 investigation said witnesses identified Preston as the fourth man.
31:26Seen with Karen, Tim and Gordon before they were murdered.
31:31So the police cold case unit believed they had a strong circumstantial case that Bruce Preston was the murderer.
31:39But police still had to prove their case.
31:46And on the 31st of January 2020, the judge ruled police had overstated the evidence identifying Bruce Preston as the
31:55fourth man.
31:57But a lot of those witnesses that were re-interviewed were vague about the identification.
32:02So whilst police were able to establish that a fourth person had joined the trio at some stage,
32:09there was never any evidence to prove that that fourth person was Bruce Preston.
32:14The cold case team had ignored crucial evidence from the original police investigation.
32:20Let's go back to that time for a moment, 1978.
32:27Back then, multiple witnesses said that the fourth man had a distinctive black beard.
32:35He was a solid build, about 178 centimetres.
32:39He had a black beard and dark hair and he was noted to have an olive complexion.
32:47This same bearded man was seen with Karen, Tim and Gordon at a Mount Isa pub the day before the
32:54murder.
32:57Witnesses described him talking to them in the Mount Isa hotel as having had a full beard, dark hair, a
33:07full head of hair and he also came along in a Toyota Land Cruiser.
33:15In 1978, the detectives who had ruled out Bruce Preston as a suspect were convinced that the trio's killer was
33:23this bearded man.
33:30Police had made several different identicates in case the suspect shaved off his beard or something similar to a void
33:36detection.
33:36Now look at this one, you can see the black hair and dark features.
33:40And this is the photo of Preston, our documentary uncovered.
33:44It's actually from the 1978 arrest when he stole Tim's bike and it's never been made public before.
33:51This photo was taken just weeks after the murder when Bruce Preston was charged with theft.
34:00Bruce Preston did not look a thing like the identikit of the Mediterranean guy with his full black beard, his
34:08black hair.
34:09Bruce Preston looked nothing, nothing like him.
34:17He was shorter, he had fair hair, had fair skin.
34:21He was certainly incapable of having a black beard and he certainly wasn't Mediterranean looking.
34:27So there was nothing about the features of Bruce Preston that even remotely looked like the person described by the
34:34witnesses at the Mundara campground.
34:37And so fast forward to 2020.
34:43The difference between the descriptions of the bearded man and Bruce Preston was so stark that a judge granted him
34:51bail.
34:52I've never heard of an accused triple murderer being granted bail before.
35:03Three years later, the prosecution withdrew their charges.
35:08Bruce Preston walked away a free man.
35:13We had a Zoom meeting with the prosecution.
35:17They were very wishy-washy about why they dropped the charges.
35:21They just said insufficient evidence.
35:24And we thought that that's just hopeless.
35:28They had a serious problem that they were contending with.
35:32A jury would never have believed the prosecution that Bruce Preston was the murderer.
35:38Bruce Preston has no criminal history apart from that one theft of the bike.
35:44He went on to serve in the military.
35:46He became a corrections officer.
35:50What is the probability that Preston would have committed three heinous execution-style murders
35:58and then stole the one thing that was most identifiable to the crime and drive it around town?
36:06So if it's not Preston, then who?
36:09And frankly, that who takes us back to the bearded man.
36:13What on earth could be the motivation?
36:15And it leaves us all scratching our heads.
36:19Our investigators close in on a highway killer.
36:23This person was extremely violent and has a complete disregard for human life.
36:30And guess where he ended up?
36:32Mount Isa.
36:41Along the deadly Flinders Highway, at least 11 people have been murdered or disappeared in the past 50 years.
36:50We're investigating what happened to three friends who were shot dead execution-style in 1978.
37:00Their motorbike was found with a local man, Bruce Preston.
37:04He was convicted of theft, but the charge of murder didn't stick for one big reason.
37:10Preston didn't match the description of the last person seen with the three victims.
37:16The bearded man.
37:19That man has never come forward to clear his name.
37:25It would indicate to me that that person could have been the killer.
37:30To find clues about the bearded man's identity, we have to go back to the original 1978 police investigation.
37:39Back then, a crucial witness told police she saw this bearded man with Tim in Alice Springs,
37:45before the trio set out on their journey.
37:49And we've tracked her down.
37:51She's never spoken on camera before.
37:55I'm Ermela Polner.
37:57In 1978, Tim Thompson was our neighbour.
38:02What Ermela saw was brief, but her memory is crystal clear.
38:09I was just standing at the gate in front of my house,
38:12and Tim Thompson came with someone driving a Toyota Land Cruiser.
38:18And Tim was sitting in the passenger seat, and there was this other fellow driving.
38:24He had a beard, dark hair, olive skin, and that's all we saw of him, really.
38:32Ermela told police she saw Tim with a bearded man in Alice Springs.
38:39Witnesses saw a bearded man fitting the same description with Karen, Tim, and Gordon in Mount Isa.
38:46Police believed they were one and the same.
38:49It raises a startling question.
38:52Did Tim know his killer?
38:55Was he followed up the highway?
38:59I believe that the killer knew Tim Thompson.
39:04I believe that the killer travelled to Mount Isa knowing that the trio were camping in that campground.
39:13Ken Gamble's investigation into the Spear Creek killings has thrown up a new suspect.
39:21In 1978, there was another highway killer suspected of murdering a man called John Zalades in cold blood in remote
39:30Western Australia.
39:33And like the Spear Creek trio, he had just a single bullet wound to the head.
39:39And had his ID and possession stolen.
39:43This murder, just months before the Spear Creek killings, is also unsolved and is one of Western Australia's longest running
39:52mysteries.
39:56The suspected killer had been nicknamed George the Money Man, and he does bear similarities to the man Ermela described.
40:04This is an identikit of George the Money Man, and this is the Spear Creek suspect, the fourth man.
40:14The highway killer known as George the Money Man stole John Zalades' bank book, and he was cashing his cheques.
40:21So detectives were initially able to track the suspected murderers' movements.
40:26And guess where he ended up?
40:30Mount Isa.
40:30Mount Isa.
40:32Now, that's the last sighting that police could ever find of George the Money Man.
40:38George the Money Man has never been caught.
40:43Ken Gamble believes the murderer could have been responsible for other highway murders throughout remote Australia.
40:50This is a person that has a complete disregard for human life.
41:00After Bruce Preston had his triple murder charges withdrawn in 2023, it looked as if the Spear Creek killings would
41:08remain yet another unsolved case along the Flinders Highway.
41:13But in late 2025, there was yet another twist, and it put Bruce Preston squarely back in focus.
41:22A coroner has reopened an inquest into the cold case killings of three people near Mount Isa.
41:29Bruce Preston was called to give evidence to a new coronial inquest, and was again questioned about his movements in
41:36the lead-up to the triple murder.
41:44Hey, Ken, how are you? Nice to see you.
41:47It's pretty interesting information coming out of that inquest.
41:50Bruce Preston was very vague about his movements at the time, and I think that's made the judge a little
41:55bit suspicious.
41:56The coroner warned Bruce Preston that if he lied, he could face a perjury charge.
42:01You said that you spent 11 months in custody and the past six years thinking about nothing else other than
42:06this case.
42:09For the families of Karen, Tim and Gordon, this new coronial inquest is their last hope for justice.
42:19The family just wants closure, and that's a horrible word that really there never is closure for the family,
42:25but they want answers that say it's now finished.
42:32Gordon Twaddle's brother, John, has carried his anger at a botched investigation for nearly 50 years.
42:39Perhaps soon he'll have his answer.
42:42If the police had done their job, as they should have done from the start, and investigated everything,
42:48they could have found somebody or something.
42:53I'm getting old, and it would be good to see it all finalised before we all die.
43:25You're looking at the start, ê´€ir?, the wrong word that truly is predictable to be good.
Comments