This episode contains adult themes and references to violence.

This podcast series is brought to you by me Headley Thomas and The Australian.

My name is Headley Thomas and my podcast, Shandy's Story revealed shocking failures by scientists at the Queensland government's DNA testing laboratory.

It has been nearly two years since the last episode of our sequel podcast, Shandy's Legacy, was released.

It has recently come to light that the serious issues plague in Queensland's Dear Lab have continued.

We know this as a result of the release of two very damning and concerning reports into the lab and its operations.

Those reports, after a new investigation into the lab by doctor Kirsty Wright and fellow DNA expert doctor Bruce Badoli, were released in August twenty twenty five.

Here's how TV news reporters covered the immediate fallout.

Despite two Royal Commission style inquiries, Queensland's DNA lab is still flawed and still failing the State and Your report.

Has found rapists and child abusers could be roaming amongst us, and killers are likely getting away with murder.

There was weekly contamination in the lab shortcuts and testing delays have continued to get worse.

It now takes four hundred and twenty days to process results from major crime cases, more than a year to test rape kits, a process that takes five to ten in other states, and the backlog of testing could take six years to clear.

These are victims, these are defendants, These are people's lives.

While that's been going on, Shandy Blackburn's former boyfriend, John Perros has continued his quest to sue me and my employer and Shunner Blackburn, Shandy's sister, for defamation.

John's legal case objected to a particular episode of The Shandy Story podcast.

The matter has.

Been heard in the Queensland Supreme Court and we are strenuously defending our journalism and Shunner.

Shandy's mum, Vicky Blackburn, has been continuing her courageous fight for justice for victims of crime.

Vicky has an incredible capacity to remain patient thirteen years after her daughter's savage murder, and to always think about the needs of other victims and their families despite her own circumstances.

Do you still hold hope that Shandy's killer will be brought to justice, convicted and thrown into prison, hopefully for the rest of his natural life.

Yes, of course we do.

There's a lot to talk about there too, But where does it all leave us?

Despite two major public inquiries, the first one by the retired Queensland judge Walter Soffronoff and the second by Annabelle Bennett, are we any closer to solving Shandy's horrific murder.

We're going to unpack each of these issues and others in several new episodes of Shandy's Legacy, beginning with this one.

The ongoing DNA lab calamity is our starting point now for these new and updating episodes.

In late twenty I'm talking to Kirsty at length again.

We met at my home on Brisbane's rural outskirts and began our first interview in a couple of years.

How would you describe the performance of the lab in the two years since we spoke about this.

I don't understand how a lab can continue to operate in such a reckless manner.

Real harm has been caused over the last two and a half years.

What myself and the review team found is that the issues that were found in the first and second inquiry continued shortcuts, compromises in quality, unreliable results, the deception of the police and the courts.

Backlogs really just got to a point where are out of control.

It appears as though no lessons were learnt.

Even during the Second Inquiry, where it appeared the lab was being fixed, it wasn't.

It was all a facade.

The lab was aware that they were providing unreliable results.

It's very hard for people who don't work in the lab to understand that level of recklessness.

The scale of this disaster.

Was so alarming back when you and I were first uncovering it in Shandy story, and then through Walter Soffrooff's inquiry, and then through the second inquiry a year later.

By Annabelle Bettett.

How is it possible that scientists, your contemporaries, people with whom you've perhaps even shared microscopes with over the years, can have allowed this to continue.

I was surprised, Eddley.

I thought going into this review, I might find one or two minor issues that we need to try to address.

But I had no idea what we're walking into because I had been excluded from the reforms from those last two and a half years I'm still at a loss to understand knowing the impact that the lab has had on the victims, on the criminal justice system, on the police, on the community trust.

Did you imagine you'd be saying those things again after the millions of dollars spent uncovering the problems in the first place.

Absolutely not.

And during the review when it became apparent that nothing had changed, were very careful to get a lot of evidence to demonstrate that we needed to be really sure, and that included interviews with staff members.

Some of those were just screaming for help they could see what was happening.

One of those staff members said that she hopes that her or none of her family members are ever raped in Queensland because she wouldn't want her samples coming to Queensland.

And there was a moment headly, we're just that in that interview and cried because that was the moment when I realized all the work that you had done, the Blackburns had done, I had done, all the money that had been pumped into this lab, it had been for nothing, for absolutely nothing.

For most listeners, it's probably two years since they last listened to episodes of Shandy's legacy and some of the things that we'll be talking about now are complex, so we will briefly recap on events and then move on to the key developments concerning the lab over the past two years.

In twenty twenty two, after all the shocking revelations in Shandy story, there was a multimillion dollar Roll Commission style inquiry into forensic DNA testing in Queensland.

Doctor Wright's concerns that the lab had been badly failing victims of crime for many years were vindicated by that inquiry.

Walter Sofronoff's findings documented scientific failure and fraud on a vast scale, affecting many thousands of criminal cases.

The Sofronoff inquiry made one hundred and twenty six recommendations for significant reforms in forensic services, and all of those recommendations were accepted by the Queensland government.

After this, twenty twenty three loomed as the year of big change for the lab.

It underwent a lot of reform, including to its leadership, and in late May twenty twenty three, the then government rebranded it as Forensic Science Queensland.

Meanwhile, Kirsty kept reviewing documents that were tendered during the Sofronoff inquiry, and that's when she made a shocking discovery about something called Project thirteen in a nutshell to show that an automated DNA extraction method used by the Lab to process crime scene samples had very low success rates in recovering DNA, and this fact was known to the lab's former management.

This is how I explained Project thirteen in episode ten of Shandy's Legacy.

It sounds like something out of a sci fi movie or a political thriller.

Put simply, it was a project that set out to test an innovative new method of extracting DNA from crime scene samples.

The new method used so called robots to extract DNA rather than relying on scientists laboriously doing it by hand.

Crucially, this significantly speeded up the DNA testing process.

The method was given the green light and it started being used in Queensland in October two thousand and seven.

It was, Kirsty says, the bigger change in the government run Lab's history, and it came at a time when the Lab was under enormous political and public pressure to clear a huge and growing backlog of samples awaiting DNA testing.

One of the major problems was the extraction method had not been scientifically validated at any time.

It recovered less DNA than comparable manual methods, and it was one hundred times less sensitive.

It also was causing the contamination of samples.

Doctor Wright found that the lab had introduced this new method despite knowing of these catastrophic failings.

The practical effect of it was that evidence available for criminal trials was compromised.

While the so called robots or the automatic extraction method was in use during a nine year period which included Shandy's murder in twenty thirteen, convictions that would otherwise have been secured were not because of this fundamental problem at the heart of the lab.

Here's another reminder from episode ten.

Kirsty believes this is ground zero for the failures in Shandy's case.

She believes this is why.

No DNA was showing up in samples when it should have been, why no forensic trace was found of Shandy's killer, and why many other crimes have not been solved.

Surprisingly, the issues relating to Project thirteen were not investigated during Walter Soffronoff's inquiry because they were not identified by the inquiry team itself, and crucially they were not brought to the inquiry's attention by an independent DNA expert who had been asked to advise that inquiry.

That expert was doctor Lindsay Wilson Wilde.

After my disclosures out these issues in Shandy's legacy in September twenty twenty three, the government buckle to intense pressure and a rare second Commission of Inquiry was established to examine the automated DNA extraction concerns.

I spoke to Christin Amiot, audio producer of the Australians podcast The Front, about this at the time the second inquiry was announced.

They had to act again because doctor Kirsey Wright is relentless and we weren't going away either.

And in the run up to a state election, I think the Premier, Anastasia Palashay and the Health Minister Shannon Fenterman just saw the writing on the wall.

This was going to be potentially a law and order disaster.

Now.

The lightning fast second Inquiry was held over just six weeks in October and November twenty twenty three.

The then government decided that it would not have been appropriate for Walter soffrinoff to conduct that second inquiry, so a new Commissioner, Doctor Annabel Bennett, of the Federal Court of Australia until her retirement, was appointed.

In the most recent episode of Shandy's Legacy, back in November twenty twenty three, we talked about the findings of that second inquiry and Project thirteen.

Here's the then Queensland Health Minister Shannon Fenterman, who announced the second Inquiry's findings at a press conference that I attended in Brisbane.

All of doctor Kirsty Wright's concerns about Project thirteen were valid.

The Commission of Inquiry found that Project thirteen was fundamentally flawed.

The DNA Lab really did away with scientifically sound methodology.

They sacrificed that for speed.

It should never have occurred.

It was never ever scientifically validated.

There were no proper processes in place.

The Commission of Inquiry also found that doctor Wilson Wilde did not draw attention to the deficiencies of Project thirteen in her evidence before the first Commission of Inquiry.

One consequence clearly of that failure was the need for this second Commission of inquiry.

However, Commissioner Bennett did not find that doctor Wilson wild did that deliberately and found without contradiction that doctor Wilson Wilde was making very good progress in implementing all of the recommendations from the first Commission of Inquiry, including major overhauls to the culture of the lab and the processes.

And importantly, Commissioner Bennett also found that there was no evidence that the public should not have confidence in the lab and the work that is happening there.

Now.

There are two recommendations.

We accept both of them.

That is that cases between two thousand and seven and twenty and sixteen when this automated DNA extraction method was in place, will be reviewed, so that's up to one hundred and three thousand samples that may need to be retested.

Of course, the second recommendation is that they should all form part of the historical case review that is already underway, where we have panels of legal experts and police reviewing cases.

So not all of these samples will need retesting.

I do believe that Queenslanders should continue to have faith in the lab and have faith in our criminal justice process.

There will be delays in DNA testing, but I think it is so important in the interest of Justice that we reviewal of those cases and those samples.

Now you heard Shannon Fentman refer to doctor Lindsay Wilson wild and you'll remember her name and her voice from earlier episodes.

Doctor Wilson Wilde had given evidence to the first inquiry in twenty twenty two as an independent DnaA expert.

Back then she.

Was still the Director of Forensic Science in South Australia, but she went on to become the interim Chief Executive Officer of what is now Forensic Science Queensland in January twenty twenty three, after Walter Sofronoff's inquiry.

When Shannon Fentaman announced the findings of the second inquiry, I asked her a question about doctor Wilson Wilde's appointment when Dr Wilsavold and being appointed to run the whole lab and scientific services.

If you had known that she'd missed this biguse was asked in the lab's history last year.

The evidence in the findings of this Commission of Inquiry is that she didn't do that in a way to deliberately mislead.

So even though there's a finding here that doctor Wilson Wilde did not provide that information about the Project thirteen being fundamentally flawed, particularly in relation to the yield of DNA.

That was not a deliberate decision.

Now to the findings of the second inquiry, the lab appeared to be getting on with its routine operations as well as implementing the recommendations from both inquiries, and we got on with other work, including true crime investigations for the unsolved murders of other women such as Bromwyn Winfield for the Bromwin series.

Forensic Science Queensland was gifted very strong and independent status.

It was the beneficiary of new legislation that was designed to ensure high quality, reliable and impartial forensic services.

At around this time.

We're now into July twenty twenty four.

Doctor Wilson Wilde spoke to the ABC's state Line program.

This is an achievable task to turn this lab around, and so I'm confident that the work that we're putting out ours of the highest quality.

Having been the interim or acting director for some months, doctor Wilson Wilde was appointed to the role on a permanent basis in September twenty twenty four.

That appointment was announced just before the then Labor government entered what's called caretaker mode ahead of the Queensland state election, and a ministerial media statement described her as being widely regarded as one of the leading forensic scientists in Australia and New Zealand.

The statement said that doctor Wilson Wilde's appointment was made following an open and international selection process.

We do not know the ins and outs of all of that, but we did find her appointment as director controversial given the questions that were squarely raised about her integrity and conduct before and during the second Commission of Inquiry.

My colleague Claire Harvey summarized the situation well in the last episode of Shandy's Legacy in November.

You sort of wonder about the political calculation here for the government.

They've got to balance the fact that Dr Wilson wild has effectively been criticized in some ways in this report, for example by the Commissioner accepting that she didn't tell Waltersofenoff's inquiry in any adequate way about the failings of Project thirteen.

But the government has to decide.

So we've got someone in charge of this lab who has made a mistake, who has refused to admit to her mistake and has got herself into an embarrassing situation and we've had to go through the ordeal of another commission of inquiry.

But is she making ongoing mistakes?

Are victims of crime at ongoing risk because of problems within this laboratory?

Or is she an efficient enough manager that she'll sort out the issues?

And maybe she's been chastened by this experience.

Would it have been far better to have a fresh start in terms of leadership of that lab Doctor Kirsty Wright certainly thought so.

The failure or multiple failures of Lindsay every step of the way in relation to Projects thirteen during the first inquiry and how she handled it afterwards, It's not just one failure, it's many, many, many failures.

We simply don't know what's going to happen behind closed doors moving forward.

I was lucky that I picked this up.

It definitely leaves me with question marks over all of the decisions and all of the actions that Lindsay makes.

And what I found quite concerning is her unwillingness to accept that she'd made mistakes.

Through twenty twenty four, as I got busy with the Bromwin investigations.

The Queensland Courts were tackling head on the impact of lengthy DNA testing delays in the criminal justice system.

The Supreme Courts Justice David Madis delivered this solemn message had an information session for lawyers in June twenty twenty four.

Face the reality, and that is that the DNA is an enormous problem in Queensland and the way things are, if we continue as we are, they will never catch up.

That is not a justice system.

We have to address that problem.

And on October tenth, twenty twenty four, in Mackay, the city in Queensland where Shandy had been brutally murdered eleven years earlier, the then opposition leader David Christifouley made an election commitment that his new government would begin a review of what he called Labour's DNA lab debarcle.

He promised that, if elected, this commitment would be delivered on in the first week of government.

Just over two weeks later, on October twenty six, the Liberal National Party won the state election and David christifully became the Premier of Queensland.

Live from Brisbane, I'm David Spears.

Welcome to Insights Queensland votes for change after nine years of labor rule.

Now David CHRISTA Foley has led the LNP back into power.

The new Premiere was true to his word.

In his government's first week of office.

Kirsty Wright and former FBI expert doctor Bruce Badowlei were appointed to undertake an assessment of testing services and reforms across forensic science Queensland.

They led two separate review teams.

But in June of this year twenty twenty five, before doctor Kirsty Wright and Bruce Badowley had completed their reports, serious problems in the lab were coming to light.

Paternity testing will be shut down at the state run forensic lab after more shocking failures were discovered.

The Attorney General says a child rape case was.

Bungal then spectacularly.

On June twenty twenty twenty five, the Queensland Attorney General Deb Frecklington announced that the director of the lab, Dr Wilson Wilde, had been suspended after contamination issues were found.

There was breaking news on a Friday night in June twenty twenty five, The ABC.

Reported Attorney General Dev Frecklington announce she'd immediately suspended the director of FSQ doctor Lindsey Wilson Wilde pending a show cause notice for removal.

Miss Frecklington says she took the action following advice.

Revelation that doctor Lindsey Wilson wild had been abruptly stood down as Head of Forensic Science Queensland or FSQ appeared on my smartphone.

I was out with friends in.

Southport, an hour's drive south of the lab.

I turned to the person nearest and showed her the headlines.

By coincidence, it was doctor Kirsty Wright.

We were at a cocktail party to mark an exhibition of paintings and portraits by our talented lawyer friend, Jason Muricami, a dedicated campaigner for DNA reform.

Kirsty must have had an idea of what was looming for the troubled lab and for doctor Lindsay Wilson wild its leader since early twenty twenty three, but Kirsty had not shared a hint of it when we were chatting before the headline started coming out.

She takes her obligations around confidentiality seriously.

She would be a good poker player.

While few people predicted the end coming quite so dramatically, it was obvious to insiders that doctor Wilson Wilde's leadership was being subjected to forensic scrutiny and being found wanting.

For several months, Kirsty and fellow DNA expert doctor Bruce Badoli from the United States had been painstakingly investigating the lab's performance.

As Kirsty and doctor Bidoley analyzed lab documents and spoke to whistleblowing scientists in the first half of twenty twenty five, the serious problems that were plaguing the lab became all too obvious, serious problems which were not being properly addressed or even disclosed by doctor Lindsay Wilson Wilde, according to the expert investigations, and this is hard to fathom given the lessons of not one but two public inquiries highlighting the crew social requirement of the lab to be transparent and responsive about problems and their remedies.

The era of hiding and burying failures in that lab should have been over with Walter Sofronoff's excoriating findings at the end of twenty twenty two, but the investigations by Kirsty right showed that during the new leadership, internal audits which came up with alarming results were being hidden.

Management decided that the internal reports should not be distributed, published, or communicated to general staff.

Kirsty and two other scientists who were helping with her investigations found that this failure to disclose the documents to other reporting scientists in the lab meant they couldn't warn police and courts about the limitations and even the unreliability of the evidence that they were presenting under oath.

And all this despite the state's Supreme Court making a special direction in July twenty twenty four, a direction which specifically required experts to disclose any limitations or uncertainty affecting the reliability of results, including the scientific validity of expert evidence.

The tipping point for doctor Lindsey Wilson Wilde, the final straw before her ousting on this evening in June twenty twenty five, came after the investigation teams discovered the extent and seriousness of contamination in the lab.

Several scientists had quietly told Kirsty about the contamination during her investigations in mid May twenty twenty five, and those scientists had expressed real concern to her about the likely impact of the contamination on police investigations and cases.

This was not one off contamination that the scientists were disclosing to Kirsty, not one or two isolated cases.

After further investigation, Kirsty and doctor Bruce Badoli discovered what they described as systemic contamination.

Here's Michelle Jensen of seven News in late June twenty twenty five, and she spoke to Vicky Blackburn for this report.

Two commissions of inquiry, one case of deja vu.

I'm kind of still in shock that it all happened again.

Twelve years and no justice for Shandy Blackburn.

Her Machai murder is one of thousands of cases failed by problems at Forensic Science Queensland.

Her samples are still in a queue for retesting.

As a lab that serves the criminal justice system grinds to a sudden halt, only working on urgent cases for seven days, its director suspended by the Attorney General.

A contamination issue was uncovered.

What it is and its impacts on cases is unclear.

After everything we've been through, we thought we were way past this being able to happen again.

Very disappointed for victims.

In May, the government started sending samples overseas to clear a backlog of ten thousand major crime samples.

Yesterday, all routine testing stopped in.

A laboratory, requiring specific rigor to accurately advise police and the courts.

The issue of contamination is extremely troubling.

There needed to be prompting and urging from the review teams for the lab to finally do the right thing in this space after its very sorry history.

It is almost mind boggling that the lab did not proactively take these steps at the very first sign of contamination.

Doctor Wilson Wilde is now on a deadline to respond to a show cause notice for removal if she wants to stay in the top job.

She instructed her lawyers to write to the government and give a detailed explanation of her actions and her leadership.

That document was tabled in State Parliament and you'll hear some of it as read by a voice actor later in this episode.

She has less than a week as victim's wait again.

And then on August four, twenty twenty five, doctor Kirsty Wright's new bombshell review report into forensic science Queensland was publicly released.

This is None Men's Queensland with Melissa.

Darnes Good Evening.

Violent and sexual offenders are tonight going unpunished amid an enormous backlog of testing at the state's forensics lab, and worse still, a new inquiry and the year's long debarcle has uncovered the lab is now at a critical point of failure.

On the same day her report was revealed, the government announced a DNA review expert team to overhaul forensic operations in Queensland, led by the former New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller.

This disastrous and it doesn't need to be because other labs aren't like this.

The systemic contamination was alarming to doctor Bedali and doctor Wright.

I asked Kirsty to read from the contamination section of her long and scathing report for the Queensland Government and the state's Attorney General deb Frecklington.

Systemic DNA contamination within a forensic biology laboratory is one of the greatest risks to the accuracy and reliability of evidence.

Results should not be released if contamination is detected.

DNA contamination is detected weekly at Forensic Science Queensland, which is highly unacceptable.

The DNA review has found that since October twenty twenty three, Forensic Science Queensland presented unreliable DNA evidence using these methods to the police, who then use that before the courts.

Despite having known of systemic contamination, the lab's managers responded with neither urgency nor transparency, even though the risks of miscarriages of justice were all too obvious.

There was evidence of what is known as sample to sample contamination.

That means the DNA from one sample contaminating another sample.

It's a grave risk for crime scene evidence and subsequent criminal prosecutions.

Of greatest concern is when contamination is regularly detected and its source cannot be determined, and that's what was happening for much of Lindsay Wilson Wilde's time as leader of the lab.

Here's Kirsty in one of her recent interviews with me.

There had been gross contamination and I mean unbelievable levels of contamination for the last two years that the lab knew about.

When contamination occurs in a DNA lab, processing or testing must stop, the source of the contamination must be identified quickly and then removed, and then the lab must undergo a deep clean.

But doctor Wright found that the lab's slow motion course of action fell well below best practice now.

Listeners to Shandy's Legacy episodes from twenty twenty two heard evidence from Waltera Soffronoff's inquiry back then about the alarm sounded by senior scientist Kylie Rieka over contamination.

Kylie Recer gave evidence about it, and here's a reminder.

There are some things that you remember quite well.

And I remember leaving w one day because I was so stressed, because I recall I had said words to the effect of this is a friends at DNA Lab's worst nightmare to get cross contamination and samples where you don't really know where it's coming from.

Those bad old days were meant to be well behind the lab, but the nightmare, as Kylie recad described it, was playing out again in twenty twenty five, and this time under the new broom.

Lindsey Wilson Wilde deb Frecklington, as Attorney General and the state's first law officer, responded decisively to what she was being told by Kirsty Wright and Bruce Bdoley about the systemic contamination and a range of other serious problems.

Queensland's Premier, David Chris fully spoke to journalists about it.

The Attorney got a briefing yesterday morning, took steps, got advice, notified the individual and then notified Queenslanders.

So she's working through that right now as she found out Queensland has found out.

Dr Wilson Wilde made no comment about her public ousting by Deb Frecklington and Premier Chris Afouley.

When asked how long she has to respond to the show caused notice for removal, he replied less than a week.

I have sought an interview with doctor Wilson Wilde.

This was declined by her.

A month after being stood down.

Doctor Wilson Wilde quit as Director of Forensic Science Queensland.

To me, this failure, the DNA failure, in my mind, is one of the biggest failures of the justice system nationally, but if not the world.

It's quite incredible for.

These new episodes of Shandy's Legacy.

I interviewed the Attorney General, Deb Frecklington, what can you say about the abrupt standing down of the then director, Lindsay Wilson wild.

I issued a show course notice.

Not long after that the former director decided to resign.

I am really focused on the future.

We need to make sure that the best science is taking place.

We've acted very swiftly to change legislation to enable us to appoint the right person that can get in there and fix the culture at the lab.

And what we have done since then is we've appointed Mick Fuller.

Listeners to the Teacher's Pet podcast will recall Mick Fuller as the then new South Wales Police Commissioner.

He was absolutely determined in twenty eighteen to help ensure that justice would ensue in the case of Chris Dawson for murdering.

His wife Lynn.

Here is a reminder from episode sixteen of that podcast that Teachers Pet Mick Fuller was talking our after he sent detectives from Sydney to Queensland to arrest and handcuffed Dawson and take him into custody to be charged over the murder of Lynn thirty six years earlier.

I've said from the start what is important to me was just as Bilenette Dawson and her family, and today is an important step forward in.

That you've become more engaged in this case as the public interest in it has grown.

What does it mean to you and your detectives to get this result today.

Which important on a number of levels, and a little bit at the commissioner, You're try and care equally for all the victims in the state.

You and I met some months ago about this matter and spoke at length about it, and then the starting point to me was about trying to thank sure people understood that we did care, and I had to take some personal responsibility to get that message out.

You and I both wanted the same.

Thing at the end of the day, which was justice for Lenet Duson and a family.

Seven years later, Mick Fuller is living away from his Sydney based family.

He's working hard in Brisbane and coming to grips with the dysfunction of a DNA lab that has been letting down thousands of victims of crime across a vast state for two decades.

While he's the farthest thing from a scientist, Nick is a bold and strategic leader and he has a steerly commitment to deliver justice two victims of crime.

Surely, after all of the previous debacles, the lab has its best chance yet with the backing of Deb Frecklington, doctor Kirsty Wright and doctor Bruce Berdoli.

But there is a long way to go.

The hits for the lab will keep coming for a while.

The more we look at the DNA debarcle, the more we realize just how deep the problem is.

That was the new Premiere David Chris A Foley.

He's right, the problems are deep and they can't be glossed over.

You are going to hear more very serious revelations in this episode and those which follow it, but we believe that there are good reasons to be cautiously optimistic about where things will be in say two years.

Here's Deb Frecklington and Mick Fuller at a media conference in Brisbane just days before this episode aired in early November twenty twenty five.

We are standing before you being upfront and honest with everything that is going on.

We're investing money to ensure that samples are being reviewed in a timely manner.

Now this is important because we have committed to faster access to justice and ensuring that we fix up Labour's DNA debarcle.

It was just short of twelve months ago that the Premiere and I announced a review.

This was by doctor Kirsty Wright and doctor Bruce Bdally and was absolutely damning.

These are major issues.

We're talking about people who have been victims of crime.

We're talking about people that might still be wandering around the streets that are rapists.

Now we acted quickly, we appointed Mick Fuller.

We are doing everything we can in the DNA space to ensure that these rapists get off the streets.

We are doubling the court reporting scientists.

That number will go to twenty.

We know that there is more work to do, but I can tell you we're getting on with the job.

I really do want to thank Mick Fuller for the hard work he's done in the short period of time.

The backlog was up to four years when I started.

It is unacceptable and so there is a lot of work to get done.

But you can't get that work done less you've got the scientists trained to do the job.

Unfortunately, every day there's a victim in Queensland and that goes into the.

Backlog as well.

And there are backlogs in serious crime and in sexual assaults.

There's backlogs around the historical case review.

And what we want to get to is that there's no.

Way we want it done sooner because each sample.

You've got to remember, this is about a victim who is still being denied justice.

So a big part of that will be the outsourcing that's funded for two years.

At the same time, I need to make sure that the matters that have been processed that forensic Science Queensland are being done by the book and the last thing I'd want to do is cut corners in terms of being the backlogged down.

We can never have another inquiry.

It is important that we make the highest functioning, best forensic lab in Australia.

That is an ambition that we don't shy away from.

I know we're keen to get this fixed.

I need to take time at the same time to make sure it stands up and it's right.

We really hope to see.

Many, many more positive outcomes in the coming months.

It's a lot of work, right, There's a lot of work in.

That And in an upcoming episode you'll hear evidence of doctor Lindsey Wilson Wilde's direct knowledge for more than two years and her concerns about the reliability of evidence.

An internal confidential briefing note in March twenty twenty three conveys her knowledge of the problems, problems which should have received immediate and very careful attention that was soon after she became.

CEO of that lab.

In our view, this document is damning, But as the reviews by doctor Wright and doctor Bidoli found, lab management's responses were slack and inadequate.

Kirsty found that management made no recommendations to stop DNA testing to stop taking evidence to court for criminal trials.

In Kirsty's report, management means doctor Lindsey Wilson Wilde, but her name does not appear in the document on legal advice.

Kirsty was told that she should not name her I am under no such restraint.

Dr Wilson Wilde did not warn police of the risk of unreliable results of dodgy DNA evidence being presented in criminal trials, and if defense lawyers come to appreciate the fact that incriminating DNA against a client may be unreliable due to systemic contamination in the lab.

There will inevitably be legal challenges.

Page one hundred and forty seven of Kirsty Wright's report includes the paragraph that those defense lawyers will zero in on.

That paragraph states, as a matter of predictive fact, that the scale of the contamination has been so great that some crime seeing DNA evidence would have been unknowingly impacted by it.

One source of DNA contamination is what was called environmental contamination, and that is DNA from lab surfaces and items which could be transferred to crime seeing evidence.

Overall, contamination was found in more than half of some one thousand, two hundred environmental samples.

It is an extraordinarily high number and it was rising in frequency over the two years that it was being measured to mid twenty twenty five, not falling.

In one of our interviews, I summarized Kirsey's findings.

About the knowledge of management.

As in doctor Wilson.

Wilde, she was aware that unreliable results were being provided to the police and courts from early twenty twenty three.

She was aware the results were so.

Unreliable that they may have needed to be reviewed and retested a later date as part of the historical case review.

And she must have been aware that these unreliable results would have impacted victim's chances at justice and may have prevented the apprehension of violent repeat offenders, and that's put Queensland communities at risk of harm.

The document was written in March twenty twenty three.

It was an important briefing note which demonstrates that doctor Wilson Wilde was well aware of the dire situation, but the document was held tightly.

My colleague Karina Berger is going to drill down into this internal document for an upcoming episode.

Earlier, you heard a TV reporter refer to deja vous in this laboratory, a sense of history repeating itself.

Here is Walter Soffronoff from December twenty twenty two when he was delivering the findings of his first inquiry, and he lied the lab's then suspended director Kathy Allen.

You don't expect in Australia that a public servant of the rank of a managing scientist is actually going to lie to you, just wouldn't credit it.

Her successor, Doctor Lindsey Wilson Wilde, made bold public promises to reform the strife torn lab and lead it from ruin.

She promised first class professionalism and world leading standards of conduct.

After the widely discredited reign of Kathy Allen, doctor Wilson Wilde was lauded by the government and Walter, but many listeners must have found this surprising.

I did too.

Dr Wilson Wilde's conduct as an expert witness at Walter Sofronoff's inquiry meant that she should not have been considered for the leadership role.

In my view, she gave bizarre explanations for her failure as an expert witness to report to Walter Sofronoff during his inquiry the clear evidence in documents She was asked to examine of catastrophic problems with DNA testing going back years, and it meant that that inquiry missed the smoking gun known as Project thirteen.

Her withholding of this information was extraordinary and egregious in the view of many people, including professional scientists whom we spoke to.

I asked her about.

It in a telephone interview ahead of our episodes about Project thirteen in twenty twenty three.

I mean, do you think that the inquiry would have expected you to say, Hey, there's also this massive ill problem.

You might want to start looking at that because it looks pretty serious.

I wasn't asked to look at a yielder shoot at all.

Okay, isn't that something you just want to volunteer anyway, like let them know because they don't know what's there until the expert witness tells them the then government was working hard to spin and sugarcoat what went down.

They wanted to protect doctor Wilson wild Shannon Fenterman, as the Minister at the time, with knowledge of what had happened, could have told Dr Wilson wild in the wake of the second inquiry, I'm sorry, we cannot support you anymore in this leadership role.

If you will not resign, we'll have to remove you instead.

Dr Wilson Wilde's appointment was confirmed with a salary package of about half a million dollars a year.

Floundering in the lab continued.

Dr Wilson Wilde's leadership went for two and a half years.

In the end, the new government of David Chris A.

Foley blasted her out.

Her side of the story would be a fascinating listen and there is a standing invitation to doctor Wilson Wylde to share it with this podcast.

We have a lengthy letter which she instructed her lawyer, Glenn Ferguson to write to the Queensland Government in response to the show caused notice she had been given a voice actor for Lindsay Wilson Wilde lawyer is going to read from the letter.

It was tabled in the State Parliament in Brisbane in August twenty twenty five.

Since our client's appointment, Forensic Science Queensland has had a positive history of achievements.

In twenty twenty four, the lab reduced the backlog of testing by approximately fifty percent.

At all times, our client has maintained the view as communicated to stakeholders, that the rectification of issues in the laboratory would be a two to three year process.

Our client has led the review and improvement of processes in the laboratory, which is ongoing and continues to identify areas for improvement.

It would take significant amount of time and resources for the laboratory to function perfectly within a short period of time.

Given the systemic nature of the issues, our client was appropriately identifying issues and prioritizing the rectification given available scientific resources.

Our client has strived and continues to strive in implementing a positive quality culture where scientists are able to voice their opinions and raise issues so that those issues may be resolved.

The letter from doctor Lindsey Wilson Wilde, Lawyer, states that she was not aware of sample to sample contamination until the day before she was stood down that as soon as she was told of the contamination, she began alerting police and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General's Office, and it says she proposed a seven day pause in operations by the lab so that the cause of the contamination could be identified and cleaned out.

One day later, doctor Lindsey Wilson Wilde received the show caused notice she was being told to pack up her things.

It is alleged that our client has failed to carry out the functions of her role.

She denies that she has failed, neglected, or acted incompetently in leading forensic science Queensland.

The lawyer's letter adds that under her leadership and at.

All times, she acted in accordance with best practice and acceptable industry standards relating to the control and minimization of DNA contamination in DNA testing.

She has communicated openly and acted with transparency, integrity and honesty in her dealings with all stakeholders, and that the lab has continued to rely on high quality processes and techniques that comply with relevant standards, and where issues concerning contamination were identified, our client has taken positive action to address the same.

DNA contamination on laboratory services cannot be eliminated.

In an ideal world, environmental contamination would be zero, but this is not reality and never the case.

The current facility is old and potentially hinders contamination reduction.

It is not consistent with good practice, which is no fault of our client.

Our client remains confident that she is capable of performing the duties as director with competence and due diligence.

In late August twenty twenty five, the government passed new laws to give the Attorney General Deb Frecklington sweeping powers over the running.

Of the lab What this state has been confronted with is one of the most shameful failures of governance in Queensland's history.

The state's DNA testing regime overseen by the former Labour government and was left in total disarray.

That was Deb Frecklington on her feet in State Parliament.

After a decade of decline.

We have spent the past ten months delivering the Christopherily government inherited a system riddled with contamination, extraordinary delays and results so unreliable that the very foundations of our justice system have been shaken.

Turnaround times for critical DNA samples had blown out to more than four hundred days, more than a year for evidence in rape and major crime cases to be returned to police.

In that time, offenders remained on the streets, victims were left in limbo, and courts were denied the evidence they needed to deliver justice.

The backlog of untested rape kits alone grew from just seventy five in twenty twenty three to more than five hundred by late time twenty twenty four.

These are not abstract statistics.

These represent lives, families and communities denied the most basic right to timely justice.

She was given the power to recommend the suspension or removal of the lab director for any reason or none.

The changes took away the requirement that forensic Science Queensland and its director must be independent.

You're going to hear some of the candid disclosures of Mick Fuller and Deb Frecklington in upcoming episodes.

They went to the United States to meet scientists in Virginia.

That's where the lab chosen for the DNA testing outsourcing program is situated.

Their scientists are expected to process one thousand major crime samples and one hundred and seventy five rape kits a month.

Their scientists did testing on victim remains after the nine to eleven terrorist attacks.

Deb Frecklington and Mick Fuller also visited the FBI to examine best practice operations for criminal DNA testing.

What a visit to the FBI here in Virginia, I mean, this is all about learning how we can fix FSQ and Queensland by learning from the best in the world who really do want to put victims at the heart of the justice system.

Vicky Blackburn and her eldest daughter Shanna have endured so much in their pursuit of justice since Shandy's murder in February twenty thirteen.

Together, they sat through the murder trials in twenty seventeen.

Vicky was in despair at the way it was being conducted.

She would have stopped going each day if she had not been told by the prosecution team that it wouldn't be a good look.

It was not a good look when evidence about the stabbing of a pig and how that was supposedly relatable to the stabbing of Vicky's daughter Shandy became part of the trial, but Vicky and Shanna had to sit and listen to it and then suffer the ignimity of the jurors taking just two hours to find the accused John Perros, not guilty.

They sat through the public hearings for the coronial inquiry in Mackay in twenty nineteen, and then they dealt with the podcast investigations, the evidence of gross failures and the findings of first one inquiry and then a second into those failures in the DNA lab.

It is hard to think of another family that.

Has experienced anything quite like this after the murder of a loved one.

Now, at a time when they should be getting comfort from news that the lab has been performing well, they deal instead with damning reports arising from the exhaustive investigations by doctor Kirsty Wright and doctor Brewster Dooley, and the confronting fact that the lab is arguably performing as badly, perhaps.

Even worse than it was before.

We really had high hopes two years ago, Oh we did.

Yeah.

We thought Welch had got to the bottom of everything, and Lindsay was going to be put into place and everything was going to be sorted out eventually, and that lab had the ability to be something one of the best in Australia, and that's what we were hoping.

What do you believe we do well?

Have had as exposed in recent weeks and months.

I feel we've gone backwards on many levels.

There's a bigger backlog.

Staffing is an issue, Training is an issue.

Contamination continues to be an issue and has gotten worse.

The historical testing is almost not moving at all.

The results coming out of that lab since the Bannett inquiry have not been able to be relied on a map, hasn't been reported to courts or reporting scientists or police or DPP or the currentate.

Just horrific.

That's how this lab is being rung.

I said to Kirsty, I'm sorry, I can only read about ten pages at a time.

It was so distressing.

Have you got an idea of why we are in this space?

Negativity and in action by one per has the ability to affect many people in this lab.

Senior management in the lab not fostering an environment to reach suitable results.

Vicky and Shanner's voices were heard in Kirsty's review in a few ways.

They went to some focus groups and they also wrote a deeply personal letter to Kirsty's review.

Team.

They described some of their experiences during the two inquiries and the toll that the lab's catastrophic failures in Shandy's testing and in testing more generally has taken on them.

I asked Vicky and Shanna to read out some parts of their letter.

I was left feeling that there was no hope this process would be able to reach anywhere close to rectifying the damage that had been done.

I felt no one cared about any of the victims, not just Shandy.

I was completely shattered and distressed.

I felt so betrayed, not just on behalf of Shandy, but for every victim who did not have the DNA in their cases correctly processed.

I walked out of the building and as I stood at the corner, watching peak hour traffic rushing past, I just had a moment where I could not bear hearing more and more failures unraveling, knowing how those victims felt.

In that moment, I just thought about walking out in front of the traffic.

It was a very sobering experience, and if anyone does not understand the importance oft DNA management processes and reporting within the justice system, this is an example of the reality of the impact on victims.

Did you kind of jump in there?

Yep?

What you're describing is.

You considering walking in front of a car and taking your own life.

That was it, and it was very, very scary for me because it's not something I would ever consider, but write at that moment, just watching what was happening and just the frivolity of these people that had destroyed not only my life, but many many victims' lives.

You okay, yep?

Can you please read the next section.

The impact on each person differs, however, they are all long term and makes day to day life a struggle no matter how much we try to overcome.

There are good days, and there are obviously bad days, but each day is forced and managed.

As I am talking with Shanna and typing today, tears are flowing down my cheeks, my hands are shaking, and I must keep going back to retype my words, making it more distressing for us.

Both.

We hope no one enjoys losing a beloved family member in the way we have.

The revelations about DNA testing that were made over the course of the podcast and inquiries have led us to believe that there has been a lack of appreciation of the impact on victims.

The impact of the original crimes is life long.

Add to that the failure to find justice, whatever the cause, resulting in symptoms becoming more mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting.

These effects change not only who you are, but how you live your life.

Day to day.

And just like the loss of Shandy, our trauma feels like it has no end.

So we tell our story for one of the better word in the hope that it brings real understanding of the term victim based outcomes.

We feel very strongly and are committed to continuing to tell our story as we fear if we stop, it will silence other victims now and in the future, and silence has never resulted in change.

We can never take back the crimes that have taken place.

However, we can bring a measure of peace to victims and allow them to grieve and heal.

Shunner and I look forward to that time to come for us and the many other victims that are still waiting.

Doctor Kirsty Wright was affected by the letter from Vicki and Shanner.

She has been a friend and confidante to them since they met for the first time in a zoom call in late twenty twenty one.

That's when I introduced Kirsty to Vickie and Shunner, and that's why during an interview at my house for this episode in late twenty twenty five, she is still appalled by a lab which remains broken.

Kirsty is still reflecting on the damage inflicted on the Blackburns and many.

Others times that by however, many thousands of people the harm that this lab has done knowingly doing it, she.

Has still got their backs.

He is Vicky again.

In a recent interview with me and my colleague Karena Berger, do you know what is happening with Shandy's crime scene samples?

As far as I know, we're waiting for research to be done into seeing how to best get any remaining DNA in those samples, how to get it out extract that without damaging if there is any remaining DNA, and that I think will be used for not just Shandy's case, for a lot of cases.

It sounds like Shandy's retesting will be pretty complicated.

But at this stage, would you prefer that any retesting was done by an external lab, possibly even an overseas lab, rather than the life in.

Queen's lab definitely, there's no question about that.

I'm hoping her samples are Bible still.

But the Sofronov inquiry ended three years ago, Annabel Bennett's inquiry two years ago.

How long does it take to do this piece of research.

The research has to be funded.

It's not going to be an easy task.

They have to find a facility, have to find scientists, They have to buy in samples and replicate the swabs and test and test.

And that's never been done in the world before.

So it's not something that they can go to other scientists anywhere in the world and say, hey, have you had this problem?

How did you get around it?

Do you know from the office of the Coroner in Mackay, David O'Connell, who reopened share this case, where that's.

At waiting for these test results from the research.

I think everybody's hoping sooner rather than native.

So I am understanding where it is and mindful of that because I don't want to be the person that rushes that through and other people don't have the opportunity to get their samples retested properly.

You are going to hear more about the untested historical samples, including evidence from Shanny's case in upcoming episodes.

How do you feel about the ongoing delays and now these latest catastrophes being unveiled.

If we just look at how many samples that we're talking about and how many cases and how many victims that has to run its course these catastrophes now though, that's just put the lab another two to four years behind.

And if we can't get disresolved once and for now, my feeling is that lab is nonviable.

That's it will be shut down.

You can't rely on a facility using unvalidated equipment and unvalidated processes and having results that they're reporting to courts with contamination from case to cases, not just contamination within a case, it's mixing case contamination across the cases.

It really is astounding that in Queensland in this day and age, that's what we're dealing with.

How do you feel about the appointment of Mick Fuller, the former new soup As Police Commissioner, as the new director of the lab, particularly because he's a non scientist.

I have concerns and I'm hoping that he utilizes the scientific experience from Kirsty and Bruce, because I think if he doesn't use those two scientists specifically, he won't be successful.

He needs to have someone with very experienced scientific management skills to be able to guide him to do what he needs to do.

This episode of Shandy's Legacy was investigated and written.

By me Edley Thomas and Karin Verger.

Audio production for this podcast series is by Wasabi Audio and original theme music by Slade Gibson.

This podcast series is brought to you by me Headley Thomas and the Australian newspaper and digital side.

Visit Shandy dot com dot au that's s h A N d e E dot com dot au for additional documentary material.

Anyone with information about the murder of Shandy Blackburn can contact me confidentially by email by going to Shandy dot com dot au