Approche production.

Cain ran Moore was born on the twenty second of September two thousand and four and died sometime between twenty one April twenty twenty three and the twenty second of April twenty twenty three in Alice River, near Townsville.

He was eighteen years old.

That's the first two lines of the coroner's finding after the completion of a coronial investigation into Caine's death in November of twenty twenty four.

Police and the coroner say it was a horrible accident.

Caine was lying on the ground in a park just minutes from his home when a vehicle ran over his head.

His family don't disagree it was an accident, but they do think someone knows something.

Someone knows who ran over their cano.

They don't believe anyone did this on purpose, but they do want someone to come forward.

They've always believed there's more to the story.

The thing that really gets me is that they didn't stop.

They did not stop.

They left him there.

Now, they wouldn't even have known that he died instantly.

They've he could have been, you know, laying there suffering all night, and they've just let just left him.

That I can never get over how anyone could do that.

Yeah, No, it was only about ten meters from where his friends were.

It was very close, Yeah, to where the tables and chairs and the little hut were where they were drinking.

To where he was run over near the tennis court.

Was absolutely freak accident.

And even the next day, hearing what happened on the news or people talking, yeah, I would think that they would realize, oh yeah, something triggering their mind as to the night before, and then come forward.

But we're hoping that they still will.

The hardest thing watching that news.

I've still got a copy of it on my phone.

It's unreal watching it because just hearing his name, you know, his full name on the news.

And seeing the police fans and.

You can even see I'm around with a blanket over it if.

You zoom in, and it's just, yeah, it's horrible.

Not something I can look at or think about at all.

Police acted quickly.

The COIB commenced an investigation into Kine's death.

Cain had no criminal history and no negative contact from the police.

Ever, Here's what police said when they first got to the park.

Initial inquiries by police identified distinct tire track marks in the grass that lined up with Cain.

It was suspected Cain had tragically been run over by a motor vehicle.

In the days after Caine was found, police carried out investigations from the scene.

The crime scene showed.

Tire impressions in the grass leading up to and immediately after where Cain had been located.

The path of the tire and condition of Kane's body suggested he had likely been run over by a vehicle at low speed.

They downloaded the data from Kane's phone.

His activity stopped on his phone at about nine pm the night of April twenty first, the night of the party.

Police also used CCTV and witness statements to identify two cars that were in the park that night, a small car and a larger four wheel drive.

That second car had only been in the area for less than five minutes.

They seized both of these cars and started interviewing everyone who was at the park that night.

I just thought that they would have found who it was with confiscating all the cars and everything and interviewing all the kids.

I just thought it would be within that few days to a week tops for them working out who it was.

I really did, really really did.

So you strongly believe that it was someone there in that group at the park that.

Night well, or someone that came there to the park, absolutely.

Sir Jane.

Once a few days had passed or a week, how are you and Gary feeling about what was happening with the case?

Every day I thought that they were going to read me to tell me something, but no, nothing.

We had to keep in contact with them and keep trying to bring an email them, and we didn't want to harass them too much.

We wanted to let them do their job.

But anything we heard we put into an email straight away or gave them a call.

And I did a lot by email because I know that they're very busy and I didn't want to.

Be hassling them.

But no, nothing, nothing.

Just felt like we were sort of just always asking, you know, is there anything that's happened or and just heartbreaking.

Did the police ever ask you for a statement?

No?

I thought that was I thought that was funny too.

That's all I could think of, is what about Gary, your husband?

No, nothing at all.

And I put it down to the simple factors that we weren't there.

You know, Gary was away working and I was at my house at Kelso.

So I'm guessing nothing happening.

You're feeling just getting more and more.

Disappointed just hearing what all the kids were saying.

So that's one thing that they were all saying the same thing.

They were all on p with.

So we thought that the police were going to solve it though, So you know, we really did kick back and just in hope that they were going to investigate it.

But it's.

It's heartbreaking to think that nothing's happened yet and it's just been handed over to the coroner's court because.

They had nothing more to go on.

That's heartbreaking.

Kine's family fear that someone knows more, but this person has chosen to stay silent.

But again, the police and the coroner don't agree, and there's no evidence to suggest someone is choosing to stay silent.

I think he was ran over.

But we're not going to stop until they come forward, until we've got answers.

We deserve answers as a family, a little bit of closure for Caine.

We deserve to know what happened to him.

I don't want this to just go unsolved.

That's my worst fear.

We want to know what happened to him.

Why he was left in the park there all night, in the cold, cold park, just on the ground by himself.

That tears me apart.

There's a lot of questions that I wanted an expert to help answer.

Damien Marrett is a former police detective in Victoria and now runs Marit Investigations.

He's been involved in investigating some of the highest profile cases in Australia.

The bulk of my career was around major crime, in drugs and covert operations.

Investigate a part of that job forms a large part of what you do as a detective.

Right divisional work, which is local cib or CiU work.

It can range day to day what happens you can be called to.

It could be a suicide where the suspicious circumstances.

It could be a homicide, It could be a rape, could be a serious assault, a group of thieves, you know, organized sort of thieves, organized crime in your area.

You basically cover whatever comes across the desk that needs further investigation that uniform usually carry out or can get rid of.

You've seen this case of Caine more.

We've spoken about it for some time.

We actually started talking about last year and then other things got in the way.

Was there anything?

Firstly, when you saw the case and you've now had a chance to look at the current as finding what was your initial thoughts look like anything.

I went into it reading a bit of an open mind.

What I did notice was there wasn't that much media around it other than him being a good bloke and you know, people liked him and so forth.

But there wasn't any huge conspiracy theories or the dark side of this crime or anything hinting that way, which surprised me because usually in any case like this, you know there'll be some link of Ah, there was death threats three days before, and you know, it changes the whole facet of it.

So when I read the coroner's report after that, it was all pretty straightforward.

It didn't seem like there was any malice or foul play involved.

It sounded like a straight out accident.

It seems highly likely he did fall asleep on a thoroughfare.

Now, a thoroughfare is anywhere a car can go, so a car's allowed to drive there.

So he's fallen asleep in the path of where cars are driving, and he's also fallen asleep just behind a road what do you.

Call them, mound of dirt?

Really, Yeah, it's like a road bump, but it's not the traditional speed bump.

It's a small hill that's probably been dug out by rain and sand and that sort of stuff.

So there's bumps on that road anyway.

So if somebody had it driven over that, especially in a larger sort of vehicle, which I think it had to be, like a four wheel drive or ESSUEV, you might think, geez, that bump was bigger than I expected.

But you've got to easily drive away not knowing that somebody was on the side of that bump or so, you know, it's quite possible or I think likely.

I agree with the Currenters report.

It's likely that somebody did not know at that time that they had run somebody over.

And that's the gist of this podcast.

No one's claiming that this wasn't a tragic accident.

The questions lie around what happened after this tragedy, what did police do to investigate, and did they leave any stone unturned?

Or is there really more to the story.

Damian and I have actually worked across a number of cases on both TV and podcast and across the years we've worked together.

I know that Damien tells it like it is.

He's not one to mince words.

But he's also not here at bash police as he would say or add any gst to the story that isn't there.

And you can hear when he first started looking into this story.

For us, it seemed pretty simple.

Kane died as a result of a tragic accident, and that's exactly what the coroner found when she delivered her finding in November of last year.

I think it's important firstly to understand the difference between what a coroner does and what a police investigation does.

So maybe we just stepped through that first, Damien.

Okay.

So if you look at in simple terms, the coroner's report is the initial finding by the coroner, and it's to work out who died, when they died, why they died, how they died, and pretty much that's where it stops.

So if there's suspicious circumstances and the police haven't investigated fully, the coroner would direct them to go and investigate further in the possibility of holding an inquest, which is, you know, the inquest court matter, looking at everybody in witnesses and so forth.

But at this stage there's nothing to suggest any as we've said, any foul play or you know, she's basically determined the who, how, when, what and why.

So just because the police haven't found the person who actually was involved doesn't mean that she would direct them to go out and find him, because it's not going to change her findings into the actual death and what happened.

What the family wants, though, is that they feel it would be unusual to roll over someone in a car at low speed and not think that could have been me.

Yeah.

Look, and I also think even though they don't suspect any foul play or you know, have anything against what the police have told them, I think for absolute closure, they want to know who did it.

And I think what sort of exacerbates that in a little bit is that the people in that park that night all knew each other.

Yes, so there'd be this weird feeling of, well, the person who did this was probably at the funeral.

The person who did this is probably somebody who gives me a hunt down the shops, you know, because it could be one of his friends and somebody who likes him.

So you know, I mean, when you lose people, you want to know every single detail, and if there's something not finished or chopped up and put in a box and put on the shelf, it just stays in your head.

Well, who did it?

Was there anything else to it?

I know, I don't mean foul play, but I mean did they stop and not help him?

Did they you know?

Was there anything else?

So to get absolute closure, I think they and they probably wouldn't blame the person if it was an accident and a friend of his, But so much time's gone on it kind of makes it hard harder to forgive people.

Let's play this out as it might have happened, So someone accidentally runs over Caine in the park doesn't necessarily know that they've done it at the time.

The next day cops grab everyone.

Over the next two or three days they grab everyone.

They grabbed the cars in question.

One of the people actually comes forward themselves and says, I was in the park.

What would happen if they went I don't know if me or not, but it could have been.

If whoever did it stuck to their guns and said I had no idea it was me.

And as time's gone on, I'm just keep thinking it could have been.

Can you check out my vehicle.

Can you do this and do that?

You know, I doubt if anything would happen at all.

Legally, the person that we're talking about did have another person in the car at the time.

They also state that they didn't feel anything unusual on the evening.

In the coronial report that was sent to the family, it says the driver volunteered information to police that he had only been in the park for a short time, around four minutes.

As a placeman, if somebody's turning up to a party like that for four minutes, five minutes and leaving, my brain would say it's got something to do with some sort of transaction.

Damien's just said, as our line of questioning to the Queensland Police, it's about those two cars that were in the park that night.

The first was a smaller car, a front wheel drive, the second a larger car, a four wheel drive.

Both were seen by witnesses driving in the area where Cain was found.

The driver of the second car came forward to police to say they were driving in the park that night for around four minutes.

Definitely, the first people you look at, people who are conducting criminal activities when something like this happens because they're more likely to cover up why they were there because they don't want to get done for whatever it was, if they were looking for somebody for criminal activities, whatever it was.

We're not alleging anyone was conducting criminal activity in the park that night.

Damien is giving his opinion as a former detective on what steps he might take when investigating.

You know, and the first question police are going to ask, and I'm guessing there were cameras and things, so they know how long this guy would have been there, and that's passenger.

You know, it looks very suss when people come somewhere for four minutes.

They also did a check on his wheels and the tire markings on obviously on the ground on Cain and then on the car and found that those wheels didn't match.

Okay, so do you know how long after they checked his car?

So here's the questions we've sent off to Queensland Police in late August of twenty twenty five.

We asked questions about why the person in a four wheel drive was in the park for less than five minutes.

Did that raise any suspicions?

Is that person or any other people persons of interest.

We also asked the details from police around the checks of the tires on this car and if the undercarriage of the car was forensically examined.

There are also some questions about the statement that appears in the onial report from the driver of the second car.

The second vehicle was the driver had volunteered information to the police as he had been at the party for a short period around four minutes.

He advised he had driven through the area where Caine was later found and on leaving the parks or a person he believed was sleeping on the ground in that area.

Okay, so it was corroborated by somebody who is a friend or an associate, because I'm guessing that's the passenger in the car.

Correct.

Police have excluded both cars after measuring the wheel span and the tires.

One thing still bugs me and Damien as well.

Police said it was very dark in the park that night.

Police conducted a walk through at a similar time of night that Kane was first noticed missing to establish the lighting in the park.

Investigators found there was very little visibility without torchlight, and that even with torchlight, visibility was limited.

The forensic crash Unit inspected the scene and said.

That vision from a vehicle, even at low speed would have been restricted by blind spots and shadowing due to the darkness the view.

The driver of the vehicle who ran over Cain was unlikely to be aware of what had occurred due to the low light in the park and the position of Caine in the park prior to his death.

And that's what raised more questions for us.

If the person in the fall Wall drive said that they drove through the area where Kine was found and said that as they were leaving they saw a person who they believed was sleeping in the area on the ground, how would he have seen him in the dark of night, possibly not from the front of his car but behind.

These facts make us feel there's more questions that need to be asked.

If police haven't looked further and corroborated where vehicle spain and you know where exactly would have driven that night, because I don't think they're wide sort of tracks, are they.

The police say that it was very dark and very dark on the night, there's not a lot of light around and the track is like what you would drive an all terrain vehicle, like a four wheel motorbike over right, So it's not a large track and it's just it's dirt surrounded by grass.

Yeah, well look at it in this way.

He's put himself at the scene.

So he's one of three vehicles that were seen.

Originally two, but then they found a third, so.

They've eliminated two other vehicles, which I'm guessing were friends and family that were at the park that night who are more likely to come forward.

Even if it was an accident, because we know the victim was on the track, it seems like would have been more of an accident.

I wanted to know from Damien, as a former police officer, what sort of things he would do in this type of investigation.

Again, we're not alleging this unnamed person we're referring to did any of this.

Damien's just giving his opinion as a former detective what he might do.

You could even go and look a driveway if it's a dirt driveway, and see different sort of tire marks there, places goes associates goes to and try and match those tire prints that were I think the coroner said they were a bit strange or different.

Then I would sort of source local tie deals, whether he's got other cars for to change those tires from.

I would even ask to consent to asserch house check whether the tires are there.

I mean, when you take tires off, there's not many places you can put them.

And the minute doesn't consent to that.

You know that rings bells and then okay, let's get a warrant.

You know, it probably got out that there was three vehicles and a camera would be a suspect for me or a person of interest at that stage, and I'd carry out those inquiries.

And even if it got to the stage where I totally believe it just wasn't stating up.

I mean, I would go to data records and stuff like that and just se been for the last three days, because I mean, that's not a big time three days to get data and pinpointing to different areas of Townsville just to see where might have been during those three days.

Next time on more to the story.

When he passed, I had to go straight into his room and just lay on his better, just smell.

His clothes and stuff.

I just couldn't leave it.

I remember the police officer saying to me at that point that he never said to me yes, we agree with you, Katie, but he said something in a way that made me feel like they were investigating it.

We don't know whether Cain has been there when he drove in or whether it's only there when he drove out, because we've got a lot of messages from people saying someone today was mailed and offer I know exactly what happened.

Again m hm