Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Scott Austic seemed like a likeable, knockabout bloke – a loving father, a good son and a loyal mate. Then he was charged with murder, found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years. The tragedy is that Scott Austic could be an innocent man. He’s languished in jail for 10 long years for a crime he probably didn’t commit. **** In May 2020, Austic was granted a retrial. On November 20, 2020, Scott Austic was found not guilty of Stacey Thorne’s murder.
This story originally aired on March 13, 2018.
He was intoxicated he went back to her house that night….and stabbed her 21 times. that’s the prosecution case.
it was dreadful to contemplate theagony.
that she must’ve suffered while staggering out of the unite seeking help .
she actually goes down the road, banging on the door crying out for help. and tragically the neighbours thin its a drunk. she staggered to her neighbor’s house and was just metres from a hospital when she died.
for the west australian police, stacy thorne’s murder was an open and shut case.
very quickly they had her lover , scott austic,in their sights.
they had the murder weapon dicarded near her home.
they had hid DNA on a can outside her house
and… a packet of winfield blues , the normal ones.
on his cigarett pack were traces of stacey’s blood.
in no time at all,police had scott austic in custody.he was the first person that came to the police attention.
in no time, he was doing hard time. for the wilful murder of stacey thorne at boodington on 9th december 2007, sentenced to life imprisonment.
but something didn’t add up.
what would turn a hardworking father of two,good to his mum.
and adored by his daughters
into a frenzied killer.when he was drunk, was he known to be violent? no.happy drunk.
wonderfull father, his ex- wife came tocourt and said he was a terrific father,she trusted him implicitly with the children. and his two girls absolutely adored him.
it made no sense.
a eight year long investigation. the more investigator dug the more they found. no fingerprints no DNA linking the knife to mr austic. there is also evidence really strong evidence, of another suspect that was kept from the jury completely.
so someone else was in the house.and it wasn’t scott. thta’s right. potentially ,the murderer. most likely, the murderer.
boddington is 120 kilometres southeast of perth.it ‘s where scott asutic grew up.
robyn is his mom.
scott as 5 years old, robyn remembers that from boy to man he’s always been a bit of a lad.often cheeky , but never violent. robyn said that nothing in he’s personality suggest violence. someone that would get that drunk ,that would take a knife and stab a women 21 times.
After school scott ended up working as an assistant mechanic in the local mine.
in the late 90s ,he moved in with his then girlfriend jodie and they had twochildren ,heidee and sky.
heidee was six when her father went to prison for stacey Thorne’s murder.
” was like ,what?it´s hard to not e evert single detail aboit what happened and all the evidence. i think that if he did it , he would tell me. because he’s never lied to me before i , aksed him and he said he didnt , and i believe him “
-heidee.
in 2oo6 , scott and heidee’s mm ,jodie , split up.
the next year he began seeing stacey thorne a much loved teacher´s aid at the local school.they bee friends since they were kids. they all went to each other’s birthdays , everything. all friends in school.
on sunday the 9th of december 2007. the day stacey was murdered , scott austic spent the morning doing chores and the afternoon drinking beer at home before heeading down to the pub.
and he probably had about four or five borbons and prior to that tyou had about a dozoen beers. like ten beer.
staff remember austic healivng the pub aroind a quarter part seven. erloer ,he’d rung stacey sying he might moce over.
at about 8 pm. scott arrived at stacy ‘s place. and then they had sex.
and he went hom, his two housemates were watching a movie.( distorting speakin)
his flatmates rembmer him returning between nin and 9:30 it was between 10 :30 and 200. pm
that stacey thorne was murdered.
stacey tried to stop the knife atack with her hands, but the blos kept coming. she was stabbet 21 times.out in the strert ,she screamed for help. but no one came.
stacey blad to dead.
he was a good person , and hewas genuin in his feeling for stacey.not only had they been partners. but she was pregnant with scott ‘s child.
she was pregnant to him, that went to motive though.the prosecutors succesfully convinced the jury that scott was unhappy that stacey was pregenant. with his child.
and they produced that text message .
perhaps the only in-controversial evidence in thiscase against scott austic is a text message. he sent stacy two weeks before her murder.
in it he wrote that his ex-wife had threatened to stop access to his daughters i fstacey had his child.
to stacey ” please i’ll do anything for you not to have it. please let me know , plesase. stacyey , please
was it a threat to her? was it a motive that the police argue ,was the reason scott killing stacy?
“there’s nothing else. there’s not a succession of text message,there ‘s not threatening phone calls.just one message from someone hwos had a few drinks and doesn’t really know what’s going on.”
– Robin Napper
forensic expert robin napper has spent lifetime examining the criminal mind as a former detective chief inspector in the UK. he knows what motivates murderes. to him , scott’s text message asking stacey not to have their baby gals well short of amotive to kill.
” yes , it would have been a financial cost to him. he would have had to pay for it but it’s a bit drastick to go round there and kill someone with pultile stab wounds. especially when two hours before you ‘d been having consensual happy sex with the person.”
– Robin Napper.
in the fight to free her son ,robyn austic has lost her house ,her savings and her husband. not long after scott was arrested and charge with the murder of stacy thorne. doug austick died of massive heart attack .
” the people that you look up to and expect them to protect you acctually crucified scott and contributed to the death of my husband.”
-Robyn.
robyn has never wavered in her belief that her son is innocent.
” i can never believe that he did it. and i won’t and i’ve been told well your’e his mother, you´re in denial, that’s probably the first time i arched up in my whole life is i carried him in here.i know what he’s capable of, and he’s not violent.#
-robyn.
if not for a simple twist of fate,the flaws in the evidence that convicted scott austic moght never have been discovered.
in 2010 ,his mother was a at a conference featuring reuben hurricane carter , the armerican boxer.immortalised by bob dylan , after seing wrongly impisoned for a tripple murder.
“i was facing the electric chair for a crime i did not commit.
barrister and forensics scientist, dr clint hampson was sitting at the sambe table as robyn.
” she said that her son had been convicted of murder.however she was adamant that he had not done this. she asked me if i would be willing to look at it.”
-Clint.
clint , a former west australian police officer said yeas. he began by shifting through all tof the photographic evidence.
Clint:” i started loooking in detal of the photographs looking at the meta data in terms of identifying when particular photographs were taken .and trying work out a chronology
the meta data is crucial to explain.it’s en alectronic footprint an important source of hidden digital information .in this case that’s the log of the times and dates of when the photoas and videos were taken by the forensic team.
” the light bulb moment for me was the cigarette packet.
that was the victim’s blood on a cigarette packet inside his house. back on his back verandah. .
it was probably the key piece of evidence.
on the december 13 ,2007 , ther first day.
the forensic investigators searched scott’s house.
they took a photo of this table on his verandah. no blood tained cigarette packet to be seen.
but the photo the jury was shown was this one.there on the same table a bloodied
packet of winfield blues..
after examining the meta data, clint was immediately suspicious.
it revealed that this photo , the one that convinced the jury to convince scott austic had beentaken some 30 hours.
after the photo which might have hellped clear him . what we have here is real photographic conclusive proof that this cigarett packet was introduced into the crime scene and that’s a pretty powerful thing.
” looking at what we found , it almost certainly implicates that it had been planted into the scene.”
-clint
Clint then contacted robin Napper.
” he came to me one day and he said,’robin i really need a second opinion on this’ . he said , ‘ i think i’ve got a case that is a shocker.’
-Robin
remember , after scott’s arrest his home was under the control of an experienced forensic team . who neither saw nor found his bloodied cigarette packet.
when they filmed the patio at the back. and the table there , no cigaretet packet on that table.
they then take still photographs, to back up the video , no caregette there at all .
it was only on the last day, when the house was due to be handed back to austics flatmates.
that other detectives fortuitously discovered what the forensic colleagues had missed.
that put biological material of the deceased back into scott asutic’s house. and there it is there. 5:31 in the afternoon on the 14th .there’s the cigarette packet.
obviously if you can put the two images side by side and do the comarison , you can clearly see that it’s not there. on the wednesday its not there . but remember the property was still under the guard, under the protection of ther forensics officers and then on the friday ,the cigarette packet turns up.
“the smoking gung”
-clint.
” and that to my mind sounded alarm bells. because it was clear that the cigarette packet had tbeen placed on the table at some later stage.”
-Robin
so concerning is this case ,that malcolm McCusker, QC
the former governor of western australia. and one of this country´s most eminent barristers.has lent his time and talents to the campaign for a retrial.
the original jury , McCusker says, was never presented with all the facts.
” at trial the jury was not told nor was it shown.”
-Robin
the photograph of this previous day’s search and the table bereft of any cigarette packet .
from prison scott austic now sheds new light on what happened to his pack of winfield blues after he was taken in for questioning.
scott:” when i went doan to the cop shop,i took the packet of winfield blue with me, that had a few smokes left in it. i trew it in the bin after i finished the packet ,i threw it in the bin.well it was down there.
so how did stacey’s blood get on the cigartette package then?
Robin:” we dont know.”
Robin:”Blood is very easy to move .it´s nit a difficult process. if you´ve got cotntrol of a crime scene with a lot of blood , it’s easy to take blood from that crime scene.”
the bloodied packet of cigarettes. wasn’t the only evidence that sent scott austic to jail.
20 metres from stacey’s unit , police found an empty can of jim beam .scotts’s fingerprints were all over it.
the jim beam can.
Clint” prosecution’s case was that mr . austic had taken that can ofj im beam for ditch courage on his way to murdering the deceased person., so i then began looking at how and what circumstances that can was identified and discovered as well.”
this is the photograph taken on that first day.
no can present on the bleak ground
that had been thoroughly searched.
finding nothing ,the forensics specialists stopped looking at 6:45 in the evening.
but by 7 am the next day a full 12 hours after the seach ends the jim beam can mysteriously appears. right here in plain view just off the edge of the bitumen and right across the roud from stacey´s house.
Robin:” so it couldn´t have dropped from the heavens, it must have been placed there. sometimes after ther forenisc investigators had been there.
as you’re reading all of this. and you’re going through these bits of evidence . Robin smile. what was he’s reaction?
Robin:” well, i smile, but i smile in disbelief ,that any suchn evidence could have been used by the prosecution wiuthout disclosing to the jury ,the reality. if the jury had been told that the jim bean can wasn’t there the day before, a natural action we, are they trying to put one over us?
justice peter blaxell:” you are a good father to your children and in the past have also had a very good reputation within the local community .those who know you well describe you as having a gentle,placid personality and they cannot understand how you could have committted the present offence.”
justice peter blaxwell’s sentenced scott austic to a minimum of 25 years in prison.
there are lot of men sitting in prison who say that they’re innocent and they didn´t do it. a lot of mums who´ll defend their child ,theri son to the end.
Robyn:” Too many discrepancies.
six when her father was jailed.today , is heidee ‘s 16 birthday .
robin:” one explanation in my experiencelooms large.is that where there is a very serious crime committed and it gets a fair amount of publicity.the police are under enormous pressure to find the perpetrator.
In the days after staceys frenzied stabbing, there was a sweep of the area near her home.
where was the murder weapon? where was the knife?like the cigarette packet and the jim beam can, the knife wouls mysteriously turn up. after the official search.
the knife
experience SES volunteeers were called upon to comb this area for evidence.
wayne:”specifically at the briefing,we asked to look for UDL cans,cigarette butts and knives.
on tuseday the 11th of december they began their search.
along the way here you can pick out very specific rocks, a bit of piper, twigs. the smallest of stone. how on earth are you going to miss that?the knife right there.
Robin :” justifies logic.it’s there staring us all in the face.
is there any way SES volunteeers would have missed it?
they we´ve always said and all of them as a group have maintained that they couldn´t have missed that .
there is a methodical line search by experienced SES men and women , they find nothing. the next day suddenly the detectives go on a smoke -o and they kick around and find it.
it was said by thnem to have been just casuyally found ,discovered , as they stood out there having a smoke.
the knife , the jim beam can ,the cigarette pack.every single piece of crucial evidence that helped convicted austic were found by detectives. what does that say? well , they´re either outstanding brilliant and everyone else is utterly inompetent or there is a huge problem with this investigation.
the knife had stacey’s blood on it.presume then ,it had scott´s DNA somewhere on it .
Robyn: no. nothing.
but that would be impossible. surley he would have held the knife firmly as he stabbed her more than 20 times.
Clint:” you would thin so ,yes.
is it even the murder weapon?
Cint:”we engaged a independent forensic pathlogist from the UK ,dr richard shepherd , to have a look at that exact fact.
Dr Richard Shepherd : ” it has the correct width, but i dont think it has the correct length to her inflicted the deep stab wounds on stacey.
Dr richard shepherd is the UK’s leading forensic pathologist. he gave espert testimony into the death of Diana , princess of Wales.
the results of stacey’s autopsy are Dr Shepherd says further proof that the knife used to convict scott austic ,is not he murder weapon.
if a knif is pushed into the body with such force. that the depth of the wound is linger than the blade, then the handle of the knife ,the hilt ,must have hit the body with huge force. to drive it in even an extra three centimetres. and that leaves bruising, that leaves grazing and there were none.
so no indiciation of that at all.none whatsoever . again, ruling out this knife as being the murder weapon.
pathologically dr shepherd cannnot make a link between this knife , 10 centimetre blade and a 15 centimetre lethal stab wound to stacey.
in the police case against scott austic the mysteries keep piling up.
like the bunrt clothes . they supposedly found in scotts fireplace. which the court accepted as evidence of his guilt.
the burnt clothes.
justice peter blaxtell :” the only reasonable inference is that your cloths were splattered with blood so you destoyed them in the wood heater in uout lounger room.”
the burnt clothes remain one of the most poorly explained and examined pieces of evidence, the prosecution case was that on the night of stacey’s murder ,scott came home and fired uo the wood heater and burnt the clothes that he was wearing somehere between 11 p.m . and 5:45 am.when the police first came and spoke to him.
It was the peak of summer and scott housemates testified that the fire hadn´t been lit in four mounths and nor was there any sign of fire or smoke in the house that night or the next morning , and nowhere in the police records does it mention that the first detectives onthe scene noticec the lingering smell of smoke.
which begs the question,if scott austic din´t bunr his clothes , who did ?
clint: “now , he dosen’t know how it came, that those clothes became burnt in that fireplace. they hadn´t used that fireplace for some time and we do know that the police had control of that house from the monday morning at 9 , am.
but that’s not the only mystery
on the night stacey thorne was murdered, scott austic went to her place, stayed for around 40 minutes and they had consensual sex. after he returnedhome a few minutes away and watched a movie with his housemates.
the prosecution case, which the jury believed is that the tired , drunk and sexual satisfied austic then desiced to go back to stacey´s to kill her.
justice peter blaxell : you had two lodgers staying in your house and soon as they went to bed at about 10:30 pm.you walked back to miss thorne’s unit.”
The bloodied footprints.
Bleeding profusely, stacey left multiple footprints. that’s the fourth pieces of evidence which is of great cocern, because there were many bloodied footprints eading to the door.
some of them were shown to staceys murdered womans , but none of them was a footprint of scott austic. now if he’d been the perpetrator and there’d been all this blood around ,
it is beyond belief that some of his footprints would not have shown up.
there are footprints in blood, some of which belong to the victim.
Robin:”as the poor girl was staggering out of the place. there are other unidentified footprints in blood, whose , we don’t know whos they are, but i can tell you one person they’re not . they are not scott austic’s.”
but this was never brought to the jury´s attention, they didn’t appreciate that there was an unknown person with footprints in the house in the blood.
so someone else was in the house and it wasn’t scott.potentially the murderer.
after stacey’s murder was discovered.
police went door – to -door looking potential witnesses.
one of the people in the street they asked,” do you know if stacey has any enemies” and she immediately named a cousin , denise thorne.
what about denis thorne? what was scott relationship with her?
scott knew dennis as much he knew stacey scott had been involved with her romantically and sexually .
when scott austic left the pub on the evening of the 9th of december 2007, the first place he went to dennis thorne ‘s but she was out . he then walked to stacey’s a distance about a kilometre.
in the meantime , denise claimed that from 10. pm ,she and her children were a sleep at her home.
she said she didn’t go out that night after 10 o’clock. when they’d already found a witness that said at 10 :30 at night she was knocking on this witness door asking for a box of matches and he lives only 70 metres away from the murder house.
transcript between denise and detectives
detective: did youy seak to anybody else that night?
denise:no.
detective: stop at anybody’s house?
denise: just went straight home and went to sleep.
now what’s the significance of that timing at 10 :30 at night?
because the murder has to have happened between 10:30 and 11:30. so whoever murdered was in the scene at the time to be able to have committed the murder.
transcript between dennise and detective
detective: so you didn’t go to stacey’s on the night that she died?
denise: no.
detective : you haven’t spoken with her for…?
denise: years.
detective: for years?
Denise and stacey had a trouble and violent relationship, a blood feud whichbegan when denise accused stacey of sleeping with denise’s boyfriend.
stacey and her sister ,brenda , then physically attacked denise hitting her so hard that she had to go to hospital.
transcript between detectives and denise.
denise : they came into the flat and…started hitting me while i had the baby in my hands. and from there i went to the hospital.
detective#2: is it the case that you decided to pay her back?
denise: no.
detective #2 : for that attack on you?
denise:no , i don’t believe in that.
Robert: she said she heard about seven o’clock in the morning from her brother her brother woke her up and said,” oh gosh , stacey’s been murdered,” and she says in her statement,” i screamed and ran down the road to haley ” hwo is the deceased’s sister” and i comforted hayley” but that was a complete lie as well.
Denise thorne’s movements the very next morning are curious to say thet very least. she tells police that she’s woken at 7 am . by her brother and learns of the shocking news of stacey’s death.
however , a whole hour earlier at 6 am. denise is seen here at what used to be a roadhouse about 11 kilometres outside of boddington.
the roadhouse owner says that denise was waiting for them to open up so that she could by fuel. her story was that some days prior she´d made arrangements to a another town to visit relatives.
whatever the truth , one thins is very clear, the police never properly investigate denise thorne’s movements that morning.
her alibi was never ,ever checed out.the police listened to it , all straight out heir head. they never did anything about it at all. and they never took her fingerprints, photograph and DNA.
so she just fell off the radar.not a search of her house.nothing , no search of her house , nothing.
transcript between detectives and denise
detective: and you are not responsible for what’s occur?
denise:no
detective: didn’t kill stacey. didn’t get into an argument with her or anything like that?
denise:nope.
detective: didn’t go to sort things out ?
denise: no.
scott austic was sentenced to a minimum 25 years in jail.including remand he´s now spent 10 years behind bars. a life lost after a life was taken.
Robyn: “he’s doing time for someone else that’s out there walking around and laughing at him.”
the evidence that was used to convict him and find him guilty of stacey’s murder, do you believe that same evidence could , in fact prove his innocence?
Robin: “well , i don’t know that it proves his innocence, what it does prove is that he was wrongfully convicted”
john:”i’m conscious that justice delayed,is justice denied.
before the last state election , john Quigley, the then shadow attorney general made his concerns known.
john: my staff out there going nuts.” what do you tink you´re doung with austic?, you’ve got a campaign on. and i said , well ,this has got to be done,but this is to the detriment of your campaign.i said” i would sooner do this and lose the election, then win the election and have it on my conscious. that i didn’t attend to this matter .”
john Quigley´s labour party did win the election.he’s now the attorney genereal of western australia and the matter is very much his to decide.
what ever he does ,scott austic’s many supporters have no intention of giving up .
clint: we keep fighting.we’ll keep fighting till we have justice for scott.
Robyn: i have never lost hope.one day hewill come home.i know he will. the team that he’´s got he has to come home .i dont believe what we take for granted. to cook him a meal , to sit at the table.and his there.seeing him with his kids ,his girls. he said :” haven’t seen the moon in years “a simple thing like that , like i haven’t seen the moon.i stay strong for him.”
policeman: right , scott , i´m going to advise you that you are going to be charged with the wilful murder of stacey thorne.
it’s so complete and so compelling and it worked .it convicted him and he´s gone away for the rest of his life.
to this day ,we dont know who’s footprints they are.
there’s been a serious miscarriage of justice.
in a experience on ascle of injustice, where does this one rate ?
robin:oh, at the very ,very top end of the scale of injustice, you can’t imagine a much more unjust situation than a man being convicted of an awful murder.when the evidence has not been fully disclosed to the jury. which convicted him .
transcript jail phone call between scott and clint
clint:i’m just gonna come out and say this straight , right?
scott: yeah.
clint: did you kill stacey thorne?
scott:no, i did not kill her.
clint: ok.
