TRANSCRIPT: Lucille Butterworth’s Killer Named
MEL DOYLE: We begin tonight with a stunning new development in a cold case murder. Lucille Butterworth was on her way to see her fiancé when she disappeared from a bus stop and was never seen again. Police have admitted the investigation at the time was hopelessly bungled, vital leads were ignored. Now, after a fresh investigation, a coroner has singled out one man as the killer, and we've obtained a direct account that he confessed to the crime. So why is he not in prison? Here's Mike Willesee.
PHILLIP THOW: Just something you didn't really think anything of, because...the honest truth is, people dribble a lot of shit in jail. Sorry, but that's... I didn't want to say that on the TV, but...that's the exact truth. A lot of people dribble shit in...in prison, so you...you don't take any notice of anything.
MIKE WILLESEE: These days, Phillip Thow leads a quiet life in a small town in a remote corner of Tasmania. In 1977, while he was serving time in Risdon Prison for stealing and driving offences, Phillip struck up a friendship with another inmate.
PHILLIP: Well, he stood out very clearly because he is a blond-headed albino. I couldn't believe what he came out with. He said, "This is what I done to the Butterworth girl." He said, "I killed...killed her." Told me plenty of times he'd got away with it. Quite often. Like, I was scared if I told somebody that I could be next.
MAN: He's on the move.
MIKE WILLESEE: We can now reveal the confession came from this man, Geoffrey Charles Hunt.
JOHN FITZGERALD: You just wonder, though, what would drive a man to do that?
JOHN BUTTERWORTH: Lust! Filthy animal! And as a result, I've lost my sister.
JIM BUTTERWORTH: He's just a damn maggot of a fella. Yeah, God...
MIKE WILLESEE: Hunt is a 66-year-old pensioner with a very dark past…You think this man should be free on the streets?
DAVID PLUMPTON: No, he shouldn't. He should be in jail.
MIKE WILLESEE: Geoffrey Hunt is already a convicted sex murderer. He's done a lot of time in jail for that. And now a coroner has named him as the man who murdered Lucille Butterworth 47 years ago. For a coroner to directly name a person as a killer is very unusual, and I'm going to give Geoffrey Hunt the opportunity to speak for himself…
The disappearance of this beautiful young woman has haunted her fiance, John Fitzgerald, for almost half a century.
JOHN F: I was so lucky to have her in my life. Sorry, Mike. I'm getting a bit upset.
MIKE WILLESEE: It's totally understandable.
JOHN F: Yep. It still hurts after 47 years. Yeah. Really hurts.
MIKE WILLESEE: The 20-year-old went missing from a bus stop in southern Tasmania on August 25, 1969. She was on her way to meet John in New Norfolk.
NEWS REPORTER: This is where the trail of Lucille's known movements ends. What happened from here on, no-one knows.
MIKE WILLESEE: Now at last, somebody does know. And after a long-awaited inquest, the coroner has not held back with his findings. Even the officer in charge of the modern police investigation is stunned…Were you surprised at the strength of the coroner's finding?
DAVID: I was. Yeah. I thought it was...it's a courageous decision.
MIKE WILLESEE: Most unusual.
DAVID: It's the only one I've known of, of that nature.
JOHN F: Very, very important. Something we haven't spoken about yet, but...
MIKE WILLESEE: Last week, in a rare and extraordinary move, Coroner Simon Cooper stridently and explicitly declared that Geoffrey Charles Hunt murdered Lucille Butterworth.
MIKE WILLESEE: How did you feel when the coroner said, "This man is the killer"?
JOHN B: Euphoric, elated.
MIKE WILLESEE: He went further and reported that Hunt had stopped his car, strangled Miss Butterworth and disposed of her body on the southern bank of the Derwent River. In prison, Phillip Thow says Hunt revealed more gruesome details, saying he'd put Lucille in a shallow grave on the edge of the water and punctured her stomach with a pitchfork.
PHILLIP: He'd said, "Oh, that's because when you're in the water, "unless you do that," he said, "after so many days, they will lift and come up...up to the top of the water."
JOHN F: Not easy to...to listen to that sort of thing. But all I hope is she didn't suffer. It would break my heart if...if I knew she'd suffered.
MIKE WILLESEE: She was your life.
JOHN F: She was.
JOHN B: (SNIFFS)
DAVID: He denied whatsoever having anything to do with the disappearance of that girl, and that's how he referred to Lucille Butterworth - "that girl".
MIKE WILLESEE: Did he deny to you that he knew Lucille Butterworth and John Fitzgerald?
DAVID: Initially, yes.
MIKE WILLESEE: Which the coroner found untruthful.
DAVID: Absolutely. Absolutely.
MIKE WILLESEE: The coroner rejected most of Hunt's evidence at the inquest as lies.
SIMON: Lies coming out of his mouth. Whenever he spoke, it was all lies.
DAVID: We were hoping that in some way, shape or form, closure can be given to the Butterworth family in relation to Lucille.
MIKE WILLESEE: The coroner praised you and your team very highly for the work that you'd done.
DAVID: I'm really appreciative of that. Yeah.
MIKE WILLESEE: Sadly, in contrast to a lot of the police work back in 1969.
DAVID: Absolutely. When you put the cold, hard light of day on that investigation in 1969, you find it...at fault.
MIKE WILLESEE: Last year, Sunday Night revealed a litany of police failures and a lack of direction that meant crucial early leads were missed. It began when Lucille's father reported his daughter missing.
DAVID: The detective superintendent looked at him and said, "Flighty young girl. She'll be back by Friday." What...what? An investigator, a detective superintendent, telling a father that, "Your daughter is a flighty young girl"? How do you know? How do you know anything about it?..Jim Butterworth says he saw his... his father walked out of that
police station a shell of a man. So... That shouldn't happen to anybody.
MIKE WILLESEE: And she never came back.
DAVID: No. No.
MIKE WILLESEE: Seven years after Lucille vanished, Geoffrey Hunt was arrested for the brutal sex murder of car sales assistant Susan Knight. While in custody at this police station, Hunt confessed twice to police that he killed Lucille, telling them something came over him, he strangled her and she died.
JOHN B: "Oh, something came over me." What? You just don't take somebody's life like that. It's awful. Absolutely awful.
MIKE WILLESEE: Hunt's confessions to police in 1976 were ignored. The fresh police investigation in 2011 prompted Phillip Thow to finally come forward with what Hunt had told him in prison.
PHILLIP: I'm sorry that I couldn't come forward about it earlier, but... let's hopefully now we'll get it over and done with for youse all.
MIKE WILLESEE: The big question now is, will the Director of Public Prosecutions recommend that Geoffrey Charles Hunt be formally charged with murder?
PHILLIP: I still can't believe that he's free now. I can't believe that... after the coroner's inquest, that automatically I thought they would have arrested him, but he's still free.
JOHN B: It's not fair… It's not fair. But we'll get him. We'll get him. We'll get him charged with murder.
MIKE WILLESEE: Today, Hunt lives in a secret location in Tasmania. His neighbours tell us they've rarely seen him since our story went to air last October… Geoffrey Hunt, are you there? Hello. It's Michael Willesee… Today he's not answering… Geoffrey, I'd like to talk to you… We tried repeatedly to make contact, but he did not respond…Every window is completely covered. There's no natural light in the house… But Hunt is a free man, and that's a worry.
JIM B: There's a killer out there. A terrible person. And he shouldn't be out on the street.
JOHN F: I just worry about the fact that...what might happen if...if he's not put away. There are a lot of people out there who are very, very angry with this whole business, and I just fear now for what could happen to him.
MIKE WILLESEE: You're talking about vigilante action?
JOHN F: Oh, yes. Most definitely. I've had a couple of calls that have told me not to worry, that he'll be taken care of. Uh...
MIKE WILLESEE: Which is not the way to go about it.
JOHN F: Well, it's definitely not the way to go about it.
MIKE WILLESEE: John turned 70 last year and he holds an eternal flame for his beloved Lucille.
JOHN F: I feel a lot better. For the first time in years, I feel a lot better.
MIKE WILLESEE: And John has one last hope.
JOHN F: That I'd give anything if he'd tell us where her remains are. I'd just give anything. And I just say, please, please, have it in your heart, if you've got a heart, so we can put her to rest. Yep.
