The Family Court murders
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ROSS COULTHART: 33 years ago, Trudi Warwick was a little girl at the centre of a bitter custody dispute. Her mother, Andrea, battled for years to keep her but her father, Len, continually defied orders of the Family Court. He fought very, very hard to keep you, didn't he?
TRUDI: Yeah.
ROSS: Why? What is it about your Dad's personality that made him fight? Do you think he really loved you?
TRUDI: Yeah, and possessive - "What's mine is mine and I'm going to have what's mine."
ROSS: For three decades, Trudi and Andrea have been too fearful to speak about Len Warwick, the father, husband and prime suspect for the Family Court serial killings in the early '80s.
TRUDI: Innocent people were killed..over me.
ROSS: Tonight, they finally speak. Tonight, the evidence linking the ex-soldier and ex-fireman to two shootings, four murders and five bombings. OK, so what I've got here is an interview that Len Warwick did back in 1986. I just want you to watch it and...
ANDREA: Oh, look at him. Oh, my God.
ROSS: When Len Warwick was named as prime suspect for the Family Court attacks, he gave one interview.
TERRY: What sort of a person do you think would want to kill a Family Court judge?
LEN: A person that was probably disturbed, very upset.
TERRY: Have you ever been upset at a decision against you in the Family Court?
LEN: Not quite that upset, Terry.
TERRY: Are you a violent man?
LEN: No, Terry, I'm not.
TERRY: What's the most violent thing you've done?
LEN: Well, I used to shoot rabbits - I suppose that's pretty violent.
ROSS: How violent was Len Warwick?
ANDREA: Very violent, very mind-controlling, very physical.
ROSS: And is that why you chose to leave him?
ANDREA: Yes. I wouldn't be alive today if I didn't leave him. He'd come home and if he didn't have a good day, he'd come straight in and start whacking. The night I left him, he had me pinned down in the lounge room and he had his foot, with his fire brigade boots on, stomping and kicking into me. He busted, bruised my arm that bad, I couldn't pick up Trudi from the cot because I was gonna run with her.
JUDY: We lived about five minutes apart and he had beaten her up and I saw the bruises and she'd left the baby behind.
ANDREA: I just ran. I'd got the keys and unlocked the door and I just ran.
ROSS: It was the last straw for Andrea who'd married Len five years before. For her own protection, she asked her brother, Stephen, to go back with her to collect Trudi.
ANDREA: Stephen went up, knocked on the front door. Len opened the door and Steve said, "Look, mate, we just want the baby. Just hand the baby over." And that was it, and Len just slammed the door.
ROSS: Eventually, with the help of the Family Court, Andrea got Trudi back. They moved into the family home in Revesby to live with Andrea's brother, Stephen, who now became a target of Len Warwick's anger. Look at that photo and just tell me about him. There's a bit of character in that face. He looks like a lovely bloke.
JUDY: Yeah, he was a surfie. He was a lovely guy.
ROSS: How old was he at the time?
JUDY: 25.
ROSS: You loved him to bits, didn't you?
JUDY: Yep. I grieved for 15 years.
ROSS: How did you hear that he'd been killed?
JUDY: My ex-husband rang me up and said, "Stephen's dead".
ROSS: Let's go back to February 1980. What happened?
ANDREA: That night, my brother... My brother was killed in the house and taken from the house while my daughter and I slept in the house.
ROSS: Late that night, Stephen finished work at Revesby Workers' Club and walked home. His sister and niece were already asleep.
JUDY: Andrea and Trudi slept in the front bedroom, closest to the front of the house and Stephen slept in the back bedroom. Stephen came home, went to bed, and somebody came in and shot him in the head and carried him out.
ROSS: Was Len Warwick strong enough to do that? Was he capable of doing that?
ANDREA: Yes. He was a solid...
TRUDI: He was a firefighter, he has got to be fit. Hitch them over your shoulder and carry them out of a burning building.
ROSS: If the police case against Len is right, Len shot Stephen in his room...
ANDREA: Yes.
ROSS: ..and then took him around the side of the house, past your bedroom...
ANDREA: Yes.
ROSS: ..in the dead of night.
ANDREA: Yes.
ROSS: And you didn't hear a thing?
ANDREA: Didn't hear a thing.
ROSS: How could he have done it? How could somebody sneak into your house in the dead of night...?
ANDREA: He knew the plans of the house! He knew the whole house, the plan of the whole house. The doors weren't locked. We had the doors open because that year, we had four weeks of 102-, 103-degree heat.
ROSS: When Andrea woke the next morning she wasn't concerned, thinking that Stephen must have stayed over with his girlfriend. It was only later that the police found tiny specks of blood on Stephen's bedroom wall. Stephen was missing for six days. So where was Stephen found?
ANDREA: Cowan Creek.
MICK MCGANN: He'd been in the water for a few days and floated to the surface despite having 11 house bricks tied around him, so it was pretty rugged.
ROSS: Clearly murder.
MICK: Clearly, yeah.
ROSS: No doubt about that?
MICK: No doubt. You can see the gunshot wound in the head.
ROSS: Mick McGann was a local detective on the case at the time. How would a murderer conceal the noise and the clatter and the clamour that is made when somebody is being killed?
MICK MCGANN: Probably, the way I would think about it, is putting a cushion or some other device over the end of the barrel.
ROSS: Did your Dad ever show you any weapons in the house?
TRUDI: Show me any weapons? We used to go rabbit shooting, fox shooting. I saw rifles and bullets and what-not.
ROSS: He was a crack shot?
TRUDI: Yeah.
ROSS: If Len did murder Stephen, why would he have murdered him?
ANDREA: What better way to get back at the family who were helping Andrea to get away from him than to kill the only son? And Stephen was the first one who approached him to try and get the child off him.
ROSS: Four months after Stephen died, there was a judge murdered in Woollahra.
ANDREA: That's right.
ROSS: Justice David Opas was married to Kristin. They had two children, Joshua and Persia, who were then 8 and 6. Kristin has never spoken publicly before and she is fearful. She asked that her face not be shown in full. Kristin and David had been married for 10 years.
KRISTIN: He was absolutely delightful. He had the most beautiful sense of humour. He was such a loving, lovely father. Before the children arrived, he was a lovely boyfriend and then husband. He was just full of life.
TERRY: Did you have any reasons to be angry at Judge Opas?
LEN: No, I don't think so.
TERRY: Did he preside over the early part of your divorce?
LEN: He did, yes.
ROSS: One month after Justice David Opas had briefly taken away Len Warwick's access to his daughter for defying court orders, and one day after her second birthday, someone came to the judge's front door.
KIRSTIN: The doorbell rang. Josh said to David... Don't answer the door, Daddy. Eat your tea. He left the room, when out, shut the front door.
ROSS: An alarm was going off in the street, muffling what happened next.
KIRSTIN: We waited and waited and I said to the children, "Daddy's a long time - I think I'll go out and see what's going on." I went out, opened the front door and lying on the ground was David.
ROSS: Justice Opas was shot with a 22 calibre long rifle.
KIRSTIN: He was only just breathing and I couldn't understand what had happened. There was no blood. I called out to Josh.
ROSS: So little Josh came out and saw his dad?
KIRSTIN: Saw his dad and went absolutely rigid. I can still see his little face. Absolutely wide-eyed and shocked and he was only eight. He went next door for help.
ROSS: Did David regain consciousness?
KRISTIN: No, no, he didn't. It was just... It was the most, well, insanely... Insanely unreal, it was, the whole thing.
ROSS: But also, so cruel.
KRISTIN: So cruel.
ROSS: Did you put it together that it was linked to his job as a Family Court judge?
KRISTIN: I did, I did, straight from the very beginning.
ROSS: When you heard that Judge Opas had been murdered, what did you think?
ANDREA: He... He had involvement in it.
ROSS: Judge Opas actually made an order that took Trudi away from him for one month. He was really upset about that, wasn't he?
ANDREA: Yeah.
ROSS: And did you say that to the police?
ANDREA: Yes, I told them exactly.
ROSS: The murder happened at 7:10pm. 33-year-old Len Warwick had finished his fire-fighting shift at least 70 minutes earlier. There is no physical evidence linking Len Warwick. to this or any other crime scene. No blood, no fingerprints, no DNA. But minutes after the Opas murder, there is an eyewitness account of a man running away from the scene carrying a long canvas bag with white handles. Under hypnosis, the witness described a man about 5'10" in height, 25-30 years old of solid build with dark hair and a medium complexion. This is the identikit shown at the inquest. Warwick's army record shows he was 5'8" and a half with a solid build and olive skin. This is vision of Len Warwick six years after Justice Opas was killed. He has a moustache but for all of his marriage, he was clean-shaven, so let's remove it. Here again is the identikit. Now let's add sunglasses and cap. Len Warwick refused a police request to appear in a police line-up before any witness. Andrea and Len Warwick had a very significant conversation in May of 1980 which she later detailed in evidence to the Coroners Court. They were both appearing here before Justice Opas at what was then the Parramatta Family Court. During the luncheon adjournment, Warwick allegedly told Andrea she wouldn't have to worry about Justice Opas, "He won't be there much longer." She said, "Why? Is he going on holidays?" Warwick allegedly replied, "No, he just won't be there at all." Five weeks later, Justice Opas was dead.
TERRY: Did you shoot him?
LEN: No, no.
TERRY: Did you have any knowledge of it?
LEN: No, not at all.
TERRY: You had no idea that might happen to him?
LEN: No.
ROSS: Here at the fire station where Len Warwick worked, police did a search and in a locker used by Warwick, they found news articles detailing the murder of Justice Opas. They also searched his home where they found a number of firearms, none of them the murder weapon. Do you feel that police at this stage were aggressively pursuing Len for the murder of Judge Opas and the murder of Stephen?
ANDREA: Yes, yes, yes. He was number one suspect.
ROSS: He was their number-one prime suspect?
ANDREA: Yes, main number one suspect.
ROSS: After Justice David Opas was murdered, Justice Richard Gee, a father of two, took over his Family Court caseload. Alison, his daughter, was 12 and scared.
ALISON: I knew that Justice Opas had been shot dead and then Dad said, "They've offered me the job to replace him." I just had this, I don't know, call it sixth sense that something was going to happen to us. March, 1984, Alison's mum was ill in hospital. Alison, her dad, and her 15-year-old brother, Steven, were asleep at home.
ALISON: It was the middle of the night, I just heard a really loud clap of thunder, the loudest I had ever heard. Then I heard some glass drop and then I turned into my room and I just went into shock. Just saw debris all in my room. My drawers had fallen in. Everything had just crashed into the centre of my room and it was just like I had woken up in a movie or a nightmare. I went into the hallway once I'd climbed over my furniture and I just saw the hallway wasn't there anymore. It was just fully caved in.
ROSS: Are you thinking about your father at this stage?
ALISON: I did hope that Dad was OK. Steven said, "Look, we'll find him once we get out of the house". So we went through his window. We went around the back of the house and we met Dad on the back deck. He was covered in debris dust over his whole body - he looked like a ghost, except that he had blood pouring down his legs from his thighs.
ROSS: He'd been cut in his legs?
ALISON: Yes, yes. With glass. There was a beam that fell over my Mum's side of the bed which narrowly missed him.
ROSS: Tell me what you thought as soon as you saw the front of your house.
ALISON: I just cried. I felt very sad. It just looked like a war zone.
ROSS: In suburban Sydney?
ALISON: Yeah.
TERRY: Had Judge Gee ordered you to hand over your daughter to your former wife during the divorce?
LEN: I'm not too sure, Terry.
ROSS: Justice Gee had previously issued orders for the sale of Len Warwick's home after his divorce. He restricted access to his daughter and even issued an arrest warrant when he failed to return Trudi after an access visit. When you heard about that bomb, what did you think?
ANDREA: I felt really sick that another person had been hurt. A week before that, we appeared in that court in front of him.
ALISON: He destroyed our sense of security in life. You know, at 12 years old, you know, you've got... You're pretty carefree with not much responsibility and that's just taken away in one easy shove, just sort of sent into a world that nobody else understands, your age, because it's so traumatic.
ROSS: Sunday night, the following month. The Family Court at Parramatta is blown up. All of Warwick's proceedings were heard here. Miraculously, no-one dies but the bombing doesn't stop. Three months later, Justice Ray Watson, who has taken over from Justice Gee, is about to leave his Greenwich home for work. His wife, Pearl, is killed instantly. Justice Watson survives. Their front door had been booby-trapped. The bomb exploded at 8:15am. It contained several kilos of gelignite. When you heard that the wife of a judge had been murdered, what was your reaction?
ANDREA: Shocked, hurt...that another person had been hurt because of it, another family is destroyed. I can't get over... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, darling.
ROSS: Justice Watson left hospital to attend his wife's funeral. In March, he'd made orders restricting Len Warwick's access to his daughter. The police have said that it's a mathematical improbability that the same person was the common link in so many explosions and murders.
ANDREA: Mm-hm. And every time, we appeared in front of each judge.
ROSS: After Pearl Watson's death, Bob Hawke and New South Wales premier Neville Wran offered a $500,000 reward.
BOB HAWKE: We don't intend to stand idly by and tolerate these sorts of attacks not only on individuals but on the very basis of the system that operates in this community.
ROSS: But whoever was doing the killing was undeterred. In 1985, another bomb was found under the bonnet of a car outside a house here in Northmead near Parramatta. The intended victim had recently moved from the address but was still listed in the phone book. The significance of it was the car was outside the home of what used to be the house of your then Family Court solicitor, a Mr Watts.
ANDREA: Yes, yes.
TERRY: Any knowledge of that?
LEN: No, Terry.
ROSS: What did Mr Watts say to you at the time?
ANDREA: I got a phone call and he said "I won't be able to", you know, "act on your behalf". And that was it.
ROSS: Basically, he was saying he was too frightened for his own safety to act for you any longer.
ANDREA: That's right.
ROSS: Andrea's brother, her lawyer, three judges, two homes and the Parramatta Family Court had all now been targeted. Investigating the death of Pearl Watson was coroner Kevin Waller.
KEVIN WALLER: This is just about unheard of in Australia for judicial officers to be personally attacked and physically attacked. It's not known. I don't know another case where it's happened.
ROSS: So the only common factor in all of these crimes was this one man?
KEVIN: I would say so.
ROSS: Which is the unique aspect of this case.
KEVIN: Yes, indeed.
ROSS: Len Warwick lives in Douglas Park, south-west of Sydney. He now has a new wife. In February 1985, his former wife, Andrea, and her sister Judy were in fear for their lives. On February 9, Len had come to their house and bashed Andrea. That night, a bomb was planted in her lawyer's car. Judy was also now being threatened. With Andrea's daughter, they went into hiding.
ANDREA: My sister and I made that decision because Judy was getting threatening phone calls, threatening phone calls to kill her and her children.
ROSS: Who was making those phone calls?
ANDREA: Len.
JUDY: The police said it was a good idea for me to get out of Sydney because I was probably next on the list.
ROSS: Judy belonged to a Jehovah's Witness congregation near where Len Warwick lived. She asked church members to help move them to a location hundreds of kilometres north. Jehovah's Witness Greg Hahn was 20 and drove the removal van. Do you remember when you helped move Andrea's possessions?
GREG: Yes.
ROSS: You came to her house. She opened the door. Do you remember anything about her features that day?
GREG: She had a black eye. It looked like she had had some violence.
ROSS: Did she say who had done that to her?
GREG: Yes, she said it was, "Len had done this," were her words.
SUE: What I remember about that Sunday morning was it was spectacular. It was one of those mornings in Sydney in winter, you know, where the sky is blue, blue, blue, not a cloud. The gum trees looked fabulous.
ROSS: Also with Sue and Peter Schulz in the Jehovah's Witness hall that day were Graham and Joy Wykes and two of their three daughters. Joy had been married to Graham for over 15 years.
JOY: He was always calm and loving, quiet man. Um, but he could be lots of fun, yeah.
ROSS: Was he a good father?
JOY: He was an excellent dad. Two of our good friends were there, David and Helen, and David had the talk that day.
PETER: David was giving an excellent talk on loyalty, Christian loyalty. Therefore, Jesus said to the 12, "You do not want to go also, do you?"
JOY: It was an older building. It was in the middle of July, so it was quite cold, and we were holding hands. And I thought, "Oh, his hand would be really cold," so we had a small rug over our knee and I pulled it up over our hands. And he knew, of course, why I was doing it, to warm his hand. He turned to me and whispered, "I love you," and that was the last thing I remember
ROSS: Could you remember a bang?
ALAINE: No, just went... your ears just went numb.
ROSS: Can you remember the flash?
ALAINE: Yeah, flash.
ROSS: Heat?
ALAINE: I don't remember heat, no. Just a lot of debris and just bits of, like, little fine bits of wood falling, And that was all through our bibles and through our clothes, and that was the shrapnel that went into your body as well.
PETER: But the moment of the bomb, all I could see was just grey. It was...you couldn't see anything. No, no, it was...after the bomb, it was dead silent, there was no noise. The air started to thin out. I don't know what size explosive it was, how you measure that, But it virtually blew half the Kingdom Hall away. And as soon as the debris stopped falling, I yelled out, "Sue, Susie, Susie, where are you?"
SUE: I thought, "I'm having a nightmare, it must be a nightmare," so I started to call out for Peter because I thought if Peter will just wake me up, everything will be fine.
PETER: And then she started calling out in a sort of a muffled way, "Peter! Peter!" Her upper lip was cut right across and was hanging down near her chin. Her eyes, her whole face, everything was swelling up so quickly, so I tried to tend to her. Just to the side of Sue was one of our friends, a woman, and she was calling out for her husband who was killed.
ROSS: It's Graham. Graham Wykes dies instantly, Joy Wykes and Sue Schulz suffer serious injuries, dozens more are badly hurt. 14-year-old Alaine Wykes is carried to an ambulance. Were you looking for your Mum and Dad at that stage?
ALAINE: I knew where they were, towards my left, and so I did look around as they were carrying me out then. And I did see a blanket sort of put out which I realised later was my Dad's body.
I heard one of the oldest in our congregation say, yeah, um, her father, Graham's, died. I prayed to God and said if that was the best thing... 'Cause he might have suffered and been in a lot of pain, that might have been the best thing.
MAN: Understand in two weeks time, August 2, you were about to celebrate your 16th anniversary. That's right, yes. Were you planning something special?
JOY: Yes, every year, just our own family have a nice party to celebrate. We all give each other gifts and we give our children a present each year and all this, so it's a really big event with a nice cake and so forth, you know, looking forward to it. He was a fine, fine man and he has missed out on life because somebody done a very bad thing, yeah.
MIRANDA: Our family changed then. It was never the same. Mentally, you just don't cope with things after you have been through something like that. They didn't want to just hurt us, they wanted to kill everybody there. Dad was...I, particularly as a 10-year-old, you know, I worshipped the ground my father walked on, you know? Nothing ever replaces that.
JOY: I really don't care how long a person's passed away or anything like that, People say time heals. Yeah, I really don't feel it does.
ANDREA: Innocent people attending to their church, a faith, did nothing wrong, didn't even know Len - they didn't even know him.
TRUDI: Yeah, all they did was help you move.
ROSS: Is he the sort of bloke who could teach himself how to make a bomb?
ANDREA: Of course he is. He's got the brains to do it.
TRUDI: Yeah, yeah, he's a brainy guy. He is smart, he must be smart. He must be pretty smart.
ANDREA: He is one step ahead of everybody else.
ROSS: The bomb was triggered by an alarm clock. The same explosives were used in the attempted car bombing of Andrea's lawyer five months earlier. The night before, there had been a break-in at the church. It's just four minutes drive from Len Warwick's then house in Casula to here, the Jehovah's Witness Hall.
TERRY: The bombing of the Jehovah's Witness Hall, the same church, the same congregation which offered your wife sanctuary, a lot of coincidences, isn't it, connecting with you?
LEN: Well, I now know about the activities of the Jehovah's Witnesses in relation to the hiding of my daughter. I didn't know that at the time.
ROSS: He had been asking people in the congregation where you and Andrea and Trudi were, hadn't he?
JUDY: Yes, he did. He approached people in that congregation, and friends sort of contacted me and said that he has been making phone calls asking where we are.
TERRY: So, you are saying that at the time of the church bombing, you didn't know of your wife's involvement with the Jehovah's Witness?
LEN: No.
TERRY: You knew nothing about it?
LEN: No.
ROSS: Len Warwick was being economical with his words and with the truth. Now crucial new witnesses with vital new evidence. 30 years ago, Anne and Warryn Stuckey had just left the Jehovah's Witnesses. Warren had been the Jehovah's Witnesses' lawyer until he became disillusioned. He felt the church shielded wives and children from fathers desperate to see their kids after a marriage break-up. Warren's now an Anglican minister, but in the days following the bombing, he did media interviews. He said he could understand why some men might hold a grudge against the Jehovah's Witness church. The day after one of those interviews, a stranger turned up. Did you know this person was coming?
ANNE: No, no, not at all. There was no appointment. This was an unusual factor 'cause most people who in the past wanted to see us, they would ring and make an appointment.
ROSS: How would this person have known where you lived?
ANNE: I have no idea.
ROSS: Anne and Warren regularly provided support to fathers as well as information about the Jehovah's Witnesses, so while the man's sudden visit was a surprise, it wasn't unusual.
WARREN: He was of average height, I would say, stocky build, moustache. My recollection is he had fairly close-cropped hair at the time, casually dressed.
ANNE: As he kept talking, um, it struck me that he wasn't crying, he wasn't weeping, about the loss of his wife or his daughter. It was more wanting the control - they had to come back, he had to get them back.
ROSS: How does the conversation end?
ANNE: Um, more at our... Well, I got scared when he started pushing for names, so I only gave him... I mean, obviously, there were other people we could have given helpful....but I wasn't going to give out any single private address at all.
ROSS: Was he angry?
ANNE: Yes, I would have said he was angry, yes.
ROSS: The couple have never been interviewed by police about that day. What they are about to say may change that. Anne, I want you to take a very close look at that picture. Is that the man that came to your house 28 years ago?
ANNE: Yes, it is.
ROSS: How sure are you?
ANNE: The thick-set build, I think his hair was a bit shorter then, the skin that was not smooth but pock-marked...um, yeah, definitely the build, absolutely.
ROSS: 100% sure?
ANNE: Yes, no doubt about it.
ROSS: OK, Warren do you want to have a look now? Is that the man that came to your house 28 years ago?
WARREN: Yes.
ROSS: You're in absolutely no doubt?
WARREN: No doubt.
ROSS: But soon, Len Warwick would get a surprise visit of his own. Federal Police go to his home with a search warrant. Warwick refuses to be interviewed, refuses to give a blood sample. The police discover three handwritten pages containing the telephone numbers of prominent Jehovah's Witness members. After the bombing of the church hall, Andrea's life was in turmoil. In hiding and scared, she took the heartbreaking decision to hand her 7-year-old daughter, Trudi, back to Len. So, you gave Len Warwick full-time custody of Trudi at that point?
ANDREA: Yes.
ROSS: How was that decision?
ANDREA: I didn't want to do it, but I thought, "Well, maybe he'll leave everybody alone, leave us in peace, maybe he might change with her and be appreciated to have his daughter with him."
ROSS: Interesting then, isn't it, that every since Trudi was given back to Len full time...
ANDREA: Yeah, everything stopped.
ROSS: ..everything stopped?
ANDREA: Everything stopped.
ROSS: No bombings.
ANDREA: No.
ROSS: No murders?
ANDREA: No.
ROSS: Everything stopped.
ANDREA: Yeah.
ROSS: How significant do you believe it is that every single murder, every single bombing, stopped as soon as he got his child back?
KEVIN: Well, I think that's a factor that must be taken into account and it's quite an important one too. I mean, it adds to the other circumstances to make the case to go before a jury
even stronger, I think.
ROSS: Prime suspect Len Warwick is a man of few words.
LEN: (BLEEP!) parasites.
ROSS: From the very first time he was called in for questioning, Len Warwick has said little.
LEN: (BLEEP!) off, stupid.
ROSS: You were the prime suspect...
LEN: I have no interest in promoting your...
ROSS: Len Warwick has consistently played one card - his right to silence on the basis that his answers might incriminate him. As the coroner, you weren't allowed to draw conclusions from Mr Warwick's refusal to answer questions, were you?
KEVIN: No.
ROSS: Did you draw conclusions, though?
KEVIN: Well, I think, as always, you are inclined to draw conclusions when someone who knows something about the case has asked a question and refuses to answer.
ROSS: Why would they refuse to answer if they had nothing to do with the case? We are recording you at the moment. What we are doing is preparing a story.
LEN: (BLEEP!) (BLEEP!) off!
KEVIN: Innocent people more or less should have shout their innocence from the rooftops, not hide behind a right of silence.
ROSS: Look, you were accused in a court of murder and bombings.
LEN: (BLEEP!) off, stupid.
ROSS: You were the prime suspect.
LEN: I have no interest in promoting your crummy little show.
ROSS: You were a prime suspect..in a series of murders and bombings.
LEN: No matter how desperate you are...
ROSS: Why don't you make a comment?
LEN: ..to improve your ratings.
ROSS: Why did you refuse to speak to police?
LEN: (BLEEP!) off.
KEVIN: There are circumstances that point straight at him. There are extraordinary links between Mr Warwick and the deaths and explosions under consideration, quite extraordinary. Whether they amount to a case, it really... I'd like to see it go before a jury.
ROSS: For five years, Warwick was placed under constant surveillance. His car, home and phone were bugged. The police helicopter was used to track him when he went into the national park adjoining his then home. Warwick was seen carrying suspicious items. Police suspected he had a hiding place, they just didn't know where.
MICK: We got some information that Warwick used to frequent a cave in the national park near Helensburgh which is where he was from.
ROSS: Do you remember the name of the cave?
MICK: My memory was it was 'Jimmy the Black's cave. We ended up going down there. It was a very hot day, I remember this, traipsing through the bush with one of our scientific guys. We even had a very basic form of metal detector. The idea of the operation was if we could locate this cave and maybe do some sort of search as far as cartridge cases, guns, and maybe then link them back to the Blanchard shooting.
ROSS: Did you find the cave?
MICK: No, we didn't.
ROSS: Acting on information, we went to the bushland south of Sydney. Our guide, who knows Len Warwick, is a local who insisted on not being identified. He knows the area and knew of the cave. After two hours, he brought us to the spot police failed to find. The police couldn't find this cave 33 years ago, what they thought might have been Len Warwick's hideout. It's not hard to see why. We only found it with the help of locals. But that's not all the locals have told us. We have uncovered quite extraordinary new evidence. We understand that 30 years ago, local youths knew that if you came into this forest just 2km from Len Warwick's then home, if you knew where to look, you could find and steal explosives. In the mid-1970s, demolition crews were blasting rock for a reservoir expansion close to Helensburgh, near Warwick's home. To those in the know, security was lax. Our guide revealed how on one occasion, he and his mates stole fuses, detonators and explosives. Len Warwick knew this place like the back of his hand.
His father worked in a nearby mine where explosives were often used. How did you get away with it? How did you get away with it?
LEN: I have no interest in promoting your crummy little show.
ROSS: But don't you understand that...?
LEN: Don't you understand that I have no interest in your show? I'm not interested in talking to you. (BLEEP!) off.
ROSS: know you don't want to talk to us but there are a lot of people out there - victims, victims' families... Your own daughter.
LEN: I am not interested.
ROSS: They want to know whether or not you did this. Why has he never been charged?
KEVIN: I would like the DPP to decide these things. They have got better knowledge of what the jurors do than I have. If they think the jury might convict, I would hope they would bring a trial on. Mr Warwick's hidden behind the right to silence for many years and I would like to see introduced the English system where the person's right to silence could be considered as another circumstance in the case against them.
JUDY: They have got to catch him.
ROSS: But they haven't.
JUDY: I know. And you can drive yourself nuts worrying about it. And I did. I mean, we were in fear of our lives for years.
KRISTIN: I have spent 30 years in virtual hiding.
ROSS: Why have you decided to speak, why is it so important?
KRISTIN: Justice has to be done. And he is going to have to go to jail and pay for all the distress and terror that he has caused everybody. If you could imagine everything that means anything to you being taken away in one minute, everything - my best friend, he was, the most beautiful father - just gone out of your life. And then your life is in total pieces.
ROSS: Has that damage continued today?
KRISTIN: Absolutely, it has. I don't feel any better or stronger or more capable of doing anything 30 years later. I feel as though I have been destroyed.
ROSS: And it was all over a little girl. The great irony is that by the time Trudi was 15, she was no longer welcome in her father's home. So after all that...he has completely cut you off?
TRUDI: Yeah.
ROSS: You haven't seen your dad for how many years?
TRUDI: Since I was 21.
ROSS: She last saw him at her wedding. What was that like?
ANDREA: Stressful.
TRUDI: Very stressful, very emotional, scary.
ROSS: Did you murder Stephen Blanchard?
LEN: I have no interest in promoting your crummy little show.
ROSS: Did you murder Justice Opas?
LEN: No interest in promoting your show.
ROSS: Did you murder...?
LEN: That is my comment.
ROSS: Did you murder Graham Wykes?
LEN: I have no interest in promoting your show.
ROSS: Why is it so hard...?
LEN: None at all.
ROSS: Why is it so hard for you to answer that question? It is 33 years since the first of these allegedly linked crimes were committed and the murderer has never been brought to justice. Why does it matter? 33 years has passed.
TRUDI: People need answers, closure. You know, innocent people were killed, over me. Somebody has to be held accountable for what happened.
ROSS: Even if it turns out that it was your Dad?
TRUDI: Yeah. If you commit something like these crimes, you should be held accountable for it. I don't care who you are.
