How Henry Keogh was locked up for 20 years for a crime he did not commit

MELISSA DOYLE: Tonight, the murder that never happened.

MAN: There was nothing that suggested this was murder.

MELISSA DOYLE: So why did they jail this man and throw away the key?

MIKE WILLESEE: How long were you in jail?

HENRY KEOGH: 20½ years.

(GATE BANGS SHUT)

MELISSA DOYLE: An exclusive Sunday Night investigation exposes the evidence that didn't exist.

MAN: The jury had been misled. He wasn't professionally qualified. 10,000 autopsies is a pretty scary number.

MELISSA DOYLE: The government report that could have freed him years ago.

MAN 2: The young woman had either fainted or slipped. There was no murder.

MAN: This guy hadn't had a fair trial.

MELISSA DOYLE: The family who stood by him and the woman convinced of his guilt who learned the truth and became his wife. Welcome to Sunday Night. I'm Melissa Doyle. It's an epic injustice to rival the Chamberlain case. Just as fierce public opinion, flawed forensic procedures and circumstantial evidence held Lindy Chamberlain responsible for the death of her daughter Azaria, similar forces aligned to pin Henry Keogh for murder, only Henry spent a hell of a lot longer in jail than Lindy Chamberlain - in fact, longer than many actual killers get for their crimes. But we've gathered powerful and compelling evidence that Henry Keogh played no part in the death of his fiancee and that the murder he was accused of never happened. The full picture of his staggering and cruel ordeal is only now emerging. And tonight, for the first time, we bring the detail together in a major Sunday Night investigation. Here's Mike Willesee.

HENRY KEOGH: I still sometimes feel like I'm on the outside looking in. It was a shock. I felt sick (SIGHS HEAVILY) You just shut down. Um...You go numb. And... (SIGHS) ..you just.....try to put it out, that it's not happening, it's not real. And of course, um, it was. (SIGHS)

MIKE WILLESEE: Henry Keogh savours as many sunsets as he can these days because, for a third of his life, he was denied them. The 60-year-old was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 for the murder of his fiancee. He spent 20 long years behind bars before his conviction was quashed.

GRAHAM ARCHER: This is a catastrophic failure of the justice system, and if we turn a blind eye to that, then, whether it's Henry Keogh or you or me or anyone else, are at risk from
a process like that.

DR BOB MOLES: Henry Keogh was convicted for something that never happened. That is abundantly clear. There's no evidence of a criminal event having occurred at all.

(CHILDREN LAUGH)

HENRY KEOGH: You could be a belly dancer.

MIKE WILLESEE: After missing out on so much of his own kids' lives, Henry makes up for lost time with his precious grandkids.

GRANDAUGHTER: Well, I love that he's out of prison now because I've been praying. When he was in prison, I've been praying every night, so now I can see him basically whenever I want.

MIKE WILLESEE: His daughter Elise has married and given birth to four children, and Henry was locked away for most of it.

ELISE: I remember thinking how we lived in a country where it was innocent until proven guilty. And right from the outset, it wasn't innocent until proven guilty, it was guilty until proven innocent.

(SOFT LAUGHTER)

HENRY KEOGH: We had a really open and honest relationship. And we could talk about whatever was on each other's hearts and they never doubted their father, me, for an instant.

MIKE WILLESEE: How long were you in jail?

HENRY KEOGH: 20½ years.

MIKE WILLESEE: It's the middle of your life.

HENRY KEOGH: Pretty much. A big slab.

MIKE WILLESEE: They can't give it back to you.

HENRY KEOGH: No, never. No. No. It's... You can't un-ring that bell. It's done.

MIKE WILLESEE: Before he was locked up, life looked pretty good for Henry. He always showed promise as a teenager, making it onto a local quiz show. He married at 21 and had three daughters. His chosen career - a financial adviser and insurance agent. Then in 1991, he left his wife, Sue, after falling in love with Anna-Jane Cheney.

HENRY KEOGH: It was something that came out of left field. 'Infatuated' is not quite the right word. That doesn't do it justice. She was just unbelievably engaging, funny, smart, super intelligent. Um... Great sense of humour. Everybody loved her. Everybody. In a word, she was amazing.

MIKE WILLESEE: By March 1994, he was six weeks away from marrying the 29-year-old lawyer.

HENRY KEOGH: She just became.....so...important to me, so.....engaging, so.....fulfilling. Her company was just...brilliant.

MIKE WILLESEE: On Friday, 18 March, they met after work for drinks.

HENRY KEOGH: We were both in really good spirits. It was the end of the week, looking forward to the weekend. The wedding wasn't far off. We loved each other's company. A good start to what I thought was going to be another typical weekend together.

MIKE WILLESEE: A couple of hours after they got home, Henry decided to visit his mum. Anna-Jane stayed behind. She was going to run herself a bath.

HENRY KEOGH: She had a bit of an achy back. And so I said, "OK, I won't be long."

MIKE WILLESEE: No-one knows exactly what happened next, but during the hour that Henry was gone, one life was lost and others would be shattered.

HENRY KEOGH: I came back, was walking through the house and called out to her. And I didn't get an answer. Found her slumped in the bath. (SIGHS) I'd hoped that maybe she was just asleep, just fainted, and my brain's screaming, you know, "Get her out, get her out and she'll be OK." And she wasn't responding. I tried to revive her and I was just praying that when the ambos came, they'd be able to resuscitate her, that she'd pull through. You can't believe it. You're not ready for it. You don't want to believe it when they tell you, you know, "She hasn't made it."

MIKE WILLESEE: It wasn't long before the police arrived at the scene.

HENRY KEOGH: And not a single one of them said there was any suggestion whatsoever of an argument, foul play, or anything. They just put it down to.....natural causes, accident.

MIKE WILLESEE: When Anna-Jane was discovered in the bath, there were no suspicious circumstances?

GRAHAM ARCHER: You're correct. From the scene, there was no suspicion raised. Henry had no injuries on him, Anna-Jane had none to speak of. There was nothing there that suggested this was a murder.

MIKE WILLESEE: Anna-Jane's body was entered at the mortuary as a non-suspicious death. Henry believed that Anna-Jane had died as a result of an accident. He thought the police believed that too. But within days, they were back asking pointed questions. Suddenly, it was not an accident - it was murder, and Henry was the prime suspect.

HENRY KEOGH: The police came round, said they wanted to put some questions to me. Been told they were going to search the house and.....they just started making all these outrageous allegations.

MIKE WILLESEE:Police thought they had found compelling circumstantial evidence pointing to a motive for murder. There were alleged affairs and Henry had taken out five life insurance policies in Anna-Jane's name and forged her signature. It doesn't look good, does it?

HENRY KEOGH: No, of course not.

MIKE WILLESEE: Did Anna-Jane know about these insurance policies?

HENRY KEOGH: Yes, she did.

MIKE WILLESEE: Did you sign on her behalf?

HENRY KEOGH: Yes, I did.

MIKE WILLESEE: Doesn't look good, does it?

HENRY KEOGH: No.

GRAHAM ARCHER: In dollar terms, it was about $1.2 million, which was, you know, a sizeable amount of money.

MIKE WILLESEE: At the time, Henry was working in the investment services division of a South Australian bank. But industry uncertainty meant he kept his insurance business as a sideline, with the potential of earning some commission.

HENRY KEOGH: You have to continue to put some business through them or they'll close them down on you.

MIKE WILLESEE: You're saying that was normal practice?

HENRY KEOGH - Well, I wouldn't say necessarily NORMAL practice - probably a poor choice - but it is common practice amongst some couples and partners that they will do it for each other.

MIKE WILLESEE: It is not legal, but it is a practice most in the insurance game know about.

GRAHAM ARCHER: There's a term in insurance called 'tombstoning', and it's where you invent a policy, as an insurance salesman - 'tombstoning' because they used to take people's names off graves. You write the policy. For the first few years, the commission is larger than the premiums. It keeps work flowing through your agency and it pays for itself. It's a recognised practice within the insurance industry.

MIKE WILLESEE: But the policies were enough to raise suspicion and led investigators to ask - did Anna-Jane simply slip and drown, or was she murdered?

HENRY KEOGH: And I'm thinking, "This madness is going to stop "as soon as the results of the autopsy are going to come in."

MIKE WILLESEE: The chief forensic pathologist, Dr Colin Manock, began his autopsy two days after Anna-Jane was found drowned in the bath. He revisited the body after suspicions were raised. He'd examined the body once...

GRAHAM ARCHER: Mm-hm.

MIKE WILLESEE: ..and then when he heard that there were suspicions, including insurance policies, he went back-

GRAHAM ARCHER: looked again. Yes. And came up with this grip theory because there were faint bruises on the outside of the left leg. And he maintained there was a key thumb bruise on the inside of the left leg and he came up with this notion that her legs had been lifted over her head and she'd been drowned, and the fingerprints were the handprints of murder.

HENRY KEOGH: He put it to me that, you know, I'd held her under or I'd held her up and lifted her up bodily. I mean, it was bizarre. I'm...still in shock at just losing her and still trying to come to terms with that and I'm being bombarded with accusations that seem to.....be totally surreal and fanciful.

MIKE WILLESEE: At what point did you say to yourself....."I am in big trouble"?

KENRY KEOGH: When I was arrested. Not till then.

DR MOLES: Inside of the leg did not show any signs of bruising. He knew that at the time of the trial, but had failed to disclose it.

GRAHAM ARCHER: Nothing compares with this - not in Australia, not even overseas. Henry Keogh's conviction is probably the worst of the wrongful conviction cases
that we've ever had in Australia.

GRAHAM ARCHER: This is too big to ignore.

MIKE WILLESEE: Can you remember the first time that cell door shut on you?

HENRY KEOGH: (SIGHS) There's been so many cell doors.

MIKE WILLESEE: The first one?

HENRY KEOGH: Mmm. Yeah. You're just struck with disbelief that this is even happening. Couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it.

MIKE WILLESEE: 40-year-old financial adviser and insurance agent Henry Keogh had just been charged with the murder of his fiancee - lawyer Anna-Jane Cheney. They were six weeks away
from the wedding when she was found drowned in the bath.

HENRY KEOGH: I still remember it now. Even though it was so long ago. Yep.

MIKE WILLESEE: Henry's daughter Elise Larcombe remembers vividly the day he was arrested. She was only 12. How does a 12-year-old kid go to school after those headlines?

ELISE: There were people saying, "Is that your father, the murderer?" And I was like, "No!"And so I didn't talk about it. I pretended that it wasn't my dad. So you go from not only the embarrassment and the shame to the guilt. Because you know that your father's innocent and you haven't stood up for him.

MIKE WILLESEE: Henry was sent to trial in February 1995. The case against him was mostly circumstantial and included the insurance policies as motive.

GRAHAM ARCHER: Murder and money go hand in hand. The notion of a bloke drowning his loving fiancee.....six weeks before their marriage for the sake of filthy lucre, well, you know, who could defend that? And that's the way the public saw it. And fair enough - that's the message they got.

HENRY KEOGH: A big issue was made of them as a motive. But if...if there is no murder, both logically and in law, motive, any motive, whether it's insurances or an argument or an intense dislike of another person, is totally irrelevant and of no meaning.

MIKE WILLESEE: During Henry's trial, considerable weight was also placed on the forensic evidence presented by South Australia's chief forensic pathologist, Dr Colin Manock. The evidence that convicted him was based around what Dr Manock had to say?

GRAHAM ARCHER: All the jury heard is....."He's done over 9,000 autopsies. Therefore, he must be an expert."

MIKE WILLESEE: Dr Manock told the jury that Anna-Jane Cheney's death was an 'assisted drowning'. He concluded that she had been conscious when she went under the water.

BOB MOLES: At the time of the trial, he said, "I knew that this woman was conscious "when she was forced into the water. "Because if she'd been unconscious, "then she would have had a mark on the brain "and I'd be seeing that at autopsy."

MIKE WILLESEE: Manock also said bruises on her leg formed a grip mark. Her assailant, he said, would place his right arm under her legs and grip the left ankle with the right hand, then lift the legs above the head, submerging her head in the water. Dr Manock also claimed the bruises
occurred within hours of her death.

GRAHAM ARCHER: So the age of the bruises was crucial. Because of course, if they were made close to the time of death, then they became more suspicious.

MIKE WILLESEE: Dr Manock presented black-and-white photos of Anna-Jane's bruises to the jury.

BOB MOLES: At the trial, he said all the slides that he had taken showed signs of bruising.

MIKE WILLESEE: The case against Henry began to build.

HENRY KEOGH: People who didn't like me. People who had felt that because there were insurance policies in place, that that was my motive. And overridingly was the fact that Manock had said that in his opinion, um, fit, young women don't suddenly die. He said that there were marks and there were bruises.

ELISE: They kept saying how intelligent he was and how calculating he was, and yet, if he had murdered her, he was a completely stupid criminal. The crime itself doesn't add up. My dad IS highly intelligent. And for me, that was what completely sealed it. Trying to be unbiased and look at it from an outsider's perspective, it was like if he was gonna kill her, he would have done it a lot smarter.

MIKE WILLESEE: After two weeks of evidence, the jury could not reach a verdict and the judge was asked to consider dismissing them after unfair media reports. The result was a hung jury and a retrial was ordered. How did you react to that?

HENRY KEOGH: You have...no power in that situation. None whatsoever. Events just roll over you
relentlessly. Wasn't that long between the two trials.

MIKE WILLESEE: Henry's second trial began in August 1995. Once again, all the evidence was circumstantial, but the jury was reminded of Dr Colin Manock's qualifications and experience.

COLIN MANOCK: There are very good reasons for carrying out post-mortem examinations.

GRAHAM ARCHER: "He was an expert." "He was an expert." "He'd know."

MIKE WILLESEE: On 23 August 1995, Henry Keogh was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

REPORTER: The former bank manager was convicted by a jury of deliberately drowning Miss Cheney in the bath in their Magill home.

HENRY KEOGH: I felt sick. I was numb. Um...I was bewildered. There's this disconnect. Intellectually, you might hear what they're saying, but when in your heart you know you haven't done anything, you can't just switch that off.

MIKE WILLESEE: What's it like for a kid going to prison to see your dad?

ELISE: It was terrifying. They're not friendly places. He always tried to be stoic and strong for us, but my dad's eyes always give him away.

HENRY KEOGH: I wanted to keep a brave front for my family and kids. I knew they were doing it
badly enough without having to worry about, you know, how I was dealing with things. And...I didn't want the guards or the system to think that.....you know, I was buckling under it. That would be admitting defeat, and that's not in my make-up.

REPORTER: Keogh, now 41, will be in his mid-60s before he can apply for parole.

ELISE: When he was in prison, we couldn't call him, he could only call us. When Dad called us, we knew that he was doing well. When we didn't hear from him, we knew that he wasn't doing well. And he definitely had dark times.

HENRY KEOGH: You wonder too, um... "Am I ever gonna get out? "Am I gonna die in here?"

BOB MOLES: One can be quite confident that there was no murder.

GRAHAM ARCHER: There was no evidence for foul play.

BOB MOLES: We had a man in an expert's position but without expert qualifications.

HENRY KEOGH: All I wanted was a day back in court to establish the truth. Trials are about truth. It's not a contest.

BOB MOLES: Henry Keogh was convicted for something that never happened.

MIKE WILLESEE: In all your examination of everything to do with the Keogh trial, did you see anything which indicated he could be guilty?

BOB MOLES: Oh, no. Quite the contrary. One can be quite confident that there was no murder, no criminal assault, no offence has been caused here, and that Henry Keogh was convicted for something that never happened.

MIKE WILLESEE: In 1995, Henry Keogh was sentenced to life for drowning his fiancee in the bath. Five years later, former law lecturer Dr Bob Moles began scrutinising Henry's case.

BOB MOLES: I'd been working on it for about six to eight months off and on before I realised that this was actually a fundamental, serious miscarriage of justice.

MIKE WILLESEE: Dr Moles discovered some serious flaws in the evidence South Australia's chief forensic
pathologist, Dr Colin Manock, presented at Henry's trial.

BOB MOLES: The disturbing thing is that he has given evidence in over 400 criminal trials when he actually wasn't qualified to do so. He's actually conducted 10,000 autopsies when he actually wasn't qualified to complete an autopsy on his own.

MIKE WILLESEE: Dr Manock was appointed to South Australia's top forensic position in 1968 without all the necessary qualifications as a pathologist, and he has never been trained in histopathology - the examination of organs and tissue under a microscope.

BOB MOLES: We had a man in an expert's position but without expert qualifications.

MIKE WILLESEE: The truth is that the case assembled against Henry Keogh was unsound even before the trial began. What Henry didn't know was that serious questions had been raised about Dr Colin Manock's expertise. There have been questions raised about his competence.

BOB MOLES: Yes, there have, in many cases.

WOMAN: I was just screaming, "He's dead, he's dead, he's dead!"

MIKE WILLESEE: The first to raise alarm bells was the deaths of three babies in separate incidents in the early '90s. All of them had horrendous signs of abuse and one of them had 15 fractures. So what did Dr Manock conclude?

BOB MOLES: He said they'd died of bronchopneumonia.

GRAHAM ARCHER: And it so shocked police and doctors that they demanded an inquest be held, and the coroner put the three together and ran an inquest.

MIKE WILLESEE: The coroner was scathing of Dr Manock.

BOB MOLES: He said that Dr Manock had seen things that couldn't have been seen. He also said that in answer to questions during the coronial inquiry, some of the answers by Dr Manock had been spurious - it means 'not genuine', 'not honest'. He made some serious errors.

HENRY KEOGH: A number of them. Huge.

MIKE WILLESEE: The three babies.

HENRY KEOGH: Just for starters, you know? The catalogue is...horrendous.

BOB MOLES: And what is abundantly clear is that from the moment that report was released, two days after, Mr Keogh was found guilty. Mr Keogh was absolutely entitled to have his conviction overturned.

MIKE WILLESEE: He spent more than 20 years in jail.

BOB MOLES: He did, yes. That's unforgivable, really.

HENRY KEOGH: In the early days, I actually thought, you know, I was only here for a short while and I had to stay as strong as I could, you know, mentally and physically, and if I did that,I could get through this easily. And that worked for a while, but it doesn't take long for the system, particularly the legal process, just to grind you down. You think it's slick, efficient, but it's anything but. It's...slow, inexorable, unbelievably frustrating.

MIKE WILLESEE: What was the first point that led you to believe that it was a miscarriage of justice?

BOB MOLES: Well, I think the first thing was that the evidence of the forensic pathologist didn't seem to make sense.

MIKE WILLESEE: At the trial which convicted Henry, the so-called bruise to support Dr Manock's hand-grip theory was circled.

BOB MOLES: If I were to give the jury a blank piece of paper with a circle written in it and then told them that the colour inside is different from the colour outside, they'd probably believe me. So it was very prejudicial and it was an inappropriate way of presenting the information to the jury.

MIKE WILLESEE: 10 years after Henry's conviction, Dr Manock retracted key parts of his evidence before the Medical Board of South Australia. He admitted he did not see the bruise to support his grip theory through a microscope.

BOB MOLES: He knew that at the time of the trial but had failed to disclose it.

MIKE WILLESEE: Manock said it was a left-handed grip, when at trial, he said it was the right hand.

BOB MOLES: He said, "Well, they must have taken it down wrong." Which of course is impossible.

MIKE WILLESEE: He no longer supported his own testimony at Henry's trial that Anna-Jane was conscious when she drowned. And the other vital piece of Manock's evidence that sealed Henry's fate at his trial was the age of the bruises.

GRAHAM ARCHER: He'd said these were recent bruises, that they'd all been made together, including the one that didn't exist.

MIKE WILLESEE: A simple test could have determined if the bruises found on Anna-Jane had occurred when she drowned. Dr Manock did not carry out
that test.

GRAHAM ARCHER: It was for a chemical called haemosiderin, and it is present in old bruises.

HENRY KEOGH: The bruising and the grip pattern were the one single indicator of homicide, yet this test could have proven once and for all whether those bruises
had been inflicted at or around the time of Anna's death.

MIKE WILLESEE: The test was eventually done in early 2014. It confirmed the presence of haemosiderin, proof of bruising days or weeks before Anna-Jane's death - nowhere near the time she drowned.

HENRY KEOGH: His case, his argument just completely falls apart.

MIKE WILLESEE: Armed with fresh and compelling evidence and an historic change in the law that allows prisoners a second chance to appeal their conviction, Henry finally had his case reviewed.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

The court found that Henry had indeed suffered a significant miscarriage of justice.

GRAHAM ARCHER: To see Henry walk out with his daughters and the spontaneous applause was.....was really moving.

(APPLAUSE)

MIKE WILLESEE: The full court quashed Henry's conviction. A retrial was ordered but abandoned when the prosecution's key witness, Dr Colin Manock, was ruled medically unfit to take the stand. Henry was finally free. If he were to walk in the room right now, what would you say to him?

HENRY KEOGH: I'd like to say... I'd like to believe that I could say, "I forgive you." But...I'm not quite there yet. I'm working on that. Because I don't want to give him free space in my head and carry him around for the rest of my life. It's not worth it. And to do that would be
an injustice and a disservice to what's left of my life and my family and those who are important to me.

MIKE WILLESEE: We approached Dr Manock for an interview. He agreed to a meeting, which he was happy to have recorded.

COLIN MANOCK: According to me, that case was finished and I wanted to get on with my life, and it's come back and it's been a nuisance to me... Dr Manock did not accept there was any problem with his evidence and said he would do a formal on-camera interview, but a few days later, cancelled on medical advice.

HENRY KEOGH: Give us a pash. (GIGGLES)

ELISE LARCOMBE: It's like instant peace. It just feels like the world's right again. I think Dad said that... ..you know, it's like
his life was on pause and he's just unpaused it. One, two, three, smile. Cheese!

(CLICK!)

(BOTH LAUGH)

MIKE WILLESEE: An emotional reunion with his dad was also the fulfilment of a promise Henry made during his darker days in prison.

HENRY KEOGH: Dad had said to me, "Promise me, son, "you won't do anything silly." And...I said, "OK, I'll make a deal with you. "You look after yourself, "you know, you go and see the doctor, you stay well, "and you be there when I get out, "and I'll keep my side of the bargain." And, um... ..as luck would have it, I walked out on bail two days before his 85th birthday, which was the best present he could have had.

MIKE WILLESEE: Henry had already served three-quarters of his life sentence, but we can reveal powerful and compelling evidence that could have freed him 10 years earlier. In 2004, an independent review of Henry's case by a government-appointed medical expert, Professor Barrie Vernon-Roberts, found there was no evidence
Anna-Jane had been murdered.

GRAHAM ARCHER: Vernon-Roberts said, "There is no forensic evidence here for murder, "and it's most likely that she either had "a cardiac arrest,
some sort of cardiac event, "or a faint, slipped and fell "and hit her head and drowned under the water." He was the Crown's chosen expert
telling the solicitor-general that this almost certainly wasn't a murder and there was no evidence for foul play.

MIKE WILLESEE: That report, which also recommended testing the age of the bruises, sat on a government shelf for 10 years.

HENRY KEOGH: The report should have been sufficient grounds to have referred my petition back to the court. All I wanted was a day back in court to establish the truth. Because trials are about truth. It's not a contest.

(LAUGHTER, CONVERSATION)

MAN: To family and to Henry. Alright. Cheers.

ALL: Cheers!

MIKE WILLESEE: While Henry savours the taste of freedom, there will always be an unanswered question.

HENRY KEOGH: Four expert pathologists, two of which had been engaged by the Crown, all agreed that Anna's death was not the result of a homicide. 'Cause the autopsy was so deficient and so defective, we will never know what that might have been, and... ..that has to be... ..one of the biggest tragedies of this whole case, you know? We will never know exactly why Anna died.

FAYE HAMBOUR: I'm not quick to judge, but I did judge.

MIKE WILLESEE: And you believed he was a murderer?

FAYE HAMBOUR: Yes.

MIKE WILLESEE: And you married him?

FAYE HAMBOUR: Yeah.

HENRY KEOGH: I can't believe there was a storm here only a few days ago. I came out of jail with a bag of 20-year-old clothes, a CD and a HECS debt, um... ..so I had a bit of catching up to do. I've never considered myself a victim. And I didn't want to bang on about 'poor me'. That just gets totally boring and doesn't serve anybody.

FAYE HAMBOUR: Mmm. This is tasty.

HENRY KEOGH: Sometime we should bring Jeremy and Abby down here. They'd love it.

FAYE HAMBOUR: They would.

MIKE WILLESEE: Today, one of Henry's biggest advocates is his new partner, Faye. But that wasn't always the case.

FAYE HAMBOUR: I pegged him as guilty. I'm not quick to judge, but I did judge.

MIKE WILLESEE: And you believed he was a murderer?

FAYE HAMBOUR: Yes.

MIKE WILLESEE: And you married him?

FAYE HAMBOUR: Yeah.

Big turnaround, huh?

REPORTER: 39-year-old Henry Keogh stood motionless in the dock...

MIKE WILLESEE: Faye, like many of her contemporaries in 1995, believed Henry wa guilty as charged. He drowned his fiancee...

FAYE HAMBOUR: There was a lot of, I guess, circumstantial things that went towards suggesting his guilt. And I took those on board, as did many people, about, you know, the insurance policies, women in his life, and the fact that the grip mark constituted the mode of murder. Again, there was a lot of evidence that was being presented that supposedly supported it.

MIKE WILLESEE: Then in 2009, a friend invited her to a talk by law expert Dr Bob Moles.

FAYE HAMBOUR: When I heard that Henry's case was given top billing, I actually did not want to go, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I did not want my thoughts rattled. I didn't want to even be challenged by what I'd held as to being the truth.

MIKE WILLESEE: Faye did go to the lecture, and as a result, read more about Henry's case and began visiting him in prison.

FAYE HAMBOUR: Slowly, but very surely, I started to believe in Henry's innocence.

HENRY KEOGH: I think we knew each other for something like five or six years, um...became good friends and... ..then I guess something just clicked.

FAYE HAMBOUR: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Heart m... I don't know what happened.

MIKE WILLESEE: You just knew?

FAYE HAMBOUR: Yeah. We seriously picked a beautiful day.

MIKE WILLESEE: But it's not been an easy road. Henry still has plenty of healing to do.

HENRY KEOGH: I still find it difficult to show joy or excitement, um.....hope, anticipation. Um...and that confuses
and disappoints people sometimes.

MIKE WILLESEE: Your wife?

HENRY KEOGH: Yeah. Yeah. That's something else they've taken off me. And... (CLEARS THROAT)

MIKE WILLESEE: Will it come back? I'm working on it. I'm hoping. But, um, you know, it's a work in progress.

MIKE WILLESEE: It would be nice to be joyful of love.

HENRY KEOGH: Oh! You know, I've said that so many times. Um, I'm almost sick of hearing myself say it. Um... ..and it's something I envy...
when I see it. Because I feel.....all the poorer for it. And... And it diminishes
the joy that I could have and the relationships that I'm trying to re-engender.

MIKE WILLESEE: Faye is helping Henry put the joy back into his life. Their future together was formally recognised in April, when they married in an intimate ceremony.

FAYE HAMBOUR: I love him and he's my husband, but just as a human being, I feel he utterly deserves all the support he can get, given what he's had to bear.

MIKE WILLESEE: So, you're free. You don't have an acquittal.

HENRY KEOGH: No.

WIKE WILLESEE: How important is that to you? And can you fight for it?

HENRY KEOGH: Initially, it was really important to me. Um...not so much now, because at the end of the day, I'm free, I have my freedom, I've got my liberty, I've got what's left of my life back. Why would I want to spend more time in court.....with the few years I've got left? For something that's not going to make that big a difference to me, to my life?

ELISE LARCOMBE: It doesn't really matter to me if people think he's guilty or not. This isn't even about clearing his name. It's...it's about the bigger story, about the system that needs to change.

HENRY KEOGH: Something's got to be done to make sure I'm one of the last. I don't know what that is, but it's got to happen, Mike. It's got to happen.

MELISSA DOYLE: Henry has been advised that to get a full acquittal, he'd need to appeal to the High Court, something he doesn't have the time or money to do. Investigative journalist Graham Archer campaigned for more than 10 years to have Henry's case reviewed. We'd like to thank him for his assistance with this story. On the Sunday Night Facebook page and website, we have more on the case.