Blood On The Tracks 06 | Revelation

This is an ABC podcast.

If you're an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person, we want you to know that this series contains the name of someone who has died.

Tamworth's become my second home during this investigation.

I've been spending more and more time in the town as more and more people come forward with crucial leads.

And as I get closer to the truth, I'm finding I'm not the only one who's hot on the trail.

I'm starting to hear that police have been speaking to the same people, going to the same places, sometimes just a day before or a day after me.

He's coming to the house to talk in a few days.

Ask him pretty much the same stuff, what you just asked.

He was looking around the house, saw the family photo.

and he said, is that Terry?

I've spoken to some detectives, told them about the conversation we'd we'd have with

and the fact that we'd ran Crime Stoppers.

I'm Alan Clark and this is Unravel.

Our season one story is Blood on the Tracks, an investigation into the death of Aboriginal teen Mark Haynes.

We're almost at the end of the season and if you haven't listened from episode one, this will spoil everything for you.

So you should go back to the start.

In this episode, Mark Haynes' case finally starts to give up some of its secrets.

We find out about a water hole on the outskirts of town where important evidence could be hiding in the depths, and an alleged confession turns the case upside down.

She said, Look, I've had to come around and see you guys.

I've told me something, and it's really concerned me, and I need to tell you.

We've decided to set up camp in Tamworth to track down the remaining people we haven't been able to speak with.

A couple of days after arriving, Susie Smith, our senior investigative producer, has got her hands on a phone number that could crack the case wide open.

Okay, I'm just

dialing 061.

Okay, here we go.

Remember in the last episode, we heard about how Terry Souter was seen standing over Mark's body on the tracks and the young boy, the relative, who witnessed that scene.

Well, we found out who that person is.

Hey, is this Mick Souter?

Oh, Mick, it's Susie Smith.

Is this a good time or?

Turns out this important witness is Faye Souter's other son, Mick.

That's why Faye was so protective of his identity.

Listen,

I work at the ABC with Alan Clark.

We're doing a story for the True Crime Unit and we came across your brother's name and we've got some unanswered questions and I know.

The morning Mark died, Faye's two sons, Terry and Mick Souter, went out to the tracks.

Mick saw Mark's body and he saw his brother Terry moving around the body.

If he agrees to meet us, he'll be the first eyewitness we've found who saw Mark's body out on the tracks that night.

I'm at the duck pond at Bicentennial Park.

I've got a black top on.

Okay,

alright.

Well, I'll just wait for you.

Okay, mate, I'll see you then.

Bye.

Mick's a bit reluctant, but he also sounds interested in what we're doing.

He agrees to meet us in a park in the center of town.

Mick's made a name for himself as a bush poet and he's pretty keen to read us some of his work.

Hello, my name's Mick Souter, also known as Mick the Poet.

He's got a thick wiry beard and he's wearing a pretty beaten up Acubra hat.

We wrote a poem a few years back called Brother's Love, which I wrote about my feelings towards my brother that I lost suddenly years ago through suicide, which my theory is life is to live it, not to take it.

As we heard last episode, Mick's older brother Terry took his own life six months after Mark was found dead.

A brother's love.

A brother's love is a thing young boys look up to.

Some things aren't right, but this is through and through.

When we touch on his brother, Mick thumbs through a dog-eared notebook of handwritten poetry and recites a verse.

It seems to be his way of coping, almost like a kind of meditation.

A brother's love will always be

till the Lord of calls and he has to flee.

Mick the bar.

Mick was 14 years old when Terry died and it's hard for him to talk about what he saw that night in the summer of 1988.

I have

worse haunts in my head, but

I've seen some pretty shit.

Mick says he has PTSD because of the things he's seen in his lifetime.

When I start asking specific questions, his answers aren't always clear, and sometimes he goes back to reciting poetry.

The years are young, and they will live, and stories of your precious life to them I will give.

The time had come and I have decided to stand upon a wall and tell some stories of our lives of the years have passed with poetry I call.

This back and forth in the park goes on for almost an hour.

I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever hear about what he saw that night.

But then he starts to open up.

Just remember seeing a boy lying on the tracks.

I just remember seeing a boy lying on the tracks.

So Mick confirms the story told to us by his mother Faye.

He says his brother woke him up and took him out to the tracks.

It was dark and Terry told him to wait a few meters back from the railway line.

Yeah, yeah,

he said, hey, wait here a minute.

What are you doing?

He said, just wait here a minute, I told you, I'll clout you under the ear.

Terry didn't want him to see what he was doing.

And then he went.

Did you have a peek at what?

I just remember sort of one and and

had a bit of a look, but

I couldn't have identified the person or anything.

It wouldn't have been possible.

I wasn't in that position, honest.

Mick believes that his brother went back out to the tracks to provide some kind of comfort to Mark.

I thought, and I still thought, to this day,

that Terry put his jacket under his head as comfort.

But police never found a jacket under under Mark's head at the crime scene.

Mick, could it have been a towel he put under his head?

Could have been.

It was something.

Because that's how I'm with my PTSD.

If I look back at a memory 30 years ago, sometimes it happens that way.

I can remember a thought, and then thoughts would be mixed.

I had big problems with it growing up.

Even though some of Mick's memories are cloudy, his family members say that that for decades the basics of his story haven't changed.

Terry wakes Mick, they go out to the tracks and Terry puts something under the head of a body.

Do you think maybe when he went, took you out to the tracks that he was going to check, whether Mark was alive?

I think his conscience would have played on because he did have a big heart.

So if he was a part of the wrongdoing,

he wouldn't have been able to walk away.

Mick says that after that night he and his brother never spoke about what happened out there

and six months later terry was gone where are you thou art brother why did you fly away or was it that got stuck in your head you couldn't bloody stay

A few hours after meeting with Mick, I get a call call from his mum, Faye.

She's been speaking to the police and she has a new revelation for us.

There was another car involved that night and she thinks it was Terry's.

And the description of what the police have told me about cars that are involved, I'm pretty sure that one car

is Terry's.

All this time, people have focused on the Tirana crash near Mark's body.

but now Faye says that her son's car was also there.

They had to get from out there, where Mark was, back into town.

And that's a long walk from out there.

And I do believe my son was the driver.

Was the driver of?

His car, but involved with

Mark's death.

We've just come to realise that Terry's car had disappeared just off the face of the earth.

We don't know what happened to it.

And here's the other huge thing.

Faye thinks she knows where Terry's missing car could be.

There's a water hole.

that's been brought to mind.

I'm not sure if it's got too much to do with Mark, but to do with my son's car.

And it was called Rocky Waterhole, out of Worrell.

And out there is where

Mark

passed away.

We find out that the water hole is just out of town.

It's on Aboriginal land and these days there's a locked gate at the entrance.

But I know who can get me a key.

It's Saturday morning and we've come here to meet Duck.

He has a mate that can get us close to Rocky Waterhole, which is where Faye believes her son's car was dumped, Terry's car.

That's significant because people believe Terry drove the second car that was with Mark that night.

and Faye can't remember seeing that car sort of after Mark died.

It just sort of vanished.

And now there's some new information that it was dumped at this place called Rocky Waterhole.

We drive out there with Duck and sure enough, it's right near where Mark died.

From the water hole you can actually see the spot on the train tracks where Mark's body was found.

Duck, tell us what this place is.

Well, this is called Rocky Water Hole.

This is where the rainbow serpent stuck his head above ground.

It's a significant gomery.

It is very, very significant.

And you say it's deep?

Yes, yes,

it's bottomless.

It's bottomless.

You can keep going down, down, down, and then you'll get so far down you think, hang on, am I going to come up from this?

Back in 88, was this more accessible?

Because we just had a bit of a drive to get here.

Back in the 70s and the 80s, we were able to access here straight from the road straight here.

I have been told way back there in the 80s

that this has been used for a dumping ground for stolen motor vehicles.

And that's common knowledge back then?

Yes it was very much common knowledge.

Everyone knew about it.

Most young people came out here and partied out this way.

Do you think Terry's car is in there?

Well it wouldn't surprise me.

We're not the only ones who've been visiting Rocky Waterhole.

We find out the police were out there just the day before.

It seems like we're on the same trail.

It feels like I'm finally getting somewhere.

We know Terry Souter was probably the driver of one of the cars and his brother saw him put something under Mark's head.

We know at least three people are likely to be involved, a driver for each car and Mark.

And remember, Mark couldn't drive.

But what we still don't know is what happened to him after he said goodbye to Tanya White at 3.30am.

Tanya, Mark's girlfriend, was the last known person to see him alive.

She might have a small, seemingly insignificant bit of information that could help me piece together this case.

Then again, she might not.

But either way, it's important I talk to her.

After a lot of hard work, Susie and I find out where she lives and we make contact.

But Tanya doesn't want to talk about Mark.

I feel like with all the movement that's happened in the last few months in Mark's case, I have no choice but to try as hard as I can to find out what she thinks about everything we've discovered.

It's something I'm not comfortable doing, but I'm hoping if Susie and I go and see her face to face, she might change her mind.

I'm heading out of Tamworth to a small town.

That's where Tanya lives.

She

was Mark's girlfriend, yet she's the one that really hasn't spoken about the case.

All of Mark's other friends have all been willing to come forward and speak because they all say that Mark's family needs closure.

I hope that I find her.

And I've been waiting five years to see her because her name is so attached to Mark's case.

We arrive in town and by sheer luck we spot Tanya straight away.

She's having a smoke next to her car on the main street.

I walk up to her and introduce myself, hoping she agrees to have a chat.

But our interaction is short and in some ways we're both shocked to see each other.

Hi, are you Tanya?

I am.

Hi, I'm Alan from the ABC.

Can I just ask you a few questions just about Mark Haynes?

As soon as Tanya realizes who I am and why I'm there, she jumps into her car.

I know this is the last chance I'm gonna have to put a question to her, but I'm desperate to know what her theory is.

How does she think Mark died?

I just want to ask a couple of questions, that's all.

What happened to Mark?

Yeah, you don't know.

What was

I don't know.

Just those three words and she's gone.

Since then, a lawyer sent us a letter on Tanya's behalf.

It said that she hopes Mark's family will get the answers they're looking for and that she is not capable of assisting us further.

The letter made it clear that she doesn't want to hear from me again.

We've heard nothing about whether the police are going to search Rocky Waterhole.

My leads for this case are quickly cooling off.

At this point, we're stuck.

So, producer Susie Smith and I go back to basics.

From the very start of my reporting, I've kept a list of people connected to this case, collecting names from police statements, inquest documents, and sources.

We've been trying to whittle this list down to just those who might have been there that night.

Susie and I go back to the list.

So we don't have many people left from that.

Most of them are dead.

Terry Souter's dead.

Most of them are dead.

I mean, we have a whole list of people we've been chasing and they're dead, either through overdose

or accident.

And

they weren't that old.

I mean, and I had a source tell me that Terry Souter was the last one left in town who was involved and he couldn't take it so he killed himself.

There's been so many moments like this.

Moments when it seems like I've turned over every last stone, spoken to everyone, chased down every lead, and all of them are dead ends.

But something new always comes along, eventually.

A new little bit of information, a phone call, and then the investigation is moving again.

As Susie and I are trying to work out what to do next, I get a call from Jason Wan, the guy everyone calls Wannie, Mark's best friend from school.

You might remember him from previous episodes.

We're both from Calder and grew up together and we used to call ourselves the Demeggie Vandals.

We weren't vandals but it was a cool thing to say.

I've spoken to Jason briefly before and now that he knows me a bit better he's happy to do a proper interview.

He's got something he wants to get off his chest.

We meet up at a hotel in Tamworth.

He seems to be in a more serious mood than the last time we spoke, more determined.

I think Mark's family have been through so much.

I mean, Mark's mum and dad are gone, his name's gone.

Duck's not getting any younger.

He's fought for 30 years for justice, and he deserves it.

He deserves for his nephew to rest in peace.

And that's why I'm speaking to you, Alan.

Jason tells me he's been holding on to something.

Something about Greg.

Greg was one of the friends out at Domino's nightclub hours before Mark was found dead.

Remember, we're beeping out Greg's real name.

That's when I see him

walking up and down outside Domino's and that's how I just yelled out, what are you doing?

And he said, ah, nah, nothing.

Jason starts telling me a story about Greg.

It's a story that will change the course of my entire investigation.

A girl came around to my house.

I remember her being,

I guess, highly concerned, not not distressed, but highly concerned.

This woman is someone that Jason trusts.

And she says Greg confessed something to her.

She said, look, I've had to come around and see you guys.

I've just

told me something, and it's really concerned me, and I need to tell you.

She said that had gotten drunk,

had become very emotional, and had told her that he was there the night that Mark was dead and that he'd placed Mark's body on the tracks.

Time seems to slow down as I realize the gravity of what Jason's saying.

The interview keeps going, but I'm having trouble focusing.

An alleged confession: this is a huge revelation.

Immediately, I know I have to find this woman,

and I have to find Greg

In the next episode of Unravel, the explosive final chapter of our season one story, Blood on the Tracks.

I just

met and saw

and she

said that

he got very drunk one night

and burst into tears and basically

described to her that he'd been there that night.

So I'll just ask you one last time.

Did you have anything to do with Mark's death?

If this story has raised concerns for you or someone you know, you can call Lifeline on 131114 from anywhere in Australia.

To follow the investigation, search for ABC True Crime.

You can contact us at unravel truecrime at abc.net.au.

Download the ABC Listen app or subscribe to Unravel wherever you get your podcasts.