In 1991, a small town in Australia was rocked by a crime that, at the time, seemed to have a clear resolution. However, as time went on, it became quite apparent that there was far more to the story than anyone really ever knew.
Vicki Arnold was a kind, quiet, hard working young woman. She had relocated from Cairns, Queensland, to the town of Atherton, and created her own sense of family and community there. At 28, she was a successful accountant with many friends who cared for her deeply.
One such friend was John Wilkinson, and his wife. They employed Vicki to help them with the accounting for their store, but they also all enjoyed spending time together after hours. Vicki was also known to babysit their children, who also seemed to adore her.
One strange day, Vicki and John were talking when Vicki asked him where she could purchase a .22 calibre rifle. Her boyfriend, who worked on a cattle station, wanted one, she explained. John found the kind of rifle Vicki was looking for, and bought it for her. In early July of 1991, he gave it to her, and she claimed that her boyfriend was ecstatic that such a gun had been found.
However, as far as anyone had known, Vicki hadn’t been dating anyone. No one even knew that this boyfriend existed.
On Thursday, July 25th, 1991, Vicki drove over to her friend’s home in order to spend time with her and her family.
A few years earlier, Vicki had met Julie-Anne Leahy and her partner, Alan, when they hired Vicki to help them with the books for their carpet laying business. When Alan and Julie-Anne married a year after the trio met, Vicki was standing next to Julie-Anne as a bridesmaid.
The evening of July 25th progressed normally, with Vicki helping with the kids, as Alan came home from work. At around 12:30 AM, Alan was watching a movie that didn’t particularly interest Vicki or Julie-Anne. As such, according to Alan, the two informed him that they were going to go out night fishing. Alan felt that this wasn’t unusual, so he thought nothing of it.
By the next morning, at around 6:50 AM, Alan was woken by his sister-in-law. She couldn’t find Julie-Anne anywhere, and she wondered if Alan had seen her. Alan noticed that Julie-Anne had left her drivers’ license and cigarettes behind, while Vicki had left behind her glasses, which she needed to use all the time for her vision. Looking out at the driveway, Alan saw that Julie-Anne’s 4-wheel-drive Nissan truck was gone, but Vicki’s car was still there.
The next logical place for Alan to check for the two women was Vicki’s apartment. When he arrived and knocked, his knocks went unanswered. He then asked Vicki’s neighbour, told him that she hadn’t heard any sound from Vicki’s place the night before.
Next, Alan tried to trace Julie-Anne and Vicki’s movements to the lake where they supposedly went fishing. When he found no sign of them, he drove around checking a few more places, but came up empty.
Following his search, Alan went home and updated his family on the situation. At the time, Vanessa, one of Julie-Anne’s sisters, was also living with the Leahy family. She, as well as his children were devasted.
Shortly after informing his family, Alan reported Vicki Arnold and his wife, Julie-Anne Leahy, as missing. Word spread very quickly through the small community of Atherton, and they quickly organized a search for the women.
For days, police, family, friends, and the community searched high and low for both women. But all of the search efforts amounted to nothing.
On August 9th, 1991, a group of teenage boys were birking through the woods and trails near Cherry Tree Creek, when they spotted something strange ahead.
Near the end of a dead-end track, they found a 4-wheel-drive Nissan truck. The truck was parked facing the highway, the doors were open, and the rear window was latched open. As the boys looked closer, they also saw the bodies of two women.
As the news of the disappearances of Julie-Anne Leahy and Vicki Arnold had been all over the community, the boys knew exactly what they had found. They ran for their bikes, and rushed to call the police.
Julie-Anne Leahy was found inn the driver’s seat of the truck. She had two bullet wounds in the side of her head, her throat showed signs of cuts, and the seatbelt of the truck had been wrapped around her throat. It also appeared that Julie-Anne’s head, hands, and arms had been viciously attacked with a blunt object, which was later identified as a rock.
Vicki had been found with her legs sticking out the truck, tucked into the passenger side footwell of the truck with a bloody knife, and a rock. She had been shot three times, once in the thigh, once under her chin, and once behind her ear. It also appeared as though a bullet had been fired from the back of the truck, going through the front passenger seat. About twenty metres from the truck, investigators found Vicki’s shoe.
The gun determined to have been used in the shootings was a cut-down .22 calibre rifle. The gun was also found to be jammed. Vicki Arnold was holding the gun.
By the time detectives arrived on the scene, night was falling, and rain had started to fall. Photos were taken, and the exterior of the vehicle was dusted for fingerprints, though none were found. As the floodlights were being turned on, more and more details of the scene came to light.
A babyseat was found in the backseat of the truck, while the back bed of the truck held two fishing rods, and a fully stocked tackle box. The keys to the truck were in the ignition, and covered in blood. The ignition was set to the “On” position, indicating that the engine had been running when the women were attacked. The truck’s headlights and heater were also found to be on.
After about an hour into the investigation, the local Atherton detectives had already come up with a theory, and decided to stick to it – despite words of dissent from investigators from a neighbouring city. They decided that Vicki Arnold had murdered Julie-Anne Leahy, and then killed herself.
The case was an undoubtedly a murder-suicide.
The Atherton authorities believed that as the two friends had been driving along, Vicki suddenly, and viciously, attacked Julie-Anne, causing her to veer off to where the truck eventually stopped. In the tussle, Vicki managed to accidentally shoot herself in the thigh.
Julie-Anne fought back, which angered Vicki. She then got out of the car, and walked up a hill to pick up a large rock, losing her shoe in the process. Once she had the rock, she continued to attack Julie-Anne in her head, and on her arms and hands. Then, she shot her twice in the head.
Then, Vicki turned the gun on herself.
This theory was supported by the fact that ammunition had been found in Vicki’s apartment during the course of the search for the two women. A while later, pieces of the cut-down rifle were found in Vicki’s carport at her apartment complex.
It was surmised that Vicki was a deeply saddened individual, and she’s killed her friend, Julie-Anne, in a fit of jealous rage over having the life that she’s always wanted.
Vicki’s friends and family refused to believe this version of events. They knew Vicki as someone who was kind and gentle. They knew, down to their cores, that Vicki would never have done what investigators said she’d done.
She’d made multiple plans with friends in the days after the deaths, and she was so slight, there was no way she had the physical strength to attack Julie-Anne so brutally. And above all – Alan had been mistaken. No one, but him, had known either woman to enjoy fishing, let alone go fishing at night.
While Vicki’s staunch supporters were pleading her case, Alan Leahy was shutting down.
He kept all of Julie-Anne’s family from seeing him, his children, or Vanessa. Soon after the deaths of Vicki and Julie-Anne, he moved across the country, truly cutting contact with Julie-Anne’s family. However, Vanessa stayed behind.
As the case was officially closed, there were many who didn’t buy this version of events for a second.
Detective Sargent Michael Hayes and Constable Willem Hendrikse immediately thought something about the crime scene was off. However, by the time they arrived, the local officers had already decided what this case was, and called it done. Hayes and Hendrikse disagreed – they firmly believed that another person was responsible for the murders.
Due to pressure from on high, Hayes and Hendrikse appeared to publicly support the murder-suicide theory, but in private they knew it wasn’t the truth. On their own, they began to conduct their own investigation.
They also disclosed that they had uncovered grosse negligence. They discovered that when Julie-Anne’s Nissan had been towed from the scene, it had been left in a carpark for several days, covered by nothing but a tarp. The condensation that accumulated under the tarp, and dripped onto the vehicle, potentially damaged any further evidence that could have been found.
A witness, who had known both Julie-Anne and Vicki, also came forward with a story. He stated that on the night of Thursday, July 25th, 1991, he saw Julie-Anne driving her Nissan while Vicki was in the passenger seat. The witness also said he saw a third person in the car. The person was a man, sitting in the backseat. It appeared to the witness that the man was leaning forward from the back into the front seats – using them for cover – and was sitting very, very still.
The witness stated that he’d seen this take plance between 9:00 PM and 10:30 PM, which negated Alan’s story of the women leaving around 12:30 AM or 12:45 AM.
Hayes and Hendrikse also took note that Vicki’s apartment and carport had been thoroughly searched through the course of the search for the two women. While the ammunition had been found, the pieces of the .22 calibre rifle had not. It wasn’t until they made inquiries about the gun that it magically appeared, and was called in.
It was also apparent that Vicki would not have had the knowledge, or the tools, to modify the rifle herself. Either she’d had help, or whomever she’d purchased the gun for had helped her.
As the case was closed, very little in the form of progress or movement was made. Until 1997.
In 1997, the case was re-examined by two high-ranking retired officers, Carl Mengler and Frank O’Gorman. Together, they heavily scrutinizd the case over the course of five months.
Through the course of their re-examination, they believed that it was not possible for Vicki’s wounds to her thigh, and under her chin to be self-inflicted. While going over the theory, both men donned gloves, and tried to position their hands in the approximate locations of the smudged, bloody fingerprints on the gun. They found that there was no natural way for a hand to make those marks in those positions, and believed that the prints were placed there in a sloppy attempt at staging.
They learned the most about the case through many interviews.
In an interview with Vanessa, they learned some very distressing details. Absolutely terrified, Vanessa described to the officers that while she had been living in the Leahy house, months prior to the death of her sister, Alan had been sexually abusing her. She detailed several incidents, and even spoke about how her other sister, Margaret, had lived with them as well before fleeing the home to move in with a boyfriend.
Julie-Anne had suspected that her husband had been paying unnatural attention to her young sisters, and she left him. However, a few weeks later, they reconciled, and she moved back in the home with her children, and her sister, Vanessa.
Furthermore, Vanessa explained to the investigators that on the night her sister went missing with Vicki, Alan came into her bedroom, claiming that it was around 1:00 AM, and proceeded to abuse her. Six years later, Vanessa was now of the opinion that Alan had abused her in order to establish an alibi. He had told her that if anyone asked, she’d gotten up during the night for a glass of water, and saw him in the home.
When Mengler and O’Gorman interviewed Alan, he admitted that he and Vanessa had a sexual relationship while she lived in the home, but he claimed it was consensual. He said it started spontaneously, after Julie-Anne had disappeared, and as Vanessa was 16 at the time, she was over the age of consent. He denied all allegations of assault and abuse.
Mengler and O’Gorman did not believe Alan Leahy for a single moment. They found him to be excessively manipulative and patronizing.
As they looked into Alan’s history, they found that he had a criminal record under a different name. In his youth, Alan had taken his stepfather’s family name. He then began getting into trouble, mostly breaking and entering. He was arrested several times, in one instance, even assaulting a police officer in an attempt to escape being led into a cell.
Ultimately, Alan spent two years in prison. In 1986, at the age of 23, he was paroled, and then he changed his name back to his birth name – Leahy. Not long after, Alan met Julie-Anne, and they began their relationship. However, Alan did maintain his criminal relationships, especially with the man who would become his best friend, who had been his cellmate in prison.
Mengler and O’Gorman also discovered that the Leahy’s were in severe amounts of death, and their carpet laying business was not doing well at all.
After Julie-Anne and Vicki had been found, Alan received a significant life-insurance payout. Feeling especially greedy, Alan also sued Vicki’s estate for more money, forcing her distraught mother to pay him out.
The more people Mengler and O’Gorman spoke to, the more new information came to light.
In an interview with a woman who had been Vicki’s neighbour in their apartment complex, they discovered that she’d seen something exceedingly unusual.
One night, while she was sleeping, she heard noise from her lounge. Springing up, she turned on the light, quietly approached the lounge, and then moved the curtain a little from the window to peek outside. The neighbour saw a man in dark clothes running away from her home. While she said she could not positively identify the man with 100% certainty, she believed that the man was Alan Leahy.
After that, the neighbour began receiving hangup phone calls, which scared her. She believed it was Alan trying to intimidate her into silence. It worked. The neighbour had been too afraid to tell the police anything during the initial investigation.
The day after the neighbour had seen this man running from her apartment, the pieces of the gun were found in Vicki’s carport. Further investigation found that the gun pieces had been found in a pillowcase. Inside the pillowcase was scribbled the name of Alan’s step-daughter, and the address where they lived when Julie-Anne and Vicki went missing.
Despite all of the new evidence, and all of the information that had been gathered, no further progress was made on the case for a few years.
In February of 2000, another coroner’s inquest was called based on the re-examination done by Mengler and O’Gorman. The corner did not consult any new evidence, or witness statements. In the end, the coroner found in favour of the murder-suicide theory.
Unsatisfied, a third inquest was called. This one went very, very differently.
A forensic psychologist, who’s area of expertise involved suicide, and suicidal ideation, was called to review the evidence. They found that there was nothing in Vicki’s profile or history that would indicate she harboured any suicidal thoughts or ideations. The expert further testified at the inquest that Vicki was, in fact, less likely than the majority of the population to be inclined to commit suicide.
The inquest heard evidence from several witnesses, including Vicki’s former neighbour, Vanessa, and other members of Julie-Anne and Vicki’s close friend and family circles.
Vanessa and Margaret both testified to the abuses they endured by living under the Leahy roof, though Alan negated them all when it was his turn on the stand. Through and through, Alan stuck to his story that the women had gone fishing, and he’d been home. He still appeared just as patronizing as before.
After considering all of the evidence, the coroner’s inquest posited a theory.
It was theorized that Alan had been confronted by Vicki and Julie-Anne in regards to his abuse towards Vanessa and Margaret. When he realized that he could spend a lot of time in prison if he was reported for child sexual abuse, Alan threatened the women, and then ordered them into Julie-Anne’s truck. From there, he ordered Julie-Anne to drive out to Cherry Tree Creek, placing Vicki in the front passenger seat, while he took cover in the back seat.
Once they’d arrived at Cherry Tree Creek, Alan attacked Vicki and Julie-Anne, and then staged the entire scene to make it appear as though it was a murder-suicide, with Vicki being the responsible party. To explain the gun that had been in Vicki’s possession, it was posited that Alan had manipulated her into buying it for him.
Once he’d accomplished his task, Alan either rode home on a bicycle, or went home on foot. Then, he went about ensuring that Vicki was framed for the the attack.
The coroner further stated that Vicki was not responsible for either her death, or the death of her friend, Julie-Anne. It was declared that Alan Leahy was the true murderer, and it was recommended that he stand trial.
The coroner then apologized for how botched the investigation had been up to this point.
Shortly after the inquest, a warrant for Alan’s arrest was issued. He turned himself into police, but was granted bail as he was determined to be a low flight risk. He immediately launched an appeal of the arrest warrant, and the court found in his favour.
It was ruled that the coroner had used an improper exercise of the law in committing Alan to trial. Ultimately, Alan Leahy was never formally charged for the double homicide of Julie-Anne Leahy and Vicki Arnold. No physical evidence was ever found that would definitively tie him to the crime.
As this was transpiring across Australian news media, 66-year-old Hazel was reading a book about the case, written by journalist Robert Reid. Hazel decided to email Robert, and tell him her story.
In 1991, Hazel and her husband, Bill, ran a general store in a town that neighboured Atherton. Early one morning in July, Hazel tended to two women who had come into the store. The women matched the descriptions of Julie-Anne Leahy and Vicki Arnold. However, they were not alone.
The women tried to make small talk, and purchased scratcher lottery tickets, while their male companion was extremely hostile. Bill had known the man, and called him by name, which made him even more irritable than before. The man then pushed the women out of the store as fast as he could, walking them to a 4-wheel-drive truck.
When Hazel later learned about the disappearance of Julie-Anne Leahy and Vicki Arnold, she grew more positive that they had been the women in her store. However, the man they had been with had not been Alan Leahy.
The man accompanying Julie-Anne and Vicki was named Chris Dunlea.
Dunlea had a notorious reputation, and was well known for being involved in large-scale cannabis cultivation. He was a cruel, and vicious man with a very violent streak. He had been long suspected of several drug-related murders though there was never enough evidence to formally charge him.
In 1994, Dunlea had been shot dead by associates of his, after he’d threatened their family.
Hazel and Bill had tried several times to report what they’d seen to police, but no one was willing to listen, or followup.
When Robert Reid received Hazel’s email, he was stunned. This was the second time someone had contacted him about Chris Dunlea.
In 1997, Robert received communication from one of the men who’d been convicted of Dunlea’s murder.
The man stated that he and his co-conspirator had been part of Dunlea’ group, and that they were terrified of him. Dunlea had threatened their families, and stated that one of them would be framed for the murders, just like he’d done to those two women in Atherton.
Dunlea had told them that the women had been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and so he’d killed them. Then he gloated that his “mates” had covered it up for him, calling if a murder-suicide.
When Chris Dunlea referred to his “mates”, he was referring to the police.
When Dunlea’s threat was taken seriously, it was decided that it was best to end him, before he ended them.
As Dunlea was dead, the man who contacted Robert had no fear of retaliation for telling his story.
At one point, it was also posited that Alan Leahy may have commissioned Dunlea to commit the murders. There exists no known evidence that the two men knew each other at all.
Some cases are very apparent, and very obviously, murder-suicide.
I am of the opinion that the disappearance, and subsequent deaths, of Julie-Anne Leahy and Vicki Arnold is not.
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Sources:
The Killing Of Julie-Anne Leahy And Vicki Arnold – P. Atkinson – Law – Protector to Prosecutor
Murder inquest hears love affair claims – Brad Ryan – abc.net.au
No charges for husband of FNQ woman murdered with friend in 1991 – Grace Uhr – Cairns Post
Australian True Crime podcast – A Convenient Murder Suicide: Who Killed Vicki Arnold and Julie-Anne Leahy? – #104
Casefile Podcast – Case 174 – Vicki Arnold & Julie-Anne Leahy