True crime fan tries to solve 1989 murder by starting relationship with suspect

A woman told an Australian coroner that she tracked down two men previously accused over a 15-year-old's 1989 killing and got them talking, an account both men rejected in court. The woman, who had never met the teenager, gave evidence at the final public hearing of a long-running coronial inquest in Brisbane on July 22, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.Annette Mason was found dead in November 1989 at a house she shared with friends in Toowoomba, in the Australian state of Queensland. She had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head, inflicted with a piece of timber recovered from the laundry, Australian Associated Press reported.The Toowoomba Chronicle dated the discovery to Nov. 19, 1989, at an address on Anzac Avenue. 36 years on, no one has been charged.An inquest held in the years after the killing ended without a conclusion, according to the ABC, because there was not enough evidence for the coroner to determine who was likely responsible.The case was reopened in 2018 after pressure from Mason's family. Hearings ran intermittently until 2022, then stalled through a long adjournment.The woman, whose identity is suppressed, told the court her involvement began in 2018, when she spoke with Robert Speedy, one of two men previously accused of involvement in the death.Speedy implied another man was responsible, she testified, and said that man had used a stool to get through a window of Mason's house on the night she died. She said Speedy also told her the man had asked whether fingerprints could be lifted from a piece of wood.Several years later she approached the man Speedy had pointed to, whose identity is also suppressed. What began as a friendship turned into a relationship, she told the court, and the two ended up living together, AAP reported.She testified he told her he had been at Mason's house the night she died, and named two other men as having some involvement.He also said Mason had been beaten before she reached the house and that a police officer had killed her, the woman said, telling her that was why the evidence went missing.Under cross-examination she accepted the man had never said he was involved in the death himself.She nonetheless told the inquest his remarks had convinced her, according to AAP: "Clearly he had killed Annette Mason."She agreed she had followed the case closely despite never having met Mason, listening to podcasts and reading extensively since the inquest reopened in 2018.Asked whether she had set out to solve the murder herself, she said she had. "I just took it into my own hands," she said. She called it "very reckless" and acknowledged the risk, but said she was proud of what she had done.She did not go to police after the 2018 conversation with Speedy. She could not tell whether he was making it up, she told the court, and doubted she would be believed. Speedy never explained how he knew any of it, she said.Both men were recalled and questioned about her evidence. They rejected it and said they had nothing to do with Mason's death, the ABC reported.Public hearings have now closed. The parties have six months to lodge written submissions with Queensland State Coroner Terry Ryan, who will deliver findings later.Under the state's Coroners Act a coroner cannot find that any person is guilty of an offense. The Coroners Court of Queensland says a coroner who reasonably suspects a crime may refer the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions.