Shortcut: Going to Jail for a Crime You Didn't Commit

**Meshel Laurie** (0:00)
The following podcast contains accounts of child sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie. Award-winning journalist and author Neil Mercer joins us to discuss the nine wrongful convictions explored in his book, Falsely Convicted. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created. The Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.
The thing about your book is very timely for me because I just realized recently that I do take our legal system seriously and I have a lot of faith in it. I do think that if someone's convicted, they're probably guilty. But so it's really timely for me to read your book and to realize, okay, not quite as foolproof as perhaps I was thinking. Because you've got nine stories here. Is there one that sticks with you? Is there one that you became really shocked by, passionate about? Is there one that you tell your friends when you go, this is my new book? Here's an example.

**Neil Mercer** (1:10)
One that astounded me was the case of Henry Keough in South Australia. Henry Keough did 20 years for murdering his girlfriend. The allegation was that she was in the bath and he drowned her. It rested very, very heavily on expert evidence from the state's chief pathologist. It turns out that the state's chief pathologist who was presented as this absolute expert, the person with the most expertise of any of the experts that came before the court was not an expert at all. It turned out in fact that he was probably, well, not probably, he's been called a charlatan. He was not qualified to do the pathology work that he said led him to this conclusion. I don't know how there has not been a royal commission into this, not just the Henry Keough matter. There are other cases in which he was involved and probably the most tragic. What's interesting is this case, there was an inquest into the deaths of three babies, three toddlers, quite separate deaths. It runs roughly at the same time as Henry Keough's trial for the murder of his girlfriend in the bath.
In the inquest into the deaths of these infants, the three of them, it's really sad. But Colin Manick says they've died of bronchial pneumonia. Sort of a lung infection, I think, but there's no suspicious circumstances. The homicide cops are going, this is bullshit, and the other hospital doctors who have examined these children, go, one of these children had a fractured spine, another had fractured ribs. There is bruising all over the body. The inquest eventually finds that Dr. Colin Manick not only got it terribly wrong, he probably, he did stop the homicide detectives from charging people with murder. So we've got this inquest in Adelaide running into the deaths of the three infants, and we've got the trial of Henry Keough running. Over here, they're saying Dr. Manick's incompetent, and absolutely doesn't know what he's talking about. In the trial of Henry Keough, he's being presented as the preeminent expert in South Australia. I mean, it's mind boggling. I've got to tell you, it sounds crazy.
I find it difficult to get my head around. Dr. Colin Manick, eventually, a number of other experts, the evidence against him became overwhelming, and he in fact withdrew some of his own evidence that he'd given at the trial.
Henry Keough was accused of killing his fiance by drowning her in the bath, and Dr. Manick had this theory, which seems to have dated back to Britain in about 1912, 1914, when there was a famous case apparently called The Brides in the Bath, and a man had been married or about to be married, and three of his fiancees or wives had been found drowned in the bath, and he'd profited. So Dr. Manick thinks he's got his own, and it was a famous case, and I think Dr. Manick thought he had his own bride in the bath case. He says, Henry Keogh comes home, finds his fiance in the bath, he puts his hand under her legs while she's in the bath, lifts up the legs by gripping, gripping one of the legs and thus holding her head underwater. In time, other experts just go, this is just not right.
Manick says, the bruises from the grip mark. He demonstrates this in court. They bring a bath into the court, so the jury can see him demonstrate the grip mark. He says, the bruises are no more than four hours old.
I mean, that's pretty conclusive. It turns out he later disavows that and says, I might have got that wrong. The thumb bruise might not have been a thumb bruise. Other experts are called in and go, well, we've done further testing. The bruises are not four hours old. They could have been weeks old. They could have been inflicted by tripping over at the pub or on the bus or-