CHANCE MEETING' SAVED MANNIX: MP
21.03.1986



By: KOCH A Source: QNP

"Chance meeting' saved Mannix: MP By TONY KOCH BARRY Mannix would have been charged with his father's murder except for a ""one-in-a-million'' meeting by his legal representative, the Opposition justice spokesman, Mr Goss, said yesterday.
Mr Goss said this after the Police Complaints Tribunal investigation into allegations by Mannix was tabled in Parliament yesterday by the Police Minister, Mr Gunn.
Mannix had alleged that confessions he made to the murder were given under duress from police officers.
The tribunal said no evidence supported the charges against the police concerned.
Mr Goss said police had told him that Mannix's legal representative, Mr Des Sturgess, had been told in another city that a man later convicted of involvement in the murder of Kevin Mannix had confessed to the crime.
This was more than four months after the ""confessions'' were taken from Barry Mannix while he was locked in Brisbane Jail.
After Mr Sturgess passed the information on, the man had been able to tell police where the car owned by the murder victim was hidden.
Mr Goss called for an immediate judicial inquiry into the false murder confession made by Barry Mannix.
The 207-page report includes 57 color photographs of the victim and people involved and associated crime scenes.
It does not contain one line of cross-examination of any police officer connected with the investigation or against whom allegations were made by Mannix.
The tribunal chairman, Judge Pratt, reported that no charge based on Barry Mannix's complaint could possibly succeed against any police officer.
""To these charges and allegations the police officers concerned have sworn they are not guilty,'' he wrote.
""Each has been examined at length during the course of our efforts to discover evidence which would tend to prove or disprove the elements of any offence.''
Judge Pratt said that a comparison between the proven events and the version provided by Barry Mannix showed Mannix's account to be inaccurate and untrue in important respects.
""We discovered that some of the detectives said by Barry Mannix to have been involved in unlawful behavior were not at the Broadbeach Police Station at the relevant times. One particular detective was not even on duty during that period,'' he said.
""A close analysis of the two untrue confessions provided by Barry Mannix shows that very little of the information therein contained came from the police. He relied in the main on information already known to him and his own imagination.''
Mr Goss said that the report was a total failure.
""They don't find that he has made up the testimony. What they say is that he made up _ he invented _ the answers that went into the confession,'' he said.
""They have failed to explain why this 18-year-old youth gave the confessions.
""That is an essential failing because, not only have they failed to provide the real reason for the confession, they have studiously avoided even speculating about it.
""How can we or the public compare the two stories and arrive at a judgment when the cross-examination of the police is kept secret? The tribunal has seen fit to include photographs of nude women, but has excluded any examination of the police officers concerned.''
The report, pictures: Page 14