Criminology - The Murder of Anita Cobby

Episode Date: September 13, 2020

In February 1986, 26-year-old Anita Cobby was savagely brutalized and murdered by five men. This is a notorious and well-known case in Australia and sparked outrage among its citizens.  Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the life and murder of Anita Cobby. Anita was a beauty pageant winner who chose a life of helping others as a nurse over a modeling career. She was well-loved by all that knew her and had an incredible family unit. The horror that she endured at the hands of five men caused citizens to call for their execution. People were shocked by the details of the crime when they emerged. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 126 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morph, what is going on with you? I am battling all kinds of little bits of turmoil here. I just had a minor fire in the kitchen that we scrambled to put out. But luckily, everyone's safe. And it was just a minor thing. thing and we move on and I'm still recording.

Sorry, I don't mean to laugh because it's not funny, but you know, you said, hey, I might be a little late to our recording session. And I say, why? Because you said, and then you said, because we had a small fire. And then, you know, when we get on, we start talking about it, something falls off, accidentally turns a stove on. That's like, uh, it's like one of those commercials, the insurance commercials. Yeah, we did.

We covered that. We handled that. Yeah. If it's 20, 20, it doesn't surprise me. That's the thing, man. I mean, nothing shocks right now because it just seems to be one thing after another. Now, on the good side, we continue to see some amazing support on Patreon. So let's give some Patreon shoutouts.

We had Katie Dupéry, Kerr, Tegla Aionette, Laura Cochran jumped out at our highest level. We had Andrea Mueller and Michelle Pierce. So that's a lot of great support. we really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you all so much for that support. It goes a long way. And if anyone else would like to help support the show, they can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology and signing up.

And don't forget about Stitcher Premium. They have a free 30-day trial and you can find all of the criminology episodes older than six months. Give it a try. All right, Morf, let's get into this episode. We have a very sad case for everyone. that thankfully was eventually solved. It's a notorious and well-known case in Australian history. We're talking about the case of Anita Cobby. In February 1986, 26-year-old Anita Cobby was abducted and

savagely raped by five young men who subjected her to two hours of sexual degradation and extreme brutality before cutting her throat. The unspeakable crime sparked massive outrage across the country and the public demanded the men's executions. 34 years later, Anita's spirit lives on and the horror she endured has not been forgotten. Anita Lorraine Cobby was born in Sydney, Australia, on November 2nd, 1959 to Gary and Grace Lynch. She has one sister, Catherine, who was five years younger than Anita. She often took on a motherly type role with her sister. They were extremely close and considered each other best friends. Catherine has said that Anita was her role model. Anita's friend said that she was beautiful inside and out, and she had a smile that lit up a room when she

walked into it. During her youth, Anita participated in several beauty pageants. In 1979, she won the Miss Western Suburbs Beauty Pageant and earned a spot in the Miss Australia pageant. Anita had a promising career as a model, but instead decided to become a registered nurse like her mother. It was a move that surprised her family. While attending nursing school, Anita met fellow student John Cobby, who was immediately drawn to her beauty, but felt as though she was out of his league. But one day he gathered up the courage and struck up a conversation with her. From that point on. The two were head over heels in love and John asked Anita to marry him. It wasn't long before Anita became pregnant and the couple was ecstatic. But Anita suffered a miscarriage shortly after

learning that she was pregnant. Devastated over the loss of the pregnancy, the young couple tried to move forward. On March 27, 1982, John and Anita married wedding pictures of their beautiful show two people incredibly happy and in love on the cusp of a promising future. The Cobby is quickly settled in the married life. John earned extra money training horses. And one day, he earned close to $10,000 on horse races. The two decided to travel abroad and ventured through the United States and Europe. Rome was Anita's favorite city, and she was excited to visit.

After their travels, John wanted to return to Australia to settle down and start a family. family. But Anita wasn't so eager to return to her normal life. After talking, John and Anita decided to separate. And Anita moved back in with her parents in the western Sydney suburb town of Blacktown. It made sense to them. On Sunday, February 2nd, 1986, Anita left home at 5 a.m. to catch a train to Sydney to work her 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift is Sydney Hospital. Sometime during the day, John called and asked if she wanted to see him after work, but she told him she had dinner plans with co-workers. After she finished her shift, Anita and two fellow nurses had dinner at a Sydney restaurant. At 8.45 p.m., one of the women dropped Anita off at Central Railway Station, where she boarded

the train to Blacktown. She arrived at Blacktown Railway Station about an hour later. Now, normally Anita would call her father Gary to come pick her up, but the pay phones at the station were out of order and there were no taxis available. So Anita decided to walk home. The walk should have taken her around 30 minutes, but sadly, she would never make it home. At about 10 p.m., Anita was walking toward home on Newton Road when a gang of five men driving a stolen white H.T. Holden Kingswood pulled up beside her. Two men got out and grabbed Anita, pulling her kicking and screaming into the car. A 16-year-old boy who lived across the street heard her screams and ran out of his house.

He could tell the screams were coming from the vehicle and that a struggle was taking place inside. He ran over to help, but the car took off, so the boy yelled for his mom to call the police. But this young boy wasn't the only one that had heard the commotion outside. The boy's next door neighbor also heard the screams and came out. of his house. Together the boy and his neighbor got into the neighbor's car and chased after the vehicle that had raced off. When the pair lost sight of the car, they continued driving around searching for it. They spotted an empty holden that was very similar to the car they had seen. It was parked near a paddock on Rine Road, which is now Peter Brock Drive in prospect. A paddock is a fenced-in area in which

horses are kept to allow them to move around. But for some reason, when this pair saw the Holden, they didn't think it was the same car they had chased. They also didn't see any people near the car. It turns out that the car actually was the one they had been chasing. What the two didn't realize at the time was that the abductors were hiding with Anita and some tall grass nearby. They waited until their pursuers gave up and drove off before coming out of hiding with Anita. By this time, Anita was half naked because as soon as the men had pulled her into the vehicle, they forced her to remove her clothes. She tried refusing saying she was married and also menstruating. After Anita didn't comply, her attackers repeatedly punched her in the face,

breaking her nose and both cheekbones. They forcibly removed her clothes, and then some of the men raped her and forced her to perform oral sex. The men dragged Anita out of the car and threw a barbed wire fence. Once the men arrived at the paddock, they dragged Anita out of the car and threw a barbed wire fence. Then all five men raped and tortured Anita for two hours. Once the violence had concluded, one of her attackers became concerned that Anita could identify them because she had seen their faces and knew their first names. He then walked up to the badly injured.

Anita and slit her throat, nearly decapitating her. After the brutal attack was over, the group of men drove to a petrol station and paid for gas using Anita's money. When Anita Cobby didn't arrive home on the night of February 2nd, 1986, her parents thought she had stayed the night with one of her friends. At 1 p.m. on Monday, February 3rd, Sydney Hospital called the Lynch home, wondering why Anita had not shown up for her shift. That's when Anita's parents became worried. Grace then reported her daughter missing to the Blacktown police. John Cobby was having dinner with his father and a friend at a restaurant when he got word

his wife was missing. Anita's loved one said it was entirely out of character for her not to be in touch with someone. They instantly knew something terrible had happened to her. But even their worst nightmares could not have prepared them for the real horror she had suffered the night she disappeared. On Tuesday, February 4th, two days after Nita Khabi was last seen, a farmer named John Rien, noticed his cattle standing around an object in his paddock near Rene Road, a deaden street just north of Prospect Reservoir. Rene told the press in 1986, the cattle kept gathering around the point, and I knew something had to be wrong.

When Raine went to investigate, he found the body of the young woman. He initially thought it was a doll. Rene raced back to his house and called the police. Rene reported to police that he heard screams on the night of February 2nd, but thought it was some teenagers partying and goofing off along Rine Road. John described that area to the media, saying it's a lover's lane, and it's also used by people with drugs. Before this, a couple of girls had been raped.

on some nights, I have counted up the 16 cars there. When police arrived at the scene, they found the bloody, beaten, and battered body of a young woman lying face down in the paddock. Her left arm was beneath her body and her right arm under her head. Her eyes were still open. She had no clothes on and there was no identification at the scene. Investigators knew by the brutality at the scene that the victim killer or killers were very dangerous and extremely sadistic. The young woman had numerous lacerations on her body and had suffered a terrible wound to the throat. Police theorized that an axe or a shovel was used in the attack.

As they surveyed the crime scene, detectives noticed the woman wore a unique ring on her finger, and they thought this might be the only way to identify her. Knowing that 26-year-old Anita Cobby had been reported missing, Detective Ian Kennedy slipped the ring off the victim's finger, put it in a plastic bag, and took it to the lynch home to see if the family recognized the ring. They did. It was Anita's distinctive Russian-style wedding ring.

Anita's parents and her husband were left to deal with the shocking news that Anita was dead. Meanwhile, the work for investigators was just getting started. A day-long search by almost a hundred, police officers failed to provide any clues to her murder. They spent the day combing fields around Rine Road where Anita's body was found. They had hoped to find the murder weapon, but they didn't find it. Anita's clothes, which included pink and white striped pants, a white top with three buttons,

a wide black leather belt, brown moccas and shoes, and a large black corduroy bag that contained her nurse's uniform and Purse were still missing. Investigators had to consider all options, and as difficult as it was, they had to consider Anita's estranged husband John Cobby in her murder. They questioned him just like they would any suspect and went at him hard. While being interrogated, John confessed under duress to hurting his wife, but later said that at that moment he confessed he wanted to die from the grief and felt pressure from the police that he had killed his beloved wife.

But after the autopsy, investigators realized that more than one person had to be involved in the vicious attack on the beauty queen and ruled John Cobby out as a suspect. On February 6th, two days after Anita's body was found, the new South Wales government offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to Anita Cobby's killer. And later on, it would be doubled to $100,000. The same day the reward was offered, morning radio host John Laws obtained a leaked copy of Anita's autopsy report and read it live on air, which shocked many listeners. In a 2016 documentary produced by Seven News called Channel 7 Investigates Anita Kabi, you thought you knew it all, Laws said he read the report because the general public ought to know. and that it incited anger in the public that murders like this were happening and we weren't being given the full details. In addition to shocking listeners, the reading of Anita's autopsy on air did not sit well with the police. The report stated that not only was Anita brutally punched and

savagely raped, but one of Anita's attackers had repeatedly kicked her in the face after she had already been hit numerous times. In the process of defending herself, Anita broke two fingers on her right hand, and three other fingers were nearly severed from the axe or weapon used for cutting her throat. Her hands were full of lacerations, and she had severe cuts on her body from being dragged through the barbed wire fence at the paddock. It was one of the most brutal and horrific murders in Australian history. The public was outraged that this amazing person who helped others for a living had suffered such brutality and evil at the end of her life. Just a few days after Anita's body was found, investigators decided to reenact her movements on the night of her murder.

Police Constable Debbie Wallace dressed similarly to what Anita was wearing that night and rode the 9-12 p.m. train from Central Railway Station to Blacktown. Wallace walked the train's length and detectives interviewed the passengers showing them pictures of Anita. They had hoped this would jog the memories of regular train passengers. A few days later, investigators searched for a woman who was reportedly forced into a car by a group of use. Just 10 minutes before Anita Kabi arrived at Blacktown Station on the night she was murdered. They speculated that these two incidents were related. This report was related to the incident in which the 16-year-old boy, and his neighbor chased after a car.

For some reason, police thought that that case and Anita's case were two different attacks. The reason for the confusion was that police initially thought that Anita had taken the 9-12 train, when in fact she had taken one that left a few minutes earlier at around 8.50. Then they put two and two together and realized that the woman forced into the car, which was chased by the boy and his neighbor, was indeed Anita Cobby. and that Anita's was the only attack that night. Police worked closely with the teenager and the neighbor to get as detailed a description of the car

that they had chased as they could. They said it was a light-colored early model, Holden Sedan, having patchy paintwork, and it was in poor condition. The teenager was later hypnotized, and amazingly, he remembered the vehicle's license plates. Investigators traced the plates and discovered the car had been stolen.

They received a little. tip from an informant that led them to three brothers, 33-year-old Michael Patrick Murphy, 28-year-old Gary Stephen Murphy, and 23-year-old Leslie Joseph Murphy. Investigators learned the men were associated with 18-year-old John Raymond Travers and his sidekick Michael James Murdoch, who was also 18 years old. Additionally, investigators learned that all five of these individuals, may have participated in the abduction, rape, and murder of Anita copy. Authorities arrested Travers and Murdoch at a relative's home and Leslie Murphy at Travers' home.

The police charged Murdoch with car theft, and he was released on bail while investigators detained Travers for questioning. A witness known in the media only as Miss X became a crucial figure in the case. She donned a microphone and tape recorder and brought cigarettes to Travers, She spoke with him in his jail cell while being wired. He confessed to being involved in the attack on Anita. Later, at 1115 on the same night, Miss X met Detective Kennedy at Granville Railway Station, and he asked her to go to Michael Murdoch's home on Booth Street,

wearing the same hidden microphone once again. She told Murdoch that she had spoken to Travers and knew what all of them had done to Anita Coby. And like Travers had done earlier that night, Murdoch too confessed. and he was recorded doing so. Less than an hour later, just a little bit after midnight, police took Murdoch in for questioning. He denied harming Anita Cobby and pointed the finger at John Travers as the one who cut her throat.

Murdoch took police to a bus stop on Newton Road where he said the five men had abducted Anita. Detective Kennedy asked him if he had helped pull her into the car and he said yes. He denied raping her in the car or at the paddard. A search for Michael and Gary Murphy began shortly after Murdoch was questioned. Just before 9 a.m. on February 24th, the screaming crowd of more than 200 enraged citizens gathered at Blacktown Court. Construction workers across the street dropped a noose from the rooftop to show what they thought should happen to the men. When Murdoch, Travers, and Leslie Murphy finally appeared in court just before noon, the three men had to be protected from the residence by a group of 10 policemen.

These three men were officially charged with murdering, raping, abducting, assaulting, and robbing Anita Cobby. John Travers was also charged separately with two counts of assaulting another woman at Toon Gaby on June 8, 1986. While three men were in custody for Anita's brutal murder, Michael and Gary Murphy remained on the run. Their pictures were broadcast on TV and on the front page of newspapers. The immediate tension worked, and a man called police saying that two men, matching the fugitive's description, were hiding out in a two-story townhouse, at Terry Way, Glenfield, roughly 33 kilometers south of where Anita Cobby was abducted.

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor,

moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch.

Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. On February 26th, Detective Ian Kennedy and another detective caught the fugitive Murphy brothers, Michael and Gary, Michael was watching TV when police barged in and was caught quickly. Gary attempted to flee, but ran into a wall and was tackled to the ground by Kennedy scratching Gary's face. Shortly after, the media took a picture of Gary in his wet jeans. The man had peed himself when the detectives arrested him. The arrest resulted from an immense police operation, involving around 50 or more police officers, including members of the tactical response group, the dog squad, and the police air wing. After their arrest, detectives began

looking closely at the men's backgrounds. The Murphy brothers held from a big family. They were three of nine siblings and lived in the Blacktown area. The Murphy family was known to the local police. Michael and Gary were unemployed, while Leslie worked as a maintenance worker. All three brothers had terrible tempers and were very short in stature. Leslie was the shortest standing around five feet tall, and he had the worst temper of all of them. Gary Murphy was hard of hearing and a convicted car thief. Gary and Michael had met John Travers while drinking and smoking marijuana at hotels around Doomside. Travers was in and out of the children's court while growing up and sent to a juvenile detention facility.

He was also expelled from high school. Travers had once boasted of having sex with a goat before slitting its throat. He sported a tear-drop tattoo under his left eye. Michael Murdoch was an unemployed teenager who idolized Travers. So we have quite a crew here, Morve. You've got a guy who idolizes another guy who boasts of having sex with a goat. Okay. I don't get that at all why anyone would do that, let alone go around boasting about doing something

so disgusting. And then you as the person who idolizes them, what does that say about you? Yeah, I think it shows the level of depravity that this group of men had between them and how dangerous that might make them. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, to me, it says there's no line that I'm willing to cross. If I'm willing to do this, I'm, I'm pretty much willing to do anything. I have no boundaries whatsoever. I think in all the cases we've talked about when we talk about people that are this over the top, those are some of the most dangerous people that there are out there. Yeah, again, you know, I just think it's because they either don't care about anything. They have no boundaries. There's, there's nothing that inhibits them.

any way. To me, those are either really fun-loving people or they're extremely dangerous. It can go a couple of different ways. In this situation, I think it makes these guys extremely dangerous. And it's like psychology 101, people that hurt animals are capable of hurting animals sometimes go on to be capable of hurting people too. Yeah, we see that a lot in killers, especially serial killers, right? They often have in their background when they were younger a history of torturing animals. It's a bad sign. Anyone that is capable of torturing an animal, that's a very bad sign.

When investigators questioned Michael Murphy, he allegedly told them, it's okay, I'll tell you everything. It's better to tell you the right story than have them believe what's been on TV. According to Murphy's statement, the five men had been drinking at a dune side hotel when they decided to go to Windsor. He said, we was driving around and saw the bird walking along the street and decided to grab her. The men had then driven to a gas station before driving to the paddock on Rine Road. Murphy continued to detail what had happened to Anita. When we got out of the car, we put her through the barbed wire fence and started fucking her.

And more if that's brutal language, it's not language that you and I normally use. But this is a quote. So to me, I feel like you have to say it in its entirety or you don't get the full measure. Murphy went on to say that Travers grabbed Anita's hair and threatened her. She seemed to do what he said after that. Travers told the other men that he would kill her because she heard their names and could identify them. Michael Murphy claimed he didn't want her to be killed. I said, no, leave her, but there was no way he was going to leave her. The four of us walked away and he come up to the car covered in

blood and said he cut her throat. When detectives asked why he didn't help Anita, Murphy replied, he's a fucking lunatic. I just wanted to piss off. Michael Murphy then rode with detectives to Rine Road to show them where they killed Anita Cabi. On February 27th, one day after the arrest of Michael and Gary Murphy, the two men arrived at Blacktown Court. As with the other three men, a crowd of angry citizens was waiting for them. The construction workers across the street once again lowered a news from a nearby rooftop. People held signs that read, Kill the animals now, or they will do it again, and jail them

for the rest of their natural lives. Others were shouting abuse at the Murphy brothers, such as kill the bastards or die you mongrels. A police sharpshooter was on a nearby roof out of fear that a sniper might kill the men. Armed tactical response group officers surrounded the building and neighboring offices. Another two dozen police officers closed off Kildare Road to control a mob of over 300 people. During court proceedings, Michael and Gary Murphy were charged with the murder, abduction, sexual assault, and robbery of Anita Coby. The robbery charges came after the five men used Anita's money at the petrol station after

abducting her. All five men planned to plead not guilty at the trial, but at the last minute, John Travers pleaded guilty to avoid a trial. The trial for the other four men started on March 24, 1987. The first nine witnesses gave evidence. Two of them were the nurses Anita had dined with on the night she was killed. Annette Bradshaw and Elaine Bray. They told the court what Anita Cobby was wearing that night.

Annette said she was the one who had driven Anita to Central Railway Station after dinner. Other witnesses consisted of the Newton Road residents who heard Anita screams and saw her abduction before trying to help her. and John Wreen, the one who found her body. Dr. Maloof, the medical examiner who performed Anita Cobby's autopsy, testified that Anita had been sexually assaulted, anally, vaginally, and orally. He found multiple bruising on her head and body, inflicted before death.

She had abrasions to her breast, left shoulder, back, and both legs and thighs. She also had smaller contusions to her upper arms. There were defensive wounds to her hands, indicating that she had put them up to stop her throat from being cut. She had six lacerations on her neck. Three of these resulted in her right ear being severed in three places. Most of the structures and muscles in her right neck had been severed as well as the trachea. Dr. Maluth said it took Anita about two minutes to die.

Gary Lynch told the court how he had to identify his daughter's body at Liverpool Mortuary two days after her murder. And more, if you talk about something that must have been just unbelievably tough, your daughter's already missing and a body's been found, the police, the authorities have asked you to come down to the mortuary to identify her. I can't imagine that feeling. And then ultimately getting there and having to confirm that, yes, that is your daughter. That's something that no parent wants to ever imagine. imagine. And I obviously haven't been in that situation, but I would have to think that that's an

image that stayed imprinted in his mind, unfortunately, for who knows how long. Forever. I would say forever. That's something that is never going to leave you. I don't see how it could. Throughout the trial, some of the evidence included Gary Murphy's statement that he heard his brother Michael saying, do your own thing to John Travers right before Anita was murdered. A woman named Maxine Greensmith, Travers' neighbor, testified she had noticed a funny smelling fire burning in his backyard. The five accused men were standing around the fire, drinking beer, and talking loudly. Some of the men later told detectives they had burned Anita's clothing and belongings that night.

The trial lasted only 12 weeks. On June 10, 1987, in the Darlinghurst Supreme Court, a jury found all four men guilty for Anita Cobby's rape and murder and sentenced them the life in prison without parole. Travers, who had chosen not to go to trial, was given the same sentence. Judge Allen Maxwell said, this was a calculated killing done in cold blood. The executive should grant the same degree of mercy they bestowed on their victim. At some point during the trial, Gary Murphy's defense lawyer, Lee Johnson, then 28 years old and fresh out of law school, was accused of sleeping with her client. In the 2016 Channel 7 news documentary, Johnson defended herself and denied the accusations when reporter Steve Pennells brought it up. She said, interesting rumor, given that the only way I ever saw Gary was surrounded by prison guards and across a six-foot table.

Johnson asked Steve Pinell's, who told him she had slept with Gary and he informed her he could not release that information. She then demanded on camera that her accusers revealed their identity because she would sue them in a court of law. Notably missing from the 1987 trial was John Cobby. Anita's husband. At the time of her murder, John and Anita were planning to get back together. They had discussed buying an apartment. Consumed by grief, he moved to the United States the day after her funeral and changed his last name to Francis to avoid more publicity and to give himself some privacy. Sadly, over the next 30 years, he became heavily addicted to drugs. He remarried and divorced and had two children in the process. He eventually moved back to Australia.

few years ago, John and his son Daniel were watching TV when the news documentary about Anita came on the screen and John began to cry. Daniel wondered why because his father did not easily get upset. So John decided to tell both his children that he was John Cobby, Anita Cobby's husband. John then went back to using his last name Cobby and still works as a nurse today. He spends his free time surfing, John still loves and mourns Anita and has always blamed himself for her death. For years, he didn't know the full details surrounding her murder or even the names of the killers. He has since learned of her fate and a few of the killer's names.

A couple of months after Anita Cobby's murder, Sydney Hospital unveiled a plaque in her honor on the chapel's wall. John sometimes visits and talks with his deceased wife. In 1988, a reporter asked Gary and Grace Lynch if they could ever forgive the men who brutally killed their daughter. Gary responded, I've come to the point where I've forgiven their souls, but not them as human beings. I studied them for those 12 weeks, searching for a sign of remorse, but there was none. If there had been the slightest hint, I think we could have lent towards them. All we saw was total negativity.

In 1991, the Lynch has said they were finally. finally at peace with what had happened to Anita and did not dwell on the events of that awful night. Gary Lynch said he had reached out to the Murphy Brothers father, but did not reveal what transpire, only saying it was something I felt had to be done. And it got a very good response for both of us. In 1993, the Lynch's and the parents of Ebony Simpson, a nine-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in 1992. established the Homicide Victim Support Group in Parramatta, according to the support group's website.

After the lynches and the Simpsons met for the first time, they recognize the very real need to set up an organization which could offer counseling, support, investigators in bringing down the five men that murdered Anita. Miss X, the witness who recorded conversations with John Travers and Michael Murdoch, received numerous death threats from the public. Her safety was concerned. As of 2016, it was believed that she was still in the witness protection program. In February 2019, not long after the 33rd anniversary of her murder, one of Anita's killers, Michael Murphy, died from liver cancer, right before he did.

died, he was asked if he would apologize to Anita's family. His response was filled with expletives. He said, why would I apologize to anyone while you leave me in this room and treat me like this? But no matter how badly he might have been treated, it could never have been worse than what he and the other four men had put Anita through. When John Cobby heard of Michael Murphy's death, he responded, I hope it was painful for him. One down, four to go. On June 25th, 2019, Gary Murphy, who was 61 by that point, was attacked by a gang of inmates in the shower block at Long Bay Jail in Sydney. A month later, he was seen in public for the first time, emerging from a secure wing at Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital in a wheelchair and handcuffs.

Journalists outside the hospital asked if he had any remorse about what he had done in 1986 or whether he had anything to say to Anita's family, but he remained silent. The four surviving killers are in various prisons throughout New South Wales. Anita Lorraine Cobby was laid to rest in Pine Grove Memorial Park in Blacktown on February 10, 1986. The Lynch family created the Anita Cobby Nursing Scholarship after her death to help nurses to further their professional training. Anita's father, Gary Lynch, passed away in 2008 at the age of nine. Grace Lynch followed five years later in 2013. She was 88 years old.

Anita's sister Catherine is married and has a set of twins, Cameron and Olivia. On the 29th anniversary of Anita's gruesome murder, February 2nd, 2015, Catherine and her family held a public memorial in Blacktown. Several police officers were in attendance, as was retired Chief Inspector Gary Rankine. who had worked on Anita's case. Catherine gave a moving speech saying she was a great sister, great daughter, very caring, kind and compassionate. A small park in Blacktown was named the Anita Cabi Reserve in her honor.

It sits on Sullivan Street, only a few blocks from where she was abducted. So we set it up front, Morf. This is a horrible case. the details are unbelievable. You know, as we were going through it, there was a couple of things that stood out to me. I think the first was that, you know, from everything that you read, Anita Cobby was a very good person. Her life was snuffed out by five individuals who, to me, just didn't care. They were willing to cross any line, break any barrier.

and they did. They broke them all. And then, you know, the grief that the family suffered, we touch on that in a lot of the episodes that we do, you know, was really struck by what happened to John Cobby, you know, the fact that they had married, they had separated, but they were, you know, in the midst of getting back together. Morph, you talked about the twist and turns in his life in the years that followed after. Anita's death. My question is, and there's no way to answer it, but would those things have happened to him, you know, the drugs, the, you know, some of the things that he got into, would that have happened to him if this tragedy had not occurred? Or was it exactly this

tragedy that pushed him down, you know, kind of a dark path? You know, it's very sad about this case is the fact that Anita was a nurse who helped a lot of people and you have to wonder how many people didn't get help that she may have one day gone on to help and made their lives better. So other people were robbed of her generosity. And what's scary is, had these guys not been apprehended and convicted, who knows what other people may have fell victim to this group. Well, I think that's a great point because, as I said, this is a group that didn't seem to care about human life in general.

So chances are they would have done something similar, if not as horrific, to someone else. And maybe many more people. We just don't know. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at truecrimediva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. As always, if you haven't done so and you love the show, go out, give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends. You know you have a lot of friends who are into true crime. Make sure you tell them about criminology.

That word of mouth goes a long way for the show. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast Discussion and Facebook. fans. So that is it for the case of the murder of Anita Cobby. It's a sad, tragic case. Like we said, it's one of the most notorious in Australian history. The one thing I will say morph is that I'm very glad that these five individuals got the justice that they deserved. Yeah, they also got pretty quick justice, too, because it didn't drag on for years and years.

It was pretty fast that it was handed down. So that was a good thing, too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, very true. So Morp and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode of Criminology. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.