Missing Niamh - 9: Episode 9: Brisbane

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Six months after Niamh went missing, Jack is arrested in Brisbane. When police take him into custody, it sets off a chain of events that will directly affect Niamh’s case forever. https://missingniamh.com

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RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. Please note that some names in this episode have been changed. Additionally, some audio clips are voiced by actors reading from statements or transcripts. It had been six and a half months since Niamh May was last seen accepting a ride from Jack Nicholson to Batlow on Easter Saturday the 30th of March 2002. They had set off from the campsite in Gingellic where they had spent the weekend camping. From Batlow, Neham was booked to catch the bus to Sydney the following day to stay with her sister. When Neham didn't arrive in Sydney, her family reported her missing to the police.

When questioned, Jack told police he'd driven Neham past Batlow and dropped her off on a stretch of the Gokap Road outside of Tumut. He said she wanted to save money on her bus ticket. But of course, this didn't make sense because the ticket had already been paid for and she had arranged to meet friends that night in Batlow. Jack Nicholson had continued his travels and headed up north to Queensland. He fled a small town after sexually assaulting Michaela, a woman who he'd been staying with, and then stealing money and items of her clothing. Michaela's partner, Michael, followed Jack to Airlie Beach, a coastal town in Queensland, where he confronted Jack for the second time within 24 hours and got some of the money back. Later that day, Jack booked himself a one-way plane ticket from Brisbane to Darwin that would leave the following night at 8.50pm. Jack somehow managed to get himself to Brisbane from Airlie Beach, a 12 and a half hour journey by road. Jack would later say that he travelled

by bus, but there was no record of his name on any bus services. He may have used an alias or hitchhiked. Nevertheless, Jack arrived in Brisbane the next morning at 6am on the 18th of October 2002. Jack put his belongings in a locker at the Roma Street Transit Centre. His flight didn't leave for nearly 15 hours and he was by himself in the Brisbane CBD for the day. Shortly after arriving, Jack received a text message from Garth who had just returned to Australia from his overseas trip to Indonesia. Garth was currently back in Cobram, Victoria. Garth's text message to Jack was to the point.

Are you still alive, arsehole? Jack responded, just. After exchanging a couple of text messages, Jack called Garth. Garth noted immediately that Jack sounded a little down on the phone. He told Garth he was in Brisbane and had booked a plane flight to Melbourne, not Darwin. He arranged to meet with Garth in Cobram and asked Garth if he could borrow $100 as he had just lost $2,000 on the pokies. Garth was surprised, he'd never known Jack to be a gambler. As we now know, Jack didn't lose $2,000 on the pokies,

that was money he had actually stolen that Michael had recovered from him. This is a fact Garth later found out and it surprised him. He said, that was a pretty out of character thing for him to do. It is interesting that Jack told Garth he had a plane ticket from Brisbane to Melbourne and even arranged to see him in Cobram. We know his plane ticket was actually to Darwin, the opposite end of the country from Melbourne. But Garth isn't the only person Jack relayed this to. He also had a phone conversation with a friend, Shane, that morning. Shane is one of the people Jack and Garth visited

in the days after leaving Batlow before heading to Deniliquin. Jack also told Shane that he was flying to Melbourne that day. I remember him ringing me up saying that he didn't have any money and that he'd booked a flight and that he was coming to Melbourne and would I lend him some money. He asked me for a couple hundred dollars and I said, well, yeah, just ring me up when you get here if you want and we'll meet up and I'll say that I'd lend him some money, which I thought was pretty weird and then I just never ever heard back from him. I didn't think that we were sort of close enough for him to ring up and ask me that. We don't know why Jack told Garth and Shane he was flying to Melbourne. We don't know what he needed money for. Whatever the reason, Jack still had several hours until his flight to Darwin.

He spent the day wandering around the Brisbane CBD. And that's when he crossed paths with a 19-year-old woman, Janice. Steve Rose explains. And a young girl, 19 years of age, was leaving the train area, or must have got off a train, I'd imagine, was on her way home, and he propositioned her in the public area, and she sort of knocked him back. He propositioned her, she continued to walk,

he propositioned her again, caught up with her. She said no, and she eventually walked home. Janice was on her way home from uni when she crossed paths with Jack. Jack said to her, You've got a nice arse, I just thought I'd come and tell you that. When Janice told Jack to go away, he replied, You've also got nice tits. One can only imagine Janice's horror at what happened next.

The male was still standing directly behind me to my right side. He used his hand to push my left breast up. I think he was trying to grab my breast, but I moved my left arm and tried to stop him. I pushed him away and walked off. He said, I'll follow you then. He said it very loudly. I walked quicker because I thought he may actually follow me. I looked behind me a couple of times, but I didn't see him. I turned right and walked home. I live on the top floor of a block of apartments. I walked up the front stairs and opened the front door.

When I got home my flatmate wasn't home. I left the front door open. The back door was also open. He must have followed, well, he did follow her and she lived in a block of units. So he followed her into the block of units but not knowing exactly which unit she lived in. He knocked on the door by chance, I'd imagine. A guy answered the door. I can't remember the exact conversation that took place there,

but he must have described the girl that he was looking for. And the guy told her where he thought she lived. When I arrived home, I went into my bedroom and put my bag down and took my shoes off. I took off my bra and shirt and changed. I went into the bathroom and started washing the shirt and bra I'd been wearing in the sink. I came out of the bathroom. I didn't hear anyone.

I was facing towards my bedroom. I was grabbed from behind around my shoulders in a bear hug. I felt a hand being placed over my mouth. I bit the fingers of this hand. So in he goes. He must have, I don't know whether the unit was unlocked or whether he broke in, but she'd just finished showering, came out and he confronted her in the lounge room

and proceeded to punch her and began sexually assaulting her. Janice struggled with Jack and did her best to fight him off. Jack forced his forearm into her neck to prevent her from screaming and tried to wrap a towel around her head. Janice put her arms up to prevent Jack from wrapping it around her head tightly so she could still breathe. Jack threatened to knock Janice out and then punched her repeatedly in the head. Jack continually tried to pull the towel tighter around Janice's head. He also tried to force something in her mouth to gag her. It was a violent attack. And at that time, the guy that gave directions to Jack

started thinking, maybe I shouldn't have done that. He didn't seem like he really knew her as well as he should have. So he went down to inquire. Pushed the door open and called Jack in the act on top of this girl. Anyway, so Jack's fled from that point. The guy gave chase, the neighbour, and just pure luck, a police paddy wagon was driving past and the neighbours pulled him over. Said, I just caught this guy assaulting this woman.

Can't remember the exact words, but to that effect. Coppers gave chase over a few fences, caught him, got the detectives involved. It was Constable McKenzie who was on patrol and who was flagged down by the neighbour just after midday. McKenzie gave chase and apprehended Jack hiding in a storeroom at the back of a hotel just south of the Brisbane CBD.

Jack was handcuffed and taken to a nearby police station. When they got word of the attack on the young woman in Brisbane, Neem's family's worst fears were realised. This was what Jack was capable of. It was a very violent assault and I remember the details of what they told us but suffice to say, yeah, he's not a good guy. With Jack back in police custody, would detectives finally get the information they needed to find Niamh? At 1.28pm on Friday the 18th of October, 202 days after Neham went missing, two Queensland detectives conducted an electronically recorded interview with Jack Nicholson.

Predictably, Jack downplayed what had happened in Janice's apartment. To Neham's brother Kieran, it all seemed a little too cosy for his liking. With the wisdom of hindsight, he believes that the police viewed this as a one-off offence rather than a pattern. You've got a guy who's committed an aggravated sexual assault in broad daylight. That's pretty unusual, right?

That rings fucking alarm bells. He's then run from police when they've attempted to arrest him. He's been pursued on foot and he's been caught hiding in a storeroom in the top floor of the roof of a pub, right? And passes by the ones who pointed him out. He's then said, you've got me. And they've assumed that it's over that one incident. But if you look at the pattern of behavior and the spiral, if you like, of where he's been going with this, you might assume otherwise. Now, the arresting officer, when he's taken back to the station, notes that he smelt of cannabis. And I think they asked him if he was suicidal and he said no. You then get the two detectives over to interview him

and it sounds like they had a grand afternoon. They had a cup of tea and a chat and the smartest guy in the room was Jack. They noted that he was cooperative and, you know, he was really nice and answered all their questions and whatever else. Which raises a few concerns because I don't know what information they had access to in the police computer system. Jack was cooperative during the interview and told the detectives that he had arrived in Brisbane that morning after travelling down by Greyhound bus from Airlie Beach. He had a plane ticket to

Darwin that evening. He was heading there to pick mangoes. So I came down to Brisbane to catch a plane and pretty much think I might miss it by the look of things. After arriving in Brisbane and having over 12 hours to wait until his flight, he put his luggage, a backpack and a swag, in a locker at the Roma Street Transit Centre. After securing his luggage, he went wandering around the CBD. I just went down to the coffee shop downstairs and popped in. I had an altercation with a mate of mine yesterday and he took all my money because I owed it to him, so I got here dead broke. I had a little bit of pot and was hoping to sell just a little bit of it so I could get a hundred bucks, but yeah, I'm a bit too shy for that.

The detectives asked Jack about the bruise on his left eye. Jack confirmed it was the result of the altercation with his mate the day before. After a coffee at the Roma Street Transit Centre, Jack told the detectives that he had wandered through the city and thought about doing a burglary. He said when he came to the block of units, he thought he might find an open door where he could wander inside and maybe grab a purse. He knocked on a door and when a person answered, Jack made up the name of a man, Peter or Steve, he couldn't remember. And the person told him there were only girls living upstairs. So Jack just went upstairs hoping to get a little richer. Jack says the burglary went wrong. He said the

door was open and he just went in and the woman started screaming. After giving that information, one of the detectives asked, what else happened? Jack replied, and that's about it. In the police interview about the attack on Janice, there are echoes of Jack's interview in Deniliquin about the disappearance of Niamh. When police asked him to give an account of what happened on the Saturday Niamh went missing, Jack completely avoided the part about giving Niamh a lift. He gave an account of everything else that happened that day, before and after, but he left out the most crucial part of the day that police were interviewing him about.

When he was pressed, he eventually gave his version of where he had dropped Aneem off. Jack's interview is all about minimising what he had done. The door was open, he went in, the woman started screaming, and that's about it. When pushed for more detail, he made the vicious attack sound like nothing. I was looking for her handbag and she's coming. I've grabbed her and tried to tell her to be quiet and, you know, just relax. I only wanted money out of it and that's when a friend came upstairs and told me to leave. Jack said the victim came from behind him.

He didn't know she was there. He said he had never seen her before. He did not admit to following her home after indecently assaulting her on the street. The detectives pressed for more detail. Um, who are you? What the, you know, and I just grabbed her and said, be quiet, you know, I'm not here to hurt you. Okay, when you say you grabbed her, how did you grab her? Um, suppose by the, I don't know, just grabbed her as you would a person, I suppose, by the hair or something.

And I just tried to go for the neck or something like that, the neck, just to quiet her down. Just tell her, don't scream, I'll go, you know, I just want the money. She didn't have any. Okay, you grabbed her. What happened after you grabbed her and told her to stop screaming? She just kept struggling, mate. And I said, can you please just be quiet, you know? I told her I was sorry the way to do it. I just wanted bloody money and wanted to get out and I didn't want anything to do with it. She said, she goes to me, please don't. She must have thought I was going to rape her. She said, oh, I'm too young. I said, I don't care about that. You know, it's not what I was here for. Jack said she wouldn't be quiet. Then another fellow turned up and he told Jack to leave.

Jack said he then left. To hear him tell it, the terrifying attack was nothing, just a guy hoping to get a little richer, opened a random door and all that. In short, he was a smug, violent rapist, minimising his actions. Did you hit her? Yeah, I might have. Did you put anything over her head? I put a towel on her face and told her not to look at me. I didn't want her to be identified, you know, as the one who robbed the joint. Yes, he grabbed her by the hair and by the throat, but it was just to quieten her.

Yes, he grabbed both her hands, but it was only to tell her he wanted money Yes, she kept struggling because she mistakenly thought he was going to rape her Yes, he did grab a towel and put it over her head, but only to stop her from identifying him Yes, he might have hit her, maybe a slap, maybe a punch Yes, she might have been on the ground with him crouching over her when the neighbour arrived. Yes, he tried to pull her top up, but it was just to cover her mouth to stop her screaming. Yes, he ran from police, but that was only because he had a small amount of cannabis on him and he didn't want to get busted. No, he wasn't trying to

sexually assault her. No, he hadn't followed her home. No, he didn't first see her in the city. Did you hit her before you put the towel over her face or after? Don't know. Before I'd say. I hit her and she made it worse, so I didn't hit her anymore. And I said, I really don't want you to look at me. Go now. Please don't look at me. I just want to go. How did she get on the ground? She just sort of went, you know. Jack was then asked if he had sexually assaulted Janice.

He denied it. You know that we'll be able to medically examine her for that and yourself as well. There have been people who have said they saw you do that, Jack. Really? Yeah. Maybe I grabbed her on the leg to keep her still, but no. I put it to you, Jack, that you followed her back from the city, that you had seen her in the city, the girl. No, I did see somebody in town that you had seen her in the city, the girl. No, I did see somebody in town that looked similar to her. I don't know if it was the same girl or not, but I wouldn't say I followed her.

No-one was fooled, least of all Niamh's brother, Kieran, hearing about it later. So, again, he's being cooperative and nice, but this guy's committed a pretty serious crime in broad daylight and you're comfortable with him because he's cooperating? I guess he felt that he was completely fucked and he had no chance of getting out of there. Jack Nicholson had been handcuffed when he was arrested.

During the interview, he asked if the detectives could remove the handcuffs. They did, no doubt thinking that the man in front of them was cooperating and answering their questions, and he exhibited no visible signs of aggression. What's really hard as a family member of someone is, and you're desperate for answers, and you really, you're hoping that one day you're going to get a breakthrough. This is the main suspect at the time, certainly someone who hasn't been forthcoming or told the truth about what's going on.

He's the one key piece of information that could lead to some form of answer or closure. And he is let go by those police. They didn't handcuff him. In addition to the sexual assault, Jack was questioned about two clear sealed plastic bags of green leafy material. He admitted it was cannabis that he'd bought up north the day before for $300. When the interview was over, the two detectives left the police station with Jack in their custody,

still unhandcuffed. They headed towards the Brisbane City Watch House with the intention of charging Jack with rape, deprivation of liberty, enter-dwelling with intent, and assault. But on the way to the watch house, the two detectives stopped at the bus terminal level of the Brisbane Transit Centre on Roma Street. They wanted to collect the backpack and swag that Jack had left in the locker inside the terminal earlier that day. Detective Steve Rose would later hear about what happened next. He did say that he assaulted her.

He denied any sexual assault and said he was there to rob her. And with that, he also must have told the police that he had his belongings in a locker at the Roma Street Transit Centre. They took him to the third floor of the car park there, walked him to the locker area. He retrieved his gear, his backpack, went back to the police car. As they were putting it in the boot, he wasn't handcuffed. And what he did next would bring Niamh's family's hopes

of finding her crashing down. He wasn't handcuffed. As I put the gear in his boot, Nicholas ran and ran straight towards the edge of the car park and just took off and flew over the top like Superman, basically, from the third floor and fell to his death right outside the police headquarters at Brisbane. Around 3.40pm, Jack had been escorted by the detectives as he collected his bag and swag from the locker. On the way back to the police vehicle, Jack carried his bag over his right

shoulder and one of the detectives carried Jack's swag. This detective walked a short distance to the front and to the right, Jack in the middle, and behind them was the second detective. As they approached the police car, Jack suddenly dropped the bag, dodged away from the two detectives, ran around the front of the police vehicle, and jumped up onto the ledge of the wall. Without hesitation, he leapt. He landed approximately 20 metres below on an inbound lane of Roma Street. Jack Nicholson received fatal injuries as a result of the fall. And in that one sweeping gesture, Jack and anything he might know about

Niamh was gone. Jack's fatal jump was so close to the police station that a senior constable working the front desk raced to the body on the road, and a detective from the homicide squad was walking to work along Roma Street for his afternoon shift when it happened. He raced to the body too, but there was nothing to be done. When the ambulance arrived, Jack was found to be unconscious, not moving, and had no signs of breathing nor pulse. Jack had sustained a large amount of trauma. One leg was twisted behind him and multiple fractures were evident. A pool of blood was seeping from the right side of his body. Paramedics detected no signs of life.

The autopsy report would later describe a head injury where his skull had been fractured into pieces, lacerations to the brain, multiple rib fractures with underlying lung lacerations, fractures of the right wrist and right thigh bone, and severe internal injuries consistent with a fall from height. The toxicology analysis found methamphetamine, the sedatives diazepam and temezepam, and cannabis in non-toxic levels. As police were unable to locate any known relative, Jack was formally identified by a fingerprint match. Jack, or Jason Paul Nicholson, also had tattoos which were compared to recorded

tattoos in his criminal history profile. When police were finally able to find Jack's family for the death notification, Jack's father told them he hadn't seen his son for five years and last heard from him via an SMS message a year ago. Jack was completely estranged from his mother. The coroner's office released Jack's body for cremation. In an ignominious end, his ashes were sent to his next of kin by express post. So, how did this happen? A man in the custody of two detectives takes a swan dive off a car park ledge.

Detective Steve Rose understood the predicament the two detectives were in when it came to handcuffing or not. You know, in hindsight, hindsight's a great thing, great thing, you know. I've done it myself, locked, arrested people. You don't always handcuff everyone you arrest. You know, he probably should have been handcuffed, I guess, for the seriousness of the offence that he committed. Yeah, it was just a disappointment to us, but I certainly didn't hold any grudge or anything with the police because I could just understand

what they were doing. I can imagine Jack or Jason, whatever you want to call him, telling them everything they want to know basically or his version of that and just being quite upfront about it. Yes, mate, no, mate, no. Yeah, you got me. No, no, I didn't sexually assault her. I went there to try and steal some money from her,

all that sort of thing. So he sort of made half admissions and he knew he was in the shit anyway. Yeah, so a lot of times if you show the crook a little bit of leniency or respect, if you want to call it that, by not handcuffing him and making a spectacle of him, especially in a public place, that respect sometimes returned by way of just telling the truth and, you know, confessing and all that sort of stuff. So I can't speak on behalf of those two police officers,

but I can understand how it went down, which is a shame. Kieran remembers this about that time. Steve told me that he was pissed off and there were two reasons. One was they didn't find out for seven days. Now that could be mistaken. But the second was that when they did put a request in because they wanted the belongings in the backpack, they wanted to see particularly he had a camera on him and all the other items and they wanted to be able to inspect those and get access to them. He said, again, it was like another seven days before they responded. And I remember him saying, you know, that's just, that's bullshit.

That's not how it's done and that's not really how, you know, the cops normally operate. We will be back after a short break. Kieran was mistaken when he said it took seven days for New South Wales Police investigating Neem's disappearance to find out about Jack's death. It actually took over a month. And the way they found out was purely by accident. It was the 20th of November 2002 when a man walked into Armidale Police Station, Neham's hometown, where Brian and Anne first made the missing persons report.

The man started talking to the officer at the counter of Armadale station. He mentioned Jack, Garth, their fruit-picking friend Clint, Neham, the hearse. He mentioned how Jack was responsible for Neham's death, but was now dead. The officer took down the information and forwarded it to the police in Tumut at Strike Force Yola. But they wouldn't get the information for another week. Jack jumped to his death in Queensland on October 18th 2002. It was November 27th by the time the Strike Force found out. From piecing together information from the coronial brief, it appears it was the report at Armidale Police Station which led to NSW Police being alerted to Jack's death.

This is how it looks in the inquest documents. November 20th, the report is made at Armidale Police Station November 27th, Strike Force Yola received the report, indicating Jack was now deceased November 29th, an investigator's note was created stating that inquiries had been made with Queensland Police by Strike Force Yola and Queensland Police confirmed Jack was deceased. How long would it have been until they found out if the man had not made the report at the Armidale Police Station? That Jack breached his bail should have raised a red flag. He was due to appear at the Daniloquin Court on April 18th. Two days before that, there is a record of Strikeforce Yola officers contacting Jack by phone, and that same day, the theory emerged in the media that Niamh had hitchhiked from Gokap Road. Then, with the media appeal, witnesses came forward with their sightings of hitchhikers.

And those sightings changed the course of the investigation. It was 2002 and information sharing and technology weren't what they are today. We don't know if the Deniliquin Police did anything to address Jack's breach of bail and we don't know if they alerted Strike Force YOLA investigators about the breach. During the phone call with Jack on the 16th of April, YOLA detectives asked some follow-up questions about Nahum's disappearance. The bail breach and the scheduled court appearance in two days' time are not mentioned in the YOLA notes. If this was a point of discussion, the detectives might have queried Jack when he told them he was in Parks,

New South Wales, which would have made daily reporting five hours away in Denelequin impossible. They would have definitely been suspicious if they'd known Jack wasn't in fact in Parks. He was in Queensland. But we don't know what they knew. We can only work from what made it into the notes. And none of this did. Jack failed to attend court at Deniliquin on the 18th of April. As a result, more arrest warrants were issued. We will be left forever to wonder if the police might have shifted their focus from Go-Kart Road back to Jack if they'd known about his unsettled erratic behaviour in the days after Neem's disappearance. How he'd targeted Simone with a joint containing something that made her not remember a whole evening.

How he'd crept into a teenager's bedroom during the night and frightened her. If they'd known he'd washed all his clothes and cleaned his CDs with methylated spirits and dyed his hair and how he'd vanished after ordering pizza. And how this behaviour was so bizarre it made his friends wonder if he had done something bad to name. But none of that was known until after Jack's death. It is only after carefully piecing it all together that we get a much bigger picture. And we also know that Jack went on to sexually assault two women, Michaela, who he knew, and Janice, the young woman in Brisbane, who he didn't. And we know that afterwards, he was so calm and cooperative that the detectives didn't think he needed to be handcuffed.

Jack's sensational leap from a building right in the Brisbane CBD after escaping police custody following his arrest for a daylight break-in and rape sounds pretty newsworthy, especially when the dead man was a person of interest in a missing persons case in New South Wales. But whether the Queensland Police closed ranks about his death in custody, or because suicides in general receive less reporting, the story didn't gain any traction whatsoever. There was one article in the local Tumet paper a few months after Jack's death, but that was about it. When Anne and Brian found out that Jack had killed himself, they held onto the knowledge until they could share it with the family when they all gathered for Christmas. With the media silence, Niamh's brother and sisters had no idea Jack died. Fanula asked her mum about the delay.

So why did you wait until Christmas to tell us? Because that was October and you told us in December. Well, you were out all over the place, so I think it was a more sensible thing to do instead of hitting you with that right then, on top of everything else. And I felt that it was better when you were all together and could be supportive of each other.

And of course Brian and Anne were coping with the news themselves. They knew what it meant when they heard Jack had jumped off a building to his death. I just thought I was disappointed, shattered in a way, because I thought that's the one person who may have known something more and it's gone. And that was, and I thought, okay, where do we go now? Who else is likely to know something? It was the first Christmas the May family faced after Niamh went missing and the news that Jack was gone made the bleak occasion even worse.

So that year was our first Christmas without her and normally Christmas in our family is everyone goes home to Mum and Dad's house and the house is full of people and, you know, just all the family together and everyone's sleeping on the floor and on top of each other and stuff and tripping over each other to use the bathroom in the morning and stuff. And it sounds like hell to only children, but for us, that's just our Christmases and that's always what it was like and we always loved it. And that year, we we couldn't face it.

We just didn't want to do Christmas in Armidale. After Jack's death, it was easier for people who knew him to speak about him without concern about any backlash. Police also examined the contents of Jack's backpack and found photos and undeveloped film. The police went back and re-interviewed Garth, the guy that he'd been travelling with at the time, and they said to him, you know, he's dead now, so he can't hurt you. If you know anything, just help us.

But he just claimed he didn't know anything. So, yeah, I mean, everyone assumed it was Jack, including me. The police found amongst his belongings after he died photos of Niamh in the car. So a few days before Easter, they had gone out to Blowering Dam, which is a big dam near Tumut. And there's like a bunch of like pine forests and walking tracks and stuff like that. And they'd obviously just gone, you know, killing time going out there for the sake of it. And these photos are like, she's sitting in the front seat smiling. And, you know, I time going out there for the sake of it. And these photos were like she's sitting in the front seat smiling and, you know, I think a couple of them were selfies of them and they just, you know, he was just another traveller

and they were just doing something on a day they weren't working, just went to travel around the area. These photos were likely taken on Thursday, March 28th, two days before Niamh went missing. This was the day she spent with Jack travelling around in the hearse, checking out the sites and landmarks around Batlow. Niamh's dad, Brian, saw something less obvious in the picture of his daughter in Jack's hearse at Blowering Dam.

There was something about her facial expression that wasn't quite right. She had a sort of not quite bemused look on the face. The photograph was taken through from the left-hand side of the car with the door open. The way she was sitting holding the steering wheel and looking towards the left-hand door, looking sort of, do you want me to do this or is this what I should do? She looked a little bit uncomfortable in just her expression. And I would put that to say, you know, what are we doing here? So he was actually posing her for a photograph,

that's the way I felt about it. And just from her expression and the way she was seated and the way she was holding the steering wheel and so forth, it was not entirely natural, if you like. So she might have been a bit concerned, showing her attention that she mightn't have understood, you know, why he was showing this attention as a possibility, but beyond that I can't say. When the inquest into Jack's death was held, the coroner had an important question to try and answer Was Jack attempting to escape police custody, or did he intend to end his own life? On the evidence, the coroner decided that Jack had intended to end his life

The reasons given were that Jack had attended the transit centre earlier and would have known the layout. He could also see over the concrete wall he jumped from and could see that there was nowhere safe to land. One of the most compelling reasons for the finding was that witnesses from below said that Jack didn't just jump, but that he launched himself off the wall. The fact that he landed a considerable distance from the building supported this, as well as the testimony of a number of witnesses. For Kieran and Fanula, the inquest left them with more questions than it answered. For starters, the two police detectives who were with Jack at the time refused to testify.

And what makes it worse is the fact that they refused to testify on the grounds they might incriminate themselves, which leads the coroner unable to ask questions about their conduct and whether it was reasonable. So his conclusion is, oh, it's reasonable. You know, it's up to the arresting officers or people who've got him in custody to decide whether he should be handcuffed or not. There's a few things in there that kind of concern me. He told them that he wasn't on drugs in that interview, but he also says he hadn't slept in three days. If someone says to me, I haven't slept in three days and he's committing a me, I haven't slept in three days and he's committing a violent, aggravated sexual assault

in the middle of the day and now he's calm and docile three hours later and he's like a little lamb, I'm saying, what's your secret? Every mum of a newborn wants to know how you get away without sleeping for three days and you're a perfectly normal, happy dude. It didn't occur to them that he may have been on drugs, speed for example. And he smelt like weed.

And the guy who'd arrested him said he could smell cannabis on him, even though he lied to the police and said, I haven't smoked in a day. But they had no way of thinking that his behavior was either erratic or would be, and he tried to flee from police once, but they felt comfortable enough to not handcuff him and to just carry his rucksack for him when they picked it up from Roma Street. That kind of saddens me and yeah, look, it happens. You know, they want the cooperation of a witness and they obviously weren't aware of his prior history at the time

but to know that they've cost us potentially answers and to sit there in that inquest with their police-funded lawyer and refuse to give evidence on the grounds that may incriminate themselves is distressing. So Dad was in that inquest and Susan was in that inquest and they had to sit there in Brisbane. And dad, they asked them if they wanted to ask any questions. He just wanted to know if he was under the influence of drugs.

That was the only question dad asked, I think. They claimed that he didn't and the toxicologist said that the levels of, say, they found methamphetamine, cannabis and something else in his system. The toxicologist said that the levels were unlikely to be an influence on his behaviour at the time or something. During the inquest, details of Jack's criminal history emerged. Jack had records in Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia and had used the aliases of Shane Anthony Johnson and Robert John Middleton. He was also known by the nickname of Gonzo. Jack was born Jason Paul Nicholson on October 21 1970 in Launceston, Tasmania. As a youth, he started shoplifting and stealing, and that later escalated to burglaries and robberies. By the time Jack left Tasmania just after Christmas in 1992,

aged 22, he had a prolific criminal career. Jack then came under the attention of police all across Australia. In New South Wales, Jack's offences were assaults, traffic violations and failing to appear. These led to the arrest warrants for assault that caught up with Jack in Deniliquin. In Queensland, Jack had committed offences ranging from burglary with violence, drugs, traffic and street offences. He was also wanted for questioning in relation to a charge of stealing. And if he had survived his last arrest, the police would have added rape to his long, long list of priors. In Western Australia, Jack had been charged with burglary, possess offensive weapon, possess prohibited drug and stealing. There was also an arrest warrant there too

at the time of his death. Detective Steve Rose travelled to Tasmania to see for himself what sort of offender Jack Nicholson was. He was a career criminal. I travelled to Tasmania and interviewed people that arrested him in Tasmania. Cat burglar, that's what he was. Yeah, he used to prey on businesses at night time. He used to jump out from one roof to another and go down through the ceiling, knock off all their gear and all that sort of stuff. There was one incident that occurred in Western Australia, in Perth, in 1995, which was both a red flag and also a good example of how easily Jack could talk himself out of trouble. He left Tasmania and went to Victoria. And from Victoria he finished up in Western Australia. And there was information in Western Australia there where he'd been caught prowling around a woman's house, around her windows,

but gave an accepted version as to why he was there to the police. And, you know, he wasn't doing anything apart from being there and she was concerned about this bloke being around the house. And he just said, oh, man, I'm pissed and I'm a bit disorientated. I thought this would be a mate's house, you know. Yeah, that's, but anyway, the police were enough to submit what we call an intelligence report and we got hold of that too. So from my point of view, he had a very, very much a predatory type nature,

like just a cat burglar type thing, you know, working on his own, not working with anyone, under the guise of darkness and jumping from one building to another, going down through roofs, all that sort of stuff. A lot of stuff he did, he did on his own. And, you know, when you look at, I think the first part of it all was the incident in Western Australia where he is suspected of prowling and I've got no doubt he was. Delving into the incident in Western Australia, Jack's behaviour is predatory. He had followed a 20-year-old woman home after she got off a train. She realised she was being

followed and as soon as she got inside her house and saw the man outside her window, she immediately called the police. When they arrived, they found Jack outside the woman's home. He played dumb, said he was drunk, didn't know where he was, had only just arrived in Perth, thought he was at his place. Sounds remarkably similar to what he told Susie's 14-year-old daughter in Gingellic when the lights were turned on and he was holding her hand. Played the drunk card. Seemed to be disorientated. Didn't know where he was. Am I at the pub? The officers from the Victoria Park area of Perth who attended this incident paid close attention to Jack. There had been a series of rapes of women in their homes around the area. Even though they didn't have enough to charge him with anything, they took his details and entered him into the system just in case.

It was another piece of information that wouldn't be discovered until it was too late. We don't know if these officers checked his criminal history, but at this time, Jack was wanted on warrant for assault on the other side of the country in New South Wales. We were unable to find any media coverage of the rapes in Victoria Park. We know no further information. Crime statistics show that in 1995 there were 10 indecent assaults and 2 aggravated sexual assaults reported in Victoria Park. And in 1996 there were 2 indecent assaults and 11 aggravated sexual assaults reported in Victoria Park. But that's as far as we know. We don't know much about Jack's time in Perth in the mid-90s. Who he was with, where he was staying,

where he was working, how long he was there. If you have any information, it's never too late to come forward. He was very brazen, you know. And from there to the girl at Brisbane, you know, where he was, you know, up front, propositioned her, she knocked him back and he said, oh, I'm not going to cop this, I'll follow her home. Yeah, and then go and knock on someone's door, just give him some bullshit excuse as to why he wanted to see this girl. That's how brazen he was. And to me,

that just indicates a real predatory type person, and confident. Steve travelled with a detective colleague to Queensland following Jack's suicide. Himself and Kay Crear travelled up there, spoke to the detectives involved. In his backpack was a number of items and the two items that were of significant interest to us were rolls of film, undeveloped, and the guys from Queensland got them developed and they depicted Nicholson in various states of undress

and in sexual activity with two different women. One of those women was asleep beside her husband at the time and remember she found out that she woke to him being in the bedroom. He was doing some pretty filthy things. These photos were of a woman who was friends with Jack. Yeah, so we went up and interviewed her and she remembered straight away that, you know, she said, I knew he was up to no good. She didn't know exactly what.

There were also pictures of a second woman who was known to Jack. She had been photographed being assaulted by Jack as well. She wasn't aware of the film, but when we showed her the photos, she agreed it was her and she instantly picked the time and date that it all happened. She came home from work feeling a bit unwell. She came home and he made her a cup of coffee. She said, I remember tasting the coffee and it didn't taste very well,

but I just thought it was me being sick. She said, I don't even think I drank it all. She said, and all of a sudden I just got so tired, I just went really tired and things started sort of spinning around a bit. And yeah, so the suspicion is that he's drugged her and then had his way with her and captured her all on film, on still camera. This woman and Simone in Gingelic mean that there are two women that we know of who

we suspect were drugged by Jack. Two women drugged by Jack, multiple women sexually assaulted by him. A disturbing pattern. The more we find out about Jack, the more sinister his encounter with Niamh becomes. On the next episode of Missing Niamh... And then at the inquest, they presented an alternative theory. I'd been told that the bikies had some sort of property on Gokup Road. That's what sort of threw the investigation into a bit of a spin.