An elderly couple are tied up and strangled in their own home, but there are no witnesses and no apparent MO.
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00:00♪♪
00:10♪♪
00:20♪♪
00:30The double homicides are rare in themselves.
00:33There had to be a reason for what cause this to take place.
00:38♪♪
00:41Police believe a couple murdered in their remote home
00:44were dead for days before their bodies were found.
00:47The nature of the killings are frightening, shocking,
00:50and coldly brutal.
00:52Just terrible.
00:54We had no suspect.
00:56We had no motive.
00:58And we had an unknown DNA.
01:00This is our man.
01:03But who is he?
01:05He said, I've got the $10,000 in cash.
01:09I'll tell you what, I nearly fell on the floor.
01:11That was a big shock.
01:13♪♪
01:25My name's Paul Watson.
01:26I'm a retired Detective Senior Sergeant of Police.
01:30In September 2005, I was a Detective Senior Constable
01:32attached to the New South Wales Police Homicide Squad
01:35at the State Crime Command.
01:37♪♪
01:42It was late on a Thursday night.
01:45I was contacted by my Investigations Coordinator.
01:49♪♪
01:52There'd been two bodies found deceased in a house at South Maroondah.
01:57♪♪
02:02I got in my car and started the drive to South Maroondah,
02:06a semi-rural suburb on the northwestern fringe of Sydney.
02:11We decided not to go to the crime scene straight away
02:14as the forensics team had already been dispatched
02:17and local detectives were guarding the house.
02:21So we made the decision to stay at Windsor Police Station
02:26until daylight.
02:28♪♪
02:31The two bodies were identified as Anna and Ian Hughes.
02:35They had been found by their son, David,
02:37who had gone to his parents' house to do a welfare check.
02:42By the time I arrived at Windsor Police Station,
02:45he was giving his statement to detectives.
02:48♪♪
02:59I can only imagine what it was like for David
03:02to have walked into the bedroom and found his mother that way.
03:06♪♪
03:10Tied to a chair and strangled.
03:15Just terrible.
03:18And I can understand why he, as he did,
03:20he left, retreated from the home
03:22immediately of finding her and calling police.
03:26♪♪
03:34The forensic investigators had been doing an incredible job
03:36through the night securing evidence.
03:41So we arrived at the home and parked at the street entrance.
03:47We left our vehicles there and walked down to the home,
03:50which is a distance of over half a kilometre.
03:53♪♪
04:01Entering into the home, nothing appeared to be ransacked.
04:05We could tell that the bodies had been there for some time.
04:09The manner of their death was just horrific.
04:13♪♪
04:17Anna, she had been tied to a chair and strangled.
04:25Curiously, Ian had been strangled and tied up
04:28in a separate room to Anna.
04:32And different bindings, men's ties, belt, scarves.
04:38The dressing gown cord from Anna's dressing gown
04:41had been used to secure Ian.
04:44What was most notable in the difference
04:46between how Ian and Anna were bound
04:49was that Ian was blindfolded, where Anna was not.
04:56Ian also had a significant wound
04:58to the left side, rear left side of his head.
05:02Yes, you can see in this particular photo
05:04that there's a significant amount of cigarette ash on the floor.
05:08That, from what we understood, wouldn't have been left there
05:11by either Ian or Anna.
05:17There was some items removed from a handbag.
05:23Initially, it appeared that the killer
05:25may have gone through the handbag to identify his victims.
05:30And finally, one of the chairs, the lounge room chairs,
05:33had been turned and was almost facing the front door entrance.
05:38We think that this is where our offender, our killer,
05:43was laying in wait.
05:48Police believe a couple murdered in their remote home
05:51on Sydney's north-western outskirts
05:53were dead for days before their bodies were found.
05:56The bodies of the 60-year-old man and his 57-year-old wife
05:59were found in separate rooms of their South Maroota home last night.
06:03There was no sign of a break-in or evidence of a robbery,
06:06while detectives are not prepared to confirm how the couple died,
06:10they were quick to rule out murder-suicide.
06:13We're treating them as a double homicide.
06:16Our forensic team had collected a number of fingerprints.
06:20They also collected DNA samples
06:22from the ligatures used to restrain Ian and Anna.
06:27Due to the location of the samples on the ligatures,
06:30they could only have been left by the killer.
06:34So having been through our crime scene,
06:37we look at developing what we call a timeline,
06:40and we have to work backwards.
06:42Quite often, or in more cases than not,
06:46a murder will be identified through witnesses.
06:50There may be gunshots,
06:52there may be screams to an offence taking place.
06:56Here we had none of that.
06:59And the piece of information that allowed us to put a time
07:02was a newspaper from the 22nd of September.
07:06We could surmise that Ian and Anna were killed on or after that date,
07:11so it gave us a place to start.
07:14Police are now trying to establish when the couple were last seen alive.
07:19You try and catalogue and choreograph their last movements, sightings, etc.
07:23Visitors that they may have had to the home, telephone records,
07:28as well as any forensic evidence, fingerprints, DNA, etc.
07:31The next thing we look at is victimology.
07:36Who are our deceased persons?
07:38Why would they be in this position?
07:40How could they come to be there?
07:42What were their routines? We all have our routines.
07:45Ian and Anna, their two children, David and Michael,
07:49neither of them lived with their parents,
07:51they're adults and had moved on.
07:53So Ian was a retired chemical engineer,
07:57Anna a schoolteacher.
08:00They'd been living at this property at South Maroondah for about 28 years.
08:05Financially comfortable, quiet lifestyle,
08:08and in a good place, as best we understood it.
08:13Oh, sort of kept to themselves a bit, you know.
08:16They do a lot of gardening and a lot of maintenance to the property and that.
08:21This couple were in no way involved in anything that would allow
08:26or to suggest that there'd be some reason
08:30for a person to come into the home, commit this crime.
08:33That was our big thing. We had a lack of motive.
08:44The family knew that it was important for them to speak to the public.
08:51David couldn't talk.
08:53And I can understand the state that he would have been in.
08:58His wife did a fantastic job in conveying the grief
09:04that the family was suffering.
09:07I think I speak for Ian and Anna's entire family
09:10when I say that we have been absolutely gutted by our loss.
09:14That someone could take away from us two such wonderful,
09:17lovely and much-loved people is a complete mystery to us.
09:21I ask anyone who has any information about Ian and Anna's last movements
09:25to please contact the police. Thank you.
09:33Somebody involved in this had to know them.
09:36But who was that person?
09:38Police are appealing for any member of the public
09:41that has any information that might assist in the last movements of Ian and Anna,
09:45particularly from Thursday the 22nd of September.
09:49We had been some period of time now with nothing.
09:53And we were absolutely getting nowhere.
09:56So we needed a breakthrough.
09:58Something to take us to the next step.
10:11A couple found murdered in their own home.
10:16The nature of the killings are frightening, shocking and coldly brutal.
10:22There had to be a reason for what cause this to take place.
10:28But we weren't able to put our finger on anything at this point in time.
10:34Strike Force Western Way was established to investigate the murders.
10:40I was assigned as being the officer in charge.
10:45With Detective Senior Constable Grant Gilbert being my senior investigator.
10:53So at that stage, we had no suspect, we had no motive and we had an unknown DNA.
11:02When you have an investigation like that, you start with family first
11:06and then you work through family, friends, associates.
11:10We ruled out any involvement with family almost immediately.
11:15We then look at the neighbours.
11:17What are their social activities?
11:20Could they become involved in a dispute with somebody over money?
11:25There are only so many motives for a crime.
11:34It was our belief that Anna was attacked and tied up first.
11:39Then the killer waited in the lounge room to surprise Ian
11:42when he returned home from the shops.
11:45Ian was hit over the head with a blunt object as he walked through the front door.
11:51The killer then took Ian to the other end of the house
11:55and tied him to the chair in the second bedroom.
12:00Why were Ian and Anna tied up in separate rooms?
12:04That was the question.
12:07The first clue, about two weeks into the investigation,
12:11I spoke with a lady at the Pitttown shops
12:15where Ian had gone that morning before he was murdered.
12:18And as I was leaving, it was just an off-the-cuff comment.
12:21She said to me, oh, by the way, they had a lawnmower man that used to mow their lawns.
12:25His name was Peter Johnson, but he left the state about two or three weeks ago.
12:30So I looked up at Peter Johnson, but when I got back to the station
12:35and he was spoken to by the police a few weeks before the murders happened
12:40in relation to a domestic he had with his ex-wife,
12:43and he said then that he was leaving the week later.
12:46And I took that on board, but that was about it.
12:50So at that point in time, we directed our resources to areas
12:53that were more relevant as we saw it.
12:58The weeks went by and the case was going cold.
13:01So we needed to retrace our steps.
13:07We'd actually asked the family to put a hold on the mail.
13:11So we went to the post office and got the mail, and when we opened it up,
13:14we realised the financial statements from the banks
13:17showed there were financial transactions on their credit cards
13:22after the murders had happened.
13:25So it was then we realised that something had been stolen from the house
13:28and it was their credit cards.
13:31And this is where it started to pick up pace for us.
13:34And from those statements, we identified that a series of transactions
13:39amounting to $12,500 had taken place from the 23rd of September
13:45through to the morning of the 26th of September.
13:52Post-mortem results confirmed Ian and Anna Hughes
13:56both died from ligature strangulation.
13:59We theorised that the killer waited for Ian to return to the house
14:02before tying him up in the second bedroom
14:05as the killer wanted the Hughes' personal identification numbers
14:09to access their bank accounts.
14:11It is likely that he initially killed Anna
14:14but told Ian that he could save her if he gave him what he wanted.
14:19Of course, he was never going to leave with either of them alive.
14:26Motive now.
14:29It appeared to be confirmed as robbery.
14:32The murders have occurred on the morning of the 23rd
14:36and from the evening of the 23rd through the morning of the 26th
14:39our offender has undertaken 14 separate withdrawals
14:45from ATMs across a three-suburb area.
14:50Our first hope was that we could identify the offender
14:53through the CCTV footage at those ATMs.
14:56But unfortunately, only one ATM had any vision.
15:02That was the ANZ ATM at Windsor.
15:06The footage was from above.
15:08It wasn't from directly on.
15:12And it was grainy, dark footage.
15:20But it did provide us vision of a male
15:25completing a transaction
15:28at the same time as a withdrawal was made against the account.
15:36The footage allowed us to see that he was roughly late 40s, 50s.
15:41He smoked. Very, very, very important.
15:44We looked back at the ash on the floor in the home.
15:49Sufficient for us to say that this is our man.
15:53But who is he?
16:04We now had some footage of a male.
16:07Roughly late 40s, 50s.
16:10A smoker completing a transaction
16:14at the same time as a withdrawal was made against the account.
16:21This is our man.
16:24But we still didn't know who this person was.
16:27Without an ID, we couldn't move forward.
16:30So we circled back to see who might have fallen through the cracks.
16:34And the only person we hadn't looked at properly was Peter Johnson.
16:38So I sat down at the computer
16:40and as I was doing the background checks,
16:42all of a sudden it dawned on me
16:44that his car was registered to a Riverstone post office box
16:48and an ATM at Riverstone had been used with the stolen cards.
16:53This is very coincidental.
16:55So I sent off his phone records
16:58and it was then that I realised
17:00that he hadn't left the state two weeks earlier.
17:03He'd actually left the state
17:05actually after the very last transaction on the Monday morning
17:08after the murders had been committed.
17:12So at that point in time, we looked at Johnson's criminal history.
17:17While he had no convictions on the current computerised system,
17:21we did find some alarming information on an older microfilm system.
17:37We identified that Johnson had been acquitted
17:40of a strangulation murder back in the 70s.
17:44We found he had been acquitted
17:47based on some failings of fingerprint evidence.
17:52Quite clearly, we were now well and truly targeting Peter Johnson.
17:56So we had to find out more about him.
18:04We began by visiting Peter Johnson's ex-wife.
18:08She couldn't have been more accommodating.
18:10She spoke about the history of the relationship and how it broke down.
18:14She said he was very bad with money.
18:16It was apparent that he was a womaniser.
18:20He had a number of relationships, ex-marital.
18:25And I think that his infidelity with his wife
18:28also affected the relationship with his daughter
18:31because she didn't really like him either.
18:34And I said to her,
18:36do you think your husband would be the sort of person to murder someone?
18:39And she looked at me straight in the eye and thought for a second
18:42and she said, I'm not sure.
18:45And I thought, well, that's not the answer I expected.
18:49And that's when she told me that a number of weeks earlier
18:53she'd actually seen a sawn-off shotgun in a drawer in the house
18:56that had since disappeared, as Peter had disappeared too.
19:01So that was concerning to us that he may have been armed as well.
19:05We were able to identify that he was currently in a relationship
19:09with another woman by the name of Patricia Ingray.
19:12So we approached Patricia.
19:16She hadn't given us much at all.
19:18She said that he had gone to Queensland a couple of weeks before the murders.
19:21She didn't know where he was living.
19:23Well, that was the first lot of incorrect information,
19:26that he'd left the state two weeks beforehand.
19:28Because his ex-wife had actually told us
19:31that she received a phone call from him
19:34and he said he was at the Hoylton Hotel in South Australia.
19:41What's Peter Johnson doing in Hoylton?
19:44A very small town in the South Australian Greenbelt.
19:49I'm Brian Rolfe. This is my wife, Avril Diane Rolfe.
19:54And in 2005, we decided to buy a hotel in South Australia
20:00in a place called Hoylton.
20:04The reason why we went to the Hoylton was I looked on the internet
20:10and the building was like my grandad's farm in Wales, in England.
20:16Big stone walls and windowsill.
20:21And when we went to see it, it was the building that sold it.
20:27Loved it to be, he says.
20:29Absolutely beautiful it was.
20:31And it's only like a very small village it was.
20:34There's probably only about 60 people living there.
20:38Yeah, so we loved it.
20:40When we got there, we didn't realise it had a restaurant.
20:44Oh, yeah.
20:45And, I mean, I was a hairdresser and a farmer,
20:48so I suddenly had to become the chef.
20:52And because I can cook, like, whatever's in the pantry,
20:56I throw it together and make it taste nice.
20:59I actually became quite famous there, didn't I?
21:03Diane was doing like 20 or 30 meals of a night at a time.
21:07That was like hard work and long hours.
21:10You don't get that much sleep, you know?
21:12And then in the morning, you have to do it all again.
21:15That's like about seven days a week.
21:18And on the end, it just got too much.
21:20We said, oh, well, the best thing we can do with this
21:23is put it up for sale.
21:25We was probably only there about three months
21:28and that's when we started advertising it.
21:42Peter Johnson came over to inspect the pub.
21:48And he came in and he looked like a perfect businessman,
21:53dressed very smart, sort of very...
21:57a know-all.
21:59It's a good way.
22:01And he stayed for dinner.
22:04And then he said,
22:07oh, by the way, I'll take the pub.
22:12Just like that.
22:15So we thought, oh, we've sold it, this is really good,
22:19and that's when the fun started.
22:22Well, in the beginning, it's just like a normal, you know,
22:26like a normal person doing a normal transaction.
22:29The price of the pub and everything was fine.
22:32And then he wanted to have a long time before he had the settlement
22:37and he kept saying he'd bring the money and didn't.
22:45SIREN WAILS
22:51Things wasn't going too well.
22:54He hardly spoke to me or he didn't want really nothing to do with me.
22:59So that was where I got suspicious of him.
23:02So we terminated the deal.
23:15Sent a letter to Peter Johnson terminating the contract
23:19on the 19th of September.
23:26I can remember Peter Johnson,
23:29he phoned me up on the 24th of September and he says to me,
23:33he says, I've got the $10,000 in cash.
23:38He emphasised to me he had the money in cash.
23:45SIREN WAILS
23:54In early November 2005, Johnson's ex-wife told us
23:58that she had recently received a phone call from her ex-husband
24:02in Hoylton, South Australia.
24:06We wanted to know what he was doing there.
24:09So we asked the police in South Australia
24:12for some discreet inquiries.
24:15And they came back with some very interesting information.
24:20Johnson was staying at the hotel and was in negotiations
24:24with the owners, Brian and Diane Rolfe,
24:27to purchase the Hoylton Hotel.
24:31Things were starting to make a little bit more sense to us now.
24:35Could it be that the purchase of the hotel had a relevance
24:41or a relationship to our homicides?
24:45If so, what was that link?
24:50News came through from South Australia
24:52that Johnson had stalled on the payment for the hotel.
24:55Until September the 26th, when out of the blue,
24:59he produced $10,000.
25:05He emphasised to me he had the money in cash.
25:08I said, well, look, Pete, I said, it's been terminated,
25:11but now you buy it on my terms, OK?
25:14I want the $10,000 in cash with no messing around, OK?
25:21He had nothing. There was no cash available.
25:25$10,000 had suddenly come into his possession
25:29after many months of negotiations.
25:33Where did he come up with the money?
25:36The termination notice on the 19th of September
25:40sent Johnson into a spin.
25:42He didn't have the money,
25:44but he wasn't a man to take no for an answer,
25:47and he really wanted the hotel.
25:49And I believe that was the catalyst for the murders.
25:53He was pretty much put on the spot.
25:55He had to get money and he had to get it fast,
25:57and the only people he knew he could probably get it from
25:59was the users.
26:02It was our belief that Johnson murdered Anna and Ian
26:05on September 23,
26:07and using their bank cards,
26:09he started withdrawing cash from nearby ATMs.
26:14We believe that over the three days
26:17from the 23rd of September to the 26th of September,
26:21he came up with $12,400 withdrawals from ATMs.
26:26And he'd come on the 26th,
26:30and he paid Diane the $10,000 in cash.
26:36It was late at night,
26:39but he was not the same Peter.
26:44He looked awful.
26:46Dear, dear, dear, and I said to him,
26:48you poor man,
26:50you know, because he'd had a nervous breakdown, hadn't he?
26:52So he told me, well, he looked like he'd had half a dozen.
26:58So now we had a motive,
27:01and Johnson's sudden cash flow linked him to the ATM transactions.
27:06But that wasn't enough to arrest him.
27:09We needed to link Johnson to the DNA profiles
27:12obtained from the ligatures used to restrain Ian and Anna.
27:17To make that link, we needed Johnson's DNA.
27:20But that was a problem, because Johnson was still in Hoylton.
27:26Unfortunately for us, the nature of legislation,
27:29as it was at that time in South Australia,
27:31made obtaining a covert sample of Johnson's DNA impossible.
27:36That couldn't be done.
27:39And what we came up with, we hoped would work in our favour,
27:43was what we call familiar DNA.
27:46By obtaining a sample of Johnson's ex-wife's DNA
27:51and seeking her approval and that of her daughter
27:54to obtain a DNA profile from her,
27:57we could establish whether or not Johnson,
28:02as the biological father,
28:04was the contributor of the DNA at our crime scene.
28:08Thankfully, Johnson's ex-wife and his daughter
28:11both agreed that the DNA profile
28:13Johnson's ex-wife and his daughter
28:15both agreed to provide us with DNA samples.
28:20And from there on, it was a matter of just waiting
28:23until those results came back from the lab.
28:35On the 17th of November, we were advised
28:39that the DNA profile from the scarf around Ian's neck
28:43yielded a DNA profile matching Johnson's.
28:48It was enough to allow me to go to the court
28:51and seek a warrant for his arrest.
28:53We flew to Adelaide that night
28:55and we met with the major crime squad in Adelaide at about midnight.
28:59South Australia Police were already on the job
29:02watching for Peter Johnson.
29:04And the next morning, we were up early, travelled to Hoylton.
29:10The 18th of November was the day of settlement
29:13and we should have settled that day.
29:16He left about quarter to eight in the morning, took his briefcase.
29:21And I thought, oh, it's the day of settlement,
29:24where's Peter going, quarter to eight in the morning?
29:28So, with that, I've gone and looked in his room.
29:32I've gone and looked in his room.
29:34I've gone and looked in his room.
29:36So, with that, I've gone and looked in his room.
29:40And I've noticed all the pictures are down off the wall,
29:43what you put on the wall, everything's packed in his room.
29:47Like, you can see he was leaving, you know?
29:50He's gone.
29:53We were listening to the radio communications
29:55between the South Australia Police
29:57and they'd followed him to a place called Auburn.
30:00And all of a sudden, one of the operatives said,
30:02I've lost him, I've lost him.
30:04And we've gone, oh, no.
30:07So, we're waiting and waiting, then the other one goes,
30:09mate, can't find him, I can't find him, he's gone somewhere.
30:16And as this happened, we crested a hill on the road
30:20and here's Johnson on the side of the road
30:22answering the call of nature.
30:25So, two carloads of detectives pull up,
30:27guns out and arrest him at gunpoint
30:30and he didn't flinch, he just...
30:34..didn't even acknowledge that we were there.
30:38The police rang Brian the day of settlement
30:42and said, we're bringing Peter in at four o'clock
30:46to collect his stuff.
30:48So, Brian, we said, oh, goodness me, you know,
30:51what's all this about?
30:54So, I'm standing by the door, it's come in.
30:57Peter in handcuffs.
31:00I said, they tell me, what has Peter done?
31:03But we still didn't know, you know.
31:06He said he'd done a double homicide.
31:10When he said that, I'll tell you what,
31:12I nearly fell on the floor.
31:15That was actually a shock, that was a big shock.
31:22They had the hotel up for sale for a number of months
31:24and they'd been liaising with Peter Johnson
31:26in regards to the sale and he pretty much
31:28freeloaded the whole time he was there.
31:30He had friends come down, I think his girlfriend,
31:32Patricia Ingray, came down at one stage with her brother
31:36and spent a week there.
31:38They drank the alcohol, they ate the food,
31:40he used all their appliances and stuff down there,
31:43all on the pretext that one day I'm going to buy this joint
31:46and take over, so it's OK, don't worry about the bills.
31:48But he never did.
31:50So, I think the Rolfs, by the time they finished with him,
31:53they were about probably $30,000 out of pocket.
32:06A major development tonight in the investigation
32:08into the murder of a couple at Maroota
32:10in Sydney's outer north-west,
32:12police today arresting a 52-year-old man north of Adelaide.
32:1760-year-old Ian Hughes and his wife Anna
32:19were found strangled in their home in late September
32:22before they were released.
32:40So, once we're back in Sydney,
32:42Johnson was held on remand until his case could be heard.
32:48On 10 December, some three weeks after his arrest,
32:51he sent a letter to his daughter.
32:53She had provided her DNA,
32:55which linked her father to the South Maroota crime scene.
32:58Johnson's letter, in my opinion, reveals his true character.
33:05Your actions over the last couple of months
33:08have made me realise how much you must hate me and despise me.
33:13I hope the reasoning behind the decisions you have made were your own
33:19and not suggested or recommended by others
33:22for their own self-serving purposes.
33:25I have nothing to hide.
33:27My mind is clear and I sleep well at night.
33:30Sadly, however, my future is now in the hands of others
33:33as a consequence of your mother's bitterness,
33:36vindictiveness and selfishness,
33:38the police's preconceived ideas and self-serving speculation
33:42and, finally, your ill-informed actions.
33:45Goodbye. I hope you have a good life.
33:48Goodbye.
33:52What does that tell you?
33:54He has absolutely no remorse for what he's done at all
33:57and he's blaming his predicament on his wife and his daughter.
34:01They're the ones that fought for all of this, for him being in jail.
34:04Had that DNA proved that he wasn't the offender,
34:07he wouldn't have been in the situation he was.
34:10It could have exonerated him.
34:12But as it turned out, it didn't.
34:19So, Patricia Ingray, the partner of Johnson,
34:23had been interviewed and provided a statement early on in the inquiry,
34:29which just gave us background as to Johnson and their relationship.
34:34And we're notified from the defence
34:36that Ingray was willing to provide an alibi
34:40for the murder of Johnson.
34:42We're notified from the defence
34:44that Ingray was willing to provide an alibi statement to us.
34:52Essentially, that he was with her at the time the murders
34:55are believed to have taken place on the morning of the 23rd
34:59and even going through to the 26th of September,
35:03that he couldn't have been where we said he was
35:06because he was somewhere else.
35:08That's the evidence that she provided.
35:12And it was now up to us to disprove that alibi.
35:16We believed we had the answer.
35:20One of those details that we had been working towards
35:24were what we refer to as mobile cell tower dumps.
35:29A mobile phone to work has to be talking to a cell tower.
35:33It has to be sending a signal back and forth to the network
35:37in order to receive calls.
35:40So, with our colleagues at Telstra,
35:43we identified relevant cell towers within the area,
35:47what mobile phones were talking to particular cell towers
35:52at the relevant points.
35:54We were able to establish that the mobile phone,
35:58in Johnson's name, is bouncing off the towers
36:02in close proximity to each of the ATMs
36:07at the times that transactions are taking place.
36:11That information was provided to the defence
36:15in the days leading up to the trial
36:18and would have absolutely thrown a cat amongst the pigeons.
36:23We needed to lean on that evidence
36:25because the CCTV we had was contestable.
36:29It showed the killer withdrawing money from an ANZ ATM in Windsor.
36:34It was our assertion that man was Peter Johnson.
36:38However, the quality was grainy
36:40and the images were captured from above.
36:43The man was a smoker. So was Johnson.
36:47But the image was not deemed to be sharp enough
36:50to confirm our assertion.
37:05The defence case rested on pretty much that we had the wrong man
37:09and Patricia Ingray would give evidence in relation to alibis for him.
37:15She had a very uncomfortable day in the witness box.
37:19Reliance upon Ingray as an alibi
37:23was compromised due to the evidence
37:27that we'd established from the mobile phone records linked to the ATM.
37:32It had rendered it a lie, basically.
37:35It just couldn't be true.
37:37The records were so strong against her evidence
37:41that it was almost comical.
37:45It is a brave move for an accused to put themselves in the witness box.
37:50They have no obligation to do so.
37:52Now, Johnson hadn't said anything to us at any point.
37:56He had a theory as to why his DNA was on the items used as liquid evidence.
38:03He had a theory as to why his DNA was on the items used as liquid evidence.
38:08He had a theory as to why his DNA was on the items used as liquid evidence.
38:13He had a theory as to why his DNA was on the items used as liquid evidence.
38:16He had a theory as to why his DNA was on the items used as liquid evidence.
38:19And that was that he had done cleaning within the house.
38:23And he said this with a straight face.
38:27A man who'd been employed to conduct some gardening,
38:32mowing of lawns, odd handyman work,
38:35had also been asked to go through the clothing cupboards,
38:41the drawers, rearrange Ian's ties,
38:45and over a period of time that allowed his DNA to remain there in such quantities,
38:51that's how the DNA came to be there.
38:54The Crown Prosecutor accused him of fabricating his story,
38:58but he didn't faze Johnson.
39:02He was always calm through his evidence.
39:05He was always quite controlled.
39:08There was just that arrogance about him
39:11as to how he was smarter than the rest of us.
39:15The family were absolutely irreparable.
39:18They couldn't believe what he was saying
39:20because they knew that their mother would not let him touch her fineries at all.
39:24But with the prosecution case closed at that point,
39:28we couldn't reintroduce them to say,
39:31no, that wouldn't have happened.
39:33So we just had to sit there and listen to Peter,
39:36At the end of the trial, the jurors retired to consider their verdict.
39:41We'd put our best case forward.
39:43It was a circumstantial case, but a strong one.
39:48Now it was up to the jury.
39:51You can never be confident as to which way a jury is going to go in a matter.
39:58We had no direct evidence.
40:00We had no one to say that they saw him at the scene,
40:02no one to say they saw him leaving the scene.
40:05But the circumstantial evidence we had was very strong.
40:09We had no direct evidence.
40:11We had no direct evidence.
40:13We had no direct evidence.
40:15We had no direct evidence.
40:17But the circumstantial evidence we had was good,
40:20like DNA and the phone towers,
40:23and that was mainly what our case was resting on.
40:26Did we establish enough to the jury
40:29that Johnson was responsible for this crime?
40:34The trusted handyman and gardener has been found guilty
40:38of killing the couple who employed him
40:40at their Maroota home in Sydney's north-west.
40:43The verdict not only brought relief to the victim's family,
40:46Johnson's ex-wife was also jubilant.
40:50My heart goes out to the deceased's family,
40:53but thrilled with the outcome.
40:57Thankfully, he was convicted of all crimes,
41:01two homicides, 14 financial fraudulent transactions
41:06and two counts of theft.
41:09Johnson sat in a dock shuffling papers the whole time.
41:13The judge, His Honour Judge Wheelie, gave the sentence.
41:17Justice Wheelie said Mr and Mrs Hughes died in great fear
41:21and distress at the hands of someone they trusted.
41:24He said the killings were so wicked, cruel and extreme
41:28that only life sentences were appropriate.
41:31Two life imprisonments,
41:34with the condition that he serve those two convictions
41:38by way of his natural life.
41:4053-year-old Peter Johnson showed no emotion
41:43in the Supreme Court this morning
41:45as he learned that he'll die in jail.
41:47There was a case to someone to get a life sentence.
41:50Two premeditated murders of that type, this has got to be the one.
41:53We can now start to concentrate on our happy memories of them
41:56and not the terrible way in which it all ended.
42:00You know, those poor people,
42:03oh, finding them like that is just awful.
42:09I feel that it was a good decision.
42:13I felt safe knowing that he's not coming out
42:19and the detectives, they did a brilliant job, really.
42:25Absolutely fabulous.
42:27You've got to commend them, you know, for catching him
42:31and for keeping a man like that off the streets.
42:35They've done a wonderful job, wonderful job.
42:40When the trial adjourned and the family left the court,
42:44they went across the road to an establishment
42:47near the Supreme Court and Paul and I,
42:49and about probably an hour or so later,
42:51we went across to the establishment to speak with the family,
42:54to see how they were, and as the lift opened,
42:57the family stood up at their table and gave us a standing ovation.
43:01Yeah, makes it all worthwhile.
43:05MUSIC
43:35The double homicides are rare in themselves,
43:38so to be able to secure a conviction
43:41in a relative short period of time
43:44was hugely satisfying for me as an individual,
43:47but more importantly for the team investigators.
43:50These matters are not one person or two people.
43:54It's a team effort in all respects.
43:57And that goes back to the crime scene
44:00and the work done by the forensic investigators
44:03through to the Crown prosecutors who put the matter to the trial.
44:08And all these pieces came together, thankfully,
44:11to form a picture that a jury was able to go away with
44:15and say, that is complete.
44:33CLICK