A cast recommend podcasts we love. This is not Without My Sister. The podcast where two sisters from Kildare, Ireland, now live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and have lots of things to do with their time, but decided to do a podcast instead. We talk about the time Beatrice got kidnapped by a man who looked like Santa, and then tried to squeeze her into his ex-wife's poochy pants to no avail, and not to be outdone the time that Rosemarie dawned her best Game of Thrones larping costume and showed up on some unsuspecting handsome boy's doorway. It was not even that handsome. I'm trying to woo him This and more can be yours, not without my sister. Acast is home to the world's best podcasts, including In the News from the Irish Times, Irish History Podcast, and the one you're listening to right now. This podcast contains content that may be upsetting to some listeners. Before continuing, please prioritize your own wellbeing and mental health. Please check the show notes for more detailed descriptions of the episodes. Hey, love. Hey, Claire. I have just been around at Louise's old address speaking to locals, and I need your help with something.

Sure. I don't know I don't know if there's anything in this, but it could be important. I need you to go online and tell me if you can find anything at all in relation to another body being found in Darabin Creek. Only a couple of years ago. Okay, you have my attention now. Body in Darabin Creek. What's coming up? All right. Okay. Man's body being found in a creek. Body was found in Darrobin Creek at Bellfield. After reports, it was found floating in the water. Circumstances yet to be determined. Wow. If that's true, that someone was found in Darrobin Creek a couple of years ago, you are not going to believe what else I was told about that story. That individual was also last seen leaving Louise's old address. No way. What What difference is that? Two people leave the same address, and both of them end up dead in Darrobin Creek. Episode 9, She's Not the Only One. As we press on with the investigation, the discovery of another body in Darrobin Creek, who was also last seen leaving Louise's old address, is a shocking and unexpected development. This raises the question, although 10 years apart, could these two incidents be intertwined?

Are we dealing with something resembling a copycat killing? Or is this just an astonishing coincidence? As Claire was able to find, in 2021, news of a male body found afloat in Darrobin Creek spread as far as newspapers interstate. Unlike Louisa's case, this time, the police were reportedly more cautious in their initial assessment, and the article indicated that they were actively working to establish if the death was suspicious. Out of respect for the family's wishes, I'll be referring to this man by the alias Jacob. Like Louisa, Jacob was only in his 20s at the time of his passing, and while they didn't know each other, had Louisa still been alive in 2021, then it's quite possible their paths may have crossed. They hung around people who shared similar groups of friends, but this is a pretty standard thing in the Preston Reservoir area. After Louisa's death, the social housing unit she lived in with Joe was vacated, and an associate of Jacob moved in. That's who Jacob had been visiting the night he was last seen alive and had left their place in the early hours of the morning. Similar to Louisa, what happened after he left the unit remains a bit of a mystery, other than the eventual discovery of his body over two weeks later in Darroban Creek.

Through conversations with Jacob's grieving family and delving deeper into the details of his case privately, the poignant truth The truth is that beyond a truly extraordinary coincidence, there doesn't appear to be any concrete link between his story and Louise's. Despite this lack of connection, I believe Jacob's story still holds value in helping Louise's case. Although a decade separates these two tragedies, by looking at them side by side, perhaps it can help us understand how investigative approaches have evolved over this period of time. From what I've learned about Jacob, he's been remembered as a kind-hearted young man who would always go above and beyond for his friends. His family told me that if Jacob had known his story could contribute to helping find answers to Louise's death, he would have willingly lent his support. We'll touch on Jacob's case again later. But first, let's look into the broader history of bodies found in Darrobin Creek, which goes beyond these two incidents. In my research into deaths at the creek, I wanted to understand how frequently these events were occurring and the circumstances surrounding them. It's interesting because Darrobin Creek actually stretches out for some distance. We're talking over 30 kilometers through the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

But despite its length, there's a surprisingly low incidence of reported deaths in it. Looking at a time span of over 150 years, from 1870 to present day, there have been just 30 documented fatalities, including that of Louisa and Jacob. From these, the majority of deaths occurred before the year 1964 and were mainly children. Some of these early records point to drownings in a particularly deep part of the creek, known historically as the Devil's Hole. This spot was once a populous swimming area and had depths exceeding three meters, almost triple what we would usually see in the creek nowadays before it was filled in. Post-1960s, changes in Darabin Creek, including a decrease in the overall water level and more public awareness of water safety, likely contributed to the vast reduction in these tragic incidents. But this is also where things become interesting. From the records I've been able to uncover, after 1964, there have only been six reports of bodies found in and around Darroban Creek. Half of these were found to be homicide. Of note, all homicide victims were female. Tragically, one of these was a child whose mother was found guilty of infanticide after taking her 15-month-old daughter down to the park, smothering her and rolling her into the Creek.

In another grim case, dismembered body parts of a 20-year-old female were discovered in Parklands near the Creek, with investigations revealing she was killed elsewhere and later disposed of in two different locations. Then, in 2012, less than a year after Louisa, the body of a female was found in the Creek encased in a nylon bag. Her mother-in-law was later convicted of murdering her at home with a hammer before stuffing her body in a wheeling bin and pushing it down to the creek. Beyond these three homicide cases, there were three other deaths in or around Darrobin Creek after the 1960s. This, of course, was Louisa, Jacob, and an adult male found in 1997 who had been on day leave from a nearby mental health facility. This is where Louisa's death stands out. Since 1964, not If only is she the only female whose death wasn't classified as a homicide, hers seems to be the only case that could be attributed to drowning. In contrast, the deaths of the two males, one a decade before and the other a decade after Louise's, were recorded as unassetained. This means the forensic pathologist couldn't conclusively determine their cause of death.

So Why was drowning suspected in Louise's case, but not in the others?

One of the hallmarks of drowning is a lot of water in the chest cavity, in the airways themselves, and possibly in the stomach, too. Now, if all those things are present, and if, for example, there are other things, like even witnesses, yes, well, then the pathologist would be happy to say, Drounding. Now, in the absence of all those things, you look at what else it could be. Is there anything else that could have caused death, or what else was going on, or presence of natural disease, things like that. But in the absence, again, of anything else, and you've been told by the authorities that this body was found in the water, then it is consistent with drowning. It's not quite the same as drowning, per se. It's the next best thing, if you like.

This is Dr. Sherry Robertson. Back in 2011, when Louisa passed away, Dr. Robertson was working as a forensic pathologist at the Victorian Forensic Institute of Medicine. This is the same organization that handled Louisa's autopsy. Dr. Robertson had left just prior to Louisa's death and was not involved in her case at all. But regardless, I still think her experience and background in forensic pathology at this time is valuable. What's the difference between consistent with drowning and unassetained?

Well, that is that there's pretty much nothing to find. There may not be any witness statements or where the body was found or something like that. But again, complete absence of natural disease, of injuries, everything else. Now you haven't even got a suggestion of drowning, so you'd say unassetained.

This is how I'm starting to interpret interpret this. Since Joe claimed he saw Louisa running towards the creek, this supports the theory she must have somehow entered the water, which in turn helps support her death being consistent with drowning. But since there were no witnesses who saw either of the males headed towards the creek, their cause of death remained unassertained. Okay, maybe it's not as straightforward as this, but it does appear to have played a part in it. Dr. Robertson and I also spoke about the presence of fluid in Louise's pleural cavities.

Now, that's a fair bit of fluid there. There shouldn't actually be any discernible fluid there.

This is helpful to know, as it's possible this was how it was interpreted in 2011. Although in concluding Louise's death was consistent with drowning, no note was made in the summary of her having fluid in her pleural cavities. Now, over 10 years later, it looks like a less definitive approach is taken. I've seen a more recent autopsy report where a body removed from water had fluid in their pleural cavities, yet their cause of death remained unassetained. Intriguingly, a medical study conducted in 2016 has shed new light on this phenomenon, revealing that the presence of fluid in the pleural cavities is not a definitive indicator of drowning. Our conversation then turned towards how much information forensic pathologists were generally provided in 2011 when it came to the deceased background, particularly if they had a history of domestic violence.

It would depend, I guess, a bit on the circumstances surrounding the finding or the location of the body If the police were looking to mount an investigation, whether there was a suggestion of domestic violence and if it was related to a cause of death in any way, yeah.

Would that normally appear in the death form 83 that police would provide?

I believe it would. Again, I haven't seen one of those forms for some time, but that's usually filled out by the officer finding the body or related to the police who found the body. If they were concerned about the issue of domestic violence, that would normally be documented there, I would think, yeah.

You would have heard me refer to the Police Report of Death or the Form 83. This is the document prepared by the investigating police officer when attending a sudden or unexplained death. This in turn is given to the forensic pathologist to assist them with completing their paperwork and is ultimately part of the documents provided to the coroner. As a summary, the Form 83 provides all the necessary background about the deceased. Aside from what can be discovered during the autopsy, it's this form that provides an important aid to the forensic pathologist about who the deceased was and the circumstances leading up to their death. As part of research for this podcast, we have attempted to access as much as we can about Louise's case. The Form 83 has not been made available to us or to Louise's family, so we can only speculate what information was or wasn't provided on this form. When it comes to Louisa's history of being a victim of domestic violence and her attempt at leaving the country on the day she died, we just don't know whether this information was provided to the forensic pathologist before his report was concluded. A passing comment from Dr Robertson also caught my attention after asking her what questions she recalled were included as part of this form.

We're trying to get our hands on this death form 83 to understand what's in it. I guess from your recollection, do you remember how many pages it would be? Was it a detailed report?

No, it wasn't a detailed report. It was usually a paragraph. There are other parts of it that had the name and address and all that stuff. Yes, it was usually the circumstances was a section of it, and that was just a brief summary of the circumstances surrounding finding the deceased person.

We will be back after a short break. So there it was. Although we can't confirm it, it seems unlikely that the Form 83 would have provided the forensic pathologist with a detailed history of Louisa's relationship and the apparent breakdown of it leading up to her death. What had been identified through toxicology results was Louise most likely smoked cannabis in close proximity to her death. At odds to this, there was no record of methamphetamine in her system. Louisa was a regular user of cannabis, so finding the main ingredient THC in her system was no surprise. But having no methamphetamine in her system was a bit of a mystery, given George had confirmed they had smoked some earlier that day. There's a few possibilities why this was the case, but as Dr Robertson and I continued to chat, she offered some other food for thought.

Can I just ask you one thing? Did she live near the Dareban Creek?

Yes.

She did?

She did, yes.

Did she often go wandering along the creek? No. No. Yes. Well, it's just possible that if she went for a walk, that she's not thinking clearly because of the THC, or particularly if it's combined with amphetamines. Yes, she may have just stumbled or walked somewhere where she wouldn't have fallen in.

I guess for us is that we believe the creep was at a level where she could have just stood up and walked out, though. It doesn't look like there's anything to indicate that she had any injury that would cause her to be incapacitated by falling in. We're definitely exploring that option.

Yeah.

I guess, on an autopsy, have you ever seen an instance where someone's being asphyxiated and it hasn't shown up on autopsy?

No, there's usually quite significant signs.

Okay. Can you recall any of those typical signs you'd see?

I always tend to see what's described as pinpoint hemorrhages in the skin of the eyes. There may be a similar hemorrhage in the lungs or depending on how the asphyxia was produced, pressure around the neck or if something was held over the face. Again, you'd expect to see some injuries, and you'd also expect to see some injury with someone struggling to get out of whatever was causing it.

With those types, like the pinpoints in the eyes, would that have been affected by decomposition?

Yes, and the lungs.

Okay. There is a potential that wasn't showing up by the time they found Louisa?

Yeah.

Okay. Here we are at a crossroads in our investigation. American specialists have offered one perspective while Australian counterparts present another. It's a clear example of the often perplexing nature of aquatic death investigations. The expert you choose to to lead an autopsy or analyze a case like this can in turn alter the narrative. Different experts, different beliefs. This led me to Dr. Thomas Young from Kansas City, Missouri. He's a forensic pathologist, but also the author of the Sherlock Effect. I'll let him explain.

I'm a forensic pathologist, trained in forensic pathology back in 1988. One of my major professional interests is the application of logic to forensic inference. In other words, how to determine what happened and who's responsible for what happened from forensic evidence.

When queried about his reproach towards determining cause of death, he explained.

Let me explain it this way. One cannot reliably surmise past events from physical evidence unless there is only one plausible explanation for that evidence. In other words, you can't do an autopsy and you can't perform toxicology and find out from them what happened in the past. You can't do it. Now, Sherlock Holmes could have done it, but that's fiction. How in the world is this autopsy report and this toxicology report going to tell you what happened to her in the past? Answer, it can't. You need to have some a narrative. It needs to be an account of what she did first and then what she did next and what she did later. If you don't have a continuous narrative or anything close to a continuous narrative, then you don't know what happened. If that information never comes, the case is undetermined, manner of death, undetermined.

I agree with Dr. Young here. In terms of a narrative, the strongest timeline for Louisa's movements ends around 8:44 PM, when she made a call at the neighbors that can be verified through both the neighbors' statement and phone call records. Beyond that, only one individual is providing an account of events, and that account does not appear from what we've seen to have been cooperated through other means. Added to this, it also lacks any eyewitness account of Louisa seeing entering the water. When it comes to Dr. Young's thoughts on the finding consistent with drowning.

Okay, well, you know what consistent with drowning means? It means it's consistent with what I believe it is. That would be like me taking a container of cream cheese and holding it up next to the moon during a night time. Imagine me holding up a container of cream cheese next to the moon, and I'd say, Look at that. This is consistent consistent with my belief that the moon is made of cream cheese. Is that ridiculous? Okay, that's what it is like to say that this case is consistent with drowning. Anytime you say consistent with something you believe, It is a meaningless statement. It has no meaning. Who saw her drown? Okay, now somebody came up with a statement, and they said, I saw her, and she fell into this big drain. It was really stormy, and the The rain was pouring down, and she fell through a manhole that was left open, and she got sucked down, and then her body is found there in the creek, and she's all bruised up and all this thing. Then you could say, Well, that is consistent with that witness account, right? Things that were actually seen. This happened, and then this happened, and this happened.

You do the autopsy, and you see all these injuries, and you see all that you see in the autopsy. Now, you could say, This is consistent with what person A said. See, that's not a belief. Those are facts because he observed them. If you're testing the witness account, then you'd say, Well, does the autopsy and the toxicology make sense with what this man said, or does it not? This is why one can be reasonably certain if witness accounts of the past are consistent or not consistent with physical evidence in the present. See, that's not a belief. That is something observed. That would be a fact. If you want to test that fact or facts, then you would compare the autopsy and the toxicology to what witnesses said. But if you don't have any witness accounts, you can't reliably surmise past events from physical evidence. See, this is like the witness accounts are on. Let's say you have two plus 2 equals 4. The witness accounts are like 2 plus 2. They said this happened, and then this happened. You could go on from that. You could look at that and you could see the witness accounts add up to four, or they don't add up to four.

But what you can't do is you can't solve blank plus blank equals four.

It's fair to say that in Louisa's case, the witness accounts don't equal for. There is not a single witness who saw Louisa enter the water that night. Added to this, no one saw her struggling in the water. She had no obvious injuries to suggest she got in trouble in the water, and it was a calm night. Even with Joe's claim of seeing her headed towards the creek, our own tests have suggested that from his claimed vantage point, Louisa could have potentially gone in various directions.

But you have all kinds of events in this case that are unaccounted for. Nobody has witnessed anything. If somebody hasn't seen it, then you don't know. The only thing you can do is guess and make statements like consistent with drowning, which don't make any sense because nobody saw her drown.

Nobody saw her drown. Referring back to the death of Jacob in 2021 and the other adult male in 1997, nobody saw them drown either. Their bodies were both found in Darrobin Creek, but no one saw them entering it alive. Both of their deaths were recorded as unassetained, yet Louisa's was consistent with drowning. How were they able to conclude Louisa most likely drowned, but yet couldn't come to the same conclusion in the case of the two males. Did it simply come down to a different approach by the forensic pathologist? This brings us to the pivotal new piece of evidence in our investigation, the depth of the creek at the time Louisa is believed to have entered it. Included in the Form 83 and given to the forensic pathologist was the information that there had been heavy rainfall in the days prior to Louisa entering the water. While If this is correct, our investigation revealed the water levels would have only been around knee to thigh depth at the time she entered. Assuming she was conscious and capable, the creek would have been shallow enough for her to just stand up and walk out. Based on this, the theories of accidental drowning or a deliberate act of suicide become even harder to accept.

To delve deeper into this, I also spoke with Professor John Perne, a distinguished Australian authority and drowning research. Is it even possible to drown in water at these levels?

Certainly, a conscious normal woman would not drown in 40 centers of meters of water unless they were demented or there was some other medical cause for it, if they were paralyzed, for example, or something like that. We do know that drowning in fishponds and pools in dementia homes and so on does occur in Australia. But it's It's a rare but tragic death when it occurs. But these are people who are demented or who are physically so frail, they can't get out of very shallow water if they've fallen in. But if a woman was completely fit and well and fully conscious and was not drunk or hadn't taken an overdose of pills, it's very unlikely indeed that she would drown in 40 centimeters of water.

Professor Perne raised a good point about a drug overdose. Exploring this theory more closely cannabis was found in Louise's system at the time of autopsy, a substance she used regularly. Yet, her toxicology report doesn't suggest any other drugs, not even the methamphetamine she allegedly had with George earlier that day. While it's rare, it is technically possible to overdose on cannabis. However, they don't usually result in life-threatening situations, unlike overdoses of other drugs such as heroine, where you may see someone become unconscious. I'm Joe told, cannabis overdoses typically appear in the form of panic attacks, hallucinations, or confusion. This could explain how she may have entered the water, but it still doesn't seem to explain how she couldn't get out. We also know that when Joe returned home the night Louisa went missing, he told police they had a minor argument, and during that, she had made a strange comment about someone coming to get her before her alleged dash out the door and run towards the creek. Despite no other witnesses that day reporting Louisa acting strangely, could she have smoked enough cannabis after visiting the neighbor to cause her to become paranoid and hallucinate?

Yes, it's possible, just like a few other possibilities. Dr. Young.

What if she was drugged? Then you could strangle her, and then you wouldn't leave any marks. What if she was drugged with something that doesn't show up on their toxicology screen. I'm being imaginative, okay? I'm writing detective fiction, but I'm doing it to make a point here that you can't sit there and imagine your way How can you do an answer like this.

While we are being imaginative here, let's also consider that victims of intimate partner violence don't always put up a struggle when a perpetrator is assaulting them. This brings me back to the conversation with medical legal death investigator, Andrea Safers, who pointed out a case where a woman was strangled in the shower and later died, but showed no obvious signs of bruising or injury to her neck. She could have been strangled. She could have been a pillow put over her face.

There's so many different things that could have happened. What the docs don't realize is that women who have been abused, they freeze or flee. They don't fight back.

They often don't fight back.

I know one study show, I think it was 17% of women report that they do not fight back. They just freeze because the cost of fighting back is worse than just letting it happen. If you fight back, it's only going to get worse. So injuries occur from trouble.

Again, we're just being imaginative here and exploring every possible option. We are not suggesting that this is what occurred in Louisa's case or that Joe had any involvement in her death. As we've said in earlier episodes, Joe declined to participate in this podcast, so beyond his statement to police, we don't have his version of events. But let's get back on track. What is certain is that there's no evidence indicating Louisa could have somehow lost consciousness on the banks next to the creek. We know this because the water levels, prior to Joe's alleged sighting of her robe in the water, never rose high enough to uplift her off the bank and sweep her into the creek. Plus, for the drug overdose theory to hold, we must reconcile it with the timeline, starting with Louisa's apparent coherent conversation with her neighbor at 8:44 PM. Next, the alleged argument with Joe when he came home. Joe's claims she then made a determined dash towards the creek, only to then, if the drug overdose theory is correct, to have a sudden, inexplicable disorientation. She would have had to have veered off the path, taken a short navigation through Parklands, descend into the somewhat shallow creek, and then become incapacitated in a way that left no obvious physical signs of injury.

This is a scenario that in all honesty, I'm struggling with, and it appears the experts do as well.

All I'm saying here is the story doesn't make any sense, and as such, it is suspicious. This This is a suspicious story. The family has every reason in the world to be very upset right now. I would be upset if this was a family member of mine.

And so from everything we've reviewed so far, it's clear that the final pieces of Louise's movements on the night she died are still elusive. We have explored various theories, from accidental drowning to the possibility of a drug-induced disorientation, but we're still left with more questions. We've yet to fully explore one theory, though: suicide. Considering the shallow depth of the creek that night, it seems improbable that Louisa would have chosen this option. However, this puzzle remains far from complete. You see, if it's true this wasn't a case of suicide, then how do we explain one of the final entries in her journal being the haunting premonition of her death? Coming up in the final episode of Troubled Waters.

I just got us to call Pappers from Resil Police Station. Can you cease that operation, please?

I'll be honest with you, Julia, you're like the last chance.

Then you just give up. Casefile presents Troubled Waters is written and produced by Julia Robson and Claire McGrahr. Audio production by Mike Magus. Audio editing by Anthony Taufer. Special thanks to Dr. Shalhee Robertson, Dr. Thomas Young, Professor John Perne, and Andrea Sefez. If you need any support regarding any of the topics raised in this podcast, please reach out to services such as Lifeline on 13114, 1800 Respect, or the Men's Referral Service on 1300, 766 491. Listeners outside of outside of Australia should refer to their local services.