Tradie’s mysterious death on roadside likely a homicide
A man has been wrongfully jailed for the death of a young shopkeeper whose body was found on the roadside in a tropical tourist town, but the coroner still insists he was the victim of murder.
Josh Warneke, 21, died of severe head injuries in the early hours of February 26, 2010, after a night out with friends in Broome, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Initial thoughts were that he might have been the victim of a hit-and-run involving a motor vehicle, or that he might have been mugged and left there.
The criminal investigation had problems, but police thought they had solved the case by charging a man with murder in 2012.
He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for manslaughter, but was later acquitted after a police investigation failed to find sufficient evidence.
Gene Gibson, a cognitively disabled Aboriginal man from a remote desert community who spoke little English and could not understand the legal process, was wrongly convicted of causing her death and was imprisoned for almost five years.
The man pleaded guilty to manslaughter after a series of flawed police interviews were deemed inadmissible, leading prosecutors to drop the murder charge.
Mr Gibson was freed in 2017 after appealing his conviction and was paid $1.5 million in damages by the state government.
More than 16 years after the death, Coroner Rosalinda Fogliani ruled that Mr. Warneke was likely the victim of a murder or manslaughter and that the fatal head injury was caused by blunt force trauma from a gun.
“I believe an indictable crime has been committed,” Ms. Fogliani said in her findings published on Monday. he said.
“Josh’s death is the result of an unlawful homicide.”
Mr Warneke received severe blows to the back of his head with a sharp instrument, resulting in a large skull fracture that left him in a pool of blood.
The coroner rejected the theory that the injuries could have been caused by a motor vehicle, saying there was no evidence to support the finding, such as gravel injuries or drag marks.
Ms Fogliani reported the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Adverse findings were made against WA police, including that the force did not have systems in place to investigate complex crimes regionally.
The forensic team was not called to the scene, resulting in samples not being taken and potential contamination of evidence.
The coroner also found failings in police interviews with the man originally charged with murder over Mr Warneke’s death.
Ms Fogliani made four recommendations, including guidance on the preservation of forensic evidence in regional and remote areas.
