Trial by Water

On Father’s Day, 2005, Robert Farquharson crashed his car into a dam. He survived, but his three children who were in the car with him didn’t. At first it seemed like a tragic accident. But quickly, it turned into a murder investigation.

For exclusive content and additional reporting on the case, available to subscribers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, visit theage.com.au/podcast/trialbywater or smh.com...

A day after Robert Farquharson drove his car into the dam with his three sons, the homicide squad took over the investigation. Sceptical of his story and suspecting Farquharson's motive was revenge, they began delving into every aspect of his account.

Had he really coughed and passed out? Or would the evidence show he deliberately steered off the road and into the dam to murder his children?

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There were two key witnesses in the Robert Farquharson case.

The first was Greg King, an old friend of Farquharson, and the story he told provided police with something they desperately wanted for their case - a motive for murder.

The other witness, Dawn Waite, came forward four years after the crash. She said she had actually seen Robert Farquharson on the night of the crash, as he was sizing up his exit from the road.

But how rel...

In the story of Robert Farquharson, there's one thing that’s hardest to understand: his behaviour in the minutes and hours after the crash.

Because on that night, his actions seemed so far outside normal behaviour for a father that the police, the media and the general public all came to the conclusion that he must have murdered his three sons.

But is that true? Or is there some other explanation for his unsettling behaviour that n...

As lawyer Luke McMahon prepares a new fight for Robert Farquharson’s release, we discover something new: that Farquharson and his ex-wife believed that police investigators were trying to pin the crime on him just days after the crash.

So would it be a problem if the system had a strong impression, right from the start, that Farquharson was guilty?

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Since releasing the Trial by Water podcast, we’ve been contacted by a lot of people. Some have wanted to ask questions, some to give feedback – positive and negative – and others to tell their stories. 

The evidence in this case is so broad-ranging that we couldn’t touch on everything in the series itself. But there are themes to the questions and comments, so in this bonus episode, Trial by Water host Michael Bachelard sits down w...

When we first released this podcast, we found a gaping hole in the evidence against Robert Farquharson. It seemed like nobody had done a psychological evaluation of a man who was said to have murdered his three sons out of a desire for revenge.

But now, a Freedom of Information request we submitted to police has come back.

It turns out there was a psychological report -- of sorts. So what did it say? And what was its effect on the ...

Robert Farquharson has now spent nearly two decades in prison for murdering his three sons. We've made multiple requests to Corrections Victoria to interview Farquharson, but each request has been turned down. So today, we turn to two of his longest-standing supporters, who speak to and visit Farquharson regularly, to understand what his life is like on the inside.

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For decades, families in Australia and overseas, have been accused of one of the worst crimes imaginable – child abuse. Diagnosing Murder is an investigative podcast about parents who've had their children taken away, sat in the dock and even done time in prison. All for something they insist they didn't do – shake their baby. Can we trust the science behind shaken baby syndrome? Or are innocent people being locked up f...

One evening Kabir's baby stops breathing. When he and his wife Dipika rush to hospital, they expect their daughter will receive the best treatment possible. Instead, the doctors turn on them. 

For exclusive content and additional reporting on the case, available to subscribers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, visit theage.com.au/podcast/diagnosingmurder. Subscribe now to theage.com.au or smh.com.au to access the speci...

Doctors and lawyers can't come to a consensus on the science of shaken baby syndrome 50 years after it was first proposed as a theory. Does shaking a baby actually lead to the brain damage seen in historical and current cases? And why has the argument become so heated that some describe it as a war?  

For exclusive content and additional reporting on the case, available to subscribers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, ...

Once forensic physicians believe a child might have been shaken, their next step is to look for a perpetrator. When they call in police and child protection, the investigation starts in earnest. It all starts inside Victoria's beloved Royal Children's hospital. 

For exclusive content and additional reporting on the case, available to subscribers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, visit theage.com.au/podcast/diagnosingmu...