September 18, 2023 • 21 mins
Leisl Smith was 23 when she was last seen at Tuggerah Railway Station on the New South Wales Central Coast on August 19, 2012.
The man she’d been having a sexual relationship with at the time, was charged with her murder and went on trial for 3 months. His final desperate act meant that Leisl’s family would never know the outcome of the trial and in a cruel twist, justice was never served.
Leisl has never been found. Is she missing or was she in fact, murdered?
Sign the petition on change.org to support Leisl’s Law
Sources:
Australian True Crime Podcast
Sydney Morning Herald Article
A Current Affair Interview with Sandi Harvey
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Music is Forest Lullaby by LESFM Oleksii Kaplunskyi
Missing Persons Organisations:
The Missed Foundation
Leave a Light On Inc
Australian Missing Persons Register
For Support Helplines in Australia go to:
https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/Find-Help/Help-Lines
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lysol Smith was 23 when she was last seen at
Tuggera Railway Station on theNew South Wales Central Coast
August 19, 2012.
The man she'd been having asexual relationship with at the
time was later charged with hermurder and went on trial for
(00:20):
three months.
His final desperate act meantthat Lysol's family would never
know the outcome of the trialand, in a cruel twist, justice
was never served.
Lysol is still missing.
Or was she in fact murdered?
This episode discusses contentrelated to suicide, abduction
(00:43):
and homicide and is not suitablefor children.
Today, I'm covering the missingpersons case of Lysol Smith,
last seen on CCTV footageparking her car at the local
train station, locking it andclimbing into her then lover's
ute.
I'm Carla Morgan and this isBolo, a podcast covering cold
(01:06):
and active missing persons caseswith the aim of helping
families bring their loved oneshome.
Lysol is 163 centimetres tall,of thin build and Caucasian
appearance.
She has brown eyes and in mostphotographs of her she has dark
(01:26):
brown hair, almost black, but atthe time she went missing her
hair had been dyed blonde andwas tied back in a ponytail.
She's described by those whoknew her as kind, with a big
heart and an animal lover.
She particularly loved horses.
She was considered somewhat ofa horse whisperer in the local
(01:47):
community and people oftenreached out to her for help with
their own horses.
Just up the road from where shelived was a man called James
Scott Church, or Jim, as mostpeople knew him by.
Church was a horse farrier,which is someone who shoes
horses, and it was Lysol's loveof horses and her desire to
(02:09):
learn more about them that ledher to him.
Jim was 42 and Lysol just 23.
They struck up an immediatefriendship that turned into a
relationship.
Lysol told friends and familythat she was in love, but at
some point into seeing eachother, church started dating a
(02:33):
woman by the name of BelindaLee's.
He was very open about the factthat he was in love with
Belinda and that she was thelove of his life, but that
didn't stop him from seeingLysol and continuing a sexual
relationship with her.
He was keeping Lysol a secretfrom Belinda and as many other
(02:53):
people as possible so thatBelinda wouldn't find out.
Belinda knew the pair had ahistory, but believed Church
when he said it was over.
Lysol, on the other hand, wasnot keeping her relationship
with Church a secret.
She openly told others abouttheir relationship, including
(03:14):
Belinda, sending her messagesand telling her not to trust
Church, and before she wentmissing, lysol told both Church
and Belinda that she waspregnant with his child.
The day Lysol disappeared was aSunday.
She cleaned up the stables, dida few other chores and got
(03:36):
dressed to go out.
She left her home in Wallara,jumped into her Honda Accord and
headed to the Tagura trainstation at around 1pm.
She said she'd be back around5pm.
Lysol's mare was due to givebirth to a foal in late August
and Lysol was extremely excitedabout this and was checking on
(03:59):
her frequently.
So when she didn't come home by5pm that day, as she normally
would, it was very out ofcharacter and raised alarm bells
for her family.
One week after Lysol disappeared, her car was found abandoned at
the train station.
Police reviewed the CCTVfootage and confirmed they saw
(04:20):
Lysol parking her car, lockingit and then walking away from
the car, but not towards thestation.
She doesn't board a train thatday she just walks out of frame.
Three weeks later police pulledChurch in for an interview.
He denied knowing anythingabout Lysol's whereabouts and he
said he hadn't seen her inmonths.
(04:42):
Well, we know that was astraight up lie and it's not the
first lie he'll tell policeeither.
Five days after his initialinterview, church changed his
story.
He admitted to having a sexualrelationship with Lysol but said
he lied to police about itbecause he didn't want his
(05:03):
girlfriend to find out.
Police confronted him with moreCCTV footage from the train
station that day.
We can see it.
It clearly shows Lysol drivingup to the train station at the
same time that Church is drivingup in his ute.
They don't drive into the carpark.
He pulls up on the side of theroad away from the entry to the
(05:27):
station and she pulls up rightbehind him.
He gets out of his car, walksback to her driver's side window
.
They have a short conversation,he jumps back in his ute and
then she drives around him andinto the car park of the train
station.
This is where she parks, locksher car and then walks back
(05:52):
towards Church's parked ute andjumps into the passenger seat.
They drive off.
This is the last known sightingof Lysol Smith, so we know for
sure he took her somewhere.
That day, when he discovered thepolice knew about this, he
(06:13):
changed his story.
He said she needed a lift, sohe drove her to Waiong.
Waiong is about a 10 minutedrive from Tuggera train station
.
After he dropped her off inWaiong, he said he went back
home.
He spent a few hours with hisparents before heading over to
(06:35):
his girlfriend Belinda's place.
It's interesting to me that hewould say she asked him for a
lift to a place 10 minutes awaywhen she had her own car.
Also, why wouldn't he pick herup from home?
Why would she park at the trainstation to get a lift with him?
It really didn't make any senseto me.
I figure that he didn't counton being seen where he pulled up
(07:01):
, that he had instructed her topark in the car park so that she
would be clearly visible onCCTV footage, parking and
leaving her car there.
Whether this was to set up thenarrative that she was catching
a train somewhere or that shewas running away, but either way
the lack of bags or anythingelse with her would be for me a
(07:23):
key indicator that going awaywas not a part of her plan.
That day the evidence againstChurch was mounting, as police
had tapped his phone, putlistening devices in his home
and his parents' home andchecked his Belinda's and
Liesl's phone records.
Here's what they discoveredBelinda contacted Church's
(07:46):
mobile at 6.26pm, then again at7.19pm on Sunday, the 19th of
August, the day Liesl wentmissing.
Belinda then called hislandline at 7.20pm and again at
8.02pm.
If he was supposed to be at herplace at that time, why was she
(08:08):
calling his mobile and hislandline?
It would be pretty easy to saythat you might call someone on
their mobile in the same house Imean, we've all done that
looking for a phone but hislandline.
That's much harder to justify.
When asked why she was callinghim if they were together, his
reasoning was that there hadbeen a break-in at his house in
(08:32):
Clarence Town, which is north,so he had gone up there to check
on things.
He said there was no phonereception there so that's why he
didn't ring Belinda back untilthe morning.
The phone records indicate,however, that his phone was
switched back on at 1.15am thatmorning.
It wasn't out of range at all,it was switched off.
(08:57):
Police also captured images ofhis youth from traffic cameras
in Sandy Hollow, about 180kmnorth of Tuggera, near the
Hunter Valley.
It was 2 hours and 20 minutesfrom the time he'd left the
train station in Tuggera withLiesl, which fits with the
timeline of him leaving thestation and then arriving up in
(09:17):
Sandy Hollow.
His car was also clocked,heading back south on the Golden
Highway later that day.
When police tell him this, hejust asks if they have the right
number plates and the right car, because how can he be in two
places at once?
They also discovered Church haddriven up into Meriwau in the
(09:39):
Hunter Valley region two daysprior to 19 August.
So Liesl went missing on theSunday.
On the Friday Church took thesame trip up north.
Police believed that this waswhen he went up that way to
select a murder site.
This same day, the Friday, healso left a message on Liesl's
(10:01):
phone saying he had organised aplace, everything was going to
be alright and that the placewas ready to go.
The police also told him thatLiesl was actually never
pregnant.
He said in the interview well,it makes no difference to me.
He adamantly denied theirclaims that he had hurt Liesl
(10:23):
and he clearly stated he hadnever murdered anyone and he
hadn't murdered her.
Church in another interviewcame up with a new alibi for why
he was heading north and backon the day Liesl went missing.
He said he was visiting afriend up in the Hunter Valley
region but that his friendwasn't home so he had sat
(10:43):
outside the gates for about sixhours waiting and then returned
home.
Once all of this evidence wasdiscovered, the police pivoted,
obviously, from a missingperson's case into a homicide
investigation, with one clearsuspect on their radar.
When they looked closer intothe phone records of Church and
(11:13):
Liesl, they had nearly 2,000exchanges in the 12 weeks
leading up to her disappearance,but zero contact from Sunday
August 19th, except there wasone call to her phone on the
morning of the day shedisappeared from Church, likely
organising the rendezvous at thestation for later that day.
Liesl's mother believes, asstated in the Australian True
(11:36):
Crime podcast, that he calledher saying something like I'll
take you up to the place thatI've prepared for you to move
into, as she did want to moveout of her dad's place and was
planning to move out, and that'show he lured her out and into
his car.
It would also explain again whyshe didn't have any bags with
her and was dressed for a daytrip.
(11:57):
She wasn't planning to be gonelong.
She needed to be back for heranimals later that afternoon.
Police also believe that Churchtook Liesl's phone and sent
messages to her family andfriends in an attempt to cover
up her disappearance and makethem believe that she was still
alive.
Storm, lysel's dad, said hereceived a strange message two
(12:21):
days after Lysel was last seen.
It said fuck you, I can't dothis and I'm not going to keep
your secret anymore.
Storm said he and Lysel werereally close and that he didn't
understand what this messagemeant, and when he called her
phone back immediately afterreceiving the text, the phone
(12:41):
was switched off.
The following day, anothermessage came through from
Lysel's number which read I'mreally sorry, dad, please don't
be angry.
That was the last text hereceived.
These messages might be whyStorm believes his daughter is
still alive and is in hiding.
There are reports that he hassaid he's also received messages
(13:06):
via Facebook.
He believes Church and Lyselwere in love and that Church
didn't do anything to hurt her.
Belinda stood by Church in thebeginning, but he can be heard
from a taped phone conversationberating her for not backing up
his initial alibi when he saidhe was with her.
In this conversation, he's alsooverheard saying he's going to
(13:29):
jail for sure.
They broke up in April of 2013after his story started
unraveling.
This was also around the timethat his properties were
searched.
They searched his home on thesame street where Lysel was
living and his place at ClarenceTown, north of Newcastle.
Items were seized, but it waslater reported that nothing of
(13:52):
note had been found.
Twelve months after Lysel wentmissing, church contacted the
police to tell them that two menshot at him in the middle of
the night after they hadquestioned him about Lysel.
There's nothing further to addabout that.
It's just an odd twist of thestory.
Despite all the circumstantialevidence, there wasn't enough to
(14:16):
pin Lysel's murder on Churchuntil six years later, in 2018,
when police revisited the case.
This time, they found HighwayPatrol video that captured his
youth travelling north at 2.14pmon the 19th August.
This was the proof they neededto show that he didn't leave
(14:37):
Lysel at Waiong, like he said,that he took her on that trip
north to the Hunter Valleyregion.
They charged him with murderand prepared a case for trial.
Church pleaded not guilty andthe trial lasted three months.
(15:05):
It started in May of 2022,almost ten years after Lysel
went missing.
It was also revealed in court,through conversations recorded
on listening devices, that hisparents weren't happy about
being caught in a lie, theiroverheard talking about how they
said they were at his place,which makes them look bad.
(15:25):
If the police had evidence thathe wasn't there and was
actually driving somewhere.
Church said in court that hehad never asked anyone to lie to
him and he encouraged hismother to stick to her own
version of events.
She had assigned statdeclaration in court saying she
didn't remember anyconversations that they'd had
(15:46):
and she had a past drinkingproblem.
Outside the courtroom, lysel'sfather, storm Smith, said he
believed Lysel ran away and isstill alive.
He's hopeful the case will goto the coroner.
Storm says, as reported in theSydney Morning Herald article
linked in the show notes, thathe received messages from her
(16:07):
via Facebook and that he hadseen her in a set of traffic
lights in Windsor.
Lysel's mother was there everyday, waiting and hoping for
justice and answers.
Finally, sixty-eight days ofevidence were heard and the
trial wrapped up.
The judge prepared her verdictand announced the date she would
(16:28):
deliver it, which was advisedto appear in court to hear the
verdict.
But just 24 hours prior to whenhe was due to appear, he took
his own life.
The judge announced she wasunable to deliver a verdict
because the law prohibits thiswhen a person on trial dies
prior to a verdict being handeddown.
(16:48):
So that was it.
Day after day of evidencepresented in court.
That would all amount tonothing for Liesl's family or
for Liesl Judge George Conlonsaid during a current affair
interview in 2022, where aperson dies prior to a verdict,
the rendering of any verdictwhere no punishment can follow
(17:10):
is regarded as unnecessary andthe trial will have to end there
.
And then, where a trial has notended or come to a close and the
person on trial dies, it'sunderstandable that the trial
cannot continue.
In this case, the trial wasover.
The judge had a verdict and wasgoing to hand it down.
(17:32):
He took his own life duringthat time, so it seems arbitrary
in this case that the findingsshould not be handed down or, at
the very least, communicated tothe families of the victim.
I think most people would agree.
The law needs to change inorder to be more considerate of
the victim and the victim'sfamily.
(17:52):
Liesl has never been found andher bank accounts have not been
touched.
Liesl would be 34 years old now.
She's been missing for 11 yearsand it's time to bring her home
.
Detective Superintendent ChadGillies from New South Wales
(18:14):
Police said the investigationinto Liesl's disappearance is
not over and urged anyone withinformation to come forward.
Liesl's mother is petitioningMark Speekman, the New South
Wales Attorney General, tochange legislation so that a
verdict can be passed down by ajudge even if an accused becomes
(18:35):
deceased, to ensure no otherfamilies are stuck in legal
limbo.
As she says, I have spent adecade without not just my
daughter but any answers.
If you'd like to sign thepetition on changeorg to support
Liesl's law, I've left a linkin the show notes for you.
(18:55):
If you or anyone you know knowanything at all, please contact
Police Link on 131-444 or callCrime Stoppers, which you can do
anonymously, on 1800 333-000.
(19:23):
Thanks for listening to Bolo.
If this episode has brought upfeelings for you and you need
support, please reach out toLifeline on 13 11 14, the
suicide callback service on 1300659 467 or respect on 1800
respect.
(19:43):
You can contact me on Insta orTikTok at Bolopod or email me at
Bolopod at iCloudcom if youhave a case you'd like me to
cover.
Until next week, stay safe andthanks for listening.
(20:04):
I'd like to give a little shoutout to Ruby, my newest
subscriber.
Thanks for supporting me andBolo and if you'd like to
support the show, you can go tothe link in the show notes to
subscribe or to the link to BuyMe a Coffee, which goes towards
(20:25):
helping me cover the costs ofthe podcast and create new
content.
Thanks again, ruby you.
Lysol Smith was 23 when she was last seen at
Tuggera Railway Station on theNew South Wales Central Coast
August 19, 2012.
The man she'd been having asexual relationship with at the
time was later charged with hermurder and went on trial for
(00:20):
three months.
His final desperate act meantthat Lysol's family would never
know the outcome of the trialand, in a cruel twist, justice
was never served.
Lysol is still missing.
Or was she in fact murdered?
This episode discusses contentrelated to suicide, abduction
(00:43):
and homicide and is not suitablefor children.
Today, I'm covering the missingpersons case of Lysol Smith,
last seen on CCTV footageparking her car at the local
train station, locking it andclimbing into her then lover's
ute.
I'm Carla Morgan and this isBolo, a podcast covering cold
(01:06):
and active missing persons caseswith the aim of helping
families bring their loved oneshome.
Lysol is 163 centimetres tall,of thin build and Caucasian
appearance.
She has brown eyes and in mostphotographs of her she has dark
(01:26):
brown hair, almost black, but atthe time she went missing her
hair had been dyed blonde andwas tied back in a ponytail.
She's described by those whoknew her as kind, with a big
heart and an animal lover.
She particularly loved horses.
She was considered somewhat ofa horse whisperer in the local
(01:47):
community and people oftenreached out to her for help with
their own horses.
Just up the road from where shelived was a man called James
Scott Church, or Jim, as mostpeople knew him by.
Church was a horse farrier,which is someone who shoes
horses, and it was Lysol's loveof horses and her desire to
(02:09):
learn more about them that ledher to him.
Jim was 42 and Lysol just 23.
They struck up an immediatefriendship that turned into a
relationship.
Lysol told friends and familythat she was in love, but at
some point into seeing eachother, church started dating a
(02:33):
woman by the name of BelindaLee's.
He was very open about the factthat he was in love with
Belinda and that she was thelove of his life, but that
didn't stop him from seeingLysol and continuing a sexual
relationship with her.
He was keeping Lysol a secretfrom Belinda and as many other
(02:53):
people as possible so thatBelinda wouldn't find out.
Belinda knew the pair had ahistory, but believed Church
when he said it was over.
Lysol, on the other hand, wasnot keeping her relationship
with Church a secret.
She openly told others abouttheir relationship, including
(03:14):
Belinda, sending her messagesand telling her not to trust
Church, and before she wentmissing, lysol told both Church
and Belinda that she waspregnant with his child.
The day Lysol disappeared was aSunday.
She cleaned up the stables, dida few other chores and got
(03:36):
dressed to go out.
She left her home in Wallara,jumped into her Honda Accord and
headed to the Tagura trainstation at around 1pm.
She said she'd be back around5pm.
Lysol's mare was due to givebirth to a foal in late August
and Lysol was extremely excitedabout this and was checking on
(03:59):
her frequently.
So when she didn't come home by5pm that day, as she normally
would, it was very out ofcharacter and raised alarm bells
for her family.
One week after Lysol disappeared, her car was found abandoned at
the train station.
Police reviewed the CCTVfootage and confirmed they saw
(04:20):
Lysol parking her car, lockingit and then walking away from
the car, but not towards thestation.
She doesn't board a train thatday she just walks out of frame.
Three weeks later police pulledChurch in for an interview.
He denied knowing anythingabout Lysol's whereabouts and he
said he hadn't seen her inmonths.
(04:42):
Well, we know that was astraight up lie and it's not the
first lie he'll tell policeeither.
Five days after his initialinterview, church changed his
story.
He admitted to having a sexualrelationship with Lysol but said
he lied to police about itbecause he didn't want his
(05:03):
girlfriend to find out.
Police confronted him with moreCCTV footage from the train
station that day.
We can see it.
It clearly shows Lysol drivingup to the train station at the
same time that Church is drivingup in his ute.
They don't drive into the carpark.
He pulls up on the side of theroad away from the entry to the
(05:27):
station and she pulls up rightbehind him.
He gets out of his car, walksback to her driver's side window
.
They have a short conversation,he jumps back in his ute and
then she drives around him andinto the car park of the train
station.
This is where she parks, locksher car and then walks back
(05:52):
towards Church's parked ute andjumps into the passenger seat.
They drive off.
This is the last known sightingof Lysol Smith, so we know for
sure he took her somewhere.
That day, when he discovered thepolice knew about this, he
(06:13):
changed his story.
He said she needed a lift, sohe drove her to Waiong.
Waiong is about a 10 minutedrive from Tuggera train station
.
After he dropped her off inWaiong, he said he went back
home.
He spent a few hours with hisparents before heading over to
(06:35):
his girlfriend Belinda's place.
It's interesting to me that hewould say she asked him for a
lift to a place 10 minutes awaywhen she had her own car.
Also, why wouldn't he pick herup from home?
Why would she park at the trainstation to get a lift with him?
It really didn't make any senseto me.
I figure that he didn't counton being seen where he pulled up
(07:01):
, that he had instructed her topark in the car park so that she
would be clearly visible onCCTV footage, parking and
leaving her car there.
Whether this was to set up thenarrative that she was catching
a train somewhere or that shewas running away, but either way
the lack of bags or anythingelse with her would be for me a
(07:23):
key indicator that going awaywas not a part of her plan.
That day the evidence againstChurch was mounting, as police
had tapped his phone, putlistening devices in his home
and his parents' home andchecked his Belinda's and
Liesl's phone records.
Here's what they discoveredBelinda contacted Church's
(07:46):
mobile at 6.26pm, then again at7.19pm on Sunday, the 19th of
August, the day Liesl wentmissing.
Belinda then called hislandline at 7.20pm and again at
8.02pm.
If he was supposed to be at herplace at that time, why was she
(08:08):
calling his mobile and hislandline?
It would be pretty easy to saythat you might call someone on
their mobile in the same house Imean, we've all done that
looking for a phone but hislandline.
That's much harder to justify.
When asked why she was callinghim if they were together, his
reasoning was that there hadbeen a break-in at his house in
(08:32):
Clarence Town, which is north,so he had gone up there to check
on things.
He said there was no phonereception there so that's why he
didn't ring Belinda back untilthe morning.
The phone records indicate,however, that his phone was
switched back on at 1.15am thatmorning.
It wasn't out of range at all,it was switched off.
(08:57):
Police also captured images ofhis youth from traffic cameras
in Sandy Hollow, about 180kmnorth of Tuggera, near the
Hunter Valley.
It was 2 hours and 20 minutesfrom the time he'd left the
train station in Tuggera withLiesl, which fits with the
timeline of him leaving thestation and then arriving up in
(09:17):
Sandy Hollow.
His car was also clocked,heading back south on the Golden
Highway later that day.
When police tell him this, hejust asks if they have the right
number plates and the right car, because how can he be in two
places at once?
They also discovered Church haddriven up into Meriwau in the
(09:39):
Hunter Valley region two daysprior to 19 August.
So Liesl went missing on theSunday.
On the Friday Church took thesame trip up north.
Police believed that this waswhen he went up that way to
select a murder site.
This same day, the Friday, healso left a message on Liesl's
(10:01):
phone saying he had organised aplace, everything was going to
be alright and that the placewas ready to go.
The police also told him thatLiesl was actually never
pregnant.
He said in the interview well,it makes no difference to me.
He adamantly denied theirclaims that he had hurt Liesl
(10:23):
and he clearly stated he hadnever murdered anyone and he
hadn't murdered her.
Church in another interviewcame up with a new alibi for why
he was heading north and backon the day Liesl went missing.
He said he was visiting afriend up in the Hunter Valley
region but that his friendwasn't home so he had sat
(10:43):
outside the gates for about sixhours waiting and then returned
home.
Once all of this evidence wasdiscovered, the police pivoted,
obviously, from a missingperson's case into a homicide
investigation, with one clearsuspect on their radar.
When they looked closer intothe phone records of Church and
(11:13):
Liesl, they had nearly 2,000exchanges in the 12 weeks
leading up to her disappearance,but zero contact from Sunday
August 19th, except there wasone call to her phone on the
morning of the day shedisappeared from Church, likely
organising the rendezvous at thestation for later that day.
Liesl's mother believes, asstated in the Australian True
(11:36):
Crime podcast, that he calledher saying something like I'll
take you up to the place thatI've prepared for you to move
into, as she did want to moveout of her dad's place and was
planning to move out, and that'show he lured her out and into
his car.
It would also explain again whyshe didn't have any bags with
her and was dressed for a daytrip.
(11:57):
She wasn't planning to be gonelong.
She needed to be back for heranimals later that afternoon.
Police also believe that Churchtook Liesl's phone and sent
messages to her family andfriends in an attempt to cover
up her disappearance and makethem believe that she was still
alive.
Storm, lysel's dad, said hereceived a strange message two
(12:21):
days after Lysel was last seen.
It said fuck you, I can't dothis and I'm not going to keep
your secret anymore.
Storm said he and Lysel werereally close and that he didn't
understand what this messagemeant, and when he called her
phone back immediately afterreceiving the text, the phone
(12:41):
was switched off.
The following day, anothermessage came through from
Lysel's number which read I'mreally sorry, dad, please don't
be angry.
That was the last text hereceived.
These messages might be whyStorm believes his daughter is
still alive and is in hiding.
There are reports that he hassaid he's also received messages
(13:06):
via Facebook.
He believes Church and Lyselwere in love and that Church
didn't do anything to hurt her.
Belinda stood by Church in thebeginning, but he can be heard
from a taped phone conversationberating her for not backing up
his initial alibi when he saidhe was with her.
In this conversation, he's alsooverheard saying he's going to
(13:29):
jail for sure.
They broke up in April of 2013after his story started
unraveling.
This was also around the timethat his properties were
searched.
They searched his home on thesame street where Lysel was
living and his place at ClarenceTown, north of Newcastle.
Items were seized, but it waslater reported that nothing of
(13:52):
note had been found.
Twelve months after Lysel wentmissing, church contacted the
police to tell them that two menshot at him in the middle of
the night after they hadquestioned him about Lysel.
There's nothing further to addabout that.
It's just an odd twist of thestory.
Despite all the circumstantialevidence, there wasn't enough to
(14:16):
pin Lysel's murder on Churchuntil six years later, in 2018,
when police revisited the case.
This time, they found HighwayPatrol video that captured his
youth travelling north at 2.14pmon the 19th August.
This was the proof they neededto show that he didn't leave
(14:37):
Lysel at Waiong, like he said,that he took her on that trip
north to the Hunter Valleyregion.
They charged him with murderand prepared a case for trial.
Church pleaded not guilty andthe trial lasted three months.
(15:05):
It started in May of 2022,almost ten years after Lysel
went missing.
It was also revealed in court,through conversations recorded
on listening devices, that hisparents weren't happy about
being caught in a lie, theiroverheard talking about how they
said they were at his place,which makes them look bad.
(15:25):
If the police had evidence thathe wasn't there and was
actually driving somewhere.
Church said in court that hehad never asked anyone to lie to
him and he encouraged hismother to stick to her own
version of events.
She had assigned statdeclaration in court saying she
didn't remember anyconversations that they'd had
(15:46):
and she had a past drinkingproblem.
Outside the courtroom, lysel'sfather, storm Smith, said he
believed Lysel ran away and isstill alive.
He's hopeful the case will goto the coroner.
Storm says, as reported in theSydney Morning Herald article
linked in the show notes, thathe received messages from her
(16:07):
via Facebook and that he hadseen her in a set of traffic
lights in Windsor.
Lysel's mother was there everyday, waiting and hoping for
justice and answers.
Finally, sixty-eight days ofevidence were heard and the
trial wrapped up.
The judge prepared her verdictand announced the date she would
(16:28):
deliver it, which was advisedto appear in court to hear the
verdict.
But just 24 hours prior to whenhe was due to appear, he took
his own life.
The judge announced she wasunable to deliver a verdict
because the law prohibits thiswhen a person on trial dies
prior to a verdict being handeddown.
(16:48):
So that was it.
Day after day of evidencepresented in court.
That would all amount tonothing for Liesl's family or
for Liesl Judge George Conlonsaid during a current affair
interview in 2022, where aperson dies prior to a verdict,
the rendering of any verdictwhere no punishment can follow
(17:10):
is regarded as unnecessary andthe trial will have to end there
.
And then, where a trial has notended or come to a close and the
person on trial dies, it'sunderstandable that the trial
cannot continue.
In this case, the trial wasover.
The judge had a verdict and wasgoing to hand it down.
(17:32):
He took his own life duringthat time, so it seems arbitrary
in this case that the findingsshould not be handed down or, at
the very least, communicated tothe families of the victim.
I think most people would agree.
The law needs to change inorder to be more considerate of
the victim and the victim'sfamily.
(17:52):
Liesl has never been found andher bank accounts have not been
touched.
Liesl would be 34 years old now.
She's been missing for 11 yearsand it's time to bring her home
.
Detective Superintendent ChadGillies from New South Wales
(18:14):
Police said the investigationinto Liesl's disappearance is
not over and urged anyone withinformation to come forward.
Liesl's mother is petitioningMark Speekman, the New South
Wales Attorney General, tochange legislation so that a
verdict can be passed down by ajudge even if an accused becomes
(18:35):
deceased, to ensure no otherfamilies are stuck in legal
limbo.
As she says, I have spent adecade without not just my
daughter but any answers.
If you'd like to sign thepetition on changeorg to support
Liesl's law, I've left a linkin the show notes for you.
(18:55):
If you or anyone you know knowanything at all, please contact
Police Link on 131-444 or callCrime Stoppers, which you can do
anonymously, on 1800 333-000.
(19:23):
Thanks for listening to Bolo.
If this episode has brought upfeelings for you and you need
support, please reach out toLifeline on 13 11 14, the
suicide callback service on 1300659 467 or respect on 1800
respect.
(19:43):
You can contact me on Insta orTikTok at Bolopod or email me at
Bolopod at iCloudcom if youhave a case you'd like me to
cover.
Until next week, stay safe andthanks for listening.
(20:04):
I'd like to give a little shoutout to Ruby, my newest
subscriber.
Thanks for supporting me andBolo and if you'd like to
support the show, you can go tothe link in the show notes to
subscribe or to the link to BuyMe a Coffee, which goes towards
(20:25):
helping me cover the costs ofthe podcast and create new
content.
Thanks again, ruby you.
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