Alva Beach: Death At The Door

Two men killed.  No one charged. A botched emergency response. And a family’s desperate search for the truth. 

One tragic night in 2018, what began as an NRL grand final party in a quiet town on the Queensland coast spiralled into a storm of lies, drunken embellishment and a bungled emergency response. By dawn, two men - Tom Davy & Corey Christensen - were dead, killed by a teenager they’d never met. 

Just after midnight, 19-year-old Dean Webber dials triple zero. An injured woman he’s never met before - Candice Locke - had run to his home for help. Within minutes, more strangers arrive at his house looking for Candice. As tensions escalate, Dean’s frantic phone call recordings capture the fear in real time - until, terrified for his life, he reaches for a knife just as the triple zero operator hangs up on him. 

With no police or paramedics in sight, fear and confusion collide in a deadly confrontation. Tom Davy and Corey Christensen are stabbed by Dean after forcing their way into the home to get to Candice Locke. Dean makes another frantic call to triple zero, but by the time help arrives it’s far too late.

Dean’s arrest is recorded on bodycam, capturing a wild, bloody scene. And, for the first time, one of the first officers...

Never heard by the public until now - Dean Webber’s police interview, in the hours after the fatal stabbings, raises more confusing questions about what exactly happened. In this episode, Dean’s account is put under the microscope - challenged by the lawyer representing Tom Davy’s family, and scrutinised by Justin Luke, the officer sitting next to him in the interview room. 
Now no longer in the force, Jus...

Police walk Dean Webber back through the scene, but were they ever intending on charging him? Adam Hegarty tracks down the lead detective on the case, Gavin Neale, to put key questions to him on the delayed response, the investigation and the decision to never lay charges. 
As the Davy family lawyer argues why the forensic investigation should have gone further - it raises the question; Who does a lack of evidence support ...

Could police have missed a second knife the night Tom Davy and Corey Christensen were killed?
In the lead up to the inquest, internal investigators probe paramedics and police. For the first time, unreleased interviews shed light on what was uncovered - startling claims of a missing weapon, critical failures in the response and mistakes that left Dean Webber’s desperate calls for help a low priority until it was far too la...

This episode unravels the lies, contradictions and missing pieces in the stories of the only two surviving witnesses to Alva Beach, aside from Dean Webber -  Louis Bengoa and Candice Locke.
Through police interviews, sworn statements and inquest testimony, their changing accounts reveal a tangled web of embellishment and uncertainty. But can their words ever truly explain how, and why, two men ended up dead that night?

See o...

The 2020 Coronial Inquest into the Alva Beach deaths was meant to bring answers, instead it left confusion and outrage in its wake. As the week spiralled into chaos, lawyers stormed out of the Cairns courthouse, the Coroner was asked to stand down over fears of bias and the key witness - Dean Webber - was excused from giving evidence. 

Retired Coroner David Heilpern joins the podcast with an independent and expert legal view -...

As many implore the families of the victims to "let it go", a shocking revelation reignites their fight for a second inquest. In a stunning final twist - it’s revealed the Coroner who led the first inquest did refer Dean Webber to the Director of Public Prosecutions suspecting he may have committed an indictable offence.
Though prosecutors found no reasonable prospects of success in charging Dean Webber with Murder, and h...

If you've finished Alva Beach, here's another podcast to dive into over the holiday break.
In The Ultimate Sacrifice, Melissa Downes takes us inside Queensland’s deadliest police shooting. When four young officers were ambushed, two escaped, two were executed in cold blood and an innocent neighbour was also murdered.
This podcast first retells...

Australia was left in shock when four young police officers were ambushed on the driveway of a property in the Queensland outback town of Wieambilla: two were executed in cold blood, two were forced to fight for their lives, and an innocent neighbour was murdered. Before the coronial inquest begins, we take you back to the 12th of December, 2022. How did a routine missing persons callout end in the deaths of Constables Matthew Arno...