Winchester and the Mafia: The police sting that bit back


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David Eastman: His murder conviction was quashed and he was acquitted in the retrial of the 1989 murder of police chief Colin Winchester.

David Eastman: His murder conviction was quashed and he was acquitted in the retrial of the 1989 murder of police chief Colin Winchester.Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong


Winchester was shot dead outside his Canberra home on January 10, 1989. A local Treasury public servant, David Eastman, was charged and convicted of the murder. He served 19 years in prison before his conviction was quashed when key forensic evidence was found to be hopelessly flawed and deliberately biased towards the prosecution. Earlier this month he was acquitted in a retrial.


The second theory, explored and dismissed by the investigators, was that Winchester was shot on the orders of senior Mafia figures because of his involvement in a massive marijuana sting, codenamed Operation Seville.


According to that theory the Mafia dons believed, quite wrongly, that Winchester had been bribed to protect the plantations, only to have ultimately betrayed them. The job was certainly riddled with corruption, but Winchester was a cleanskin.


In 1980, the AFP was just over a year old and their first commissioner, the empire-building Sir Colin Woods, wanted a big scalp. There was none bigger than solving the 1977 murder of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay, who was killed in his hometown of Griffith.


Article source: http://smh.com.au/national/bali-volcano-anxious-wait-for-australians-amid-mount-agung-eruption-threat-20170925-gyok7q.html

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