Leith Ratten

Last updated

Leith Ratten
Born18 January 1939
Australia
Died(2012-01-20)20 January 2012 (aged 73)
Brisbane, Queensland
Occupation Surveyor
Criminal status Deceased
Conviction(s) Murder
Criminal penalty Death; commuted to 25 years imprisonment

Leith McDonald Ratten was a convicted murderer from Echuca, Australia whose case ignited controversy and national interest in the 1970s. Leading lawyers were convinced of his innocence. He died in January 2012. [1] [2]

Contents

Background

On May 7, 1970, members of the Victoria Police stationed in Echuca responded to an emergency call at a home in Mitchell Street. They found a heavily-pregnant woman, Beverley Ratten, lying dead in the kitchen from a shotgun wound to the torso. Her upset husband, Leith Ratten, was removed for questioning. Beverley would later be interred in the Cheltenham Memorial Park, Melbourne.

During interview Ratten said he was cleaning an old rusty double-barrelled shotgun brought in from the garage when it fired, hitting his wife under the left armpit while she was in the kitchen at lunchtime. [3] Ratten could not explain how the gun discharged or how it came to be loaded. Subsequent investigations revealed that Ratten was having an affair with Jennifer Kemp, the wife of a family friend, and had spoken to her on the morning of the shooting. He had also applied for a twelve-month posting to a base in Antarctica.

In January 2012, Ratten died, aged 73 years.

Trial and appeals

Ratten was committed to trial for murder and the hearing took place in August, 1970 in the nearby town of Shepparton, Victoria. Despite the assertions of Ratten's defence counsel that the shooting was accidental and evidence against him was circumstantial, the jury found Ratten guilty and he was sentenced to death. This was later commuted to 25 years' prison.

Following the case, Ratten's lawyers undertook four separate appeals on various grounds, one of which involved the exhumation of Beverley Ratten's body in 1973. All four appeals were dismissed. Despite the failure of his appeals there was considerable doubt about Ratten's conviction, many believing he was found guilty for the questionable morality of his marital infidelity rather than concrete evidence. His case was widely discussed among the legal fraternity while his cause was taken up by many notable lawyers and politicians, such as Don Chipp.

In 1978, the Free Leith Ratten Committee was founded by Monash University law undergraduate, Mark Cowie. Over the next five years, and until Ratten's release from Her Majesty's Prison Dhurringile, Cowie was involved in efforts to bring new evidence before the courts that questioned the legitimacy of Ratten's conviction. He authored an unpublished manuscript on the case, Justice in Shame: The Leith Ratten Case.

Don Chipp said that in 1971 Henry Winneke had told him the convicted murderer Leith Ratten was innocent. In 1981 when Ratten had yet to be released, Chipp said Winneke denied the conversation had taken place. Later, a member of the Supreme Court at the time of Ratten's trial, told Tom Molomby Winneke had wanted to remove the jury from the trial. Such a move would require a belief that the evidence would not support a guilty verdict. [4]

Ratten served his sentence, was a model prisoner and was released in 1983 (whereupon he worked as a surveyor in Queensland). In 1981, two years prior to his release, Ratten was advised he would likely be released and was given time on regular day-release opportunities to find a job, which he did. Then he heard via the radio that he would not be released. Politicians making the decision had allegedly been pressured by Victoria Police to not release Ratten. Further examination of the unfired cartridge was undertaken, with the view that it was indeed a reload cartridge, and he was released soon after. [5]

Media coverage

Ratten's family had been advised that he would be released early if there was no fuss. [5]

But in the late 1970s ABC TV did a program on Ratten in its "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" series. The program was researched and scripted by Tom Molomby who later organised a campaign lobbying politicians on Ratten's behalf. [6]

A Sunday Observer beat up was severely criticised by the Press Council of Australia. [7]

A book, The Web of Circumstance, by Tom Molomby in 1978 argued Ratten was innocent. And Professor Colin Howard of Melbourne University wrote:

"After reading his scrupulous and impartial account I share the author's belief that there can be no doubt left that Ratten did not murder his wife." [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Echuca</span> Town in Victoria, Australia

Echuca is a town on the banks of the Murray River and Campaspe River in Victoria, Australia. The border town of Moama is adjacent on the northern side of the Murray River in New South Wales. Echuca is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Shire of Campaspe. As of the 2021 census, Echuca had a population of 15,056, and the population of the combined Echuca and Moama townships was 22,568.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robyn Williams</span> Australian science journalist

Robyn Williams is a British/Australian science journalist and broadcaster who has hosted The Science Show on ABC Radio National (RN) since 1975, and created Ockham's Razor in 1984.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Chipp</span> Australian politician

Donald Leslie Chipp, AO was an Australian politician who was the inaugural leader of the Australian Democrats, leading the party from 1977 to 1986. He began his career as a member of the Liberal Party, winning election to the House of Representatives in 1960 and serving as a government minister for a cumulative total of six years. Chipp left the Liberals in 1977 and was soon persuaded to lead a new party, the Democrats who, he famously proclaimed in 1980, would "keep the bastards honest". He was elected to the Senate on 10 December 1977 and led the party at four federal elections. From 1983 it held the sole balance of power in the Senate.

<i>R v Carroll</i> Judgement of the High Court of Australia

R v Carroll (2002) 213 CLR 635; [2002] HCA 55 is a decision of the High Court of Australia which unanimously upheld the decision by a Queensland appellate court to stay an indictment for perjury as the indictment was found to controvert the respondent's earlier acquittal for murder. The court held that charging Raymond John Carroll with perjuring himself in the earlier murder trial by swearing he did not kill the baby Deidre Kennedy was tantamount to claiming he had committed the murder and was thus a contravention of the principles of double jeopardy. The case caused widespread public outcry and prompted calls for double jeopardy law reform.

Peter Falconio was a British tourist who disappeared in a remote part of the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia on the evening of 14 July 2001, while travelling with his girlfriend Joanne Lees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Death of Maria Korp</span> Australian victim of crime (1955–2005)

Maria Korp was a Portuguese-born Australian woman reported missing for four days and later found, barely alive, in the boot of her car on 13 February 2005. She spent a short time in a coma before emerging into a state of post-coma unresponsiveness. She became the centre of a controversy in Australia during 2005. Depending upon their viewpoint, people have characterised the controversy as being about euthanasia or about human rights and protecting people with disabilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bevan Spencer von Einem</span> Australian child murderer

Bevan Spencer von Einem is a convicted child murderer and suspected serial killer from Adelaide, South Australia. An accountant by profession, he was convicted in 1984 for the murder of 15-year-old Adelaide teenager Richard Kelvin, the son of local television and radio personality Rob Kelvin. Von Einem is serving life imprisonment. He was in G Block of Yatala Prison for decades but was transferred to Port Augusta Prison in the north of the state in 2007.

The Caledon Bay crisis refers to a series of killings at Caledon Bay in the Northern Territory of Australia during 1932–34, referred to in the press of the day as Caledon Bay murder(s). Five Japanese trepang fishers were killed by Aboriginal Australians of the Yolngu people. A police officer investigating the deaths, Albert McColl, was subsequently killed. Shortly afterwards, two white men went missing on Woodah Island (with one body found later). With some of the white community alarmed by these events, a punitive expedition was proposed by Northern Territory Police to "teach the blacks a lesson".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Dupas</span> Australian serial killer and rapist

Peter Norris Dupas is an Australian convicted serial killer, currently serving three life sentences without parole for murder and primarily for being a serious habitual offender. He has a very significant criminal history involving serious sexual and violent offences, with his violent criminal history spanning more than three decades, and with every release from prison has been known to commit further crimes against women with increasing levels of violence. His criminal signature is to remove the breasts of his female victims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Carleton</span> Australian journalist (1943–2006)

Richard George Carleton was a multiple Logie Award–winning Australian television journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regent Theatre (Sydney)</span> Former cinema and entertainment venue in Sydney, Australia

The Regent Theatre was a heritage-listed cinema and entertainment venue in George Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, built in 1928 as a flagship for Hoyts, and was demolished in 1988 by property developer Leon Fink.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brett Ratten</span> Australian rules footballer

Brett Ratten is an Australian rules football coach and former player in the Australian Football League (AFL). He played 255 games for the Carlton Football Club between 1990 and 2003, including the club's 1995 premiership. He then served as Carlton's senior coach from 2007 to 2012. After a seven-year stint as an assistant coach with Hawthorn and St Kilda, in 2019 he was appointed as St Kilda's senior coach, a role he held until his sacking at the end of the 2022 AFL season. Ratten was also the caretaker senior coach at North Melbourne during Alastair Clarkson's leave of absence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Janine Balding</span> Australian murder case

Janine Kerrie Balding was a homicide victim who was abducted, raped and murdered by a homeless gang of five on 8 September 1988, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Balding's murder is often compared to the 1986 murder of Sydney nurse Anita Cobby.

Kathleen Megan Folbigg is an Australian woman who was wrongfully convicted in 2003 of murdering her four infant children. She was pardoned in 2023 after 20 years in jail following a long campaign for justice by her supporters, and had her convictions overturned on appeal a few months later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Winneke</span> Australian jurist (1908–1985)

Sir Henry Arthur Winneke, was a Chief Justice of Victoria and the 21st Governor of Victoria, from 1974 to 1982.

John Spence Winneke, was a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria and President of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria, which is the highest ranking court in the Australian state of Victoria.

Robert Donald William Farquharson is an Australian man convicted of murdering his three sons on 4 September 2005, by deliberately driving his car into a farm dam.

Leanne Sarah Holland was an Australian girl from Goodna, Queensland, who was murdered in September 1991, when she was 12 years old. Her mutilated body was found in nearby Redbank Plains, three days after she was reported missing. Graham Stafford, her sister's live-in boyfriend, was convicted of her murder. Stafford's conviction was quashed as a miscarriage of justice after he had served 14 years in prison.

Ronald William Iddles is a former Australian police detective. His conviction rate was 99% and he was dubbed "Australia's greatest detective". After a career spanning some 43 years investigating serious crime, he took up the role of Secretary of the Police Association of Victoria between 2014 and 2016. He retired in 2016, but he was lured out of retirement the following year and is currently Victoria's inaugural Community Safety Trustee.

Robert Gwydir Booth Morrison, CF is an Australian zoologist and science communicator. He co-hosted The Curiosity Show which aired on television from 1972 to 1990. He has written or co-written 48 books about science for the general public.

References

  1. ↑ Moor, Keith (2 February 2012). "Man dies still denying murder". Herald Sun. Retrieved 6 October 2018.
  2. ↑ "RATTEN, Leith McDonald | Death Notices | Melbourne". My Tributes. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  3. ↑ Molomby, Tom, Is there a moderate on the roof? ABC Years, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1991, p.78
  4. ↑ Molomby, Tom, Is there a moderate on the roof? ABC Years, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1991, pp.84-85
  5. 1 2 Molomby, Tom, Is there a moderate on the roof? ABC Years, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1991, p.83
  6. ↑ Molomby, Tom, Is there a moderate on the roof? ABC Years, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1991, p.79
  7. ↑ "Adjudication No. 13 (June 1977) [1977] APC 8". Australian Press Council . Retrieved 20 March 2019.
  8. ↑ Molomby, Tom, Is there a moderate on the roof? ABC Years, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1991, p.80
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.