Warning: this article includes the name and image of an Aboriginal person who has died.
The uncle of a young Aboriginal man who died in 1988 in suspicious circumstances outside Tamworth has said that he will present new information when the coroner’s inquest into his nephew's death resumes in February.
Uncle Don Craigie has dedicated his life to finding out what happened to his nephew, Mark Haines.
Mr Craigie spoke to media at the Tamworth courthouse on Thursday, the 37th anniversary of Mr Haines’ death.
“These statements have not been heard yet in the coroner’s court, but I dare say in six weeks’ time when the coroner’s court is convened again in Lidcombe, these statements may be tendered there,“ Mr Craigie said.
He said the statements were not related to new information tendered to the coronial inquiry late last year.
“Nothing to do with them whatsoever. This is new evidence,” he told reporters.
The body of the 17-year-old Gomeroi youth was found on train tracks eight kilometres south of Tamworth on the morning of January 16, 1988.
He had suffered a head injury but little else, and there was very little blood at the scene.
Mr Craigie said that police had not followed official procedures after Haines’ body was discovered, compromising the investigation.
“Within one hour, the boy was removed from the train tracks and the train was allowed to proceed.”
He said that if it had been a white man’s body, proper police procedures would have been followed.
Mr Craigie holds a press conference every year on the anniversary of his nephew's death. The coronial inquest could potentially offer the answers he has been looking for for decades.
The circumstance of how his body came to be on the tracks is one of the country’s more famous cold cases.
“As we said way back then, the investigation wasn’t up to scratch. Flawed in many capacities,” Don Craigie told reporters in Tamworth.
A second inquest ended abruptly in October last year amid revelations of “new evidence.”
Police offered a $500,000 dollar reward for information on the case, and late last year doubled the amount.
“That reward is still available, and I dare say the police minister and the state government of New South Wales if they thought this was an open and shut case, they wouldn’t be throwing a million dollars at it,” Mr Craigie said.
The inquest resumes on February 28.
