'The uncomfortable truth': Two mothers' 36-year fight for justice

Early one morning in 1987 three men were driving along a lonely stretch of outback highway when they happened across the unimaginable.

Noticing a white 4WD had crashed on the side of the road, the men immediately stopped and got out of their vehicles.

What they saw next would be vivid in their minds decades later and would spark a 36-year fight for justice by two grieving mothers.

Lying face-down in the gravel by the shoulder of the road was the lifeless body of a young girl.

Yards away, on a tarpaulin, was the lifeless body of another girl, naked from the waist down. Next to her, with his arm around her, was an unconscious man - much older than her.

Sixteen-year-old Muruwari Kunya girl Mona Lisa Smith and 15-year-old Wakamurra girl Jacinta Smith - known to those close to her as Cindy - are remembered as being "good girls" who were like sisters to each other.

They both attended Bourke High School in the NSW central west and lived in a close-knit Indigenous community on a reserve.

Mona's mother, June Smith, said her daughter dreamed of being a singer and wanted to sing in the town's Aboriginal Talent Quest.

"Mona was a beautiful baby and she grew up a lovely, happy-go-lucky girl and as she got older, she and her cousin Cindy were always together every day," she told an inquest into the deaths.

Her cousin Cindy also loved music and wanted to learn how to play the piano. Her favourite songs were 'Uptown Girl' by Billy Joel and 'Venus' by Bananarama.

"I used to love taking my kids to the Talent Quest, where our kids could perform for our community," her mother, Dawn Smith, said.

"Cindy was always too shy to get up and sing, but she enjoyed going and watching the others."

The girls' musical ambitions were stripped away from them in the early hours of December 6, 1987, after a tragic car accident on the Mitchell Highway between Bourke and Enngonia.

A non-Aboriginal male - 40-year-old Alexander Grant - was also in the car at the time of the crash but escaped with only minor injuries.

What happened that morning, and the police investigation that ensued, was subject to an inquest by state coroner Teresa O'Sullivan in December, 2023.

Her findings, handed down on April 23, 2024, were damning of the police.

"The initial police investigation in the days following the girls' deaths... was wholly and, in some respects, inexplicably deficient," she said.

"The uncomfortable truth, to my mind, is that had two white teenage girls died in the same circumstances, I cannot conceive of their being such a manifestly deficient police investigation into the circumstances."

When police arrived on scene that morning - having been alerted about the crash by two of the three men - Cindy was found lying on her back, predominantly naked.

Mr Grant "smelt strongly of liquor, had bloodshot eyes, was incoherent and slurred his speech".

At first, Mr Grant admitted to officers that he had been the one driving. But when one officer pointed out the girls were dead he quickly changed his tune, saying Mona had been the driver.

This was the story he maintained when a police officer visited him in the hospital later that morning. He told the officer he "grabbed the wheel" and told Mona to slow down, "but then she went off the road and that was that".

Explaining why Cindy was in a state of undress, he said after the accident she took her clothes off and said, "ya want me" to which he replied, "no, we've got a problem here".

Crime scene officers didn't take detailed photos of the bodies, car or debris in location and did not seize the tarpaulin or anything else from the scene to examine.

The car was not forensically tested and key witnesses - including one of the men who found the crash - were not interviewed.

During a further questioning by police in Nyngan on December 9, 1987, Mr Grant told police the tarpaulin had fallen out during the crash and Cindy had been "walking around" drinking a bottle of rum.

The officer accepted Mr Grant's version of events and he was charged with neglect causing bodily harm, aiding an unlicensed driver and driving under the influence.

The case was reopened a few months later, in May, when the curiosity of a visiting Accident Investigation Squad officer got the better of him.

Senior Sergeant Raymond Godkin was in town during the Brewarrina floods. To pass the time, he was flicking through the Station Occurrence Pad and it triggered his memory of the accident. He felt something was not right.

When he returned to Sydney he spoke to his superiors and they agreed the case should be re-investigated.

But when he returned to Bourke he was not met with cooperation.

"I explained to him why I was there, and he said to me, 'as far as I'm concerned, you can hop in your car and piss off back to Sydney, because my detectives did this job and I'm content with what they did'," he recalled before the inquest.

Unperturbed, Sergeant Godkin pressed on with the re-investigation. But by this stage, it was too late. Critical evidence had been "irreparably lost".

Mr Grant was hit with further charges of two counts of driving under the influence causing death and indecently interfering with a dead body.

The charge of interfering with a body was dropped due to the time of Cindy's death being unable to be pinpointed and the charges of neglect were also dropped.

In February 1990, a jury found Mr Grant not guilty of the charges of culpable driving causing death.

He walked free. The girls' families were devastated.

"The trial wasn't explained. We didn't even know why he got acquitted. Nothing was explained. It didn't feel fair or right," June told the inquest.

"We weren't offered any support. Nothing during the trial and nothing after the trial. They never came anywhere near us."

At the time of the car accident Mr Grant - who died in 2017 - was staying with his wife at the Mitchell Caravan Park in Bourke.

He worked in the cotton industry, including on the cotton gin just outside Bourke, as a contractor and excavator.

Just a fortnight before the fatal crash in 1987, Mr Grant approached two other teen girls in the Smith family in his vehicle and asked them for directions to the rodeo.

The girls got in the car to direct him to the showground and they asked him to buy them some beer. He agreed, and the trio drank together outside the showground.

As they were leaving, he asked one of the girls if she wanted to drive the car and she said yes. She drove back to the showground and picked up Cindy.

According to the girl, Mr Grant started making sexual advances on her while she was driving and Cindy intervened, moving his hand away.

After they dropped Cindy back to the reserve, the man told the other Smith girls he would give them money if they had sex with him. They both rejected him and got out of the vehicle.

In her findings, magistrate O'Sullivan said on the evening of December 5, 1987, Mr Grant was again "scoping the Bourke township for young girls to ply with alcohol and to sexually proposition".

She said Cindy and Mona had got in the car with him at about 8:15pm after he offered to drive them a short distance to the levee.

"They did not normally accept lifts from strangers, but it is likely that they did on this occasion because they met him on that previous occasion," magistrate O'Sullivan said.

"Instead of giving them a lift home as he should have, Mr Grant took off with them.

"Although it scarcely needs to be said, the conduct of Mr Grant was predatory and disgraceful."

She said the evidence heard in the inquest pointed "unequivocally" to the girls dying in the accident and to Mr Grant having been driving the vehicle at the time.

"Mr Grant readily told sargeant Godkin in the interview in May 1988 that a lot of what he told detectives previously was 'not right'... 'and really bullshit'," magistrate O'Sullivan said.

"This statement may ultimately be one of the few truths relayed by Mr Grant."

She found that, given Cindy died during the accident, she would not have been able to remove her own clothing and that Mr Grant "sexually interfered" with her after she passed.

For 36 years the family of Mona and Cindy never gave up fighting for accountability and for answers.

An inquest into their deaths began in 1988, but was dropped before it concluded as Mr Grant had been charged with an indictable offence.

Working with the mothers of Mona and Cindy, in 2022, The National Justice Project applied to have the inquest reopened.

This was not the first time the mothers have tried to have the investigation reopened, but the first time it was successful.

"The failings identified regarding the police investigation in the correspondence from February 1990 after the acquittal of Mr Grant were absolutely accurate," Ms O'Sullivan said.

"The families' concerns have been squarely vindicated by the evidence received during this inquest."

She said she had "no hesitation" finding the girls' race had played a part in the botched investigation and the treatment of their families.

"My final words of thanks and praise go to Mona and Cindy's family," the coroner said in her concluding remarks.

"Without their tireless advocacy, it is doubtful that this inquest would have been reopened."

In a statement to the media, Dawn said she welcomed the coroner's findings but the "pain and hurt" or what happened to her daughter all those years ago "will never go away".

"We want to be able to hold someone accountable for what we have heard," she said.

"I hope that other families in our position won't ever go through the same thing [that] we did for 36 years.

"We hope that there is change in the way the police force treats Aboriginal families who have had loved ones who they have lost or have been killed."

Among her recommendations, Ms O'Sullivan said police should receive training about the cultural perspectives and ongoing impact of colonisation on Aboriginal people today.

"For the fellas in the police that did the wrong thing, they shouldn't be in the police force," June told the media.

"If they don't like Blackfellas, why do they come out here? We all bleed the same. We are proud to be black. For cops to treat us differently because of racism is wrong.

"If it was two white girls it would have been different," she said.