A person sent me something in the mail the other day.
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On the corner of the envelope was written "Missing person Tony Jones".
Tony Jones disappeared without a trace in one of Australia's most baffling cold cases.
The 20-year-old man from Perth vanished while hitchhiking between Townsville and Mount Isa in November 1982.
A 2002 inquest ruled he was murdered and a second inquest in 2010 heard his body may have been burned in slaughter yards in Hughenden. But the coroner halted the second inquiry when lawyers noticed it was being heard under the 1958 Coroners' Act and not the updated 2003 Act.
The case was in the news again last week when Jones's family hoped a Brisbane Supreme Court judgment would finally bring clarity to the issue.
Sadly their hopes were quashed when the Court ruled against a judicial review because the application was only raised in 2018 and not made "in reasonable time".
The family told media in Brisbane they felt they would now never know the truth.
So, back to the letter.
Inside was a print out of a Wikipedia page of another dead man: Mervyn Henry Stevenson (1926-2001). Stevenson was a Queensland Police Officer from 1947 until he retired in 1982. However in 1984 the then-Labor opposition tabled a confidential police report in parliament on cattle thefts and other matters than recommended charges be laid against Stevenson.
Police commissioner Terry Lewis, later jailed after corruption scandals uncovered by the Fitzgerald Inquiry, vetoed the recommendation. Then in 1992 on the 10 year anniversary of Jones's disappearance Townsville police published an identikit sketch of a person wanted for questioning in relation to the matter. Police said the person allegedly dined with Jones on the night of his disappearance and planned to give him a lift to Charters Towers.
The Townsville Bulletin reported the sketch matched a "former policeman" and the 2002 inquest identified him as Stevenson - who had died a year earlier.
I have no idea if Stevenson was implicated, but if he did meet Jones that night, that needs to be investigated further - Derek Barry
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
