CAROLINE JANE DOW

January 1978

CAROLINE JANE DOW (25)

PHILLIP SIDNEY BAKER (24)

Shot dead at Cabarita Beach, NSW. They were naked and had been killed with a shotgun. It has been reported that the killer came from Queensland.

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Police cool on cold cases

Les Kennedy June 4, 2007 SMH

TWO hundred murder cases deemed solvable are about to be sent back to local detectives - but senior police fear they will remain unsolved for years because of insufficient resources and a growing backlog of 9000 exhibits for DNA analysis.

Kings Cross police alone will be handed 37 old murder cases on top of an already heavy crime load for the 15 detectives. Seventy detectives at the Homicide Squad can normally only manage 50 to 60 cases a year.
The cases include a series of gangland killings amid suspicions they went nowhere because of corrupt police involvement.
But the Unsolved Homicide Unit, dubbed the "cold case squad", believes the 200 murders can be solved with the aid of modern forensic techniques such as DNA analysis of blood, saliva and hair found at crime scenes, along with fingerprints and ballistics evidence.
It chose the 200 from more than 400 unsolved murders committed between 1970 and 2000 after it was asked to review them in June 2004, with an expectation it would take six months to identify cases worth reinvestigating. But it took the small team three years of searches as it tracked down and read each case file.
Even with new techniques that could solve the murders, investigators will have to compete with the backlog of 9000 exhibits from other cases - such as robberies, sexual assaults, burglaries and muggings - dating back to 2000. These are are still awaiting analysis at the Government's understaffed DNA forensics laboratory at Lidcombe.
While Queensland has 100 scientists working to clear a backlog of 12,000 crime scene exhibits, only 10 now work at the Lidcombe laboratory. Nevertheless, the 200 unsolved murder cases will be handed back to detectives at 80 suburban and country commands over the next six weeks.
"We don't know how many of the local squads will get the time to do them on top of their existing work," a Major Crime officer told the Herald.
"The emphasis in local area commands now is on solving volume crime [such as break-and-enters and car thefts]; that's all commanders are interested in.
"There are on average 100 murders a year in NSW, and the Homicide Squad, with about 70 detectives, actively examines 50 to 60 of them. The rest are handled locally. So how is Kings Cross going to cope with 37?"
The state police strategy has also shifted priority in funding and staffing to counter-terrorism, security for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Sydney in September, and public order squads. "Major crime resourcing has dropped off the radar," one officer said.

Compounding the crisis are similar DNA backlogs in every other state, while there is still no functional national DNA database from which suspects can be identified if they move interstate and are arrested for another crime. This is because legal problems persist, with differing state laws on the collection of DNA, as revealed in the Herald on Saturday.
One of the 200 cases that will be hampered by stalling on the national DNA databank is the murder of Caroline Jane Dow, 25, a trainee nurse, and her boyfriend, Phillip Sidney Baker, 24. Their naked bodies were found blasted by a shotgun in the dunes at Cabarita Beach on the North Coast in January 1978. The killer is believed to have come from Queensland.
Police have been guarded about the cases that will be returned to local area commands, but the cold case squad will also ask Cowra detectives to reopen investigations into the April 1987 murders of Catherine Pollard, 28, and her friend Georgina Watmore, 24. They were found bludgeoned to death in their home after a party.
Among the "solvable" Kings Cross cases are: the murder of Kato Mo, who died in a gang fight outside a brothel in 1986; the 1994 murder of Talal Assad, a suspected drug dealer bashed to death by a rival drug trafficker; the shooting death of Ali Ghazzawie; and the 1988 shooting murder of the Rex Hotel bar manager Mark Gregory Rogers. The gun used to kill Rogers was identified as the weapon used to kill William Rogers, a taxi driver - not a relative - in Ashfield later the same year.
There is a promise to increase the Sydney DNA analysis team from 10 to 20 and create a new laboratory at Greystaines, but police say it will still be a fraction of Queensland's effort.
Compounding the crisis are similar DNA backlogs in every other state, while there is still no functional national DNA database from which suspects can be identified if they move interstate and are arrested for another crime. This is because legal problems persist, with differing state laws on the collection of DNA, as revealed in the Herald on Saturday.
One of the 200 cases that will be hampered by stalling on the national DNA databank is the murder of Caroline Jane Dow, 25, a trainee nurse, and her boyfriend, Phillip Sidney Baker, 24. Their naked bodies were found blasted by a shotgun in the dunes at Cabarita Beach on the North Coast in January 1978. The killer is believed to have come from Queensland.
Police have been guarded about the cases that will be returned to local area commands, but the cold case squad will also ask Cowra detectives to reopen investigations into the April 1987 murders of Catherine Pollard, 28, and her friend Georgina Watmore, 24. They were found bludgeoned to death in their home after a party.
Among the "solvable" Kings Cross cases are: the murder of Kato Mo, who died in a gang fight outside a brothel in 1986; the 1994 murder of Talal Assad, a suspected drug dealer bashed to death by a rival drug trafficker; the shooting death of Ali Ghazzawie; and the 1988 shooting murder of the Rex Hotel bar manager Mark Gregory Rogers. The gun used to kill Rogers was identified as the weapon used to kill William Rogers, a taxi driver - not a relative - in Ashfield later the same year.
There is a promise to increase the Sydney DNA analysis team from 10 to 20 and create a new laboratory at Greystaines, but police say it will still be a fraction of Queensland's effort.