PETER Dutton poses with Faye Kennedy and a petition containing thousands of signatures.
The young federal member for Dickson is used to the photo-op, but this one is not for the cameras.
This is a case close to the police-officer-turned-politician’s heart. Ms Kennedy is the mother of Diedre Kennedy, a toddler who in 1973 was stolen from her bedroom, sexually assaulted, bitten, murdered and tossed on to the roof of a toilet block.
The crime shocked Queensland and fell in the lap of Mr Dutton when he joined the police force as a young detective in 1990.
He’d spend years chasing her killer but to this day nobody has been jailed for it. One man escaped narrowly, and only by a legal technicality.
Raymond John Carroll, an electrician, was arrested and charged over the murder. He was found guilty in 1985 but the verdict was overturned by a Queensland Court of Appeal.
Years later, when new evidence implicating Carroll emerged, police couldn’t charge him because Queensland’s double-jeopardy laws prevented a person being tried twice for the same crime.
Carroll has always maintained his innocence, but the legal loophole set Mr Dutton on a path towards ensuring no other suspect escaped scrutiny the same way.
He joined Ms Kennedy in gathering more than 30,000 signatures and succeeded in changing the legislation in 2007.
When Ms Kennedy learned of the news, she told the Brisbane Times none of it would have been possible without Mr Dutton’s dogged determination.
“Peter Dutton has really been my rock,” the broken mother-of-two said.
“He was a police officer and he actually worked on bubby’s case some years back.
“We’ve been pushing for ages and when I spoke to Peter Dutton this morning, I said it has finally come to fruition.”
Diedre was abducted from her bed in Ipswich, west of Brisbane, on Saturday, April 14, 1973. She was sleeping next to her sister Stephanie when her killer snuck into the house, grabbed her from the bed and took her away.
When the toddler’s body was found, there was a bite mark on the outside of her left leg, just above the knee. She was dressed in women’s underwear that had been stolen from a clothes line next door to the Kennedy home.
The toilet block where she was dumped was less than 200m away.
The cause of death was strangulation but the little girl who had just learned to walk was also sexually assaulted before she died.
Ms Kennedy said that on the morning of her murder, Diedre’s sister came into her room to relay the unthinkable news.
“She told me Dee-Dee was not in her cot,” Ms Kennedy recalled years later.
Carroll spoke out about the case years later. He said he was “sorry” for the family but maintained he was an innocent man.
“I feel extremely sorry for Mrs Kennedy for her loss. I honestly hope she does get closure for this crime, but I’m sorry, she is not going to get it at my expense, because I did not do it,” he said.
The Weekend Australian reported in 2003 that the killer benefited from a “laboratory bungle” when a single pubic hair “taken from the crotch of the 17-month-old bruised and sexually abused body” was destroyed in the lab.
After his conviction was overturned, Carroll was charged with perjury and convicted for lying to investigators. That conviction was also overturned.
“Two juries found that (he murdered Diedre),” Ms Kennedy said. “And no judge will ever convince me they were wrong.
“People need to know that you can’t do that kind of thing. It’s wrong.”
Faye Kennedy’s nightmare took a dark turn in 2010 when the murdered toddler’s ashes were stolen from the family home.
“Her baby jewellery, the plaque off the crematorium wall when we had her there (are gone)” Ms Kennedy said.
She said the ashes, which weren’t in an urn, were among the only physical connections that kept her close to her daughter.
“I need her. I need her to be with me. She belongs to us,” Ms Kennedy said.
Mr Dutton today lost a three-way contest to become Prime Minister of Australia.
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