“We’ve done all this for them,” Boyd said.
Retired NSW Police detective Russell Oxford,who began working on the case in 1988,said they had “never given up” and thanked Boyd for her efforts since she was a young child.
“Today’s verdict was sensational,” Oxford said.
Bowie had tears in his eyes following the verdict and hit his fist on the wooden dock before he was taken downstairs to the cells.
The judge listed his sentencing in December.
The Crown had argued thatcomments made by Bowie to his ambulance colleagues constituted admissions,including that “pigs don’t leave any evidence”,“they’ll never find her” and “if you ever want to get rid of anybody,feed them to the wild pigs,they don’t leave anything,not even bones”.
In a police statement in August 1982,Bowie said he had been drinking beers and playing pokies the night Roxlyn disappeared,and the next morning he had noticed a blue suitcase and $100 cash gone.
The ‘Dear John’ letter tendered at John Bowie’s trial
Dear John,
I’m leaving you with the kids for good.
I’ve thought about it for a long timenow and tonight finally did it.
I’ve packed a few things and youcan have the rest. I don’t want anythingto remind me of you or the kids.
Don’t try to find me,because I willnever come back to you.
Bye,
Roxlyn.
Bowie was allegedto have forced Roxlyn to write two letters about leaving her family – a “Dear John” letter to him and a “Dear Mum and Dad” letter to her parents in Sydney – before she was killed.
Crown prosecutor Alex Morris claimed such coercion was “powerful evidence supporting premeditated murder”.
Morris alleged Bowie had a window of opportunity to kill Roxlyn between 7pm on June 5,1982 and 11pm or later when he knocked on the caravan door of neighbours who lived in the backyard,ahead of his “staged performance ... pretending to be the concerned husband whose wife was missing”.
The Crown alleged Bowie dispersed items of clothing and removed a silver “R” ring from Roxlyn before burying it on a block 250 metres from their home.
Prosecutors also argued Bowie had a tendency to be intentionally violent towards women with whom he was in a domestic relationship.
One woman told the court she had a conversation with Bowie at a truck stop near Maitland in 1990 or 1991 and expressed a wish someone would kill her violent husband. She said Bowie,who was then a bus driver,replied,“I have killed someone before,and it’s not a nice feeling”.
Morris told the jury the “11 important words might tell you everything you need to know”.
Defence barrister Winston Terracini,SC,argued it had been a “Mickey Mouse” police investigation and criticised a lack of inquiries into obtaining records of the modes of transport and telephone operations as they were in 1982.
Roxlyn and John Bowie.Credit:NSW Police
“Members of the jury,they can’t even put before you ... even a vet that will tell you what pigs eat,” he said.
Terracini said jurors may dislike Bowie,and it was accepted he “had pretty low standards and difficulty living up to them” regarding his behaviour towards women,but the justice system was “not about only giving a fair go to people we like”.
He said there did not appear to be any doubt that Roxlyn Bowie had written the two letters,but if the jury was “not satisfied that she was forced to write them ... then you’d be of the view that she left of her own accord”.
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He said Bowie “has maintained his innocence for 40 years”.
The Crown prosecutor said the hypothesis that Roxlyn left the isolated town with no easy means of transport,limited clothes and cash was one “supported nowhere other than in the realm of fantasy”.
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