Mona Lisa, Cindy Smith deaths in Bourke: Courtroom erupts over disturbing necrophilia ruling

An inquest into the deaths of the two Indigenous teenagers has reached emotional scenes as a coroner found a drunken white man sexually assaulted a 15-year-old as she lay dead after a horrific crash in the Outback.

A court packed with the families of cousins ​​Mona Lisa Smith, 16, and Jacinda ‘Cindy’ Rose Smith, 15, was startled by a man shouting expletives after the verdict in the court in Bourke, in far north-west NSW, on Tuesday.

The teenagers died on the remote Mitchell Highway near Enngonia, outside Bourke, December 1987.

Some 37 years later, State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan found that Alexander Grant had engaged in “predatory and disgraceful conduct” after her death with Cindy on the side of the highway.

The coroner also found that Grant had previously driven around Bourke looking for young Aboriginal girls to get drunk and sexually abuse.

“Horribly, the evidence indicates that he became sexually involved with Cindy after she died,” the coroner said.

“I am convinced that there was some form of sexual interference by Cindy by touching Cindy’s breast or genital area after she passed away.”

Ms O’Sullivan also concluded that Grant had lied when he said he was not driving his Toyota HiLux car when it crashed.

She also found that racism in the police force at the time meant the crash was never properly investigated.

In In the weeks before the crash, a white male driver had picked up Cindy and family member Sharon Smith, among others, and behaved in a “predatory and sexually inappropriate manner”, the court heard.

“I notice it was Mr. Grant,” said Mrs. O’Sullivan.

On the night in question – December 5, 1987 – she said Grant was “again exploring the Bourke township to introduce young girls to alcohol and sexual solicitations.”

She discovered that the girls had accepted a lift from Grant for the short distance to the embankment in Bourke, near their home.

But “instead of giving them a ride home, he left with them at around 10 p.m. to the Riverview Hotel to purchase alcohol.”

Then, in the early hours of Sunday, December 7, 1987, Grant crashed his car due to unsafe steering due to ‘intoxication, fatigue, driving speed and lack of lighting’.

Mrs O’Sullivan was convinced that Grant had remained in the vehicle as it rolled, but that Cindy and Mona Lisa had been thrown from the car and suffered catastrophic injuries when it ‘rolled on them’.

She could not estimate the specific time of their deaths, but said they died “very soon” after the accident.

‘Mona… from multiple internal injuries, including head and lung injuries and extensive blood loss. Cindy… from multiple internal injuries, including pelvic and lung injuries and extensive blood loss.”

Grant was charged with indecent interference with Cindy’s corpse and culpable driving causing the death of both girls, but the indecency charge was dropped and he was acquitted of the latter charge by an all-white jury at his 1990 trial.

Grant told a police officer at the scene that he was driving the vehicle, but then changed his story and said it was Mona Lisa who had been driving.

The coroner found that Grant drove the car, despite lying about it afterwards – and accepted the testimony of Officer Ken McKenzie who was at the scene of the accident that morning.

Officer McKenzie noticed that Grant smelled strongly of alcohol, had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, was unsteady on his feet, dirty and disheveled.

He had indicated at the time Grant had just changed his story to say ‘oh, now she’s the driver’.

“I have no hesitation in accepting his account,” Ms O’Sullivan said.

However, she did not have much confidence in the former’s testimony Detective Sergeant Peter Ehsman, who told the inquest he believed Grant’s story that he was not driving the vehicle and was unaware of any confession at the scene.

“If Mr. Ehsman had conducted a thorough investigation… he would certainly have been made aware of these admissions. Mr. Ehsman was not open to the possibility that Mr. Grant might lie.”

The coroner found there was evidence of systemic racism or cultural bias within Bourke police in the 1980s.

She said “tensions” between the Aboriginal community and police and “the existence of racial bias within the NSW Police at the time” influenced the investigation into the girls’ deaths.

She described Mr Ehsman’s ‘unconscious bias’ as ‘very disturbing’.

Mr Ehsman had told the inquest it was not unusual for young Aboriginal children to drive without a license, despite the fact Grant’s car was a manual and not an automatic.

Ms O’Sullivan also found it unconscionable that Cindy and Mona Lisa’s mothers – Dawn and June Smith, who were in court on Tuesday – found out about their daughter’s death “from other family members rather than being advised by the police’.

“This inquest was their last hope for answers about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of their beloved girls, a form of justice, albeit decades later,” she said.

“They were very loved by their families. They went to Bourke High School, where they were clearly popular… they were inseparable, like sisters.

‘Mona and Cindy were young, bright girls who were bursting with life and excitement, they had big hopes… and dreams.

“The grief and pain of their deaths remain raw for their families.”

She praised the mothers for continuing the investigation into the girls’ deaths, saying: ‘It has been a long journey. There have been many twists and turns in the road, but you never gave up.”

The inquest, which lasted seven days in November and December last year, revealed disturbing evidence about Grant’s sexual conduct with underage girls and police indifference.

After Grant crashed his car, Mona Lisa’s body was found partially scalped and lying in the mud yards away, while Grant was found with his arms draped over the exposed breasts of Cindy’s body.

Cindy was lying on a tarp with her clothes pushed up around her neck to her ankles.

Two civilian witnesses who first arrived at the scene of the crash had seen Cindy’s nearly naked body lying with her legs together next to Grant.

But the first police officer to arrive afterward discovered that the girl’s legs had been moved – presumably by Grant – to expose her genitals.

Mona Lisa’s partially torn ear was later found at the crash site, not by police investigation, but by her relatives.

Grant had the steering wheel of his Toyota removed from the crashed vehicle, which police failed to confiscate or properly investigate.

His high-powered attorney argued that Mona Lisa was driving the crashed car, and that the charge of interference with Cindy’s body was “discharged” or dropped by prosecutors on a technicality.

During the trial, which was held in the same courthouse as the coronial inquest, Cindy’s mother was so disgusted by Grant’s acquittal that she threw a shoe at the all-white jury.

After the jury acquitted him, Grant fled the city and later died at the age of 70 in a nursing home in NSW in 2017.