FigTree
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Short Overview of Donald Mackays case:
Source: Australian Dictionary Biography
UPDATE: wed 12th june 2013
Police search property in NSW for remains of Donald Mackay
Lets hope after all this time there is a break through on where Donald's remains lie.
:rose:
Source: Australian Dictionary Biography
About 6.30 p.m. on Friday 15 July 1977 Mackay left the Hotel Griffith and vanished. His bloodstained vehicle was located seven hours later in the hotel car park. Three spent .22 cartridges lay nearby. Public indignation at the failure of the police to find Mackay's body led the premier Neville Wran to appoint Justice Philip Woodward royal commissioner to inquire into drug trafficking. He reported in 1979 that Mackay was murdered by a 'hit man' on behalf of the Griffith cell of N'Dranghita (The Honoured Society). In 1984 the local coroner found that Mackay died of 'wilfully inflicted gunshot wounds'. His wife, two sons and two daughters survived him.
In 1986 James Frederick Bazley, who protested his innocence, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy to murder Mackay. The report in 1987 of a special commission of inquiry into the police investigation of the death of Donald Bruce Mackay named police officers, politicians and 'Society' members. Few, if any, doubt that Mackay was murdered in 1977, but many questions concerning his disappearance remain unanswered.[i/]
UPDATE: wed 12th june 2013
Police search property in NSW for remains of Donald Mackay
STATE and federal police officers spent this evening working to excavate a remote NSW property as part of the investigation into the death of Donald Mackay, the victim of one of Australia's most notorious unsolved murders.
The operation, which took place on a property near Hay in the NSW Riverina and was believed to focus on a mineshaft, involved dozens of officers, with a mechanical excavator brought in to assist the search in the late afternoon.
Anti-drugs campaigner Mackay, whose death has been described as Australia's first political assassination, was killed in 1977, after leaving a hotel in the nearby town of Griffith, where he had been drinking with friends.
The furniture salesman's keys were left lying on the ground next to his locked van, which was smeared with blood, and three spent .22 calibre cartridges were found on the road nearby.
His wife Barbara died in 2001 without knowing where her husband's body was dumped.
Lets hope after all this time there is a break through on where Donald's remains lie.
:rose: