Category Archives: Case 01 Sue Neill-Fraser

By Andrew L. Urban By the evening of Australia Day 2009 in Hobart, the blustery wind was calming down and the fine day was turning into a balmy summer night. Helen set out for an 80th birthday party at a … Continue reading →

Andrew L. Urban It is disturbing when a crime reporter gets crime reporting wrong, as did Rochelle Jackson on ABC Radio’s Nightlife with Suzanna Hill on June 28, 2018, talking about one of the most important and controversial legal cases … Continue reading →

By Andrew L. Urban, Jennie Herrera, Lynn Giddings When the Supreme Court in Hobart convenes for the final, crucial session on August 20, 2018, to hear Sue Neill-Fraser seeking leave to appeal against her murder conviction, members of the official … Continue reading →

There are very substantial doubts about this case … the evidence is so weak …. it is hard to see how any conviction could stand … Tasmania’s legal system risks being a laughing stock, if it wasn’t such a tragedy. … Continue reading →

By Andrew L. Urban In her long running appeal against her 2010 murder conviction, Hobart grandmother Sue Neill-Fraser is finding new obstacles, compounded by inaccurate reporting: a fellow prisoner, Stephen Gleeson, has been charged with perverting justice (in her favour). … Continue reading →

Andrew L. Urban Tim Ellis SC, then Tasmania’s DPP and the man who prosecuted Sue Neill-Fraser in 2010 for murder, addressed several aspects of his prosecution – in public. It’s rare that a prosecutor speaks in detail publicly about one … Continue reading →

By Andrew L. Urban A sensational late summer day in Hobart on Wednesday, March 7, 2018 – which I spent on a yacht on the Derwent thanks to my brother and sister in law – can in hindsight be seen … Continue reading →

By Andrew L. Urban Delays for a variety of reasons have stretched the time-line in the latest Sue Neill-Fraser appeal, since the first directions hearing, which was almost exactly a year after the relevant legislation was passed, two and a … Continue reading →

By Andrew L. Urban. Shortly after 10 am on Monday October 30, 2017, a slight young woman with blonde hair up in a bun and breathing nervously, took the witness stand in the packed Court 1 of Hobart’s Supreme Court. … Continue reading →

By Andrew L. Urban.  First published in The Australian, 25/3/2015 as “Justice cast to the four winds” (p. 11) Sue Neill-Fraser was convicted of murder in 2010, after her partner of 18 years, Bob Chappell, disappeared from their jointly owned … Continue reading →