The son-in-law of a missing World War II veteran confessed to killing the 73-year-old when he “bashed him unmercifully”, an inquest has heard.
Retired builder Leslie Ralph Ball, who served with the Royal Australian Air Force in Darwin, went missing in Townsville on May 22, 1993.His son-in-law David Phillips told a family friend he killed Ball after claiming his father-in-law had sexually assaulted a girl, the coroner heard on Monday.
At a reopened inquest into Ball’s disappearance, Murphy said Phillips confessed to luring his father-in-law into the garage of his Townsville home before bashing him.“He said: ‘I gave him such a thrashing, I had him by the throat up against the wall and all but got his windpipe out of his throat’.” He said Phillips told him he recruited the lookalike so a neighbour who waved at everyone from her verandah “thought it was his father-in-law” when they went past.Murphy said Phillips then revealed the pair took the body away in a truck before he killed the lookalike and buried him with Ball.“He said ‘I gave it to the old bloke and I buried the both of them ... in the same grave ... and then I took the truck to the railway station’,” Murphy told the inquest.
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