Deirdre Kennedy Print Page

Plaque erected in memory of 17 month old Deirdre Kennedy who was abducted and murdered in 1973.

Deidre was abducted sometime after 10pm on Friday April 13, 1973 while she was sleeping beside her sister Stephanie. At dawn the next day, trotting trainer Westy Mills, who had been exercising his horses in Limestone Park, discovered Deidre's body. She had been tossed on to the roof of the park's toilet block, 500m from the Kennedys' two-bedroom flat. Deidre had been bashed, sexually assaulted and strangled.

The case ran cold until 1984 when a detective sergeant who had worked on the Deidre Kennedy case had a chance meeting with two old friends in Toowoomba. The men were former police officers who had gone into the RAAF as military policemen and were investigating a case at Amberley airbase. A RAAF recruit by the name of Raymond Carroll had been looking at a young woman's personal pictures and underwear.

Detective Sergeant John Reynolds interviewed Carroll and took hair samples and a cast of his teeth. Carroll said he was at Edinburgh air base at the time of Deidre's murder but an instructor said Carroll was not present for the passing out parade and a fellow recruit recalled him being granted leave for a family medical emergency. The jury didn't believe him and he was convicted and given life imprisonment by trial judge Angelo Vasta.

However, Carroll was later acquitted, with the Court of Criminal Appeal putting considerable weight on what it regarded as discrepancies in the dental experts' testimony. In 2000, Carroll was tried for perjury and found guilty on the grounds that he lied when he said he did not kill Deidre but he was acquitted again and the case went all the way to the High Court, which dismissed the Crown's appeal, meaning he could never be tried again.

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