https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/30758904/damning-tapes-that-snared-anita-cobby-s-killer-uncovered/?cmp=ydnThe secret recordings that snared Anita Cobby’s killers have been uncovered 30 years after five men were jailed for life for her murder.
The two tapes reveal in full for the first time the role of a woman known as “Miss X”, who was crucial in catching the killers.
For the past three decades, she has lived with a new identity as a member of the witness protection program because of threats to her life.
Miss X was known to John Travers, the man who led the assault on Anita Cobby and cut the 26-year-old nurse’s throat in a Sydney cow paddock on February 2, 1986.
Three weeks after the brutal murder, Miss X — who was the girlfriend of Travers’ uncle and suspected the violent 18-year-old was involved — approached police.
She agreed to have a recording device concealed under her clothing and spoke with Travers in his cell.
In the 45-minute conversation, Travers admitted to the murder and named the four others involved.
“We were all drunk and she’d f...ing seen all of us,” he said.
“ ... I said she’s got to be done and they said ‘do your thing’.
“So I just cut her.”
The tape was crucial in catching the killers.
A transcript was used in the trial of the five men and helped secure their conviction.
But what was not known until now was the existence of a second, much longer tape. Shortly after she secured Travers’ confession, Miss X agreed to be wired up again to visit the home of Michael Murdoch, another of the killers, to secure a confession.
“Mick, I’m sorry, I saw John today,” she told him.
“He told me everything.
“I know everything all right about what happened.
“I know it all.”
That secret tape will be heard for the first time in a movie-length investigation, Anita, to air tonight on Channel 7. The emergence of the tapes comes amid reports at the weekend that one of Anita Cobby’s killers — believed to be Michael Murdoch or John Travers — has written to a NSW parliamentary inquiry pleading for better treatment of prisoners serving life.
At least two of the men are understood to be campaigning for parole.Ms Cobby’s husband, John, said he had thought about the men’s possible release and was worried about the safety of his family. Mr Cobby was originally the prime suspect in his wife’s murder and days after her funeral, he changed his name and fled the country.
He said he always blamed himself for her death.
“I should have been there for her,” Mr Cobby says in the Channel 7 special tonight.
In an emotional reunion on a Sydney beach, Ms Cobby’s sister, Kathryn Szyszka, told him her family had never blamed him.
“No one is to blame but the perpetrators,” she said. “And John should not blame himself.
“He needs to be free of that thought because ... we just want him to find some peace and happiness, that’s all we’ve ever wished for him.”
The murder of Ms Cobby outraged Australia and led to calls to bring back the death penalty.
The five men — including three brothers — were sentenced to life imprisonment with their files marked “never to be released”.
