What an interesting group discussion we had at Wynnum's Little Gnome Bookshop recently. All present were extraordinarily privileged to have Ken Blanch, true crime author and former journalist, stop by with his daughter Kelyn. Ken's personal and disturbing knowledge of Detective Frank Bischof's ethics, in fact his lack of any conscience whatsoever, left us saddened and disgusted but gave us another reason to believe our grandfather was innocent.
Ken Blanch - Review of Lingering Doubts (3 May, 2015)
Lingering Doubts,
going inside Brisbane's Arcade Murder provides compelling evidence for the
modus operandi of unscrupulous police in mid-20th century Queensland.
What they did in those days was identify a suspect through
circumstances and then try to fit the evidence to their suspicions. This led to false conclusions and to the
obfuscation of the real facts.
In the old Queensland police force, advancement was very
much as a result of success and those seeking it very often were not concerned
with how their achievements came about.
Not only did police actively seek evidence that would damage
the suspect, they also actively ignored anything that might be in the suspect's
favour. This sometimes led to vigorous protection
of wrongdoers in the interests of the police and/or politicians.
I have demonstrated
this in my recent bookette, Marjorie
Norval: the girl a railway station swallowed, about the disappearance of
Marjorie Norval in 1938, nine years earlier than Reg Brown's case.
Frank Bischof was involved in investigating that case too.
He often boasted to me privately, when I was chief crime reporter for the old
Brisbane Telegraph and he headed the
CIB during the 1950s, of how he
resorted to trickery to disadvantage suspects and even obtain questionably
incriminating admissions from them (now
known more popularly among police as verballing).
Deb Drummond and Janice Teunis' analysis of likely
alternatives for the assumptions police made according to circumstance in their
investigation of Bronia Armstrong's death has been thorough and enlightening,
and well and truly justifies the title. Congratulations.
