Henry Keogh
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Henry Keogh is an Australian murderer. He was sentenced to 26 years for the 1994 murder of his 29 year old fiancée, Anna-Jane Cheney, then head of Professional Conduct at the Law Society in Adelaide, South Australia. It was alleged that Keogh had planned the murder for over two years.
Doubts have been raised regarding the evidence upon which the conviction was based, however all appeals and petitions have been disallowed.
In a petition lodged in 2002, Keogh's legal team provided material in support of 37 separate complaints. Keogh's key complaint was against then chief forensic pathologist Colin Manock's handling of the autopsy on Cheney and his evidence in the trial.
South Australian Deputy Premier, Kevin Foley, said that after considering the report of the Solicitor General, delivered after an exhaustive examination over two and a half years of the 37 complaints contained in Mr Keogh’s third petition, he formed the opinion that it did not disclose any arguable basis on which the Supreme Court could find that there had been a miscarriage of justice.
"Nor does it disclose any reason to doubt Mr Keogh’s guilt of the murder in 1994 of Anna Jane Cheney," Mr Foley said.
"It is important to understand that the case against Mr Keogh was never dependent on the pathology evidence alone."
"For example, in his address to the jury, the prosecutor Paul Rofe QC said: ’If this was just pathology evidence then Keogh should be acquitted.’"
"The trial judge too directed the jury that: `It is accepted by both sides that the pathology evidence, by itself, does not solve this case for you.'"
"Rather it was the overwhelming strength of the whole of the circumstantial evidence against Mr Keogh that led, and still leads, to a conclusion of guilt."
"Some of the criticisms of the way in which Dr Manock conducted the autopsy of Ms Cheney may be valid. However, those matters were known to the defendant’s lawyers or the expert pathologists they engaged at the time of trial."
"There was no deficiency in the prosecution’s disclosure. Nor is there any feature of the way in which the trial was conducted that shows any real risk that there was a miscarriage of justice on this ground."
"Nothing that the petitioner, or his lobbyists through the media have raised, change the facts surrounding the awful death of Ms Cheney."
Mr Foley says on reading Mr Kourakis’ report, it reminds us of evidence at the trial which found Ms Cheney was found dead in her bath;
- at a time when without her knowledge, her life was insured to a total value of about $1.2 million under five policies that had been fraudulently obtained by Mr Keogh, by forging her signature on the policy applications;
- the very day after she and Mr Keogh had attended on a wedding celebrant to register their intent to solemnise a relationship that Mr Keogh had betrayed by having affairs with two other women;
- within 24 hours of her suffering up to 15 bruises to different parts of her body;
- with two bruises at the very top of her head that are difficult to explain innocently.
"The combined weight of the circumstances is more than enough to prove Mr Keogh’s guilt."
"Moreover, the lies told by Mr Keogh to several people, including Ms Cheney’s father and the police shortly after her death can be viewed as an attempt to conceal the full value of the insurance he had taken out on her life, and therefore the amount he stood to gain from her death."
"It is not arguable that there has been a miscarriage of justice," Mr Foley said.
In an interview with Ian Henschke on the ABC television show, Statewide, Alexis Keogh, one of Keogh's three adult daughters, vowed to continue to fight for her father's release.
Mr Foley said Keogh and his supporters should "accept his guilt" and consider Cheney's grieving family.
