The Teacher's Pet

For almost 40 years, Roslyn's death has remained unsolved.

Hedley Thomas is the investigative journalist behind some of Australia's biggest true crime podcasts, including The Teacher's Pet and Shandy's Story.

Now, he's gone back through the evidence, interviewed people connected with the case, and begun asking whether Roslyn's murder was ever properly investigated.

His new podcast is called The Poisoned Wife, and he joins us to talk about it.

Yeah.

Was he...

You know, when we talk about Chris Dawson, the subject of The Teacher's Pet, one of the subjects, you, uh, identified that he was a charismatic guy.

He was a very attractive man in almost every aspect, or he would've seemed so to the young woman in that story.

One that I did like, and you'll know what these are all called.

The Australian one.

What was that one called? Oh, Case File.

No, the one where there was about the girl that went missing and the PE teacher.

me about The Poisoned Wife.

Yes, so this is a new series from Hedley Thomas, and he was, of course, the Aussie journo who did The Teacher's Pet.

And so that was a show from 2018, received a lot of awards, and actually ultimately after that podcast came out, led to a murder conviction.

So, yeah, it was big boots to fill for Thomas, this new series.

Gosh, difficult second album, eh?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

But I think the interesting thing with this one is that there are a lot of parallels with this new case to the one in the teacher's pet.

So for people who haven't listened to the teacher's pet, that investigated the disappearance of a woman and then after her death, her husband entered into a relationship with their much younger babysitter.

On the issue, and we touched on it briefly, but the issue of, uh, how it could affect potential prosecutions because of the exposure.

From recollection when I was speaking to Hedley with The Teacher's Pet, that became, uh, a part of an issue that the, uh, the courts were, uh, concerned about the, uh, person nominated in The Teacher's Pet podcast wasn't gonna get a fa- fair trial.

That, that was o- overcome.

What's your thoughts with your legal background and the possibility of how that can be, uh, we make sure that we don't prejudice the, the possibility of a fair trial for someone that, uh, might be mentioned in a podcast? I'm not talking specifically The Poisoned Wife, I'm talking generally here.

Relationships with police in, in general, like I, I would imagine a lot of the investigations would start, uh, you'd, you'd have a look at it, and again, I'm not specifically referring to the, uh, Poisoned Wife, other investigations.

At some point in time you'd, uh, reach out to police.

I think Hedley during a couple of the, uh, uh, probably was The Teacher's Pet, that he was providing the police with information saying, "Hey, this might be relevant, you may or may not, uh, not be aware of it." What's your relationship with, uh, uh, police on, on these, these type of investigations?

Look, I think it's pretty variable.

No, it's a series, sorry.

If you were into The Teacher's Pet-

Mm

... which took a stranglehold on me all of, what, like, seven years ago now, this is called The Poisoned Wife.

It has four episodes that have come out so far.

It's a podcast by Hadley Thomas, who is the same investigative journalist that did The Teacher's Pet.

And it is, I mean, it's such a fascinating story.

Mm.