A statement in relation to the ABC’s request for a response

My access to the police brief was formally authorised by the Deputy State Coroner, Paul MacMahon, following the 2007 inquest. Australian Police were not the source of authority to approve my access to documents.

At the time I was given access I was not “a writing student” per se. I was a postgraduate researcher. I was awarded a doctorate from the University of London for my narrative nonfiction book Have You Seen Simone?, and my accompanying thesis, in 2015. That work and my methods were approved by the University of London’s Ethics Committee.

I assume the coroner gave me access to documents because, at the time of the 2007 inquest, the case had stalled in both jurisdictions. German investigators could take no further action without new evidence, and key witnesses in Germany were beyond the reach of the NSW Police.

Separately, and more troublingly: Simone's family had not attended her inquest and did not know the evidence in her case. The Polizei were not able to inform the Strobels about the evidence as a consequence of their close relationship with the Suckfuell siblings, who had been officially named suspects (Beschuldigter) by the State Attorney of Würzburg in June 2005. It was not until my arrival, two years and seven months after Simone's death, that the Strobels learned about the evidence, and why Tobias, Katrin and Jens were persons of interest in relation to Simone’s death. I also ensured they had access to the evidence in German, so they could make their own assessments. The head of major crimes in Würzburg, Hans-Jürgen Kämmer, told me at the time that this was not the norm — never before had a writer become involved in an investigation — but that it was good I was there, and good for the Strobels that someone was helping them to realise the possibility of what might have happened (p.163, Have You Seen Simone?).

Former homicide detective Wayne Hayes has recently expressed the view that I should not have been given access to police documents in the case. He has nonetheless been supportive of my work over the last twenty years. In Have You Seen Simone?, I record Hayes telling me directly that the investigation had stalled and that I was “really our only hope of solving it.”

I attach the Crown Solicitor's letter of 15 October 2020, addressed to the Strobels, which recognises the work I did in contributing to the evidence in Simone’s case. This letter records that the fresh inquest was ordered on the discovery of new evidence and facts, and specifically names interviews that I conducted as one of three categories of new evidence. After the failed murder charge the scope of the second inquest changed.

My work was tested directly in court. In 2014, Tobias Moran sought an urgent injunction in the Supreme Court of Western Australia to stop publication of my book (Moran v Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd [2014] WASC 334). Justice Martin refused the injunction. He found my use of the coronial inquest material was lawful — protected as “fair report” of public proceedings, not just something the Court declined to stop (at [68]). He also found that the suspicion the book raised rested on “a considerable body of evidence” (at [69]), not speculation. He also noted that investigating unsolved crime has never been the exclusive province of police, and it was that principle the Court accepted in refusing to stop the book. Following the injunction, a defamation action proceeded, lasting three years and settling in my favour.

As a private citizen I have had to carry personal and legal risk for the past 20 years, unlike police and journalists who do similar work under the protection of large corporations and government bodies. Nonetheless, I don't regret the access I was given.