The compelling story of South Australia’s disgraced former chief forensic pathologist and the legal scandals in which he became implicated.
For nearly three decades, Dr Colin Manock was in charge of South Australia’s forensic pathology services, and played a vital role within the state’s criminal justice system: in cases of unexpected or unexplained death, it was his job to determine when a person took their final breath and whether they had died naturally or as a result of something more sinister. Throughout his long career, he performed more than 10,000 autopsies and gave expert scientific evidence in court that helped secure approximately 400 criminal convictions.
But, remarkably, Manock, a self-described “witness of fact”, did not have the necessary training for such a senior, specialist role, and he made serious errors in several major cases—with tragic consequences, including the apparently wrongful imprisonment of innocent people. The full extent of his wrongdoing and the exact number of cases impacted by it remains a mystery more than twenty-five years after he retired, due to the continuing refusal of those in power to heed calls to launch a formal inquiry into his career.
In this book, Rooke examines several of Manock’s most controversial cases, and speaks with many of his former colleagues, people directly impacted by his flawed work, and legal experts. At its heart, A Witness of Fact is about how an entire legal system has failed badly, how unsafe verdicts have been swept under the carpet—and how forensic evidence that is admitted in courts of law in Australia and across the world is dubious more often than we would like to think.
“Drew Rooke performs an unflinching autopsy on the 27-year career of Colin Manock, the disgraced chief forensic pathologist from South Australia who left a trail of questionable convictions and uninvestigated crimes in his wake. Rooke poses uncomfortable questions about the willingness of successive state governments to turn a blind eye to—and, in some cases, even enable—Manock’s malpractice, which became one of the worst scandals in Australian legal and medical history.”
Paddy Manning
“This reads like a thriller, but don't be misled. It is an important exposé of how easily our system of justice goes wrong.”
Margaret Simons, author of Six Square Metres
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“Author Drew Rooke is an accomplished writer, with an eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, and his profile of Manock is captivating to read. There’s a pleasure in seeing how detail-oriented and dispassionate Rooke can be in his own assessments, mirroring much the same clinical approach Manock attempted (and sometimes failed) to subscribe to with his coronial decisions … [A Witness of Fact] charts compelling territory. It offers readers a sobering look at a figure who had significant influence on criminal justice in Australia for perhaps far too long.”
Nathan Smith, Books+Publishing
‘In A Witness of Fact, Drew Rooke dissects the career of Colin Manock, an English immigrant who retired in 1995 as South Australia’s chief forensic pathologist after a career spanning almost three decades. Rooke carefully weighs its parts, puts samples under a microscope, and examines the evidence from every angle. The result looks a lot like a crime scene.’
Linda Jaivin, The Saturday Paper
Praise for One Last Spin:
‘Timely and meticulously researched, One Last Spin is a candid, important investigation into the predatory rise of pokies in Australia by a fresh new voice in Australian journalism.’
Anna Krien
Praise for One Last Spin:
‘A masterfully researched and skilfully written account of a virus that has flourished unchecked for decades. At once a page-turner, sociological study, and damning indictment, Drew Rooke has provided us with further proof — if ever it were needed — of the calamity that is the poker machine industry.’
David Leser, journalist and author of To Begin to Know: walking in the shadows of my father
Praise for One Last Spin:
‘Early in Drew Rooke’s One Last Spin, a gambling counsellor tells him, ‘Australia has pokies the way America has guns.’ This book is an affirmation of that claim: the social harm poker machines create; the political leverage of the gambling lobby; the fallacy that pokies are somehow a force for communal good and intrinsic to some archetypal idea of Australianness. Through interviews with addicts, academics, opponents, clubs management, and industry peddlers, Rooke shows how pervasive and poisonous the situation has become — and how, learning from past defeats, the campaign to halt the march of the ‘VIP Lounge’ is gaining momentum. This is a brave and compassionate work of advocacy journalism by a fresh new voice in Australian nonfiction.’
Sam Vincent, journalist and author of Blood and Guts: dispatches from the whale wars
