It was a routine \u201cwelfare check\u201d, something police officer Ian Ninness had done countless times before. But this time, he knew something was different.<\/p>\n
Just two days earlier, the former cop from Cardwell \u2013 a tropical coastal town located halfway between Queensland\u2019s Cairns and Townsville \u2013 had taken a call from WW11 veteran Leslie Ball\u2019s daughter Le-Chelle, who was desperately searching for her dad.<\/p>\n
Le-Chelle Ball was just 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone\u2019s done this bloke in,\u201d Mr Ninness said. \u201cI thought he was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 71, the single retiree had been looking forward to moving into his dream home. So much so he pushed for an early settlement. But on the day itself, he failed to show up.<\/p>\n
That was April 1993 and since then three police investigations and two coronial inquests have failed to find out what happened to Mr Ball, or who\u2019s responsible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know who murdered my father and I want justice,\u201d Ms Ball told news.com.au\u2019s new true crime podcast Perfect Alibi.<\/p>\n
Investigative reporters Jo Townsend and Callum Denness have spent two years trying to unravel what happened to Mr Ball as part of the Perfect Alibi podcast which launches today. They\u2019ve tracked down family members and former police investigators, uncovered evidence of fraud, and found links to the Melbourne underworld. They have also uncovered proof they say identifies who killed Mr Ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first heard Le-Chelle\u2019s story about the disappearance and murder of her father, I genuinely thought it seemed pretty far-fetched,\u201d Denness told news.com.au.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when I began to dig through the police file on Les Ball\u2019s case, it checked out. And what followed has been two years of investigating a crime that is absolutely solvable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Townsend, who has spent years investigating true crime, said \u201cthis one stands out\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a pretty wild story \u2013 the links to the Melbourne underworld, the fraud and the forged documents, the seemingly perfect alibis and the initial suspect,\u201d Townsend said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it is all, unbelievably at first, true.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want people to listen because they should care about Le-Chelle and her 30 year fight to find out what has happened to her dad,\u201d Townsend said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want her to find out where her dad\u2019s remains are and bury him properly. She believes she knows who murdered her father, and by the end of the podcast, we do too. And it isn\u2019t very often that true crime journalists get to claim that, get to feel like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not knowing what happened to her father is \u201cthe worst feeling,\u201d Le-Chelle told the Perfect Alibi podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just felt sick in the stomach because my dad wanted to move into that house and he was not not moving into that house,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I was like, \u2018well where is my dad\u2019?<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething\u2019s happened to him \u2026 I was just hysterical\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Le-Chelle is Mr Ball\u2019s daughter from his second marriage to Et Ison.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was that absolutely obsessed with that child from the moment she was born,\u201d Ms Ison told the Perfect Alibi podcast.<\/p>\n
Despite being known to take off for weeks at time, Mr Ball would always keep in touch with La-Chelle. So when he failed to reply to two letters she\u2019d sent him, La-Chelle knew something was wrong.<\/p>\n
Desperate for answers, she called the local police station.<\/p>\n
Former local Cardwell cop Ian Ninness picked up the phone and agreed to do a \u201cwelfare check\u201d but within two days knew something more sinister was at play.<\/p>\n
Officer Ninness went to Mr Ball\u2019s new house only to find a tenant who said she\u2019d heard the sale of the house had fallen through.<\/p>\n
Mr Ball had paid a $7000 cash deposit and was due to settle the final $63,000. He\u2019d even had all his mail redirected to the new house. But on the day of settlement \u2013 Monday April 19, 1993, he failed to turn up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were bank statements, social Security, veterans Affairs letters and things like that. I started opening some of the mail up just to see if there\u2019s anything that would assist me in finding him,\u201d Mr Ninness told the Perfect Alibi podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke to solicitors. I spoke to the real estate. I spoke to the people at the house that he was buying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Two days after her phone call, Mr Ninness called Le-Chelle back saying her father never moved into his new home. He never showed up for the settlement.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone\u2019s done this bloke in,\u201d Mr Ninness said. \u201cI thought he was dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the investigations that I did myself led me to believe that this man, if he was alive, would\u2019ve contacted his daughter, would\u2019ve settled the house. A lot of things that he didn\u2019t do. \u201cAnd, I personally thought, he\u2019s probably passed on\u201d.<\/p>\n
On May 22, 1993, five weeks after her father was due to settle on the new house, Le-Chelle filed an official missing person\u2019s report, with the case handed to Townsville Detective Noel Powers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite obvious that he intended to settle down there and make that his forever home,\u201d Mr Powers told the Perfect Alibi podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then all of a sudden it just, it stopped \u2026 basically dropped off the earth. There was no sign of his account being active,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The first people Mr Powers spoke with were Mr Ball\u2019s daughter Leanne and her husband David. According to Mr Powers, neither seemed too concerned.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom memory there was, there wasn\u2019t a great deal of concern,\u201d Mr Powers said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLe-Chelle in particular was in contact with me and with us quite frequently, wanting to know what was going on, asking how we\u2019re going, had you do this, did you do that? That\u2019s what you do expect of a family involved in this sort of situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhereas Leanne and David was nothing. There was no contact,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
David Phillips told Mr Powers he had last seen his father-in-law on a Friday morning, while Leanne said she saw him a week later when he visited her in hospital in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said he didn\u2019t stay all that long, just inquired about how she was going and that he was going to visit Le-Chelle up on the Sunshine Coast. and according to her, that\u2019s the last he\u2019s ever been seen of,\u201d Mr Powers said.<\/p>\n
But something didn\u2019t add up. Why would Mr Ball on the day of the settlement of his dream home be 1300km in Brisbane, and why would he have a second train ticket from Brisbane to Dalby, which is four hours west of Brisbane?<\/p>\n
Le-Chelle\u2019s mother Et Ison wasn\u2019t buying it either.<\/p>\n
\u201cI rang the station master. Did he remember anybody that description getting off? No, he didn\u2019t,\u201d Ms Ison said.<\/p>\n
She also called all the hotels in Dalby. Again no one had seen a man matching Mr Ball\u2019s description.<\/p>\n
Officers would later find Mr Ball\u2019s car abandoned at Townsville train station but there was no sign of his distinctive homemade trailer which was usually either hooked up to the car or parked in the Phillips\u2019 driveway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worry that La-Chelle\u2019s never gonna let it go,\u201d Ms Ison, now 80, told the Perfect Alibi podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s always gonna hope for the best and hope that something will come out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pray about it all the time but she will never let it go. Not in my day, she won\u2019t,\u201d Ms Ison said.<\/p>\n
Read related topics:Brisbane<\/a>Perfect Alibi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a routine \u201cwelfare check\u201d, something police officer Ian Ninness had done countless times before. 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