Ex-copper Jamie Mathew Flanagan’s bombshell bid to reopen case after conviction for fiancée’s murder

A lawyer for a former Sydney police officer convicted of strangling his Filipina fiancée and disguising it as a suicide, has launched a bombshell bid to reopen the murder case and have the victim’s body exhumed claiming no forensic tests were ever done to “prove” she was murdered.

In stunning new evidence filed in court supporting a bid for a retrial for Jamie Mathew Flanagan, it has been revealed the original investigation into the death of Desiree “Joy” Manozo, 25, was so badly botched that her neck injury was never examined to determine whether she died by manual strangulation as alleged, or by hanging.

A fresh legal defence team in the Philippines acting for the veteran ex-cop have undertaken a case review of the evidence and the trial, which was held during COVID, when it’s argued many experts were not available.

Renowned forensic experts who have now had a chance to examine the evidence have recommended Joy’s body been exhumed and the hyoid bone in her neck examined which is standard procedure in a suspected homicide case.

Flanagan’s attorney Drissa Mae B. Pascual has revealed they have made a string of extraordinary discoveries — including that no autopsy report was ever produced and no DNA testing ever done — that are of such weight they would have blown a hole in the prosecution case and likely change the guilty judgment.

The motion for a new trial argues that had the scene of Joy’s death been properly processed, “investigators could have obtained standard prints, DNA reference samples, trace evidence, and other suspect-oriented materials from the accused and from other persons who had access to the scene and could not have been ruled out.

“Such evidence could have confirmed the accused’s guilt, if truly supported by the physical evidence, or excluded him conclusively before he even spent years in incarceration.”

The shock arrest in 2019 of retired Sergeant Flanagan, a father of three daughters, for allegedly murdering the mother of his youngest child, made headlines around the world. He was taken into custody the same day and has been in detention and then jail ever since.

From the start there were serious problems with the case. It was claimed Joy was pregnant at the time she died and Flanagan was charged with a second count of murder by causing an unintentional abortion. But it wasn’t true.

She was not pregnant and that charge had to be dropped.

Flanagan has always vigorously denied having anything to do with Joy’s death. However, he was found guilty of Joy’s murder and sentenced to “reclusion perpetua” which is between 20 and 40 years jail with no parole before 20 years.

The now 60-year-old moved to the Philippines in 2017 after retiring from the NSW Police. He had grown up in Newcastle and worked in Marrickville and then Newtown command.

He had met Joy on an earlier trip and when he returned they become a couple and moved in together, became engaged and had a baby girl.

The prosecution theory put forward at Flanagan’s trial was that he and Joy had a physical fight on the night of July 20, 2019, about taking their baby to Australia, and he strangled her and then staged a scene to make it look as if she had hanged herself.

Joy was found the next morning by her father, who took her body down and laid her on the floor. It has been established the alleged crime scene had been tampered with (unwittingly) at the time by her family.

Documents filed in the Philippines Court of Appeals have now revealed no autopsy report was ever done, and the hyoid bone in Joy’s neck was never examined for signs of strangulation, which is standard in a suspected homicide strangulation case.

During the trial, the prosecution relied only on the recollections of a hospital doctor, who was not part of the police forensic team, and that, it’s argued, rendered “his testimony vulnerable to the serious inference that his conclusions were made to fit the prosecution’s murder theory.”

It has also been revealed police took no fingerprints or footprints from items at the scene including from the cupboard from which Joy was found hanging.

Police did take fingernail clippings from Joy’s body but they went “missing” and were never made available at trial, despite requests from the defence.

Attorney Pascual has since gained access to the fingernail clippings and discovered that police had never tested them for the presence of DNA left behind from a homicide suspect. Nor did police ever take any DNA samples from Flanagan.

The case was complicated as Joy’s death was initially processed by police as a suicide/hanging incident. Her death certificate states suicide as the cause of death.

It was not until later on the day of her death, when a hospital doctor examining Joy’s body raised doubt about the suicide theory and it shifted to murder.

The hospital doctor pointed out one of Joy’s feet was not pointing downward as hanging victims normally are. However, at the time the body was found, rigor mortis was not complete and the body was moved several times before it reached the hospital for the autopsy.

The only person who saw Joy’s body hanging and could describe the position it was in, was her father. He did not give evidence at the trial.

Crucially, the motion for a new trial argues the doctor “deliberately failed to co-ordinate with Scene of Crime Operation officers for the required reprocessing and reinvestigation of the case as a homicide” as required by police procedures in crimes of violence.

And when the theory shifted from suicide to murder, Flanagan was immediately treated as the only suspect, despite seven other people being in the house the night before and morning of Joy’s death.

During the trial, the investigating police officer was asked what additional inquiries he made after suspicions were raised it was murder not suicide, and he said he interviewed Joy’s siblings who told him there was no reason Joy would suicide.

The officer admitted he assumed the killer would be Flanagan because everyone else in the house that night were Joy’s relatives and that meant, he believed, they could not have committed the murder.

Dr Mamerto Bernabe Jr, a forensic pathologist expert who has conducted more than 10,000 autopsies, said there was a “lack of any convincing evidence” put forward by medico-legal investigators that showed the manner of Joy’s death.

He said for a murder trial, the lack of an autopsy report, plus missing and non-existent DNA samples brought doubt about the procedures and professional handling of Flanagan’s case.

Dr Bernabe’s report also stated photographs taken at the scene provided to the trial appeared to be sourced from social media rather than proper forensic scene documentation.

The investigating police officer had also pointed to Flanagan’s outward lack of grief after Joy’s death as indicative of his guilt and this was accepted by the trial court in its judgment.

But an assessment by Clinical Psychologist Dr Cely D. Magpantay submitted by the new defence team, said Flanagan’s immediate behaviour upon discovering Joy’s death was consistent with genuine shock and grief, and immediate concern for their baby.

She said his coping style throughout life and career had been to internalise distress and conflict.

Dr Magpantay assessed his personality as inconsistent with intimate partner homicide.

She said Flanagan’s relationship with Joy was characterised by intense emotional attachment, extraordinary financial investment and generosity and integration of her extended family into their household — patterns inconsistent with the controlling, jealous, escalating violence typically observed in intimate partner violence.

Forensic expert in death and torture, Dr Benito E. Molino, on reviewing all the evidence for the submission for a new trial concluded “that the available documentation does not provide a sufficient, objective, and independently verifiable basis, to support a reliable conclusion that the hanging was staged, or that the manner of death can be determined with forensic certainty as a homicide”.

Dr Molino critically found uncertainty in the supposed chronology of events and said scrutiny of the physical layout of the scene raised serious doubts about the account of a child witness “whose narration appears physically inconsistent with the actual scene”.

Another child in the house that night has already admitted she was coached at trial to lie about what she saw.

The case is now before the court waiting for a hearing.