The Truth About Amy - Episode 2: Police still haunted by Amy Wensley’s suicide ruling

As he stood and looked at the ghastly scene in front him, Larry Blandford made a promise — to himself, and to the young woman who lay dead on the floor at his feet.

“I made a pledge to Amy on that fatal night,” he says now.

“I said the words out loud to her: ‘I’m sorry for what’s happened to you, sis. We will get to the bottom of it now.’ I pledged that and I meant it.

“Because the evidence I gained from that room, it was obvious to me that she didn’t shoot herself. So someone’s got to be accountable for that action.”

That Amy was Amy Wensley, the 24-year-old mother-of-two who up until that afternoon had been raising her girls at the property where First Class Constable Blandford had been called on June 26, 2014.

He had been called there with two other blue-collar colleagues from the nearby Mundijong Police Station where they were all based.

They had been called there with scant information.

“A woman has been shot with a shotgun. That’s virtually all it was. It’s as basic as that,” Mr Blandford remembers.

A decade on from that call, that late afternoon is still seared into Larry Blandford’s memory.

And those recollections make up the second episode of Seven’s major new podcast ‘The Truth About Amy’, which sets out to re-investigate the death of the young mother.

A death that Mr Blandford was convinced then was not suicide. And still isn’t.

“I suggest that she didn’t commit suicide. I’ve had high-ranking police officers say to me, at least a dozen: ‘She didn’t shoot herself’,” Mr Blandford says.

“A lot of police have spoken to me and they are convinced it’s not a suicide. I don’t think the right people have handled the job.

“The only way this can now be proven, I think, is if they have some kind of inquiry and put all these police on notice that they’ll have to go to the inquiry and answer the questions.”

Those police would include two detectives, Detective Sergeant Tony Kirkman and Detective Sergeant Tom Weidemann, who arrived after Mr Blandford and his colleagues called them to the Serpentine property where Amy had died.

An inquest into Amy’s death was told that Detective Kirkman, the more senior of the pair, seemed reluctant to even view the room containing Amy’s body.

It was his last shift before he was scheduled to take seven weeks’ leave.

He eventually did go in, for less than 10 minutes.

And when he returned, he did so with a firm conclusion that Amy had killed herself — despite the grave suspicions held by Mr Blandford and his other colleagues.

That prompted harsh words at the time. And bitter feelings ever since.

“They might’ve been in there 10 minutes, but it just seemed a very short time to me. Not enough time to do a preliminary examination in there to see what they can find, take more photos, look at the spatter ... look at the ammunition, look at the gun,” Mr Blandford says.

“They didn’t have enough time to do any of that.

“They said — oh it’s non-suspicious, just like that. And I said, again: “No, you’re missing the point. The whole story is that it is suspicious.”

The reasons for Mr Blandford’s suspicions were multiple. The position of Amy’s body. The towel over her head. The position of the gun. The spent ammunition on the bedside table.

All clues which screamed that others had been in that room other than Amy.

The fact that when Amy’s partner David Simmons tried to get back into the house where she still lay dead, he told police he was looking for his phone — which he said was pink.

“There’s no big hairy guy alive who owns a pink phone. The pink phone was found a bit later on — tucked in Amy’s left sock,” Mr Blandford says.

And the words spoken to the Constable by Mr Simmons’ friend Gareth Price as police arrived.

“When I interviewed him once before, his mother was there as the interpreter. He couldn’t read or he doesn’t know how to read,” Mr Blandford says.

“I said: ‘Gareth what’s going on, mate?’ And he said ... my friend’s partner is up in the house and she committed suicide.

“And at that time I thought ... have you been schooled to say that? Because you’re illiterate. It’s a big word.”

Mr Blandford says in the inquiries since — a cold case investigation, and a coronial inquiry — he still feels his observations have been ignored, or downplayed.

He says another officer who gave evidence at the same inquest — which eventually recorded an open verdict into Amy’s death — was later called a “traitor” by a colleague.

He says he believes David Simmons changed his clothes on the night Amy died, because of the complete lack of gunshot residue on them — despite him spending the day shooting clay pigeons with his friend.

And he says his ingrained misgivings about the case of Amy Wensley were not exclusive.

“I went to Armadale, just wandered into the sergeant’s office and it was Tom Weidemann,” Mr Blandford says.

“He looked up at me and it was within a half a second, he said: ‘It was a bit strange that night, wasn’t it?’

“It’s still on his mind. Three or four years later.”

*The Truth about Amy is available on all podcast platforms.

Anyone with information can email thetruthaboutamy@seven.com.au or leave an anonymous tip at www.thetruthaboutamy.org