The Truth About Amy - episode 12: Peter Collier says failure to refer cold case to DPP is ‘incomprehensible’

Attorney General John Quigley should send the case of Amy Wensley back to WA’s Director of Public Prosecutions, according to shadow Police Minister Peter Collier — who says it is “incomprehensible” that he hasn’t done so already.

Amy was found dead in her bedroom from a shotgun blast to the head 10 years ago — a death immediately considered suspicious by the first police on the scene.

Unbelievably, the detectives who arrived minutes later took only minutes more to decide it was a suicide, meaning homicide experts and crime scene investigators were not called to the Serpentine scene.

For three months, Seven’s hit podcast ‘The Truth About Amy’ has done its own forensic investigation — with crime scene analysts ruling out suicide.

WA police have announced a new team to look into the new leads.

A $1 million reward exists for information about the case.

And a petition has been launched by Amy’s family, calling on Mr Quigley to refer the case to the DPP for further consideration.

But in a letter to the Wensley family sent last week, Mr Quigley stated that “there is nothing in Part 4 of the Director of Public Prosecutions Act … which provides for the Attorney to refer matters to the DPP.”

“It specifically prohibits me as the Attorney from issuing directions to the DPP in respect of a particular case,” he said.

Mr Collier said in his opinion there was, in fact, no statutory impediment to Mr Quigley sending it to the DPP.

“I specifically asked in the parliament as to why he wouldn’t forward it off to the to the DPP, the public prosecutor. I pretty much got, in political terms, a single finger,” Mr Collier said.

“The government continues to hide behind the cloak of secrecy and use the parliament as a vehicle for their own pandering.

“The Attorney General is on the way out. He’s finishing at the next election. He can do something very bold in his final few months in that role, and that is to send this off to the DPP.”

The petition launched this week has already reached nearly 6000 signatures, with Amy’s aunt Anna Davey saying that in their view, the “authorities failed her”.

Mr Collier agrees.

“Ten years down the track, it has been, in some instances, a slow-moving train wreck,” he said.

“This is something that is profoundly significant. A young woman lost her life. The government knows that — we as a community owe it not just to her daughters, not just to her family, not just to justice, but to Amy.

“We owe it to Amy to get to the bottom of this.”