GRIEVING Bathurst mother Ricki Small is right when she says it’s time the State Government considered increasing the reward on offer for information relating to her daughter’s abduction and presumed murder in 1997.
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In fact, it should have happened long ago.
From day one, the Jessica Small case was one of police mismanagement and disinterest – a fact conceded by police at an inquest into Jessica’s death at Bathurst Court House in 2013.
On day one of the inquest – held 16 years after Jessica was last seen alive – counsel for the NSW Police Force, Michael Spartalis, conceded the initial police investigation into her disappearance was deficient.
Mr Spartalis told the inquest that the initial investigation was “somewhat lacking” and that lines of inquiry which should have been examined were not.
In handing down her findings at the end of the inquest, Deputy State Coroner Sharon Freund acknowledged the shortcomings in the initial investigation and recommended the state government post a reward of “not less than $500,000” in a bid to flush out information about Jessica’s killer.
The amount finally offered, $100,000, was just another slap in the face for Mrs Small and her family.
No explanation was offered about why the state government believed Jessica Small’s abduction and murder was not worthy of the sum suggested by the person who had sat through two weeks of evidence in the case.
No-one from the government could explain why information on Jessica’s death was worth just 20 per cent of the recommended figure.
Of course, the state government’s stance is even more baffling given the fact most rewards go unclaimed.
It’s quite possible that whatever figure was offered would make no difference, so the government penny-pinching was completely without basis.
But – and it’s a big but – if $500,000 was enough to flush out vital information then it would still be money well spent.
Surely no-one in government would be quibbling over potentially paying out an extra $400,000 if police were finally able to close the books on a 19-year-old murder.
The deputy state coroner should have been the best person to decide an appropriate reward in the Jessica Small case, not a pen-pushing bureaucrat.
That was just one more bungle in this case – a bungle that should now be put right.
