Third Party to Murder: The Sequel - By Robert Reid

The Chilling story behind one of Australia’s most bizarre crimes.

THIRD PARTY TO MURDER: THE SEQUEL is a two-part book that includes Reid's initial examination of the crime and continues to probe the circumstances and aftermath of the bizarre tragedy. Reid's chilling narrative grips the reader from page one and proves once again the old adage that "truth is stranger than fiction".

The bodies of Vicki Arnold, 27, and Julie-Anne Leahy, 26, were found near Atherton, north Queensland, by trail bike riders after the women had been missing for 15 days.

Despite a highly complex death scene, police concluded that Arnold had murdered Leahy and then killed herself. Just hours later the bodies were removed and the vehicle towed away and left in the open for three days before scientific officers arrived. No fingerprints were found. One year later a coroner agreed with the police that the case was a clear-cut murder-suicide. But the case refused to go away. Over the next seven years public pressure and Reid's first book led to four separate investigations and a Criminal Justice Commission inquiry. In 1999 a second inquest was held, but despite fresh evidence uncovered by independent investigators a year earlier, a murder-suicide finding was again handed down.

But was this quiet country girl, with no history of violence, capable of such frenzied bloodshed? Was there, as the police and coroner decided, a dark and terrible compulsion to kill hidden deep within her soul?

Or is there another, more sinister reason why the two friends had to die on that remote bush track? Was there a third party present, and were these two innocent women grotesquely murdered in cold blood?...