Leigh Rennea Mears was an excitable, conscientious Year Eight student at Newcastle High School in 1989. She was the eldest daughter of Robyn Lynne and her stepfather, Brad Shearman. Leigh also had a younger sister, Jessie.
Leigh’s mother divorced Leigh’s biological father, Robert William Mears and married a man who was also called Leigh. Together, they had Jessie in 1983. Robyn then changed her surname from Mears to Jessie’s father’s name. So Leigh got the name, ‘Leigh Leigh’. Robyn eventually separated from this man and married Brad, but the name stuck.
Leigh wasn’t a regular fixture in the social scene, so when she got a formal invitation to the teen event of the season, she was very excited. This was a birthday party for Jason Robertson, a 16-year-old who also went to Newcastle High School.
The party was being held at the North Stockton Surf Club, a formerly abandoned structure. Robertson’s party had created significant buzz and was sure to entail drugs and alcohol.
Authorities later estimated there were 60 to 100 teen attendees. Most of them were Year Ten students. The oldest at the party was Matthew Webster, who was 18, and Guy Wilson, 19. Both were posing as the party’s bouncers.
This was the first teen party Leigh ever attended, and she had explicit permission from her mother to stay until 11 pm. This was after Robyn was assured that responsible adults would be present.
What she didn’t know was that the boys had despicable plans for her child. Later evidence indicates that Webster had approached a partygoer before the night even began and told him that they were going to get her drunk and “all go through her”.
The plan was similar for many of the other underage female attendees. The boys had invited them, aiming to intoxicate and later sexually assault them. An adult bought alcohol for these girls before the party.
Leigh and her friend were given a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey. They diluted it with Coca-Cola, and she got drunk very quickly. A 15-year-old boy referred later on in official documentation as NC1 said, “I’m going to go and fuck [Leigh]”.
Afterwards, Leigh was seen walking into the dark sand dunes with this teen boy. She was apparently so intoxicated that he almost had to carry her.
When Leigh got back from the beach, she was bleeding between her legs and was visibly distressed, seeking help. She told the others at the party that this boy raped her. No one intervened.
Webster then reportedly told the other boys, “She’s a bit of a slut, and why don’t all of us have a go?” Wilson walked up to Leigh, put his arm around her and propositioned sleeping with her. She was visibly offended and refused.
Wilson then threw her to the ground and began taunting and physically assaulting her. Webster and the other boys joined in, pouring beer on her and spitting on Leigh. The assault lasted minutes, but no one tried to help her or even call for help.
When they stopped, Leigh staggered to her feet and threw a beer bottle at her attackers. It missed. But Wilson threw one back, and it hit her in the leg. She struggled, got away from the boys, and sought refuge in the clubhouse. But they wouldn’t let Leigh go.
The teens followed her, hurling insults and beatings. They continued for a time before Leigh staggered out and wandered towards the beach. It was unclear whether they followed her, but this was the last time anyone saw her.
Murder Most Foul
Her stepfather arrived 20 minutes later to pick Leigh up, but she was nowhere to be seen. After searching for her, Robyn and Brad assumed that Leigh had gone to a friend’s place. No one from the party contacted them.
Some of the teens even pretended to look for Leigh. Brad spent the night worrying about his stepdaughter. He resumed the search the following morning, and that’s when they found Leigh.
She was dead. Her body was lying in a pool of blood in a hollow within sand dunes. When he saw her mutilated body, Brad broke down.
When Leigh’s body was found, she was on her back, with her legs splayed apart. Leigh’s shirt and jumper were intertwined; her underwear was bunched around her right ankle. There was a blood-stained rock weighing about 5 kilograms next to the body. Blood spatter was noted two meters away.
The medical examiner determined from the postmortem that she died from a skull fracture and injuries to the brain. Leigh had been hit at least three times with significant force. The postmortem also found asphyxia haemorrhages and injuries to the ribs, jaw, liver, and kidney.
Fingertip pressure injuries around the neck also suggest she had been choked out prior to her death. Her blood alcohol level was 0.128, which should have caused significant impairment of motor coordination.
She had significant genital injuries as well, which corresponded with penetration from an inflexible object. Dr Johan Duflou claimed this may have been from a beer bottle and was the reason for most of the genital injuries.
Forensic evidence also confirmed that prior to this incident, Leigh had not engaged in sexual intercourse.
Twenty Detectives and the Compromised Case
A squad of twenty detectives was assigned to the case. These were led by Detective Sergeant Lance Chaffey. This was reduced to fewer than 10 within weeks due to the quick, narrow focus early in the investigation.
Three teenagers were initially arrested and charged out of the 100 attendees. These included NC1, whose identity was withheld because of his minor status, Matthew Webster, and Charles Wilson.
During an interview on November 5, 1989, NC1 admitted to having had sex with Leigh, but he claimed it was consensual.
Wilson initially denied any involvement in what happened to Leigh. When he was pressed, considering the statements provided by the other teens, he admitted to pushing Leigh, pouring beer over her, and throwing a beer bottle at her.
Webster admitted to pouring beer on Leigh as well, but denied sexually assaulting her. He claimed to have left the beach party and to have gone to the pub.
At the time, rumours flew about the investigation. The most damaging one was that Leigh had actually been murdered by her stepfather.
When Leigh’s mother asked Detective Chaffey why other boys were not being charged, considering she heard it was a mob that attacked her, he reportedly asked if she knew how much it cost to run an investigation.
Detectives then cross-checked the boy’s alibis and discovered that the story Webster gave was false.
In February 1990, Webster and Wilson were hauled in again and interviewed separately. Then they were placed together in an interview room equipped with a listening device. No one said anything incriminating at first, then later that evening, during a separate session, the confession came.
Webster detailed how he saw Leigh alone in the dark and felt that he was ‘right for a root’. He confessed to pinning her down, placing her hand across Leigh’s throat so she could not scream, and stripping her clothes off.
When asked by police how many times he hit her head, he replied, “I can’t remember, I just freaked. I was spinning out – all these things were going through my head, and I bolted.”
By securing the confession, the homicide squad considered the case open and shut. The defence contested that the confession could not be admissible in court, alleging that police had beaten it out of Webster during the interrogations and promised a reduced charge of manslaughter.
Matthew Webster was then brought to court for a formal arraignment. He pleaded guilty to one charge of murder. During the sentencing hearing on October 24, 1990, the defence team utilised the lack of conflicting witness testimonies to frame the case in Webster’s favour.
They presented him to Justice James Wood as a remorseful, gentle giant who, in normal situations, was non-violent. He allegedly suffered an uncharacteristic bout of violent impulses that came on from alcohol consumption.
Wood determined that Webster’s motive for killing Leigh was the fear that she would tell everyone what he and the rest had done to her that night. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison with a nonparole period of 14 years.
Webster was the first individual to be sentenced under the truth-in-sentencing statute. It removed the gaps between sentences given and the time spent in prison. Charles Wilson was sentenced to six months for the assault of Leigh. NC1, the unidentified teen was also given six months in a detention centre, but this was reduced to 100 hours of community service.
No one was formally charged with the rape or assault of Leigh despite the catastrophic genital injuries. NC1 did admit to having sexual relations with another underage girl at the party, but he was never charged for that crime either.
Similarly, the counts against Webster concerning sexual assault were also dropped. Police took blood samples from the suspects. Whether any DNA confirmation was carried out remains unknown. Carrington speculated that evidence sent for testing could have been fabricated.
Aftermath
While Webster was in custody and awaiting the sentence, some of the residents in Stockton rallied around him. Leigh’s family was routinely targeted. The family home was broken into many times.
Whenever Robyn came across boys who had been at the party, they swore and spat on her. Leigh’s biological father, Robert, was so distraught that he attempted to commit suicide in September 1990.
Brad also spent a week in a mental health facility, haunted by the images of Leigh’s body and unable to cope with the rumours flying around that he was responsible for her death. The pressure eventually broke his marriage, and they separated from Robyn.
Leigh’s little sister was not spared. The other children in her class reportedly harassed her to the point she had to be taken out of school. Wilson apparently once came across Brad and told him that Jessie would suffer the same fate. Brad punched him in the face.
The town’s response to protect the perpetrators and punish the victims was not incidental. It was bolstered by the media, which focused more on Leigh’s behaviour. She was painted as promiscuous and lacking parental supervision.
Reinvestigations and Inquiries
The case did not stay buried. Rather, the Newcastle Legal Centre made submissions to the NSW Parliament in 1996, indicating that there were others involved in Leigh’s death who had not been prosecuted.
The NSW Crime Commission also reviewed the case and made negative findings concerning many of the detectives involved. It was then referred to the Police Integrity Commission in 1998.
The PIC recommended that five of the detectives on the case be charged with unlawfully arresting suspects. They also condemned the use of listening devices to record confessions without the suspects’ knowledge, as in the cases of Webster and Wilson. Still, no murder or rape charges were issued.
On June 10, 2004, Webster was released on parole after serving 14.5 years in prison. Leigh’s family released a statement afterwards saying they harboured no ill will toward him and wished him well as he restarted his life.
Matthew Webster and Charles Wilson are currently free and live out of the public eye. As both completed their court-appointed sentences, they are no longer being monitored by the state. Their physical addresses are also not part of the public record.
Looking back at the crime and the forensics, the absence of semen from different perpetrators, considering the genital trauma, and the failure to test Wilson’s shirt have left more questions than answers.
One is whether Webster was acting alone or if a group of teens beat, rape, and killed the 14-year-old girl? Then one of them took the fall for it? Unfortunately, that question may never be answered.