Notes on Adelaide podcast: The thin blue line
On the 50th anniversary of the death of George Duncan in the Torrens – a murder that reshaped modern Australia – we take a look inside the police files on the investigation. What we find is sometimes comical, often disturbing and very revealing about the attitudes of the day.
Fifty years ago this week, University of Adelaide law lecturer George Duncan was murdered.
Nobody was ever found guilty of his drowning in the Torrens, but his death on May 10, 1972, changed Australia – leading directly to the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
That development has been examined in detail. But rather less attention has been given to police efforts to find who killed George Duncan. That enterprise created hundreds of files, but what’s in them?
In work for InDaily, reporter Simon Royal took what’s understood to be the first look into the police files, collected by a Scotland Yard investigation ordered by the then SA police commissioner. He joins us for this episode.
You can read more about Simon’s examination of the files in his extensive report for InDaily.
Notes on Adelaide is a weekly current affairs podcast driven by the independent journalism of InDaily, CityMag and SALIFE, and produced by Solstice Podcasting.
New episodes are uploaded weekly. You can find the podcast on InDaily or on your favourite podcast app including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Listen to our previous episodes here.
