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Airdate: Crime Investigation Australia

The next case to be re-opened by Crime Investigation Australia will be the 1988 murder of Janine Balding.

This episode features a case in which a young Sydney woman was picked off the streets at random and brutally raped and murdered. When police arrested the gang responsible and found their youngest member was just 14-years-old. The latter was the youngest person ever to receive a life sentence in NSW.

CIA will feature interview with the chief investigating officer, witnesses, and Kristine Mobberley the young woman who narrowly escaped the same gang. The special also includes intimate interviews with Janine’s mother, father and brother.

Press Release:

Crime Investigation Australia, FOXTEL’s hit crime series, will examine one of Australia’s most horrific murders in the world premiere of CIA: Thrill Kill – The Janine Balding Murder, on Thursday, July 31 at 7:30pm AEST.

The case, highlighted in the media in recent weeks due to the killers’ chance to appeal their “cement them in their cells” sentences, looks back at how a young Sydney woman was picked off the streets at random and brutally raped and murdered.

Marking the 20th anniversary of this heinous crime, the CIA episode features detailed re-enactments and interviews with key figures from the case including the chief investigating officer, witnesses, and Kristine Mobberley the young woman who narrowly escaped the same gang. The special also includes intimate interviews with Janine’s mother, father and brother.

On a September night in 1988, police officers climbed through a barbed-wire fence beside the F4 freeway at Minchinbury in Sydney’s west. They were accompanied by two teenage boys who guided them to the edge of a shallow dam where the beams from torches outlined the body of a young woman lying in the mud. She was later identified as 20-year-old Sydney bank clerk, Janine Balding. She had been abducted, raped and drowned by a group of street kids.

Barely two years since the rape and murder of Anita Cobby, there was a sense of disbelief that another young woman could have died in similar circumstances and just a few kilometres away.

The shock was compounded when police arrested the gang responsible and found their youngest member was just 14-years-old. The others were two boys aged 15 and 16, a girl, 18, and 21-year old Stephen “Shorty” Jamieson. It appeared the gang members were seeking to impress each other with their toughness when they set out to rape a woman. They selected Janine at random.

After a protracted investigation, legal manoeuvres and two trials, life sentences were handed down to the three found guilty of her abduction and murder: ‘Shorty’ Jamieson and the boys aged 16 and 14. The latter was the youngest person ever to receive a life sentence in NSW.

On lesser charges, including rape and abduction, the 15-year-old-boy was given a 10 year sentence. After his release on parole seven years later, he went on to attack other women and is now in jail until at least 2017.

The 18-year-old female in the gang (the girlfriend of the then 15-year-old) was released on a bond after being held for 19 months

FOXTEL’s world premiere of CRIME INVESTIGATION AUSTRALIA: THRILL KILL – THE JANINE BALDING MURDER airs on Crime & Investigation Network on Thursday, July 31, at 7:30pm AEST.

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