Australian Story: June 27

On Monday Australian Story presents the first of a two part look at the 2014 death of 24-year-old Amy Wensley and the family’s fight for justice.

An unsolved death. A police force under fire. An aunt’s relentless search for answers.

When 24-year-old Amy Wensley died from a gunshot wound to the head on a rural property outside Perth in 2014, the questions quickly mounted.

“You know why would Amy tell my Mum she’s on her way and then go back inside and shoot herself in the head? It just made no sense,” says her sister Kelly.

After a fight with her partner, the mother-of-two was planning to stay at her own mother’s house but she never arrived.

Although detectives quickly declared Amy’s death a suicide, the three uniformed police officers first on the scene weren’t convinced.

“It’s too suspicious,” says former police officer Larry Blandford, who is still haunted by the failure of detectives on the night to preserve vital evidence. “That’s the sad part about what happened, the police bungle”.

Unhappy with the speed and the findings of the initial investigation, Amy’s aunt Anna Davey decided to kickstart her own investigation, gathering statements from friends about Amy’s life, re-examining the evidence and furnishing the police and the coroner with new information.

“I’m sure that there are people over there in Western Australia that wished I had just dropped off the face of the earth,” she says.

Over time Ms Davey helped expose fundamental failings by the police on the night of Amy Wensley’s death. This destruction of potentially vital evidence compromised subsequent police investigations and limited the evidence available to the coroner at a long-awaited inquest.

Now Amy’s family are speaking for the first time about the impact of the initial police failings on all of those touched by the case and their ongoing search for answers.

8pm Monday on ABC.