There are more journalists outside the Katherine courthouse than there are residents in Larrimah, 180km down the highway.
It’s 36C and the tiny town is sweating under the heat of the media spotlight as the inquest into the death of Paddy Moriarty resumes after a hiatus of almost four years.
There’s an American documentary crew on its way. Reporters keep dropping in for comments. People driving past stop to take pictures of Moriarty’s deteriorating house or ask questions of the remaining residents. Some of them yell things as they speed past.
The Northern Territory landscape always feels exposed to the elements, but this exposure is something else, and not what the residents – mostly retired – signed up for. Larrimah’s the kind of place you go to escape the crowds.
But it’s been hard to avoid the gaze of the outside world since Moriarty, 70, and his dog, Kellie, went missing from the 12-person town in December 2017, a case so mysterious it attracted huge national and international media attention.
Moriarty was known as a local larrikin, a bit of a shit stirrer, a good storyteller.
He was also known for an enduring feud with his neighbour Fran Hodgetts, now 78, who ran a Devonshire tea house across the highway from his place. The pair had been fighting for about a decade.
Brent Cilia, Hodgetts’ grandson, is one of three young people who have moved to Larrimah since the disappearance. He arrived more than three years ago to run the tea house and says the town has shed the reputation it used to have for feuding. Most of the residents are on good terms now, he says, and almost everyone celebrated Christmas together at the pub in the past two years.
As the inquest opens, he’s serving up tea and scones to tourists, waiting for news from his grandmother, who’s been called to give evidence.
A smaller cast
This week’s inquest was the second half of proceedings that began just six months after Moriarty vanished. Almost the whole town appeared before the court then.
Part two involves a smaller cast: a police officer, lawyers, a couple of Moriarty’s friends, the man who is known as the gardener.
Coroner Greg Cavanagh takes the bench for his last case before retirement. Counsel assisting, Kelvin Currie, begins extracting a series of unlikely leads from two witnesses and the police evidence from the officer in charge, Det Sgt Matt Allen.
Then Hodgetts appears via videolink from Melbourne, where she now lives.
“I can’t hear anything, darling!” she says aiming her ear toward the camera. “I’m hard of hearing!”
The technology exacerbates the confusion but a rhythm is established and Hodgetts responds to an allegation that a witness heard her offer someone $10,000 to “get rid of” Moriarty.
“I never ever ever ever paid anyone to bump Paddy off,” she says. “I swear on my mother and father’s grave.”
She is also asked to explain a complicated series of alleged plant poisonings, for which she says Moriarty was responsible. At the 2018 inquest, it was suggested that the harassment and damage was one of the reasons she had advertised for a live-in gardener.
Hodgetts says a few weeks after Owen Laurie took up the position in August 2017, he had been attempting to plant along her fenceline and she had warned him not to put them there, in case someone killed them.
He had allegedly replied: “If anyone touches my plants, it will be the first murder in Larrimah.”
Now, when Currie asks about the comment, Hodgetts says it was a joke. Laurie takes the stand and says the same.
But then comes the bombshell: eight secret police tapes recorded (with a warrant) in Laurie’s home in the six months following Moriarty’s disappearance.
In the first, a man’s voice says: “Tell them what I’ve done. Hit with a fucking hammer.”
Laurie denies the voice is his, then exercises his right to remain silent.
The tapes play for the next half an hour. Some include singing and yodelling. One sounds like a sea shanty.
“I killerated old Paddy,” a voice says, after a country guitar interlude. “I fucking killerated him. I struck him on the fucking head and killerated him.”
In another tape, a voice says: “You fuck’n killed Paddy, doonged him on the head. Donged him on the head … Smacked him on the fucken nostrils, smacked him on the fucken nostrils … with me claw hammer.”
Following a guitar ballad, a voice says: “You gotta find out who fucking done it mate, that’s if you don’t find the fucking body ... I can tell you, you are not finding out.”
Eventually, the tapes run out. After a brief silence and a final “no comment”, Laurie is dismissed.
‘We need to find Paddy’
The next day, Cavanagh announces his findings: Moriarty and his dog are certainly dead.
“In my opinion, Paddy and his dog were killed in the context of and likely due to the ongoing feud he had with his nearest neighbour,” Cavanagh says.
Cavanagh says the evidence in Moriarty’s home – his hat, glasses, keycard and food on the table – indicated he had returned from the Larrimah Hotel that night, then left the house again with his dog.
“There is no evidence as to where he went, however, it is my view it’s likely that the new plants at Fran’s place were of some attraction to him.”
The Coroner’s Act does not permit a finding that might suggest an individual may be guilty of an offence, and Cavanagh confirms he will report his findings to the commissioner of police and the director of public prosecutions for further action or investigation.
Police say a $250,000 reward for information that leads to the discovery of Moriarty’s body or the conviction of his killer still stands.
“Murder investigations are challenging, particularly without a body,” Allen says. “The case doesn’t get closed until it is solved. We need to find Paddy.”
As the news of the findings filters through, Cilia says, residents dropped in to see if he was OK, one bringing a pack of smokes from town, another some fresh-laid eggs.
Although he feels unsettled, Cilia says he’s sure his grandmother had nothing to do with Moriarty’s death.
Still, it’s hard to live in a town that small where the coroner thinks a man was murdered. The rest of the residents are shaken too.
“I know it’s affecting all of them,” Cilia says. “They’re all older and they’ve been through so much and you can see they’re sick and tired, a little. And it hurts me because they built this town. And it’s a good town. You don’t want it to be known as that place a murder happened.”
And so, once more, the people who loved Moriarty find themselves in limbo – that terrible space between knowing and not knowing what happened to their mate.
Karen and Mark Rayner had known Moriarty since they moved to Larrimah in 2015. During the first half of the inquest, they were called as witnesses. This time, they sat quietly in the courtroom, listening.
Back in Larrimah, they say they don’t want Moriarty’s memory eclipsed by what happened to him.
“For us who had the privilege of knowing Paddy, we saw the caring, giving, honest and genuine person he was,” Karen Rayner says.
“He didn’t seem to leave too many footprints on this Earth but he definitely left a footprint on our hearts. It was a pleasure to have laughed with him and to hear the yarns he spun about his life. We will miss him always.”
