In 1979 in WA's outback, Percy Brown was charged with murder. Four decades on, he wants justice for the crime he insists he didn't commit.
With a ragged breath, 20-year-old Percy Brown was running.
He only stopped once to look over his shoulder to check if George Davis was gaining on him, but the banks of the Fitzroy River were enveloped in darkness.
So he kept sprinting, jumping through the dense spinifex and over sleeping bodies at the campsite, back to a fibro shanty nestled in nearby Junjuwa community.
The night was still. The camp was quiet. Percy fell into bed, head pounding and body sweating.
Hours later, the silence was punctured.
A body had been found, and police were looking for someone.
Forty years on, Percy remembers the jolt of horror when he was arrested and charged — later to be convicted — for the murder of George Davis in Fitzroy Crossing on April 25, 1979.
"I'm innocent from that day when they finished interviewing me to right now where I'm sitting," he says.
Now aged 62, Percy is a quietly spoken man.
The story of his murder conviction still troubles him.
"It's not only me; there's a lot of Aboriginal people who were innocent," he says in a voice barely above a whisper.
Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia's Kimberley was fractured and fissured in the 1970s.
Walmajarri, Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Nyikina and Wangkatjunka people had gathered in the service centre after they were pushed off their land by local pastoralists.
Gambling, drinking and violence were rife — sins only fuelled by the success of the local Fitzroy Crossing Inn.
The inn was a local watering hole, where black and white patrons were served at separate sides of the pub.
Police were fixtures at its entrance, often hauling drunk people across the threshold and throwing them into a cage on the back of a police vehicle.
Percy Brown found himself against this backdrop on the afternoon of Anzac Day in 1979.
According to transcripts from the WA Supreme Court, Percy was already unsteady on his feet when he wandered away from the bustling inn and into the darkness of the nearby camp.
What happened next was set out before Judge Charles Smith.
Percy wandered over to a group of drinkers, including Nancy Williams and Mabel Maylo.
Nancy's partner, George Davis, had left the group to buy more beer, so Percy took his place in the circle.
The drinks flowed and before long, the skinny "matchstick-lookin''' boy found himself propositioned by Nancy for sex.
They disappeared into the darkness, leaving Mabel to welcome George when he returned from the inn.
"He came back asking for Nancy," Mabel told the court.
She pointed shadows of tangled limbs out to him.
"He went wild."
George stormed over to the pair with his beers still in hand and slapped Nancy, who took off running.
Percy stood his ground against the much larger, fitter man for a brief second and sized him up and made a decision. He would run.
When George Davis's body was discovered early the next morning, the word spread from the campgrounds to Fitzroy Crossing and out to Junjuwa, a nearby community.
He'd succumbed to three blows to the head. Blood had pooled at the back of his head and he lay face down in the dirt.
His legs were bent behind him at an odd angle, his beers gone.
First on the scene was Aboriginal police liaison Jock Shandley and Senior Sergeant Malcolm Cole.
The two men presented a strange team — Shandley was known for his stellar community-minded approach to policing, while Cole was better known by his nickname "Town Buster".
Rough, ready and already the subject of several complaints from the Aboriginal Legal Service for his treatment of local people, Cole watched on as a crowd gathered on the roadside.
The scene was simple: George Davis's head had been caved in, a large stick was missing from a nearby woodpile and there was a solitary footprint near the body.
One hungover and confused face milling on the outskirts of the scrub stuck out to the two attending officers.
Shandley called 20-year-old Percy over to where the footprint had been indented into the soft track.
Transcripts from the trial in September 1979 detail what was said:
Shandley: "I said, 'I want you to put your footprints on this foot from the last night. I want you to put it here three time'."
Prosecutor: "Did the person do that?"
Shandley: "Yes. He put his footprint three times alongside the one from the last night. Then I just look at him and he look at me and I said, 'I think it was you'. I went just like that — 'it was you'."
Cole witnessed the exchange and narrowed in on Percy.
"What do you know about it?" he asked him.
According to the senior sergeant, the young man shook his head and could only muster a single word: "No."
Recalling what happened next is still difficult for Percy, more than 40 years on.
He remembers being held in the stuffy police station donga for hours with Cole and two detectives, with no interpreter, as the questioning wore on.
"I kept on saying, 'no, no, no'," Percy recalls.
He has since alleged he had his fingers cut by a nail clipper and a gun held to his temple during questioning.
While those specific allegations weren't tested at trial, the accused's claims of feeling fear under questioning were firmly rejected by police during proceedings.
"[A detective] said: 'How you feel if I shoot you, if I pull this trigger?'" Percy says.
Throughout his time in custody, Percy says he continued to deny any involvement in George Davis's death, but did concede he slept with the man's wife the night before he was found dead and had made a footprint while running away.
He says the two officers took him back to the scene in an apparent bid to jog his memory.
As he walks the ABC through the campgrounds 40 years on, Percy points to a spot in the scrub.
"They brought me this way and showed me the place where they found the body," he says.
"They gave me a big stick and forced me to hold it.
"They told me how I hit the person on the back of the neck and how he fell down, and they wrote it all down."
Shell-shocked and only understanding some of the words asked by the English-speaking officers, Percy did what is now known by the Aboriginal Interpreters Service as gratuitous concurrence.
He says he signed each page of his apparent confession, wanting the ordeal over with. It's a decision Percy now wishes he could take back.
"Someone killed that old fella, but not me."
The justice system in Fitzroy Crossing and the broader Kimberley at the time of Percy's conviction was far from perfect.
There was little understanding of how Indigenous people saw the white law system and, in particular, how miscommunication between the cultures could be problematic.
According to Aboriginal Interpreting WA — Percy's now employer — gratuitous concurrence "is a very common feature of Aboriginal conversations throughout Australia, and is customarily used to indicate a readiness for cooperative interaction or resignation to the futility of the situation".
It's something Allan Fenbury saw at work when he accompanied a young Percy to his trial in Broome as his defence lawyer in 1979.
"He was a very young, Indigenous man from the Kimberley," he remembers.
"He was very soft-voiced and softly spoken, reticent — he whispered, so it was hard to get a word out of him — and shy."
He remembers the difficulty of defending a man who had, in the eyes of the law, confessed.
"The only evidence really that he was the person who committed the offence was this confession.
"He said to me it wasn't true and that he had given in and said yes to questions after a while, because that went on and on.
"He didn't really feel he had much choice — my words, not his."
Mr Fenbury does not allege any wrongdoing by police. He does however believe that, aside from the gratuitous concurrence, language is a systemic barrier.
"It was a constant problem with legal representation, defence work at that time; the police officers would interview the suspect, they would read him his rights ... give him a caution as they were obliged to do under the law," he says.
"But it was very difficult to know whether the accused really appreciated they had a right to silence, and I've often thought this bloke doesn't have a clue what a confession or a caution is.
Percy gave his evidence just as a central desert man thrust into the spotlight of a white courtroom would — his leg jiggled, he answered in short sentences, and struggled to keep up with the speed at which the lawyers were discussing his case in English.
"His denials were unconvincing," Mr Fenbury says.
Regardless, his lawyer still pinned his hopes to a glaring hole in the prosecution's case, which came to light as he questioned Detective Senior Constable Glenn Thompson from the Derby Criminal Investigation Branch.
Fenbury: "Apart from the footprints that he admits and always admitted, do you know of any other evidence against him except this record of interview?"
Thompson: "There's the exhibits, as you say, the record of interview."
Fenbury: "What else? Fingerprints that you know of?"
Thompson: "No, there's certainly no fingerprints."
Fenbury: "Hairs found on [Percy's] fingernails or on the piece of wood?"
Thompson: "No."
Fenbury: "Is there any other scientific evidence that you know of that connects this man with the killing?"
Thompson: "No."
Fenbury: "Blood stains on his clothing or anything?"
Thompson: "No."
Fenbury: "Articles of clothing left at the scene?"
Thompson: "No."
As far as the evidence went, witnesses said they hadn't seen a physical fight between Percy and George Davis, and the prosecution's case as a result hinged on the confession the 20-year-old had reluctantly signed.
Nevertheless, two days later Percy was found guilty and sentenced to five years' jail, the mandatory minimum for murder at the time.
As quickly as the young man was hauled away to Broome Regional Prison, the notorious Kimberley bush telegraph spread the word.
Did you hear? That skinny young fella from out Noonkanbah way has been locked up for murder of Mr Davis.
Joe Ross was 19 when word got around Fitzroy Crossing.
He remembers the feeling that hummed around Percy's case in the central desert at the time — a distinct sense of unease.
In fact, the community seemed to see what happened as emblematic of a bigger problem they saw with the town — how local police treated Indigenous people.
Joe says the Fitzroy Valley was full of injustice in the 1970s.
"There was this whole group of white men that dominated this place. In places like Fitzroy Crossing, you could get away with it."
The local elders decided it was their time to intervene and a community meeting was called.
Steve Hawke, the son of late prime minister Bob Hawke, was a fledging journalist and living in Fitzroy Crossing when he got word a "magic man" was travelling to Fitzroy Crossing to look into George Davis's death.
Sensing a scoop, Mr Hawke scored an invite to the meeting along with Aboriginal Legal Service lawyer Phil Vincent.
"There were probably about 60 or 70 people there — all men, mostly elders, gathered by the Fitzroy River," Mr Hawke says.
WA Police also came along to watch the loreman carry out his investigation.
"This old man was incredibly impressive — he had this silk and a walking stick with snakes carved on it," Mr Hawke recalls.
Mr Vincent says the community watched on as the loreman worked.
"He produced rocks and a special handkerchief — a piece of cloth," he says.
"He indicated to the detective, through that medium, that he could tell who the real person who committed the crime was.
"The wrong person had been charged."
The loreman gave the crowd a name, but with Percy behind bars, the local detective was hamstrung.
"[The detective] said that there's nothing that could be done about it unless the community handed over the man they believed did it," Mr Hawke says.
And they didn't.
Instead, the man would be dealt with in the cultural way rather than handed over to the white authorities.
Percy was told about the meeting years later.
"That old magic man, he found me not guilty in Aboriginal culture," he says.
But the fact remained, "I was guilty in white man's way".
And so he spent five years behind bars in Fremantle and Broome.
He now calls the latter home and works as a Walmajarri and Kriol interpreter.
On days he is booked to help an offender come before a judge, Percy puts on his Akubra, his reading glasses and ironed shirt and walks a short distance to the same courthouse in which he was convicted all those decades ago.
Interpreting is a job that means a lot to him.
"I help them with English and Kriol, people who need help," he says.
"[It's important] because I went through that, and I need to help my people."
The 62-year-old has chosen to tell his story in the hopes he'll have a better chance now at an appeal.
"They should have done it a long time ago when I was released from prison."
In the 1970s, an appeal had to be lodged within 21 days of the conviction under West Australian law.
For a young man who wanted his ordeal over and only understood the basics of English, it wasn't an avenue he wanted to go down, nor did he know how to.
But reflecting on the happenings of the past 40 years, Mr Vincent and Mr Hawke agree that grounds for an appeal are strong.
It's something Percy's considering, although the road to do so is complicated.
He can either apply to have an appeal heard against his conviction or simply have it overturned by the state's attorney-general.
Mr Vincent was instrumental in making a number of complaints against WA Police in the 1970s in Fitzroy Crossing, and witnessed firsthand the way Indigenous people were treated by local officers.
A faded old Kimberley Land Council newsletter recorded Mr Vincent's work:
"By May 1979, Fitzroy Crossing Aborigines had made 20 complaints of bashings, harassment and discrimination by Cole and his colleagues.
"These were referred to the Commissioner of Police by the Aboriginal Legal Service."
"Yes, there were complaints about a particular police officer in Fitzroy Crossing and the treatment of Aboriginal people," Mr Vincent says.
The officer was Senior Sergeant Malcolm Cole, who had been involved in Percy's investigation.
The complaints, which were mainly focused around the controversial meal allowance scheme that lawyers such as Mr Vincent allege incentivised officers to lock people up, triggered an internal investigation by WA Police.
It was recommended Cole, who died in 2021, be removed from the Kimberley.
The officer tried to retain his posting, but the more relations soured, the greater the pressure from locals became.
The "Town Buster" eventually chose to move on.
Mr Vincent says to see Percy's case play out against this backdrop added to a feeling he may be telling the truth about what happened to him in the police lockup.
"The justice system was pretty rough and ready up there, and very often people who were charged weren't able to give proper explanations to police or indeed later in court," he says.
"There's always a chance that there has been some wrongful conviction."
Years later, Mr Vincent would chair the WA government's first interim inquiry into deaths in custody, after John Pat died in Roebourne Police Lockup shortly before his 17th birthday.
Mr Fenbury, who has recently retired from two decades on the WA District Court as a judge and on the Prisoners Review Board, has come to the same view over the years.
"At that time, the police didn't have any legal obligation to video interviews or provide any other support person or an interpreter even."
He in particular sees flaws in the prosecution's argument around Percy's motive, the footprint evidence and the reliability of the confession, which was reflected in his questioning of police during the trial.
Fenbury: "You questioned him continuously for the afternoon and he at all times, up until 1730 hours, said, 'No, I didn't do it. It wasn't me'. Isn't that right?"
Thompson: "That's not right, no."
Fenbury: "It was after you had been questioning him for four hours that he eventually agreed with what you said to him. Isn't that right?"
Thompson: "No, that's not right."
Fenbury: "I am not saying you hit him or anything. You questioned him for four hours and he caved in at the end to stop you from questioning him. Isn't that right?"
Thompson: "That's not right."
Steve Hawke, having later written a fictionalised account of what happened to Percy as a piece of creative writing, comes to a firmer conclusion about the case.
"I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind, on the basis of what people said to me and what I saw there, there had been a miscarriage of justice," he says.
"A person spent five years in jail for something he hadn't done."
Last month in WA Police's annual report, Commissioner Col Blanch highlighted the significant work that had been done to right the wrongs of the past.
"We remain dedicated to contributing to the wellbeing of Aboriginal people, increasing engagement to improve relationships and understanding through the Aboriginal Police Advisory Forum, district advisory groups, and station-level community action planning with local elders and community leaders."
In 2018, former commissioner and now governor Chris Dawson issued a formal apology to the state's Aboriginal people for their past treatment at the hands of police.
WA Police also established its Aboriginal Affairs Division (AAD) to "lead in fostering and nurturing better relations with Aboriginal people".
AAD superintendent Tony Colfer says the division is working hard to build trust with traditional owners.
"It's been one of my priorities, overseeing the AAD, to get out there and engage and change culture within the agency," he says.
"The division was set up to drive change and build those relationships around culture, trust and respect, and I think we're definitely on the right track."
Superintendent Colfer says the apology is an important part of recognising past wrongdoings by the force.
"It's not about putting the past behind us, it's about understanding how people understand the history ... and recognise it and then move forward in a positive way — working with Aboriginal elders, traditional owners and Aboriginal people in the community."
But for people who lived during that time in the north, there's little that can make up for the time lost at the hands of officers who took advantage of the region's remoteness.
Joe Ross, now a community leader in Fitzroy Crossing, wants a recognition of not only Percy but what his people went through.
"There's many elders here that feel aggrieved by that," he says.
"There needs to be a process of healing for people, and if people have been wrong done by and accused of things and sent to jail, you need to be able to find a way to say that was the wrong thing to do."
Credits
Reporting: Hannah Barry and Jessica Hayes
Photography: Andrew Seabourne, Hugh Sando and Jessica Hayes
Video: Andrew Seabourne
Producer: Daniel Franklin
