The historical deaths of two Sydney men will go under the spotlight as a royal commission-style investigation seeks to determine whether they were victims of gay hate.
The special commission of inquiry will examine the deaths of Carl Stockton and Mark Stewart on Friday as part of an inquiry into police handling of suspected LGBTQI hate crimes between 1970 and 2010.
It was launched after Strike Force Parrabell, a 2018 report by NSW Police into 88 potentially hate-driven murders, found 23 deaths remained unsolved.
Key to the hearings is whether police credibly investigated the crimes and whether social attitudes towards the LGBTQI community could have contributed to police indifference towards the cases.
The inquiry heard on Wednesday investigators failed to adequately preserve crucial evidence in the murder case of gay Sydney man Gerald Cuthbert in 1981.
"This is considered unacceptable by both contemporary and historic policing standards," counsel assisting the inquiry Kathleen Heath said.
The evidence could have identified the 27-year-old's killer and potentially illuminated the motive of the crime but instead was lost to time.
The inquiry also heard evidence in the case of intersex woman Samantha Raye, who was found dead in a cave by the water's edge in Sydney's east in 1989.
While there is no evidence Ms Raye was murdered, the abuse and hostility she faced as a result of societal attitudes might have driven her to suicide, commissioner John Sackar heard.
Stephen Page, a former senior police officer, told the inquiry in February alarm bells should have sounded that gay men were being targeted by violence in the 1980s.
Homosexual conduct was decriminalised in NSW in 1984 but homophobic attitudes were still rife in the community during the 1980s and anti-gay bashings were a common phenomenon.
The special commission is due to deliver its report to the NSW governor in June 2023.
