Former judge John McKechnie slams police over ‘appalling’ investigation into Dante Arthurs in explosive memoir

The judge who jailed Dante Arthurs has lashed detectives over an “appalling” investigation during which the deranged child killer walked free from a police station three years before he murdered an eight-year-old girl. Former Supreme Court judge-turned-Corruption and Crime Commission boss John McKechnie has detailed the death of Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia Shu in an explosive memoir to be released next month. My Life in Crime: A Tapestry of Cases chronicles Mr McKechnie’s five-decade career in justice, including his eight years as Director of Public Prosecutions and 16 years on the bench. In a chapter on the Arthurs trial of 2007, Mr McKechnie castigates police for botching a 2003 interview with Arthurs after he was taken in for questioning over an assault on another eight-year-old girl. The case was dropped after the DPP decided that confessions made by Arthurs in police interviews would have been ruled inadmissible in court because the detectives had been “overbearing”. “I was shown the record of interview from 2003,” Mr McKechnie writes. “The police conduct was appalling. Had that incident been fully investigated and the rules followed, there might not have been a death three years later.” Police repeated the error in 2006 when they took Arthurs in for questioning after Sofia’s body was found in a toilet cubicle at a shopping centre in Canning Vale. Mr McKechnie spells out why that police interview was ruled as involuntary before noting that “twice in three years police had failed to conduct an interview with Arthurs according to the proper procedures, which were designed to ensure that any confession was made voluntarily and would be admissible in court”. The case against Arthurs was in the headlines this week after Attorney-General Tony Buti denied him parole. It was the third time the murderer was considered for parole after being jailed for life with a minimum of 13 years. In his book, Mr McKechnie explains why Arthurs’ conviction for murder as opposed to wilful murder meant a shorter non-parole period. “A person convicted of wilful murder must serve a minimum of 15 years before parole,” he writes. “By contrast, a judge was required to set a lower minimum period — between seven and 14 years — for a person convicted of murder. “Was the non-parole period too lenient? Of course it was. It was effectively the maximum that could be imposed but still fell way short of the punishment such an evil and heinous crime deserved.” Mr McKechnie, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2015 to become CCC Commissioner, hints at the personal toll from hearing evidence “so disturbing that some people left the courtroom in anguish”. “This was not my first case of child killing or sexual assault,” he writes. “I had seen the depths of depravity and the cruelty one person could inflict on another. However, I had not seen this extent of violence inflicted on a child before.” My Life in Crime is on sale next month.