DELAYED INVESTIGATION DUE TO WRONGFUL CONVICTION ALLOWS THE REAL MURDERER TO ESCAPE JUSTICE

But at least the real murderer is dead so that is probably the best justice. He suicided by biting his wrists and bleeding to death. Now it will just be the crooked cops in the firing line

Sitting in his cell in the West Australian prison that had been his home for eight years, convicted murderer Simon Rochford thought his time was up. Hours after he watched himself publicly identified on television as the new suspect in the brutal murder of Perth jeweller Pamela Lawrence 12 years ago, Rochford took his own life. It had been a week since Rochford, who had four years left to serve on a minimum 15-year life term for the bashing murder of his girlfriend Brigitta Dickens, was questioned for five hours by detectives investigating new evidence in the high-profile murder - and the police had planned to come back.

Lawrence's long-suffering family and the man who spent 12 years behind bars after being blamed for her murder - Andrew Mallard - may now never discover the truth. The case has a tortuous history - Mr Mallard's conviction was finally quashed by the High Court last year and he was released in February after the Director of Public Prosecutions withdrew the charge.

In the wake of his release, a Corruption and Crime Commission investigation has begun into the handling of the case and five senior police, including two assistant commissioners, have been suspended, pending its findings.

Even more mystery surrounds Rochford - a backpacker from Huddersfield in England who used an alias and was wanted for being an illegal immigrant. He concocted extravagant stories about his background and was reportedly questioned while in custody awaiting trial over the unsolved murder of a German tourist in a London hotel in 1993. Rochford was convicted in 1995 of wilfully murdering 27-year-old Dickens on July 15, 1994, seven weeks after Lawrence was bludgeoned to death in her Mosman Park jewellery store.

A recent cold-case review put Rochford at the scene of Lawrence's murder after new technology was used to match a previously unidentified palm print with the 38-year-old prisoner.

At 7pm on Thursday, Rochford was watching the ABC news bulletin with at least one other inmate at the medium-security Albany Regional Prison, 400km south of Perth, when he saw himself named as the new suspect. The prison's superintendent had also seen the news, but state Corrective Services Commissioner Ian Johnson said Rochford's reaction had caused "no undue concern". At 7.44am yesterday - two hours after he was last seen alive during a check of his cell - prison officers found Rochford dead on his bed, sparking a police and coronial investigation into his death.

Rochford, 26 at the time of his conviction, arrived in Australia in 1993 on a three-month tourist visa. He was using a false surname and soon met and befriended Dickens while she was working at the Fremantle Hotel. He told her he owned a yacht in New Zealand and they began making plans to sail to Queensland. But after what was described as a "stupid argument" in a room in a backpackers hostel in the beachside suburb of Scarborough, Rochford bashed Dickens twice on the head with a barbell, fatally fracturing her skull. Her body, which he hid in the boot of her car, was discovered by police three days later.

At his sentencing hearing in November 1995, Rochford - the son of an alcoholic father and a mother who is believed to live somewhere in Western Australia - was described by the state prosecutor as showing little compassion for his victim. Justice Henry Wallwork also commented that no one other than Rochford knew what occurred before his inexcusable crime.

Yesterday, police deputy commissioner Chris Dawson said Rochford's conviction and his print being found on a cabinet in the jewellery store had made him a "significant person of interest" in Lawrence's murder. Mr Dawson acknowledged the ongoing and far-from-complete police investigation into Lawrence's killing had been compromised by Rochford's death. He could not say whether police had notified prison authorities that Rochford, placed on suicide watch after being questioned by police but returned to his single cell on Monday after being assessed, was about to be publicly identified.

He also refused to comment on calls for an apology to be made to Mr Mallard, who would have served time with Rochford at Perth's maximum-security Casuarina prison in the 1990s. Mr Mallard, whose conviction was quashed after the High Court found a raft of evidence had been withheld from the defence, was yesterday described by his sister Jacqui Mallard as being "saddened" by Rochford's death. "It is such a sorry saga," Ms Mallard said.

Labor backbencher John Quigley, who on Thursday used parliamentary privilege to call for Supreme Court Justice John McKechnie, the DPP at the time of Mr Mallard's prosecution, to stand down pending the CCC investigation, also described Rochford's death as tragic.

But Mr Dawson said the police investigation would continue and, in deference to Rochford's family, he refused to reveal the result of the police interview with him, a preliminary discussion paper on the case review or further details of Rochford's past. "While this case is of public interest, another family is grieving," he said.

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Another report below:

Wrongly convicted Andrew Mallard shared a small prison section with the man now suspected of murdering Pamela Lawrence in 1994. Mr Mallard was shocked yesterday when he saw a photograph of Simon Rochford, who committed suicide in Albany Prison on Friday morning after being named as the new prime suspect in the brutal killing. "I remember him staring at me in the remand prison when we were both waiting for our trials (in 1994-95)," he said. "The other prisoners would confuse me with him because we were both in there for bashing-type murders. "They'd say, `You're the guy with the body in the boot', and I'd say, `No, I didn't kill anybody'."

Mr Mallard was struggling to come to terms with the latest twist in his ordeal, which started when he was interrogated by police in the days after Mrs Lawrence's murder in Mosman Park. He had hoped the recent discovery that Rochford's palm print was left at the scene would assist in drawing the matter to a close for his family and the Lawrences. The Sunday Times understands the method of Rochford's suicide rules out foul play. He is believed to have bitten his wrists and bled to death.

Mr Mallard is still concerned about being investigated by the police, who attempted to interview him this week on video. And he wants an investigation into why the palm print was not revealed to his lawyers in 2002, despite a subpoena specifically requesting that kind of evidence.

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