The Story of Leisl Smith

Leisl Smith was 23 when she was last seen at Tuggerah Railway Station on the New South Wales Central Coast on August 19, 2012.  

The man she’d been having a sexual relationship with at the time, was charged with her murder and went on trial for 3 months.  His final desperate act meant that Leisl’s family would never know the outcome of the trial and in a cruel twist, justice was never served. 

Leisl has never been found.  Is she missing or was she in fact, murdered?

Sign the petition on change.org to support Leisl’s Law  

Sources:
Australian True Crime Podcast
Sydney Morning Herald Article
A Current Affair Interview with Sandi Harvey

For a full list of sources including additional background music click here

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Lysol Smith was 23 when she was last seen at Tuggera Railway Station on the New South Wales Central Coast August 19, 2012. The man she'd been having a sexual relationship with at the time was later charged with her murder and went on trial for three months. His final desperate act meant that Lysol's family would never know the outcome of the trial and, in a cruel twist, justice was never served. Lysol is still missing. Or was she in fact murdered? This episode discusses content related to suicide, abduction and homicide and is not suitable for children. Today, I'm covering the missing persons case of Lysol Smith, last seen on CCTV footage parking her car at the local train station, locking it and climbing into her then lover's ute. I'm Carla Morgan and this is Bolo, a podcast covering cold and active missing persons cases with the aim of helping families bring their loved ones home.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Lysol is 163 centimetres tall, of thin build and Caucasian appearance. She has brown eyes and in most photographs of her she has dark brown hair, almost black, but at the time she went missing her hair had been dyed blonde and was tied back in a ponytail. She's described by those who knew her as kind, with a big heart and an animal lover. She particularly loved horses. She was considered somewhat of a horse whisperer in the local community and people often reached out to her for help with their own horses. Just up the road from where she lived was a man called James Scott Church, or Jim, as most people knew him by. Church was a horse farrier, which is someone who shoes horses, and it was Lysol's love of horses and her desire to learn more about them that led her to him. Jim was 42 and Lysol just 23. They struck up an immediate friendship that turned into a relationship. Lysol told friends and family that she was in love, but at some point into seeing each other, church started dating a woman by the name of Belinda Lee's. He was very open about the fact that he was in love with Belinda and that she was the love of his life, but that didn't stop him from seeing Lysol and continuing a sexual relationship with her. He was keeping Lysol a secret from Belinda and as many other people as possible so that Belinda wouldn't find out. Belinda knew the pair had a history, but believed Church when he said it was over. Lysol, on the other hand, was not keeping her relationship with Church a secret. She openly told others about their relationship, including Belinda, sending her messages and telling her not to trust Church, and before she went missing, lysol told both Church and Belinda that she was pregnant with his child.

Speaker 1: 3:29

The day Lysol disappeared was a Sunday. She cleaned up the stables, did a few other chores and got dressed to go out. She left her home in Wallara, jumped into her Honda Accord and headed to the Tagura train station at around 1pm. She said she'd be back around 5pm. Lysol's mare was due to give birth to a foal in late August and Lysol was extremely excited about this and was checking on her frequently. So when she didn't come home by 5pm that day, as she normally would, it was very out of character and raised alarm bells for her family.

Speaker 1: 4:10

One week after Lysol disappeared, her car was found abandoned at the train station. Police reviewed the CCTV footage and confirmed they saw Lysol parking her car, locking it and then walking away from the car, but not towards the station. She doesn't board a train that day she just walks out of frame. Three weeks later police pulled Church in for an interview. He denied knowing anything about Lysol's whereabouts and he said he hadn't seen her in months. Well, we know that was a straight up lie and it's not the first lie he'll tell police either.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Five days after his initial interview, church changed his story. He admitted to having a sexual relationship with Lysol but said he lied to police about it because he didn't want his girlfriend to find out. Police confronted him with more CCTV footage from the train station that day. We can see it. It clearly shows Lysol driving up to the train station at the same time that Church is driving up in his ute. They don't drive into the car park. He pulls up on the side of the road away from the entry to the station and she pulls up right behind him. He gets out of his car, walks back to her driver's side window. They have a short conversation, he jumps back in his ute and then she drives around him and into the car park of the train station. This is where she parks, locks her car and then walks back towards Church's parked ute and jumps into the passenger seat. They drive off. This is the last known sighting of Lysol Smith, so we know for sure he took her somewhere.

Speaker 1: 6:06

That day, when he discovered the police knew about this, he changed his story. He said she needed a lift, so he drove her to Waiong. Waiong is about a 10 minute drive from Tuggera train station. After he dropped her off in Waiong, he said he went back home. He spent a few hours with his parents before heading over to his girlfriend Belinda's place. It's interesting to me that he would say she asked him for a lift to a place 10 minutes away when she had her own car. Also, why wouldn't he pick her up from home? Why would she park at the train station to get a lift with him? It really didn't make any sense to me. I figure that he didn't count on being seen where he pulled up, that he had instructed her to park in the car park so that she would be clearly visible on CCTV footage, parking and leaving her car there. Whether this was to set up the narrative that she was catching a train somewhere or that she was running away, but either way the lack of bags or anything else with her would be for me a key indicator that going away was not a part of her plan.

Speaker 1: 7:26

That day the evidence against Church was mounting, as police had tapped his phone, put listening devices in his home and his parents' home and checked his Belinda's and Liesl's phone records. Here's what they discovered Belinda contacted Church's mobile at 6.26pm, then again at 7.19pm on Sunday, the 19th of August, the day Liesl went missing. Belinda then called his landline at 7.20pm and again at 8.02pm. If he was supposed to be at her place at that time, why was she calling his mobile and his landline? It would be pretty easy to say that you might call someone on their mobile in the same house I mean, we've all done that looking for a phone but his landline. That's much harder to justify. When asked why she was calling him if they were together, his reasoning was that there had been a break-in at his house in Clarence Town, which is north, so he had gone up there to check on things. He said there was no phone reception there so that's why he didn't ring Belinda back until the morning. The phone records indicate, however, that his phone was switched back on at 1.15am that morning. It wasn't out of range at all, it was switched off.

Speaker 1: 8:57

Police also captured images of his youth from traffic cameras in Sandy Hollow, about 180km north of Tuggera, near the Hunter Valley. It was 2 hours and 20 minutes from the time he'd left the train station in Tuggera with Liesl, which fits with the timeline of him leaving the station and then arriving up in Sandy Hollow. His car was also clocked, heading back south on the Golden Highway later that day. When police tell him this, he just asks if they have the right number plates and the right car, because how can he be in two places at once? They also discovered Church had driven up into Meriwau in the Hunter Valley region two days prior to 19 August. So Liesl went missing on the Sunday. On the Friday Church took the same trip up north. Police believed that this was when he went up that way to select a murder site. This same day, the Friday, he also left a message on Liesl's phone saying he had organised a place, everything was going to be alright and that the place was ready to go. The police also told him that Liesl was actually never pregnant. He said in the interview well, it makes no difference to me. He adamantly denied their claims that he had hurt Liesl and he clearly stated he had never murdered anyone and he hadn't murdered her. Church in another interview came up with a new alibi for why he was heading north and back on the day Liesl went missing. He said he was visiting a friend up in the Hunter Valley region but that his friend wasn't home so he had sat outside the gates for about six hours waiting and then returned home.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Once all of this evidence was discovered, the police pivoted, obviously, from a missing person's case into a homicide investigation, with one clear suspect on their radar. When they looked closer into the phone records of Church and Liesl, they had nearly 2,000 exchanges in the 12 weeks leading up to her disappearance, but zero contact from Sunday August 19th, except there was one call to her phone on the morning of the day she disappeared from Church, likely organising the rendezvous at the station for later that day. Liesl's mother believes, as stated in the Australian True Crime podcast, that he called her saying something like I'll take you up to the place that I've prepared for you to move into, as she did want to move out of her dad's place and was planning to move out, and that's how he lured her out and into his car. It would also explain again why she didn't have any bags with her and was dressed for a day trip. She wasn't planning to be gone long. She needed to be back for her animals later that afternoon.

Speaker 1: 12:04

Police also believe that Church took Liesl's phone and sent messages to her family and friends in an attempt to cover up her disappearance and make them believe that she was still alive. Storm, lysel's dad, said he received a strange message two days after Lysel was last seen. It said fuck you, I can't do this and I'm not going to keep your secret anymore. Storm said he and Lysel were really close and that he didn't understand what this message meant, and when he called her phone back immediately after receiving the text, the phone was switched off. The following day, another message came through from Lysel's number which read I'm really sorry, dad, please don't be angry. That was the last text he received. These messages might be why Storm believes his daughter is still alive and is in hiding. There are reports that he has said he's also received messages via Facebook. He believes Church and Lysel were in love and that Church didn't do anything to hurt her.

Speaker 1: 13:14

Belinda stood by Church in the beginning, but he can be heard from a taped phone conversation berating her for not backing up his initial alibi when he said he was with her. In this conversation, he's also overheard saying he's going to jail for sure. They broke up in April of 2013 after his story started unraveling. This was also around the time that his properties were searched. They searched his home on the same street where Lysel was living and his place at Clarence Town, north of Newcastle. Items were seized, but it was later reported that nothing of note had been found.

Speaker 1: 13:55

Twelve months after Lysel went missing, church contacted the police to tell them that two men shot at him in the middle of the night after they had questioned him about Lysel. There's nothing further to add about that. It's just an odd twist of the story. Despite all the circumstantial evidence, there wasn't enough to pin Lysel's murder on Church until six years later, in 2018, when police revisited the case. This time, they found Highway Patrol video that captured his youth travelling north at 2.14pm on the 19th August. This was the proof they needed to show that he didn't leave Lysel at Waiong, like he said, that he took her on that trip north to the Hunter Valley region. They charged him with murder and prepared a case for trial. Church pleaded not guilty and the trial lasted three months. It started in May of 2022, almost ten years after Lysel went missing.

Speaker 1: 15:12

It was also revealed in court, through conversations recorded on listening devices, that his parents weren't happy about being caught in a lie, their overheard talking about how they said they were at his place, which makes them look bad. If the police had evidence that he wasn't there and was actually driving somewhere. Church said in court that he had never asked anyone to lie to him and he encouraged his mother to stick to her own version of events. She had assigned stat declaration in court saying she didn't remember any conversations that they'd had and she had a past drinking problem. Outside the courtroom, lysel's father, storm Smith, said he believed Lysel ran away and is still alive. He's hopeful the case will go to the coroner. Storm says, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald article linked in the show notes, that he received messages from her via Facebook and that he had seen her in a set of traffic lights in Windsor. Lysel's mother was there every day, waiting and hoping for justice and answers.

Speaker 1: 16:19

Finally, sixty-eight days of evidence were heard and the trial wrapped up. The judge prepared her verdict and announced the date she would deliver it, which was advised to appear in court to hear the verdict. But just 24 hours prior to when he was due to appear, he took his own life. The judge announced she was unable to deliver a verdict because the law prohibits this when a person on trial dies prior to a verdict being handed down. So that was it. Day after day of evidence presented in court. That would all amount to nothing for Liesl's family or for Liesl Judge George Conlon said during a current affair interview in 2022, where a person dies prior to a verdict, the rendering of any verdict where no punishment can follow is regarded as unnecessary and the trial will have to end there.

Speaker 1: 17:14

And then, where a trial has not ended or come to a close and the person on trial dies, it's understandable that the trial cannot continue. In this case, the trial was over. The judge had a verdict and was going to hand it down. He took his own life during that time, so it seems arbitrary in this case that the findings should not be handed down or, at the very least, communicated to the families of the victim. I think most people would agree. The law needs to change in order to be more considerate of the victim and the victim's family. Liesl has never been found and her bank accounts have not been touched. Liesl would be 34 years old now. She's been missing for 11 years and it's time to bring her home.

Speaker 1: 18:10

Detective Superintendent Chad Gillies from New South Wales Police said the investigation into Liesl's disappearance is not over and urged anyone with information to come forward. Liesl's mother is petitioning Mark Speekman, the New South Wales Attorney General, to change legislation so that a verdict can be passed down by a judge even if an accused becomes deceased, to ensure no other families are stuck in legal limbo. As she says, I have spent a decade without not just my daughter but any answers. If you'd like to sign the petition on changeorg to support Liesl's law, I've left a link in the show notes for you. If you or anyone you know know anything at all, please contact Police Link on 131-444 or call Crime Stoppers, which you can do anonymously, on 1800 333-000.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Thanks for listening to Bolo. If this episode has brought up feelings for you and you need support, please reach out to Lifeline on 13 11 14, the suicide callback service on 1300 659 467 or respect on 1800 respect. You can contact me on Insta or TikTok at Bolopod or email me at Bolopod at iCloudcom if you have a case you'd like me to cover. Until next week, stay safe and thanks for listening. I'd like to give a little shout out to Ruby, my newest subscriber. Thanks for supporting me and Bolo and if you'd like to support the show, you can go to the link in the show notes to subscribe or to the link to Buy Me a Coffee, which goes towards helping me cover the costs of the podcast and create new content. Thanks again, ruby you.