4338.214 · August 2, 2018 AD
The Body That Was Already There
On the evening of 2 August 2018, police responded to a reported break-in at a Berriedale residence registered to Luke Smith. Inside they found the savaged remains of a man who had been missing from South Australia for over twenty years — killed days earlier, but ravaged beyond recognition. They also found a wounded stranger, a shattered window, blood belonging to people who shouldn't have been there, and a dead animal no authority could identify. The house burned down the next night.
Nobody went to Luke Smith's Berriedale house looking for Cody Jennings. Jenny Triffett went looking for answers about her missing husband. Sharon Pafistis went looking for answers about hers. Kate Gibbons went looking for her son's father. The police went because Kate called 000 to report two women breaking in.
What they found had nothing to do with what any of them were looking for.
Cody Brian Jennings had vanished from Gawler, South Australia, in 1997 — walked away from his life with a letter telling his family not to search. Twenty-one years later, his remains were discovered in a downstairs room of a suburban Hobart house. He had been dead for days, not years — but the state of his body told a different story. Catastrophic injuries, repeated displacement within the property, and sustained predation by an animal found at the scene had rendered the remains almost unrecognisable. Forensic analysis that should have been straightforward became an exercise in separating what violence had done from what time had not.
The crime scene expanded with every hour. A wounded man was found inside with no clear explanation for his presence. An unidentified animal — large, dark-furred, predatory — was shot dead in the backyard. Blood analysis identified traces belonging to individuals whose connection to the property defied easy explanation. And within twenty-four hours of the discovery, the house was destroyed by arson, taking with it evidence that might have answered the questions the investigation was only beginning to ask.
Detective Inspector Sienna Blackwood led an investigation that would eventually name a suspect, close a case, and leave behind more unanswered questions than any resolution should permit.
