Tasmania’s Parole Board used a document citing legal authorities that do not exist to prevent Susan Neill-Fraser from proclaiming her innocence.
On 26 January 2009, a troublesome yacht called the Four Winds was moored on the Derwent River in Tasmania.
Bob Chappell, a physicist at the Royal Hobart hospital, was on board the 53ft ketch. The 65-year-old was trying to fix yet another issue with the yacht he had bought for $200,000 less than four months earlier.
The next morning, a passerby noticed the Four Winds was sitting low in the water, as if it were sinking.
On 20 August 2009, detectives charged Susan Neill-Fraser, Chappell’s partner of 18 years, with his murder.
Neill-Fraser’s case has long been a topic of conversation in Tasmania, in part because of her loyal and vocal band of supporters, but it has infrequently made headlines on the Australian mainland.
The state’s Parole Board banned Neill-Fraser from speaking to the media, at least in part because of a document said to outline a series of previous court decisions that justified such a condition.
Neill-Fraser was released on parole in 2022.
In late 2024, after a discussion about her case with Robyn Blewer, the director of Griffith University’s Innocence Project, Neill-Fraser asked her parole officer to clarify whether such conversations were allowed under the conditions of her release.
On 15 September, the Tasmanian supreme court heard that the Parole Board had uncovered AI use in a document from its secretary, Ben Hancock, which was seen as forcibly supporting the state’s position to harden the conditions of Neill-Fraser’s parole.