Only two Northern Territory police officers have ever been charged with murder. The first was acquitted. The second faces trial soon.

A page from the Centralian Advocate, July 1980 (Image: Centralian Advocate)

Forty-one years ago, eight Anmatyerre men left the Aileron roadhouse north of Alice Springs in an old Holden station wagon after a day of solid drinking and headed home to their families at Ti Tree Station, 80 kilometres north. 

Within the hour one was critically injured and another — for cultural reasons identified as Jabanardi — was dead, shot by Northern Territory police officer First Class Constable Laurence “Jack” Clifford who would later be charged with Jabanardi’s murder, the first NT police officer to face a murder trial since territory self-government in 1978.

The trial of the second NT policeman to be charged with murder is scheduled to begin in Darwin next week. Constable Zachary Rolfe is charged with murdering 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker at the remote NT community of Yuendumu in November 2019. 

What really happened on that outback NT road 41 years ago? Read on.

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