Greg
From top: Allison Nitschke (image courtesy The Advertiser), Lynette Nitschke, Mark Woodland
Hutchins was deep into the investigation of the strangulation murder of 18-yearold Allison Nitschke when the office phone rang. It was Allison’s mother, Lynette. Hutchins had seen but not spoken to her the day before at St Mark’s College, where he had found her daughter’s killer, Alister Thompson. Now, for Lynette, he would have to confirm that Allison was indeed dead, and that police had found her dumped naked body in the Adelaide Hills. “It was the toughest phone call I’ve ever had in my life,” he remembers, after almost 24 years. “It was just the absolute hurt coming from Lynette. “It wasn’t the time to go into the intimate details, and I can’t remember the exact conversation anyway: it’s a long time ago. But it was an absolutely unthinkable pain (for her), and there’s nothing that you can do about it. “Homicide is always going to be really painful. It’s always the extreme.” Lynette, who still keeps in contact with Hutchins, remembers his approach as “very professional, caring and understanding”. “The thing I remember with Greg,” she says, “is that he really explained to me why he couldn’t tell me things, and that was really important to me.” Hutchins never slept that Sunday night after the phone call. “That’s what it does to you,” the now Major Crime operations inspector says, “and I might not be the only one.” In another phone conversation with Lynette, Hutchins had to tell her that Thompson had scored bail after his arrest for murder. February 2015 Police Journal
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“He said: ‘Look, I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, but he’s been granted bail,’ ” she recalls. “I could tell by his voice that he was really upset about it; and, obviously it was terrible for him to have to tell me that.” Allison, a country girl, had boarded at St Mark’s when, on a Friday night, fellow boarder Thompson entered her room and strangled her. Soon after his sexually motivated crime, he used a friend’s car to transport her body up into the hills for dumping. And, on his way back to St Mark’s, he deposited clothes, likely belonging to Allison, into various bins. The next morning (Saturday), with Allison reported missing, Hutchins and his colleagues attended the college and started asking questions of anyone who might have known of her whereabouts. Thompson gave him some clearly nervous responses before confessing: “She’s dead! I murdered her!” Says Hutchins: “It ended up quite a significant murder investigation, close to 300 statements. We had to interview everyone at the college. It went for weeks, day in, day out, just going there from morning ’til night, taking statement after statement. “In the end, Alister pleaded not guilty but, just prior to trial, he pleaded guilty. He got 18 years.” The Nitschke murder investigation is one of 50-odd in which Hutchins has played a part as either a CIB or Major Crime detective. Many have concluded with a guilty verdict and heavy sentence and left him and his colleagues with a “huge” measure of job satisfaction. “Even though your best witness is dead,” he says, “you can generally piece the jigsaw puzzle together so everyone knows what’s happened.”