AAP General News (Australia)
04-04-2008
FED: Coronial inquest provides no comfort to Kovco family
By Amy Coopes
SYDNEY, April 4 AAP - It wasn't the finding his family had been hoping for.
After two months of evidence, scores of witnesses and huge expense to taxpayers, the
inquest into the death of Private Jake Kovco has provided little comfort to his widow
and mother.
It was Judy Kovco's determination that resulted in her son's death being examined by
a coronial jury.
But she was adamant its finding that he had "irresponsibly self-inflicted" his fatal
gunshot wound was "most definitely" wrong.
As counsel assisting the coroner had observed, the inquest was perhaps the "last grasp
of a loving mother who cannot bring herself to accept that her son was less than perfect".
For the soldier's young widow, Shelley Kovco, the Sydney inquest and the military board
of inquiry that preceded it could not give her what she wanted most - her husband back.
Instead, the family endured eight weeks of hearings in which their most private crises
became public - infidelity, sexual abuse and suicide attempts among them.
Pte Kovco died after being shot in the head with his own service pistol in the Australian
embassy barracks in Baghdad on April 21, 2006.
He was Australia's first military casualty in Iraq, and the shooting and subsequent
bungled repatriation of his body sparked national controversy.
A 2006 military board of inquiry into the death and surrounding events concluded that
the gun went off as a result of Pte Kovco "skylarking" with the Browning 9mm pistol.
The inquiry finding dismayed the 25-year-old's mother, with Judy Kovco accusing the
military of a cover-up and pushing for an inquest.
Shelley Kovco was angered by the insinuation that her husband had been somehow foolish
or careless with his weapon, but stood by the army, insisting it had "nothing to hide".
The Kovco women entered Glebe Coroner's Court in Sydney two months ago just as they
were recorded by the paratrooper in his diary's final pages - opposing forces of love
between which the soldier feared he would one day be expected to choose.
A jury this week concluded Pte Kovco shot himself in an "irresponsible" and reckless
act, with "disregard" for the dangerous consequences of firing his gun.
The six-person panel said they could not decide whether or not he knew the weapon was
loaded, but found that, on the balance of probabilities, Pte Kovco had not intentionally
taken his own life.
It was a very public examination of a privately troubled man.
Over seven weeks the inquest heard evidence from scores of Pte Kovco's colleagues,
superiors and friends.
He was a larrikin, the "company clown", keen for a laugh and a practical joke.
But there emerged another, darker side to the soldier who dreamed of being selected
for the elite SAS regiment.
The court was told that in December 2005, Shelley Kovco threatened to leave her husband
because of his drinking.
When drunk, Mrs Kovco said Jake would become emotional about sexual molestation he
suffered at the hands of a neighbour as a seven-year-old.
The abuse, which took place over a period of nine months, drove him to contemplate
suicide at least once, when he was 14.
Pte Kovco may have put a gun to his own head with suicidal intent on up to three occasions,
the jury heard.
The sensational claims did not come from members of the Kovco family, but were brought
to the attention of the coronial investigation team by Brisbane woman Amy Johns, who came
forward to claim she had a brief affair with Pte Kovco before he went to Iraq.
They slept together twice, and Ms Johns said Pte Kovco told her he was separated, and
that pictures in his wallet of his children were his niece and nephew.
When she asked him to reveal something about himself nobody else knew, Ms Johns said
Pte Kovco confessed he had tried to kill himself.
"He had tried to shoot himself with a shotgun in the back of his dad's ute and he was
drinking a lot and his dad came and stopped him," she told the inquest.
Her testimony was the first time Ms Johns and Shelley Kovco came face to face, and
the widow's strain was evident as she wept in the witness box.
Mrs Kovco recalled an incident in 2001 when her husband became emotional and, rifle
in hand, told her he was going to "fix this".
Pte Kovco's mother, Judy, also recalled the event, telling the court her son said he'd
had a "hell of a life".
Both emphatically rejected the possibility that Pte Kovco committed suicide.
Eminent Adelaide psychiatrist and suicide expert Robert Goldney told the court the
confession to Ms Johns was proof that Pte Kovco was still troubled by the molestation,
and by thoughts of self-harm.
After ploughing through Pte Kovco's diaries, letters and other personal papers, Prof
Goldney concluded that the soldier was a "flamboyant" personality who engaged in escalating
acts of risk-taking culminating in his death.
His "exhibitionistic" tendencies and the fact his previous suicide bids had been averted
by others may have led him to again attempt self harm in the presence of others, hoping
he would be stopped, the professor said.
But Judy Kovco said her son would have put the gun into his mouth, not to the side
of his head, if he was "serious" about taking his own life.
Mrs Kovco's lawyer Bruce Levet grilled Pte Kovco's barracks neighbour, Steve Carr,
at length, about the presence of his DNA on the pistol.
Forensic testing on the slide and grip of the Browning revealed a mixed profile, with
the DNA of another male more prominent than that of Pte Kovco.
Army sampling undertaken during the 2006 board of inquiry found a one-in-8.3 billion
DNA match with now-Corporal Steve Carr.
Corp Carr was on duty with Pte Kovco on the embassy roof during his final shift.
A DNA expert told the inquest it mas more likely Corp Carr, not Kovco, cocked the pistol
before it fired.
Corp Carr said he didn't recall ever touching the gun, and could offer no explanation
for the presence of his DNA.
His lapse of memory was one of 280 occasions on which Mr Levet said soldiers responded
"I don't recall" to questions at the inquest.
He identified 16 "inconvenient truths" in the evidence, including the loss of vital
forensic and other traces due to military incompetence at the crime scene.
Pte Kovco's clothes were destroyed and his body washed at the Muslim civilian morgue,
while the barracks room was released to be cleaned before NSW police could examine it.
A raft of changes to defence training and protocol were recommended and implemented
following the military inquiry into Pte Kovco's death, including instruction for all personnel
in the preservation of crime scenes.
Military police now receive civilian police training on collecting and preserving DNA,
and are required to use digital voice recorders.
NSW Coroner Mary Jerram noted a number of "unfortunate" flaws in the military investigation
in her closing address, but declined to comment other than to dismiss the theory of a
"cover-up".
She instructed the jury at the outset to disregard speculation by Mr Levet that Pte
Kovco was shot by a fellow soldier.
Closing the evidence, Ms Jerram's assisting counsel John Agius SC said the theory was "fanciful".
"It is perhaps the last grasp of a loving mother who cannot bring herself to accept
that her son was less than perfect," Mr Agius said.
Mrs Kovco shook her head and closed her eyes as the jury foreman read the verdict,
and withdrew to a witness room to compose herself.
Perennially outspoken, she left the court in silence, offering only "most definitely"
when asked whether the jury got it wrong.
Offering a resigned smile, Shelley Kovco also had little to say about the official
public finding.
Mrs Kovco told the inquest she had long accepted that she would never know what happened
to her husband.
"At the end of the day it doesn't bring Jake home, he's still gone," she said.
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