Half the Truth

July 1977 — Griffith, New South Wales.

A winter night, a locked van behind the local hotel, three spent .22 shells on the bitumen, and a man who never made it home.

Businessman and Liberal Party candidate Donald McKay had spent years exposing the Riverina’s drug trade. That evening, he vanished.

Within hours, Griffith became the centre of a national story. The headlines asked who pulled the trigger — and who ordered it? Behind the noise, investigators found drag marks, blood, and silence.

Through conflicting police reports, media contradictions, and fragments of the Woodward Royal Commission, this first episode unravels the night McKay disappeared — and the moment Australia’s criminal underworld collided with its corridors of power.

Featuring archival sound, reconstructed detail, and narration by Stephen Johns, Half the Truth opens Season 1 – The Vanishing: the story of one man’s stand against a criminal empire, the price he paid, and the shadows that still haunt a nation.

Written & produced by Stephen Johns.

Sound design and editing by Stephen Johns.

© Compromised Podcast Series.

Justice Philip Woodward audio in part:

Special thanks:

Title:

Crime Investigation Australia: Conviction in Donald Mackay case

Year

2007

Courtesy

Foxtel

Al Grassby comments:

Special thanks to ABC News archives Australia

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Griffith wasn’t just vineyards—it was an industrial drug economy hiding in plain sight. As Donald Mackay vanished, a syndicate led by Robert Trimbole—with names like Sergi, Barbaro and Tizzone—was cultivating cannabis on a massive scale, protected by silence and influence. Raids came and went. Files moved. People stopped asking questions.

By 1977, law-enforcement estimates put the profits at $60–$80 million a year—nearly half a billion dollars in today’s terms—laundered through trucking firms, restaurants and real estate. This episode follows the money, the protection and the leaks that let the crops keep growing, and asks the question that still matters in 2025: when truth collides with power, who pays the price? For the Mackay family, the cost never ended.

Written, researched and narrated by Stephen Johns.

Justice Philip Woodward audio in part: Crime Investigation Australia: Conviction in Donald Mackay case. 2007. Foxtel

Al Grassby comments: ABC News archives Australia

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/enrique-molano/spring-coming

License code: TMQZ5W2MAANQTUGE

https://uppbeat.io/t/avbe/endless-puzzle

License code: 6G9BN3TRTYTCDBRL

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In 1979, Justice Philip Woodward’s Royal Commission promised light—and delivered language.

The Law That Never Spoke follows the insiders who saw too much: a clerk who filed a brief that vanished, an AFP officer told to “stay in his lane,” and a system that learned how to silence itself by process, not threat.

Featuring archival material, reconstructed testimony, and the quiet echoes of a nation still balancing its books, Episode 3 traces how the machinery of justice became the machinery of silence.

Listen now. Because every system leaves a paper trail—if you know where to read between the lines.

Justice Philip Woodward audio in part: Crime Investigation Australia: Conviction in Donald Mackay case. 2007. Foxtel

Al Grassby comments: ABC News archives Australia

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/enrique-molano/spring-coming

License code: TMQZ5W2MAANQTUGE

https://uppbeat.io/t/avbe/endless-puzzle

License code: 6G9BN3TRTYTCDBRL

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.