Corryn Veronica Ann Rayney, née Da Silva, (born 1963) migrated to Australia with her Indian family in 1973 as refugees from Idi Amin's Uganda.
The state's police commissioner and attorney general declined to acknowledge documented procedural mistakes, and refused to instigate a fresh search for the killers, leading to calls for a federal investigation into the matter.
[10] At the trial of Rayney's husband, forensic doctor John Hilton and neuropathologist Victoria Fabian both testified that the cause of death was not clear, but that she had sustained injuries to her head, neck and brain.
However, he also stated that "he could not exclude the possibility Mrs Rayney received her neck injuries as she was placed head-first into her bush grave at Kings Park", although they definitely occurred prior to death and there was little to suggest that she had been alive at the time of burial.
It was alleged that she had recently "put her husband on notice that if he did not disclose his finances, she would have his clients, from whom he received legal fees, subpoenaed", and that he had been secretly recording her phone calls and conversations.
[29] On 1 November, Justice Martin acquitted Lloyd Rayney when he handed down a judgment of not guilty, saying that the "case by the State is beset by improbabilities and uncertainties".
"[32] An appeal by prosecutors against the verdict was held in the Supreme Court of Western Australia in August 2013, before three judges brought in from other states: Mark Weinberg, Anthony Whealy and Terence Buddin.
[39][40] Rayney indicated interest in whether there would be consequences for "police who the trial judge said gave misleading evidence, pressured a forensic pathologist to change his report, abused their position of authority and behaved reprehensibly".
[41] An investigation by the Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission later cleared two police officers of "any serious misconduct" after their behaviour in threatening a female lawyer had been described as ranging from "inappropriate to reprehensible" by the trial judge.
A second matter reviewed by the CCC related to "attempts by a third officer to encourage an independent pathologist involved in the case to change a report to better fit police evidence.
[43] In December 2017, the Supreme Court of Western Australia awarded Rayney $2.62 million in damages in a defamation action against the State, over his having been publicly named as "the prime and only suspect".
[48] In February 2016, Rayney was cleared by the State Administrative Tribunal of the alleged "unlawful destruction of evidence and/or an attempt to pervert the course of justice" and his right to practise was reinstated.
The full bench of the Supreme Court of Western Australia has made the decision to remove Lloyd Rayney from the roll of solicitors in what represents the end to a five-year-long legal battle.
[55] In a prime-time TV presentation on 21 August 2014 that was dismissed by Attorney General Michael Mischin as "infotainment that is one-sided", Rayney, backed by senior lawyers and a forensic scientist, spoke out for the first time and called for independent investigators to re-examine the unsolved case.
[57] In May 2015, WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan ordered a cold case review of the matter[58] which had not resulted in any new charges by March 2017, when a court began hearing Rayney's defamation suit against the state.