The 14-year-old girl from Fern Bay was assaulted by a group of boys after she returned distressed from a sexual encounter on the beach that a reviewing judge later called non-consensual.

Matthew Grant Webster, an 18-year-old who acted as a bouncer at the event, pleaded guilty to her murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison with a 14-year non-parole period.

[3]: 131 [4]: 480  Leigh's murder inspired a theatrical play entitled A Property of the Clan, which was later revised and renamed Blackrock, as well as a feature film of the same name.

At the time of her death she lived with her sister, mother and stepfather Brad Shearman on Fullerton Road, Fern Bay, having moved there nine months earlier from a housing commission flat near the Stockton ferry terminal.

[11] According to police witness reports, Leigh was one of several under-age girls who were invited to the party for the purpose of getting them intoxicated and having sex with them.

"[10][3]: 14  Leigh was also one of several under-age people for whom an adult purchased alcohol before the party; she and her friend were given a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey, which they then mixed with Coca-Cola.

[3]: 20  The assaults continued for approximately five minutes; Leigh stood up when they stopped and staggered away before picking up an empty beer bottle and throwing it at the group of boys, missing them.

[3]: 6  Guy Wilson threw a beer bottle back at her as she left, which either hit her in the leg[1] or missed, according to different witness accounts.

After repeated search attempts, Leigh's mother and stepfather decided to wait for her to return home, assuming she had gone to a friend's house for the night.

Leigh's blood alcohol reading was 0.128,[3]: 63  a level which, according to the University of Notre Dame, would have caused "significant impairment of motor coordination and loss of good judgment".

[3]: 19  An analysis of the postmortem by Dr Johan Duflou, deputy director of the New South Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine, stated that an inflexible object, possibly a beer bottle, was likely to have caused most of her genital injuries.

[3]: 35  People who attended the party complained of living in fear of being the next rumoured killer;[21] Matthew Webster, Jason Robertson and two other boys appeared on the front page of The Newcastle Herald on 8 November with such complaints.

In November 1990 Detective Chaffey told journalist Mark Riley that police had heard this rumour so many times that they considered Shearman to be a suspect.

[25] On 17 July Shearman was given a 12-month good behaviour bond for the 31 January assault; the judge did not record a conviction, taking into consideration that he had been provoked into attacking Wilson.

[1][29][12] In reducing his sentence the judge stated the evidence obliged him to find that the sex was consensual, and that it was better for NC1 to do something positive for the community rather than possibly being led further astray in custody.

[4]: 475  Five Stockton citizens volunteered to give character evidence at his trial, describing the 120 kg (265 lb) teenager as a quiet "gentle giant" from a good family.

[13]: 19  The actual level of sexual violence that Leigh sustained was accordingly, she said, "all but erased" from the sentencing,[13]: 17  and it appeared Justice Wood had only been given the limited information from the post-mortem report that would have corroborated Webster's confession.

[39] Leigh's death received widespread[12] and ongoing coverage in both the Sydney and Newcastle media, possibly due to a fascination with her reduplicated name.

[4]: 480  The epithet slut in a pretrial psychological report also became a topic of focus for the media:[3]: 84 Webster attacked Leigh, not so much because she would not let him have sex with her but because she became the living proof that even a slut, a property of the clan, thought he was not good enough to have sex with.Carrington accused the media of completely missing the point that the report was not stating the views of the psychiatrist, rather it was the psychiatrist's interpretation of Webster's feelings.

[4]: 479  Several writers, including Eva Cox and Adele Horin, rejected the concept that Leigh was in any way responsible for her sexual assault and murder.

[41]: 23–24  It took police over three months to press charges against Webster even though they had established within ten days that he had lied about his whereabouts, had publicly stated his intention to rape Leigh, and had the opportunity to commit the crime.

[1] Police took blood and clothing samples from suspects, including the shirt Wilson was wearing on the night of the murder, which he admitted had a bloodstain on it,[3]: 69  but it is not known whether any DNA tests were carried out.

[3]: 70  In 2009 a solicitor who acted on behalf of Leigh's family stated that given the advances in DNA testing technology, it was time to re-examine the evidence.

[3]: 20  In reviewing the autopsy, Boettcher said that the numerous blows which killed Leigh came from multiple directions, and were probably inflicted with different items, indicating the possibility of more than one perpetrator.

[1][3]: 65 Carrington and Johnson speculated[28] that Leigh was assaulted by the group of boys after returning from the beach, as punishment for complaining about being raped, and was murdered by Webster and two others because they were afraid she would tell other people.

[3]: 76  In August 1994, Kerry Carrington sent a 17,000-word document and 300 pages of evidence to the Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service, asking for the case to be investigated.

[47] Admitting to the inquiry that he killed Leigh and insisting that he was alone in doing so,[48] Webster stated that police repeatedly punched and kicked him when he refused to confess to her murder.

[3] Carrington was cross-examined for three days, longer than any of the police officers who were questioned, in what was described by Hillary Byrne-Armstrong as "an inquisition on just about every word she had spoken [or] written" in relation to Leigh's murder".

[13]: 23  Byrne-Armstrong accused the PIC of summoning Carrington for the sole purpose of attacking her credibility on issues they had no intention of investigating,[13]: 23  and to discredit someone who had attracted considerable media attention for criticising police.

[10] In October 2001, the Director of Public Prosecutions declined to press criminal charges against any of the officers, on the grounds they had suffered emotional hardship and their careers had already been destroyed.