Two witnesses to a fatal boat crash in Mandurah two years ago say they're relieved the manslaughter case has been dropped against the accused. The women were on board another vessel that encountered the doomed boat moments before it crashed into a channel marker killing two women, but say if police had been listened to them in the first place, the man would never would have been charged.
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00:0058-year-old John Burden was alleged to have been driving a boat that crashed into a channel
00:07marker on the night of January 21 last year, killing his wife Debbie and her friend Kylie
00:13Bazzo. But according to Nicole Jones Howard and Lois Owen, who were on another vessel
00:18and seconds before the crash, saw who was driving, he never should have been charged
00:23because he was not the one behind the wheel.
00:26He couldn't get it wrong. There is no way and remembering that I was only a couple of
00:31metres from him and I'll never forget his face.
00:34The women say the next day they and their partners identified the driver in four separate
00:39statements given to police.
00:40All four statements to four individual detectives say the same thing.
00:45Mr Burden was knocked unconscious in the crash and has no recollection of it. A fortnight
00:50later when he was charged, the women say they tried to convince police they had the wrong
00:55person but weren't listened to.
00:58We don't know these people. There is no interest in us telling lies or fabricating anything.
01:04All I knew was there was a greater force and I said to Lois, I'm not stopping because this
01:09man is innocent. His family and Kylie's family, the whole lot of them deserve to know that
01:16this man did not do this.
01:18It wasn't until about three weeks ago that the women and their partners were contacted
01:22again, this time by state prosecutors. It was their pre-trial interviews that led to
01:28the decision to drop the case just four days before Mr Burden was due to face a jury trial.
01:33Whatever happens, I hope the police do reinvestigate it properly but we don't know and all I know
01:40is that John's free.
01:41In a statement, police said they were reviewing the decision to discontinue the charges and
01:46they maintain their investigation into the crash is ongoing.