New Episode: Leanne Holland — She Was Only Twelve
She Was Only Twelve is out now on Coffee & Crime AU.
Leanne Holland is twelve when she disappears from Goodna during the September school holidays in 1991. Days later, she is found dead at Redbank Plains.
Police focus on Graham Stafford. A jury convicts him of Leanne’s murder in 1992, and for years that verdict looks like the answer to the case.
But it does not stay that way. Questions grow around the timeline and the forensic case. In 2009, the Queensland Court of Appeal quashes Stafford’s conviction and orders a retrial. The retrial never happens.
This episode follows the case from Leanne’s disappearance through the investigation, trial and appeals, while being careful about the legal position today: the conviction is gone, the court did not identify another killer, and Leanne’s murder remains unresolved.
A fresh coronial investigation into Leanne’s death was ordered in Queensland in 2026.
The Conviction That Wouldn’t Hold is available now through Coffee & Crime AU.
Content warning: the death of a child, grief and criminal proceedings. Details are kept non-graphic.
