The selfie, the shotgun and a mother dead: A family's push for answers over Amy Wensley's death

Amy Wensley sits on the end of her bed looking at her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe door directly in front of her. Her expression is difficult to read.

Outside a winter's day draws to a close at her isolated bush property not far from Serpentine, south of Perth.

In the driveway, the 24-year-old's two young daughters wait in their car seats for her to drive them to their nan's house for a sleepover.

The car's engine is already running. It's packed with clothes, birthday presents, shoes, toys for the children – and Amy's passport.

The car radio is drowned out by parrots screeching in the nearby trees, wheeling for cover as Amy's partner, David Simmons, takes aim with his .22 rifle.

Watching this scene is David's close friend and hunting partner, Gareth Price.

Inside the bedroom, Amy picks up her pink iPhone and frames a selfie in the mirror.

She's holding David's double-barrelled shotgun.

It's 4:48pm on June 26, 2014.

WARNING: This story contains references to suicide and domestic violence.

Twelve minutes later, at 5pm, Amy's mother Nancy Kirk arrives home 20 minutes away in Pinjarra. Like most days, she calls Amy to check in.

She has never heard her daughter cry like this. "What's happened?" she asks. Amy immediately replies: "I f**king hate him."

Distressed, Amy tells her mum about a fight with David, her partner for the past five years and the father of her younger daughter.

Amy told her mother she threw a beer bottle at him and punched him in the lip. He grabbed her by the throat and slammed her to the floor.

"Pack your shit, get the girls," Nancy says. "I'll come and pick you up." 

"No Mum, I'll be there soon," Amy replies, calming down now. 

It's the last conversation Nancy will ever have with her daughter. 

By 5:18pm, David Simmons and Gareth Price, with Amy's daughters in the back seat, are driving into a roadhouse at Serpentine, a few minutes down the road. 

David asks the proprietor if he can use the landline. 

"I've got two kids and my wife shot herself," he says to the triple-0 operator. "Can you please just come and take her or do something?"

At the end of the call, he says: "Why would she f**king do that?" 

For the past eight years, the 18 minutes between Amy's phone call with her mother and the report of her of death have burned in her aunt's mind with an inquisitorial fire.

"Within 18 minutes, something has gone terribly wrong," Anna Davey says.

"That's where the issue is. She's dead. So, what happened?"

Amy's family has never accepted the police's answer to that question.

Within hours of Amy's body being found slumped behind her bedroom door with a gunshot wound to the head, detectives from the West Australian police had declared the death a suicide. 

"It just did not make sense, it just didn't add up," Anna says.

"She was going, she's leaving. She's packed the birthday presents for her younger daughter; she's packed her passport."

The question of what happened to Amy Wensley has also troubled former constable Larry Blandford, the first police officer to step inside her bedroom the night she died.

"As soon as I saw the body, the gun, the positioning, I was alerted to the fact that we had to look at this further," he says. "It was a fatal head shot and definitely suspicious."

Blandford and two other uniformed officers found Amy's body slouched in a corner behind the door, her legs partially blocking the entry. The gun was a metre away.

There was no suicide note and, crucially, Amy was sitting on her right hand, even though she was right-handed.

"You can't just pick up a double-barrel shotgun up with one hand and peg yourself," he says.

To Blandford, the scene called out for a homicide investigation.

In the room that night, he made a promise to the crumpled young woman on the floor: "I'm sorry for what's happened to you sis. We'll get to the bottom of this."

But within hours, any hope of knowing with certainty what happened to Amy would be dashed. 

Detective Senior Constable Tom Weidmann and detective Sergeant Tony Kirkman arrived and inspected the bedroom and in no more than 15 minutes emerged with the view that Amy had shot herself.

Blandford was baffled, even incensed, and "straight away questioned that".

"You haven't quizzed us," he says he told the detectives. "And there's two statements being taken of Price and Simmons and you haven't read those statements."

The detectives assured him they would read the statements, and then left the house.

"Not more than five minutes later," Blandford says, they called back to confirm Amy's death was still deemed a suicide.

For Blandford and the other uniformed officers, with no avenue available in the police hierarchy to question the decision, it was a simple case of being overruled by a superior.

"I can't read the crystal ball and say Amy did shoot herself, [or] Amy didn't shoot herself," he says.

"But what I can say is it's frustrating to think that on the night, the investigation of homicide hasn't been carried out."

There were other lapses in the investigation that night.

Blandford recalls how Amy's mother Nancy arrived at the house "really shocked" and, turning to Amy's partner David, said words to the effect of: "It's your fault she's dead."

Constable Pip Dixon, who was with Blandford at the scene that night, recalled Nancy specifically referred to David's drinking.

Melbourne-based family advocate Charandev Singh says that was a "warning sign" that warranted further investigation, and "should have turned on every siren in the joint".

Instead, within hours, detectives made the extraordinary decision to break down the scene and, the next morning, it was scrubbed clean without a forensics unit inspection.

"The trauma cleaning service completely wiped the scene of anything useful forensically," says Peter Ward, the barrister representing Amy's family.

"The bloodstains were removed, the carpet was removed, there was nothing left."

The firearm wasn't treated for forensics, Blandford says, "and that's really devastated this investigation".

"I sort of thought: 'Well, this is a real shemozzle what's happening here,'" he says.

"You hear about it in the police often, but you don't ever get involved in it because you think it's never going to happen. But it does."

A few days later, after police heard about Nancy's phone call with Amy just before her death, David Simmons was arrested on suspicion of murder, and Gareth Price was arrested on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact.

Both men had been at the property when Amy was fatally wounded.

Both were released without charge and the decision from the Major Crime Unit remained the same — Amy's death was a suicide.

"I've always worked on the view that to prove a suicide, you should start with the basis that it's a homicide and you work backwards," says retired detective Ron Iddles, who worked for the Victorian homicide squad for 25 years.  

Iddles has investigated more than 250 suicides and would later be called as an expert witness at the inquest into Amy’s death.  

"I can't explain why they came to that assessment, other than lazy police work," he says.

Determined to uncover the truth, within weeks Amy's aunt Anna Davey had begun her own investigation, as painstaking and meticulous as any professional.

She began speaking with Amy's friends, scouring her online conversations and, over time, would delve into police reports and witness statements.

"The quality of the police work that happened on the day that Amy died, I'd like to say I hope it never happens to another family," Anna says.

"Detectives on the night didn't even speak to one member of my family, not one. They didn't ask questions about their relationship and physical altercations and violence."

Working from her home in Sydney, Anna began piecing together the complex, tempestuous and at times violent relationship between Amy and David.

"Rather than the police doing their job properly, it was my aunty doing their job," says Amy's sister Kelly.

Amy Wensley was social and gregarious. She loved fashion and bling. She was close to her girlfriends.

The messages and photos on her phone are suspended in time. She recorded her daughters learning to read and bouncing on a new trampoline.

Her voice is heard constantly, but like many parents documenting their children, she rarely appears in the videos herself.

On the day she died she downloaded a recipe for pea and ham soup, and baked chocolate slice. Later she went out with a girlfriend.

There was nothing that day – no hint in the digital fingerprints that linger – to suggest it would be Amy's last.

Amy met David in 2009 when she was working in a pub. She liked the "witty side of him", says her close friend from school, Erin.

"David had a charm that he could switch on … take her emotions away and sweep her off her feet," Erin says.

David was a "country boy", says Amy's friend Natasha. When he wasn't working at his father's business, he was with his mates "pigging and shooting guns and all these different types of things you wouldn't associate with Amy".

A few months into their relationship, Amy became pregnant.

It wasn't long before they saw changes in Amy. She got her own gun licence and "a pink gun", Natasha says.

"Very Amy to have a pink gun, even though – a gun."

But in private, Amy would confide about David's drinking, drug use and occasional violence.

It was a volatile relationship marked by mutual jealousies and at times Amy would also explode, largely over his drinking and drug use.

In the days before Amy and David's daughter was born, Natasha walked unexpectedly into the kitchen to find Amy bent over the table with David's hands around her neck.

"She was fighting back," Natasha recalls.

"It was just intense. I never thought I would see that, like she's nine months pregnant. It was … heartbreaking.

"By the end of the night, they were OK."

Amy's mother Nancy never witnessed physical violence but was concerned by the demeaning way David spoke to her daughter.

"I said to Amy, 'Why put up with that crap? Leave him'," Nancy says. "But Amy always took him back."

By early 2014, Amy and her daughters were living with David on the bush block belonging to his father, their relationship swinging between extreme highs and lows.

In the days before her death there was light-hearted talk of engagement rings and marriage.

But after a year trawling through Amy's Facebook messages and talking to her friends, Anna says she discovered "just how toxic Amy's relationship was".

"There was strong evidence in the week leading up to Amy's death that she was leaving for good," says Anna.

Anna reached out to the CEO of the Women's Council Against Domestic Violence in WA, who suggested she speak to a family advocate to help her navigate the legal system.

They gave Anna a name – Charandev Singh.

By his own reckoning, Charandev Singh has worked with more than135 families during his 29 years as a family advocate.

"Almost all of it has been unpaid," he says. "I try and stay with people who are fighting incredibly painful and difficult battles as long as I possibly can."

For Anna, meeting Charandev was a game-changer.

"I was just thinking, 'Oh my God, this is someone who believes'."

He put her in touch with a Perth law firm prepared to work pro-bono for the family.

The wheels of justice were finally turning.

The pair gained access to the first police report and found more evidence of police errors, including the suggestion that Amy was Indigenous, when she was of Thai descent.

Based on years of working on black deaths in custody cases, Charandev feared the perception Amy was Aboriginal "might have infected the criminal investigation response".

Three years after Amy's death, the case was referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions and then onto the police Cold Case Unit for further investigation.

"I thought, well this is good, you know, they're going to start from a clean slate," Anna says.

By October 2018, biomechanical expert emeritus professor Tim Ackland had been engaged by the Cold Case Unit to find out whether Amy could have fired the fatal gunshot herself.

They returned to the house in Serpentine to conduct some experiments, using a police officer of similar stature to Amy to model various scenarios.

The shot that killed Amy was discharged horizontally in the right temple at very close range.

David Simmons and Gareth Price both told police they discovered the shotgun on Amy's lap with the stock near her feet and the barrel facing towards her head.

Police found Amy with her right hand wedged under her thigh. A lack of gunshot residue and blood on that hand suggested it was under her thigh when the gun was fired.

Professor Ackland, from the University of Western Australia, tested whether the model could fire the shot with her right or her left hand.

"The model was able to reach the trigger with her left hand but without the use of a right hand she had no way of controlling the position of the barrel," Professor Ackland says.

"When we tested whether Ms Wensley could have shot herself using her right hand and her left hand holding the barrel against her right temple … In 10 trials, the right hand of the model ended up away from her body and certainly not tucked under her thigh."

Just as perplexing was how the gun could have ended up in Amy's lap. The tests found the shotgun's recoil would have propelled it away from her body.

If this were the case, Professor Ackland said, "then the shotgun could not have been found by Mr Price in front of the deceased … the question is how did it end up in front of her if Mr Price is telling the truth in his evidence? Someone else must have put it there."

The conclusion Professor Ackland sent back to the Cold Case squad was that her death was "highly consistent with her having been shot by another person".

Peter Ward says despite the limitations of reconstructing the movement of a body after it's been shot with a shotgun, and the lack of a detailed forensics model of the scene, Professor Ackland's report was "strong".

"On the balance of probabilities, I think his report is reliable," he says.

The Cold Case Unit also unlocked Amy's pink iPhone for the first time, revealing a final haunting image taken less than an hour before her death.

"With her left hand she's holding her mobile phone to take a photo of her reflection in the mirror and in her right hand she's holding a double-barrel shotgun," Anna says.

Anna believes police thought it looked like possible evidence Amy had killed herself, but when Anna looks at the photo, she sees "someone who wants to defend themselves".

"I don't think you can draw too much out of it," cautions Ron Iddles.

The Cold Case review offered three possibilities for what happened: Amy had killed herself; somebody else killed her; or there was an accidental discharge of the firearm while she or somebody else was holding it.

Anna, feeling stonewalled after five years writing to the police about the investigation, complained to the WA Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC).

The CCC "was able to form a reasonable suspicion of serious misconduct" and referred the case back to the police.

Within a matter of months, WA Police's internal affairs unit outlined 15 failings in the initial investigation by detectives, including a failure to clarify inconsistencies in the accounts of Simmons and Price, a failure to consider forensic procedures and a failure to establish a timeline of events.

The detectives were only given an assistant commissioner's warning notice, "which didn't make me feel fantastic," says Anna, "but at least the CCC got them to act."

Soon, Amy's case would get the full hearing Anna had been fighting for all these years.

Last February, six-and-a-half years after Amy's death, her family gathered nervously outside the coroner's court where the case would finally be the subject of an inquest.

"The coroner heard evidence from a lot of Amy's family and long-term friends that there had been incidents of coercive control," says barrister Peter Ward, who represented the family at the inquest.

"Larry Blandford gave evidence that nobody had ever taken a statement from him in the major crime investigation or the cold case investigation."

The inquest also heard evidence presented by Professor Ackland and a second expert, Thomas Gibson, who concluded "it is unlikely the gunshot wound was self-inflicted and deliberate".

But despite admitting they made mistakes on the night Amy died, senior members of the WA Police Force continued to insist her death was a suicide.

Detective Sergeant Kirkman apologised to Amy's family, while his colleague Detective Senior Constable Weidmann said he regretted not inviting experts to the scene.

Neither had changed their view that suicide was the cause of death.

"Detective Kirkman said his arrogance got in the way on the night," Anna says.

"But one of the things that he said also that really stuck out for me was he was going on seven weeks leave. On the night Amy died, that was his last shift. It raised a lot of questions for me."

David Simmons and Gareth Price repeated their earlier statements to police that they were outside when the shotgun went off. They denied having anything to do with her death.

 "I'm not lying and I'm not holding anything back," David Simmons told the coroner's court.

"I've lost the best person in my whole life and now. I have to live with that and listen to people … trying to blame me for it."

In September last year, the coroner delivered an open finding.

"The coroner couldn't be satisfied whether Amy died at her own hand or that of another, or by accident," Peter Ward says, "because of the lack of evidence as a consequence of the initial failings in the investigation."

The coroner remarked that Amy's selfie "adds weight to the possibility that Amy committed suicide" and that she had seen similar photographs preceding suicides in other cases.

In assessing David Simmons's evidence, she said "there were aspects of David's evidence that minimised the difficulties in his relationship with Amy, and his controlling and aggressive behaviour towards her but there was nothing in his demeanour to suggest he was lying about how Amy died".

She commented that Gareth Price would have difficulty "maintaining a lie for any length of time".

"It was devastating, we were in tears," Anna says.

Eight years after that harrowing night, Anna is still driven by the anger that Amy has been let down so badly by those who were meant to serve and protect her.

She says continuing the fight for justice is the "last thing I'll ever do" for Amy, apart from watching over her children.

The only avenue remaining for Amy's case is if new evidence comes to light. But Anna is calling for change in the way violent deaths involving women are handled by police.

"I truly believe that when police are called out to an incident that involved partners in a relationship, they have to look at it through a domestic violence lens," Anna says.

"It is so out of control in this country. Things have to change and one of those changes can be the attitude of how police look at this when they first walk into that room."

Anna and her family haven’t received a formal apology from the WA police force.

WA police declined an invitation to speak to Australian Story and said that since Amy Wensley's death it has changed its practices and procedures "for greater oversight of incidents … and greater awareness of family violence."

David Simmons and Gareth Price were contacted for comment but declined to do so.

Watch the two-part Australian Story Jumping the Gun on iview and Youtube.

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