Small Town Murder Gossip 2.0

On the morning of March 16th (a Sunday) the body of Alexis Jeffery was found on the banks of the Macintyre, the river running through the small border town Goondiwindi. Discovered just 500 metres from her home, she leaves behind two young sons. Alexis was last seen at 3:30am walking through the town’s main street after a night out at a local pub. She was heading for a footpath that follows the river through most of the town. Now two weeks since a police statement announcing foul play, no arrests have been made and the residents of Goondiwindi are restless and concerned. It’s a small town and naturally rumours command attention, but where varying reports used to fight it out in supermarket chitchat or pub yarns, now they play out on social media.

I grew up in Goondiwindi and a lot of friends still live there. Living 1000 kilometres away in Melbourne, news of the young woman’s death first reached me via Facebook. A friend-of-friend, whose online life would occasionally be broadcast in to mine thanks to a mutual acquaintance, had written an update relating to fear and tragedy. The post was liked in such a frenzied rush that I knew something serious had happened. Later a friend sent me a link to a news article explaining that the partially clothed body of a woman had been found on the riverbank in my hometown. She wondered if I knew anything.

Fair question. Around 350 kilometres from Brisbane, Gundy—as it’s affectionately known to locals —sits along the river that makes up part of the Queensland–New South Wales border. Kept alive by surrounding agriculture, it’s a small town with a simple main street dominated by discount stores. There are four pubs—they all close at 1am. With a population of about 5000 in a town where every face is familiar if not recalled by name, everybody, even those who'd left, knew something, or at least thought they did.

At the time of the news article the body hadn’t been named, just the usual details that come with breaking news: location – Goondiwindi. Gender – female. Age – 24. I’d  recently turned 25 and having spent 19 years of life in Gundy, the odds of knowing the victim were high, although if we’d been friends, I would have found out before it made headlines. Over years of living away from home I’d learnt that close proximity to death meant frantic phone calls and credit card charges for immediate airline and bus tickets. Still, growing up in a small town meant webs of possible connections that were hard to escape. My speculation ended with one quick phone call to a friend, “Her name’s Alexis Jeffery”. Improbably, I’d never met her.

Even before police had officially released Alexis’ name to the public, most people knew. Her body was found near a local community centre and the investigation had meant the cancellation of an event, and as word spread of its cancellation so did news of a body. The police tape that cordoned off the area acted as both barrier and banner, announcing to the town that something had happened. Over the next few hours word would flow through the town and so would speculation. Rumours varied in degrees of sensationalism, covering almost every aspect of the event. Reports of exactly who had found Alexis’ body, the condition in which her body was found, and even who she’d been seen with at the pub earlier were all fair game for sharing, even online. At one point it was getting around that a suspect was in custody relating to a murder charge, only to be rebuffed by police later. The weirdest part—from three different sources I was given the name of a suspect.

Ian ‘Jonesy’ Jones is the editor of the local weekly newspaper The Goondiwindi Argus, whose Facebook page has become a hub of activity for conjecture about Alexis’ death. “The fact is a lot of people would have known Alexis, or if they didn’t know her they would have known of her. They’ve seen her around. It becomes more personal, it’s a lot closer to home”. I asked Jonesy about the rumours getting around town and whether he’d had to remove any comments from the Facebook page. “There’s been one or two. If you see stuff that you know is going to offend someone…with this sort of stuff you’ve got to be careful, we’re not here to have a forum that people are going to get hurt by… There was only a couple early, and that was only because we were worried about where the police were heading. It was a better-safe-than-sorry policy.”  Comments on The Argus’ page varied, from messages of sympathy to debates about public lighting and CCTV. But, as Facebook comments tend to be, some were more extreme, “Seems like there’s a serial killer getting around down there,” “I’m sure there was a fellow that use to walk along there and was accused or charged of flashing to women!!!!”, “Who in that town will confess…maybe it wasn’t a local, who eva did do it iz a scummy grub, & if they r local I’l b back 4 research, unles they die in jail b4 hand.”

The news, the discovery of the body, and the speculation about a possible murderer took less than a day, fuelled by Facebook.

Gossip comes naturally in a small town; you live in everyone else’s business and it provides an escape from the boredom. Although this time the speed at which information spread online caught me off guard. The trouble social media provides in the court process is well known, but the real issue in places like Gundy was social media as an information delivery system. I couldn’t help but think back to another local tragedy, where two young men were killed in car accident on the way to their rugby grand final. It was 2006, before Facebook had become entrenched in lives, when information was shared over the phone. In the fallout of the news our friends gathered together, and one got a call and was told a third friend had also been killed. And so we began to mourn for him too—until we saw him walking up the front lawn towards us. I’d later found out his parents had heard the same rumour. Technology provides us all with the ability to publish anything at lightning speed, including rumours, but rumours are so often wrong.

Speculation goes hand in hand with suspicious deaths everywhere, it’s just that small towns like Goondiwindi provide us a smaller bubble. As the investigation in to Alexis’ death continues, undoubtedly so will the rumours, online or otherwise. Some have grown tired of the constant gossip, arguing its pointlessness—a shortcut to closure. But many of the town’s residents are driven by the constant need to know what happened—how could a quiet town harvest something so terrible? And for now that means clutching on to shreds of anything, supermarket chitchat, pub yarns, and Facebook comments alike.

Follow Mitch on Twitter: @MitchMaxxParker