17yo found dead in a dingy toilet block

With five of the six bereaved families still refusing to accept the suicide conclusion, the cases are being examined in a new book: Dying Rose, named for the award-winning podcast investigation into what has been called “a national tragedy”.

This is the story of the youngest victim: 17-year-old Charli Powell, discovered lifeless in a grotty men’s toilet block.

DYING ROSE: Death that exposed a national tragedy

‘Please help me!’

It was 4am on Monday 11 February 2019 when Stephen* was jolted awake by a frantic knock at the door.

Stephen, then 42, lived in the suburbs of Queanbeyan, a regional New South Wales town near Canberra. It was a quiet, residential area and any disturbance at night was unusual.

Wearing only his underwear, Stephen got up and cautiously approached the front door. On the other side of the locked screen door was a young man – somewhere between sixteen and nineteen, Stephen guessed – with a baby face and dark hair and eyes.

‘I think she’s killed herself,’ the young man said.

Stephen was wary but the youth seemed to be in shock and suffering genuine grief.

‘He was just very upset and obviously needed help, so I wasn’t going to second-guess that,’ Stephen said later. He put on a dressing gown and ugg boots, went outside and followed his late-night visitor to Freebody Reserve, about fifty metres away.

The recreational reserve was popular during the day, but late at night it was deserted.

The young man led the way to a men’s toilet block at the edge of the reserve. It was a dingy old freestanding brick block with a concrete floor. There, they met with a confronting sight: a girl was slouched in the doorway, vomit and blood around her.

‘I saw the deceased there on the ground,’ Stephen later told the New South Wales coroner’s court. ‘And it was reasonably dark, but I noticed that there was clothing around their neck

and they weren’t moving.’

The young man bent down in disbelief and cr...
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