Soldier’s widow responds to murder claim

News.com.au is reinvestigating the high-profile death of Australia’s first casualty in Iraq nearly 20 years ago after new and disturbing claims have come to light.

Private Jacob “Jake” Kovco, 25, died from a gunshot wound in 2006, shot in the head by his own pistol at his Baghdad barracks in the Australian embassy.

A military board of inquiry and subsequent inquest questioned whether someone else could have pulled the trigger. Both ultimately concluded the dad-of-two died from “skylarking” with his gun and accidentally shot himself.

News.com.au reported earlier this week that a soldier who served in Iraq has since allegedly made “confessions” to three separate people claiming he killed Kovco.

One individual made a statement to the military police in 2022 about the soldier’s alleged confession. It has also been claimed that a second individual may have also provided a statement to the military police on the same topic. However, in 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, the current Defence Minister, told Kovco’s family that authorities would not be reinvestigating as “no new information” had been provided.

Now Jake Kovco’s widow, Shelley Kelsey, 49, has asked the NSW coroner to reopen the investigation as she believes the new claims could “change the outcome of the coronial inquest”.

“I believe the inquiry needs to be reopened and explored further as this information was not presented at (the) time,” she wrote in her request to the coroner, shared with news.com.au.