Murdered Goodna schoolgirl Leanne Holland.
Police are being implored to investigate how three images depicting murdered schoolgirl Leanne Holland's corpse came to be posted on a gore website.
The 12-year-old's battered body was found near the family's Goodna home three days after she went missing in September 1991.
Graham Stafford, the former boyfriend of Leanne's sister, spent 15 years in jail for her murder but the conviction was quashed on Christmas Eve last year.
brisbanetimes.com.au yesterday revealed that images showing the young victim's half-naked corpse had been posted on a website, the name of which we have repressed.
Sources have indicated the photographs are legitimate.
Queensland Police yesterday refused to say whether they would investigate the crime or even seek to have the material removed from the site.
"It is disappointing that photographs of this nature find their way in the public domain," was a police spokesperson's sole statement.
Federal Police were unable to comment last night.
brisbanetimes.com.au understands the publication of such images on the website is illegal under Section 228 of Queensland's Criminal Code, which deals with obscene publications and exhibitions.
Last night, Queensland Council of Civil Liberties Michael Cope described the publishing of the images as "a gross violation of privacy ... of the deceased and her family".
"This certainly requires an investigation," Mr Cope said.
"It may be impossible to track down the individuals responsible, but at least authorities may be able to ensure this does not happen to another family."
Goodna councillor Paul Tully said there was no question police should investigate how the photos - which are believed to be crime scene photographs - fell into the wrong hands.
"It's obviously stolen property or improperly obtained, so they should be investigating it," Cr Tully said.
"There'd only be a couple of sources that it could have come from...
"This is one of the most disgraceful uses of the internet imaginable.
"Have the morals of our society degenerated so much that we cannot afford any decency or privacy to the deceased or her family?"
The publication of the images is the latest incident in a case marred by nearly two decades of controversy.
Mr Stafford was released from jail on parole in 2006, four months short of the 15-year minimum sentence he received for Leanne's murder.
Once freed, he continued his fight to be cleared of the killing, and his conviction was quashed on Christmas Eve 2009.
A retrial was ruled out in March of this year, after which claims surfaced that a police informant may have been the murderer.
A woman known only as 'Kim' told Fairfax Radio 4BC her natural father had helped police in the murder investigation and had shown her photographs of Leanne's body.
Private investigator Graeme Crowley, who co-authored Who Killed Leanne? with Bond University criminologist Paul Wilson, told 4BC at the time those post-mortem photographs had been circulated in prison. Mr Wilson was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Cr Tully said the continuing publicity surrounding the case made it difficult for both the Holland and Stafford families to move on with their lives.
"Obviously it's unrelated to [Mr Stafford's] guilt or otherwise but it's just that, when is this whole saga going to stop? Both families really suffer as a result of these sorts of images going on the internet. They'll never get any peace out of this until all that stops."
Queensland Police commissioner Bob Atkinson announced on May 2 investigators would re-examine evidence and re-interview witnesses in the case.
Section 228 of the Queensland Criminal Code, 'Obscene publications and exhibitions', says it is illegal for:
(1) Any person who knowingly, and without lawful justification or excuse-
(b) exposes to view in any place to which the public are permitted to have access, whether on payment of a charge for admission or not, any obscene picture, photograph, drawing, or model, or any other object tending to corrupt morals.
It also states:
2) In the case of an offence defined in subsection (1)(a) or (b), if the matter or thing is obscene or tends to corrupt morals by reason of depicting a person who is or is represented to be--
(a) a child under the age of 16 years--the offender is liable to imprisonment for 5 years;
However Mr Cope said he was not aware whether these laws would apply to someone who was dead. "It may be that there is a loophole in the law that needs to be closed," he said.
