The unsolved 1980s murder of well-known transgender performer Wendy Wain could have been an ordered professional hit, an inquiry will hear.
Shot execution-style in her Kings Cross apartment, the complex circumstances surrounding the cabaret performer’s killing remain unsolved nearly four decades on, the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crimes will hear on Friday.
The royal commission-style inquiry has been examining dozens of unsolved deaths between 1970 and 2010, where killers may have been motivated by gay hatred.
At the time of her death, Ms Wain was believed to have been romantically linked with a NSW Police officer.
The prominent drag queen was shot at close range in April 1985, and her body was discovered by a friend, who was concerned after she failed to make contact.
“She was a popular person whose death caused considerable fear and distress in that community,” senior counsel assisting the inquiry Peter Gray said during the commission’s opening hearing last year.
The well-known entertainer had been working at cabaret bar Pete’s Beat on Oxford St as a performer, talent manger and costume maker before her death.
A coroner’s inquest found Ms Wain was shot to death, but could not identify a killer.
A subsequent investigation by Strike Force Parrabell found there was too little evidence to determine Ms Wain had been the victim of a hate crime.
It comes after Scott Phillip White was on Thursday sentenced to nine years’ jail for the 1988 murder of gay US mathematician Scott Johnson.
NSW Police originally ruled Mr Johnson’s death a suicide, before the case was re-examined in 2012 following pressure from his family in the US.
In 2017 a coroner determined Mr Johnson died from human intervention, and Mr White pleaded guilty in January of last year. White later recanted this plea.
NSW Police were criticised for “resisting” solving the case during earlier hearings, with former Massachusetts attorney-general Martha Coakley saying police put considerable resources into stopping a homicide investigation.
“If that case had the appropriate resources from the beginning, instead of writing it off as a suicide, losing evidence, not talking to folks … some of the progress could be made,” Ms Coakley told the inquiry in March.
White punched Mr Johnson as the pair were walking on Sydney’s North Head cliff, causing him to fall to his death.
White will be eligible for parole in 2026, having already served part of his sentence.