Inquest unravels sordid tale of epic proportions

GREG ANSLEY reports on the plot and counter-plot lined up for a five-week hearing.

CANBERRA - The machiavellian last days of Australian mining magnate Lang Hancock are finally being played out in court in an inquest that could see his former wife disinherited and tried for murder.

It is a tangled web of alleged plot and counter-plot, embracing voodoo spells, adultery, drug addiction, poisoning plots and even a bizarre bid for a high-speed wheelchair crash to kill the man who discovered the world's richest iron ore deposit.

And despite attempts to constrain the hearing to sober legal bounds, the war between Hancock's widow, Rose, and daughter, Gina Rinehart, has once again spilled its turbid waters into an avidly attentive public pool.

West Australian coroner Alastair Hope suppressed most of the first day's evidence on Monday in the hope of avoiding a media circus.

But even the opening statement of Lloyd Rayney, counsel assisting the coroner, was sensational, and in the days that have followed the evidence has fulfilled expectations that the five-week inquest and its more than 60 witnesses will unravel a sordid tale of epic proportions.

Outside, Rinehart's team distributed an inflammatory press release subsequently suppressed by the coroner.

Rose and her second husband, upmarket Perth real estate agent and former Hancock intimate Willie Porteous, arrived at court with their arms full of the family poodles - white, grey and black.

The tale of Lang Hancock has been retold for years: his discovery of the giant Hamersley iron ore deposit in West Australia's Pilbara region; his simple and low-key family life with his first wife, Hope, and daughter, Gina, despite his immense wealth; his late marriage to former Filipino maid Rose and his sudden explosion on to Perth's social scene; and their eccentric life together until Hancock's death at age 82 on March 27, 1992.

The contest for control of the Hancock fortune between Rose and Gina has been equally absorbing, moving for more than a decade between the bitter and the bizarre, enormously costly, and still dribbling on this month, with Rose winning the right to dispose of $A50 million ($62.3 million) worth of property in Perth, Sydney and Florida.

Rose celebrated in her unique fashion, with a garage sale.

But the inquest that began this week is concerned solely with the final, troubled months of Hancock's life, when Rose was addicted to the painkiller pethedine, prone to explosive arguments with her dying husband, and frantically angry at late changes to his will that would effectively part her from the immense royalties flowing from Hamersley.

Rose herself gave a clear indication of her state of mind during an outburst two years ago during one of the endless Federal Court legal battles, when she explained her reaction to Hancock's decision to change his will.

"I said [to Hancock]: 'If this cloak and dagger thing is going on, I'm going to get a divorce right now'," she told the court.

"I said: 'I'm going to murder you, I'm going to do this and that, and you're going to die a bankrupt'."

Gina Rinehart, who fought for years for an inquest, believes Rose did exactly what she threatened and killed Hancock. There were enough rumours of this at the time.

The closing stages of Hancock's life were tragic enough. The warfare between Gina and Rose was tearing him apart and forced him to call a crisis summit in hospital a month before his death, to no avail.

His adored stepdaughter was discovered committing fraud. Rose was becoming more violent in her behaviour.

On March 1, there was a poignant interval, when Rose convinced Gina to attend a farewell supper for Hancock's friends, entertained by the late Danny La Rue, dressed soberly and without sequins for the occasion.

But life spun out of control again at Hancock's mansion Prix D'Amour.

In the final days Hancock, confined in the guest house, took out a restraining order against Rose. When he died, neither Rose nor Gina was present.

Police, tipped off by an anonymous caller to an alleged poisoning plot, immediately took over Prix D'Amour with senior officers of the major crimes and drug squad, assisted by customs sniffer dogs.

No evidence of any crime was uncovered in the subsequent 17-month police investigation, nor by earlier coronial inquiries which confirmed that Hancock, who had been seriously ill with heart, lung and kidney disorders, had died of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Gina has never given up her attempt to prove that Rose was a gold-digger who had married her one-time employer for his money then set out to hasten him to his grave.

In 1999, Gina won the right to take her case to the WA Supreme Court, followed rapidly by Coroner Hope's decision to conduct an inquest on the basis of "substantial" new evidence presented to him.

This week, that began to emerge in what coronial counsel Rayney said was a series of allegations that if proven could lead to murder charges against Rose and implicate husband Willie Porteous, Hancock's former cardiologist, Dr Barry Hopkins, his former driver, Arthur Browne, and a former police officer, Peter Busby.

Rayney said Gina's lawyers would allege that Rose had intended to poison her husband, but had told Gina that she had decided against the plot because she knew there would be an autopsy.

Rayney said there would be evidence that Rose had expressed a desire that Hancock would die, leading to the possible conclusion that she had intended her husband to die, that she had a motive for his murder, and that she had acted "in a way that demonstrated her consciousness of guilt."

So far two former maids, both Filipinos, have told of life with Rose.

The first, Maxima Simidrescu, wept as she told the inquest of the pressure Rose exerted on Hancock to cut Gina from the will, and of Rose's attempts to persuade her to kill "the old one."

This allegedly included the bizarre plot, discussed in the Filipino language Tagalog, to kill Hancock in his wheelchair during a round-the-world trip.

"[Rose] asked me to push him so hard that he will die," Simidrescu said. "If I push him hard the wheels would go upside down and he would be hurt. That's very dangerous."

The other maid, Heidi Biddle, said Rose had asked her to cast a voodoo love spell over Willie Porteous, a regular guest at dinner parties held while Hancock lay dying, and that the spell had apparently worked as Willie began sneaking into Rose's room at night.

She said Rose had boasted of marrying Hancock for the four Tagalog Ms - matandang mayaman madaling mamatay (old man with money will die soon) - but had said he was taking too long to die and had joked about lacing his food with pethedine.