Coniston massacre
On 15 August, dingo trapper Bruce Chapman arrived at Coniston and Murray sent Chapman, Paddy and Alex Wilson and three aboriginal trackers to the soak to find out what happened. The three buried Brooks on the bank of the soak. In the afternoon two Warlpiri, Padygar and Woolingar arrived at Coniston to trade dingo scalps. Believing them to be involved with the murder Paddy arrested them but Woolingar slipped his chains and attempted to escape. Murray fired at Woolingar and he fell with a bullet wound to the head. Stafford then kicked him in the chest breaking a rib. Woolingaar was then chained to a tree for the next 18 hours. The next morning the posse, with Padygar and Woolingar following on foot in chains, set out for the Lander River where they found a camp of 23 Warlpiri at Ngundaru. With the posse encircling the camp, Murray rode in and was surrounded by Aboriginal people yelling, Brisco started shooting with Saxby and Murray joining in. Three men and a woman, Bullfrog's wife Marungali, were killed on the encounter, with another woman dying from her wounds an hour later. A subsequent search of the camp turned up articles belonging to Brooks. Stafford was furious with Murray over the shooting and the next morning returned to Coniston alone.
Cambodian genocide denial
Malcolm Caldwell was a British academic who wrote extensively about Cambodia, including, a few months before his death, an article in "The Guardian" denying reports of Khmer Rouge genocide. Caldwell was a member of the first delegation of three Western writers, two Americans, Elizabeth Becker and Richard Dudman, and Caldwell, to be invited to visit Cambodia in December 1978—nearly four years after the Khmer Rouge had taken power. The invitation was apparently an effort by Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, to improve the image of the Khmer Rouge in the West, now questioned by some of its former academic sympathizers. On December 22, Caldwell had a private meeting with Pol Pot and returned "euphoric" to the guest house in Phnom Penh where the three members of the delegation were staying. During the night Becker awoke to the sound of gunfire and saw a Cambodian man with a gun in the guest house outside her room. Later that night she and Dudman were allowed by guards to venture out of their rooms and they discovered Caldwell's body. He had been shot. The body of a Cambodian man was also in his room.
The murder of Caldwell has never been fully explained. Four of the Cambodian guards were arrested and two "confessed" under torture. They said, "We were attacking to ruin the Khmer Rouge Party's policy, to prevent the Party from gathering friends in the world ... it would be enough to attack the English guest, because the English guest had written in support of our Party ... Therefore, we must absolutely succeed in attacking this English guest, in order that the American guests would write about it." Whatever the motive behind Caldwell's murder, it seems highly unlikely that it could have occurred in tightly-controlled Cambodia without the involvement of high-level Khmer Rouge officials.