"Our lives are novels where we only get to write so much. The rest is shaped by the hands of others, though often the last few pages are ours alone.
In his final pages, I met Stephen Edwards, a man charged with murdering his mother.
Did he? Didn’t he?
In this deep-dive interview, why not decide for yourself?"
If you Google ‘Dr Stephen Edwards’ you will find news stories of him allegedly murdering his elderly mother, being sent to jail for three months and then being on bail for four years until the case was dropped.
Edwards, a former general practitioner who specialised in nursing home patients and palliative care, was deregistered after the charge of euthanising his mother was brought against him.
The case was closed after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six to thirteen months to live in January 2020.
His book on the events which consumed his life, Evil Conjectures, is published this month.
The story of how Edwards was charged with conspiring with his brother to murder his mother confronts the most fundamental questions of life and death, magnified by his own diagnosis of terminal cancer which he stubbornly refuses to accept.
His incarceration in Tasmania’s notorious Risdon Prison brought him into direct contact with mass murderer Martin Bryant as well as the inequities and perverse injustices of the prison system. Dubbed ‘Dr Death’ by his fellow inmates, he nevertheless earned their respect.
Edwards insists he the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice for which, since Lindy Chamberlain and before, Australia, unlike many countries, has no formal system of review.
Edwards was only the second person in Australia to be granted bail for murder, and his treatment highlights the lottery that is the justice system. Perversely, the dropping of the charges against him makes it impossible to clear his name. His narrative of the events that led to his murder charge and his fight for justice makes for compelling reading.
TESTIMONIES
This is a story every Australian should read because it is bound to replay in all our lives one day, in one way or another. Take up Stephen Edwards' challenge and decide for yourself whether he was right or wronged.
Associate Editor. The Australian.
"This utterly compelling read illustrates more than any other book I have ever read the dictum, 'In the midst of life we are in death'." John Stapleton. Author, Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia.
Evil Conjectures is now available at all major online outlets, including Amazon and iBooks, as well as Booktopia, Australia’s largest online bookseller.
LINKS
ANGUS & ROBERTSON
https://www.angusrobertson.com.au/books/evil-conjectures-stephen-edwards/p/9780645039443
AMAZON
PAPERBACK & KINDLE
https://www.amazon.com.au/Evil-Conjectures-Stephen-Edwards/dp/0645039446?
BOOKTOPIA
https://www.booktopia.com.au/evil-conjectures-stephen-edwards/book/9780645039443.html
EXTRACT
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