Buried Alive: Luckman and Reid

On the night of May 4, 1982, 13-year-old Terry Ryan rushed into his family home in Marsden, a suburb of Brisbane, and told his mother an astonishing story. Terry said that he had been forced by two men to participate in the sexual assault and prolonged torture and murder of his best friend, 13 year old Peter Aston. He said he had buried Aston in a shallow grave in scrubland about 60 kilometres south, over the New South Wales border, near the seaside hamlet of Kingscliff. Belita Ryan immediately rang the police. Terry retold his story to Detectives of the Queensland Criminal Investigation Branch. At approximately 4:45 on the morning of May 5th, the detectives drove Terry and his mother over the border into New South Wales. Terry led his mother and the detectives along the sandy track into the scrub. After about 200 meters, the track opened onto a roughly cleared area and the tire tracks disappeared into bush land on the other side of it. "There ... in there," Terry Ryan said as he pointed into the foliage. "It's in there.". The detectives led the way, and as they entered the track, they came across a grave-sized mound of earth off to the north-east. It was covered with small tree branches and twigs obviously broken from the nearby trees. Terry stepped back into his mother's arms and began to cry as the police officers approached the ominous mound and examined the freshly turned earth. In the dawn light, they saw spots of blood in the sand and a large, wet, blood-soaked section in the centre of the raised soil. Lying in the sand at the head of the bush grave was a dark sock and a knife in a sheaf. What the police officers found beneath the mound almost defied their comprehension.