A 29-year-old Cooktown man has been sentenced in the Cairns District Court to 15 months imprisonment for lying to a Crime and Misconduct Commission major crime hearing.
Nathan Trevor Quibell pleaded guilty to one charge of perjury after making inconsistent statements during a CMC hearing in May 2005 into the disappearance and suspected murder of John William Francis Arnold at a remote location south of Cooktown.
Mr Quibell is a person of interest in relation to Mr Arnold’s suspected murder and had been called before the Commission after it was believed he had information about the death of Mr Arnold.
Quibell initially gave evidence that he last saw Arnold in Cairns after they had both harvested a cannabis crop at Trevethan Falls south of Cooktown. He later gave evidence that he had returned to the crop site one morning to discover Arnold’s body lying in the middle of the clearing, and had then buried the body nearby.
Mr Arnold, then aged 32, was reported missing in August 1997. His last contact was with his mother when he telephoned her in August 1996 to say that he was leaving Cairns to work as a fisherman on a boat off Cooktown.
Quibell is already serving an indefinite sentence for contempt of the Commission, committed at the same hearing when he refused to continue answering questions about the circumstances of Mr Arnold’s death.
Quibell is the second person in the past week to be sentenced to a jail term for lying to the CMC.
Last week Gold Coast City Council contractor, Dumitru Balan, was jailed for six months after committing perjury during a CMC investigation of corruption involving council officers and contractors.
ENDS
