Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware this article contains images and names of people who are deceased. These have been used with the permission of the family.
A man questioned about the deaths of two central Queensland women in the 1970s may have taken the truth about their demise to his grave.
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He was charged with the murder of a Rockhampton woman in 1975, and three years later, questioned over the death of 21-year-old Margaret Kirstenfeldt.
News of his death has devastated the families of both women whose deaths are cold cases.
The man was one of several figures examined in the 7NEWS true-crime podcast Pendulum, a 20-month investigation which probed the circumstances surrounding the 1978 death of a mother-of-two, Kirstenfeldt.
She was found semi-naked with her throat cut and stab wounds in Sarina, just south of Mackay in Queensland.
The podcast has learned that Person X died on September 11, 2019, at the age of 69.
He had been living in Rockhampton and is believed to have died from liver complications.
7NEWS can now reveal the identity of Person X.
Person X unmasked
He was born Steven Henry Kiem on January 20, 1950.
He then changed his name, possibly in the early 1980s, to Christopher Edward Turner – the name under which he was jailed for drink driving in the 1990s and took to his grave.
Kiem, who worked for Queensland Rail in the 1970s and 1980s, was also known by the nicknames Crusty and Pineapples, after working as a labourer on farms in Yeppoon, northeast of Rockhampton.
Pendulum has been unable to trace any official documents or deed poll Kiem used to change his identity.
Some members of the police suspect Kiem changed his identity after 1978, when detectives investigating Kirstenfeldt’s death recognised him as the man arrested and charged with the murder of an Aboriginal woman in Rockhampton woman three years earlier.
Where it began
A 28-year-old woman’s body was found naked, bound and snagged in the mangroves of Lakes Creek, downstream from Rockhampton.
Prior to Kiem’s death, the woman was identified in the Pendulum podcast as Rosie, for cultural and legal reasons.
Her family has now given 7NEWS permission to publicise her name - Queenie Hart - who was born in the Aboriginal community of Cherbourg in southeast Queensland.
Murder charge dropped
At the first day of trial, the murder charge against Kiem was dropped after the judge ruled a jury could not be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that he was responsible in any way for Hart drowning.
The Rockhampton Supreme Court trial transcript shows Kiem admitted to violating Hart’s genitals with sticks and reeds after what he claimed was consensual sex.
Investigators on Margaret Kirstenfeldt's case talk to 7NEWS.
Kiem also admitted to police he used her clothing to twice knot her arms behind her body.
He claimed Hart was alive when he abandoned her near a jetty and ignored her cries for help.
Within months of the trial, Kiem moved north to Sarina.
Mystery of Margaret
On February 10, 1978, Margaret Kirstenfeldt’s body was found outside her Sarina home.
Kiem’s past and close proximity to the crime scene became one of the key reasons investigators remain heavily divided over whether she was murdered or committed suicide.
Episode 13 of the Pendulum podcast also reveals lead investigator Detective Milton Hasenkam confided in his son that he believed Kirstenfeldt was murdered and did not take her own life as he had concluded in his final report to the coroner.
Medical findings into the cause of Kirstenfeldt’s death have also swung between suicide and murder.
The case was at first treated as a rape and murder, then days later deemed a suicide after autopsy findings deemed her horrific injuries self-inflicted.
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Both Hart and Kirstenfeldt were women were aged in their 20s and had internal injuries to their genitals.
Kiem was the last person to see Hart alive and had attended a party at Kirstenfeldt’s house the night before she died.
Police interviewed Kiem at the time of Kirstenfeldt’s death but he denied any involvement.
Case re-examined
Nearly 30 years later, Kirstenfeldt’s death was re-examined and reopened as an unsolved murder when former Rockhampton detective Peter Swindells became the assistant commissioner of Queensland Police State Crime Operations, where the homicide squad is based.
In 2004, cold-case detectives reinterviewed Kiem, known by then as Chris Turner.
He again denied any involvement in Kirstenfeldt’s death.
Kiem was also interviewed in 2001 by the QPS’s Taskforce Alex – a team of detectives investigating serial rapist and killer Leonard John Fraser.
Fraser and Kiem (Turner) served two stints together in Rockhampton jail.
When Fraser was released after completing a 12-year sentence for rape, he lived with Kiem for a while in a flat at Yeppoon.
The Cold Case Investigation Team within Queensland Police’s Homicide Squad is currently is reviewing Kirstenfeldt’s death and has appealed to anyone with information to make contact.
It is unclear whether Kiem’s death impacts their investigation.
Families shattered
Both the Kirstenfeldt and Hart families expressed disappointment and distress when they learned of Kiem’s death.
Kirstenfeldt’s sister Deb Smith said there was a “mixed bag of emotions”.
“(It was) a deflating moment when I first heard this, and most the family members felt the same,” Smith said.
“Deflated and a mixture of anger…as mum always does…she went very quiet for a while and shrugged her shoulders and said what more can we do.”
She said Leslie, Kirstenfeldt’s daughter, was very angry.
“I got a message from Leslie that she had to go out and bash some golf balls to get the anger out of her system,” Smith said.
“So it’s been a mixed bag of emotions.”
Queenie Hart’s niece Debbie West said she was devastated at news of Kiem’s death
“First and foremost, I would like to see justice for my auntie,” West said.
“Our family didn’t get justice. The law failed our family.”
Hear more in Pendulum, available on acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your preferred podcast platform.
You can find more from Pendulum on Facebook, and follow Paula Doneman on Twitter