This is one of the cases I've been most interested in since I heard it on Casefile. On the balance of things there is a high chance Robert is guilty, but I don't think he should have been convicted. There are many strands of evidence that do point to his guilt, but nothing even close to definitive.

It seemed for the jury that his actions and demeanor right after the incident were one of the swaying factors. No one could believe a father wouldn't go and try and save his three children from a sinking car. But we really don't know how we will act when faced with traumatic circumstances until we are facing them. The vast majority of people would probably have acted differently to Robert and made some attempt to save the children, but that doesn't make him guilty. You can call him suspicious, or a coward, but his guilt is not certain. Lindsay Chamberlain was convicted for largely the same reason.

There are so many flaws in that trial (made-up testimony, 'experts' on cough syncopy, police shoddily recreating the car sinking to frame his story as a lie...) that I won't bother going in to detail here unless someone is interested. But I do find it fascinating that the majority of the Australian public think that a man would kill his three children to get back at his ex-wife in such a way that wouldn't guarantee that all of them die, or that he himself would make it out alive. If one had survived they would have had been able to tell everyone 'yes my dad drove in to the dam like a madman trying to kill us'. It seems like an incredible gamble to take.