Ray and Jennie Kehlet went to the outback hoping to find their fortune but never made it home. Now there is one suspect left in the mystery

It was the allure of gold and adventure that brought Ray and Jennie Kehlet to a remote stretch of the WA outback. . And it was their disappearance in the unforgiving terrain, scattered with disbanded mine shafts, that sparked the most expensive land and air search in WA history. A coronial inquest into the fate of the devoted couplehas been told about a secret prospecting location, a crystal-lined mine, gunshots and several inconsistencies in the statements of their snake-catcher camp-mate Graham Milne. While the evidence from several witnesses, including Mr Milne, has added detail and further intrigue to what was previously known, the inquest appears likely to fall short of giving the Kehlets’ family the answers they so desperately need. The most crucial parts of the mystery — how they were killed — might never be resolved. Mr Kehlet’s body was found at the bottom of an abandoned 12m mine shaft — one of 139 in the area – 18 days after he and his wife were last seen alive on March 21, 2015. Ms Kehlet, 49, has never been found and is presumed dead. Her three adult children and other family members have been ever-present the inquest, paying keen attention and liaising with Brendyn Nelson, counsel assisting Coroner Ros Fogliani, on questions they want asked. The testimony of Mr Milne on this week unsurprisingly drew intense interest. He remains the only suspect in the deaths. He was initially resistant to answering questions, fearing he would incriminate himself. “One can see where the police case is going,” his lawyer Glenn Cridland told the Coroner. Ms Fogliani compelled Mr Milne to give evidence, offering him the olive branch of a certificate of immunity — meaning his testimony could not be used against him in any future prosecution — if she was satisfied he was telling the truth. An area named “three million dollar patch” was the target location of the couple and their prospecting mentor, Mr Milne, when the trio set up camp in the Table Top area, about 25km from Sandstone and about 700 kilometres north-east of Perth in the State’s Mid West. Mr Milne said Mr Kehlet had coined the name “three million dollar patch” but during the trip he’d referred to it as “one million dollars each patch.” “Ray wanted to keep it, as he called it, secret squirrel ... he didn't want anyone to know,” he said. It wasn’t a straight-forward route. There were creeks to cross and there was debris to clear. They had stopped to mark areas with orange tape, so they could find their way back. It had also rained on March 21, he said, even though Mr Nelson had put it to him that no rain had been recorded locally during the entire period. Earlier, during their first afternoon at the camp-site, the two men went off exploring, visiting locations Mr Milne said he had previously camped at. Their solitude was broken by a gunshot in the distance. They looked up and observed a white Prado landcruiser and saw two men get out. “Ray wanted to crack off a shot to them know there were other people in the immediate area.” he said, adding that it was too far to yell. Mr Milne said he put a cigarette packet in a nearby tree as a target. The first shot missed, the second went straight through the middle, he said. The sighting of the two men wasn’t mentioned in his hand-written statement, he confirmed to Mr Nelson after re-reading part of it. Mr Milne, a certified snake handler for the Department of Parks and Wildlife, said the short prospecting trip had been interrupted three times by the Kehlets’ dog Ella bolting away from the camp, on at least one occasion, in pursuit of a kangaroo. Each time the Kehlets had gone off searching for the great dane, which they adored. It was the same on the morning of March 21, when Mr Milne said Ella suddenly “took off”. He said he let Ms Kehlet take his quad bike to look for the animal, but had no intention of joining the couple on the dog search, telling them: “I didn't come up here to chase the dog, I came up here to go prospecting.” He admitted may have been “a little abrupt”. Before heading out to prospect on foot, he said he gave Ms Kehlet instructions on how to put his quad back on his trailer in readiness for him to leave the camp in the early hours of the next morning because he was due back at work. He said the couple set off on the quads in opposite directions in search of the dog. That was the last time he saw the couple. Mr Milne said he spent the next 18 hours prospecting alone and got back to the campsite between 2 and 3am on March 22, where he assumed the Kehlets were asleep in their tent. Before driving away in the darkness, he said he left behind some equipment on a table for them to use, including a metal detector, a pan and a GPS. The WA Police position was made clear by Detective Sergeant Stephen Cleal in the first week of the inquest. He said Mr Milne was the only suspect still not cleared in the investigation. “I had the intention to charge him, which was referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions, but was not accepted,” Sgt. Cleal said. “So under the circumstances there is no plan to charge Graham Milne. There could be possibly down the track, but not at this point.” He said some of Mr Milne’s claims — made in four statements and two interviews, including one that lasted more than 12 hours — didn’t stack up. Among these was Mr Milne’s claim that he used a bitumen road to leave the campsite and not the unsealed Paynes Find-Sandstone Road that was a shortcut. GPS coordinates downloaded from Mr Milne's car by police had put the vehicle near the gravel road about 10:00am on March 22. If Mr Milne had used the bitumen road his car would have been captured by CCTV cameras from a roadhouse at Mount Magnet, Sgt Cleal added. But he said there was no sign of the vehicle on that footage. Mr Milne was challenged on some of these points by Mr Nelson. Earlier in the inquest, another witness Georgina Granville said she and her husband were driving on the Paynes Find-Sandstone Road under darkness early on March 22 when they came across a “quite agitated” and “quite aggressive” motorist, who had pulled over to the side. They had slowed down their car to see if he needed help, when they were waved away. She later identified the man as Mr Milne. Mr Milne told the inquest he’d driven a 5km section of the Paynes Find-Sandstone road before turning around and getting on sealed road for the long trip back to Perth. While on the gravel road he’d contemplated returning to the camp-site to “stick with” the Kehlets, who he’d earlier described as “good friends”. All three worked at Fortescue Metals Group’s Pilbara Cloudbreak mine. Mr Milne, who worked as a medic at the mine, said going back to the Kehlets would have left his work crew short the next day. “I was going to ring (work) and tell them I wasn't coming in. I suppose my conscience got the better of me after I stopped and thought about it,” he said. Mr Milne said he did not tell police about this change-of-mind because it made him out to be an “idiot”. “It was embarrassing,” he said. He couldn’t explain why his vehicle wasn’t recorded by CCTV at Mount Magnet. Mr Nelson said that if the GPS records were correct, there were five hours that were unaccounted for. But Mr Milne disputed this, saying his timings made sense to him. He said he took a two hour nap in his vehicle on the side of the road while heading towards Wubin. He agreed this was the only sleep he got in 40 hours. Mr Milne was asked by Mr Nelson about why DNA matching his profile was on a water bottle found next to Mr Kehlet’s body in mine shaft. He responded that the trio had shared bottles. He could not explain how his DNA profile also made it onto a cigarette butt near the mineshaft, where Ms Kehlet's cigarette butts were also found. And he could not explain why blood was found on Mr Kehlet's boots. “There were no injuries on the trip,” he said. Mr Milne was also grilled extensively by the lawyer representing WA Police, Sarah Keighery, on why he failed to tell police during the massive land and air search about all the locations he’d been to with the Kehlets on the trip, which were on mud maps. These included a mine shaft with crystals in the walls, which Ms Kehlet was particularly interested in visiting. And there was another location where the couple had sourced scrap metal that Ms Kehlet intended to weld into garden ornaments. Mr Milne stressed that he’d told police what was asked of him when he returned to Sandstone to assist with the search. “The main area (police) wanted to know about was three million dollar patch,” he said. He said he forgot about the mud map. “They were looking desperately for your friends and you didn’t tell them about these locations?” Ms Keighery said. Asked if he’d deliberately misled police, he replied: “no”. “Did you not think it was relevant to tell police everywhere you went,” she pressed. “I just done what I was asked,” Mr Milne responded. He said he’d told police about the mud maps in a phone call. “What if I told you a detective found the map and you never told police about the maps (which resulted in the search area being extended),” Ms Keighery said. “No, I mentioned it,” Mr Milne said. “I’m sure I told them about the mud maps.” He agreed that “through hindsight” it would have been prudent to have told police more in April 2015. It was revealed this week that Mr Milne had got permission to sleep at the camp-site when he returned to Sandstone in early April 2015 at the request of police to assist with the search. This was before Mr Kehlet’s body had been found down the mine shaft, which was 1.8km from the camp-site on April 8. Sergeant Cleal said the investigation was initially treated as a missing person case and the area was not considered a possible crime scene until later on. At the end of his evidence, Mr Milne was granted a certificate of immunity by Ms Fogliani. On Friday, forensic pathologist Judith McCreath told the inquest that a post-mortem established that Mr Kehlet, 47, suffered fractures to his face, neck and his right hand. But the cause of Mr Kehlet’s death was unable to be ascertained because of the advanced state of decomposition when his body was located. Facial injuries included a fractured left cheekbone and eye socket. He also had two breaks in one of his ribs and damage to the left side of his neck. Dr McCreath said a break in the hyoid bone in Mr Kehlet's neck could have been caused by blunt force or strangulation. Although an uncommon injury, she had seen it in motor accident victims and said it could have been caused during a fall down the mine shaft. One of the curious details that emerged this week was that a modified jerry can containing rocks was found at the bottom of the mine shaft next to Mr Kehlet’s body. It was positioned upright and “looked as if it had been placed there”. Also the body was off to the side and could not be seen from the surface. Senior firefighter Ashley Gasmier, who found Mr Kehlet’s remains, said the mine shaft widened at the bottom. He believed if Mr Kehlet had fallen down, he wouldn’t have rolled to the side and out of view. The inquest resumes on February 11.