WITNESS SAW PAEDOPHILE PRIEST COVERED IN BLOOD NEAR COLD CASE MURDER VICTIM MARIA JAMES' HOUSE

A priest who sexually abused the son of cold case murder victim Maria James was seen covered in blood on the day of her murder, metres from the crime scene.

The priest — identified as Father Anthony Bongiorno — had blood on his face and arm as he ran into St Mary's Parish Thornbury, roughly 50 metres from the bookshop and home where Maria was stabbed 68 times in 1980.

The ABC's Trace podcast , which has been reinvestigating the case for the past year, tracked down an electrician who was conducting maintenance work in the grounds of St Mary's Parish on June 17, 1980 — the day of Maria's murder.

Allan Hircoe was working on an electricity box on the porch at St Mary's presbytery when he saw the priest approaching.

"A chap that I recognised as the person in the paper, Bongiorno, came on the left hand side and I looked at him from about eight metres away," Mr Hircoe said.

"He had blood on one side of his face, and one of his sleeves was rolled up, and he had blood on that arm."

The electrician approached the priest, who appeared distressed, to see if he was OK.

"I said, 'What have you done?' And he said, 'I cut my face on the wire fence near the roses,' or, 'I cut my face on the roses near the wire fence'. Long time ago — I'm not sure which way he had that," Mr Hircoe said.

Mr Hircoe had a first aid kit in his car, and told Bongiorno to wait while he got it.

"I said, 'I'll be back in a second,' and I said, 'Don't go away,' and I walked off. Then I turned around — gone. Completely gone."

Unaware that a murder had just taken place metres from where he was standing, Mr Hircoe went back to his work.

"Then I heard this muffled scream from a woman. Then there was a big argument in another language, which I thought was Italian, but it was a woman's voice and she was completely distressed and screaming," he said.

"I thought, 'fancy getting that much in trouble for getting a bit of blood on your shirt'."

Later that day he heard about the murder of Maria James but, like police at the time, never considered that Bongiorno might have been involved.

"I never put two and two together," he said.

Priest abused victim's son

The day before Maria was murdered, her 11-year-old son Adam James told her he had been sexually abused.

Adam — who has cerebral palsy and Tourette syndrome — told his mum Bongiorno had sexually assaulted him that morning at Thornbury's St Mary's church, where the James family were regular attendees.

Adam, who has difficulty communicating verbally, recounted the incident to Trace.

"He said to me, 'Adam, come with me'. He said, 'Adam, I don't want you to tell your mum or [your brother] Mark about what I'm going to do to you'," Adam said.

"I asked him 'what do you mean?' and he didn't say anything.

"He took me behind the altar. I was standing there looking around he pulled down my pants halfway and he said, 'Adam, you know you can trust me, don't tell your mum or Mark about this', and he touched me."

On the walk home from church, Maria asked Adam if something was wrong.

"Mum said, 'Adam, what did he do to you?' and I pointed down," Adam said.

The next morning — the day of her murder — Maria James called St Mary's Parish from the family's kitchen.

Adam heard his mother on the phone, and says she sounded upset and angry.

When she ended the call, Maria walked her son to the bus stop and waved goodbye.

Hours later, she was dead. But for three decades, Adam didn't tell anyone else what had happened.

Bongiorno conducted Maria's funeral service.

Bongiorno had a history of being openly critical of Maria James.

Not long before she died, he publicly scolded her at a church mass for selling pornographic magazines at her bookshop.

But on the day she was stabbed 68 times, it was Bongiorno who picked up Mark from school and informed him of her death.

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It was also Bongiorno who conducted the funeral.

In the aftermath of the murder, police spoke to the priest, believing he may have information gained in the confessional.

Rowland Legg, one of the detectives who worked on the case, said that far from helping with the investigation, Bongiorno was defiant and obstructionist.

"I can recall us having several heated discussions with Father Bongiorno. He was fairly verbally aggressive towards us," Mr Legg said.

"We were frustrated by his belligerence in the fact that he was just flatly refusing to [help]."

The year after Maria's murder, Bongiorno was transferred to other churches twice, ending up at St Ambrose in Brunswick, where he was promoted to parish priest.

And at St Ambrose he allegedly abused at least three other boys.

The three abuse survivors took their cases to court in 1996. Bongiorno was committed to stand trial, but the cases were split into separate trials, meaning each jury was only told about one set of allegations.

In two of the cases, Bongiorno was acquitted. The third case was discontinued.

The decision to split many abuse allegations into separate cases has come under criticism at the current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

While he was never convicted by the courts, a state government tribunal ruled Bongiorno had committed child sex crimes, and awarded the victims compensation. In recent times, the church has done the same.

Bongiorno investigated — and cleared

Police reinterviewed Bongiorno about details of Maria James' murder in 1998. During these interviews he made the bizarre claim that she had been working as a sex worker out the back of her bookshop.

Detectives found no evidence to support this theory.

Bongiorno died four years later in 2002. He is buried in an unmarked grave.

Around 2007, when a Victoria Police cold case team was reinvestigating the case, police started to look at Bongiorno as a "person of interest".

Her sons Mark and Adam were not informed at the time; nor were they interviewed about the priest.

Bongiorno's alibi on the day of Maria's murder was provided by another priest — father Sean O'Connell, who is now deceased.

The two claimed to have been attending a meeting in Coburg until late in the afternoon that day.

But in 2015, Bongiorno was ruled out as a suspect.

Victoria Police say they cannot reveal how they eliminated the priest. However, those close to the investigation were told the priest's DNA did not match that found at the crime scene.

'There's been mistakes'

The Maria James murder was former top cop Ron Iddles' first case as a homicide detective. He would later reinvestigate it as part of Victoria Police's cold case unit.

"I don't think there's any police officer that I worked with, especially back then in 1980, who would have suspected that a priest from the church could have been responsible for the death of Maria," he said.

"Even that he could have been responsible for assaulting a child — that just didn't come into our minds."

Mr Iddles retired earlier this year, but believes Bongiorno should still be considered a person of interest in Maria James' murder.

"While I understand he may have been ruled out on DNA, I don't know where that sample came from," he said.

"Something just didn't sit right."