fate and reporting that there was a conspiracy of silence in the Kimberley. Although Wood suspected that Tommy had been murdered by Leopold Overheu he found no proof to support the allegation and concluded that all the white members of the patrol had lied and orchestrated their testimony and that their journal was fabricated. Wood warned that his conclusions were based on the balance of probabilities not the beyond reasonable doubt standard required for a trial. On the question of the number of Aboriginals killed Commissioner Wood stated that "If I cannot get direct evidence I shall have to depend on hearsay." Later criticism of Commission evidence Many witnesses retracted statements, refused to testify or simply disappeared and several key Aboriginal witnesses to the killings "escaped" from custody at Wyndham before they could give evidence to the Commission. None of the Aborigines named to the Commission who had witnessed the massacres or who had relatives killed were called to testify. As a result, Gribble was the only witness for the massacres. The Chief Medical Officer of the WA Health Department, McGillivray, had testified as an expert witness on the recovered bone fragments. He identified himself as a bacteriologist with no experience as a forensic expert with his duties for the health department generally consisting of testing swabs for disease and infections (Question 460, sworn evidence of McGillivray). When shown an obvious hip joint he stated that it was "too small to be of a human adult" and when shown what everyone, including Wood, said they recognised as part of a human jawbone (Maxilla) complete with tooth sockets, McGillivray stated that he did not "think it was human". Initially rejecting the teeth as human, under cross examination he admitted they did not resemble animal teeth so had to be human. Historian Neville Green obtained copies of the letters cited as "evidence" to discredit Gribble and found nothing in them to support what was claimed in regards to their content. Hepburn Tindale, the cousin of Norman Tindale, testified as an authority on northern Aborigines and claimed to have a master's degree from Oxford University, a Diploma of Anthropology, a Fellowship from the Royal Geographical Society and was an author of articles for the Manchester Guardian (Questions 2758 and 2783, sworn evidence Tindale). Although Oxford University archives revealed that he did in fact enrol in 1923 he left the same year and never