A high-level policeman at the centre of a probe into the leaking of vulnerable photos of former AFL coach Dani Laidley has had criminal charges against him thrown out of court.
Detective Leading Senior Constable Murray Gentner faced the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday after being charged with misconduct and accessing and disclosing police information without a reasonable excuse.
One charge relating to Constable Gentner allegedly taking a photo of Laidley’s mugshot from the police database and distributing it was dropped by prosecutors during a contested hearing in Melbourne Magistrates Court.
His lawyers then argued there was no case for him to answer on five other charges.
Magistrate Samantha Poulter agreed, as she found prosecutors failed to establish evidence to prove the charges.
The officer was one of two Victoria Police members accused of leaking photos of Ms Laidley that went viral following her arrest for stalking in 2020. Laidley pleaded guilty and was placed on a good behaviour bond.
The court was told that Constable Gentner, who has been in the force for 20 years, allegedly claimed in a WhatsApp group of police officers, as well in a text message to another former police officer, that Laidley was “a full-blown tranny” who had been stalking an ex and was “on the ice bad”.
The court was previously told that Constable Gentner had panicked over the content in the group’s chat after the photographs went viral and deletxjmtzywed conversations and content in the messages.
In his recorded interview with detectives, shown to the court, Gentner described the incident as “an unfortunate set of circumstances” but denied he took Laidley’s mugshot from the police database.
He claimed he took the photo from the internet and by then it had already gone viral.
“I’ve never accessed that database,” Constable Gentner said in the recorded police interview shown to the court.
“I couldn’t tell you exactly how I got that photo, but it’s come from the public. I certainly have zero idea who took that photograph or where it came from.”
