Murdered Goodna schoolgirl
Leanne Holland.
The creators of a website dedicated to gore where three explicit images of murdered schoolgirl Leanne Holland were posted have refused to remove the photographs.
brisbanetimes.com.au revealed last week images showing the 12-year-old's half-naked corpse had been posted online.
Leanne's body was found near her family's Goodna home three days after she went missing in September 1991.
The photographs of Leanne were first published in a university textbook in 2002.
Images of the crime scene were distributed to students working on the release of Graham Stafford, who served 15 years in jail for the murder before his conviction was quashed in December 2009.
In a "message to Australia" posted on the website, its creators, based in the Netherlands, have defended their actions.
"In posting these pictures we did nothing wrong what so ever in our own eyes," the website read.
"The publication of the picture in themselves were not made for any reason but public interest as a news source for un-adulterated truth of a brutish crime, protest against Australian internet censorship and censorship of the internet in general."
The creators of the website refused to remove the images of Leanne, saying that they were posted for "journalistic purposes".
"We won't take the pictures down or our informative piece on the tragedy that is Leanne Holland's death," the website read.
Visitors to the website joined the chorus against internet censorship, although one reader did not accept the creators' claims to morality.
"I don't think you guys can cling to any moral highground on the existence of this site. This isn't a political site, it's a snuff entertainment site that thrives on shock value," an anonymous person wrote.
"Don't try to act like you're some kind of new-age-freedom-of-information warriors because you own a website full of dead bodies."
The Crime and Misconduct Commission has announced an inquiry into how the photos were released and police are investigating if posting them is against Queensland law.
Queensland Attorney General Cameron Dick said it was imperative victims' rights and their families' rights were protected and images of crime scenes or murders needed to be strictly controlled.
"We need to look at, broadly, what happens to those images in courts and it's something I am keen to do," Mr Dick said.
"We need to respect victims, victims' families and they are afforded protection from the system.
"We have to make sure we have an open justice system and make sure we protect victims' rights as well."
However, those behind the website said images of corpses were "public property".
"The pictures are crime scene photographs of a corpse, a corpse has no age, and stop being a person in the juridical sense.
"Law applied to underage individuals do not and should not apply to corpses."
Queensland Police have confirmed they are seeking to force the removal of the three images, although they have admitted they may have no recourse.
"Uploading such material is abhorrent to most people, but it is not necessarily illegal," police said in a statement.
"We are doing all we can to have it removed."
The man responsible for first publishing the images in his textbook, American criminal profiler Brent Turvey, said he was dismayed at the abuse of the images.
"It's all very instructing to the professional mind, but to the criminal mind it is salacious," Mr Turvey said.
