That’s because they were fixated on their view that her husband, barrister Lloyd Rayney, was their “prime and only suspect”, and had killed her at their family home before burying her in Kings Park, a new TV investigation claims.

Martin Bennett, who represented Mr Rayney in the high-profile murder trial, believes there was compelling circumstantial evidence against convicted sex offender Allon Mitchell Lacco and his cousin Ivan Eades.

“I think the evidence is there and it just needs different people to do the job properly,” Mr Rayney told 60 Minutes, urging a renewed investigation to find his wife’s killer.

“There is a person - or people - walking around who’ve literally gotten away with murder.”

Corryn Rayney, 44, was last seen at 9:30pm on August 7, 2007, after leaving a bootscooting dance class. Her body was found eight days later, buried 50 metres from the road, after police followed a trail of oil 3.5km back from where her broken-down car was discovered.

Mr Rayney immediately became the chief suspect, but wasn’t charged with her murder until three years later.

He was acquitted in 2012, with the trial judge describing the state’s case as “beset by improbabilities and uncertainties”. An appeal was dismissed in 2013, and last year Mr Rayney won a record defamation payout against the WA Police.

He recalled the damage done by the police press conference on September 20, 2007, when he was branded the key suspect.

“I had worked by that stage — more than 20 years as a hardworking lawyer to build a career,” Mr Rayney said. “It took less than 20 minutes to destroy all that.”

Mr Rayney said his life “changed immediately”.

“I remember I had called a taxi because the police had taken my car away,” he said. “The news was on and I remember the taxi driver shaking his head and saying, ‘Ah, the husband did it.’ He hadn’t recognised me, but he was convinced by what had been reported.”

While Justice Brian Martin said in his original ruling aspects of the police conduct ranged from “inappropriate to reprehensible”, Mr Rayney said that “doesn’t cure the harm they’ve caused to me and to our children”.

During the defamation trial last year, former detective Carl Casilli said Lacco allegedly told an acquaintance “there’s a body going in there” as they drove past Kings Park in 2007. The DNA of his cousin Eades, also a convicted sex offender, was found on a cigarette butt outside Rayney’s Como home.

“It was a small investigation into Eades, but a large investigation into Lacco,” he was reported by PerthNow as telling the trial.

The detective travelled to Lacco’s NSW home in 2009, where a search uncovered a map of Kings Park, a diagram of the layout of the Supreme Court where Mrs Rayney worked, and page torn out of a calendar from August 2007.

Mr Casilli said Lacco told him he “had an interest” in the Supreme Court building and had once worked at Kings Park, and denied the calendar page belonged to him.

“A lot of things about Allon Lacco struck me as lacking credibility,” he said.

According to 60 Minutes, Lacco is in jail awaiting sentencing on 14 unrelated charges including assault. Eades’ whereabouts is unknown.

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