Failures to properly investigate the beating death of a retired schoolteacher might have been driven by police indifference to attacks on gay men, an inquiry has been told.
William Emmanuel Allen, also known as Bill, died from a head injury sustained during an attack at Alexandria Park in Sydney's inner west in December 1988.
The park, about 800 metres from the 48-year-old's home, was a known gay beat.
About 10pm on December 28, Mr Allen was assaulted before flagging down a driver for help.
He said he had been "bashed and kicked" and that the assailants had taken his money and keys.
But Mr Allen declined to go to police, saying "that's what you expect when you do the beat".
He was found dead in his Alexandria home the next day.
Almost exactly one year later, another gay man, Richard Johnson, was punched and kicked to death near the same park toilet block.
Police charged eight teens, aged between 16 and 18 at the time, with Mr Johnson's murder.
The group, who became known as the "Alexandria Eight", were jailed over the death. Members of the group admitted involvement in numerous bashings of gay men in both the Alexandria and Bondi areas.
Their prosecution led police to look again at the killing of Mr Allen, but it was determined there was insufficient evidence to bring any charges.
But a special inquiry into LGBTQI hate crimes heard police did not pursue lines of investigation that could have provided evidence in the case.
These included a failure to photograph the toilet block Mr Allen had visited on the night he was assaulted to determine whether his phone number was written on the wall.
A common practice at the time was for men living alone to leave their number on the wall as an indication they wanted to meet other men at the beat.
Counsel assisting the inquiry Christine Melis said the possibility that Mr Allen's phone number was there might have informed the direction of the police investigation.
That could have included conducting night patrols and monitoring nearby phone boxes for potential persons of interest.
"Even if this was not how Mr Allen was killed, the failure to pursue this line of investigation may reflect police and police indifference to homosexual men being assaulted in Alexandria Park," Ms Melis said.
"There is the possibility, admittedly speculative, that if police had pursued this line of investigation more actively in 1989, future assaults and even future homicides might have been avoided."
The inquiry has kept other theories of the motives behind Mr Allen's fatal attack confidential to avoid prejudicing possible future investigations.
But Ms Melis said there was "more than sufficient evidence" for police to categorise the death as "evidence of bias crime", as opposed to giving it a weaker characterisation of a suspected bias crime.
The commission has been examining the deaths of gay people between 1970 and 2010, with a final report due in December.
