A MAN who was serving a life sentence for murdering West Australian teenager Hayley Dodd before he had his conviction overturned will face a retrial next year.
Francis John Wark stood trial in the WA Supreme Court before Justice Lindy Jenkins, who in 2018 found him guilty of murdering the 17-year-old hitchhiker after luring her into a ute near rural Badgingarra in July 1999.
Hayley’s body has never been found.
Get in front of tomorrow's news for FREE
Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.
READ NOWWark was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 21 years, but last month the WA Court of Appeal quashed his conviction.
At a status conference in the WA Supreme Court on Monday, provisional retrial dates were set for February next year. The trial is scheduled to run for nine-and-a-half weeks.
He will next face court for another status conference on June 18.
Wark was charged in 2015 following a cold case review and had been serving a 12-year prison term at the time for raping a woman he picked up in Queensland in 2007.
He was convicted of Hayley’s murder largely on the evidence of an ankh-shaped earring found in 2013 when a car bench seat cover was examined at the state forensic laboratory.
Justice Jenkins also found Wark had a propensity to pick up lone female hitchhikers then rape them.
Wark said he had done his weekly chores in nearby Moora, then travelled to Perth about 20 minutes after Hayley vanished.