Waller, Kevin Maurice

Public servant, barrister, magistrate and coroner. He was appointed as the City Coroner in 1970 and in 1987 conducted the coronial inquest into the death of Pearl Watson, the Family Court judge's wife killed in 1984 by a bomb at her Greenwich home unit. In 1988 he was the first person to be appointed to the position of New South Wales State Coroner. As State Coroner he conducted inquests into some of the state's most significant cases including the 1989 death of David Gundy, the Kempsey coach crash,  the Newcastle earthquake and the shootings in 1991 at the Strathfield Plaza shopping centre. He held the position until his retirement in 1992. He was the inaugural chair of the Victims Advisory Council from 1992 and the founder of the the Australian Coroners Society in 1991. In 1993 he chaired an independent committee reviewing suicide and other forms of self-harm in the NSW prison system, and a crisis and aged care unit in the Long Bay Correction Centre Hospital was named after him.