Article from 'Adelaide Now' 8/2/2011.
Accused killer Jason Downie, in red, at a Christmas function before his arrest. The camera flash has washed out the colour in his eyes. Source: Supplied
THE man accused of the Rowe family's stabbing murders in Kapunda was partying at a work Christmas function less than a week after their deaths.
Exclusive photographs of Jason Alexander Downie, 18, show him smiling with workmates at a dinner in the Barossa Valley only days after the November 8 deaths of teen Chantelle Rowe and her parents, Andrew and Rose.
A suppression order protecting Downie's identity was lifted on Wednesday during an appearance in the Elizabeth Magistrates Court.
He is charged with three counts of murder.
While comments on his social networking Bebo site suggest his father walked out on him and his mother, Lorna, when he was just two months old, it is understood his birth certificate does not even list the identity of his father.
Downie has a brother, Jamie, who was living in Kapunda at the time of the deaths, and a teenage relative, believed to be a half-sister, Jodie, living in Kilmarnock, Scotland, with whom the accused killer would correspond.
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Among those who shared Downie's last night out before he was arrested on Tuesday November 16 was the young man called on by the police to "bring him in" for questioning to the Kapunda police station.
Hours before Downie's arrest, the apprentice mechanic's workmates joked with him that he was "going to be locked up for the murders".
With another teenage workmate, he travelled the 30km from Tanunda to Kapunda at the end of his day's work, and was dropped off at Kapunda police station for "further questioning".
The two mechanics had commuted together from Kapunda to Tanunda almost daily since the alleged killer began an apprenticeship at the service centre about a year before the deaths.
"When the fellas heard that he was to be taken to the police station, they even joked with him that they were going to lock him up," a colleague said.
Downie attended Barossa TAFE at Nuriootpa once a week, but often was absent from his course, the work colleagues said.
Another friend on his Facebook site is a teenage girl with whom Chantelle Rowe often stayed in Nuriootpa.
Chantelle worked at Cafe de Vine in the town's shopping complex for a week before the deaths, and stayed with her friend's family some nights during her last week.
Chantelle - who listed her home address on job applications as at the Nuriootpa house and not the Kapunda family home in which she died - text-messaged her new boss to say she was sick about 12 hours before her death.
Workmates say Downie went to work on the Monday of the Rowe family deaths.
He also went to work the following day when Major Crime detectives declared the crime a triple murder, but asked to go home because he knew the Rowe family.
"On the Tuesday, he came to work and then asked to go home," a colleague said.
The work colleague said the alleged murderer attended work every rostered day after the deaths as Major Crime detectives scoured Kapunda and surrounds for clues in one of the state's worst cases.
Downie also visited the shrine to the Rowe family, adorning the rear fence of the property, three days before his arrest.
After his visit, police removed many of the tributes.
Magistrate Terence Forrest remanded Downie in custody until April.
