Personally if I'd come unstuck and killed myself in my VH registered Yak I'd expect the recognised experts (ATSB) to be sifting through the wreckage...and hopefully joining the dots to see whether I'd stuffed up or that bloody LAME had left his pesky screwdriver inside the tail empennage!!
Well, you wouldn't be expecting anything. You'd be dead. However I know what you're saying.
If you'd killed yourself and no-one else, despite having a known medical condition that doesn't mix well with flying, it might have fitted into the 'well he was doing what he loved' category of stuff ups. Unless you'd ploughed into a school of course...
If you'd killed a private passenger that would have been a greater cause for concern.
If you'd killed a paying passenger (despite being prohibited from carrying them) who had discovered your operation because you'd continued to advertise a paying passenger service (despite being prohibited from carrying them) and that unfortunate customer had naively expected that an Australian aviation company advertising joyflights was in fact conforming with the regulations and allowed to do so, then the community in general and the relatives of said passenger in particular should expect that the ATSB would as you say, sift through the wreckage and find out what went wrong so all reasonable steps could be taken to prevent a repeat occurence. They should also wonder why a regulator, if it was aware of breaches, did not take all possible steps to prevent those breaches re-occuring before someone ended up dead rather than after, or indeed even then.
Say a person is known to be driving without a license. Say people who know this call the local coppers and say 'X is hooning around in a souped up Commodore even though his license is suspended.' Say the coppers then find X driving his souped up Commodore without a license. What is the expectation? I'm guessing that the majority of people would expect that the local coppers march X down to the station and charge him. It happens regularly. Sure, there's the odd miscreant who drives away from the courthouse on his fifth suspension, but they're usually plastered all over the news and then locked up. What's the diff?
It's not even like the theoretical X was driving a taxi or other commercial vehicle and advertising his 'Souped Up Commie Taxi Service'.
Additionally, there are far fewer licensed pilots than car drivers in the country so it should be easier to keep tabs on them. With aviation, nor is there the disconnect between state regs and agencies that makes regulating ground vehicle drivers even more difficult.
a lack of responsiveness and disclosure by those in aviation who had witnessed his antics.
Did any of them call the regulator? Was the regulator aware of his antics? How many calls and how much information do they need? It's well known in the aviation community (and don't ask me for references because you're not getting them
) that calling CASA about breaches is a WOFTAE. Transair has already been mentioned.
Wait until the whole Coroner's report is released, the story in "The Australian" barely scratched the surface!
I live in hope. At least I live, unlike the paying passenger who no doubt assumed that an advertised activity was conducted by persons licensed to do so. As Justiceseeker said, there's a strong sense of deja vu.