by Debra Oswald
The final defence witness was John Santino. It wasn’t common for the accused person to risk being cross-examined, but the narrative Woodburn was weaving required the jury to see this man play the role of the bereaved partner.
Santino began by relating how he’d met Kendra, the whirlwind romance, his commitment to support her acting dreams, how he’d adored her ‘bubbliness’ and her ‘beautiful soul’. Anita made an effort to identify this man’s possible charm. He radiated a boyish fervour that could conceivably come across as attractive, and if a young woman was swept up by him, becoming the focus of his emotional intensity, it might feel compelling.
Woodburn was careful to stare down the problem areas that had come up earlier in the trial and he adopted an austerely authoritarian tone for the next run of questions.
‘Mr Santino, would you describe your relationship as volatile?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I would have to say yes to that.’ Santino straightened his shoulders, like a schoolboy bravely owning up to some minor transgression. ‘Because of the passion of the connection me and Kendra had, we had arguments sometimes. I’m not proud about that. But Kendra, she would get mad and shout at me just as loud.’
‘Did you ever hit Kendra?’
‘Oh no. Never.’ Santino made a show of being sickened by the suggestion. ‘I would never hurt her in any way.’
‘But you could feel quite jealous over your girlfriend—is that so?’
‘Yes, that’s true. I mean, if other men thought she was hot, it made me feel good—she was hot and she was mine. But I didn’t like it if guys came on to her too obviously, panting over her. But then Kendra could be possessive too—she hated other women coming on to me. The jealousy was only because we loved each other so strongly.’
Woodburn sighed sternly, playing it with an edge of disapproval. He eyeballed the jury, so they could take a good look at how rigorous he was being with his client. But eventually he nodded slowly, letting the jury know that he, Gilbert Woodburn, was finally satisfied with Santino’s answers to these tough questions.
Surely no one would be taken in by this farce. But when Anita scanned the jurors, some of them seemed to be going with it.
Next, Woodburn took John Santino through the last months of Kendra’s life. The answers were prepared, well calibrated to present Santino as the imperfect but devoted boyfriend, answers that folded the foul-tasting evidence into a more palatable mixture.
‘It was her idea to drop out of acting classes. I kept telling her she was talented but she had too much self-doubt.’
‘I loved the way Kendra looked. But she begged me to help her lose weight. “Be my body coach, Johnny,” she said. So we came up with the plan, together, to have rewards like the Hamilton Island trip as incentives. I regret that now. I blame myself for maybe making her anorexia worse.’
‘Kendra started withdrawing from her friends when she got depressed. I kept saying ‘Ring your friend Damien.” I liked the guy. But Kendra said Damien always pressured her about going back to acting and he made her feel bad about herself.’
Anita turned her head enough that she could see Damien Ross in her peripheral vision. She felt agonised for him. He must have wanted to pound down the aisle and smash Santino’s shiny fucking forehead against the wooden edge of the witness box. But Damien stayed very still, just staring at the man who had killed his friend and was now telling lies about her.
‘It was Kendra’s idea to change her phone number and cut contact with Damien and her other friends. Now, I realise that was part of her mental illness and I should’ve argued back more.’
The voice coming out of John Santino’s face was sweet, hesitant, loving, but it was the same voice Anita had heard on the recording threatening and ridiculing Kendra. Anita looked at the jury. They hadn’t heard that recording and they didn’t know his history, so they could only judge this man on what they were seeing now. And now, many of the jurors were softening with sympathy.
Woodburn shifted into a new gear, adopting a gentle, you-poor-thing tone as he asked about Kendra’s final days.
Santino let his voice break a little bit as he answered. ‘I blame myself. Kendra told me she wanted to kill herself but I didn’t want to believe she would really do it.’
‘Did you wrest a knife off Kendra on one occasion?’ asked Woodburn.
Santino dropped his head, as if too overcome to answer, but then went bravely on. ‘Yes, she was holding the knife up to her own throat. I kind of dived over, got the knife off her, but she accidentally cut her hand—here.’ On his own hand, he indicated the location of the laceration Kendra had had stitched up in the medical centre.
‘On another occasion, did you find a packet of oxycodone tablets in Kendra’s handbag?’ Woodburn asked.
‘Yes, I did. She told me she had enough there to kill herself with.’
‘Do you know where she obtained those serious opioid drugs?’
‘No clue. I guess there are places in the Cross you can buy stuff like that illegally.’
‘Did you go to the police?’
‘No. I flushed them down the toilet as soon as I found them. But I regret that now. I should’ve gone to the police. Kendra might still be alive if I’d … I thought we could get help for her and it’d all be okay. But I was wrong.’
Santino then let rip with his full grief performance, complete with snotty crying, and Woodburn requested an early lunch adjournment so his client could gather himself.
As spectators filed out of Court 3, Damien Ross zigzagged quickly between the ambling people and out the door, so Anita lost her chance to throw him a fortifying smile or whatever feeble attempt at supportiveness she would’ve tried.
She stayed in her seat to finish typing the morning’s notes, then made her way through the dog-legs of the courthouse corridors to reach the ladies. Anita sat on the loo for a few extra moments, trying to breathe away some of the distress from the morning.
Eventually, she hauled herself up and went out to the basins to wash her hands and wet down stray bits of hair. She was about to leave when she heard a toilet flush and one of the cubicle doors swung open. Brooke Lester had obviously been sitting silently in that cubicle for some time, taking the chance for a moment of privacy and solitude.
Anita flashed her an automatic friendly smile and Brooke smiled back, not unfriendly but not quite meeting Anita’s gaze.
Brooke did a little embarrassed grimace at herself in the mirror. ‘I have to wee all the time now.’
‘Oh right, of course,’ said Anita, scrambling to think of a way to continue chatting without being intrusive.
But the young woman herself seemed to want to hang on to the conversational thread and keep talking to this stranger in the ladies. She said, ‘The baby kind of jumps around, dances on my bladder.’
‘Ha. Right.’ Anita nodded. ‘I’ve never been pregnant, but I’ve always imagined it must be a crazy feeling—having a separate human moving independently inside your body. It’s a wild idea, really.’
Shut up, Anita. Why was she prattling on with this nonsense?
But Brooke puffed out a little laugh. ‘Ooh, yeah! Never thought about it like that.’ Then she leaned down to address the baby. ‘Who are you in there? And what music are you dancing to?’
The two of them exchanged goofy smiles and Anita was struck by how lovely this woman was and how very young.
Then Brooke sighed, the delight evaporating from her face as if she’d suddenly remembered something grim. She arched her back and wriggled her shoulders to relieve aching muscles.
Anita offered, ‘Those wooden seats in the court—they can’t be super comfortable for hours on end when you’re pregnant.’
Brooke stood there rearranging her overly tight clothes—a peach-coloured narrow skirt with an elastic maternity panel and cream wraparound top made from clingy jersey—yanking at the fabric to give her belly more room.
She was apparently in no hurry to leave the ladies. ‘You’re a journalist,
aren’t you?’ she asked.
‘I am. How are you going with it all? This must be hard,’ Anita ventured.
Brooke looked at Anita via the mirror and murmured, ‘Yeah, I mean … yeah, it’s hard.’
Her tone was tentative but there was definitely an invitation to talk seriously. This was Anita’s opportunity. Fuck protocols. She should warn her about the man she was tied to. But it wouldn’t work to grab this woman by the shoulders and simply screech at her, ‘Run away! You’re not safe! Escape now!’ Anita should rattle off a full list of John Santino’s previous assault charges and accusations. And she should not let Brooke Lester leave that bathroom until she’d described every menacing word Santino had uttered on that recording.
But before Anita had a chance to say any of the words, the door behind her squeaked open and, in the mirror, she saw Brooke’s face harden with fear.
‘There you are, Brooke, my darling! Are you okay?’
Marina Santino’s tone was syrupy—sweet enough to bring on a diabetic coma—but there was no denying the anxiety on Brooke’s face when she saw her boyfriend’s sister walk into the ladies.
Marina slid her manicured hands across the young woman’s shoulders and steered her away from the basins, away from Anita. ‘We’ve got to get you to a doctor’s appointment, honey!’
Then Marina flipped her attention to Anita, explaining, ‘Obstetrician appointment. Very exciting. But we’re late!’
She whisked Brooke out into the corridor.
After the encounter in the ladies, there was no sign of Brooke Lester for the remainder of the trial, but Marina was in Court 3 for the final two days, a conspicuous and potent presence. She announced—loudly enough to be overheard—that Brooke was ‘shaken up to see Johnny getting upset on the stand’, so she was staying home to rest.
The closing addresses by the two barristers were as Anita would have predicted. Hugh Warby’s summary of the case against Santino was pedestrian, with a vocal intonation that dribbled downwards towards the end of each statement, as if Warby himself was unconvinced by his own arguments.
Gilbert Woodburn was at his magnetic, cunning best, sweeping the jury through the evidence as if he was retelling the plot of a mesmerising true-crime podcast about a man falsely accused. He appealed to the jurors’ vanity: surely they were smart enough to see through the apparently suspicious material they’d heard; surely they were wise enough to appreciate that a man could be foolish, but that didn’t mean he was homicidal. Woodburn left space for the jury to feel huge sympathy for poor anguished Kendra Bartlett, so there was no need for them to swing that sympathy into the guilty column of the ledger. He concluded by using his deep, authoritative voice at its most compelling—this was a sad story but not a story of murder. Acquittal was the only sensible verdict.
Anita surveyed the faces of the jury as they listened to Woodburn. She’d developed theories about each juror, assumptions based on gender and other markers, plus her observation of their reactions during the trial. But there was really no way to know.
When the twelve people retired to deliberate, Anita kept replaying Rohan’s reminder: ‘The jury aren’t crazy.’ Despite the omissions in the evidence and the clunkiness of the prosecution, there had to be a filament of hope the jurors would make the right decision.
When the jury deliberations spilled over to a second day, Anita took her laptop to work in a cafe close to the courthouse. The moment word came through that a verdict was imminent, she would be ready to dash over there.
To justify the time she was occupying the cafe table, she ordered beverages every hour, and at lunchtime she paid for a big healthy salad. Probably just as well from a nutritional point of view too. Given the volume of caffeinated liquids sloshing around her body, it felt good to chomp through a bowl of greens and feta and grainy bits.
She forked in salad with one hand, scrolling through notes on her laptop with the other, so focused on the computer screen that at first she didn’t register the woman standing right by her table. When she finally glanced up and realised it was Trish Lester, Brooke’s mother, Anita smiled—an invitation to talk.
‘Hello,’ Trish said. ‘I’ve seen you going into the court.’
‘Yes. I’m a journalist. Anita Delgado.’
‘So you’d know how the system works for this next part?’
‘Basically, yes. You’re Brooke’s mum?’
‘That’s right.’
The father, Rob, came over to join his wife, holding a metal stand with the number nine for the food he’d ordered.
‘Don’t bother her, Trish,’ he said. ‘The woman’s having her lunch. And working.’
‘It’s okay,’ Anita assured him and quickly scooped her belongings into a corner of the table to make space. ‘Would you like to join me? There’s plenty of room.’
Trish threw a look to her husband. ‘She might be able to help us understand what’s going to happen.’
Rob pressed his lips together. He was reluctant, but at the same time keen for any help they could find.
The two of them sat down at Anita’s table.
‘If the jury say he’s guilty, will he be sentenced straight off?’ Brooke’s father asked.
‘No. There’ll be sentencing submissions and other procedures,’ Anita said. ‘But almost certainly, he would be taken into custody straight away.’
Rob Lester nodded soberly.
‘You know you can come into the courtroom,’ Anita explained. ‘Any member of the public can watch the trial.’
‘Well, we didn’t know that to start with,’ said Rob. ‘Doesn’t matter, though. The trial isn’t really why we’re here. Really, it’s, uh …’
Anita nodded and waited for him to fill in the rest of the thought. That was a habit she had learned as a journalist—don’t swoop in and finish people’s sentences with what you assume they were going to say. Don’t be afraid to let a silence run. People usually felt obliged to fill the silence and more of the truth would tumble out of their mouths.
‘We don’t care about the trial,’ he said. ‘We just want to talk to our daughter.’
Hearing the distress in her husband’s voice, Trish jumped in. ‘We saw it on the news—Brooke going into the courthouse. We didn’t even know she was pregnant until we saw it on TV. Then one day I turned to Rob and I said, “Let’s drive up there, try and talk to her.”’
The Lesters had been driving up from Wollongong every day during the last weeks of the trial. They’d taken leave from their jobs—Rob was an electrician and Trish worked in the kitchen of an aged-care home.
‘How long since you’ve spoken to Brooke?’ Anita asked.
Trish looked at Rob, as if making the calculation in his face. ‘It’ll be a year next month,’ she said. ‘We got into a big argument with her—about him.’
‘Santino.’ Rob Lester pronounced the name with a shiver of distaste.
Trish described Brooke meeting Santino on an online dating site and being spun around by the seductive bombardment from her new boyfriend—flowers delivered every day to the homeware shop in Sydney where she had been working, romantic texts filling her message bank, limousines arriving to take her to expensive restaurants, weekends in posh hotels, and promises of overseas holidays they would go on once he wasn’t restricted by his bail conditions.
‘So did Brooke talk about the murder investigation her new boyfriend was facing?’ Anita asked.
Rob Lester nodded. ‘She always defended him: “Poor Johnny”.’
‘In a weird way, I think it tied her to the guy more strongly,’ Trish added. ‘Like, here’s this man suffering over his girlfriend’s death, who gets unfairly charged with murder. It made Brooke feel an urge to support him even more.’
‘She quit her job so she’d be available whenever he needed her.’ Rob sighed heavily. ‘She stopped seeing her friends because Johnny needed her.’
‘We tried to get on with the bloke,’ Trish insisted. ‘I mean, that’s what you do. You can’t ques
tion your daughter’s choice of boyfriend …’
‘But what if her choice is a grub like John Santino? What do you do then?’ Rob asked.
Anita made a murmur of helpless sympathy.
‘A year ago, she tried to break up with him,’ Trish said. ‘She came home to Wollongong, crying and crying, wouldn’t say why. Rob thought—’
‘He hit her. I saw the bruises. That mongrel hit her,’ the father growled.
‘But then John kept ringing, sending flowers and whatnot to the house, and she said she was moving in with him. That’s why we had the big row.’
‘And when she went back to him, she cut off contact with you?’ asked Anita.
Rob nodded and flopped his head back. ‘Look, I lost my temper on the phone a couple of times—said some things I wish I hadn’t said.’
Trish rubbed the back of her husband’s hand, reassuring. ‘Santino made it like Brooke had to choose—him or us.’
These were loving, honourable people who’d never encountered the domineering force of someone like John Santino until the day he swooped in to snatch their daughter. They’d been taken by surprise, not equipped for this fight.
‘And since you’ve been coming to the court, has she talked to you?’ Anita asked.
Rob shook his head, too upset to speak.
‘He’s always right there next to her,’ explained Trish. ‘Or the sister. Rob reckons Brooke’s too scared of them to talk to us.’ And now Trish was the one fighting tears. ‘Is it better to think your daughter hates you or better to think your daughter is scared to death?’
Rob leaned across the table, eager to convey something to Anita. ‘Look, I feel bad about what I said to you a minute ago, when I said we didn’t care about the trial. We do care.’
‘We think about that poor girl he killed,’ said Trish. ‘We think about her all the time.’
‘Of course,’ said Anita.
‘And now our daughter is pregnant to that bastard.’ The rage was seeping up into Rob Lester’s throat, tightening his vocal cords. ‘What are we supposed to do?’
