by Bob O'Brien
By this time, Lee Haddon had finished with the trial of Dr Millhouse and he was helping out with some of the administration work. Lee had an initial connection with our team, having asked Peter Woite on 2 August 1983 to try and locate the person who first mentioned von Einem’s name as someone we should speak to about the murder of Alan Barnes. Obviously, that person knew von Einem and he probably knew things about him that we didn’t. We could learn things from him, or at least discover that he had a grudge against von Einem and was just setting him up. It was important that we found out either way. Later this person became known as ‘B’. He told us things about von Einem that were so bizarre that they had to be true.
Chapter 9
The Associate
Peter Woite was given the task of finding B. He learned that he was interstate, living in Melbourne, so Peter travelled to Victoria to speak with him, but B had moved again just prior to his arrival. Now, he was believed to be living in Mildura on the Murray River. Peter contacted local detectives to see if they could find him but they didn’t have any luck and the trail went cold after that. We chased up family members — coincidentally, his father lived in a suburb near von Einem, while his sister lived in the northern outskirts of Adelaide — neither of them knew of B’s exact whereabouts. Peter kept running into a blank wall.
Revisiting the enquiry in October 1983, I drove to B’s sister’s house at Gawler, north of Adelaide, but she wasn’t home, so I left a message for her to phone me. I spoke with her a couple of times on the telephone and she said that she would try and get him to ring me.
I was sitting in the offices of the Major Crime Squad when B telephoned in November 1983. B said that he would not come to the police building but would meet me at a hotel. We decided to meet that afternoon. I was sitting at a table in a city hotel when B walked in with another young man. B looked soft but not effeminate although his male friend looked gay. He was prissy and subservient to B. I bought both of them a drink and B told his friend to sit elsewhere. He immediately moved off without saying anything and sat at another table. I told B that I wanted to speak to him about von Einem. He started asking me questions, testing me, assessing whether or not I could be trusted. Then he told me a few things that whetted my interest. He said that he picked up boys with von Einem, drugged them and had sex with them.
I’ve got to get this guy on side. This guy’s information is dynamite, I thought.
I asked him to come to the Angas Street police building so I could get a statement from him. He didn’t want to come straight away because he had his friend with him. He said that he would come in the next day.
I was sitting at my desk in the Major Crime office when a constable at the front desk rang to tell me B was at the front counter. I went down and greeted him.
‘Thanks for coming in,’ I said.
‘No worries.’
‘Look, we’ll go to an interview room upstairs where it is quieter.’
There were interview rooms downstairs at the Adelaide Police Station but I didn’t want any distractions and I didn’t want anyone who came into the police station seeing B talking to the police. He could be an important witness.
I took B to the first of two detective interview rooms on the second floor of the Angas Street building, past the reception desk for the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence. There are two interview rooms, including one with a two-way mirror. Detectives and bosses accessed the viewing area by going into an adjacent office and stepping into a small room, not much bigger than a broom closet, which did not let in light which could possibly destroy the effect of the two-way mirror. The mirror allowed private viewing of suspects sitting in the interview room. Obviously, a suspect could be watched to observe any mannerisms or if he was trying to hide any property or drugs in his clothes but I don’t know of any cases where the private viewing produced any additional evidence.
I spoke to B for six hours and typed his statement. It was eighteen pages long with seven additional pages of notes and drawings. What he told me was sensational.
He was was in his early twenties and had been active in the gay scene for about five years. He said he was bisexual — he also had sex with women. He said that he was now heterosexual but the sweet young guy with him at the pub made this statement questionable. B had first met von Einem in June 1979. By my calculations, that would have made it just before Alan Barnes was murdered.
Their first encounter was on a Sunday afternoon at the Torrens, near a boathouse. B described Number One beat near Jolly’s Boathouse on the south side of the river. He knew the area well. He mentioned the half-dozen boat sheds on the southern bank and the other three on the northern side near where Mark Langley disappeared. B said he was sitting on the lawns covering the banks of the river when von Einem approached him and asked if he wanted a drink. Their relationship developed from there. B knew von Einem was a homosexual but said he never had sex with him.
I recorded B’s words. I typed them directly onto paper as he recounted his graphic story. Taped interviews, either by tape recorder or video recorder, weren’t being done in 1983. We were still typing word by word. B described von Einem’s activities and said that von Einem had his own beat. His beat was not one of those around Adelaide’s public toilets, as have been described previously, he had his own beat on which he cruised to pick up boys. I kept typing as fast as I could to keep up with the story.
‘King William Street between North Terrace and Scotty’s Motel . . . that was his beat. He used to cruise up and down from Parliament House through North Adelaide to Scotty’s Motel and back again. He used to do it all the time.’
Scotty’s Motel is just to the north of Adelaide, past the inner suburb of North Adelaide. It’s well known to people because a tall statue of a Scotsman stands on the front wall of the motel. At the other end of von Einem’s beat, South Australia’s Parliament House stands on the corner of King William Street and North Terrace, next to Adelaide’s Festival Theatre, which separates Parliament House from the River Torrens. On the opposite side of the road, about 100 metres away, is Number One beat. The main road out of town starts at Parliament House, crosses the River Torrens, goes through North Adelaide via O’Connell Street, where Richard Kelvin saw Karl Brooks off at the bus-stop, and continues north past the motel.
B graphically described how, together, he and von Einem had picked up two boys.
‘I don’t know where I met up with Bevan that night but it was at night-time, probably a Saturday night; but it was definitely after midnight when we picked up two hitchhikers.’
I started to learn about von Einem’s modus operandae. The duo picked up the boys in von Einem’s bronze Falcon sedan and offered them a drink.
‘We gave them booze and Bevan gave them heaps of Rohypnol and they went out to it in the car. He would give them at least eight to ten Rohypnol. Bevan always keeps booze in the car. Normally, there is an esky in the boot and one on the back seat, which he keeps covered with clothes in case he is pulled up by the cops.’
The mention of Rohypnol — possibly one of the drugs which were in Richard Kelvin’s system — was a great piece of information, further completing the jigsaw. Speculation had always existed over the disappearance of Mark Langley. He was tall and strong. He worked as a plumber, which built up his muscles and strength. People wondered how someone could abduct a growing young man of his size. Mark Langley, as with all the boys, showed no signs of defence wounds, which are caused when a victim tries to protect himself, and are very obvious, say, in knife attacks. The victim will have cuts to his hands and forearms, caused when the hands are raised trying to fend off the attacker. Cuts to the leg happen when the victim kicks out trying to hold off the attacker, and are less common, as are defence wounds when a shooting occurs. The speed of a bullet will not allow the victim to do much. However, if the victim sees what is about to happen, then the victim may raise his hands to cover his face in fear. If the gun is fired towards the victim’s head, then the bullet may hit a hand o
r arm before passing through to the skull.
I imagined an angry and upset Mark Langley storming away from his friends parked on War Memorial Drive. He already had drink in him from the party. He was probably walking on King William Road or one of the nearby roads thinking about how he was going to get home when a good Samaritan stopped and asked if he wanted a lift. The driver would offer a few soothing words after he learned that Mark was upset and angry. The words would be followed by the offer of a drink from the driver, who looked harmless. The drink would help Mark calm his anger and settle him down. If ‘rollies’ were placed in the drink, then the combination of drugs and alcohol would soon put Mark Langley out to it. Then he was simply under the control of the driver, who could become the hidden Mr Hyde, our sexual sadist. We couldn’t prove this scenario but it was a distinct possibility. If von Einem didn’t do it, then someone like him did — perhaps even a mate of his did it.
Perhaps even this person did it, I was thinking as I typed B’s words on the blank pieces of paper rolled into the typewriter.
Von Einem’s partner continued to tell me his story.
‘After about ten minutes they were complaining that they were too pissed to drink and Bevan said, “Take the Rohypnol” and that would sober the kids up. That is what he said to them to get them to take the tablets. They were small white or yellow tablets about the same size as diazepam. Diazepam is Valium. I know that they were Rohypnol because I asked him what they were and he said “rollies” and I saw the word “Rohypnol” on the bottle.’
In the years that B knew von Einem, our main suspect was living in a unit at Campbelltown, one neighbourhood away from von Einem’s suburb of Paradise. Von Einem moved to Paradise in the early months of 1983. B described how they took boys back to the unit. They could do this, he said, because von Einem’s mother was away every second weekend. She would go and visit a cousin, Beryl Alcorn, at Lower Hermitage, a country area just outside Adelaide’s suburbs in a gully at the bottom of the Adelaide Hills.
B said the unit comprised two bedrooms, lounge, kitchen, bathroom and small laundry. It was one of three units built nearly at the end of a no-through road and the unit was the last in the block. They drove up the concrete driveway alongside the units and stopped outside the front door to carry the boys inside.
‘We drove down the driveway and turned left and parked. The back door of the car ended up right next to the front door of the unit. It made it easy to carry the kids into the unit . . . Bevan took the kid by the arms and I had the legs and we carried him into the bedroom, which was Bevan’s, and we put him straight onto the bed with his head on the pillow . . . We brought the second one in the same way and dropped him on the lounge room floor. I then went back into Bevan’s bedroom because he asked me to get [the boy] undressed.’
B continued to tell his story to me. He knew a lot about a side of von Einem that was very sinister and sick.
‘Before we undressed him [the one in von Einem’s bedroom], he showed me his pill collection, which was on top of shelves on the opposite side to his single bed. He had Rohypnol, Mandrax, Valium, Palfium and I think that there were a couple of other jars there but I cannot remember just what they were.’
B’s comments about the different type of drugs fitted with what we knew about von Einem. During the visit to his home on 28 July 1983, we found those assorted drugs in his carry bag and the Mandrax and Noctec hidden on the ledge behind the mirror of his cupboard in the bedroom. I was mentally comparing what B was telling me with what we knew to be true to check the truth of his story.
Von Einem used to live in a unit when Detective Rod Hunter spoke to him about Alan Barnes. That checks out.
‘Kippers’ and I better have a look at that address.
He did have a Falcon before getting his new car. That checks out.
The drugs check out.
B continued to describe what they did to the two drugged hitchhikers in von Einem’s unit.
‘We took one shoe and sock off each, were both helping each other, and left his shirt. He was lying on top of the bed, and we both went out and undressed the other one in the lounge room. Bevan then went into his bedroom and closed the door.’
I thought that it was interesting that the two of them undressed each boy. They didn’t undress them separately. If von Einem was involved in the murders, he was big enough to carry the boys by himself but here he was working with another person to undress someone. Here he was picking up boys, drugging them and then undressing them with help from another person.
‘I did not touch the one in the lounge room. I would have but he wasn’t good looking and he was rolling around as though he was going to be sick.’
He wasn’t good looking and was going to be sick! What a casual way to tell me what he did. B was talking to me in a very matter-of-fact way. There was no indication of guilt or remorse.
You haven’t got a guilty conscience about any of this, I thought.
Then B’s story became even more astonishing and grotesque.
‘When I went in the young blond [guy] was still on the bed; he was facing the wall and his knees were drawn right up to his chest. Bevan was kneeling on the floor next to the bed. Bevan was holding a torch up the boy’s arse and he pulled this rod out of his arse as I walked in the door. Bevan’s light was off but I had the light on in the lounge and that threw light into the room. As I said, as I opened the door I saw Bevan pull this crochet needle-type thing out of his arse . . . Anyway he pulled the rod out and then slowly pulled the torch out and I saw that it was on. When he pulled the rod out he put it down on the floor. He did the same with the torch after turning it off. I know that he was angry when I walked in.’
Incredible! Unbelievable! But I was certain it was true. B was too detailed with his descriptions to make this up. Besides, he knew about von Einem’s unit, his car and he knew about the drugs. He even mentioned the names of the drugs that we were interested in. I interrupted B and gave him my pen and asked him to draw the shape of the rod and torch on one of the blank white pieces of typing paper. He did some sketching and continued telling his story.
‘I told him that I wanted to go because the one that I was with was waking up, but it was just an excuse to get away. Bevan said that he would kill the cunt if he woke up. He asked for me to wait and help him get them dressed and take them to someone else’s house. He said that they will sleep all day with the Rohypnol and that he wanted to get them to this drag queen’s place where they could sleep it off.’
A drag queen — more information that fitted with what we already knew.
‘We dressed both of them and carried them to the back seat of the car and propped them up each side of the back seat. Bevan said that if we are stopped by the cops to say that they are both drunk and that we are taking them home. Bevan drove and I was sitting in the front passenger’s seat. I think that we must have taken back streets . . . I remember what the house looked like . . . three drag queens lived there; one was half-Maori and the other two were white. The name, P, rings a bell but I cannot be sure.’
Well, Miss P comes up again. George, the other hitchhiker, was taken to P’s place when he was drugged.
B was taken home and he rang von Einem during the week at work to find out what happened to the boys.
‘. . . he said they slept it off until midday the next day and they went home. The only other thing that I remember is that the one in the lounge was rolling his head and said a few things when we were getting him dressed. Bevan was a bit rough with him. Just throwing his legs around and things like that and he gave him another couple of rollies to keep him quiet. He gave him a bit of water from the kitchen to wash them down.’
During the hours that I typed his statement, B told me another story, describing exactly the same type of deviant behaviour. He described how he met von Einem near one of the boatsheds at Number One beat at about 7 p.m. on a Saturday two or three weeks after they picked up the first two boys. They cruised around in von Einem’s
car, scored a bit of grass and went to the Duke of York Hotel for a drink. Later in the evening they picked up two youths about eighteen years of age who were hitchhiking.
One had tattoos; B said that he saw them on his legs later on, when they were undressed at the flat of another associate of von Einem — not at von Einem’s unit this time and at a different place from the other associate’s.
B said that when they arrived, the drag queen was expecting them. They went to the flat, smoked a couple of bongs and von Einem offered the hitchhikers rollies after pretending to take a handful himself. The lads downed about eight or nine rollies each with some beer and, after a couple more drinks, they passed out.
One of the drugged hitchhikers had said he wanted to go to sleep and the drag queen helped him into her bedroom where von Einem helped the drag queen to undress him and put him into her double bed. At this stage, B said he left to go to Patches Disco, a gay club, on North Terrace in the city, while von Einem and the drag queen stayed with the hitchhikers. Later, B asked the drag queen what happened after he left. She said that the one with tattoos fucked her and they left next morning when they woke up. The drag queen said she didn’t know what von Einem got up to with the other one.
B then described a third time, when they picked up another boy. It was the following Saturday night and again they met at Number One beat after B rang to see if they were going to get together. Obviously, B didn’t distance himself from von Einem after the first time they picked up hitchhikers. It was just like Miller and Worrell with the Truro murders. Miller said that he didn’t touch the girls. B is saying that he left before anything happened but here he was continuing to pick up boys and continuing to ask von Einem if they were meeting and going out.
