by Hazel Baron
Justice Taylor was certainly no bleeding heart, although that did nothing to appease Hazel. Just six years later he presided over the horrific rape and murder trial of Allan Baker and Kevin Crump. Career criminals who had met in jail, their first victim was itinerant worker Ian Lamb, shot dead while sleeping in his car in a thrill-kill on 3 November 1973. They didn’t even know him.
Five days later they notoriously abducted mother-of-three Virginia Morse, thirty-five, from her family property in western New South Wales. Over the next few days, they repeatedly raped and tortured her until they shot her dead just over the Queensland border. The full shocking details of her final hours have never been revealed. Justice Taylor’s words to Baker and Crump when he sentenced them for life continue to reverberate: ‘You have outraged all accepted standards of the behaviour of men. The description of “men” ill becomes you. You would be more aptly described as animals, and obscene animals at that. I believe that you should spend the rest of your lives in gaol and there you should die. If ever there was a case where life imprisonment should mean what it says — imprisonment for the whole of your lives — this is it.’
*
As the Baron siblings counted down to what they hoped would be the final time they would have to give evidence — in the trial over the murder of Sam Overton — their lives were rocked by another tragedy.
The Overton trial was due to begin on 21 August 1967. On 16 August, the same day that Hazel, Allan and Jim received their letters from the police along with their plane tickets to Sydney, they got the news that their sister Margaret had died. She was twenty-three, married to a farmer, and her death came suddenly from a cyst on the brain.
Hazel was sad that she and Margaret had lost touch after she moved to Hopetoun with Dulcie and Harry. She heard news of her through Jim but felt it was too dangerous to write to her while the police were gathering evidence against Dulcie and Harry. Hazel felt she couldn’t trust anyone, not even her own sister.
Hazel got her address from Jim and wrote to her after their mother was arrested. Margaret had been both angry and devastated. She didn’t believe Dulcie or Harry could kill anyone. But slowly she had come to realise it was true and their convictions for her father’s drowning had come as a shock. She had been suffering headaches and visited the doctor as they got worse but the doctor put it down to ‘nerves’ because of the murder. Margaret was another of Dulcie’s victims, Hazel thought.
She left behind a twenty-month-old baby. The families drove to Hopetoun for what was a heartbreaking funeral.
Hazel had let Ray Kelly know and he told her that Dulcie could demand permission to attend her daughter’s funeral, escorted by police. It was something Hazel couldn’t even begin to cope with so she asked Kelly not to tell her mother. It was a decision she never agonised about. The families got back to Broken Hill on 19 August to find that three days after Jim’s twin sister had died, his wife Alma was in hospital to give birth to their second child.
They felt as though they had been caught in a whirlwind, a tornado that had picked them up from the ground, was spinning them around and wouldn’t let go. The next day, 20 August, the three siblings flew to Sydney to give evidence against their mother over the death of Sam Overton. Hazel was so upset about Margaret’s death and consumed with worry about Margaret’s child and Jim and Alma’s baby that she could hardly think. Years later she could recall little of the trial and even forgot that Jim had given evidence.
Outside court, Sam Overton’s widow, Margaret Overton, put her arms around Hazel and gave her a warm hug.
‘You poor kids, what you must have gone through,’ she said.
At the very time Hazel felt she should have been the one consoling Mrs Overton, the Adelaide nurse’s words and actions brought Hazel comfort. At that moment, Margaret Overton was like the mother Hazel never had. Dulcie had never hugged her with a mother’s love and selflessness.
When she faced her mother in court this time, Hazel sensed fresh venom. It wasn’t something anyone else in the courtroom could have seen; it was just the look in Dulcie’s eyes. Hazel could guess why. She had found out that at the exact time Margaret’s funeral began, at 3 pm, a doctor at Long Bay went with a prison warder to break the news to Dulcie. They told Hazel that Dulcie had ‘performed a real treat’, demanding to go, there and then, professing her innocence of everything and threatening that if anyone else died, she would sue Hazel if she wasn’t told about it.
Who else was going to die? Hazel thought.
She found out much later that Dulcie had been smuggling letters out of jail to Allan asking him to retract his evidence and saying things like: ‘How could you say that when I gave birth to you?’ He struggled against her vitriol and felt really bad for trying to get his mother locked up for life.
For Hazel, it was reassuring to see the familiar face of Bill Knight prosecuting again and to have Del Fricker back at her side for support. The George Clooney lookalike Atwill was again representing Dulcie.
The defence could not argue with Overton’s cause of death — the amount of arsenic in his coffin was overwhelming. The poison had caused him to suffer a slow torture and an excruciating death. Their only chance was to cast doubt in the jurors’ minds and find a way to suggest that there was an innocent explanation for how the poison got into his system. New South Wales government medical officer Dr John Laing, who had carried out all the tests on Overton’s body, would be a key witness.
Margaret Overton’s brother, James Lawrence McClure, was one of the first witnesses and he gave evidence about his brother-in-law’s impeccable dress style and told the jury how he had looked in the wardrobe in Overton’s bedroom after his death to find his good slacks and riding boots, as well as the money Overton always kept on him, were missing. He also recounted how Dulcie had asked him if Harry could have Overton’s three good sports coats and that he answered: ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mrs Bodsworth.’
Atwill didn’t mention the clothes when he cross-examined McClure. He concentrated on the dangers of Calarsenite, which was fifty per cent arsenic. It became obvious that the defence would try to show that Sam Overton could have ingested it accidentally during the crutching of the sheep, which took place the week before he became ill. The experienced grazier was having none of it. He said he knew that when used on sheep, the Calarsenite was diluted in water and could not be too concentrated or it would be dangerous to the sheep.
Atwill: ‘And of course if you did absorb any of the fumes or if you ingested it through the mouth or anything like that, it would be extraordinarily dangerous?’
McClure: ‘I don’t think so, no.’
Atwill: ‘You do not think so?’
McClure: ‘I don’t think it would be that dangerous, no.’
Atwill: ‘That Calarsenite, do you mix it with water?’
McClure: ‘Yes, it has to be diluted.’
Atwill: ‘And in its raw state it would be more dangerous?’
McClure: ‘It would indeed, yes.’
Atwill: ‘And if a human being should absorb some of the fumes of that, or even if some of the liquid were put into the mouth or anything like that, it would be extraordinarily dangerous?’
McClure: ‘Well, I suppose if some got into the mouth, yes, but I don’t think any sensible person would ever . . .’
Atwill: ‘I quite agree with that. Thank you, Mr McClure.’
Atwill had cut him short. The jury would be told that it is the answers that are evidence, not the questions. Nonetheless, defence lawyers seek to sow the seeds of doubt through the questions they ask.
Then it was Jim’s turn to be chipped away at by Atwill.
Atwill: ‘Do you know that during this period of crutching, Mr Overton used to assist?’
Jim: ‘That is right.’
Atwill: ‘And do you recall that during this time when they were doing the crutching they [Overton and Harry Bodsworth] used to leave home early in the morning and come home late at night?’
Jim: ‘That
is right, yes.’
Atwill: ‘And they used to have all their meals down at the woolshed?’
Jim: ‘Yes.’
It was Hazel’s turn to testify, and her time in the witness box was mercifully brief as she felt her mother’s eyes on her. She recounted the conversation when Dulcie told her that Overton wouldn’t be at Netallie Station for long and there would be a vacancy. Atwill had only seventeen questions for her, and none of them touched on that conversation or arsenic.
When Allan was called up, Atwill hammered away at him, again concentrating on the long days he had put in on the crutching at the woolshed working side by side with Overton.
Atwill: ‘Some you crutch and some you jet?’
Allan: ‘Yes.’
Atwill: ‘Would you explain to His Honour and the gentlemen of the jury what is involved in jetting?’
Allan: ‘Well, jetting involves — it is an arsenic of sheep, to prevent blowfly strike in sheep and it is done around the tail of the sheep and up the back, which you can gulp the fumes very easily.’
Atwill: ‘And in fact what you used for this on Netallie Station was a thing called Calarsenite?’
Allan: ‘That is right.’
Atwill: ‘Which is an arsenic compound?’
Allan: ‘That is correct, yes.’
Atwill also pressed Allan on the comment his mother apparently made to him when he went shooting with Overton and Dr Potts. Dulcie had said: ‘Allan, while youse are out shooting could you accidentally shoot Sam on the other side of the swamp?’ And that when they all came back safe that afternoon, she had said: ‘Well, at least you could have done it, Allan.’ As Allan spoke, Dulcie could be heard sobbing loudly in the dock.
Atwill: ‘You are not sure whether your mother was joking with you or not, are you?’
Allan: ‘No, that is something I couldn’t say. She may have been joking, but that is what she said to me.’
More than ever before, the three siblings just wanted to get out of there and get home to their families and take in what had happened to Margaret. Jim had his first child to see. They were all on the first plane back to Broken Hill.
The defence argument that Overton could have accidentally inhaled or ingested the arsenic while working with Calarsenite took a battering from Dr Laing despite a spirited cross-examination by Atwill.
Atwill: ‘Just going back for one moment to clarify it. Of course you are unable to say first of all whether it [the arsenic] was taken, ingested in powder form or in solution form?’
Laing: ‘That is so.’
Atwill: ‘Or by fumes from the air?’
Laing: ‘I think an amount of this order, I would think it would be impossible to do this by fumes.’
Atwill: ‘Are you able to say that definitely?’
Laing: ‘I think so, yes.’
Atwill: ‘You of course are aware that there are many workers’ compensation cases where people working with arsenical compounds receive injuries through fumes?’
Laing: ‘Yes, that is so.’
Atwill: ‘In large doses?’
Laing: ‘Not to this order.’
After his success in getting Dulcie’s record of interview with the police excluded from the trial for the Tregenza murder, Atwill tried to have her confession regarding poisoning Overton thrown out on similar grounds — that it had been coerced and she had not spoken freely. After some hours of legal argument in the absence of the jury, the new trial judge, Justice Richardson, came to the opposite decision to that which had been made by Justice Taylor. He said that all Harry had been doing was telling his wife to tell the truth — and allowed the record of interview to be tendered as part of the evidence against Dulcie.
As every one of those catastrophic words, about how she had poisoned Sam with arsenic and couldn’t even give a reason for it, were read to the jury by Detective Sergeant John Palmer, Dulcie looked down at the handkerchief she was twisting in her hands.
It was a tall order for Dulcie to convince the jury she was innocent after they had heard her interview with police but once again she made a statement in her defence from the dock. This time her account was rambling, showing nervousness and perhaps even desperation. Dulcie was panicking. She was backed into a corner and the detectives thought they could hear it in her voice.
She said there was no truth in the prosecution’s claim that she had wanted to get rid of Overton so that her husband could take charge and manage Netallie Station.
‘I never did it. He was a good boss and I would have had no reason to harm him,’ she said, the twisted handkerchief now looking like a wet rag.
‘He had been working with the shearers and he came back complaining of pains in the stomach. He at no times had a meal with us because he had his own little dining room and we had ours.’
As she had claimed in the Tregenza trial, she said she had been distressed when detectives spoke to her and she would have told them anything: ‘I didn’t care. They got me so distressed I didn’t care what I told them. And I told Mr Kelly he could answer his own questions if he wanted to and I would have signed anything. I would not have cared what it was like. I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for.
‘As for the accommodation in Melbourne, I was put in a cell on the left-hand side as you go in. All I had was three blankets and I laid on the cement and I never seen a bed there. I was put in a cell on the left-hand side just before you go to where there is a sort of yard affair with rails there, and I stopped there and Mr Ritchie didn’t look after us for meals because I felt too upset to eat but he was very good with the meals and so far as the accommodation and the filth in Melbourne it was a disgrace. That’s all.’
The jury retired to consider its verdict on Wednesday, 23 August, and the detectives thought the deliberations would not take them long. It had taken the Baron jury less than two hours and the Tregenza jury not much longer. But the day stretched on as Overton’s family members along with the police waited for the jury’s decision. The defence and prosecution lawyers have their own rooms in which to wait and the detectives could have returned to the main police station — in those days, on the corner just outside the court — but they chose to wait with the family. There were a few cafés around the courthouse but no one could stray far from the court precincts because the jury could return at a moment’s notice. The minutes seemed like hours and, the longer the wait went on, the worry grew that the jury wouldn’t get it right.
After four and a half hours, the twelve jurors filed back into the court. They hadn’t believed Dulcie. The verdict was guilty. It felt like the courtroom had been holding its breath.
Justice Richardson thanked the jurors and discharged them. He asked Dulcie if she had anything to say before he passed sentence.
‘Yes, I do,’ she said.
‘There was lies told right through the court. I never touched that poor man.’
The judge sentenced her to life and Kelly sent his familiar telegram to Hazel in Broken Hill: ‘Saw mother today. It seems like a lifetime.’
It looked like Dulcie’s luck had run out. She was finally locked up for life. ‘Life’, however, didn’t mean life, as in ‘a lifetime’, in New South Wales then and Hazel knew Dulcie would get out one day.
It had taken almost three years and the court saga was almost over. But then the Baron family was rocked by another death.
*
Saturday, 15 June 1968, was going to be a big night at the Buffs Lodge in Broken Hill. The boys — Bill, Allan and Jim — were all members of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, joking that it was the poor man’s Masons. Like the Masons, they had their secret codes and mysterious ceremonies but the Masons were for the social elite, not working blokes like them. Allan had got Jim involved when they worked on Kangaroo Island where Allan had reached the third tier of the Buffs as a ‘Knight of the Order of Merit’.
The order had nothing at all to do with buffaloes, being named after the popular song of the time that became their anthem when
they were formed in 1822, called ‘We’ll Chase the Buffalo’. Bill, Allan and Jim liked being in the Buffs for the comradeship it offered; they felt they were among friends. As well as raising money for charities, the Buffs looked after each other’s families in times of need. The boys also secretly liked the rituals observed by the club, such as the codes which had to be uttered through the narrow slot in the door to get into Broken Hill’s Buffs lodge in the centre of town on Argent Street. Women couldn’t join, although they had their own female arm. Along with Hazel and Jim’s wife Alma, all the wives put up food like sandwiches and sausage rolls for the men.
That Saturday night there was a good spread on and the beers were flowing. It was Jim’s turn to be elevated to the ‘knighthood’. As a Knight himself, Allan was going to perform the ceremony, driving across from Olary Station that day.
Before he left the station with Joan and the kids, Allan wanted to get a kangaroo to feed the sheep dogs, the kelpies, who would be by themselves for the couple of days the family would be away in Broken Hill. He had a new vehicle he was still getting used to, a second-hand International Scout, which looked like a Jeep. His five-year-old son and one of their dogs jumped in the passenger side to keep him company. Neither Allan nor Jim ever had any problems with slaughtering sheep and ’roos by hand; they had been doing it since they were wet behind the ears.
They hadn’t gone more than a kilometre when Allan took a shot at the first ’roo they had seen but he had only winged the animal, which got up and took off. With the rifle reloaded, Allan drove after it but he still hadn’t got the hang of the strange gear sticks in the International Scout. As well as the ordinary gear shift, there were another three gear levers including one for high and low range. He had the rifle lodged among the levers and as the vehicle bounced over the ground, it went off and shot him in the liver. He managed to stop the vehicle and collapsed outside. His young son ran back to the homestead for his mother. She was eight months pregnant and couldn’t drive. By the time help reached him, Allan had bled to death. He was twenty-six.
