The noise was coming from a cell that hadn’t been used for over 100 years – since 5 December 1900, to be precise. Norris pushed open the old cell door and the music stopped. All of a sudden, gone.
‘There was nothing in there. Just a tiny little cell. Absolutely empty.’
Norris turned … and ran.
‘I got out of there quick-smart,’ Norris said. ‘I was freaked. I didn’t believe in ghosts until then.’
I asked Norris about the ghost, who it could have been.
‘There was only one bloke ever hung in Goulburn, from what I can gather,’ Norris said. ‘And I don’t know who or when – I don’t know anything – but I do know on that night, and I will swear on a stack of Bibles, I heard somebody in that cell, the first condemned cell, gently singing and playing his guitar. It scared the willies out of me.’
The only man to be executed in Goulburn Jail was, in fact, John Sleigh. He spent his final night alive in a tiny first-floor cell located at the south-eastern end of B Wing. It was, of course, the condemned cell described by Norris.
Sleigh was sentenced to death for shooting Frank Curran dead at Back Creek before burning his body. And he was hanged at 9 am on 5 December 1900.
‘The drop was some twenty feet from the door of my cell,’ described James Dwyer, a Goulburn inmate on the day of Sleigh’s execution. ‘It has always been a spot that held my attention each time I climbed to my whitewashed home. All through the night before he died, the condemned sang songs that were heard by all the prisoners in the wing. [Sleigh] had a fine baritone voice and his words rang through the big building. They were songs of the day. He chanted “Annie Rooney”, “Dreaming of Home”, “Mary Green” and other favourites. The Governor ordered him to stop, telling him he was upsetting the nerves of other prisoners around him, but the songster took no notice of the command. I really didn’t see any reason why he should. Outside the cell of the condemned, and quite within hearing of the wretch inside, the hangman and his assistants were testing the rope by tying a bag of sand the exact weight of the man to be hanged and letting it drop with awful clatter. No prisoner slept that night.’
And it appears, if Norris is to be believed, that Sleigh continues to ignore the governor, singing now to deprive guards of sleep rather than inmates.
Norris is stunned when I tell him who the executed inmate was – more so when I say what he was doing on the night before he died.
‘Bugger me. That’s exactly what I heard. I heard him singing. That’s really spooky. I never thought to look it up.’
Goulburn, however, was a place of death long before the singing Sleigh swung.
Ever heard of a gibbet?
Bleached Bones
General Sir Richard Bourke (yep, the guy every Bourke Street in Australia is named after and the first man in the colony to be honoured with a public statue) jumped as his wife, horrified and hastily lashing out, pinched his arm.
The Governor of New South Wales winced – the governess had got him good.
‘Abhorrent,’ he shouted, not at her but at the men proudly showing him the sun-bleached bones. ‘Remove them at once.’
He turned his back on the gruesome gibbet after promising the governess it would be gone.
‘Barbaric,’ he said. ‘This will never happen again.’
Bourke then declared gibbeting illegal and ordered the structure to be sawn down and destroyed. Sure, public hangings were still okay, but you could no longer display a body in a metal cage and leave it to rot above a city street.
The legend of Goulburn justice began that year, 1833, as the decomposing corpses of John White and William Mooney – sentenced to death by hanging 12 months earlier for murdering overseer Maurice Roach with an axe – were left as food for the hungry hawks and crows that circled above.
The township of Goulburn was first established in 1820, four residential blocks erected around a square on a bend of the Wollondilly River. The first substantial building was the lock-up: a ramshackle structure of wood, eight metres long by three metres wide. The jail soon fell down and was rebuilt with more wood, but this time on a concrete slab. It was officially called Goulburn Plains Gaol and referred to as the ‘wicker basket’. The jail was still nothing more than a hut with a door – no windows and the wooden logs so loosely lashed together that prisoners often slipped through the gaps and escaped into the nearby paddock.
And, of course, there were the instruments of death and dissuasion in plain sight on a clear rise at the back of the township.
‘Prisoners sentenced to death were hanged or “turned off” on the gallows and then, when considered appropriate, hung from the gibbet in an iron cage,’ described Dr James Kerr in a 1994 Goulburn Jail conservation plan commissioned by the NSW Department of Public Planning for the Department of Corrective Services. ‘The intention being to hold the carcass together and exhibit it as a measure of discouragement to other evildoers.’
‘The execution of these two miserable wretches shocked,’ reported the Goulburn Herald at the time. ‘Their bodies were gibbetted on the rising ground on the north-west side of Goulburn, a spot which has ever since been known as Gallows Hill.’
Governor Bourke might have stopped the gibbeting 12 months later, but the killing continued …
A man called Whitton was next; he was hanged outside the Auburn Street lock-up for the crime of bushranging. And then came James Talbot in 1854, who had the dubious honour of being the first man hanged in the all-new 1841 masonry-built prison.
The 1841 census showed the old Auburn Street lock-up was bursting at the seams with 50 male inmates sharing the hut with a lone law-breaking woman. So a new jail was built and they were moved. This prison, officially finished in 1845 – four years after occupation began – had over 40 cells stacked over two floors. There was also a three-room narthex with entry lobby, warders’ office, gatehouse, cookhouse and cesspool.
Still, the jail was small and crime was large.
The ‘new’ prison was decommissioned just 39 years after it was opened, razed to the ground in 1884. Enter the Goulburn Jail that stands today – all legendary lions, ghosts and gallows.
The Gaol at Goulburn, as it was officially known, was opened on 1 July 1884. Designed by Colonial Architect James Barnett, the $61,000 super prison had four radial cell wings, eight yards, a chapel and a detached hospital.
‘Constructed of local brick with stone dressing, it was finished with handsome architectural detailing,’ Kerr’s conservation plan reported. ‘Goulburn, for the first time in Australia, had single cells of reasonable size (3.96 metres by 2.13 metres). These were based on the cell dimensions of England’s famous Pentonville [Prison] model.’
This is the prison where Sleigh was hanged. And it is the prison he still haunts today. The 1884 jail is the historic epicentre of today’s Goulburn Correctional Centre that has grown to include the X Wing (1968), the High-Security Dispersal Unit (1980), the Multi-Purpose Unit (1986) and the Supermax (2001).
The prison housed first-time offenders from 1928 to 1949; now it is home to Australia’s most evil and violent men.
But first, let’s talk a walk through the ‘Killing Fields’.
Welcome to Goulburn Jail – Australia’s most murderous prison …
2
THE KILLING FIELDS
Slice, Slash and Scurry: The Slaughter Starts
The surgical cut was made with a butterknife after it had been slowly and patiently sharpened on the sandstone prison brick. More scalpel than shiv, it sliced through skin, stomach and then artery: the target of the attack.
Pfffffft.
Blood spurted from the victim’s belly, covering the attacker in red. The man with the weapon licked his lips. Then he growled.
He wasn’t done yet.
Frederick Valdez Ford flicked his wrist and sent the shiv south. The movement was violent, full of anger and rage, but somehow delicate and precise at the same time. The blade sliced down, cutting vertically through Wanna Chamron’s coeliac artery. He
split the life-pumping highway as he swiped, then severed it horizontally with a sideways jerk, at the exact point where it divides into the legs.
Pfffffft. Pause. Pfffffft. Pause. Pfffffft.
With each fading beat, Chamron’s heart spat a small bucket of blood onto the yard.
Splat. Pause. Splat. Pause. Splat.
Chamron, 26, soon bled out. The cold concrete covered with claret, the Cambodian refugee was dead, his stay in Goulburn Jail lasting exactly 125 minutes.
Welcome to the Killing Fields – a place to kill or be killed. The suspected member of the 5T Asian crime gang was the first of seven inmates to be murdered at the prison in just two years – 11 months and one day – making Goulburn Jail the most murderous prison in Australia.
23 September 1995, 2.53pm … the killing begins.
Chamron nonchalantly walked from the bus. He spoke to no one and looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world as he entered the reception room; the smell of stale piss was masked by buckets of bleach. He said nothing as a guard commanded, ‘Spread your cheeks.’ He was silent as he grabbed his greens and was overtly obliging as he was shoved into his cell.
Chamron had five months left to serve. He didn’t care if he finished it in Goulburn or Guantanamo Bay. Soon he would be out, back to his drugs and dodgy deals.
He had behaved badly in Parramatta Jail and had been sent to Goulburn as punishment.
So what? I’m 5T. Nobody’s gonna fuck with me.
It was this arrogant attitude that allowed him to be lured into the shower block just two hours after he arrived.
‘Hey, I’ll show you around,’ said the man known as Freddy Ford. ‘Come with me. You are one of us.’
Ford, a Filipino national, was heavily linked to Asian crime.
‘This is Amoh,’ he said, pointing at another inmate – Nico Norma Emery Amohanga, a 21-year-old New Zealander. ‘You remember him, right?’
Chamron, who had arrived in Australia with his sister as a refugee in 1992, did know Amoh. He knew Freddy, too. The trio had been locked up together as kids at the Mount Penang Juvenile Justice Centre at Kariong, just north of Sydney.
Yard 3 was busy. Inmates from both B and C wings roamed free.
‘Over here,’ Ford said, leading Chamron towards the shower block.
‘This way.’ Chamron turned back to Amoh.
Whack. He was stabbed in the back.
‘What the fuck?’ Chamron demanded, blindsided by the sneaky shot.
Ford pulled the butterknife out and reloaded his arm.
Chamron turned into lightning, crashing into Amoh before doing the bolt. He screamed as he ran towards the Circle.
‘I’m stabbed,’ he cried. ‘I’m fucking stabbed!’
But the yard was bustling, filled with noisy inmates on the move.
‘Time to finish,’ a guard shouted. ‘Time for muster.’
Inmates spewed out of the shower block and were herded to a grassed area at the back of C Wing.
Chamron ran. But Ford ran faster, knife in hand and lackey a stride behind.
The fresh meat closed in on the gate. There were guards there. They’ll save me, right?
Thud.
Amoh sprinted past Ford and downed Chamron with a haymaker to the chest. The victim desperately jumped off the concrete and regained his balance. He looked up and saw Ford.
That’s when the butterknife-turned-scalpel delivered the blow and slashed through the vital artery in his stomach. Chamron clutched at the gaping hole in his guts and dropped. He would soon be dead.
‘You fucking Dog!’ shouted Ford as he drove the knife through Chamron’s eye and into his brain.
One final blow, just to be sure.
Goulburn Governor Allan Chisholm was sifting through reports when he was interrupted. He was almost through the paper pile.
‘A murder, boss,’ said the officer. ‘A new bloke has been gutted.’
Chisholm pushed his chair back, grabbed a notepad and steeled himself for the fresh stack of reports that would surely follow. ‘Here we go.’
The boss was new to Goulburn himself.
‘I was the governor at Goulburn between 1993 and 1996,’ Chisholm later recalled.
‘And that was a famously difficult period down there. I had worked at plenty of jails: Parramatta, Muswellbrook, Grafton, Kirkconnell, Glen Innes and Long Bay. They were tough places, Grafton and Long Bay in particular, but they had nothing on Goulburn. My initial thoughts when I was told I was going to Goulburn were, Well, you have got to be fucking joking. There were rumours about the conduct of the staff, and the problems with inmates were well known.’
Ironically, going to the worst jail in the state was supposed to be a reward for being the best officer.
‘In 1992 the commissioner rated the jails from worst to best,’ Chisholm continued.
‘One being the worst, two the second worst and so on. And then he rated the superintendents; one being the best and so on. So the guy rated number one went to the worst jail. Initially I was rated number three and was sent to Parramatta. That was fine with me. But the number one guy refused to take on Goulburn – and so did the number two guy when they came to him. I was ordered to take up the post, and the boss made it very clear to me that I could not refuse. So I ended up at Goulburn; the hardest bloody institution they had.
‘I remember my first day there like it was yesterday. You could cut the air with a knife. There was so much tension in the place – it was that intense. I met the governor that I was taking over from, and he was a shattered man. He was spilling coffee, his hands shaking from stress. I looked at him and said, “What have I got myself in to.”’
This would be the first of four murders Chisholm would investigate.
‘Oh, there were stabbings every day,’ Chisholm said. ‘It’s a miracle there weren’t plenty more that ended up dead.’
Chamron’s was the first murder he attended, and it officially began the murderous period at Goulburn that saw the prison dubbed the ‘Killing Fields’.
‘I was called down as soon as they found this guy,’ Chisholm said. ‘There are procedures to be put in place, like preserving the crime scene and filling out the crime scene logs of who enters it and when. You have to be quick. Being the governor of the institution, I also had to identify the inmate that had been killed. I was also responsible for interviewing the person I suspected of the murder.’
Chisholm deduced that the dead man, the one with his guts now lying all over the concrete floor, knew his attackers. He was not a random inmate targeted as soon as he jumped off the bus.
‘It had to be about a drug deal,’ Chisholm said. ‘A carryover from another prison. These guys knew he was coming here and I reckon they had been ordered to put a hit on him. This one all revolved around that Vietnamese gang – the 5T. He was killed by one of them. He went through reception and Freddy Ford met him and walked him across to the shower. He did him there. Ford was doing life and was a gang member. He had Filipino in him, and boy did he know what he was doing. I remember being astounded by the way Chamron died and that Ford was such an expert killer.’
Ford was also an expert in the art of silence.
‘He looked me straight in the face and said, “If I did do it and you prove it, what are you going to do? Give me life?”’ Chisholm recalled. ‘He was just belligerent. He wouldn’t admit to anything, but he didn’t care if he was charged and convicted all the same.’
Ian Norris was one of the officers ordering the prisoners from the shower block when Chamron was murdered. He gave a statement to the police, offering a chilling comment on how such a grisly crime could happen so openly … without anyone witnessing or knowing a thing.
NSW Police
STATEMENT in the matter of: Murder of Wanna Chamron. 25 September 1995.
15. At approximately 2.55pm on Saturday 23 September 1995, First Class Prison Officer Martin and I were supervising the clearing of the shower block in the preparation for the afternoon muster. We
call out, ‘Time to finish. Time for muster.’ We watch the inmates leave the shower block and open the connecting gate to allow them into the grassed area at the back of C Wing. The shower block is locked.
16. At this time which was approximately 2.55pm, I received some information via the portable radio that I was carrying. As a result of this information I had a conversation with First Class Prison Officer Martin. We both remained in the grassed area and started locking the inmates that had been in 3 Yard back into 6 Yard adjacent to the kitchen. By doing this 6 Yard became crowded with approximately 40 inmates.
17. At approximately 3.20pm, First Class Prison Officer Martin and I walked through C Wing, to the Centre Circle. I remained in the Centre Circle for approximately 3 minutes. I saw that Ambulance Officers were on the scene, at the front of gate 3. The Ambulance Officers were on the Circle side of the gate of 3 Yard. I saw that they were treating an inmate now known to me as Wanna Chamron.
18. I saw that Wanna Chamron was lying on his back. He was wearing prison-issue greens. I saw blood on his chest area and head. There was also a large amount of blood on the concrete ground, around his body. There was a large number of Prison Officers in the area watching the proceedings.
20. The first time that I saw Chamron was when he was lying on the ground in the Circle. I deal with many prisoners every day. They are always coming and going. I do get to recognise some of them. I was not familiar with Chamron in any way. I did not recognise him in 3 Yard at any time. I did not recognise this inmate on the occasions that I was escorting inmates from 3 Yard into the shower block.
I do not know how this person received his injuries, and I do not know how he came to be lying in the position when I first saw him on Saturday afternoon at approximately 3.20pm.
Norris knew much more about the next murder. It still gives him nightmares …
Holey Horror
‘He ran out bleeding like a stuck pig,’ said Norris. ‘He was running towards us, saying, “Gate up, chief. Gate up!” He was covered in blood and began stumbling. And then he fell.’
Australia's Most Murderous Prison: Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail Page 2
