by Chris Smith
We were on our way alright. The team spent the best part of half a day on the property bringing in stainless steel cases, unpacking tiny monitors and kilometres of cable. There were small videotapes, light boxes, hefty video cameras and tripods and even gardening equipment used to remove certain branches and bushes in the backyard. As well as additional sensor lights, the team had attached small infra-red cameras to the sensor light brackets. They were almost invisible and certainly would be in the dark. Four of them had been carefully attached to cables that were threaded up onto the gutter of the house and inside the downpipes. For each of the cameras, hardly two centimetres of cable was visible. It was a clever bit of work.
Libby stood and stared at the shiny black face of one of the cameras, marvelling at what it might see. In spite of their tiny size, the cameras looked highly intimidating. Libby’s remembered reading 1984 at school with its visions of Big Brother. In this case, the threat of visual invasion was working for her.
By late afternoon, Libby’s sunroom looked like a television studio; her bedroom a mini television control room. Everywhere you walked there was a cable or box to trip over.
‘I’d like to roll on a master interview tonight if we can, Libby,’ I said, in a deliberately laid-back way, so as not to frighten her. It was actually the hardest thing Libby would face for us: a probing, exhausting interview on camera.
Libby was reluctant, but she had little option if she wanted her story to be told. The team was in place, the producers had assigned a reporter who was en route and, as I explained, we were ready to lay the foundation story before the surveillance began. By seven-thirty Libby found herself sitting on the couch, which had been dragged at an angle across the room, vicious lights glaring at her from both sides and Jane Hansen in a chair opposite, waiting for the nod.
‘Camera’s rolling, Jane,’ instructed the cameraman.
Over the space of 45 minutes, Libby retraced her life, firstly pre-Phillip, then through their early passionate days together and into the seedy world of being stalked incessantly. She seemed at ease after several minutes. On a couple of occasions she paused to hold herself back from crying. Reliving the moments of terror and abuse was hard enough to get through, let alone expressing it clearly for the millions who would see this. Jane was a highly experienced operator who handled her sensitively. I watched the interview at close-hand, sitting nearby on a large stainless steel box.
‘That’s all I’ve got; I think we’ve got it all,’ Jane eventually said quietly.
The interview was over. Libby was, in television current affairs terms, amazing talent. Her story was riveting, her sincerity compelling and both Jane Hansen and myself knew that we had a key piece of the puzzle ‘in the can’. Jane wanted some additional filming done in the backyard, which was a smart move. Libby’s explanation of where his balaclava would appear even had the crew’s skin crawling. Jane left soon afterwards, as did several of the crew, quietly excited by what they’d accomplished and having shown great empathy for Libby and her plight. She was at home with this mob of enthusiastic and professional media strangers. She’d heard all the stories about how conniving the media was, especially the commercial television sector, but so far, she felt she was in good hands.
Three of the crew remained in Libby’s house that night. After a quick scoff of fast food, the diet of a surveillance producer, I took over Libby’s bedroom, which had no less than four television monitors packed together on the floor next to her bed. Cables led from these to a large multiple recording unit hidden in the wardrobe. There was a pile of opened videotapes next to the unit and another pile of brick-like batteries with a large charger next to them. A small stool was positioned directly in front of the monitors, which was where I planned to sit. We asked Libby to stay in the dimly lit lounge room, watching television, to play bait to Hopkins. Meanwhile, my job was fairly simple: watch the bank of screens, quietly reload tapes and batteries, but mostly sit in wait.
The infra-red camera lit up the backyard on my screen as if it was the middle of the day. The pictures were grainy but provided superb contrast. Even the slight swaying of Cocos palms in a tiny breeze on the southern fence was easily detected. Yet, outside, to the naked eye, it was pitch dark, not a breath, not a movement. In fact, the area surrounding Libby’s parents’ home was an extremely dark place. As a well-established old Northern Beaches suburb, there were high gum trees adorning the boundaries, thick bushes in between and, being 200-odd metres away from the nearest arterial road, the area was not well lit by street lights. It was a very dark pocket of Balgowlah and, as such, a stalker’s paradise. This was extremely scary territory for anyone on the receiving end of such treatment.
The first night was an exciting operation, despite long periods of nothing, not even an inkling of company. The mobile crew two blocks away performed two-way radio tests with me. They were parked nearby, waiting for the call to either head Hopkins off in a getaway street, or head back to Libby’s house to record his movements on the property. At one stage I ventured out in the dark along the side of the house to adjust the position of one of the infra-red cameras with a broom. After several hours Libby and I started talking about Hopkins, why she thought he was the way he was. I was constantly keeping Libby focused on what would happen if he did turn up, how the team would react. It was important she not give the game away. Alerting Hopkins to the trap would keep him away until we were long gone.
By 4am, with no sign of Hopkins, I asked her if there was any clear pattern to Hopkins’ stalking. She made somewhat of a sobering observation. ‘You know, he hasn’t actually been here for two weeks. Not since the last court case,’ she whispered from the lounge room.
I froze, and didn’t reply immediately. I was not only genuinely keen to catch Hopkins in the act, I was also under considerable pressure to obtain some good footage as well. My boss had given me just five days with so much technology and manpower tied up on one story, in one location. We needed results and this was not what I needed to hear. Somehow we hadn’t discussed this point. Her stories of stalking and harassment had seemed so fresh.
Night two dragged on without a whisper until a mangy cat jumped the fence and into the line of sight of the rear infra-red camera, startling me almost off my stool. It was a good drill and proved the set-up worked.
Meanwhile our conversations between the bedroom and the lounge room were more frequent, less whispered and meandered from television politics and office romances to the occasional giggling fit about what some of the station’s more public figures got up to in their dressing rooms. Libby knew I was embellishing the gossip, but it sure alleviated the boredom of sitting around staring at nothing for hours on end.
There was always the danger that this might turn from one of my more exciting assignments into an empty roll of static pictures—not a story in sight. Towards the end of night two, I was getting nervous. Had Hopkins detected us? But how? Or worse still, had this serious case of stalking fizzled out into a fabrication? Was Libby just hanging on to the story to save face?
Night three saw a change in tactics. We turned up well before dark, before regular work hours had ended. It was an attempt to avoid any possibility of being seen entering the property during the afternoon. Hopkins may have been watching the street and noticed that Libby had company. The crew too no longer roamed the nearby streets. Although the crew car was unmarked, its mere presence might have been a give-away. The crew now had to sit in wait in the dirty, dark shed in the backyard. It wasn’t a popular strategy, but it made sense. And to complete the change in tactics, Libby would move from room to room, more like she would if it was a normal night. Her lengthy presence in the one room may have looked out of place, possibly staged.
The set of changes brought results, but not the ones we hoped for. At 2:40am, as I sipped on yet another Diet Coke to keep myself from dozing off, a sharp flash of light appeared between two bushes in the south-west corner of the property. It spiked me into action, my eyes wide open, my fir
st sign of trouble in three nights. I feared it might be wishful thinking, conjuring false images through boredom.
‘Libby,’ I whispered. ‘I think we’ve got company. I’ve got him!’
Then camera three picked up a second flash at the back fence. It became a beam for a few moments and then went out. I waited and waited for more, for any sign of movement or light; there was none. What Hopkins was up to, if it was indeed him, was uncertain. The fact that he was willing to come to the property, risk being caught—if he had indeed suspected something over the two earlier nights—and now left without any satisfaction or response, was baffling. He was always prepared to do his homework, always patient enough to wait until the time was right. He was a perfectionist and what I’d now discovered was that, if he sniffed something was not right, he was also prepared to simply turn around and walk away.
Night four arrived and it was the top of the ninth, so to speak. We didn’t want to leave ourselves just one last night to hook the target. The odds of scoring on the final night were low indeed. I had to make it happen; I had to find an edge.
During one of our lengthy, middle of the night whispered conversations from bedroom to lounge, Libby had told me about her private investigator and how he’d been given the run-around, unable to get too far late at night. He did of course provide witness to Hopkins’ breach of AVO, but this too had worked out badly for Libby. While this PI may not have scored a direct hit, I could still use an extra set of eyes. He had some knowledge and history of the site and our target, if he could be convinced to help out. So for night four, Rob Hearn was employed as part of surveillance.
Hearn would be on foot. While he’d never found Hopkins’ launch spot, he did have his suspicions about three locations nearby. His role was to comb all three alternately for the duration of the evening. He was in two-way radio contact with myself and the crew. We could now monitor places previously out-of-bounds to us.
It was early on night four when the two-way crackled with a calm message from Hearn: ‘Sighted what could be a target … heading through laneway up ahead, in your direction.’
Again I was startled by Hopkins’ behaviour. He’d come so early, after three nights of virtually nothing.
‘You know it’s him?’ I asked.
‘Not sure,’ replied Hearn. ‘But he’s definitely acting suspicious and I’ll try to keep up with him.’
‘No. Stay away. Come to the other side of this location to watch for his departure that way. The crew will be there at the back if we need them.’
I was attempting to cover all bases and, if this was to be a short flashlight visit, I didn’t want to frighten Hopkins away. Right on cue, Hopkins flashed his light across the backyard from the back fence. The crew in the shed had their two-way receiver connected to an earpiece so that the crackle of the hand-held unit didn’t alert Hopkins to their presence.
‘Should we get out of here and nail him?’ asked the cameraman.
‘Stay put you blokes,’ I warned. ‘We need more than a shaky picture of a shadowy bloke running over a fence a mile away … hold your positions.’
The adrenalin was pumping among the entire crew. This time, we told Libby nothing about what we’d seen. On our previous sighting of his flashlight, I suspected that Libby’s minute physical reaction to the news might have been enough to tip him off. It was only a possibility, but with just one-and-a-half nights left on the clock, I was determined not to take even the slightest chance.
‘I have the torch in frame,’ I told the others. ‘Only the torch, so wait on.’
The torch soon went out. There was nothing for an excruciating twenty minutes until one of the monitors detected a flying object. A soccer ball had been catapulted from behind the fence—flying over into the rear yard—one of his favourite tricks. It bounced and triggered one of the sensor lights.
‘He’s smart, you blokes,’ Libby whispered. ‘He’s working out where he can approach without the detectors going off. Watch out.’
Fifteen seconds later there was a huge crash, like something had hit the side of the house. He’d shifted location to an adjoining property and had thrown what sounded like a plant pot at the wall. The impact was quite close to Libby’s room, where we’d positioned all the monitoring equipment. This time though the sensor didn’t trigger. Libby was no longer in the lounge area but had made her way to the kitchen after the first missile, the ball, had been thrown. I didn’t want Libby’s demeanour to tip him off or dissuade him from entering the property. We moved her away from the rear sliding doors and her parents were told to remain at the front of the house, in their bedroom, no matter what they heard happening at the rear.
Then, a series of objects was thrown towards the back veranda. These were lemons from a neighbour’s tree and, after three hit and ricocheted from the veranda railings, the sensor lights were finally triggered. Hopkins seemed to be roughly plotting the shadow points in the yard for a possible entry. Suddenly I was blinded by a direct beam of light from his wandering torch, which had shone in the face of one of our infra-red lenses. Night had not just turned into day, it had whitewashed the screen, as if Hopkins had intended to seek it out. This final explosion of light was the last image to appear on our screens that night. After five minutes of waiting, Hearn’s voice came through the two-way.
‘I’ve got a sighting; he’s just removed a balaclava and he’s hiking it across Sydney Road. I knew this was where he was entering the block. Might have him nailed.’
Hearn had been following the shooting gallery hi-jinx but was not prepared to keep guard at the front of the property. From the rear of the home, he was banking on sighting Hopkins at a point about half a kilometre in a direct line west from where he’d been throwing his missiles. This was where Hearn had always suspected was the launching spot. But he was on foot and well behind his target.
‘I’m still a hundred away, I’ll try and catch up,’ Hearn told us.
‘Don’t let him see you though, mate,’ I replied. ‘We need him back.’
He didn’t reach Hopkins in time. He’d crossed the road and run through a block of apartments that had a public walk-through archway leading into another street. If he had a vehicle there, it was gone. But this was definitely one of his launch spots. We now knew his entry and exit methods, although we had no visual recording of his movements.
The night was not a total failure; the clear recordings of torch light on the property added to our growing pile of visual material. It was certainly suspenseful, even on tape. It was heart-pounding work for all of us, seeing this flash of light in pitch darkness, imagining his departure through heavy bush and over several fences. Not a normal day at the office for sure. And Hearn’s work was vital. We now had an opportunity to follow Hopkins and trap him. But why was he running? There was no one on his tail when he left the property and his frantic sprint across the road had begun well before Hearn had entered the same road. He was in a hurry, which could not possibly have been related to what had gone on in the backyard. Again Hopkins actions were puzzling, unless of course, he had busted the operation with one laser-like beam from his torch.
As the crew packed up that night, there weren’t too many words spoken. The pressure was well and truly on. The program’s bosses were not throwing any further technical and human resources into the story—not even for one extra night. There had been an attempt back at the office by those who weren’t involved in the assignment to cast doubt on Libby’s motives and have the story shelved. It was motivated by jealousy and was nothing new in the competitive game of commercial current affairs. My attempt to bleed an extension from the program’s executive ranks only highlighted to them how improbable it was that we could track down the stalker. One senior producer even accused Libby of being a ‘loop’ and wanted the story wrapped up, written and edited as a small news-sized story. My fiery reaction to the idea was enough to quell the argument. But the Balgowlah project had just one final evening to find the man and prove the premise. We had one fin
al roll of the die to come. I was still cocky enough to think we could do it, an assertion based in bravado rather than common sense.
13
LAST ROLL
The tactics would remain almost the same—after all, there were few other options available. There was one change; equipped with our knowledge of Hopkins’ exit route, the camera crew was back in their car and stationed a block away, waiting for the call to head off Hopkins after his visit. Libby and I were the only ones in the house this time, both the crew and investigator had to be mobile.
As the crew arrived to set up about two hours before dark, as tapes and batteries were lined up for the last time, I tried to imbue the others with a feeling of hope. We needed luck and, at the very least, we were doing everything in our power to make that luck. I told Libby and the crew that I was certain that the previous night’s shenanigans were a prelude for a proper attempt by Hopkins to get closer to his target. We shouldn’t be put off by his premature departure. I felt it had nothing to do with our presence. I suspected he was a quite a busy boy. We’d done all the preparation anyone could do in the circumstances and I felt confident we could film our man up close. Even without perfect identification, if he did front and was brazen enough to get in full view of the infra-red cameras, the show would have its story and the momentum to take it to the next level.
On that final night of filming, no one had much to say. We knew our roles. The crew was in position even before Libby arrived home, just before dark. She was feeling uneasy about all the trouble the program had gone to, based on her say so, without a result. She was nowhere near as confident as we were.
