Into the Darkness

by Robin Bowles

  Obviously, if she was incapacitated in any way (for example by the combined effects of ethanol and prescribed medications) I am not in the position to exclude the possibility of involvement of other parties.

  Dr Lynch’s report was reviewed by Professor Stephen Cordner, head of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, on 9 December 2010, and sworn as a statement on 23 November 2011, almost a year after Phoebe died. It wasn’t made available to Phoebe’s family at that stage.

  Dr Lynch was also asked about the likely time of Phoebe’s death. He couldn’t be specific about this, because seven hours had elapsed between when she was last seen alive and the discovery of her body. He hadn’t attempted to take a rectal temperature, which is sometimes a useful guide to time of death. Forensic pathologist Dr Shelley Robertson, who has enough letters after her name to fill a book, told me years ago, ‘The time of death is somewhere between when the deceased was last seen alive and when the body is discovered. We rarely get closer than that.’ In Phoebe’s case, this seemed about right.

  *

  In addition to the autopsy, other tests were underway. The notes and other written material seized by Bernard Carrick were analysed to ascertain if Phoebe was the writer.

  Blood taken during Phoebe’s autopsy was sent for matching to samples taken at Balencea. Samples were later sent to Professor Olaf Drummer, the head of forensic scientific services at Monash University, with a request to comment on the level of substances in Phoebe’s blood and in particular the possible effects of Stilnox given her intoxicated state.

  The workman who’d injured himself in the building the day before Phoebe’s death was tracked down and asked for a blood sample.

  The analysis of blood samples from the apartment study doorframe, the computer mouse on the study desk, the inside of the wheelie bin, and the twelfth-floor refuse room floor and door showed that Phoebe’s blood could not be excluded as the source. Forensic officers use this terminology to mean there is a match.

  The workman couldn’t be ruled out as the source of the blood in the lift and the B1 parking area, meaning it was probably his.

  Phoebe’s clothes were sent to the police forensic services laboratory along with photos from the autopsy, so that the forensic officer could match Phoebe’s injuries to the damage to the jeans. This turned out to be not entirely possible.

  The jeans were already stiff and heavily bloodstained. The damage to the area around the buttocks and the lower right leg, where Phoebe’s most severe injuries were found, seemed to suggest that the jeans were being worn as usual when those injuries were inflicted. However, there were two long tears in the jeans, one 17 cm long on the back panel along the side seam and the other about 23 cm long on the right front leg. Neither had gone right through the fabric, and neither lined up with any of Phoebe’s injuries.

  The forensic officer pointed out that in her experience, injuries to a body and damage to clothing don’t always line up, so her findings weren’t too unusual. The effects depended on several factors, such as the texture of the garment, the looseness or tightness of fit, and the type of implement causing the damage. For example, a sharp knife would cut fabric, whereas a serrated one would tear it.

  So, I wondered, if the jeans were in their normal position when Phoebe entered the chute, how did they unzip, loosen their leather belt and end up around her knees? Or, if her jeans were already below her knees when she entered the chute, how could she possibly have climbed in unassisted? She would have been hobbled by her trousers.

  The forensic officer said much later in court, ‘In my opinion, no conclusion could be drawn as to the position of the jeans on the deceased from this damage.’

  There’s no room for speculation in scientific reports.

  *

  A major omission in the investigation of Phoebe’s death was that the police had failed to seize CCTV footage from Balencea or the hard drive that accompanied the system. One possible reason was that the crew who attended on that first night didn’t work again until Monday 6 December. It was also Monday before a new crew was allocated to the investigation, in the form of Detective Senior Constable Jason Wallace and Detective Sergeant Gerard Clanchy, both of Homicide. Though it’s universally accepted that the first 48 hours after a death are crucial, no further investigations were undertaken for more than three days.

  On the night of Phoebe’s death, nobody acted on Eric Giammario’s warning that the CCTV system ‘looped’ and obliterated existing footage at short intervals. The police weren’t even involved when the footage was eventually downloaded. Giammario had it done by Sielox, the company that supplied the system. It transpired that the CCTV camera covered the hallway leading to the compactor room and the ground floor lift entrance, but the footage from 2 December was no longer available by the time police went to examine it.

  Police didn’t take statements from Giammario until 10 January 2012, more than a year after the event. When they finally got around to it, he was so nervous about not recalling events accurately that he sought legal advice about whether he needed representation. It was months before police took statements from Ant Hampel’s staff to confirm his movements on 2 December; one staff member was interviewed four months later and two others eleven months later. No statements were taken from the ambulance officers (though they wouldn’t have been able to say much anyway, as they weren’t allowed to examine the body). Police didn’t have detailed discussions with the manufacturer of the garbage chute to ascertain how it worked and discover if Phoebe’s injuries were consistent with the compactor’s operations. The investigators didn’t even try to ascertain if Phoebe’s body could have fitted into the chute, or whether someone with a blood alcohol reading of 0.16 would have been able to climb into the chute unaided. Of interest also should have been the absence of finger and/or palm prints around the flap at the entrance to the rubbish chute. How could Phoebe have manoeuvred her way into the chute without leaving traces? Especially if she’d cut her finger on the broken glass, which is how the police speculated that her blood got on the computer mouse.

  Finally, although Phoebe’s blood was found on the study desk and the mouse, police didn’t seize the computer to check when it was last used, which may have provided a closer indication of Phoebe’s time of death. If Phoebe had suicided, it was conceivable that she’d left a message on the computer.

  Some time later, Phoebe’s brother Tom, who knew her email passwords, got into her account and discovered that all her emails had been wiped. Police never found out what was in the messages or when they were deleted. If police had checked the computer on 2 December, the emails may have still been there; if not, specialists may have been able to retrieve them.

  Lorne Campbell was certain that his granddaughter couldn’t have committed suicide. For a start, he didn’t believe she’d do something like that in the midst of so many family events. Not only was she intending to celebrate her father’s birthday on the night she died, but early next morning she planned to go and help her mother set up for her brother’s eighteenth birthday party. Lorne’s own seventieth birthday was only days away, with a big family gathering planned.

  It was also incomprehensible that she’d have chosen to commit suicide in such a bizarre way. There was no other recorded instance in the whole country of suicide by rubbish chute. How would she have even thought of it? If she’d wanted to kill herself, she had a twelfth-floor balcony to tip herself over and an apartment filled with pills, a cocktail of which could easily have been deadly. Why struggle into a garbage chute?

  There were other things that didn’t fit. If she’d committed suicide, why didn’t she leave a note? This was most uncharacteristic of Phoebe, the young woman who wrote everything down. Why didn’t she call for help? And if she’d been planning to kill herself, why bother to obey the fire alarm that morning? During the dreadful days after Phoebe’s death, Lorne concentrated his hopes on the police. He hoped his form
er colleagues would ask the same questions and the Homicide Squad would uncover the real reason for Phoebe’s terrible death.

  *

  On Tuesday, 7 December, Detective Senior Constable Jason Wallace of Homicide arranged a meeting at Balencea for the following day. Those in attendance would be Dr Matthew Lynch, Neil Bone, the managing director of Wastech, the company that made and installed the waste disposal system, Senior Constable Bernard Carrick, Detective Sergeant Mark Butterworth, and Detective Senior Constable Brendan Payne from South Melbourne Crime Investigation Unit (CIU).

  Brendan Payne had been informed early that morning that it was likely he’d be taking over the investigation to prepare a brief for the Coroner. It’s quite rare for Homicide members to prepare coronial briefs, and Brendan Payne’s station covered Balencea, so he’d drawn the short straw. At 9.30 a.m., after looking into the compactor room, they all trooped up to the twelfth floor and crammed into the small room from which it was thought Phoebe fell to her death.

  At the meeting, it became clear that Dr Lynch and Neil Bone had quite different views about what had happened to Phoebe. Dr Lynch considered the chute would have been wide enough to accommodate a person of Phoebe’s build if she could negotiate the opening feet first. He did concede, however, that he couldn’t discount the possibility of another person (or persons) putting her into the chute if she’d been disabled or unconscious.

  Neil Bone emphatically asserted that it would have been impossible for anyone to survive the passage through the compactor if it was set to automatic. On that setting, it chopped the rubbish and compressed it into 400mm blocks before allowing it through, to maximise space in the bins. He didn’t believe Phoebe could have passed through the compactor without sustaining more serious injuries unless another person (or persons) had been involved. He asked what setting the refuse system had been on when Phoebe was found. The police said they didn’t know. They obviously hadn’t viewed the crime-scene photos, although they were in the slim file on the case.

  Brendan Payne took possession of the file, which also contained the few existing statements, phone records, videos of the scene, and the autopsy report.

  *

  The same day, Tuesday 7 December, Len and Natalie had an emotional discussion about the meeting at Ant’s the day before, the ramifications of a power of attorney, and the thought that they wouldn’t be permitted to farewell their daughter in the way they wanted and needed to. At the end of it, they engaged a solicitor to advise them on the status of senior next of kin and to try to obtain control of Phoebe’s body. They instructed the solicitor to write to the Coroner advising him of their presumed status as next of kin and asking to have Phoebe’s body released to them.

  Later that day, the solicitor advised them that Ant had agreed to release Phoebe’s body to the family, but he wouldn’t agree to relinquish his status as senior next of kin. Len and Natalie were so relieved that they could make arrangements for Phoebe’s cremation and the disposal of her ashes that they didn’t push on the other issue.

  Also on Tuesday, Homicide detective Jason Wallace went back to Balencea and obtained what was left of the CCTV footage for the night of 2 December. Everything except the front entrance and the foyer had been taped over. He also obtained the key fobs’ security monitor printout for Apartment 1201 for that day.

  At around 3 p.m., Wallace went to Ant’s apartment, where Ant was with friends and family, and took possession of Phoebe’s iPhone, which George Hampel said he’d just collected from a repair shop in Richmond.

  The same day, Ant posted a notice on Facebook saying: ‘For those of you around the world who don’t know the sad news, my partner phoebe struggled terrible depression much of her life. she took her life on Thursday to ease her pain, to be at peace. There will be a memorial next week.’

  This post caused a bit of a flurry among those who did know the sad news. Several people wondered how Ant knew Phoebe’s death was suicide when there wasn’t yet an official verdict.

  *

  A long email from Ant arrived at lunchtime on 8 December, addressed to Len and Natalie and copied to Tom, Nik, Jeannette, George, Felicity, Sue, and Robert Owen. Ant said he was deeply hurt that Len and Natalie had challenged his position by lodging an application with the Coroner to be treated as Phoebe’s senior next of kin ‘without the courtesy of consulting me’.

  He said that he had never intended to prevent them from having information about her death. He’d informed the Coroner’s office that he had no objection to having Len and Natalie listed as interested persons ‘so we all receive the same information’. He didn’t wish to have a fight over her body but would ‘permit’ Len and Natalie to organise funeral directors and make arrangements for her cremation.

  It was an emotional email. Ant included an extract from the letter he had written to the Coroner defending his position as senior next of kin. In that letter, he said he didn’t want to ‘sully or dishonour Phoebe’s memory by engaging in a dispute with her parents over who has the best claim to take charge of her body now. My pain over their conduct is insignificant compared to the pain Phoebe would feel if she knew they had taken this course.’

  He also objected to what Len and Natalie had said in part of their letter to the Coroner, where they’d asked that the task of investigating Phoebe’s death be given to a coroner who would have no conflict of interest through any prior association with Felicity, his stepmother. Ant said this was a ‘slur … suggesting some improper influence’ on Felicity’s part. He added that in the discussion at the apartment, Felicity had merely tried to guide Natalie towards the counselling and advice services available through the office of the Chief Coroner, who was Felicity’s ‘professional colleague, and a personal friend’.

  Ant said he believed he had demonstrated his integrity by agreeing to the release of Phoebe’s body, but Len and Natalie’s actions had caused him to ‘lose all trust in dealing with you in making any further arrangements to commemorate Phoebe’s life. We will be arranging a private memorial. Jeannette and the boys are of course welcome to take part.’ By implication, Natalie and Len were not. He concluded by saying that he wouldn’t participate in any further correspondence.

  *

  Around the same time as this email came in on Wednesday 8 December, Detective Jason Wallace phoned Len, seeking a meeting at his Southbank apartment that afternoon. Len rang Natalie to tell her to be there as well. They were hoping the detective was going to tell them he had a suspect. But no, quite the contrary. Jason Wallace, accompanied by his boss, Detective Sergeant Gerard Clanchy, told them the involvement of Homicide was at an end. Investigators had concluded that Phoebe’s death wasn’t suspicious. They believed she committed suicide. The case was now finalised from Homicide’s point of view.

  Len and Natalie asked what would happen now. Nothing, they were told, unless the Coroner decided to look into Phoebe’s death. An inquest was a possibility, but not a foregone conclusion.

  The last thing Jason Wallace did that week was to visit the workplace of the cabinetmaker who’d cut himself at Balencea on 2 December. Having confirmed with this man that he’d bled in the lift and the car park, Wallace sent the final reports over to Brendan Payne.

  When Lorne Campbell heard what Homicide had told Len and Natalie, he was flabbergasted. In effect, there had only been a three-day investigation by Homicide into his granddaughter’s strange death. Lorne believed it wasn’t enough.

  He made an appointment with Sergeant Clanchy at Homicide for Friday, 10 December. Police don’t usually like old cops becoming involved in current investigations, but this was an unusual death, and Clanchy agreed to see him.

  *

  Before the meeting, Lorne compiled a long list of things the police should have done, but hadn’t. They hadn’t taken the CCTV footage on the night. They hadn’t interviewed the building manager about security systems or asked if he’d noticed anything unusual th
at afternoon. They hadn’t interviewed Ant Hampel’s staff to verify his movements on that day, which is Investigation 101 for the circle of people around anyone who dies in strange circumstances. They hadn’t seized the computer from the apartment to see if there was anything useful on it — a suicide note, for example. They’d brushed aside the broken glass, the bruises on Phoebe’s wrists and upper arms, and the blood in the apartment, on the mouse and on the doorframe, arguing that Phoebe had dropped the glass and cut herself. But could the dropped glass equally indicate a scuffle? Most important of all, apart from taking a cursory look on 7 December, police hadn’t confirmed that it was possible to commit suicide by way of the rubbish chute.

  Lorne expressed all these concerns and more in his meeting with Clanchy on 10 December. He also raised concerns about Phoebe’s iPhone. If Ant Hampel had taken the iPhone to be repaired on Wednesday morning when he left for work, Phoebe couldn’t have sent the ‘tomato soup’ text message on it that morning at 10.32. Also, the phone was working at 6.25 p.m. the previous day, because Ant had used it to send the message to Bren Hession asking after Phoebe.

  What Lorne wanted was a proper investigation. He believed that answers to these questions could shed more light on the circumstances surrounding Phoebe’s death and rule people in or out. That’s what police do, after all.

  But Detective Sergeant Clanchy was unmoved. He told Lorne that Homicide was satisfied that Phoebe committed suicide. Ant Hampel’s statement of 2 December had ‘checked out’. Lorne was at a loss as to how that could be so when none of Ant’s employees or friends had been interviewed except Christo Van Egmond. But over Lorne’s protestations, Clanchy said that nothing had been discovered to suggest that anyone else was involved. The Homicide investigation was at an end. The file had been sent to Brendan Payne to tidy up and prepare an inquest brief.

  *

  Lorne felt the Homicide investigation had already been compromised, and now it was over. Done and dusted. RIP Phoebe. But not if he had anything to do with it. He went to see Natalie, who was still in shock. She too couldn’t believe that Phoebe, for all her foibles, would have committed suicide, even if she’d considered it from time to time. Natalie was sure her love for her family would have stopped her.