Into the Darkness

by Robin Bowles

  Neil agreed immediately and told Lorne he’d call him when all was ready. He set up the chute entrance on a platform above a section of chute above a soft landing.

  On 18 February, Lorne arrived with Natalie, Russell, Jeannette, Viv, and Sarah. Sarah, who was in training for the world women’s boxing championship, went first. Again she managed to climb into the chute feet first, but her shoulders were too wide to continue down the shaft.

  Viv had the next go. While she was trying to manoeuvre herself into the chute, she sat on the edge of the door, causing the sides to buckle inwards, so that the bolts in the side popped out. This made the flap tip backwards, leaving Viv holding on to the frame by her fingertips. But she persevered.

  She slid her body into the opening with one arm extended up behind her to prevent the springs from closing the door on her arms before she was through. As she moved into the shaft, the weight distribution changed and the door started closing before she was through. Finally, after overcoming these difficulties, she flew down the shaft onto the mattress with her hands held above her head. Neil Bone observed that if Phoebe had gone down the same way, her hands would have been injured as the flap sprang back and closed on them before she fell.

  Lorne also wanted to test whether it was possible for another person to put someone into the chute. He had Viv simulate unconsciousness while Russell picked her up, put her over his shoulder, head dangling down his back, and dropped her into the chute feet first. As Russell had a free hand to hold the flap open, this was relatively easy. Viv hit the mattress for a second time.

  Lorne had now shown that it was possible for a sober person of the right size, strength, and agility to fall down the chute. Against that, he asserted it would have been beyond Phoebe’s capacity to duplicate what had just been done. In addition, Neil Bone was adamant that a body couldn’t survive intact on passing through the compactor when it was in ‘auto’ mode.

  No one had taken note of the settings when Phoebe was found, but forensic photos taken on the night showed that the setting was on auto. So why weren’t Phoebe’s injuries more extensive? It was another mystery.

  Neil later conducted some experiments of his own with a compactor on his manufacturing site, using timber of various sizes. When the compactor blade descended on the thinner piece of timber, which was about 6 mm thick, it snapped in half and proceeded through the hole to the bins below. A larger piece (about 10 cm x 5 cm) was deeply dented, but the blade then retracted and only came down again after it sensed the timber was gone.

  Neil reckoned that the only way Phoebe could have passed through without being crushed was if the compactor had been switched from automatic to manual. This would have required someone to enter the compactor room and change the setting, first from automatic to manual and then back to automatic, leaving Phoebe bleeding on the floor. This seemed an unlikely scenario. But the CCTV of the doorway to the compactor room had been taped over, so it was impossible to find out if anyone had entered or left the room.

  *

  Meanwhile, other fragments of evidence were filtering through. At Balencea, Ruth Foster* had been in the lift shortly before 4 p.m. on the day of Phoebe’s death. Also in the lift was a male stranger, quite stocky, with dark brown hair. He was wearing a light-coloured top and dark pants, carrying an object about 20 cm long and 10 cm wide. He got into the lift on B1, and pressed 12 without a fob. He must have been ‘buzzed up’ by someone on Level 12. Ruth later told Eric Giammario about this, but he said the Homicide investigation was over. Her information wasn’t passed on until the police interviewed Eric many months later.

  I rang Ruth and asked her if she could still remember accurately. On a scale of 1 to 10, how definite could she be that the man had pressed the button for the twelfth floor? She was more than definite, she was ‘absolutely positive’. And she said he certainly got out after she left the lift on Level 8.

  Of course, eyewitnesses make mistaken identifications of suspects all the time. Some people are doing life in prison as a result of witnesses’ errors. But Ruth sounded very certain, and why would she make it up?

  Later on, police released a photo taken from some recovered bits of CCTV footage, asking for public assistance to identify a stocky man in a light blue T-shirt who’d shown up on the footage. Knowing Phoebe had been absent for three hours from all who knew her on the Tuesday night before she died, I wondered about that man. Could Phoebe have made some arrangement with him to visit her, bring drugs maybe? Did Phoebe buzz him in?

  Police eventually interviewed the occupants of the other three apartments on Level 12 and established that none of them had buzzed anyone up that day. If Phoebe buzzed him up, she was still alive when he arrived at Level 12 — assuming that he did arrive at Level 12. So who was he? And would the lift log show if someone was buzzed up to Level 12 without having to use a security fob? I’d need to check this question.

  Beth, the concierge, returned to work after being away for a bit over three weeks. She was still feeling very fragile and nervy, and her feelings weren’t helped by the teasing she got from the other staff, who showed her CCTV of her running up and down the hall in distress after she’d made the emergency calls on the night. They called her ‘Ping-pong Girl’ because they said she’d been bouncing off the walls.

  I found this information curious. If the CCTV footage they were teasing her about was taken in the corridor on the night, that footage hadn’t been shown to anyone involved in the investigation. Why not? Where was it?

  Beth later told Lorne that the one person who’d been kind to her was Ant’s friend Christo Van Egmond. In the past, Christo had always walked by without acknowledging her, but he came in to see her soon after she’d returned to work. He brought her a bottle of wine and some chocolates to cheer her up.

  Beth told Lorne she was a bit uncomfortable about the attention, as she hardly knew Christo. He told her Phoebe had killed herself and ‘was beyond help. She didn’t want to be helped.’ He asked Beth questions about finding the body, which made her even more uncomfortable. She’d tried to put that night out of her mind. She said that Christo dropped by a couple more times, but she finally asked him to stop.

  Gradually, the notoriety swirling around Balencea died down and the residents settled back into their routines. Ant went back to work and so did Natalie. Len continued to see patients and Lorne went off to his music teaching three days a week. But there was no sense of closure for anyone.

  CHAPTER 8

  DETERMINATION

  Before an inquest takes place, police prepare a brief for the Coroner. The officer responsible for this is the ‘informant’, and the informant for Phoebe’s inquest brief was Detective Senior Constable Brendan Payne.

  Detective Payne has boyish looks, which probably lull the bad guys into a false sense of security at times. He has a nice face and friendly manner, and he’s quite softly spoken. He knew he had to tread softly in this case, as there were important people involved. He’d already tried to assert himself unsuccessfully when George Hampel wanted to accompany Ant to an interview. Payne was under no illusions about the importance of getting this one right.

  He made exhaustive enquiries. On 10 March 2011, he returned to Balencea to execute a warrant to take possession of Ant’s iMac. This was probably an exercise in futility, as it was more than three months since Phoebe’s death. Phoebe’s own computer showed no record of activity since October, two months before she died. Only one item of interest showed up on Ant’s computer — a Coroners Office Form 25, the form for the release of a body, which was shown as being downloaded from the coronial website on 19 October 2010 — months before Phoebe died. Why would either Ant or Phoebe have done this? It was a puzzle then and still is. Ant denied downloading it, and the police finally concluded that the date of download registered on the computer must have been incorrect. I consider this a leap of faith, because I never argue with my computer’s memory!

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bsp; Payne returned several times to Balencea to obtain more details from Eric Giammario about the security system and the workings of the compactor. He’d call by and say to Eric, ‘What if this was how someone accessed the building?’ Walking together through the building, sometimes edging around or ducking under the areas covered by cameras, he and Eric would go back to the office and see if they’d been picked up on CCTV.

  Payne became quite close to some of Ant’s friends. One in particular told me they’d meet for coffee so that Payne could discuss various issues that were troubling him. Brendan Payne was clearly worried about many aspects of the investigation, and the stress he was under took its toll.

  In one of the many coincidences that occur every time I write a book, a girlfriend of mine asked me to drive her to and from an appointment to have her nails done, as she’d recently had an operation and was unable to drive herself. My friend was a regular at the salon in Albert Park, so the chitchat went on while I sat nearby and thumbed through a magazine.

  ‘And how’s your hubby?’ my friend asked conversationally.

  ‘Oh, not all that good,’ the nail technician replied. ‘They’ve made him take three months stress leave because he’s investigating the suicide of the girl down the rubbish chute in St Kilda Road and they say it’s suicide, but he’s not sure.’

  Suddenly my ears pricked up. Wow! Did I want to ask some questions? Of course! But I decided not to. It would be pretty unfair to Mrs Payne, if that was who she was. I was hoping my friend would probe further, but not being a crime writer, she let it pass with a ‘tut, tut’ and the conversation moved on. Amazing what you learn in beauty salons!

  Payne had three months off that time, and Lorne told me he took another two months the following year. Preparing the brief was a balancing act. He held ‘welfare’ meetings with Phoebe’s family and friends, reassured the Hampels, and tried not to highlight the inadequacies of his colleagues’ decisions in the early days after Phoebe died.

  The investigation also kept him busy. He obtained more information from Neil Bone, the owner of Wastech, including detailed drawings and explanations of how the compactor worked.

  He spent a lot of time trying to pinpoint when Phoebe’s iPhone had been taken for repair. Lorne Campbell had impressed on him the importance of this date, because of the ‘tomato soup’ text. The obvious question was, did Phoebe really send it?

  Payne tracked down the repairman, who said he had no paperwork to show when the phone was brought in but did have a receipt from when George Hampel picked it up some days later. I found that puzzling. Why wouldn’t a repair shop issue a receipt when it took a $600 iPhone for repair, but issue a receipt when it was collected?

  Payne and his helpers exhaustively analysed the phone records from Phoebe’s two phones, Ant’s phone, and the apartment landline. They couldn’t check Phoebe’s emails or text messages — including the puzzling ‘tomato soup’ message — as someone had erased them. They also checked the security swipe records, looking for evidence that Ant had returned to check on Phoebe in mid-morning on 1 December, but found none.

  He asked Ant to come in to try to clarify that issue and the date the phone was dropped in for repair. The interview was inconclusive.

  Payne checked with the fire brigade about the likely cause of the false alarms and was told that workmen in the building that day had probably set them off by accident.

  In Phoebe’s jeans pocket, the forensic examiners had found a piece of paper with a phone number on it. He discovered that it was a pre-paid number and had been disconnected. Both the name of the purchaser, Tina Smith, and the address, which was somewhere in Greensborough, were invented.

  Payne also visited forensic pathologist Dr Matthew Lynch, seeking clarity about the bruises to Phoebe’s wrists, shoulders, and neck, where there were no surrounding injuries to account for them. He got the same answer I did later: some form of blunt trauma; couldn’t speculate on the cause and unable to say when they happened. After this meeting, Dr Lynch prepared an additional report.

  Payne asked a forensic physician, Dr Morris Odell, for his opinion about whether Stilnox mixed with alcohol could possibly have been a precipitating factor in Phoebe’s death. He also showed Dr Odell Lorne’s re-enactment video with Viv and Sarah. He asked Dr Odell to prepare a report for the Coroner.

  And Payne had to fit all this into his day with no let-up in his usual job. No wonder he was stressed. The months went by with no sign of an inquest on the horizon.

  *

  The Victorian Coroners Act 2008 sets out the criteria that make it necessary to report a death in Victoria to the Coroner. The very first is that the death ‘appears to have been unexpected, unnatural or violent or to have resulted, directly or indirectly, from an accident or injury’. You could certainly apply that description to Phoebe’s death.

  Once a death is reported, the Coroner’s key task is to establish its cause. If police and medicos have identified the cause of death to the Coroner’s satisfaction, then he or she can determine that the death isn’t reportable, even if it was initially reported as such, and no inquest will be held. At the other extreme, an inquest must be held if the Coroner suspects that the death resulted from a criminal act such as homicide. In the middle is a large area of discretion where the Coroner can decide whether or not a hearing is required, and if so, whether it is an open inquest.

  The Coroner may rule that a hearing can be done ‘on the papers’, which means the determination is based on written reports from police, medicos, and others rather than by hearing oral evidence. An open inquest, by contrast, is a public investigation in which witnesses are cross-examined and compelled to answer questions about the circumstances of the death.

  This was what Phoebe’s family wanted, but the Coroner, His Honour Peter White, wasn’t entirely convinced an open inquest was required. He set 5 December 2012, just over two years from Phoebe’s death, for a mention hearing to take submissions on the matter.

  Natalie and Len were told they’d need legal representation, as the other parties would be well represented. Ant would be bound to get the best possible advice, and the police hadn’t exactly covered themselves with glory in the early days of the investigation, so they’d have someone covering their backs.

  The first task for the family would be to have the Coroner agree to an open inquest. If they succeeded, during the inquest itself, each person’s counsel would attempt to tease out the full story by asking questions of the witnesses that the other barristers might not wish to ask. Being independent, the Coroner can ask any witness anything if he thinks their answers may assist him. It’s not an adversarial system, but it can become a bit heated, with barristers objecting to different lines of enquiry or questioning the relevance of particular statements given in evidence. In the end, the Coroner rules, and the Coroner’s powers are much broader than those of a judge.

  The Handsjuks were starting at a disadvantage because they knew little about the system. Phoebe’s parents had rarely consulted a lawyer in their lives, and they were suddenly being cast into a complex situation. When extraordinary things happen to ordinary people, they either swim or sink.

  And the Handsjuks weren’t wealthy. How were they to get the best representation on Phoebe’s behalf, which is how they saw it, when they were told their costs could exceed $60,000?

  They also felt the weight of the senior Hampels’ influence in judicial circles. Every second lawyer or barrister around seemed to have trained under Professor George Hampel or briefed George Hampel QC. Almost every policeman had given evidence at some stage to His Honour George Hampel or Her Honour Felicity Hampel. The lower echelons of the legal profession are always in awe of judges, as are the police.

  The situation was especially tricky in Melbourne. In spite of being Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne retains many characteristics of a village. It has a distinct social structure tied to old schools,
exclusive residential areas, and wealth. It’s pretty much the same anywhere in the world. Position, property, and influence are always in play.

  There’s no suggestion the Hampel family took any active role in the Coroner’s deliberations. But there were those who perceived Ant as being possibly involved in Phoebe’s death and who therefore believed that a public hearing was in the public interest, no matter how it affected the sensitivities of the family.

  When I reflected on the situation, I sympathised with Ant’s parents, who’d suddenly found themselves in an embarrassing position. Through no fault of their own, their son’s issues had thrown an unwelcome spotlight on them. It reminded me of the environment when I was growing up. My father had a fairly important job, and whenever I even looked like stepping out of line (unseemly behaviour, going out dressed in black, wearing too much makeup — the list was endless) my mother would exhort me, ‘Think of your father’s position!’ And his position wasn’t nearly as elevated as George Hampel’s.

  Natalie and I had a long chat about the problems they faced finding a lawyer who could help them. Barristers operate on the principle of ‘next cab off the rank’. If you approach a barrister (usually through your lawyer) they’ll take your case if they’re available unless it conflicts with other clients’ cases. But it was difficult to persuade anyone to represent the family members at Phoebe’s inquest. Some lawyers agreed at first, but read the brief and withdrew. Others refused outright. Natalie felt as if she was in a washing machine full of soapsuds where she couldn’t see anything.

  Eventually, she found a legal team headed by Simon Moglia, who is primarily a criminal defence lawyer. Simon came to the bar in 2006 from Victoria Legal Aid, where he was in the Public Defender’s Unit, representing accused people who have no money. The law was his second career; he’d first worked nationally and internationally on youth policy, HIV, and sexuality. He’s what my husband would describe as a ‘bleeding heart’, but to me he sounded like an all-round good guy.