Into the Darkness

by Robin Bowles

  After a while, Ant had offered to type the statement. O’Brien noted, ‘He laughed nervously and said, “I might be faster.” Hampel then began typing the statement. Immediately he stopped crying, he calmed down and seemed totally normal. At the bottom of page one of his statement, he appeared upset and cried again for approximately five to ten seconds.’

  Ms Siemensma returned to the police arrival at Balencea. She established that when they first arrived, Sergeant Forster had been the most senior police officer on the scene.

  He was asked how many bins had fallen and where.

  He thought there was only one, and it was ‘directly beside the deceased’.

  Ms Siemensma read from O’Brien’s statement: ‘We made sure that we physically didn’t step foot in the door, but I remember like leaning in to see the deceased.’ She added that Detective Angela Hay had noted, ‘MAS also arrived at this time, however, did not attend and view the room.’

  She asked O’Brien, ‘Is that a mistake? You say they did have a look inside?’

  ‘They definitely had a look inside. I was standing next to them.’

  ‘Why didn’t the police allow the ambulance paramedics to go in?’

  He reiterated that the police were treating the compactor room as a crime scene. In other words, they thought a murder had taken place.

  ‘There was a large-type machine in the middle of the room,’ O’Brien said. ‘I didn’t twig that it came from the chutes upstairs in the apartments.’ Why would he? He probably lives in a house and takes the garbage out to a rubbish bin.

  He’d been told on the radio at 7.15 p.m. that there was a ‘deceased female’. He’d answered that call on that premise.

  ‘To us as police officers, it was quite obvious that she was deceased. As far as the ambulance officers go, you’d have to ask them.’

  The Coroner asked on what he based that opinion.

  ‘The position of her body, and the colour of her face, quite white, the amount of blood — all those factors. To me it was quite obvious that she was deceased.’

  ‘Well, the colour of her face may indicate all sorts of possibilities,’ His Honour returned.

  ‘Possibly. I’m not a doctor. It did not even cross my mind that she was still alive. We didn’t go in because we didn’t want to disturb the scene. But if I had of thought she was alive, I definitely would have gone in.’

  Ms Siemensma asked him if there was any procedure or code of practice that covers a similar situation — someone in a room, not sure if dead or alive — as to whether ambulance paramedics go in, or does preservation of crime scene take priority?

  ‘Obviously preserve life,’ he replied.

  He didn’t notice if the manual/auto switch was on or off or flashing. He said that his suspicion on observing the scene as it was led him to believe either that the deceased person had been murdered in this room, or she’d been murdered elsewhere and put in this room.

  Ms Siemensma asked him about the controversial CCTV, or lack of it.

  O’Brien had written in his notes that Eric had said there was CCTV, but in ‘no way did he mention that it was looping. No way at all.’

  ‘Did he say it would be a good idea if the police started downloading if they needed the CCTV?’

  ‘May have, but not to me. I think that’s fairly crucial, and he didn’t mention anything of the sort to me.’

  ‘So, obtaining the CCTV would have been crucial?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  Hindsight is a marvellous thing, I thought.

  ‘Did you ask if you could take the CCTV hard drive away?’

  ‘No, I never asked that at all.’

  ‘Did you tell any other police officers about this?’

  ‘I can’t recall telling anyone on the night, no.’

  He said he hadn’t asked for a security printout of the key log access either.

  ‘Was there a reason you didn’t take a statement from Mr Giammario that night in relation to movements in and out of the room and the security?’

  ‘I was tasked to do something else. I was a uniform member at the scene, fairly low on the food chain. I did what I was told.’

  Ms Siemensma told him the concierge had given evidence that a police officer had said the girl had committed suicide. ‘Did you say that to her?’

  He said he hadn’t.

  O’Brien said that on the night, as he took note of Ant’s comments and observed his behaviour, he believed that Phoebe had been murdered.

  ‘I was quite suspicious of the whole scene, and his demeanour at the time I just found strange. I realise that people react differently to grief, but putting the two factors together, yeah, I did think was quite strange.’

  Moglia had his go next. He drew O’Brien’s attention to an asterisked note in the handwritten notes he’d taken at the doorway in Balencea. ‘The note says, “for the benefit”. What does that signify?’

  ‘I was forming the opinion that I didn’t believe he was as upset as what he was portraying and what was being said was for the benefit of the people in the room. I’m not sure if he knew that I was there, but it seemed as though he was saying it for the benefit of others.’

  Moglia went on to establish that O’Brien had attended many crime scenes and it wasn’t unusual for him to make notes.

  He asked about the training O’Brien had undergone to enable him to make a decision that life was extinct in a discovered body. Not much, it seemed.

  ‘Could you exclude Phoebe being comatose and close to death?’

  ‘No, it didn’t enter my mind at all.’

  O’Brien told the court that he’d walked back to Balencea with Ant and his supporters after police had taken his statement. As his apartment was now a crime scene, Ant had to sleep elsewhere and he wanted to get some belongings.

  O’Brien didn’t go up to the apartment with him. ‘I was well past knock-off time and, as I said, fairly low on the food chain.’ Other police were in charge of the scene when he left, and people couldn’t walk in and around the building uncontrolled.

  It was Galbally’s turn, and as I was expecting, he seized upon the list of observations and gave them a good shake in his best booming voice.

  ‘You were at the door whilst Mr Hampel and his family were in the room for about 53 minutes? And the group was talking?’

  ‘Mostly trying to comfort him.’

  ‘You captured 13 extracts from his conversation and included them in your statement? It took you 30 seconds to read those 13 sentences out. That’s only a small part of the 53 minutes you’re taking notes, isn’t it?’

  I wondered when he’d thought about timing the comments. I read them out aloud later, and it took me 40 seconds, but he’d made his point.

  ‘It was hard to write, hard to hear and make out what he was saying, and he obviously said other things that I didn’t record.’

  ‘So you’re only capturing about 13 sentences out of a conversation that takes something like nearly an hour. Pretty important to get the context correct, isn’t it? Because you don’t actually know the context in which those statements are made? You know what I mean by context, don’t you?’

  O’Brien replied, ‘Yeah, well, the context was that I thought he was saying it for the benefit of others.’ Touché.

  After getting O’Brien to agree that people show grief in different ways, Galbally had made his points and he sat down.

  ‘Always quit when you’re ahead’ is one of Galbally’s maxims.

  O’Neill’s job was a bit harder. He was striving to ensure the police emerged in their best light, even though the Coroner had stressed that he wasn’t going to judge the way they’d handled things. His Honour might not be judgmental, but O’Neill knew that nearly everyone else in the court would be.

  ‘Sergeant Forster was much more experienced than you, maybe 40 years i
n the job. Did each of you independently came to the view that you were confident that Phoebe was deceased?

  ‘Yeah, definitely. We were all of the opinion that she was deceased.’

  ‘When the ambulance officers arrived, did they ask to see her more closely?’

  ‘I don’t believe so,’ O’Brien replied. He thought they would have been let in if they had.

  He was read a passage from the ambulance officers’ notes saying that when they arrived the room was ‘a crime scene and they were unable to access the patient’.

  ‘I thought the scene was a crime scene. At no stage did I say that the ambulance officers couldn’t go in, none at all, nor did Sergeant Forster.’

  The Coroner excused O’Brien. Before leaving the witness box, he looked over at Natalie and said, ‘Can I just say one thing to Phoebe’s family? If I thought there was a chance that she was alive, I would have gone in and tried to save her.’

  After being reassured by O’Neill and the Coroner, he made his escape, staring at his polished shoes as he went.

  *

  Sergeant Healey was called. When asked if his statement was correct, he said he wanted to change his statement.

  ‘I’ve been made aware that I’ve incorrectly transcribed my notes in relation to the meeting that occurred on that afternoon.’ This was Ant and Christo’s meeting in the city that afternoon.

  ‘Someone’s told you that, have they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wondered who, but Ms Siemensma didn’t ask.

  ‘What would you like to change?’

  He said he’d got the time wrong. He’d written that it ‘finished at 3’ instead of ‘started at 3’, or something like that.

  Ms Siemensma said, ‘So that now reads, “had been with him at a meeting during the day at 3.00 p.m., that finished between four and 4.30 p.m.”?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct.’

  Quite an important mistake, I thought.

  Healey said he was the most senior officer on the scene until Detective Butterworth arrived at 8.46 p.m. His notes said he ‘did not enter CS [crime scene], attend premises only’.

  He was briefed by Sergeant Forster when he arrived. He had no knowledge about how or why Phoebe’s body came to be where it was.

  ‘Did you look inside the room at all?’

  ‘No. My policy is the less people that go into a CS the better. If I don’t need to go in there, I don’t go in. I was informed that it had been secured and I took that as having been done, with someone guarding each of the entrances and exits.’

  ‘Antony Hampel approached you at about 8.10 looking for his flatmate. Could you clarify, did he use the word “flatmate” or is that your word?’

  He said, ‘It’s my recollection he used the term “flatmate”.’

  He said that shortly after Ant had come down and described Phoebe to him, he sought more information from Sergeant Forster. ‘I then went up and spoke further to Antony. It was within probably five minutes.’

  He said he walked right into the apartment, into the main lounge room area. He could recall seeing broken glass, but couldn’t say whether he saw it the first time he visited or the second. He remembered seeing glass on the kitchen floor.

  ‘When you went up there, Mr Hampel showed you Phoebe’s handbag and mobile phone. Could you look at the photos you have there? Is that how the bag and the notes looked?’

  ‘From memory, yes, not 100 per cent sure, but I think that’s the case, it was on the kitchen bench.’

  ‘Okay. You say Mr Hampel showed you the mobile phone. There’s some suggestions that Phoebe had two mobile phones. She had a Nokia phone and she had an iPhone. Do you remember which phone Mr Hampel showed you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I didn’t do a thorough search, I was just trying to establish what had happened.’

  ‘There’s a reference to there being a shrine on the bed in the master bedroom, with a photo of Antony Hampel and a photo of a cat, and some candles on a bedside table. Did you recall seeing any of that?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  Healey then told the court that by now he was pretty sure the dead girl downstairs was Phoebe, after seeing photos in the apartment. He’d left Ant alone in the apartment while he went back downstairs to consult with his colleagues. ‘My aim was to try and notify the members downstairs of what was occurring, and then deal with anything after that.’

  Don’t the police get issued with mobile phones? I wondered. We later discovered that they did, but Healey said his didn’t work in the apartment, which was why he had to go downstairs.

  Ms Siemensma was on to it. ‘Given that you didn’t know the circumstances of how Phoebe came to be where she was, wouldn’t it have been prudent to ask Mr Hampel to also leave the apartment and leave the belongings where they were?’

  ‘With hindsight, yes, it probably would have been.’

  Healey later went back to 1201 and was with Ant when his mother and stepfather arrived. He said that he’d been under the impression that everything was secure at the main front entrance to the building. ‘But I found out that they’d actually entered from the car park directly into the lift and come straight up.’

  Ms Siemensma quoted from his notes on the night. ‘“Parents of Antony arrived from the car park, straight in — question mark, question mark.” What are the question marks for?’

  ‘I’ll check my day book.’

  His procedures weren’t all that good. Can’t remember, no times recorded, people tramping through the building unexplained? Did he ever find an answer to those question marks? Perhaps Sue and Robert had arrived at the garage roller door while Healey was downstairs and Ant had buzzed them in to the visitor car park. In our building, a visitor who’s been buzzed in has a few minutes to walk to the lift, press the button for the floor they’re visiting and go up. All in the same buzz-in. And those buzz-ins, Eric told me later, weren’t accurately recorded.

  Anyway, there were Robert and Sue, having eluded a cordon of Victoria’s finest.

  The Coroner asked a really simple question, given that Healey had now established that the dead person in the compactor room lived in apartment 1201. ‘Couldn’t you have said, “Wait outside, please. I can’t allow you in here at this point”, or something similar?’

  “I did eventually, but it was all very dynamic,’ the officer explained. ‘Antony was very upset, there was lots of crying and tears and hugs, so as soon as I possibly could, still trying to be sensitive as well, I got them out of there. But we didn’t really have anywhere to put them, because the ground floor was full of police — we didn’t have a room. One was organised later.’

  Healey was so caught up with being sensitive that he didn’t take any photos of the broken glass, Phoebe’s belongings, the blood marks, nada. At 8.46 p.m., he shepherded the family downstairs and went to brief Butterworth, who’d just arrived. (The information about when he did this came from Butterworth, not Healey; he didn’t record the time.) He had no notes about CCTV and had no memory of thinking about it on the night.

  Mr Moglia asked him some penetrating questions. ‘On the night, was it part of your primary responsibility as the sergeant in control of the scene to preserve the crime scene downstairs?’

  ‘Yes, but I was more concerned with notifying Antony that I believed Phoebe had been found. I hadn’t decided that was a crime scene at that point. That occurred sort of after that. My first concern was for Antony at the time.’

  What?? I wrote in my notes. The ambos had arrived at 7.30 p.m. and were told the compactor room was a crime scene. The apartment was clearly linked to Phoebe, so it was a crime scene as well. Is Healey saying that everyone else was treating the compactor room as a crime scene while he was still not sure? The scene had been secured (or he thought it was), a CS log was being maintained, and he was still deciding? Puhhleese!

  Mr Moglia as
ked him if he saw the brand of Phoebe’s phone when he was in the apartment. Was there more than one?

  Healey referred to his notes. ‘I’ve put here, “He had expected her to be at home and was worried that she had left her phone and handbag behind.” I don’t have a recollection of any more than one phone.’

  ‘And it’s clear from that there was only one, because if “the” phone is broken, that’s why he was explaining he was calling the home phone?’ Mr Moglia must have to control his eye-rolls at times, having to deal with this sort of thing.

  Healey said that he’d gone downstairs with the family as soon as he discovered a room was available.

  Mr Galbally introduced himself next and began by asking questions about how Healey had first encountered Ant.

  Healey said, ‘I recall him coming towards the crime scene, so my first reason for action is to prevent anybody going towards the area, so I asked him who he was and “Why are you coming —”’

  The Coroner broke in, ‘Are you referring to the refuse room?’

  Healey said no, just the foyer.

  ‘You’ve counted that as part of the crime scene?’

  Healey said he had.

  Mr Galbally asked him more about his second visit to the apartment. Was that when Ant showed him the handbag?

  Healey wasn’t sure if it was that visit or the previous one.

  Galbally asked, ‘Now, where was the handbag?’

  ‘On the kitchen bench.’

  ‘Right, and then you say, “And mobile phone.” You haven’t actually said in your statement as to whether the mobile phone was in the handbag or not. Do you remember?’

  ‘No, I don’t recall.’

  ‘May have been in the handbag, may have been out of the handbag?’

  ‘Could have been, yes. I was more concerned with confirming exactly who Phoebe was.’

  Healey said the Post-it notes were on the bench near the handbag, and he didn’t remember seeing any candles in the apartment.

  ‘How long did you spend in the apartment on that second visit?’

  ‘I would imagine it was around 15 to 20 minutes — just going off my notes.’