Into the Darkness

by Robin Bowles

‘Linda Cohen says that Phoebe was concerned that if she went to Paris with you and there was some sort of disagreement she wouldn’t have any money. She was also concerned that you might propose to her in Paris. Did you discuss any of her concerns that Wednesday night?’

  ‘Never,’ Ant said emphatically. Phoebe was a very strong-minded woman, he added, and he thought that if she had an opinion she’d make it pretty clear. ‘If she felt strongly about something, she would have discussed it with me.’

  He was asked about the bruising on Phoebe’s neck and arms. Could he see her arms and neck on Wednesday night or Thursday morning?

  He said he couldn’t. ‘She was in bed, she was wearing tracksuit pants and top and was clothed and under the doona, so I was sitting on the side of the bed on Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning, the blinds were down, the room was dark, and she was in bed sleeping.’

  But surely, I thought, she didn’t wear her tracksuit when Ant was giving her a massage on Wednesday night? If the bruises were there, you could hardly miss them.

  Ms Siemensma took him through his movements on 2 December as evidenced by his swipe card, which was shown using the lift at 9.01 a.m. to leave for work and again at 6.06 p.m. to open the garage door.

  ‘Did you return to the apartment at any time between 9.01 a.m. and 6.06 p.m. on the Thursday?’

  He said he hadn’t.

  His day unfolded with staff meetings and other work; he took Phoebe’s phone to be repaired at about 11 a.m. He had a short lunch break near the office and then left about 2 p.m. for a meeting in the city, driving in with one of his staff members. After the meeting, which went for two to three hours, he and his staff member went back to the office, where he did more work and then headed home.

  He said he wasn’t aware of the fire alarms and didn’t see any fire trucks when he came home because he entered from the rear of the building through the car park and straight up to 1201.

  Ms Siemensma told him that during the first fire alarm the front doors to the apartment complex were open for about 17 minutes. She asked him if he remembered the doors being open when he got home.

  ‘No, because I didn’t come through the front,’ he said.

  ‘Did the police ask you that evening if your own front door was locked?’

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  Her focus shifted to the ‘shrine’ Ant had said he found on the bed when he came home. I was interested in this, because none of the police had mentioned it or could recall it when questioned.

  Ant was handed the relevant photographs. ‘We don’t see a shrine in any of the photos,’ Ms Siemensma said, ‘with a photograph of you or the cat; did you move those things?’

  ‘The shrine was in this photo.’

  ‘This one with the candles? But you’ve said a shrine on the bed with photos of the cat and yourself.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I was referring to, um, so the bedside table, not the actual bed itself, and the candles were lit and there was some incense burning and some Post-it notes as well.’

  ‘And so you now say that where your statement says “on our bed”, that’s “the bedside table”? Did you move the photographs of yourself and the cat?’

  ‘I think I did, and I think … I’m not sure whether the Post-it notes were actually on the bedside table or on the bed. They may not have all been together.’ He said he thought Phoebe’s journal was on the bed.

  ‘Was that the state in which you left your bedroom that morning?’

  He said Phoebe had been asleep in bed, so no.

  ‘Why did you leave the journal on the bed but dismantle the shrine?’

  ‘I didn’t really pack it up. I remember picking things up. Her journal would often be left sitting in various places around the apartment, so I didn’t have any reason to move it. The shrine was unusual, so that concerned me.’

  ‘There’s nothing about the writing or the content of the Post-it notes that indicated that she was inebriated?’

  ‘I didn’t read these notes as anything different to things that I’ve seen in her diary before.’

  The questions turned to the glasses on the kitchen bench and the mysterious broken glass in the hall.

  Ant said he sniffed the contents of one of the kitchen glasses and thought it was vodka. He saw the broken glass in the hall, but didn’t sweep it up. He didn’t see any marks from liquid on the wall bedside the glass.

  The Coroner commented that the glass on the floor didn’t seem to be a complete glass. Police had searched for the rest of it, but hadn’t found any glass fragments in the bins in the apartment or the refuse room.

  He didn’t see blood on the study architrave but did see ‘a drop’ on the mouse and a small amount on the computer keyboard. He couldn’t remember whether or not he cleaned the keyboard up.

  Ms Siemensma asked, ‘Did that look like fresh blood to you?’

  ‘Um … if you had to ask me whether it was fresh or not, I would say fresh, yes.’

  Ms Siemensma took Ant to the police report about the activity on the iMac. There was some activity from 6.19 p.m., then at 6.34, and then later that evening.

  Ant explained, ‘When I came home and went into the study and saw the small amount of blood on the keyboard, my first reaction was to look at the computer and see whether she’d written something on there.’

  ‘What were you looking for?’

  ‘Anything. By that point I was concerned, and I was looking to see if she’d written something or accessed a particular website — anything.’

  The Coroner asked if they had separate passwords. Ant said they did, because they used different programs for email.

  ‘If you didn’t know her password, you weren’t in a position to see whether she’d been sending emails?’ asked the Coroner.

  Ant agreed that he wouldn’t have been able to get into her files unless she’d left it logged on.

  So, Ms Siemensma put it to Ant — he saw the broken glass, Phoebe’s bag, phone, and keys on the kitchen bench, blood on the computer, and she was missing.

  ‘Why did you continue to use the computer if you were so worried about Phoebe?’ she asked.

  *

  Before we moved on to the iPhone evidence the Coroner called a lunch break. We all needed it. Ant was cautioned not to discuss his evidence with anyone, and media flew out to file stories. I thought it might be a good opportunity to shake hands with Ant, but he and Galbally headed straight for a conference room and shut the door. Deborah Siemensma was pacing up and down outside, looking pretty cross. She wasn’t happy about the private meeting going on behind that closed door.

  Barristers don’t like it when their questioning is on a roll and an adjournment is called. They may have rehearsed a series of questions that builds up to a ‘Whack!’ for the witness, and an adjournment breaks their momentum. I wasn’t sure whether Deborah was cross about that, or just about the private conference. Anyway, Galbally and Ant stayed in there all lunchtime. Maybe Galbally was protecting him from the media (and me), and neither of them reappeared until court resumed.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE iPHONE

  Ms Siemensma’s first question to Ant Hampel after the break came out as a challenge. I think she was still cross. ‘Mr Hampel, over the lunch break did you discuss your evidence with anybody?’

  He said, ‘No, I didn’t.’

  She didn’t press the point. I’d thought she might, given her anger earlier. She went back to the iPhone.

  Phoebe’s iPhone was an important issue for several reasons. First, it could have held a record of recent texts and emails between Phoebe and her friends and family, perhaps providing clues to her state of mind. Secondly, there was confusion, largely created by Ant himself and latched on to by Lorne Campbell, about when the phone was taken for repair. Thirdly, after George Hampel had picked it up on 7 December (a bit of a meni
al task for such an important man, I thought), it was given to Detective Wallace, but police analysis showed the phone was empty. There was confusion about whether a SIM card was in the phone. Ant said yes, Detective Daley said no, and Jason Wallace wasn’t sure.

  Over the years, I’ve passed on various phones, smart or otherwise, to grandchildren to use until they succeed in nagging their parents into buying them a you-beaut new one. But before doing so, I empty the memory and pre-pay a new SIM. This involves a trip to the shop and a good twenty-minute wait while they erase the memory on the hard drive of the phone. If I only remove the SIM card, some information is still stored on the host phone. The handset itself has a memory.

  Even if you drop the handset in the water, as I did in a Queensland river, the memory may still be there. In that case, I took my phone to a phone retailer in the next town, and he said, in true Queensland vernacular, ‘She’s buggered, love. Chuck ’er out.’ All my contacts and photos were gone — everything!

  My husband suggested trying to dry it out on the car dashboard as we drove through the Queensland heat. Sure enough, about two hours later, I heard my little chick go ‘peep’. My husband isn’t technical, but he’s very practical.

  In this case, though, Detective Daley had found nothing at all. The phone’s memory must have been completely erased, which isn’t something that happens by accident.

  Then there was the question of when the phone was sent for repair. Initially, Ant said that he’d taken it for repair on Wednesday, but that didn’t jell. The ‘tomato soup’ text was sent that morning, ostensibly from Phoebe and definitely from her iPhone, so she must have had it then, unless someone else sent the text.

  On the night of 2 December, Ant had told Sergeant Healey that Phoebe had left her phone behind on the kitchen bench. Ms Siemensma pointed out that Len had made a statement saying Ant had told him that Phoebe’s phone and purse were in the house. ‘Could it be that you did say that and you’ve now just forgotten?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s possible it could have been misunderstood. I was referring to her belongings, I don’t specifically remember it referring to her phone. But I may have. It’s possible.’

  ‘He also says that he rang Phoebe’s iPhone, it rang out, he left a message and seconds later you called him on your phone. Do you think that’s a coincidence?’

  Ant said he was looking for Phoebe and rang several people.

  ‘Sergeant Healey says that you told him at 8.10 p.m. that night that Phoebe had left her phone and handbag behind.’

  ‘Well I don’t recall her phone, I remember going through her bag looking at her keys,’ Ant answered.

  ‘You say in your statement, “I took it to work with me on Wednesday and dropped it off to get fixed.” And four days after Phoebe died, you say to her mum that it was the Wednesday. You go on to say that the other phone, the Nokia, was lost. On what did you base that?’

  ‘Phoebe had told me that on the Wednesday evening.’

  Ms Siemensma turned to Ant’s interview with Brendan Payne in January 2011, which was partly sparked by Lorne’s continuing disquiet about which day the phone went for repair. A lot hinged on the answer.

  She said, ‘Detective Senior Constable Payne says, “You think it was Tuesday or the Wednesday”, and you say “It was definitely the Tuesday or the Wednesday, yeah. I would have taken it to work with me, which means it couldn’t have been earlier than Wednesday. It makes sense that I took it on the Wednesday.” Do you see that in front of you in your statement?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now, I don’t intend this as a criticism at all, Mr Hampel, but I’m suggesting to you that you’re confused and you’re trying to reconstruct your movements and events over that period and you’re guessing it’s the Thursday.’

  Galbally stood up and told His Honour that he thought the question unfair, having regard to the evidence of two police officers and Linda Cohen about what Ant said on 7 December, when the phone was handed over to police. He said then that he’d dropped it in on the Thursday.

  What a shame there was no receipt, I thought.

  Ms Siemensma responded, ‘That was said on 7 December. He’s made other comments — one on 6 December and others subsequently — about the dates.’ She obviously found it odd that now, more than two years later, Ant didn’t remember when he took the iPhone in for repair.

  ‘Well, it’s all very well to preface a question by saying “this is not a criticism of you”,’ Galbally said, ‘but there’s not a shred of evidence when the phone was put in for repair.’

  Ms Siemensma took that in her stride and came back asking Ant if he had an explanation for telling Len that Phoebe left her phone in the apartment, or for what he told Healey about the phone. She said Healey had also given evidence that Ant had shown him Phoebe’s iPhone that evening.

  Now Mr O’Neill was upset. He said that Acting Senior Sergeant Healey didn’t say that it was an iPhone he was shown.

  Ms Siemensma says, ‘Okay. Phoebe’s phone you showed Acting Senior Sergeant Healey that evening?’

  Ant replied, ‘I have little recollection of what I said that evening to the police; I was in a complete state of shock.’

  But if Phoebe’s Nokia was lost, as he’d said, the phone Healey allegedly saw must have been her iPhone. Curiouser and curiouser.

  ‘Can I ask you,’ Ms Siemensma continued, ‘what was wrong with Phoebe’s iPhone?’

  ‘It wasn’t maintaining a full battery charge. We’d spoken about it.’

  ‘Did any police ask for Phoebe’s phones on the night of Thursday 2 December?’

  ‘I can’t recall a lot of detail.’

  ‘Did you or anyone else check text messages on Phoebe’s iPhone before it was handed over to Detective Wallace?’

  ‘Not to my recollection. The dates are quite blurry to me.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we have a police report about their analysis of the handset, and there is a reference on Phoebe’s iPhone to a text message sent by Linda Cohen on 2 December at 1.57 p.m., which is marked as read. And another text message sent by Samantha Bensley to Phoebe’s iPhone at 4.31 p.m. on 2 December, which is also marked as read. There’s a further text sent on 2 December from Jeannette Campbell at 8.16 p.m., which is marked as read. Do you have any explanation for that? You don’t suggest that the repair shop has been reading Phoebe’s messages, do you?’

  ‘I don’t have an explanation, and I couldn’t comment on the repair shop.’

  The Coroner chipped in when all the media started busily scribbling. ‘Just to be clear, the record that it is read doesn’t indicate at what time it was read,’ he explained. ‘So anyone making an enquiry about the use of the phone, including police investigators, could have triggered that record.’

  Ms Siemensma said she intended to ask Detective Daley about that, but her understanding of Wallace’s evidence was that he’d kept it secure until handing it over to Daley.

  She then asked Ant if Detective Payne had told him during another interview on 2 November 2011 that an inquest was likely. Ant said he did.

  ‘And did you indicate to Detective Payne in that discussion that you still have the iPhone?’

  ‘I don’t recall. It’s possible,’ Ant replied.

  Ms Siemensma said, ‘And then there’s a reference to half a telephone number. “This is the iPhone, this is the current number.” Does that mean that at that time, you still had Phoebe’s iPhone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And do you know where the SIM card is from Phoebe’s iPhone? Have you looked for it?’

  Ant said he didn’t remember going through the SIM card when the iPhone was returned. ‘The phone wasn’t used for some time, so I don’t recall where the SIM card would be.’

  ‘Have you looked for it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Coroner asked him, ‘Can you give me any assi
stance in regard to what may have happened to the SIM card? It certainly should have been taken before by the police.’

  Ant said he thought it was cancelled and the handset was given to one of his staff, which would mean it had been reformatted and would have a new SIM.

  ‘There wasn’t a reason in your mind you might hold onto the SIM card in case there was an inquest?’ Ms Siemensma asked.

  ‘I didn’t have a reason to.’

  I think they’d wrung every bit out of the iPhone puzzle, and it was still a puzzle.

  Ms Siemensma asked a few more questions about what happened on the night. Ant had told Payne that when he looked at the computer, it was turned on and the Gmail home page was showing.

  ‘We see the computer is used at 6.19 p.m., which is before Dr Handsjuk rang you. Had you developed these concerns at 6.19 p.m. or shortly thereafter?’

  ‘Which concerns?’

  ‘Your concerns about the glass and the blood on the computer?’

  ‘I established the concerns as soon as I saw them. I saw the glass before, then I saw the computer.’

  ‘You saw the blood on the computer when you went to use the iMac, and became increasingly concerned?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ms Siemensma asked what he was looking for on the computer.

  ‘Nothing specific,’ he said. ‘Given that she’d written the handwritten notes, I thought it would have been an obvious thing for her to have possibly written something on the computer.’ He couldn’t remember whether he’d actually been able to access her emails or had only been able to see the home page.

  Ms Siemensma said there were records showing access to iPhoto and a bit later GarageBand, a music program. ‘Did you make those entries?’

  He said he did.

  ‘Why were those sites accessed if you’re looking to see if Phoebe had left something on the computer?’

  ‘There’s often several programs that are left open on the computer. For example, if she was looking at photos, listening to music, or emailing, all those programs would be open. So, I’m probably looking at those, looking at what music was she listening to, or what programs were open, so I would imagine that’s what the record refers to.’