by Sue Williams
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
A GLIMMER OF LIGHT
IN ALICE SPRINGS, SUPERINTENDENT Colleen Gwynne was sitting in her office waiting for the phone to ring. She’d been trying to work all morning, but hadn’t been able to concentrate. Every file and document she picked up from her in-tray, she went through and put down again impatiently, having no idea at all of what she’d just read. She picked up the phone receiver and heard the familiar burr. Reassured it was working, she put it down again carefully on its cradle. She glanced at her watch. Only five minutes had passed since the last time she’d looked. It had felt like an age.
Five weeks and six days had passed since Bradley Murdoch had been arrested in Port Augusta on 28 August 2002 on charges of rape and abduction. And since the South Australian police had taken blood samples from their prisoner, it had been … five weeks and five days. Gwynne knew. She’d been counting every single one of them.
Murdoch’s lawyers had argued that police had no right to send a DNA analysis of their client’s blood to the Northern Territory to be matched against the speck found on Joanne Lees’ T-shirt. The magistrate had disagreed, and South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson said he would sign a ministerial arrangement with his Northern Territory counterpart Syd Sterling to allow the interstate transfer.
Murdoch’s lawyers appealed the ruling in the South Australian Supreme Court. On October 2 they lost again, with Justice Ted Mullighan saying that the public interest served in profiling Murdoch’s DNA outweighed his right to protection from unwanted interference. But solicitor Mark Twiggs immediately announced that he’d also appeal that decision. It was only on October 8 that Twiggs decided not to take the matter further, and the DNA was couriered to Darwin. The forensics team had told Gwynne they’d call her as soon as they had a result. She’d be the first person to know. It was just that the wait was proving interminable.
They’d been close to bringing in Murdoch three times before: firstly, when he was questioned by Broome detectives and let go; secondly, when he’d risen close to the top of their top ten list of suspects as a result of following up on the initial set of inquiries and questioning people who knew him; and thirdly, when James Hepi was arrested, and named him as the Barrow Creek killer — and then he’d just disappeared.
But at last Murdoch was sitting in a cell in Adelaide’s Yatala Prison awaiting his fate and the answer to the question that had been haunting Gwynne for the past fifteen months — not to mention the rest of Australia and Britain — could be just within her grasp.
When the phone suddenly rang, it sounded so loud, Gwynne jumped. She stared at it a moment before reaching over to pick it up. She noticed her hand was trembling.
A FEW MINUTES LATER, she was dialling Assistant Commissioner John Daulby’s direct line. He picked it up straight away. She guessed he too had been unable to concentrate on much else that day. ‘John,’ she said, ‘It’s Colleen. I’ve got something to tell you. I want you to sit down …’
Gwynne forced herself to stay calm but, inside, she was dancing. ‘I wanted to do a big Toyota jump in the middle of the crime squad,’ she says. ‘I was jumping around, saying, “We’ve solved it!” It was so exciting. It was the big breakthrough we’d been waiting for so long. It had been a glimmer of hope but the DNA was a match, and we felt we’d got our man. We’d all been under so much pressure, and had so much criticism, it was a wonderful moment.’
Yet while they had a DNA match, that only showed that, at some point, Murdoch’s DNA may have rubbed off on Joanne. Proving he had killed Peter Falconio was another thing entirely. But Gwynne allowed herself the luxury of savouring the pleasure of this latest breakthrough.
‘When you are dealing so closely with victims, you are living what they are going through to some extent. It felt so good. John was so happy too. To some extent he was going through Joanne’s experience. The media had been so quick to make assessments of what the police were doing, and he took everything to heart. It was a really personal thing for him. He speaks from the heart and works incredibly hard and really cares. He’s such a great team-player, and was always sympathetic to people affected by the investigation.’ Despite this breakthrough, Gwynne felt the ongoing saga had bruised Daulby: ‘I think the whole thing left him a little bit disillusioned.’
Daulby called the Falconio family and spoke with Nick, the eldest son. Luciano and Joan were away visiting relatives in Italy. ‘They were relieved, but you couldn’t say they were happy to hear the news,’ he says. ‘It was a sad occasion for them really. Their biggest hope was that we’d found the right man, and he might lead us to the body. That was always their priority. They still wanted to find their brother, to find their son.’
He tried to call Joanne but got only a message bank. He also sent her an email. He hadn’t known, but she was over in Sicily, working. When she received a number of messages from friends, she went on to the internet to look at reports of who it was that had been arrested. ‘I thought that I should just have a look on the internet to see what people were writing about,’ she says. On the BBC website, next to a photo of herself and Peter, she saw her first photograph of Murdoch. It would be something his defence team would later hold against her.
The police had intended to announce the development the next morning, but soon they were deluged with calls. Nick Falconio had spoken to a journalist, and suddenly everyone wanted confirmation. The press conference was hurriedly re-scheduled for later that evening, Wednesday 9 October 2002.
In England, Joanne’s stepfather Vincent James was relieved. ‘I just hope the man arrested will tell us what happened to Peter,’ he said. Nick was cautiously optimistic, but sombre. ‘We had been expecting to hear, but I am still a bit shaky to be quite honest,’ he said. ‘Realistically, we don’t think Peter’s alive but deep down that is what my mother thinks. But we are hoping we will know the answer soon. My mum has been in a terrible state ever since it happened and she will never be the same again. It’s been an agonising wait. You think about it every day. It comes into your head whatever you’re doing. Hopefully this is the start of some sort of close or conclusion so we can get on with our lives.’
For legal reasons, Daulby couldn’t say the DNA was an exact match, merely that Murdoch couldn’t be excluded by the result. Everyone knew, however, precisely what he meant.
THE PRESS TOOK IT AS vindication of Joanne and her story; the doubters were faintly apologetic, while the believers took pleasure in watching them choke on humble pie. Joanne’s chief adversary, the Daily Mail’s Richard Shears, wrote in his story that appeared the next day, ‘I am happy for Miss Lees, for I am the first to admit that there were elements of her story that caused me to doubt her. Today she will be able to face her critics and hold her head high.’ The Sydney Morning Herald’s Phil Cornford put it succinctly. ‘Ms Lees’s only mistake was surviving and then refusing to tell the media about her ordeal,’ he wrote. ‘A number of reporters, mostly British but some Australian, decided her silence signalled guilt. The pariah instincts of the talkback jocks found an echo in their audiences.’
At the same time, legal writs from Murdoch’s lawyers kept arriving at newspaper offices on their stories linking Murdoch with the crime. Some people favoured theories that Murdoch wasn’t the one; he was merely a bloke who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, just as the Northern Territory police had become desperate to find someone, anyone, to frame to take the heat off them. The real killer just hadn’t been caught. Others still preferred to believe that there was something suspicious about Joanne. Questions remained in Shears’ newspaper copy, for instance, about the movement from the front to the back of the car, and Joanne’s recollection of the man’s dog. With Murdoch to be charged for the attack at Barrow Creek, wasn’t Jack, a Dalmatian, quite different to Joanne’s description? But, if Murdoch were her attacker, at least it cleared up another doubt. A Dalmation, or even a Dalmation cross, wouldn’t be the best kind of dog to let out of your car on a dark night
in the outback to help you look for someone. ‘They’re daffy dogs which aren’t the smartest,’ says vet Meredith Phillips, whose family has always kept Dalmatians. ‘They’re very energetic and excitable, particular when they’re puppies, and they’re not the best at obeying commands. They’re very friendly and loyal, but they like to run and they tend to be submissive. They’re not aggressive at all.’
THE MAN OF THE MOMENT, however, was still saying nothing. Superintendent Colleen Gwynne and Taskforce Regulus head Sergeant David Chalker flew down from the Northern Territory to Adelaide to interview Murdoch, but left empty-handed. Just as he’d refused to answer any questions from South Australian police about the alleged offences against the girl and her mother, he remained resolutely silent on the Barrow Creek killing.
There are some who believe alleged offenders in Australia should no longer be able to retreat to the right to silence. Just as it’s long since been abolished in England, so should it be abolished in Australia, they feel. Victorian barrister Ken Marks QC is one. ‘The “right” prevents a court or jury from applying common sense to a refusal by a suspect to answer important questions by disallowing any inference whatsoever to be drawn from the silence,’ he says. ‘This is one of the tiny minority of places in the world that maintains the “right” — [and] it is a luxury which an increasingly crime-ridden society cannot afford.’
But with Murdoch declining to speak, the detectives instead travelled over to the annex where he’d been staying in the Riverlands to look at what the South Australian police had found. While they were there, they took a DNA swab from Jack, the dog, hoping they might be able to compare it with the dog hair found on Joanne’s body that night at the roadhouse.
Senior Constable Tim Sandry also examined the items found in Murdoch’s vehicle: the guns, the cable ties and the drugs. Later, after the rape trial, Regulus member Sergeant Megan Rowe took out a warrant to have all the exhibits found that day sent up to Darwin. When they arrived, Rowe noticed a black hair tie on the board, identical to the one Joanne had lost that night. It was shown to Joanne. ‘That’s my hairband!’ she cried immediately. ‘Where did you get it?’
GWYNNE DIDN’T STOP SMILING for the next few days. The whole Taskforce Regulus team had been working so hard on the case that it felt an immense relief that they at last had a suspect and, they felt, a good case against him.
Over the long period of the investigation, so many police had fallen by the wayside. Some of those who’d been working on the case far from home, had eventually packed up and asked to go back as they’d been away from their families for so long. Some officers just couldn’t be spared from their regular areas, both geographical and spheres of expertise, for any longer. With such a small force, there were only ever a certain number of people who were experienced, willing and able to help at any one time. There were a few officers who’d become disheartened that there had been no quick result. Others had argued over the best way to achieve an outcome and had quit the investigation when their colleagues disagreed. Promotions had been put off. Relationships had broken down. Gwynne had been no exception. Her steady relationship had also finished, midway through the case. ‘Falconio cost me my relationship,’ she says. ‘You just have no time together. You’re never there for them, and they eventually aren’t there for you. It can’t survive.’
But Gwynne, now thirty-seven, had absorbed herself so completely in the case, there wasn’t much time left over for a private life anyway. On Sunday mornings, Daulby would call her to ask, ‘Have you thought about this?’ Or ‘how about that? And ‘What do you think of the idea …’ Gwynne relished talking through every possibility with him. ‘Sometimes the thoughts would be really off the wall but there were always some really good suggestions there that they were so quirky.’
In November, with Murdoch in prison in SA and with the extra information that had been gleaned about him, Colleen Gwynne flew to England with one of the taskforce members who’d been there from the beginning, Sergeant Megan Rowe, to re-interview Joanne Lees. The pair wanted to check that she could identify Murdoch, and to clear up the last few nagging queries. It was tough on Joanne. With a suspect behind bars she’d felt that everyone would finally believe her story and leave her alone. But now she was having to face even more questions. At one stage, she broke down in tears all over again. ‘Why won’t people believe me?’ she cried, with such pain in her voice that it tore at the two officers’ hearts. ‘Even now you’ve caught him, you don’t believe me! Ask my friends. They know I don’t lie.’
While recounting events yet again, however, Joanne mentioned one detail she’d never revealed before. When she and Peter were watching the sunset in Ti Tree before the darkness, they’d shared a joint. Gwynne looked at her in amazement. Why hadn’t she mentioned this before? Joanne shrugged. She hadn’t thought it important. How on earth could it be relevant? Gwynne made a note of it. Now she had been told one more fact about what had happened, she’d have to report it back to the investigation. She didn’t see it as particularly significant, either, but she’d have to include it.
The main matter, though, was the dog Joanne had seen that night. She’d described it as a Blue Heeler. Murdoch’s pet was a Dalmatian cross — although probably crossed with a Blue Heeler. Gwynne and Rowe arranged a room at the local Hove police station, and handed her a book of photos of dogs and asked her to pick out one that was most similar to the dog she’d seen. She chose photos of cattle dogs which she said were similar in ‘its size, its face, shape, ears’. When asked about its colouring, she replied, ‘Patches of dark colour.’
The pair also showed her a photoboard of pictures of twelve different men, and asked her to pick out the man who attacked her. She went straight to number ten: the photograph of Bradley Murdoch.
JOANNE WAS STILL DOING IT tough. She loved her new job helping care for people with intellectual disabilities, but the pressure of the police, media and public attention was getting to her, and she was not coping with the grief over the loss of Peter. When she took on the problems of others, sometimes she found she could forget her own, but she was jolted sharply back into reality all too often. She’d be in a shop one day, when someone would ask her for her autograph. She would wander through Brighton’s lanes and a camera flash would suddenly flare in her eyes. She’d be sitting drinking coffee in a café and notice she was being stared at. Even worse, she would be out with one of the people she was caring for and be approached by someone wanting to ask her all about the case. She’d get upset and flustered, and her charges would also start getting distressed. At times she feared she’d be sacked. At others, she wondered if she’d ever lead a normal life again.
‘She wants closure,’ says Gwynne. ‘She’s been an incredibly strong woman. She’s done everything I’ve asked of her. We told her how SA is trying to fast track the case, how it shouldn’t be too much longer.’
Similarly, the Falconio family were also still reeling from the tragedy. Joan really wasn’t well at all, and Luciano was trying hard to keep it together. Everyone was focussed on finding Peter’s body, but often they had different ideas about how best it could be achieved. One member of the family asked, if Murdoch was convicted, could police do a deal that would give him a lighter sentence if he told them where the body was? Another wanted him to receive the heaviest sentence possible. No concessions.
‘I’m still hopeful of finding the body,’ Gwynne told them. ‘I won’t give up.’ And she wasn’t just spinning them a line. She knew she’d do anything to try to find it, even if it wasn’t strictly within the rules.
ONE DAY, GWYNNE DECIDED TO have another go at interviewing Murdoch. She went into the interview room at the jail, walked right up to him, and lifted up her shirt. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘no wires. I just wanted to ask you, tell me where the body is. This isn’t permissible as evidence. Just tell me.’
For a moment, Murdoch stared at her in silence. Their eyes locked. She held her breath. And then his eyes slid away. He said nothing.
She realised that, if he were the killer, he still might never tell. It was a moment straight out of Silence of the Lambs.
‘His image has never left my mind,’ says Gwynne. ‘There’s something about him … He’s one of those people you just wonder what’s going on inside his mind. I’ve never let anyone get to me like that. I was glad to get out of there, basically. I’ve interviewed murderers, rapists, paedophiles … but this was worse, somehow. I couldn’t get his face out of my mind.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
THE PRICE OF A LIFE
AT THE BARROW CREEK HOTEL, two years on from the murder of Peter Falconio and the attempted abduction of Joanne Lees, there’s a party in full swing. Publican Les Pilton is serving behind the bar, and his girlfriend Helen Jones is sitting on a stool on the other side. She’s had too much to drink, and her words are slurred.
‘You’ll have to forgive her,’ says Pilton amiably. ‘These anniversaries can always be hard. Somehow, this second is worse than the first. It’s made more of an impact because there’s still so much happening, and it’s still not finished.’ He and Jones spent the afternoon looking at their watches and saying, ‘They’d be just leaving town now.’ ‘They’d be at the Camel Cup now.’ That evening, they both watched the sunset and remembered the one at Ti Tree that two backpackers, so much in love and with their lives in front of them, had watched together. At 7.20 p.m., Pilton remarked, ‘They’d be south of Barrow Creek now.’ That night, they hadn’t wanted to go to bed. At 1.30 a.m., they said, ‘Everything unfolded just about now.’ And at 4 a.m., they finally lay down. ‘I’ll always remember it until Peter’s body is found,’ says Pilton, sadly. ‘That’s the only way that closure will come along.’
