In 1956, John was posted to Malaya where the small family spent three idyllic years before returning to Ipswich where their second son, Peter, was born in 1962. Re-located to the tropical city of Darwin, Ilma gave birth to their second daughter, Debbie, in 1965, the same year they returned to Ipswich for a further three-year posting. By 1970, living in Richmond, New South Wales, their last child, Lee-Ann, was born. They were again posted to Darwin in 1971.
It was, Raymond and Sandra recall, an unremarkable childhood. Normal. Average. Nothing outstanding. They swap memories: sitting up a mango tree eating the fruit; gorging themselves on raspberries and gooseberries, their clothing stained with the juice. Just kids doing things normal kids do. But they are not all happy memories. Raymond grimaces at how often they moved, how often he changed schools. He counts them on his fingers and speaks out loud. ‘Two, three, four.’ He glances at Sandra. ‘Four to six?’
‘Try eight.’ It is Sandra’s prompt and he follows it. ‘Oh, OK, eight. Both primary and high schools. Eight.’
Different schools and different classmates, who marked him out for special, unwelcome attention. It was his teeth that set him apart. Stained, protruding, he could not hide them. His classmates called out to him as he walked home from school. ‘Hey, Carroll! Sabre-tooth!’ Ribbed him, mercilessly, that he could eat an apple through a tennis racquet. Different states, different schools, different classmates, but the same old abuse. It never let up.
‘Mum and Dad were poor as church mice, and they couldn’t afford braces for Raymond,’ Sandra explains. ‘We’ve all got a slight overbite, but Raymond’s is protruding. Mum desperately wanted to fix it for him, but she just didn’t have the money.’
He was powerless to stop the taunts, his self-esteem shattered by the cruel jibes, the relentless, hurtful comments. He couldn’t do anything to change himself. He couldn’t run. Everywhere he went, the nagging taunts followed. ‘Hey, Carroll! Sabre-tooth!’ It happened so often, he found a way to deal with it.
He blocked it out.
The bottom dropped out of Ilma’s world after John’s sudden death in a freak accident four miles out of Katherine in the Northern Territory. Early morning in the stifling build-up to the wet season, clouds pregnant with pre-monsoonal rains, the air-force semi-trailer he was driving jack-knifed and hit the passenger door, springing open the driver’s door and flinging him onto the bitumen. He had left for work in the early hours, in such a rush it was the only time in their married life that Ilma could recall he did not kiss her goodbye. Mid-morning, she was hanging the washing on the line when she heard him call out to her. ‘Hey, Il,’ he said, and she turned, smiling, expecting to see him. But he was not there. She pegged out the rest of the clothes – shirts, shorts, underwear – and then an RAAF Commanding Officer and padre were standing at her door. They didn’t have to tell her something terrible had happened; she already knew by the look on their faces and the sound of her own voice, screaming. Backing away from them, in slow motion. ‘No, no! Oh please, no!’
There was no reason to stay in Darwin now that John was dead. Ilma packed the family possessions and headed back down south, a middle-aged widow with five kids: the oldest 16, the youngest six. Three girls, two boys and a grieving mother settling into a new life at 13 Quarry Lane, Ipswich.
They would lead narrower lives from then on, Ilma’s shock and sorrow enveloping her and dissipating her once fierce independence. She shrank from life; clothed in mourning, her laughter gone, she was not a neglectful mother but a sad one, a distracted one. Her keening would last six years, and the children would get away with more than she would normally have allowed. Sorrow took the edge off her discipline and Sandra, the eldest girl, stepped into the breach. She had always been old beyond her years – intense, responsible – and now she was catapulted by her father’s sudden death into becoming her mother’s confidante, the one Ilma relied on. The head of the family; the strong one. Raymond was the eldest boy, only a year younger than Sandra, but the responsibility did not fall to him. His mother withdrew and his older sister took over. ‘Raymond didn’t become the male head of the family; I did,’ Sandra would later say, her voice tinged with a hint of defiance. ‘I became Mum’s partner. I was the one she leant on. I was the eldest.’
He doesn’t remember a great deal about his father, except that they got on fairly well, despite the fact he annoyed the hell out of him. He remembers that, and his father’s abrupt, tragic death. He was only 15 when he died, a traumatised young man without an older bloke to talk to. He does not hesitate when asked what stands out from his childhood. ‘Dad’s death,’ he says, firmly.
Raymond had little choice but to leave behind his Darwin apprenticeship as an auto electrician. He left with a letter of recommendation from the Apprenticeship Board and an introductory letter from his former employer, but, after working for nine months in Ipswich, he failed to get his final indentures. There wasn’t much work around in the provincial Queensland city: a few labouring jobs, bits and pieces. Not much work, and not much of a social life. Raymond stuck pretty much to himself; always has. He doesn’t mind people, but he isn’t comfortable in crowds. He won’t have a conversation for conversation’s sake.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Desley Hill after he met her at a Christmas get-together at his Aunty Carol’s house in Ipswich. He liked her innocent simplicity, the way she didn’t try to dominate him. He reckoned she was around 17, though she may have been older; what he does remember is his mother was unimpressed with the age difference. Raymond was not yet 16. They spent their time together in long walks around Woodridge, her Brisbane suburb, and, afterward, Raymond would catch a train home, a lovesick teenager.
He would always remember Desley as his first love, but he was fed up with the lack of opportunities in Ipswich. He needed to make a decision: either to keep dragging himself around one job site to the next, or settle into some sort of a career. Raymond tossed the idea back and forth and finally made up his mind. He would follow in his father’s footsteps, join the RAAF.
Dressed in his smartest bib and tucker, he headed down to the Brisbane Recruiting Centre and returned later for medical and psychiatric tests, which he proudly passed.
In the last days of January 1973, the world, weary with a war in which it had long ago lost heart, finally witnessed the signing of the Vietnam peace treaty in Paris. By the end of March, the last of the US troops straggled out of Vietnam. And, in between, on 5 February, 17-year-old Raymond John Carroll joined up. He would wear the air-force blues; make a career in the RAAF. Just like his old man.
He started recruit training at Edinburgh Air Base in South Australia, joining course 1203 on 9 February 1973. Boot camp: hard physical workouts, spit and polishing shoes, learning to salute and say Sir. Rise and shine. Half quick march. Halt.
Carroll’s instructor, Corporal Raymond Martin, was impressed with Carroll’s boots, holding them up for the rest of the recruits to see. ‘I want them to shine so you can see your face in them,’ he barked. ‘Just like these boots.’ Punctuality, obedience, service. That’s what he expected from his boys.
Carroll lived up to dress expectations and appraised himself in the mirror. Peaked hat with RAAF badge and epaulettes on the shoulders of his pristine white shirt. Dark blue tie, mid-line crease in his trousers and wide studded belt circling small waist. Boots immaculately polished. He was perfectly turned out. His father would be proud.
His black hair was cut to regulation length – ‘short back and sides’ – and he was tall, over 184cm, and slightly built. His colouring hinted at a Mediterranean heritage: eyes dark as melted chocolate and hair that he wore swept back from his forehead. People were often surprised when they found he was Australian to the core, a born-and-bred Queenslander.
He moved closer to the mirror, preening. Generous mouth, that naturally turned down in a glum expression. Top lip raised to accommodate protruding upper teeth. Large ears and broad nose. Hollow-chested, his shoulders hunched slightly forward.
All recruits had to have their dentition checked and a chart recorded. Flight-Lieutenant Ross Dunn, attached to the dental section, noted that the corner of Carroll’s front left tooth was chipped and that his right tooth was mottled. No work was done at the initial check and his fellow recruits, with whom he rarely mixed, would remember him for his teeth. ‘He had very protruding front teeth with sections missing from it, and the inside sections of his front upper teeth were missing,’ recruit Michael Sheean recalled. ‘He was pigeon-chested and pigeon-toed.’ Sheean also remembered Carroll was a fastidious dresser adept at spit-polishing his shoes and boots. Always immaculately turned out in his uniform. The RAAF was in his blood. He knew what was required.
From the start, Carroll was a loner, an odd-man-out who had little to do with other members on the course. It was in his nature to be quiet, and, if the other recruits didn’t share his interest in mechanics or electronics, he happily stayed away from them. He didn’t want to mix much; he was only interested in finishing his course and starting work. He knew that many of the other course members regarded him as somewhat aloof, but that neither surprised nor concerned him. All his life, he had been the target of bullies because of his teeth. Hey, Carroll! Sabre-tooth! Ribbed mercilessly. Get the course finished, get out and start work. That was his goal.
A quiet, unobtrusive bloke would always stand out amongst men in their late teens who bonded with backslapping, sport and drinking. They did not invite Carroll to share their sessions: he not only looked different, with deep brown eyes that could stare right through them, but some recalled he had unpleasant breath.
Michael Sheean recalled later that Carroll would sometimes materialise behind him, from out of nowhere. ‘Once I was lying on my bed and I felt something move behind me. I turned around and there he was, quietly sitting on the end of my bed.’
Raymond got used to hearing it. ‘Jesus, Carroll, you scared the shit out of me! Where did you come from?’They called him ‘Fang’ because of his buckteeth and laughed, cruel laughter that he did not join. But, if he was hurt by the attitude of some of the recruits, he never showed it. All his life he had endured taunts and ribbings. This was nothing new.
He admits he wasn’t a typical rookie. ‘As far as I was concerned, I’d been air force all me life. I was bottlefed it, ate it, slept it, dreamed it. Air force. Rookies was just a stepping-stone for me; no great hullabaloo. I just wanted to finish me course and start work.’
But Corporal Martin feared recruit Carroll had much to learn about diplomacy. A guest of honour at the RAAF graduation dinner, held well in advance of the final passing-out parade, Martin was seated next to a senior officer, Flight Commander Brady. Carroll took up a drink and placed it on the table. ‘Thank you very much,’ Brady beamed. Carroll looked surprised. ‘The drink’s not for you,’ he replied. ‘It’s for Corporal Martin.’
The course had started on 9 February, and the passing-out parade was on 19 April 1973. He didn’t have long to go now before he could get out of Edinburgh and start his real training for the job.
11
Faye is desperate to see her little girl. She has shed countless tears in the days following Deidre’s murder, begging to be given the chance to say goodbye to her in private. ‘I want to see her. When can I see her?’ Incessantly pleading with Barry. ‘I want to see her. When can I see her?’
‘You will, mate. You will.’ That is all she is ever told. Every time she asks, that’s the response. ‘You will, mate. You will.’ Barry tries to protect her, tells her to remember Deidre how she was. But all she wants is to hold her. Give her a hug, say goodbye in private.
Grief-stricken at his daughter’s murder, Barry hides Deidre’s injuries from Faye. Years later, Faye recalls: ‘I asked Barry if she had been hurt, beaten about or anything and he just told me she had a mark on her forehead and had been suffocated.’ Faye’s face creases in a frown before the tears start. ‘It was so disgusting, how that man dressed her. I knew I put her to bed safe that night, tucked up happy. Then this animal came in to our home and did that to her.’
Stephanie keeps asking where Dee Dee has gone. They try to explain to her that she isn’t coming home any more, that God needs her in Heaven. She finds it impossible to comprehend how her sister could have been there at night when she went to bed and not there in the morning.
From the moment Faye tells Steph, she will barely remember anything about Deidre. Hypnotherapy will fail to conjure an image of the intruder’s face; she can dredge nothing from her memory. The shock of losing her sister is so traumatic, she completely blocks it out.
Hundreds of people attend Deidre’s funeral service, held at Mount Thompson chapel. But of Faye’s family, only her mother and grandmother are there. The rest of her family is a long way away, with their own personal commitments. She wishes they were there to support her through her traumatic loss.
It is less than a week since Deidre was murdered, but Faye feels pressured by those around her to have the service before Easter. A funeral, they believe, will help bring closure. It is the day preceding Good Friday. After that, over the Easter period, the church will be filled with believers mourning the death of Christ, celebrating His Resurrection. Christ died for our sins. He rose again and sat at the right hand of the Lord. The same Lord who Faye now desperately asks for answers. Why have you abandoned us? How could you allow this to have happened? Why our precious Deidre?
The funeral service is the day before Stephanie’s fifth birthday. That morning, Barry undergoes a dental examination by Kon Romaniuk, who is satisfied that his teeth did not cause the bite marks found on his daughter.
Still on crutches, Barry is dignified in his RAAF uniform. His colleagues have pulled together, left nothing to chance. Everything is organised. The chapel is an ocean of flowers and Deidre’s tiny white coffin is adorned with pink carnations in the shape of a pillow. Prayers and hymns resonate around the chapel, and the forlorn sound of inconsolable weeping. The padre who delivers the service lost his own son at the age of 16, and has enormous empathy with the family. He speaks quietly, gently of Deidre’s short life, and of her loss. The media, staked outside with cameras and microphones, are asked to leave the family in peace. You blokes have had your story; please, respect the family’s privacy. Leave them alone today.
There is a desolate hush at the crematorium. Nothing to disturb the silence save Faye’s sobbing and the bleak, soft sound of the coffin gliding on rollers and disappearing through the curtains.
Barry will remember nothing of the service, just a blur of hands on his shoulders and quiet talk. Sorry, mate. We’re really sorry, mate. If there’s anything we can do to help …
Deidre’s ashes are placed at the mortuary and a tiny plaque guards them. ‘Deidre – in our hearts forever.’
It will take time for Faye to reflect on the haste of Deidre’s funeral. To wonder if the police were diligent enough with what they did before Deidre was cremated. Whether they were too rushed. ‘In those days,’ she says, ‘you went with what you were told. We had kept asking when we could have her funeral, and I still believe it was held when it was because it was Easter. Was it too rushed? There was no DNA, then; that came later. Apparently there was a hair, but, from what I can gather, it was destroyed. There was nothing left of it.’
There will be time for reflection and doubt, but today is not that time. Today, the family is absorbed in their grief, in going through the motions of saying goodbye. They had promised Stephanie a birthday party, and they hold it the day after the funeral, as arranged. Five candles on the cake and so much pain in the room Faye can almost taste it.
From the time of her murder, Barry can never again bring himself to utter Deidre’s name.
John Reynolds works on the Kennedy murder for seven months, but, with a huge load of other work that needs attention, and frustrated at the lack of fresh leads, his work on the file dwindles off. In the time since the murder, there hasn’t been one suspect strong enough to get within cooee o
f warranting being charged. A few red herrings that have only wasted police time, a few nutters ringing up with outlandish theories, but never anything concrete.
The file will remain open, but it is now becoming what the cops call a ‘cold case’. Faye and Barry accept that with the same stoicism they have accepted everything else. The police have done their best. Reynolds often flashes back to the morning he saw Deidre in the park, and he wishes he could do more. But, like his colleagues who have all been deeply affected, his hands are tied. He will be allocated time to pick it up again only when strong information filters in.
Raymond Carroll doesn’t know what to think when he goes to the doctor with his girlfriend, Joy Meyers, and they find out she is pregnant. He is only 17 and it has been the first sexual experience for them both. They had met in Wagga, where Carroll was posted in August 1973, and they hung out together, mostly at the local bowls club. He waved her goodbye in February ’74 when he went back to Amberley for field training, staying with his family at Quarry Lane. Three months later, he got a hell of a shock when he returned to Wagga and she told him she thought she was expecting.
He doesn’t want to marry, resentful at being forced into a shotgun wedding. But marry they do, on 28 June 1974. It isn’t quite how Joy had imagined her wedding day would be, either: six months pregnant and her dress billowing out the front. It disconcerts her, too, that her new husband is always harping on about what he wants to call their child if it is a girl. Deidre. She thinks the suggestion odd and, besides, she doesn’t like the name. When their daughter is born on 9 September 1974, Joy calls her Kerry-Ann Sherrie.
Justice In Jeopardy Page 6
