Rowley decides to start his own quiet investigation, anything to do with Raymond Carroll. But the Ipswich police are less than enthusiastic about his hunches, telling him they are pretty sure they know who did it, and discount his suspicions. They virtually fob him off. They have tunnel vision; they think they know who it is, and it definitely is not Carroll. But who they think it is, they never tell him. A detective tells Rowley he is pretty sure they have the bloke who did it, but they are frustrated because they can’t prove it.
Astonished at the lack of action, Rowley keeps digging in the background. He does not believe enough investigation has been done to eliminate Carroll, but, without the support of civilian police, it is an uphill task. The only strong thread is his belief, based on Carroll’s fingerprints that had been found on the photographs of Jackie Toigo, that the serviceman is a sexual deviant with a penchant for women’s underwear. That, and Carroll’s teeth. He knows that police were told that, judging by the shape of the bruise marks found on Deidre’s thigh, whoever had bitten her had deformed teeth. He just can’t let go of his suspicions about Carroll.
In an attempt to piece together the leads, Rowley reads back through copies of stories recorded on microfiche at the Queensland Times. He sees the name ‘Nugget’ from very early in the investigation, and notices his last name is also Carroll. Cecil ‘Nuggett’ Carroll. He thinks there is perhaps a connection with Raymond Carroll, but ‘Nugget’ is no relation.
Working on his own time, Rowley starts an unobtrusive surveillance on Carroll’s home. It is now an obsession.
13
Investigating a case in Toowoomba, six months after the break-in at the women’s quarters, Rowley and another RAAF policeman, Flight Sergeant Bowes, meet John Reynolds, who had worked on the case from the start, for a counter lunch. Reynolds knows Rowley from the days when he worked with the civilian police. As a military policeman, Rowley’s area is now south-east Queensland, liaising with local coppers in areas with RAAF communities.
Rowley gets straight down to business. ‘I think I know who may have killed the Kennedy baby.’
Reynolds is surprised; it has been so long since the murder, the case is now gathering dust in police files. But he has carried the memory of Deidre’s battered body for nine years and is extremely interested in what Rowley has to say. Any leads deserved investigation. He puts his glass down on the table and leans in closer. ‘Yeah? Go on.’ He says it casually, in the flat vowels of his native Queensland. ‘What have you got?’
Rowley outlines his theories. ‘This bloke’s been done for breaking in at the WAAF women’s quarters and slashing underwear. Sick stuff; pinched photographs of a half-dressed woman, went into the laundry and took to the nipple area of bras and slashed the crotch out of ladies’ panties. He’s obviously a pervert. And Deidre dressed up like she was; it made me wonder if there could be a connection. His wife has stuck up for him, said he was home that night, but there’s no question at all that he did it. His prints were all over the photographs. He also lived in a street in Ipswich near Limestone Park in early 1973 before he joined the air force.’
‘Has he got any other form?’ Reynolds is now more than just interested; Rowley has his undivided attention. ‘Anything on file about him?’
‘Not that I know of. But I reckon he’s managed to just slip under the radar all these years.’ Rowley pre-empts Reynolds next question. ‘Look, he was doing a rookies course in South Australia when Deidre was murdered. But I don’t think he should be dismissed out of hand. The civvies keep telling me they’ve already got a suspect, but they say they haven’t got enough evidence to pin anything on him. But who is this suspect? Surely they should at least have a look at Carroll. It can’t hurt. They aren’t taking this seriously at all.’
Reynolds isn’t surprised. In his experience, the young cops coming through do everything by the book. The days of relying on gut feeling and old-fashioned hunches are long gone, but he trusts Rowley’s judgment. ‘Leave it with me,’ he tells him, standing and shaking his hand. ‘I’ll get back to you.’
Reynolds taps the steering wheel on the drive back to Brisbane, where he now works, going over the details of what Rowley has told him. He recalls details of the geographical map he had drawn of Ipswich when Deidre was first abducted. Limestone Park is at the apex of a triangle between Short Street and Quarry Lane. Close. Very bloody close. By the time he pulls the squad car in to park, he is determined to look into it further.
He goes to his boss and says he wants to do something with this, but warns him it is going to be a huge job. ‘Anyhow …’ It is a word Reynolds uses frequently, while he gathers his thoughts. ‘Anyhow, he told me to have a yarn with Horrie Robinson, the Superintendent of the CIB.’ Robinson knows Reynolds from the days when he was a uniformed sergeant and Reynolds was a constable. He knows his capabilities and his flaws: short on the minutiae of administrative duties, but long on results if they were achievable.
Reynolds outlines Rowley’s theories. ‘Do you want me to hand this over to Homicide?’
‘Just hang on a minute.’ Leaning back in his chair and opening the door, Robinson yells over his shoulder for the homicide inspector to come into his office. ‘This is Detective-Sergeant Reynolds,’ he says. ‘He’s now attached to the Homicide Squad to head up the investigation into the 1973 murder of young Deidre Kennedy.’
Reynolds asks that a young officer with whom he has been working be assigned to the case. He gets him. He then calls John Rowley to ask if he would liaise directly with them.
Rowley is grateful that someone is finally listening. Just because a case is old, he thinks, it doesn’t mean it needs to die on the vine.
Scared that the press might get to them first, Reynolds decides that Faye and Barry, who are now living at Richmond, need to be informed that the investigation is being re-opened and that police now have a strong suspect. Rowley goes with him after they call ahead first to make an appointment. Barry appears stoic when he hears the news, but Faye is stunned. She listens quietly and nods when John Reynolds finishes talking. Rowley finds her bravery astonishing, and reflects that informing the Kennedys of the developments in the investigation is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.
Barry wasn’t as stoic as he had appeared. ‘Deidre’s murder was so traumatic, I thought, “surely we’re not going to dredge all this up again.” I thought we’d put it behind us, and I knew it would be so hard for Faye.’
Reynolds starts in the records area at the Homicide Squad in Brisbane to pull up the old files. Although there has been virtually no movement on the case since 1974, he can’t find half of what he needs. Cops call it the ‘dungeon’ and the place is a shambles. There are stacks of files on people who have been interviewed in relation to Deidre Kennedy’s murder – some here, some there – but Reynolds knows that something isn’t right. He knows that in a murder case this size hundreds of people would have been interviewed. He doesn’t know what has been lost, but he knows the files are incomplete. He just can’t tell who has been interviewed and who has not.
Reynolds finds a file on a RAAF member who had gone into the Ipswich police station in 1980 and admitted to the murder. He would have to be re-interviewed. Reynolds knocks on his door and goes through the preliminaries, but it is soon apparent that something is very wrong.
‘Prove to me that I didn’t do it.’ The bloke’s eyes are glinting with more than a hint of madness and he is leaning belligerently forward, taunting Reynolds. ‘Go on, prove to me that I didn’t do it.’ It is enough for Reynolds. ‘People run a mile if they think they’re going to be charged with something; coppers don’t normally get that sort of reaction. He reckoned when he watched TV that Coke cans would suddenly come flying out and start telling him things.’ Reynolds laughs at the memory. ‘There weren’t many things to laugh about with this case, but that was one of them. Police often get people coming into the station, putting their hand up for something they haven’t done. Maybe they enjoy their five minutes of f
ame, or they might be delusional. But whatever; when you start investigating, you find out they’re a kangaroo short in the top paddock. A screw loose.’
Knowing that Homicide always keeps a copy of an investigation’s running sheets, Reynolds decides to go back to Ipswich. Thousands of fingerprints are still there from when they were filed in 1973, and even though a lot had been damaged in the 1974 floods, there is basically a complete file. What he can’t find are the doorknocks or the exhibits such as the hair samples, ladies’ underwear, Deidre’s pyjamas and other evidence from the scene.
The key to the missing files has to be in the Homicide exhibit room. Horrie Robinson asks him if he has looked for the doorknock and exhibits himself. Reynolds hasn’t had time, and asks the staff who work in that area to do it for him. They come back and say they have looked everywhere but can’t find them. ‘Anyhow, we walked through to the exhibit room ourselves, looked to the right shelf and there was a big brown parcel marked “Deidre Kennedy”. You couldn’t miss it. Didn’t the Super go off! He said, “you’re telling me that you’ve been looking for these for three weeks?” He put a bullet through the place.’
Reynolds never finds the doorknocks. How many people live in this house? Are there any males in the house over the age of 12? Where were they on the night and morning of April 13 and 14? Paperwork detailing the scores of people who were interviewed in the days and weeks following the murder have simply disappeared. Hundreds of interviews lost. They are losses that the Queensland Police Service will be asked to explain, and for which they will never provide an adequate answer. Perhaps they went in the floods of 1974, ruined by water seepage into the basement of the CIB? Perhaps they were moved around in a re-shuffle and were misplaced? Unsurprised that voluminous amounts of material have disappeared, Reynolds is determined that it was in no way deliberate. But, he concedes, it could be seen as sloppy police work.
Kon Romaniuk, who had done the original bite mark investigation on Deidre’s body, was expecting Reynolds. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he had told the doctor on the phone. ‘I’d like to get a clearer picture of what sort of bloke we should be looking for.’
Romaniuk spells it out for the Detective-Sergeant when they meet. ‘The marks were made by both the upper and lower teeth. The small, irregular pattern of bruises that look like “point” marks was made by the upper teeth, but the lower marks are less obvious. The killer will have deformities to his two front teeth that made the “point” marks on the skin. The teeth on his bottom jaw will be straight but his top jaw will be V-shaped.’ Romaniuk reminisces about the marks. ‘The baby did not have deep bruises. There were no indentations to her skin and there was a width between the upper and lower marks. That indicates to me that the biter’s top and bottom teeth cannot close together when his jaw is shut. He has what we call an “open bite” and a significant overjet where his teeth protrude.’
Romaniuk signed a police statement regarding the photograph of the bruise marks and models taken of other teeth, including those of Paul Borchert and Stephanie Kennedy. Different dentists from the 10-strong panel he had convened within a year of Deidre’s murder to gauge different opinions had selected different people as suspects. ‘Comparisons of these models against that of the bite mark on the dead child were inconclusive, because of the meagre detail in the bite mark on the thigh of the child,’ he wrote. Romaniuk concluded in his police statement that: ‘In the final analysis it was agreed between myself and these ten men that it would be impossible to establish with any degree of certainty as to who would be responsible for this bite mark to the dead child … I am of the opinion that the bite mark on the thigh of the child was inflicted by a young person up to the age of 15 years or an adult person with a small mouth … The individual bruises caused by the bite are not sufficiently defined to enable one to arrive at any definite conclusion.’
Romaniuk had given his professional opinion in 1973, but his statement – which would become known as Exhibit 41 – would dog him.
Shortly after, the Superintendent, Horrie Robinson, wants to know what Reynolds intends to do. Robinson knows his form only too well: Reynolds’s nickname might be ‘the Legend’ for the way he looks out for his colleagues, but he’s not a cop renowned for spending too much time on the fine print.
‘What’s your plan for Carroll?’ he asks.
‘I’ll go and get his dental impressions and take it from there.’
Robinson raises a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Yeah, but what are you going to do if he won’t give them to you?’
Reynolds is already out the door. ‘Let me worry about that.’
By 11 October 1983 – 14 months after he first spoke with Rowley about the case – Reynolds is ready to speak to Raymond Carroll. He had called ahead to RAAF police at Amberley and asked that they have Carroll waiting for him at the base.
Carroll sizes up Reynolds as he walks toward him. Shorter than himself, stocky build and hair already starting to thin on top. He fits him straight away as a bloke’s bloke, who wouldn’t suffer fools for long. Not the sort of man who would casually saunter into a conversation and take a long time getting to the point.
Carroll is right. Reynolds introduces himself, gets straight down to business. They are, he tells Carroll, investigating a serious matter that occurred in Ipswich several years ago in 1973. ‘Can you tell me when you joined the RAAF?’
Carroll holds his gaze. ‘I joined the RAAF on 5 February 1973. Then I went to Edinburgh and did my 10-week basic training.’
‘What did you do after you completed your basic training?’
‘I then left Edinburgh and went to Wagga where I did my basic training in electrical fitting.’
‘Do you know when you left Edinburgh?’
Carroll lights a cigarette, flicking away the match with his thumb and middle finger. ‘I think it was about the end of April. Can you tell me what this matter is that you are suggesting?’
Reynolds doesn’t take his eyes from Carroll’s face. ‘We’re investigating the murder of Deidre Maree Kennedy, which occurred in Ipswich on the night of 13 April, or the early hours of 14 April 1973. It would be appreciated if you would accompany us to Ipswich police station, where we can talk further.’
At the police station, Reynolds grills him, and Carroll holds his ground. He was at Edinburgh at the time of the murder, he says. After graduating, he travelled with almost all of the squad by service air to Richmond, New South Wales, then went on to Sydney and later Wagga by train. No, he answers, staring at Reynolds, he did not go to Ipswich on the weekend of the murder. Most definitely not.
And now Carroll suddenly remembers. He was not in the recruit passing-out. He and another bloke were on the sideline because there was too large a number to march, what they call in the RAAF a ‘blank file’– a missing person in the parade that made it look untidy – and that is why he would have sat out. He can’t remember the other bloke’s name.
‘Raymond, are you prepared to give us dental impressions of your teeth?’ Detective Morris, a senior sergeant working with Reynolds, has now temporarily taken over the questioning. ‘Plus fingerprints and hair samples from your head, chest and pubic hair?’
‘Have I got to?’
Reynolds flicked a swift glance at Morris. That was an interesting response. Have I got to?
‘No, you haven’t. But are you prepared to supply them voluntarily?’
‘I suppose so, yep.’
Carroll remains cool throughout. A bit balky at first, but Reynolds keeps on track. ‘Look, if you haven’t committed this murder, you’ve got nothin’ to worry about, have you?’ Carroll agrees to have his impressions taken and signs the forms. He is like a brick wall. He has, he insists, nothing to hide.
Dentist Desmond Hannan makes an examination of Carroll’s mouth and finds that restoration work has been performed to the outside of his upper teeth. He then takes a cast of both his upper and lower teeth and gives them to dental technician Ronald Morley. From that cast, Morley prepares a mod
el of the teeth.
Reynolds is sweating on the fingerprints coming back. Shit, he curses when he sees the results. There is no match with Carroll, either at the Kennedy flat, or at the scene. He now pins his hopes on the odontological findings.
‘Have a look at these, Kon.’ Reynolds hands him the dental impressions, waits quietly as he places the records on his laboratory bench. Fanatical about his work, Kon Romaniuk has admitted to an obsession with the Deidre Kennedy case. For years, he has tried to match the bite marks on the baby’s legs with every person who has been through the dental school. He has never even got close. But now he starts shaking, talking rapidly in his thick mid-European accent. ‘This is the closest I’ve ever been, this is the closest I’ve ever been! But …’ Romaniuk’s voice trails off.
‘But what?’
‘It’s close, but not close enough. The similarities are uncanny, but there is a problem with the upper marks. There is nothing to show what has caused these pressure points on the dental records.’
Romaniuk has already advised Reynolds to access Carroll’s RAAF dental records, taken when he was inducted into recruits in February 1973, aged 17, so the men have them here to discuss. The records show his front teeth were badly chipped, broken away at the outer edges. But they also show something else. ‘This man had some teeth reconstruction work done when he was 21,’ Romaniuk announces. ‘Two front teeth capped, the outside tip of the front, left and right corners, a few fillings and one extraction. But there’s something still not right.’ He picks up the telephone. ‘I am going to speak to the dentist who did the work.’
Reynolds waits while the doctor makes his call, and Romaniuk hangs up after a few minutes. ‘You may not believe this, John,’ he grins. ‘The RAAF nurse who recorded the restoration work done by Halliwell, the dentist, made a mistake. What you might call a red herring.’
Justice In Jeopardy Page 8
