Many documents, he says, were destroyed and thrown out when the Ipswich police station basement was waterlogged in the floods that swept through – not the 1974 flood, but one that came later, a seepage of water and fuel that swept all before it.
Prosecutor Adrian Gundelach has forensic scientist Kenneth Cox in the witness stand when Carroll’s chest, head and pubic hair are handed up. While some similarities with his hair were found, they are not, Cox testifies, what he would call ‘a very good match’. On the other hand, he says, there are two portions of hair that do not have sufficient dissimilarities to rule out Carroll as a suspect. ‘All I can say is they could come from Carroll and he cannot be eliminated.’
‘Would you,’ Gundelach persists, ‘ever be in a position to say a hair came from a particular person’s head or some other body?’
‘No.’
The defence seizes on this. ‘There is really no positive presumption of identification as to the defendant Carroll being the person here in this matter as a result of the hair sample; do you agree with that?’
‘I agree with that.’
Cox recalls mounting hair samples on microscopic slides in 1980. At that time, he says, there was a Tasmanian suspect for the murder. But there was no match.
Neil Raward, officer in charge of the scientific section at Police Headquarters, says he examined hair samples from both the Kennedy family and people who lived in the Borchert household next door. After testing, he eliminated them all as suspects.
On day two, 27 February, Dr William Josephson, who attended to Deidre at Limestone Park, agrees with Gundelach that he was present at the Institute of Forensic Pathology in Brisbane on 14 April 1973. Vasta, known for cutting to the chase and keeping language simple for the layperson, peers down from the bench. ‘Forensic pathology? Is that a fancy name for the morgue?’
Shown nine photographs, including close-ups of the bruise marks, Dr Josephson – by now, deputy superintendent at Brisbane’s Prince Charles Hospital – is clearly unimpressed. After studying them, he makes his announcement. ‘They are not,’ he intones, ‘an excellent representation.’ Josephson later adds what he had adduced at the park. ‘I would say the bite marks were inflicted probably at or around the time of death, though they may have been inflicted earlier.’
Press journalists scribble furiously. This is exactly the sensational type of evidence that headlines are made of, and they use it to full advantage. ‘Baby Bitten Near Time of her Death – Doctor’. The story has now taken on proportions of its own, gathering a huge audience outside Queensland. But even hardened reporters struggle with some of the detail. Sometimes stories cut too close to the bone, and this is one of them. Other news items need attention but they seem shallow, empty against the tragedy that is the murder of an innocent child. Even 12 years on, the story has lost none of its resonance. There is a whiff of death in the courtroom, an unnerving spirit that hangs over proceedings. The main players, now paraded one after the other in the witness box, have aged, and there is sometimes a weariness in their answers, as if they wonder whether this horror will ever end.
It is only early in the trial, and there is no promise it will get any easier.
Josephson is still on the stand. He found, he reiterates, bruising on the air passages consistent with violence, but the small bones in Deidre’s neck were not broken. ‘I formed the opinion that death was caused by asphyxiation due to strangulation.’ Cross-examined by Copley, he said he could see no indentations in the bite marks.
RAAF policeman John Rowley, called from Malaysia to give evidence for the prosecution, is extremely unimpressed with the entire exercise. The Crown puts a few blokes up at one of the best hotels in Brisbane for six weeks, and four of them, including Rowley, aren’t called to give evidence. Rowley turns up each day not knowing if he’s going to the witness stand or not. He is bored to death.
Time and memory can play tricks, especially through an inquest, committal and a murder trial. A lot has happened between 1973 and 1985. Cecil ‘Nugget’ Carroll died early in 1974 and Arthur Borchert has long ago left Short Street, his de facto Kathleen and the brood of kids. And Borchert can’t remember now if Nugget had described the prowler on the veranda as having blondish-to-fair hair. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. He doesn’t know for sure. Borchert had definitely thought it could have been his son Paul, who also had that colour hair, but then … It was a long time ago; he can’t remember that far back. He had been drinking that night, though he wasn’t drunk and he didn’t see the prowler. ‘I never seen him,’ he tells the court. But Copley reads his own words back to him from the committal, so he understands what he said at the time. ‘And you were asked, “Blond-headed …?”’
‘Yeah,’ Borchert concedes. ‘It must be right. If that’s what I said at the time, then, yeah.’
Reynolds is amazed at how little Borchert has changed. Same beatnik hairstyle, trailing down to his shoulders in greasy tendrils identical to the cut worn by Albert Einstein. Dressed in a suit that has obviously been hired, like something a man would wear to a wedding. Or a funeral.
Copley is testing Borchert’s memory about the fellow he saw walking toward the flats that night, an exchange that degenerates into farce. ‘A little earlier today you said you saw the person next door … who was walking between the flats for about five minutes.’
‘Mmm.’
‘You mean about five seconds, do you?’
‘Five minutes, five seconds. I didn’t time him. I wasn’t timing him.’
‘I suggest to you, as a matter of fairness to yourself, it wouldn’t take five minutes to walk a distance of 25 feet?’
‘No, I don’t suppose so. Depends how fast you walk.’ Borchert grins when he says it and looks around the courtroom as if he may take a bow.
Copley doesn’t appreciate the humour. ‘He wasn’t doing handstands or anything?’ he asks sarcastically.
‘No.’ Borchert shoots Copley a filthy look.
Copley is also impatient with Detective Morris’s recollection of how police tested whether Nugget Carroll could so clearly have seen a prowler on the veranda. ‘Do you know if the light was on in the bedroom when you went in to conduct this experiment? Surely there wouldn’t be you and Carroll and other policemen trooping around the bedroom with the light off all the time, groping around in the dark, would you? You would have had the light on at some stage, surely?’
Morris cannot remember. ‘I am not 100 per cent sure.’
Arthur Bocherts former ‘missus’ Kathleen is on the stand. Time has not been kind to her. Her skin is leathery and hair lifeless; petrified to be in court, she looks as stunned as a deer in headlights as she recalls events before Deidre was abducted. Weeks before, she says, ‘Old Nuggie’ had tripped over after a drinking binge. He was on tablets for the pain in his head ‘and to stop him being wobbly on his legs’. He had got up to get his tablets and gone back to bed. She and the kids were watching television and Arthur was in the kitchen playing records with his mate.
She had done her washing the day before, she says; hung most of the clothes on the Hills Hoist downstairs and strung the rest on the veranda with a long rope. A pair of step-ins, a little pair of blue panties that belonged to her five-year-old daughter, and a few other items. She is unsure, now, what time she washed but, she stutters, ‘she usually started in the morning part.’
Gundelach has missed something Kathleen said. ‘That’s not surprising, the way she mumbles,’ Vasta growls, just audible enough for the court reporters to pick up.
Reporters move forward in their seats when RAAF dental surgeon Brett Halliwell takes the oath on the witness stand.
He had worked on Carroll’s teeth in 1976 and specifically remembers him. ‘His oral hygiene left a lot to be desired,’ he tells the court, ‘and he had a number of treatments with my hygienist at the time, which I deemed more than essential.’ Adrian Gundelach remembered that outside court, the dental witnesses were not so circumspect in their descriptions. Carroll, t
hey said, had a mouth like a sewer.
18
Former instructor Ray Martin looks comfortable in the witness box, telling the court that Carroll had left Edinburgh after he had told him someone was sick in his family. ‘You had no other contact whatsoever with Raymond Carroll after you told him to report to the orderly room in headquarters?’ Copley asks. ‘No,’ Martin replies. ‘None whatsoever.’
The recruits agree that they recall Carroll’s absence from the passing-out parade, and that they never saw him at Edinburgh again. Darryl Stephenson is the exception. Informed by telegram that his brother had died on Friday 30 March, the funeral was to be held the following Tuesday. He had left the RAAF base on Monday and was away for three days. But, he tells the court, he is fairly sure that he spoke to Carroll in the canteen on the day of the graduation.
Each recruit has his own recollection of Carroll. Some admit they remember very little. Others describe him as having ‘buckteeth’ and unpleasant breath. Neil Hurst, who had the nickname ‘Tooth’, remembers Carroll’s teeth were bigger than his own. He also recalls that Carroll had told him that, since the death of his father, he was the head of the family and responsible for them.
Former recruit Trevor Kitson does not take kindly to being cross-examined about his memory of Carroll being absent from the base. Leaning over the witness stand, the veins are prominent in his forehead. ‘I couldn’t give a damn what you bloody think!’ he snarls at Copley. ‘I am telling you what my memory tells me and that’s it.’
Sergeant Robert Matthews had been attached to the clothing store at Edinburgh in 1973. The clothing register books filled out for uniform supplies when RAAF personnel moved bases would now be either destroyed or archived at the base, he says. But, he admits, he had failed to locate them when he had looked a month before the trial started. They were, simply, nowhere to be found.
Former Base Administration Officer Wing Commander Peter Moxey has no knowledge of Carroll being granted compassionate leave. No knowledge, in fact, of him being granted any leave at all in April 1973. Gundelach rises. Would any checks have been made if a chaplain from RAAF Amberley rang with a message regarding a recruit’s family? Moxey shakes his head. Provided the officer receiving the call was confident that the information was true, then no. Training leave would not appear on a recruit’s leave card that stayed on records whilst they were in the RAAF, and any request for interstate leave would be passed internally to the recruit’s superior officer, who would make the decision that they could go. There was no requirement to keep these forms.
Warrant Officer Ronald Oldmeadow says he had pulled out Carroll’s file in April 1973 but he cannot recall the reason why he did so. Unless there was a death in the family, he says, Carroll would not have been granted compassionate leave at public expense because a recruit could resign within three months of enlisting. There was no particular routine about granting leave because every case was different and it was ultimately the Commanding Officer’s decision. Leave cards were only signed after a recruit had started at his first posting.
From where the reporters are sitting, the prosecution and defence are neck and neck. And then William Jordan, Carroll’s neighbour from Quarry Lane, drops a bombshell. He just can’t remember, he says, whether or not he saw Carroll prior to the murder. He was away that weekend and had volunteered to give his fingerprints to police when he returned home. ‘Would you,’ Copley asks, ‘agree with me there was no suggestion of any family crisis in the Carroll family on or about 12 April 1973?’
‘No, I would not agree with that,’ Jordan replies. ‘In the back of my mind, I remember Mrs Carroll was sick and Raymond had to come home from the air force on compassionate leave.’ He has a vague recollection that he discussed this with his wife in 1984 after police had approached him and told him that Raymond was being questioned.
There is an uproar in court following this evidence. Although Jordan had not suggested this to police back in 1973, he is now saying, unprompted, he remembers that Carroll’s mother was sick.
Dr Graham Cruickshank was the Carroll family’s GP in 1973, practising at an Ipswich clinic. He has located stamped attendance records for Raymond’s brother, Peter Carroll, then 12, and sister Leanne, five, for a visit to him on 12 April 1973. They had been stamped to show the children had attended, but there were no notes from him regarding the visit. There are, he ventures, a couple of possibilities for this: either the children had not been sick enough to warrant him writing notes, or their files had been stamped on arrival but they hadn’t waited to see the doctor. He had not received a call from the RAAF and it would be wrong to assume that because there was a date stamp on the card the children had received treatment. No, he says emphatically, he cannot show his appointment book. They were systematically destroyed after 12 months.
Gundelach thinks long and hard about how to best present the dental evidence to the jury. It is, he knows, a huge challenge. Beyond the circumstantial evidence and the key witnesses, the prosecution’s argument about the identity of the person who produced the bite marks would be the crux of its case. It is this evidence that must convince the jury beyond reasonable doubt that, having conducted tests on the casts of Raymond Carroll’s teeth, it was he, and no one else, who had bitten Deidre and left the pattern of bruising on her thigh. The prosecution must walk a fine line: to ensure that its message is clear and easily understood, while not confusing or boring the jury with scientific jargon. The last thing the prosecution needs is six men and six women baffled beyond comprehension. The evidence is further complicated by the passage of time: the odontologists had had to remove the restoration work done after Carroll joined the RAAF and reproduce his teeth to the condition they were in at the time of the murder. This needs to be explained, in layperson’s terms. And if they can’t sell this to the jury, the prosecution’s case will be most certainly sunk.
The prosecutors also know that this is a landmark case, based largely on odontological evidence, that is being closely watched around the world. The challenge was to pull it off, convince the jury that none other than Raymond John Carroll’s teeth had made those bite marks, that it was his dentition and his dentition alone.
Editors have warned their journalists to correctly report the three witnesses’ professions. Under no circumstances are they to call them orthodontists: they are people who correct dental deformities. The correct title of the witnesses is ‘forensic odontologist’: people who specialise in the application of dental knowledge to questions of law. And, if they don’t know that ‘forensic’ means matters relating to courts of law or legal proceedings, then they shouldn’t be covering courts.
Out of earshot of the journalists, Kerry Copley has his own term for people who work in dentistry. Fillers and pullers.
The three expert witnesses – Dr Brown, Dr Sims and Dr Romaniuk – all agree that the bite mark consisted of two areas of bruising on the upper surface of the left thigh. The top mark was an irregular pattern of small bruises; the bottom had two separate diffuse bruises adjacent to each other. The top row of bruises was left by the biter’s upper teeth, the larger area by the lower. It is crucial to the prosecution’s case that the jury understands this. The row of bruises on the top part of Deidre’s thigh was left by upper human teeth and it is their contention that it was Carroll’s dentition, and only Carroll’s dentition, that caused the marks. The three odontologists all reach the same conclusions. But they use different methods of identification to find that different teeth caused the marks on Deidre’s body.
Unlike Sims and Brown, who used overlays, Romaniuk applied the casts directly onto a photograph of the bite marks. While his colleagues argue the upper bruising was caused by the four upper teeth, Sims’s opinion is that it was caused by only three. Brown and Romaniuk agree that one particular tooth made a particular mark; Sims believes it was a different tooth. They differ, too, in their opinions regarding the lower teeth. Romaniuk relates bruising to all four. Sims sees only three and Brown cannot indicate whi
ch teeth formed the marks, pointing to a ‘scraping mechanism’, which he says caused diffuse bruising.
On the eighth day of the trial, plaster casts of Carroll’s teeth, mounted on a wire jaw frame, and photographs of the bite marks on Deidre’s thigh are handed up as exhibits. Kon Romaniuk’s answers are considered, carefully weighed. ‘In your opinion,’ Gundelach asks him, ‘is there a possibility that someone else’s dentition could have made that bite mark that we see depicted on the thigh of Deidre Maree Kennedy?’
Romaniuk is unequivocal in his reply. ‘No. I have done so much work on this and I have convinced myself quite clearly and it is my opinion that the only person who could have made the bite mark was Raymond John Carroll.’ When everything is taken into account, he explains, including the relationship between Carroll’s teeth and the deficiencies in them, he had a unique dentition. And no two people – not even identical twins – share the same dentition. He tells the court that, as a result of his tests, he has come to the conclusion that there is a definite pattern between Carroll’s teeth and the bite marks. The headlines are forming as he speaks. ‘Accused Man Bit Baby on Thigh, Murder Trial Told.’
The next day, Romaniuk reads to the court the statement he gave in October 1973 – that a panel of 10 dentists had admitted it was impossible to establish with any degree of certainty exactly who was responsible for biting Deidre Kennedy. That he had changed his mind between 1973 and now does not go unnoticed by the defence. For the reporters, it is easy pickings. Dentists have disagreed on the bite marks, and that is what they will relay to their audience.
‘Have your views on the bite marks changed since 1973 because of any developments in odontology?’ Justice Vasta asks.
Romaniuk nods. There have, he agrees, been some quite considerable advances made in the interpretations since then.
Romaniuk is on the witness stand all day long and loses copious amounts of weight due to the stress. The defence goes in hard to trip him up and query his academic qualifications. Copley quotes from a standard medical textbook. ‘In cases where only bruising is present, a definite opinion should not be given concerning the identity of a suspect.’
Justice In Jeopardy Page 12
