Marilyn follows them, desperately trying to talk to Raymond through the car window. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she cries. They have started the engine and she is screeching over the top of the noise, standing in the street outside their housing commission home, knowing she looks a spectacle but not caring.
‘What do you want me to do?’It is coming out in heaving sobs now, and the vehicle is moving away.
‘Ring Sandra.’
Marilyn stands there, stunned and inconsolable, until the police vehicle disappears around the corner.
Sandra breaks down when she hears that her brother has been taken into custody again. The family is never going to get any peace, it seems. But she gathers herself to ring a lawyer, asking that Raymond have immediate representation. She is the responsible one, the person on whom the family relies. By the time she has finished her phone calls, she has paced the room countless times and smoked half a packet of cigarettes.
As the head of the re-opened Kennedy investigation, Detective-Sergeant Cameron Herpich is the point of reference for any media inquiries regarding the case. Herpich offers a firm handshake and an uncomfortable expression when we meet at QPS headquarters in Brisbane in May 2004. He carefully picks his way through his words, building sentences block by block in police parlance. Pleasantries are exchanged, tape recorder running, but, inexplicably, it already feels like high noon.
Part of the reason for Herpich’s unease immediately becomes apparent. So many reporters, he says, have promised Faye things they have not delivered, dredging up emotions and leaving her depleted. There was a screenplay on the story, never completed. Contracts shoved under her nose, which made her nervous. And now this book. Would this be finished, or end up an unfulfilled promise, like the others?
I assure him that I have Faye’s, and her family’s, full cooperation.
Herpich often appears ill at ease, never more so than when he believes I may be attacking the QPS. ‘It has been suggested to me,’ I venture, ‘that a dark angel has looked over and protected Raymond Carroll. What do you think about that?’What Herpich thinks is that I am subtly pointing the finger at the QPS. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting … ?’ It is a common refrain throughout the interview.
‘Who,’ he demands to know, ‘said that about the dark angel?’
‘Faye Kennedy,’ I reply.
Herpich uses police speak from the outset. ‘We interview crooks. We speak with witnesses.’ And so it was with Raymond Carroll.
Herpich tells Carroll he would like to interview him back at police HQ.
Carroll refuses to talk to Herpich at all times. Afforded his rights, he is conveyed from his home address to Brisbane; during the trip in the car, he doesn’t say a thing. When the car arrives at headquarters, Herpich tells him that he has the right to contact a lawyer. He gives him a phone book and says, choose one.
Herpich studies Carroll’s body language. He is quiet, nervously quiet and cold. The arrest had come out of the blue for him. It was, Herpich mentally notes, like he knows this is it. He also knows that he doesn’t have to speak to police and that Herpich will have to prove anything he suggests.
Carroll’s defence barrister, Jim Coburn, arrives at headquarters shortly after Carroll’s arrival and has a brief meeting with him. His client, he flatly informs Herpich, will not be answering questions.
Police use Carroll’s dental impressions from the early murder trial, and Carroll is informed that he is being arrested on perjury charges. Once he is arrested, police can, by law, take a new set. And they have to.
Alex Forrest takes further impressions of Carroll’s teeth, and police photograph the procedure. They are graphic, disturbing images: Carroll’s mouth stretched wide to reveal the outline of his teeth, his dark eyes haunted. He remains icily composed throughout, but Herpich knows that if looks could kill, he would be dead.
Deemed a no-flight risk, Carroll is bailed, but the biggest concern Herpich has is where police stand in relation to the law. But after the Director of Public Prosecutions, Royce Miller, QC, and his deputy, Michael Byrnes, say what he is doing is right, he has no doubts. Herpich is certain that it was Carroll’s dentition that made the bite mark on Deidre’s thigh. He has cause for confidence. Alex Forrest told Herpich, it’s him. Colin Bamford said, ‘it’s him’. Pamela Craig said, ‘it’s him’. Another person in New Zealand said, ‘it’s him’. With so many experts saying the same thing, who is he to say the opposite?’
Barry Kennedy is at home in Longreach where he returned after he left Faye, sorting out his life, regaining sobriety, when he reads that investigators have re-opened the case on Raymond Carroll. John Reynolds had always kept him up to speed in the first investigation, though he had sheltered the Kennedys from unnecessary pain. Faye and he had separated but Deidre was still his daughter. Surely he could have been contacted, instead of having to read it through the press? Placid by nature, this was a slight he would neither forget, nor forgive.
Carroll utters only four words at his committal hearing for perjury. ‘Not Guilty, your Worship.’
They are all here. Eight months after Carroll’s arrest, the Kennedy and Carroll families, a sprinkling of lawyers and a gawking public have turned out to see him at the start of the committal. At stake, this October 1999, is not only Carroll’s future, but the credibility of the digital technology used for the first time to prove that he had lied at his first trial when he gave evidence in his own defence that he did not kill Deidre Kennedy.
The DPP has flown Dr Colin Bamford out from England. Experienced in giving evidence on bite marks prevalent in rape and child-abuse cases, he tells the court that although Bernard Sims correctly identified Carroll as the person who had bitten Deidre Kennedy, he had made errors in some of his tests. Identification of a bite mark on the baby’s body made by Carroll’s upper teeth had been made by his lower teeth, and vice versa. There have, he says, been advances in technology since Sims gave his evidence, but it is a ‘100 per cent certainty’ that it is Carroll who made the marks. Sims had once been Bamford’s teacher, but, while he is highly regarded in his field, Bamford says his mentor is ‘not infallible’. Lawyers scribble furiously: Dr Bamford is saying that Dr Bernard Sims – by his own admission one of the world’s leading odontologists – got the bite mark upside down in the previous murder trial.
Garner and Bamford go for a sandwich in the lunch break, a welcome diversion from the bleak evidence being given in court. Bamford, renowned for his large appetite, hoes into huge slabs of thickly sliced bread with roast beef. It is the height of the mad cow disease outbreak in the UK, and Garner watches him devour the sandwich, waiting until his mouth is full. ‘Good, is it?’ he asks.
Unable to speak, Bamford can only nod. ‘Mm, mm.’
‘Glad you’re enjoying it,’ Garner casually says. ‘We’re getting all this really cheap beef from the UK at the moment.’
Back in court, Carroll’s counsel Liz Wilson suggests the new technology is simply more ‘showy’ than the technology of the past, but is still based on much of the old subjective methods of the eighties. Bamford disagrees, telling the court there was a ‘lot of information’ left by the marks and that the computer technology is a breakthrough. Bite mark analysis, Bamford continues, is a form of pattern recognition and comparison. He refers to the paper scale that appears in some photographs of the bite marks, which has the large letter ‘G’ written on it. Bamford, a barrister as well as a forensic scientist, knows what he is doing. ‘What letter is this?’ he asks.
‘G,’ Liz Wilson replies, with a look that indicates that this is obvious.
‘Pattern recognition,’ Bamford crows. What Wilson has identified is pattern recognition and any similar letter ‘G’ would be recognisable by comparison. This is the classic spider-and-fly exchange that earns Wilson the sobriquet ‘G-Whiz Liz’.
Wilson could not have chosen a more challenging adversary. Legendary for calling a spade a spade, prior to the committal Bamford had used his skills to identify v
ictims from London’s Paddington underground rail disaster. All the bodies, bar two, were horribly dismembered. It was total chaos and carnage. Bodies were strewn up and down the railway line and in carriages. Working in the morgue for more than 30 hours without a break, Bamford had heard a commotion outside the building. An ugly crowd had formed, a wild, unruly mob of Afro-English, hurling abuse at him. ‘You just identifying all the white bodies first!’ they screamed. ‘What about our people?’
Exhausted, Bamford appraised the crowd through roadmap eyes. ‘Who’s in charge here?’ he barked. A couple of people, with a local politician, stepped out of the throng, their chins jutting out. ‘Come inside,’ Bamford ordered. ‘Leave the rest of this lot out here.’
Row upon row of blackened bodies, burnt beyond recognition by the diesel, were laid out on slabs. One of the men started gagging and the politician turned away. ‘Now,’ Bamford said, ‘tell me which of these people is white, and who is black.’ He had made his point. ‘Now fuck off and take that mob with you, so I can get on with my job.’
Back in the office, after the committal hearing had finished for the day, John Garner asks Reynolds and Herpich to consider a question. If Carroll had been in Ipswich on April 13 1973, what was he doing the night before Deidre was abducted?
They shrug their shoulders. ‘Dunno. Gone out to buy fags or something?’
‘There aren’t any shops in the area.’
‘All right, he’s gone snowdropping.’
‘He travelled from Edinburgh to Ipswich to steal undies? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. What about this idea?’ Garner outlines his theory. ‘He’s in the air force. The bloke who owns the block of flats Deidre was abducted from is also in the air force. Every person who lives in those flats is in the air force.’
‘So?’
‘So, there are too many air forces here. Suppose he had a married girlfriend who lived at the flats? He went to visit her, the old man was home, she slammed the door in his face. That would put him in the right place and in the right frame of mind. What do you think?’They don’t think anything.
Garner plugs on. ‘He was only 17 then, not married, but we need to find out what sort of bloke he was, whether he would play around. I reckon the best person to ask would be his ex-wife; see what she knows.’
The witnesses continue in the committal hearing. Former recruits repeat what they said at the first trial and Joy Meyers hammers her ex-husband about his treatment of Kerry-Ann. ‘I could hear her crying, really crying, really badly. When I went to change her nappy again I found these bite and bruise marks on her leg.’ No, she says indignantly when asked, the marriage did not end after she was accused of having an affair.
Garner waits until after Joy has given evidence before he speaks to her outside court. ‘I know what you’ve said about Carroll as a father, but what was he like as a husband?’
She looks at him. ‘As a husband? Well, he wasn’t a very good one.’
‘Did he play up on you?’
‘He played up, all right, but he reckoned he didn’t. His girlfriend’s name was Desley. Desley Hill she is now. She sent some letters to Darwin when we were living there. Love letters and stuff. I don’t know where she’s living now.’
Garner corners Michael Byrne and Cameron Herpich after he speaks to Joy Meyers. Not an authorised investigator on the case, he has to be diplomatic. ‘I’ve spoken to Carroll’s ex. She is none too fond of the man, to put it mildly. And there was a girlfriend in the picture. Name of Desley Hill.’
Herpich nods.
33
Detective-Sergeant Herpich tells the court the case was re-opened after the discovery of two people who alleged they had heard confessions: a former RAAF officer, Graham Bradshaw, and a prisoner who claims to have spoken with Carroll about the murder while incarcerated with him at Boggo Road Jail.
Herpich says it is the first time that digital analysis of the bite marks has been used anywhere in the world. He concedes that RAAF records that would prove Carroll was in South Australia at the time of the murder have been destroyed. His brief to John Garner, he says, had been simple: to find out whether anything could be done to enhance the photo-imaging, to counteract part of the problem at the original trial in the quest to try to match teeth to a photo.
The sight of the prisoner who claims to have spoken with Raymond Carroll about the murder, Trevor Swifte, scares Faye who is sitting in the court when he is brought in. He is in his early 40s, a big rugged bugger. It is the first time she has seen him, and they brought him down for the Committal in handcuffs. Faye has never encountered someone shackled like that and gets a terrible fright. Swifte’s evidence stuns the court. Carroll, he says, admitted to him that he had abducted the baby, sexually abused and then strangled her. ‘He said that he was out “snowdropping” – pinching underwear … He took the baby and murdered the baby and whatever else, I don’t like talking about what he done …’He says Carroll told him he had bitten the child on the ‘buttocks or something’ and that it was the bite marks that had ‘fucked him’ when Trevor asked him what went wrong. Under cross-examination, Swifte vehemently denies that he told police about Carroll’s confession to help him in an upcoming court appearance. He adds that the only person he told about Carroll’s confession, a prison officer, has since died.
The court is also told that, while they were living in Darwin in the late seventies, Carroll’s second wife, Jennifer, had accused him of murdering Deidre. RAAF officer John Gnezdiloff – known to his colleagues as ‘A-Z’ because his name has so many letters in it – says that Carroll had cried during a private meeting with him when he made the revelation. ‘He said something along the lines of “My wife has accused me of murdering that baby,”’ he said.
Graham Bradshaw repeats the evidence he has told police, that Carroll had approached him whilst he was drinking with some mates at an airmen’s club at Point Cook military base in Victoria. ‘He said he did it,’ he tells the court. ‘I said, “Are you really trying to tell us that you killed this little girl?” and he said, “Yes, I did it.”’
John Garner says using the digital imaging, he has discovered bite marks that had not been detected at the original trial and that he has matched the three bite marks found on Deidre’s thigh to models of Carroll’s teeth taken in 1984.
State forensic dentist Dr Alex Forrest does not mince words, saying that the dental evidence against Carroll at his first trial was wrong. The teeth had been analysed upside down and two further bite marks were discovered on Deidre when the case was re-opened. The accuracy of new digital dental analysis he and Garner had developed, he says, is ‘right up there in the field of DNA’ and similarities between models of Carroll’s teeth and the marks left on Deidre’s thigh are ‘far, far better than would be expected to arise from chance’.
Forrest fares better than Victorian forensic dentist Pamela Craig, who is slaughtered for the evidence she gives and the way she delivers it. It is an ominous precursor to what is to come for her at trial.
The rest of the committal hearing is equally rigorous, and, after two weeks, Magistrate Brian Williams, SM, finds there is enough evidence to commit Carroll for trial on perjury charges. Remanded on bail to appear at the first sittings of Brisbane’s Supreme Court in the New Year, he is assailed by reporters as he leaves the court. ‘If convicted, you face up to 14 years’ jail, Mr Carroll. Do you wish to say anything?’
Purse-lipped, he stares straight ahead and keeps walking.
Raymond Carroll receives six letters, sent to him via his solicitor from a stranger in West Ipswich, four of them mailed in November 1999 and two in March 2000. The envelopes have been re-used, the writing in a shaky hand. The man, who is 90 years old, includes his name, and says he got ‘knocked up’ when he travelled. It would be better, he has written, if Carroll’s lawyer could go and see him.
Carroll has no clue about the elderly man’s identity, nor his motive for writing letters. He passes them to his solicitors, who make a decisi
on that his allegations do not strengthen their case in any way. Perhaps, they reason, the man is delusional or insane; perhaps he has a vendetta against his son; certainly his allegation is not proof that it is true. For Carroll, the bizarre letters, and the letter writer, remain a mystery.
‘Mr RJ Carroll,’ the first reads. ‘If you tell me the name and address of your solicitor, I may be able to help you.’ The letter is signed with the man’s name. They continue to arrive, protesting that Carroll’s lawyer has ignored his letters. ‘I won’t write to your lawyer asking him when the trial is due. He might send me a bill for $50.00 for seeking information! They don’t call lawyers “sharks” without a reason.’ The letters become even more bizarre:
On 21st October [1999], I reported to Ipswich police that my son had admitted killing Deidre Kennedy. Later that day, 2 detectives called at my house and one of them asked me did he admit it before it was published in the paper. I said I couldn’t remember …
By the end of November, the letters take a desperate tone. ‘In reply to your letter,’ he scribbled:
your lawyer had better come and see me if he wants to talk to me. Last Thursday I fell backward twice in Ipswich Mall and a policeman did my shopping and the ambulance drove me home. I was all right next day.
The final letter arrives on 13 March 2000. ‘I have received no word from the Brisbane Police or your solicitor about your coming court appearance,’ it grumbles. Offering to go to Brisbane by train, the man concluded, ‘I would of course tell the jury you are inosent of the crime and my son is guilty. Hoping to hear from you …’
Garner and Forrest are concerned. For some reason, there appears to be a reluctance by police to follow up on the information regarding Carroll’s former girlfriend. They know that the more evidence they can bring to this case, the stronger it would be. Desley Hill may not be of any help, but surely she was at least worth talking to? In a meeting with Michael Byrne, they outline their apprehension. Byrne agrees, sending over a checklist to Criminal Investigation Branch. Tactfully, he slips in the query: ‘Anyone had a chance to check on Desley Hill yet?’
Justice In Jeopardy Page 20
