Good. Saves me asking that question.
He wants to talk about the photograph, about why the police pushed so hard to prove his mother had taken his brother and sister to the doctor. ‘OK, if the kids are sick, it gives them an excuse to get me out of Edinburgh on compassionate grounds. Right?’
‘But a lot of people said you weren’t there.’
‘That was because I wasn’t in the course photo. I told Reynolds I wasn’t in the course photo.’
‘Yes, but you said you were standing off to the side and then they proved you weren’t there by showing someone else’s photograph in which you were clearly nowhere to be seen.’
He seems exasperated with the verbal ping-pong, looks at Sandra who starts pacing. ‘They couldn’t remember him being there. They remember someone leaving. They assumed it was Raymond. My ex-husband was in the army. He can’t remember who he was on course with, or who he travelled with, either. OK? It’s a big space of time. The cops have got all their notes to refer to. Nobody told us to do that.’
The morning light has caught her face, and, for the briefest of moments, there it is: all the years of defending her brother from the enemy – media, public, police; all the years of being the family guardian; all the years of playing mother ingrained in dark hollows under her eyes and in heavy creases around her mouth. For the briefest of moments, it looks as though her frustration, her exhaustion, will tumble out in tears. But she has turned away, taken stock. She is the eldest. The head of the family. The one they all lean on.
Raymond comes back into the conversation. ‘I said I was standing to the right of the parade ground, this bloody massive rectangle area. Not every square inch of that area is photographed. So they produced evidence to say, right, if I wasn’t on the pass-out parade, they assume I’d be standing at a particular spot. I was off in a line of trees at the edge of the parade ground.’
He doesn’t know who he was standing with, can only make assumptions. ‘The person who was back-coursed.’ Murmuring to himself. ‘Bloody hell, who was he?’
‘So what happened to your paperwork?’
‘You tell me,’ he challenges. ‘There were three visits to Canberra records. On the first visit, the clerk can remember me records for course 1203 being pulled. All the records were there. All the records were there. On the second visit, two people went down to peruse the records of 1203. At that time they were all there as well, including the course roll. On the third visit, by me lawyers, the course roll was not there. You tell me where they’ve gone. Casper the ghost has come along and destroyed things?’
He runs through the litany of evidence built against him. ‘OK, they say I wasn’t at Edinburgh. Why? Because I wasn’t in the pass-out photo. They ask, was I in Edinburgh at the time? Dunno, they answer, but if I was, I’d have been in the pass-out parade. Did I march on that? Well, if I had, I’d have been in the photo. Why wouldn’t I march? Because I wasn’t there. OK, they say, we’ve got evidence to say I did something in Ipswich; is there any reason why I’d go there? “Ah,” they say, “Stephenson went on compassionate leave; maybe Carroll went on compassionate leave, too?” Somebody who hasn’t got a direct memory can be led into thinking another way. Especially under pressure.’
‘Can we get this clear?’ I ask. ‘Your line is that Rowley didn’t like you; he picked you up for some speeding offences on the base; the women’s quarters are broken into, he’s looked at you and thinks, your teeth fit, you must be good for that and also for the Kennedy girl’s murder. Is that it?’
‘I dunno what my line is …’
He queries the evidence of the witnesses. Why didn’t his first wife tell anyone that he had bitten his own daughter? Swifte’s time frame is out of whack, the conversation didn’t happen and he manufactured the story to get a deal on his sentence. Stephenson, one of the course members, had a vague recollection of introducing Raymond to his parents after the pass-out parade. ‘They had two witnesses on a video link-up from England, and they were both sitting at a table discussing what was going on. The judge came in and said, “I hope those men aren’t the two witnesses.” They separated them and they gave their evidence, which matched with what they were discussing previously …’
‘People only hear what they want to hear,’ Sandra says. ‘Our system works on “beyond reasonable doubt” and that’s why Raymond was acquitted. There were too many doubts.’
They are in full swing. I don’t have to ask a thing. ‘At the first trial,’ Raymond says, ‘three expert witnesses had the bite mark upside down. But then in the second trial they say, “Now we’ve got it right.” Now, if that’s not reasonable doubt, what is? Honestly! Teeth are supposed to be similar to fingerprints, but if three people say it’s the same bite mark but use different points of reference, how can it be the same? The technicalities that I’m supposed to be gotten off on aren’t technicalities. They’ve taken the emotion out of it and looked wholly and solely at the physical evidence that’s been presented, and they’ve come to their conclusions from that. Now it hasn’t been a conclusion where they have said, “We’ll re-try him,” or “It’s a bit dubious,” or “It’s a two-thirds majority”. It’s been a unanimous decision of outright acquittal. Unsafe and unsound.’
Everyone in the room is nodding. ‘You don’t just leave the base, particularly rookies. There has got to be documentation, travel orders, leave granted, whatever. In the service, your whole life is documented.’ He sighs again. ‘I could make allegations about conspiracy and everything else …’
‘But to what end?’
‘For closure. To make it fit me. And, even with the computer presentation, they were still identifying different teeth with different points. It’s also anatomically impossible for anybody to bite in the pattern they said I did. I’ve got an overbite, but so do a lot of other people. Going on this so-called “uniqueness” of my bite, they say it’s like a fingerprint – only one match. How can you have six people saying different teeth match? Even in the second trial, they had different teeth lining up with different bruises.’
It is the most animated he has been all morning. ‘The so-called second bite mark has never been proved to be a bite mark to start with. If you go through the original autopsy report, there’s no mention of a second bite mark. Romaniuk doesn’t mention that second bite mark and neither did any of the panel of 10 dentists. The Queensland law system is a play. Whoever acts the best at the time wins. Nugget Carroll assumed the person taking the clothes off the line was Paul Borchert. The description he gave – how could he mistake that with someone who had just been in the RAAF, with very short black hair? He said the prowler was five foot six to five-eight. I was six-two. It was a big case.’
And a big sentence he has just spoken. He stretches out his long legs. ‘The justice system in Queensland needs a huge revamp.’
‘It had one. They called it the Fitzgerald Inquiry.’
‘It needs a better one! In Queensland, if a person’s in the dock, they’re perceived to be guilty. End of story. Particularly if it’s a high-profile case …’
Raymond Carroll’s freedom, so hard won, haunts him. He dismisses calls for an overhaul of the double jeopardy laws as little more than a ‘political move’ and plans for any civil action against him a rerun of OJ Simpson. But fear that he may one day face a civil court gnaws at the edge of his consciousness, scraping like bony fingers. ‘During the committals and trials, I knew I was innocent and that the system would prove that, so I didn’t really have a great worry. So when the guilty decisions came down, I felt numb, nothing. “How could this be?” I thought. “This can’t happen.” But now they’re changing the double jeopardy laws and, while they say they can’t touch me again, there’s still the possibility of something going wrong, that it will all start up again. So I have to prepare myself in a fashion for that.’
It is his turn to ask a question. ‘Have you actually seen photographs of the bite marks?’
Flashback. Plump, dimpled thigh. Faye had call
ed Deidre ‘a little porker’. Plump, dimpled baby flesh covered in obscene bruises. ‘Yes, I have. They are hideous. Upsetting.’
‘I know it’s hideous. But take away that emotion, right …?’
Take away that emotion. I stare at him, confounded by what he has said. ‘That’s a bit hard to do. She was only a tiny girl.’
‘Yeah, but I seriously believe I was convicted on emotion, not fact. That’s why the Criminal Court of Appeal and the High Court looked at the facts, without the emotion, and said, “It doesn’t stand up.” Cigarette smoke is curling around his moustache. ‘I honestly hope that Faye Kennedy gets closure, but not at my expense, because I didn’t do it. But, I tell you, the way the police have handled this case, it will never be closed. Now, if they wanted to charge someone else with the murder, any first-year defence lawyer is gonna say, “Hang on, you’ve put Raymond Carroll through two trials, you definitely said it was him, so how can it be my client?” Somebody could come up and confess to this crime, and a lawyer would get him off. They would say, “If Carroll’s dentition was so unique, how can it fit two people?”’
Sandra is striding again, nodding. ‘The legal team told us that after the first trial. They said they’ll never get anybody for this.’
I move on to another topic. ‘Why did you go into the supermarket where Faye worked?’I ask him. The question slides quietly between the smokers’ coughs and the clattering of coffee spoons. ‘You know that it was perceived as a very sinister thing to do. Why did you go in there?’
When Queenslanders had read the newspaper story about this, they found it beyond comprehension. Raymond Carroll – the name they had come to know over almost three decades, the man accused and then acquitted of murdering Faye Kennedy’s daughter – had casually strolled into the supermarket where Faye worked. Strolled in, put his food on the counter and waited to be served.
But she would not serve him. Ever.
She saw him heading toward her and wanted to scream out, instead stood riveted to the spot, her stomach turned to liquid. His family had been in before, but it was the first time she had seen him in there, and the first time she had seen him up close. So close she could reach out and swipe him.
His hair was longer than it was when she last saw him at the perjury trial, longer and peppered with grey. He stepped up to the register and put his groceries on the conveyor belt. For Faye, it was as if the world had stopped and there were only two people in it. Herself and Carroll.
He doesn’t blink in response to my questions. ‘I had no idea she worked there. I went in and got a couple of things and went to the quick checkout. I was looking at things on the stands, the checkout became vacant, I looked up and thought, “Oh shit, it’s Faye.”’
‘But surely you knew she worked there. Ipswich is not that big a city.’
‘No, I didn’t know. Anyway, I didn’t make a scene, I just put me stuff on the counter and she refused to serve me. I just stood there and waited until someone else came to serve, said thank you very much and walked out.’
A cool customer, I thought. But it wasn’t that easy for Faye. She fell apart, just managed to splutter out her outrage before she staggered away from the counter. ‘There is no way in hell I’m serving you,’ she had hissed. In the lunch room, she shook violently, her body racked with sobs.
Given the lynch-mob emotion, I ask Carroll why he didn’t go to another checkout, or just leave his stuff and walk out of the shop.
He is suddenly belligerent, defensive. ‘Why should I? I’ve done nothing wrong, right? I am a member of the public. I am innocent. Why should I have to change my lifestyle because of something that has gone horribly wrong? I was already in front of her, put me stuff on the counter, looked up and saw it was Faye Kennedy. Before I could do anything else, she had just stormed off.’
He went in another time, later to buy cigarettes. ‘I wasn’t trying to be antagonistic. I had a look around before I walked in the door.’ He shrugs. ‘She wasn’t there.’
Sandra takes up the story. ‘Raymond has been made to look like so much of a monster, he realises some things are going to have to change. But he has as much right in this community as anyone else. Whether people believe he’s innocent or not, he has been acquitted. He’s a free man. There was a story in a newspaper that sort of made out he went in there stalking her. We don’t even know where she lives, don’t want to know. He didn’t deliberately go into that supermarket.’
It’s a Mexican standoff.
‘We were living in a housing commission house in an Ipswich suburb,’ Marilyn adds. ‘We weren’t hidin’. But we’ve never been back into that supermarket since. We go further to do our shopping now.’
Little wonder. The newspaper story that exposed Carroll going to the supermarket generated huge public sympathy for Faye. Though legally entitled to shop there, Carroll risked encountering ugly scenes from an outraged public if he upset Faye Kennedy again. In small communities, they protect their own.
Raymond says it is he who should be upset. ‘The crap people come out with!’ He is shaking his head. ‘The Sunday Mail started running articles – I was supposed to be living in Mackay and all sorts of stuff. I wasn’t there; I was living in Ipswich. They were just trying to bait me, to find out where I was. Then it started all over again. After the second trial, I had to re-build me life all over again.’
‘It’s hopeless,’ Marilyn says. ‘He gets a job and next minute he’s finished. Once, he worked just one day at a factory and then the media was there out the front to greet him when he come out. It’s hopeless.’
Raymond tells me he has a good relationship with his daughter Kerry-Ann, whom he refers to, sarcastically, as ‘the supposed bite mark victim’. ‘I’ve told her there is a book coming out on the story. Her response was, “What’s the name of it so I can go buy it?”’
‘Ray’s mum said that even when Kerry-Ann had a snotty nose, Joy would rush her straight to the doctor,’ Marilyn says. ‘So why would she ignore somebody abusing her child?’
They say Kerry-Ann, now 31, has no memory of being bitten. ‘She wanted to go on the stand but they wouldn’t let her. She couldn’t believe that her father would do that. They are very close. We went to her wedding last November.’
The family laugh at Joy Meyers’s version of events about why their marriage broke down. It is bitter laughter, laced with scorn, but they don’t share the joke with me. ‘The fact of the matter is, Raymond was the good guy,’ Sandra says. ‘He gave her a divorce hassle-free, so it didn’t restrict his already limited access to Kerry-Ann. And he paid the price for it. All that other stuff never came up until after Raymond was put on trial.’ She is stridently loud, half shouting.
Raymond interrupts her, his voice soothing and quiet in comparison. He traces a finger around the bottom of his moustache as he speaks, following the contours of his mouth. ‘I don’t sling mud. I will not go down to the dirt, smut, in-the-gutter-fighting crap. I have done nothing wrong. I’ve been brought up to respect the law. If something goes wrong, you go to see the police. I still respect the police. I haven’t got much time for ’em, but it’s the system that I have absolutely no respect for. Right? Herpich, Reynolds, all the others; they had a job to do. And they did it. But the problem is, a lot of stuff I’ve got no physical proof about and, if I haven’t got that, what’s the point in making the allegation?’
‘What about the business with Kerry-Ann, in the bedroom, screaming? Why would Joy have said that?’
‘Have you met Joy? She likes shock value. She’ll say anything to get a reaction.’
Desley Hill wasn’t truthful, either, by his account.
‘She said you turned up at her place the night they found Deidre’s body.’
‘Nuh.’
‘Why would she say that? Why are so many people out to “fit you up”?’
For the notoriety, he says. And Desley is impressionable.
‘Impressionable? But if she loved you, why would she do that to you?’
<
br /> His voice becomes higher. ‘But that’s just it! What makes you think she loved me?’
‘Well, did she?’
‘I don’t know!’ He is curiously defensive now, refusing to deny outright how she felt about him. ‘After my divorce from Joy, I saw her again. She was living by herself then.’
‘So you didn’t see her at all during your marriage?’
‘No.’
‘What about the letters, the engagement ring, the letter Desley wrote to Joy in Darwin?’
‘I don’t know. I never saw the letters. I was never confronted by Joy, either.’
‘Yes, you were. It came up at trial.’
‘I confronted her, not the other way around.’
It is a quick response and it takes a while to sink in.
‘OK, answer this,’ he says. ‘If I was in Ipswich at the time Deidre was murdered, why wasn’t I contacted by the police in 1973?’ He seems to be daring me to speculate. ‘Well?’
‘Presumably because you weren’t at the house. Let’s assume for a moment that you were in Ipswich; you’re not going to answer a police doorknock, are you?’
‘If I was in Ipswich, where else would I be staying?’ His voice rises. ‘I’m 17 years old, I’ve supposedly just been dragged out of my course on compassionate grounds because my mother is gravely ill; they do a doorknock, my mother answers when they ask, “Who’s here?” and there’s no record of me. If there had been, why wasn’t I contacted back then?’
‘Perhaps it was your mother’s instinct – a natural maternal instinct – to hide you?’ As I say it, I am remembering what a lawyer told me, years before: that a mother could see her own adult child, smoking gun in hand, standing over a dead body, and still declare it was a fit-up. Blind loyalty and a mother’s love: the two most immutable instincts.
Sandra’s voice has a cold edge I haven’t heard before. ‘That would infer,’ she says with a withering look, ‘that he came up here to kill the baby.’
I sense I should probably back off, but I don’t. ‘No, it doesn’t automatically imply intent. But isn’t it possible Raymond came to Ipswich, killed the baby and that your mother protected him?’
Justice In Jeopardy Page 31
