A baby. Dressed up like a woman in underwear that swamped her tiny body. Her thigh bruised with hideous marks. The sight defied description.
The man panicked. He was scared. So scared. This child had obviously been murdered and dumped and soon it would be light enough for other people to come into the park. He didn’t know what to do. If he went to the police, they would think he was responsible. If he left her in the bin, the dogs would attack.
He cried as he lifted her out of the rubbish bin and looked for a place to put her. It had to be high off the ground, away from the dogs. There was a building nearby. A toilet block. He would put her on top of the toilet block.
He wanted her to be seen, wanted her rescued from this lonely place. He climbed up with her in his arms and arranged her so that her head and arm hung over the guttering. Anointed her with his tears and scrambled back down, running, running to get away from there. By the time news breaks of the discovery of little Deidre Kennedy’s body later that afternoon, he had hunkered down with his secret. But the memory never left him, stayed in his conscience through three long decades. Haunted him, how he was too cowardly to go to the police in case they thought he was the person who did it.
The police checked the veracity of his story. Verified where he lived. Spoke to his doctor. Chatted with people who knew him. And, in the end, they agreed the personal details he had given them all added up. The man was kosher.
Dying of cancer, and wanting to get it off his chest. And, when he died a short time later, he was satisfied he was going to his grave with a clear conscience.
53
So much has happened in three decades. Journalists return to the Deidre Kennedy story when something new breaks but there is always competition for copy space, every day a new story breaking somewhere in the world.
Lawyers involved in the case have long ago moved on to new trials and challenges, but the defence in a high-profile case like this can cop a hard time of it. Peter Davis, still working in private practice, grew to dread going to dinner parties and the inevitable, whining question: ‘But how could you defend him?’ He has a theory about how this case got so big, a juggernaut out of control. ‘The RAAF is little different to the legal profession,’ he says. ‘People just can’t stop talking about each other. And from the time Carroll’s name was thrown in the ring, the legend grew bigger and bigger.’
Faye Kennedy made a lasting impression on Davis. Four years after the trial, he still remembers her with great sympathy. ‘Faye was a very sad case. You will see from the answers which she gave to my cross-examination of her that she was very defensive and thought that she was under some sort of attack. Nothing of course could be further from the truth. Because I was defending, it became an “us” vs “them” scenario, which is the problem with the adversarial system. The jury just had so much sympathy for her, and I wouldn’t have wanted to be a juror who found against her. They got caught up in the horror of it all. They could not be objective.’ He ruminates about Faye’s strength. ‘I thought she was bigger than human. Anyone who can turn up to court every day and listen to evidence about how her daughter had been butchered is pretty special. She is extremely brave. She is totally convinced that Carroll murdered Deidre, though I believe that must be because people keep telling her that. I have certainly never seen proof that would convince me beyond reasonable doubt that he did it and I have never formed an opinion one way or the other. People often ask me, “what would you do if he confessed, would you still defend him?” and my answer is always the same. Yes, I would, though I may change the tack of my questioning to witnesses. Our system of justice operates on a jury trial, and it’s not about truth. It’s about proof.’
Carroll’s defence teams remain scathing about what he has had to endure, pointing to two jury trials, two appeals, a High Court judgment and intense media coverage as proof that he is one of Australia’s most vilified men. Finality, they point out, is a vital element of any system of justice. Peter Russo admits he was treated by some in the community as a pariah, a leper for defending him. ‘It’s my job to defend people. I think this was trial by an hysterical media, like the Chamberlain case.’
Adrian Gundelach is now in private practice, and maintains the Kennedy case is the saddest he has ever prosecuted. Philip Nase and Milton Griffin are now Queensland District Court justices. Peter Barron is Assistant-Commissioner of Police in far north Queensland.
After the Carroll case, Michael Byrne left the DPP office in late 2001 to work in private practice, a resignation that was greeted with controversy. Widely tipped to take over as Director, the position was instead given to Leanne Clare, who later came to national attention for her controversial handling of swimming coach Scott Volker’s sex scandal case. Byrne’s departure was regarded as defection by those concerned at the loss to the department of his considerable experience and by others as reflective of the extremely low morale in the DPP. His passion for criminal law has not diminished.
In the years since he presided over Carroll’s murder trial, Angelo Vasta has never been swayed to believe the jury was wrong. ‘The way to right a wrong is by having a series of people coming out and saying it’s wrong,’ he says. ‘The Appeals Court hears no evidence, and does not seek witnesses.’ Now 66 and with Bell’s Palsy, Vasta was never found to have done anything in the discharge of his duties that hinted at impropriety. He has been exonerated every step of the way, including vindication by the International Commission of Jurists. Over the years, he has lost great champions of his cause, cheated of their support by their sudden deaths. ‘I finally had to think that the good Lord was trying to tell me something,’ he says. ‘I am still fighting to clear my name, but I had to step back, lest I became consumed by it.’
He admits he has been hurt at the betrayal against him, dismayed that the mud has stuck. But he remembers the words of Sir Thomas More, who confronted an accuser at his own trial. ‘I pity you, Sir, for your perjury.’
Vasta outlines to me what he regards as the two great tragedies of the Kennedy case. ‘The pubic hair should have been preserved. It was the one piece of evidence that would have irrefutably proved who killed that little girl.’ The other is the quirky nature of the law, so often misunderstood by those who rely on it most – the victims of crime. ‘If nothing happens except that Deidre’s murder acts a conduit to change the double jeopardy laws, then it is some small consolation that her suffering has not been in vain.’
John Rowley’s accent hasn’t softened after more than 35 years in Australia, though at 62 he admits his hair now enjoys a close relationship with Brylcreem and is streaked with silver. Try as he might, he can’t seem to escape the fall-out from the Kennedy story. ‘To be honest, I’ll be glad when it’s all over,’ he says. ‘I just can’t seem to leave it behind me.’
I check some assertions Carroll made to me. ‘Did you suspend him for driving on the base and deliberately hand him the photographs so that his fingerprints would be on the picture?’
‘That’s ridiculous, I didn’t even know the man!’ Rowley snorts. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of this rubbish. The first time I got to hear of him was when there was the break-in at the airwomen’s block at Amberley. And he wasn’t suspended for driving, not by me and, as far as I know, not by anybody. And Carroll didn’t see the photographs – that’s not the way we worked. We wouldn’t have handed him the photograph so that he could leave his fingerprints on it. The RAAF police is not the same as civvies where ambition can push you to chase a conviction that will further your career.’
Rowley ended his 21-year career in the RAAF as a warrant officer, the highest senior non-commissioned rank one can achieve. During his career, he had hundreds of successful investigations, but he is still intensely irritated at press reports that followed his involvement in the Kennedy case. ‘Some articles made out that I’m a paragon of virtue – a hero. I was a good policeman, but I was not a cross between James Bond and a knight errant. I’m just a dogged sort of a bloke, that’s all.’
It was, he says, just another job. ‘I can’t describe a man; I can only describe the impressions I get. There were times when I was interviewing Raymond Carroll for the break and enter at the women’s base that I got the distinct impression he was there but not there. Like I was talking to him but he was looking, like, through me. He can say all he likes that it was a fit-up, but the fingerprints on that photograph and his car in the area were not circumstantial. And the jury proved that.’
Peter Davis agrees with what Rowley has told me about this. ‘No question,’ he says when asked. ‘No question at all that he did that one.’
John Reynolds made a recommendation that Rowley be given the $10,000 reward, posted by the State Government in 1973, for his key role in re-opening the Kennedy case. Neither Rowley, nor anyone else, received a reward.
John Reynolds is now director of his own water-analysis company, but he will never forget Deidre. ‘Anything to do with kids hits a copper hard. A lot of people did a lot of work trying to solve this case.’ He occasionally keeps in contact with Faye, and still feels gutted at the lack of resolution. ‘This is one of the greatest injustices ever seen in Australian criminal history. Where is the justice for that little girl?’
Demoted from Detective-Sergeant, CIB, back into uniform, Reynolds says he was effectively hustled out of the force in 1993 after he investigated and exposed the corrupt practices of a senior officer and was openly critical of the judicial inquiry into Angelo Vasta. Passed over for position of Inspector by a policeman 13 years his junior, he opted for early retirement after his appeal against that failed. He applied for retirement on a Wednesday. ‘By Friday,’ he recalls, ‘I got a call from the Commissioner’s office, basically telling me to clear my desk.’ From that moment, he was persona non grata. In police parlance, he says, ‘There is no one so ex as an ex-copper.’
All the odontologists in both trials are unequivocal in their opinion that the evidence they gave – however it was later construed by the appeal’s courts – was right. ‘No one – no one – has ever changed their mind about whose teeth made those bite marks,’ John Garner says. He defends their digital computing system. ‘There were very few forensic odontologists in the world actually doing bite mark identifications at that time because it was looked on as a subjective science that had very little credibility. It was the dark ages. Trying to trace something conjured up all sorts of problems, and people saw that. It was only through Alex and computers that identification has gone ahead in leaps and bounds.’
I remind him that not everyone shares his opinion, and he sighs. He knows that. He sure as hell knows that.
He admits to unease about some aspects of the original investigation, theories he had that he tried to check but where he came up against a brick wall. Theories: join the dots and follow the trail. But he wasn’t an authorised investigator. No one was much interested in his theories.
Storage of case material has improved since the original trial. ‘In the past, cases were managed by the lead detective and occasionally coppers would compare notes. It was an ad hoc situation; if a cop was sloppy in management of data, then it often simply got lost. People were at cross-purposes with no holistic approach. These days, officers are very conscious of doing everything by the book.’ And it is precisely this, Garner says, that can create problems. ‘Good policing involves a mix of discipline and experience, following the direction set by the co-ordinator, countless hours of foot slogging, 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration. It’s about listening to what is being said, and what is not. It is too easy these days to overlook gut feeling.’
Some forensic odontologists involved in the committals and trials have been called on to use their expertise in helping to identify victims from terrorist attacks, such as the Bali bombings, or natural disasters, such as Asia’s tsunami tragedy on Boxing Day 2004. ‘It is then,’ Alex Forrest says, ‘that our job gets to the human level, which is really, after all, what it is about.’
Forrest equates forensic dentists as resembling a loose confederation of warring states and believes that government departments, police and lawyers became bigger than the case they were representing. Somewhere along the way, in the quest to try and prove who murdered a tiny child, egos and personalities fudged the purpose, and paranoia and ambition poisoned common sense and reason. ‘The real test of any evidence is when it goes in front of a jury. The trick is to behave like a politician, and not take it personally. But,’ he cautions, ‘this case has been a misery from start to finish. I don’t know one person who hasn’t been affected by it, one way or another, who isn’t sick to the stomach by the whole thing. Not one.’
Dr Kenneth Brown has now retired but still consults on some cases. Dr Bernard Sims is ill with diabetes and has also retired.
Dr Kon Romaniuk, debilitated with brain damage after his accident in Sydney, suffered further deterioration from a stroke in late 2004 and is now in permanent high-dependency care. His wife, Leona, graciously has given me background information on her husband, and, though I have Kon’s number, she warns it may not be worth the call. ‘He moves in and out of lucidity,’ she says. An hour later, I call her back to check a date, but Kon answers the phone. I have called his number in error. And so we speak, as he looks out to a garden of beautiful bougainvillea and describes their colours to me. ‘Do I know you?’ he asks.
‘No, but I have just spoken to your wife and I am writing a book on the Deidre Kennedy case. You are an important part of that story.’
‘Oh, thank you. I’m embarrassed now.’ He does have a melodious voice, just as Leona had said. Lyrical.
‘Do you recall the case?’I am mindful of what his wife has told me, upset I have called the wrong number. ‘Yes, I remember. It was one of the biggest of my career. The little baby. There was a court case, and I was in the witness stand an awfully long time. It was terrible.’
‘Kon, the dentists at the second trial said that you, Dr Brown and Dr Sims got the bite mark upside down. What do you say to that?’
He chuckles. ‘They’re wrong. We got it right.’
Now it’s my turn to chuckle. ‘That’s what the other odontologists say, too.’
We chat about the case, about how power and politics sometimes clouded issues. Of those long-ago days when he worked closely with John Reynolds and, later, John Garner. Have his opinions changed, I ask?
Never, he says.
It is time to hang up. ‘Thank you, Kon. It was lovely to talk to you.’
‘And to you. I met your father the other day. He is a fine man.’
This is an unexpected digression, and I gently explain my father passed away many years ago. He accepts that. We talk some more about his own family, and now I must go. ‘Goodbye, Kon. Thank you again.’
‘Goodbye. And don’t forget to give my regards to your father. He is a fine man.’
The Australian’s Chris Mitchell concedes there have been unforeseen impediments to the mooted civil case. Tim Carmody is now a Queensland Family Court judge, which means he is no longer at liberty to speak on legal issues and can no longer offer advice to the Australian. The Australian’s lawyer, Brian Gallagher, was forced to withdraw after suffering a stroke. On legal advice, Mitchell is now taking a wait-and-see approach, pending the outcome of the Attorneys-General decision on possible changes to the double jeopardy laws.
‘We will turn our attention to the civil action when those decisions are made,’ he says. ‘But one thing is for sure: this story is not going to go away in a hurry. It is not just about a murdered baby and a mother’s grief: it strikes at the heart of justice.’
To date, changes to Australia’s double jeopardy laws are still on the table. Public opinion has not changed; overwhelmingly, the majority of Australians want the current laws overturned. In September 2005 – the week Justice in Jeopardy was released – NSW Attorney-General Bob Debus announced that a bill to overhaul the double jeopardy rule would be put before cabinet by year’s end. The barricades are s
tarting to fall. Other states will consider double jeopardy for discussion at the next meeting of the Attorneys General.
In the early stages of research, I waded, bewildered, through the vagaries of different government departments. Finally advised to place a request for specific information to a specific area, I was confronted by a taciturn and imposing senior public servant who materialised from nowhere and stridently demanded I tell her what I wanted. Stunned at her rudeness, I said I was searching for particular documents that pertained to the Deidre Kennedy case. The answer clearly displeased her. The department she represented, she snarled, could be of no assistance. Was I in the wrong place? I could only guess: the sermon was delivered in a hallway and, with a glacial stare that indicated I was dismissed, she executed a three-point turn and stomped away. I never saw the exhibits I requested, exhibits that had been used at trial and were on public records.
So many people related to or involved in the case have died in the years since the story first broke. Kerry Copley, QC. Keith Kennedy. Dr O’Neill who did the autopsy. Paul Borchert. Prison officer Denzil Creed. RAAF officer Lesley Meacham.
Colin Bamford succumbed to cancer in 2001. John Garner was able to honour his memory in a small way. ‘I got a call around midnight from one of his sons in the UK, telling me his father had passed away. His brother was holidaying in Cairns and he needed to urgently contact him to tell him the bad news. He had come up against red-tape problems; the official channels had told him it could take up to two weeks to locate him. I called Police Operations Centre, explained who Colin Bamford was and what he had done to help in the Deidre Kennedy case. I asked if they could relay a death message to his son.
Justice In Jeopardy Page 34
