The Frankston Serial Killer

by Vikki Petraitis

  Instinctively, the inspector looked at the dead woman's hands. Defence wounds, in the form of cuts and stab wounds, told him that she had fought her killer.

  Officers from the state forensic science laboratory arrived and Graeme Arthur called the State Emergency Services personnel to provide lighting while the crime scene examiners worked into the night, combing the area for clues to the identity of Debbie Fream's killer.

  The detectives procured a large stepladder from the SES to straddle the barbed wire electric fence bordering Fred Michelmore's property, so they could climb back and forth and view the body, both from Taylors Road and from the paddock where it was more easily seen.

  Crime scene examiner Senior Constable Tony Kealy had extensive crime scene experience having notched up 30 years in the force; 13 of them at the Victoria Police State Forensic Science Laboratory. He originally worked from the huge laboratory complex in Macleod and had helped set up the outer branch in Hastings two years before. Kealy had been around long enough to remember the old city morgue with bodies stacked in every available space, and he still remembered the smell of death associated with the poorly ventilated building. Memories of standing in blood and water on the concrete floors at the morgue in the small hours of the morning now seemed like scenes from a B-grade horror movie. Kealy had also done what he considered an apprenticeship as a crime scene photographer for three years before he became a crime scene examiner. He had seen so much death.

  At this latest crime scene, Kealy's job was to look for solid forensic evidence to aid the detectives in their investigation. Police now had the car and the body and it seemed all of the dead woman's clothing was accounted for. Her purse and any items she may have purchased were still missing, and there was no trace of the murder weapon.

  Kealy bent over close to the body. He had to get an idea of the type of wounds the woman had suffered in order to know what type of weapon the searchers should look for. To the seasoned crime scene examiner, it looked like a frenzied attack with a large knife.

  As he scanned the surrounding area, Kealy began to get a picture of the murder scene. There was blood around the area in which Debbie Fream lay, and in smaller patches nearby. No drag marks were evident, suggesting that the woman had been murdered in the area where she still lay, rather than killed elsewhere and dragged to this spot. Kealy also noted that the woman's underwear was still in place, which discounted theories of a sexual attack. If it wasn't a sexually-motivated murder, then it could be the work of a thrill killer or, considering the missing purse, perhaps a robbery gone wrong.

  The branch used to partially cover the body came from a tree a few metres away. Kealy carefully held the broken end of the branch next to a corresponding fresh break on the trunk of the nearby tree. It appeared to match. But apart from that, little else fell into place. After a long search, they found nothing of evidentiary value; no knife, no purse, and no obvious reason for the senseless brutal murder.

  Tony Kealy took particular notice of the soil and mud on Taylors Road. He had examined Debbie Fream's Pulsar on the day it had been found and had painstakingly scraped mud and dirt from the tyres and undercarriage. Initially, the soil samples had looked sandy, but a soil expert told him that the sample contained no shell fragments so it probably wasn't from near the coast and it didn't match this spot on Taylors Road. Kealy would spend a considerable amount of time driving around the general area looking for matching soil that could lead them to the missing purse or the murder weapon.

  All afternoon Fred Michelmore and his wife Beverley sat with a detective giving statements that included everything from the last four days they could think of. Beverley had driven her son to work along Taylors Road on the night Debbie Fream disappeared and then picked him up later. She had driven four times back and forth up the dirt road but couldn't remember seeing anyone.

  Fred explained that he would normally have gone into the paddock on Friday but he had gone on a hunting trip for the weekend. As the couple discussed their movements with the detective, Beverley realised with horror that she had probably seen Debbie Fream's body on Saturday.

  A woman who agisted her horse on the farm had reported a dead sheep in a paddock adjoining the one by which the body was found. Beverley and the young woman had walked with the farm dogs to find the sheep carcass, and one of the dogs had run over to the clump of ferns on Taylors Road. The two women had veered off to the right towards the dead sheep and Beverley had called to the dog, wondering what it was sniffing at. Beverley said she could make out something white through the ferns and assumed it was a piece of paper caught in the trees. She had called the dog over and thought nothing more of it.

  What she had unknowingly seen from that distance was Debbie Fream's white nursing bra.

  Around 7.30pm homicide detectives Senior Sergeant Rod Wilson and Sergeant Mick Hughes arrived at Taylors Road. Wilson, in his mid-30s, had done his apprenticeship as a detective with the Carlton CIB and transferred to the homicide squad in 1981. In his long career in the homicide squad, Wilson had met many murderers. They were all different; some had lengthy police records while others had no priors at all.

  Wilson had followed Debbie Fream's disappearance although he hadn't been called in until her body was located. Along with the other detectives, Wilson wasn't surprised Debbie Fream had been found dead. The scenario of her fleeing from her 12-day-old baby in the middle of cooking dinner always seemed unlikely.

  Mick Hughes and Rod Wilson were briefed by Inspector John Noonan and took charge of the scene and the investigation. They made their way in through the clump of bushes to view the body.

  The dead woman had been stabbed a number of times in the throat and once in the stomach. Wide stab wounds suggested a very large knife had been used. Dried blood had blackened the left side of her face and vegetation was matted through her hair. A long purple line around her neck suggested that the killer had strangled her. Defence wounds on the dead woman's hands told the detectives that she had struggled with her killer.

  Comparisons with the Stevens murder were inevitable but even a cursory examination told Wilson and Hughes that while the two murders were certainly similar, they may not necessarily be connected.

  Elizabeth Stevens's throat had been slashed, as had her chest, with a small pocket-type knife, the blade of which had later been found. Debbie Fream's body only had stab wounds, which looked like they had come from a large knife. Similarities were that both women had disappeared off the streets at night and both were found dumped with only a token attempt to conceal the bodies. Both women had sustained severe injuries to the neck.

  Initial investigations into the disappearance of Debbie Fream had revealed no connection between the two women; they hadn't known each other and they hadn't moved in the same circles.

  A decision was made to investigate the two murders separately, using different homicide crews. Even considering the strong possibility that the murders were linked, they had to be investigated separately in case they weren't. The danger in assuming that the same killer was responsible for both murders was that this could be a copy-cat killing where the only connection was that the murders were within a month of each other. If all the information was pooled and they were not linked, vital evidence could be confused and lost.

  Around 10.30pm Debbie Fream's body was removed from where it had lain for the last four days. Before that, Detective Colin Clark had stood in Fred Michelmore's paddock guarding the body. It was dark and eerie and isolated. The command post had been set up further down the road to keep police traffic away from the crime scene. Clark stood as a solitary sentinel in the darkness, battling the urge to turn to the dead woman and whisper, 'Tell me who killed you.'

  Undertakers manoeuvred a white stretcher covered in a sheet into the narrow space between the body and the barbed wire fence and gently lifted Debbie Fream's body onto the sheet. Police photographers and a video operator caught the proceedings on film with the aid of flashes and SES lighting. For the benefit of t
he camera, two undertakers lifted the body, rolling it slightly so the camera could film tiny pinpoint stab wounds to her back. When the footage was taken, they carefully placed her down again and covered her with the folds of the sheet.

  Debbie's body was taken in an undertaker's van, escorted by officers from the Frankston traffic operations group, to the casualty section of the Alfred Hospital where life was pronounced extinct at 11.41pm, then on to the city mortuary. The necessary paperwork there, was completed a little after midnight.

  Inspector John Noonan arrived at the little house on Kananook Avenue to tell Garry Blair that Debbie had been found. The young man opened the door and invited the police officer inside to a lounge room full of concerned relatives and friends. Noonan had spoken to Garry at length during the last four days and the two men had developed a good rapport.

  'Sit down Garry,' Noonan said quietly. 'Unfortunately, we have bad news for you. We have identified the body. The girl we found was Debbie.'

  Garry Blair broke down with the enormity of Noonan's words. The four-day limbo was over and now he knew that Jake's mother would never come home.

  Everyone in the room immediately began to cry. They all grabbed those closest to them, clutching together in their grief. Every day, relatives had visited; some had stayed camped out on the floor, waiting. For four days, they had all avoided mentioning the possibility that Debbie was dead. She must have hurt herself, they thought, and was wandering around in a daze. Now they knew otherwise and the reality was terrible.

  John Noonan was well aware of the media interest in the case and gently asked whether Garry wanted to make a statement. If he didn't, Noonan would arrange for the media to be kept away. The distraught young man said that he would make one plea for anyone who knew anything to come forward. Noonan arranged a press conference with the understanding that the media would leave the young man alone afterwards. It was agreed and Garry made one last appearance before the television cameras.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Another post mortem

  At 8.15am on Tuesday 13 July, Professor Stephen Cordner's services were again required to perform the post-mortem examination on the body of Deborah Anne Fream. It was exactly a month to the day since he had performed a similar examination on Elizabeth Stevens.

  Dressed in the customary surgical gown and white plastic apron, Cordner looked at the young woman on the mortuary table. He could see at a glance that the woman had recently given birth; her breasts were swollen to suggest that she had been breastfeeding. He mentioned this fact to his assistants. It added a sense of gravity and reality to what could seem to them like an endless stretch of nameless bodies. This woman was obviously young and she was obviously a mum.

  Professor Cordner had read reports of the missing mother in the papers and now that she lay before him dead, he was acutely aware of what her loss would mean to her son who was barely two weeks old. Cordner performed the external examination first by noting the appearance of the dead woman. He dictated his observations into his hand-held tape-recorder which he would later transcribe into a written report for the homicide detectives and the coroner's files.

  Noting the blood which blackened one side of her face, he said, 'There is a moderate amount of dried blood extending from the left side of the mouth and from both nostrils over the left side of the face. In addition there is blood staining, more marked over the front and left side of the neck and left shoulder than was present over the right. There is no blood staining associated with the stab wound to the upper abdomen.'

  Cordner noted the presence of haemorrhages around the eyes and the eyelids normally associated with asphyxiation or strangulation. A thin, deep-red coloured ligature mark around her neck confirmed that the killer had strangled her. Debbie Fream had been stabbed in the neck and stomach with a knife with a wide blade. Cordner measured each injury and dictated the results into the tape-recorder.

  An abrasion on her right cheek obscured a stab wound beneath it while another stab wound had penetrated her left ear lobe and continued downwards into her neck. On the dead woman's face, Cordner counted 28 abrasions. Examining her neck, Cordner recorded three stab wounds on the left side and ten parallel stab wounds to the front. He also noted a number of dark marks around Debbie Fream's neck, suggestive of a ligature that had been applied and then reapplied to account for the series of lines. There was another stab wound on the right side of the neck, and she had been stabbed twice in the chest and once in the abdomen.

  Cordner recorded numerous cuts and abrasions and stab wounds to her hands and arms - the same ones the police had noticed at the scene - which indicated that Debbie Fream had fought for her life. Particularly vicious were the cuts between the webs of her fingers suggesting that she had tried to grab the knife away from her attacker.

  When the body was turned over, Cordner recorded six pinpoint stab wounds in her back, ranging in depth from two to four centimetres. They had been made with a smaller weapon than the stab wounds to the dead woman's neck. With at least two different knives and a ligature, it was obvious the killer had come prepared.

  After completing the external examination, Professor Cordner proceeded to check the internal damage caused by each of the wounds by opening the body. Of interest when later examining sections of the heart under the microscope, Cordner noted the presence of a collection of chronic inflammatory cells in association with myocardial fibre damage. This type of inflammation could have been the result of an infection and often disappeared without the person ever knowing they had it; or it is something that could develop into a life threatening heart disease. Considering the horrendous injuries the young woman had sustained, the professor concluded that in this case, it had in no way contributed to the cause of death.

  In his summing up, Cordner wrote:

  1.The body was that of a well-nourished young woman showing the signs of recent delivery…

  2.The deceased shows the general signs of mechanical asphyxia…Taken with the ligature mark around the neck; this means that the deceased has had an episode of neck compression during life.

  3.There are twenty-four stab wounds mainly concentrated around the neck but also on the head, chest and arms. The stab wound to the abdomen is a post-mortem injury.

  4.The stab wounds to the hands are defence injuries.

  5.There are also pinpoint stab wounds to the back which have been caused by a different weapon.

  6.The stab wounds have caused haemorrhage and blood had also been aspirated into the severely damaged trachea.

  7.In my opinion, the cause of death is: Aspiration of blood and haemorrhage from multiple stab wounds to the neck in a woman who has had an episode of ligature strangulation.

  After the post-mortem examination, Debbie's grandfather, Dr William Fream performed the formal identification at the Coroner's Court mortuary. His statement read: 'On the 13th day of July, 1993 at the Coroner's Court, I identified the body of Debbie Anne Fream…who was 22 years old. Her occupation was home duties. The deceased was my granddaughter. I have known the deceased for 22 years.'

  The formality necessary for such an identification belied the enormity of the loss of his granddaughter.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Evidence

  Inspector John Noonan arranged for all investigators working on the murders of Elizabeth Stevens, Debbie Fream, Sarah McDiarmid and Michelle Brown, as well as those connected with the attack on Roszsa Toth, to meet at the Frankston police station to discuss the investigation.

  Noonan had headed a taskforce before and knew the importance of pooling information and using the expertise of all those involved. The inspector was devoting much of his available resources to finding the man he believed to be a serial killer.

  He had pushed for a central data bank to be set up with a full-time typist entering all the available information on each of the investigations. Every lead and report and all the follow-up information was entered with a view to cross-matching everything the indiviual investigations were
collecting. If a suspect's name was keyed in, the computer could tell whether the name had been entered in relation to that case or one of the others. If someone was checked in a particular spot where a murder had taken place, the computer could recall the details.

  Up until now information like this could have been lost under mountains of written files and its significance may not have become apparent until someone got around to checking it by hand. A central data bank was able to solve these problems and make sure that all the information gathered by the hundreds of officers working the investigations was given equal priority.

  John Noonan had worked in the Frankston district for 10 years and knew the area well. He had a strong feeling that Roszsa Toth's attempted abduction and Debbie Fream's murder were linked because the coincidence of two women being attacked on the same night near adjoining train stations was too great to ignore. He also had a strong feeling that the attempted abduction and Debbie's murder were connected to the murder of Elizabeth Stevens. Even the similarities with the three-year-old McDiarmid case were also too many to be ignored.

  Sarah McDiarmid had disappeared from the Kananook railway station in July 1990 after catching the train home at night. The amount of blood found on the ground next to her car suggested that she had been fatally wounded. The location of the railway station was also too significant to be ignored; the attack on Roszsa Toth had occurred near the Seaford station and Debbie Fream had been taken from the general area as well. The chances of this happening at random were slim.

  Sarah McDiarmid was in her early twenties, so she fit the general age pattern of the victims and her attack had been a random one. She didn't normally catch the train at that time of night so it was unlikely someone was waiting for her. Debbie Fream didn't normally go out at night for milk and Elizabeth Stevens didn't normally come home that late on the bus. The only difference between the McDiarmid case and the cases of Stevens and Fream was that Sarah McDiarmid's body had never been found.