The Frankston Serial Killer

by Vikki Petraitis

  A little over half an hour after Natalie Russell walked into the entrance of the bike track, 15-year-old Simon rode his bike down the same path. Three-quarters of the way along the track the schoolboy noticed a black shoe lying in the middle of the path. He slowed down to take a closer look; it was almost exactly like one of his sister's, with silver metal on the side and silver lace holes. The afternoon sun shone on the silver making it glint. But the shoe wasn't his sister's so he kept riding. He did, however, notice the shoe's position; it lay next to a large hole in the cyclone wire fence of the golf course.

  A couple of minutes after Simon rode down the bike track, 13-year-old Sam entered the track from Skye Road. About halfway along, he saw a man quickly walking towards him.

  Sam watched out of the corner of his eye because a vague feeling of unease came over him. The man had his hands thrust deep in his pockets and was approaching the teenager as if he was somehow trying to act natural. Sam realised that if anything happened here, no one would hear. The area was deserted. Luckily the man hurried past him without speaking. Sam caught a look at his face as he passed, more through fear than simple curiosity. The man was big and sort of fat. He was wearing a black top and dark pants. He had dark hair. After he passed, Sam turned around and looked back at the man who kept his head down and continued walking. Sam walked a little quicker trying to shake the uneasy feeling he had.

  Natalie Russell's family reported her missing around 8pm that evening. Her mother Carmel couldn't understand where her daughter could be. As the mother of four children of her own as well as two stepchildren, she didn't panic when Natalie was a bit late from school, but considering the pervading community fear, Carmel went over the morning in her mind. She had driven Natalie and her brother, Damien, to John Paul College at 8.15am. Just before they had left home, Natalie had told her that she might go into Frankston after school. But when Carmel had dropped her daughter off, Natalie had said she might just walk straight home from school.

  Carmel had driven past John Paul College at 2.40pm on her way home from shopping and had looked out for Natalie but figured that, if her daughter had finished at 2.30pm, she had missed her by five or 10 minutes. Carmel had half expected a phone call from Natalie at around 3pm asking for a ride home but when she didn't hear from her, assumed that her 17-year-old had changed her mind again and gone to Frankston after all.

  Not long after, Damien came home from school and Carmel drove him to football training, then returned to collect him just before 6pm. They called into McDonalds on the way home and bought an easy tea.

  Ten minutes after she arrived home with her son, Carmel heard a bus go past their house. She looked to see if Natalie was among the passengers getting off, but she wasn't. Carmel started to worry then. Natalie always telephoned if she planned to be home after dark, and it was dark now.

  Damien offered to check the bike track to see if his sister was there. When Carmel told him not to, Damien said, 'But she could have fallen over and hurt herself, Mum.'

  When Natalie's father Brian arrived home at 6.45pm, Carmel voiced her concerns. Brian volunteered to drive to Frankston and have a look for his daughter; he had some errands to run so he told his wife he would keep an eye out for her.

  Carmel phoned her daughter Janine in Sydney and told her that Natalie was late home. Janine was worried. She knew her sister hated to worry their mother and it was unlike her to be late. Carmel mentioned the trip to Sydney planned for the following Monday. She and Brian were leaving Natalie and Damien home by themselves. Natalie had jokingly threatened to have a party while her parents were away, but Carmel knew she wouldn't.

  Carmel heard the 7.15pm bus coming up the road and went outside to check. It passed without stopping. She rang Natalie's aunt, Pat Smith and told her that she was worried. Pat agreed that it was unlike her niece not to let her parents know where she was. When Brian got home 10 minutes later, Carmel insisted they call the police.

  At the Frankston police station, the Russell's call to report their daughter missing was taken very seriously. The missing persons report was passed on to all the officers working Operation Reassurance.

  Sergeant Phil Atkins from the protective security group had been working Operation Reassurance for two weeks. He was the supervising sergeant for the other PSG members who had also been assigned temporary duties as part of the operation. Atkins sent two of his men immediately to the Russell's home in the Pines estate. He told them to get a full description of the girl, a list of any places she could possibly be, and an idea of her character - was she the type to be late home or to go visit a friend?

  A short time later, the two officers arrived at the Russell house and spoke to Carmel and Brian. After talking to the worried parents, the situation looked serious and the two officers telephoned Inspector Ron Cooke at the Frankston police station.

  As the duty officer for that shift, it was Cooke's responsibility to co-ordinate the search for the missing schoolgirl. He sent Phil Atkins over to the Russell house to evaluate the situation.

  Carmel Russell had already given the police officers a school photograph of her daughter. Natalie had been captured on film half blinking, but the photo was a recent likeness. When Atkins arrived, he questioned Mr and Mrs Russell again.

  'Nat always rings me to let me know where she is.' Carmel Russell looked the police officer straight in the eye. 'She knows how much I always worry about her. I know that if she could get to a phone and ring me, she would.'

  The worried parents repeatedly stressed that not only did Natalie always ring to let them know where she was, she was always home before dark. If she had gone into Frankston with friends, she would have been home by 6pm.

  It was essential to establish whether Natalie had perhaps come home, changed and gone out again. Atkins went outside and shone his powerful torch around the front and back yards to see if he could find Natalie's school bag anywhere. He went back inside and asked Mrs Russell to check Natalie's bedroom to see if any of her clothes were missing. The four police officers and the Russells found no sign that Natalie had been home and left again. Atkins became really concerned when he saw how worried Natalie's parents were.

  The first thing to be done was to establish the route Natalie would have taken from John Paul College. Carmel told the officers that Natalie had to walk home because she had been driven to school that morning, and that she probably took the shortcut along the bike track.

  Phil Atkins knew the bike track well from his years working at Frankston before transferring to the PSG. It was one of many possibilities to be checked.

  The presence of the uniformed police officers in their living room made the Russell family more fearful, made their daughter's disappearance real. The officers left them to wait while they went to search for Natalie.

  Back at the Frankston police station, Inspector Ron Cooke could see that Natalie Russell's disappearance was distressingly similar to that of Elizabeth Stevens. Neither girl was the type to disappear without letting her family know where she was; both girls had been on their way home from school; and both had disappeared on a Friday.

  Cooke telephoned Chief Superintendent John Balloch at home and told him that another young woman had gone missing. The news was naturally alarming. His district was already living in terror and he had all available officers working gruelling hours to catch the killer.

  The media would go wild; indeed hours earlier, it already had - with a third body. Balloch had been in his office that morning when Frankston mayor Dennis Shaw had telephoned asking about a third body. Balloch denied the rumour but the phone calls persisted. Was there a third body in Frankston? Balloch kept saying no. Finally, he was informed that a third body had indeed been found but in this case, it had no connection to the recent spate of killings.

  As the story unfolded through a series of telephone calls, Balloch found out that a body of a young woman had been found on a property in Mt Eliza early in June. Apparently, a young woman had been reported missing three y
ears earlier by her family in Perth. Questioned at the time, her boyfriend told detectives that he had dropped her off at Melbourne airport and hadn't seen her since. Another man in Mt Eliza had been questioned initially, but failed to mention that he was storing some things belonging to the woman's boyfriend while he moved to the United States. Looking into the case again, detectives questioned the friend a second time. He casually mentioned that the boyfriend had left a barrel of computer parts in his garage. Homicide detectives made their way to Mt Eliza.

  Enclosed in a barrel of lime, detectives found the body of the missing woman. They made a decision to keep the find secret: if the boyfriend returned from the United States of his own volition, detectives would have a good chance of picking him up for questioning. However, if the news became public, the young man could disappear and might not be found. But keeping a body secret in Frankston in July 1993 was virtually impossible.

  While John Balloch was overseas, his temporary replacement had been informed of the find, but Debbie Fream was murdered shortly afterwards and in the confusion, he had forgotten to mention the body in the barrel to his boss.

  Balloch then had to phone all the people who had enquired and tell them that there was indeed a body but it wasn't connected. It had been a very difficult day and now the news of another young woman going missing - a 17-year-old student - made him despair at the situation he and his officers faced. He waited by the phone for further news, feeling that somehow he had let the community down.

  When the officers reported back from the Russell house, Inspector Cooke radioed for the police helicopter to begin an aerial search of the area. He also called in the mounted branch. The search began as Phil Atkins and Ron Cooke drove to John Paul College in McMahons Road. Cooke requested the SES to provide a command post at the school, as well as lighting.

  Phil Atkins knocked on the door of a house on the college grounds and spoke to two nuns who lived there. He asked them if they had seen Natalie Russell. They hadn't but they were able to tell Atkins the names of some of Natalie's friends who the sergeant telephoned from the house. It wasn't long before Atkins found out about a party that many of the Year 12 students had gone to. One of the senior officers at Frankston went personally to check the party but Natalie wasn't there and no one had seen her.

  Inspector Cooke then called in the dog squad to make a check of the area. The police dogs were so well trained that they could detect a person - living or dead - and were a better resource, especially in the dark, than a group of 20 officers searching.

  Dog-handler Steve Smith arrived at the school together with his Rottweiler, and began the search. The dog found no traces of anyone in the school grounds.

  Atkins then radioed for four units to backtrack from the school to the Russell's home and two units to check all the pubs and wine bars in the Seaford, Frankston and Langwarrin areas. The bike track also needed to be looked at for any signs that Natalie may have walked down there. The track was bordered on both sides by cyclone wire fences which Atkins knew were often cut or broken.

  Atkins and Cooke discussed the situation with Brian McMannis, the head of the State Emergency Services who had been celebrating his birthday at a Frankston restaurant when he received the call. They asked him to send a couple of SES members down the track. They were to pay close attention to any breaks in the fence and report on how thick the bushes were on either side for a line search to begin as soon as possible.

  Inspector Cooke spoke to two members from the mounted branch who had arrived earlier and directed them to join the search of the track and the golf courses. Their advantage of height on horseback could aid in spotting something which might otherwise be missed.

  Brian McMannis dispatched two SES volunteers to make a cursory search of the bike track.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The bike track

  An aerial view of the bike track near Skye Road, along which Natalie Russell was murdered.

  Photo courtesy of Victoria Police

  Roy Stevens, a volunteer with the State Emergency Service, had been paged to headquarters at 9.55pm on Friday evening. He arrived around a half hour later and immediately boarded one of the SES vehicles heading for the command post at John Paul College. On arrival, little time was wasted. Stevens was instructed to check the bike track between the Peninsula and the Long Island golf clubs for a missing 17-year-old John Paul College student. He and a fellow SES officer, David Male, set off with their powerful torches.

  Although technically wide enough for a car to travel its length, the bike track was so overgrown with trees pushing against the wire fences on each side that travel was only possible on a bike or on foot. Bracing themselves against the cold and the rain, the two men began the long walk up the dirt track.

  Stevens searched the right hand side of the track, while Male searched the left. They had both been told to pay particular attention to areas where the fence had holes or gaps. About halfway along the track, Stevens saw the first of a number of holes in the fence and he and his partner climbed through it and began to search in the text-book circular way. They found nothing and returned to the main track. At another gap, both men shone their torches through the fence only to see vegetation so thick it would have been impossible for anyone to get through. They continued on.

  Further down, Male and Stevens found a third hole in the cyclone wire. They climbed through and began searching again. Almost immediately, Stevens's torch beam illuminated a pair of legs wearing what looked like black tights. He moved a little closer and saw a young woman lying on her side. He could see her left hand facing palm up. It was smeared with blood. He couldn't see her face, only the back of her head.

  He took a couple of steps back and yelled to his partner in a voice that betrayed his shock. 'Come over here, have a look at this. I think I've found something!'

  David Male pushed through the scrub to where Stevens was standing and stared down at the girl's body. The two men were horrified. They were volunteers and their experience of finding dead bodies was limited. Both men quickly scrambled out through the hole in the fence. Understandably, neither wanted to stay alone while the other went to summon help. The worst fears of all the searchers had been realised; there was some sort of maniac on the loose and the two SES volunteers had just seen first-hand the results of his work. They quickly headed towards a pair of flashing torches they could see on the golf course. Two police officers from the mounted branch rode over to them.

  Senior Constable Cynthia Cameron checked the time. It was 10.45pm when Stevens and Male called to her and her partner Helen Seymour. They had been searching the golf course on horseback for around 45 minutes. Cynthia Cameron asked her partner to hold her mount while she followed the two SES workers into the bushes to confirm their find. She saw the black-stockinged legs and the body through the cover of the bushes and immediately radioed for senior officers to attend.

  The time was 10.54pm and the body had been found.

  Phil Atkins was at the command post at John Paul College directing officers in the search when the call came over the radio.

  'Could we have assistance at our location urgently,' a breathless voice said via the radio; and described the position on the bike track.

  Inspector Cooke was talking to members of the homicide squad on the mobile phone in the command post caravan when Phil Atkins ran in and grabbed him by the jacket. Cooke almost threw the phone down and raced with Atkins to a police car. They drove to the scene using the Monterey Technical School entrance.

  'What have you got?' asked the sergeant over the radio en route, praying that the searchers had made a mistake.

  'We don't know whether it's a mannequin or not,' came the reply.

  Cooke and Atkins looked at each other. They both knew. Mannequins were not dumped in the scrub - bodies were.

  Atkins was angry. Right under our goddamned noses, he thought. Hundreds of police officers had been patrolling the Frankston area and it seemed that the killer had sailed right throu
gh them to kill again.

  He thought of the officers he had sent out searching after Natalie Russell had been reported missing barely three hours before. They hadn't complained, in fact they had been unusually silent, grabbing their kits and hitting the road as soon as their orders came through. There had been no dinner breaks, no coffee breaks, no one had wanted to waste a minute. Now he knew that the missing school girl wouldn't be found alive.

  Parking the police car in the school grounds adjacent to the tennis courts, Cooke and Atkins hurried through the rain down the muddy path of the bike track to the area where the SES volunteers waited. They were both shaking and Atkins knew that the freezing temperature had little to do with it. They were probably both in shock.

  The sergeant shone his torch at the hole cut in the cyclone wire. His breath fogged in the torch beam and he had to turn his head slightly so as not to reduce his visibility. He ducked through the fence and made his way through the bent branches. He hoped fervently that the SES workers had made a mistake, but a couple of metres in he saw a school bag and further along was the crumpled figure dressed in a school uniform lying face down in the dirt under a canopy of ti-trees. He swore loudly, breaking the eerie silence of the freezing winter's night.

  Atkins was careful not to get too close and he didn't touch the schoolgirl's body but he had to make sure she was dead. Shining the torch in the direction of her head, he could see the vivid red colour of blood washed through her thick black hair. From that angle, it looked to Atkins as if she had been bludgeoned to death. In the torchlight, no steam was visible from her nose or mouth to indicate she was breathing. Her black tights were ripped and her hands bore the defence wounds common to victims that had fought with their attackers. Around her feet, dirt had been kicked into piles and Atkins knew the struggle had been violent. The words 'killing field' came into his mind.