The Frankston Serial Killer

by Vikki Petraitis

  Next to him, Inspector Cooke too stared down at the victim. Overhead, the police helicopter arrived, shining its powerful night sun along the area of the bike track. It had been called in earlier to assist in the search and now its beam lit up the area of the crime scene casting eerie shadows through the trees.

  Atkins pressed the button down on his portable radio. 'Our worst fears have been realised. Notify the members of the taskforce.' Atkins also asked D-24 to organise for the command post to be moved to the car park of Monterey Technical School.

  Ron Cooke telephoned Chief Superintendent John Balloch to tell him that they had found the missing schoolgirl, and that she was dead.

  Everyone knew instinctively that it was the same killer and everyone wanted him caught. The tragedy was that for the police to get enough evidence to catch him, more women had to die. The first two murders had turned up no forensic evidence of any value and Phil Atkins hoped that this time the killer had slipped up and that this scene would provide the clues needed to identify him. It became his job to guard the immediate area.

  Inspector Cooke organised police to guard both entrances to the bike track and set a media point - he knew that it wouldn't be long before they caught wind of this latest murder over their police scanners.

  Phil Atkins remained outside the hole in the fence while other police officers converged on the scene. He was wearing a police issue white raincoat over his leather jacket but in the confusion immediately following the find, he had left his police hat in the car and he was soon soaked through by the persistent drizzling rain. The weather was freezing cold as Atkins remained at his solitary post and he was thankful for the police helicopter hovering perfectly still directly above him. The jet wash from the powerful engines was forced downwards in warm gusts which almost stopped his teeth from chattering.

  Atkins thought about the girl's final moments. Was her death swift or did her killer torment her? She must have known. The media had focused daily on the Fream murder. Information caravans had been set up in both the Frankston and Seaford areas and nobody in either suburb, or indeed all of Melbourne, had missed the image of Debbie Fream as a new mother lying in a hospital bed proudly holding her newborn son. What must Natalie Russell have thought when she was grabbed? She must have known.

  The Russell family were 'lucky' in one sense - they didn't have to go through the agonising four-day wait experienced by the family of Debbie Fream. At least for Natalie Russell's family and friends the period of agonising limbo would soon be over. Eight hours between disappearance and discovery was a small blessing.

  Atkins knew that the killer was getting a taste for blood. Where was he when the police were hurrying to the scene? Was he at home watching television? Sitting with a wife? Children? Was he like an animal fresh from the kill? Was he dreaming in ecstasy about her cries, her blood? Probably. Did he feel any remorse? Probably not.

  Out of the darkness, Atkins made out a figure walking across the marshy school grounds. He shone his torch at a teenager coming towards the bike track. Inspector Cooke also saw the figure and sent two detectives to get her. From his post, Atkins was furious at the danger the girl had put herself in by walking alone at night. He yelled out to her that a girl had just been murdered and what on earth was she doing here.

  'What killer?' the girl called back. The detectives took the girl to the command post and questioned her thoroughly about what she was doing out on her own. The girl told them that she was on her way home so Cooke organised for her to be escorted.

  Sergeant Mick Barry arrived at work an hour early for his 11pm shift. Before he entered the Frankston police complex, two colleagues having a 'smoko' at the back entrance waved him over.

  'Another one's gone missing, mate,' one of the men told the sergeant. 'Walking home from John Paul College. Just a school kid.'

  'God, this place is going to be jumping,' said the other, voicing the opinion of all three officers. The public fear was almost tangible. Seconded from CIBs all over Melbourne to assist in investigations and door-knocks around the area, Frankston police station had almost two hundred detectives working on the murders.

  The three police officers discussed the disappearance of the seventeen-year-old student. The details were sketchy but they considered the possibility that she had merely gone shopping or to visit friends without letting her family know. Inside the station, more police officers were discussing the disappearance. It didn't look good.

  The senior sergeant in charge of the station, Peter Bull, was also on duty that night shift. He was gearing up to join the search, handing out photocopies of the photograph of the missing girl to all the cars and vans heading out to look for her. Minutes later an officer entered the duty sergeant's office.

  'They've found her and she's dead,' he said emotionlessly.

  His colleagues just looked at him for a moment, then senior officers began rushing into the office grabbing hats, coats and kits before heading for their respective cars.

  Mick Barry and his partner did likewise; they rushed to their police car, screeching their tyres on the concrete as they emerged from the basement car park. They didn't use lights and sirens; they weren't advertising this one.

  Mick Barry's partner radioed D-24 for the location of the body find. Such details over the radio were coded so as to not give information to those listening in with radio scanners. The last thing investigators needed was an hysterical audience.

  En route to Silvertop Drive, Sergeant Barry was informed via police radio that he was to help set up a command post in the back car park of the school. His car was the eighth police vehicle at the scene. As they pulled up, Barry's partner dropped the photo of Natalie Russell onto the back seat saying, 'Guess we don't need this any more.'

  More members of the State Emergency Service arrived at the same time as Sergeant Barry and his partner and set up powerful lights illuminating the car park area adjacent to the school's two tennis courts. Down the track, they saw the police helicopter maintaining a perfect hover over the crime scene.

  Police swarmed around the area, but only a few ventured down the narrow path behind the tennis courts to where the young woman's body lay. The area had become a crime scene and homicide detectives were on their way. Evidence must be protected, hence the girl's body lay alone in the icy night with a light drizzle of rain falling down upon her - the sensation of which she was no longer capable of feeling. Her seventeen and a half years on earth had ended in this lonely place.

  Detective Sergeant Tony Jay was working a district response shift from Springvale when the call came through that the missing schoolgirl had been found murdered. He and his partner raced to the scene to offer their assistance.

  Jay learned that nobody had made a physical description of the crime scene yet. In order to begin investigating, detectives needed to know as much about the nature of the crime as possible. Jay spoke to Inspector John Noonan and the two decided to view the scene. They walked down the bike track to where Phil Atkins stood. Jay followed Noonan, crouching to get through the cut wire, and the pair made their way down the narrow corridor of foliage to the body. Noonan dictated a description of the victim, while Jay scribbled it in his notebook:

  Blue jumper

  Black tights

  Skirt - green/blue check, maroon stripes, lifted up to waist

  Tights not disarranged

  Jumper lifted up to expose shirt

  On right hand side, left arm twisted up

  Blood on left hand

  Right arm to side, hand up

  Blue/grey long sleeve shirt

  No shoes

  Left leg folded back

  Right leg outstretched under left leg

  Damage to rear of hand

  Tear on left stocking on thigh

  Time almost stood still for the officers standing under the tree canopy, discussing how the schoolgirl met her death. They didn't touch her or disturb the scene and they too thought that she may have been bludgeoned or bashed because of
the blood in her hair. They couldn't see her face at all.

  Tony Jay had been a uniformed officer at Frankston when Bertha Miller and Joy Summers were murdered in the early 1980s and, as he walked out through the wire fence, he thought of all the suspects police had interviewed back then and wondered if this killer was anyone he had come across before.

  Jay arranged to speak to SES member Roy Stevens who had found the body. Two hours after shining his torch on the dead schoolgirl, Stevens was still shaking and emotional. Jay realised that he must have been suffering from shock.

  At 12.40am a briefing was held in the woodwork classroom at the Monterey Technical School and the detectives all gathered to listen to Inspector Noonan bring them up to date. Knowledge of the cause of death was limited to what Noonan and Jay had seen earlier. They were reasonably certain that the body was that of Natalie Russell.

  Tasks were allocated and Jay met up with an old workmate, Detective Colin Clark. The two discussed the murder and Jay asked Clark, who had worked on the Stevens murder, what the similarities were. But before the cause of death in this case was identified, any discussion of similarities with the first two murders was merely educated guessing.

  Crime scene examiners Sergeant Brian Gamble and Senior Constable Tony Kealy arrived at Monterey Tech just after 1am. Kealy was a local and it was difficult for him to witness yet another young woman's body. He had searched the area surrounding Taylors Road where Debbie Fream's body had been discovered and now he had to look down on another victim of the same killer.

  For Gamble and Kealy, the first job was to work out how far the crime scene extended in order to plan the methodical and slow search for evidence. Walking up the bike track, the two crime scene examiners noted the holes in the cyclone wire fence which the SES searchers had seen earlier. They also noticed blood around the hole through which the body had been found.

  Gamble and Kealy measured and recorded the dimensions of each of the holes, then focused their attention on the hole near where the body had been found. It showed signs of being recently cut. Brian Gamble carefully cut samples of the wire for evidence. If a suspect was caught, the cuts could be matched by forensic experts to pliers or wire cutters just as certainly as fingerprints could be matched to a particular person.

  Gamble used a pair of tweezers to hold a tiny piece of sterile gauze which he moistened in distilled water before rubbing it carefully over the blood stain on the pole that supported the wire fence. He then sealed the gauze for evidence. Tests would show whether the blood was from the victim or her killer.

  The two crime scene experts decided the area immediately surrounding the body of the schoolgirl, shouldn't be examined before dawn. There could be fibres or other minute pieces of evidence that could be lost in the dark if the police were in too much of a hurry. They also decided not to bring the SES lights into the crime scene area as any additional human traffic could unnecessarily contaminate it. Drizzling rain presented a potential problem, but Kealy judged that it was light enough to not disturb the tree-covered crime scene. He discussed this with homicide detectives who agreed to wait. Before the sun rose, Gamble and Kealy concentrated their efforts on the bike track itself.

  The helicopter stayed until it had to return to Essendon airport for refueling. When it flew away, it left Phil Atkins with the eerie silence and darkness that he had noticed when he first arrived at the scene. He stayed for four hours until he was relieved at 3am to return to the relative warmth of the command post.

  As many of the police officers left to interview people, Natalie Russell lay all night, alone under the ti-trees, while rain drizzled around her in a gentle mist in the eerie silence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The long night

  Constable Angela Butts was working an 11pm shift out of Frankston police station. When she arrived at work, the station was buzzing with the news of the body find. She teamed up with Senior Sergeant Peter Bull, and the two raced to the Monterey Technical School where they were told the body was that of a schoolgirl. It was impossible to get a positive ID because she was lying face down and she wouldn't be moved until daylight when crime scene and forensic officers could make a more thorough examination of the scene.

  Inspector Ron Cooke made the decision to notify the Russell family that a body had been found, before they heard the news through the media. Cooke, Peter Bull and Angela Butts made the short drive to the modest home in the Pines estate. Angela Butts didn't know what to expect. A new police officer, barely three months out of the academy, she knew that the Pines had a tough reputation. She wondered what the family would be like.

  Carmel Russell greeted the officers and led them into the lounge room. They stood before the worried mother, hats in hand and told her that a body had been discovered along the bike track.

  'Is it female?' Carmel asked in her quiet voice.

  'Yes, I'm afraid it is,' answered Inspector Cooke.

  'Is she wearing a school uniform?'

  'Yes,' the inspector nodded sadly.

  Carmel Russell considered the information for a moment and looked squarely at the officers. 'It can't be Nat,' she told them. 'Nat is too strong; she would never let anyone kill her. She would fight or run away. No, no, it can't be Nat.'

  The officers exchanged glances as the distraught mother completely dismissed the possibility. Peter Bull was almost certain that it was Natalie's body, so he decided to leave the young constable at the house until further news came through. Bull told Angela to answer all phone calls, in case the media tried to ring; and to keep an eye out for reporters in case they started turning up at the house. If there were any problems, she was to use her police radio to call him. He and Cooke then returned to the crime scene.

  Angela Butts evaluated Mrs Russell as the two women settled themselves on the couch in the warm lounge room. The young police officer was impressed. Slight in build, the fair-haired mother showed a strength not always seen under such circumstances. Not that Angela had any experience with this type of thing. The police academy had taught her procedure, then she'd spent four weeks on a booze bus, two weeks directing traffic and two weeks at driving school. She had never done a death notification before, and now she sat in the lounge room with a woman whose daughter may have just been murdered by a vicious serial killer.

  'There's no way it's Natalie,' Carmel Russell told Angela. 'She's too clever.'

  Angela Butts knew enough about grief to realise that denial was the first stage. The mother sitting opposite her would refuse to believe that her daughter was dead until the body was identified. Carmel's husband Brian sat quietly in another chair while his wife did most of the talking.

  Carmel told Angela what Natalie was like and how popular she was, her face occasionally lighting up in a radiant smile as she recalled some of the funny things Nat had done.

  The policewoman noticed a beautiful bunch of flowers in the room, and asked whose they were. Carmel said they were from her daughter Lisa who lived in Perth.

  'It was my birthday last week,' she explained.

  Carmel's second oldest daughter, Janine, had called her mother several times during the evening, to be told the same thing - she's not home yet.

  Janine's fiancé Martin was watching the Steve Vizard show on television a little before midnight. Janine was lying down in the bedroom of their Sydney home. The program was interrupted by a news break announcing that the body of another young woman had been found in the Frankston area. Martin went in and told Janine, who rang her mother immediately.

  'Is she home yet?' asked Janine, her voice shaking.

  Constable Angela Butts, who answered the phone, told her that there was still no news.

  Janine remembered talking to Natalie on the phone two days earlier. She had been watching an episode of Australia's Most Wanted and there had been a feature on the so-called Frankston serial killer. Janine had called her sister in Melbourne just to tell her to be careful. Now Natalie was missing and a body had been found.

 
Soon after midnight, there was a knock at the front door. Angela Butts opened it to find one of Natalie's friends and her father. The friend had heard that Natalie hadn't returned home from school and that a body had been found. The young girl was frantic and Carmel Russell comforted her.

  'They don't know if it is Nat,' she said. 'It may not be her.'

  After the girl and her father left, Carmel paced the lounge room floor talking about how wonderful her daughter was. The worried mother was shaking slightly and Angela Butts was overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all. This girl was clearly loved and cherished. In her short time in the police force, the young recruit had already seen so many parents who didn't seem to care at all.

  Carmel told her how Natalie went to work each Saturday with Brian, helping him fix brake pads. She would come home covered in grease, smiling. She loved the work and got to spend time with her dad as a bonus.

  Angela looked over at Brian. He was a big man, but he seemed to have shrunk as he sat hunched in his chair. Angela thought he looked as though the life had drained out of him and the two women encouraged him to get some rest. He went into the bedroom and slept for a couple of hours while the women talked over cups of hot coffee.

  As light dawned on the house in Forest Drive, Carmel turned to Angela and said, 'It's light now, they'll be able to identify the body and they will tell us.'

  There was a change in her tone and Angela thought that Carmel Russell was now more willing to accept that the body could be that of her daughter. It seemed to be the only way to explain why Natalie hadn't come home or phoned to say where she was.

  Angela was in a difficult situation. She understood the desperate need for the family to know, one way or the other, whether their daughter was dead or alive. But she also knew that the police would be in no hurry to identify the body. Not only did they have to wait until it was light to make a thorough search of the scene, but they needed to leave the body in its exact location for a forensic pathologist to examine it for evidence. The police were desperate to catch this killer; but if someone turned the body over too soon, evidence could be lost.