The Frankston Serial Killer
Page 29
Retribution is considered necessary to avenge a crime; the law cannot be taken into the family or the injured party's hands.
Retribution is the duty of the state and is necessary to maintain non-violence and order.
So much of what Natalie wrote before she died took on new meaning after her murder.
Carmel Russell found a story Natalie had written called 'The Letdown'. It was a piece of fiction, in which Natalie wrote about winning tickets to see her pop idol in concert. Included in the prize is a backstage pass to meet him. In her story, the star was a strong anti-drugs campaigner and was considered a good role model for teenagers. However, when Natalie goes backstage, the police arrive to arrest the pop idol for drug abuse and he suddenly grabs her. Natalie wrote:
The next minute, I felt myself tightly grabbed from behind with a knife to my throat. I had never felt so much fear, not knowing what was going to happen…
Carmel Russell was stunned. It was unnerving that Natalie had written such a story only months before she herself was grabbed with a knife at her throat.
Carmel Russell had wanted a son after her first two daughters. When Natalie was born, she lay disappointed on the delivery table at the news of yet another girl, until she heard the doctor say, 'It is a beautiful baby.'
Carmel looked at her new daughter and her heart immediately melted. Before her lay a tiny infant with dark curly hair. She was beautiful.
Natalie's father Brian had a special affinity with his youngest daughter. Carmel says it is because she took after him; bright and clever. Brian helped her with her school work and taught her to swim. She loved her father.
Natalie was rather a shy child, showed little confidence with people she didn't know, and gravitated towards younger children; she looked after them and they loved her.
When Natalie was 14, Carmel was concerned about her. School teachers would ask Carmel whether there was a problem at home, because Natalie never smiled at school. They were worried and Carmel was at a loss. Even when they met people they knew in the street, Natalie would greet them with a solemn hello.
'Why can't you smile, Nat?' her mother would ask afterwards. Natalie didn't feel like it, she said. It wasn't genuine. Did her mother want her to gush over people when they met?
Carmel saw a big change in her daughter, when Natalie turned 16. It was as if she had discovered life. Her attractiveness bloomed and she was filled with a confidence that had so far eluded her. Now it was like she wanted to cram as much living into her teenage years as she possibly could. Her sense of humour, ever witty, became dry; and she had a remarkable knack of imitating people with a sharp accuracy. Everyone was drawn to the dark-haired young woman with large brown-green eyes. Natalie became the girl that friends turned to. She had an aura about her that people trusted, and her friends were many.
The Russell family give the impression that while her life may have been short, Natalie's death will last forever. Photographs, videos, her writings and memories are all that are left of a beautiful young woman. Many of her friends seemed to give up hope when Natalie died; some began university only to drop out, others left school to take low-paying jobs. Natalie's brother-in-law Martin says that if Natalie had lived, many of her friends would have achieved more of their potential - such was her influence. She was the shoulder to cry on, the friend they trusted.
It all adds to the hidden costs of Paul Denyer's killing spree.
It took Carmel Russell many months to stop putting out four plates for dinner. When people asked her how many children she has, she had to think for a moment before answering, 'Four, but now I only have three.'
Something is missing all the time and Carmel's burning question is: Why her? The one who was wanted and needed so much?
Such a death alters everything, changing perspective forever. When Carmel heard friends whinging about their teenagers leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor, she'd think to herself: if only Nat was alive, she could leave a million towels on the bathroom floor.
Few people could ever understand what such a loss is like. Well-meaning advice falls like ashes on the grief-stricken. The platitude Carmel came to hate the most was when people's sympathy turned to impatience and some began to tell her that she needed to 'put it all behind you'.
In her mind, a voice screams: 'Put what behind me? My daughter? How can you put a daughter behind you?'
Outwardly, she remains polite.
It is easy for her family to sorrowfully discuss Natalie's death one minute, and be laughing about some of the funny things she did the next. Such is the nature of the loss. The reality for the Russell family is that she is never coming back and nothing will change that.
Natalie's aunt, Bernadette Naughton, took great comfort from Bev McNamara, a woman she met through the Crime Victims Support Association. Bev's daughter Tracey had been murdered and she knew how the Russell family was feeling.
The two women spoke often on the phone and conversations would invariably begin with the question, 'What sort of day did you have?'
Bev understood why Bernadette's sister, Carmel, kept all her daughter's things. Bev had been through it all before. Everyone grieves in different ways. She understood.
Bernadette often visited Natalie's grave at the new Cheltenham cemetery to weed around it and lay fresh flowers. Natalie was buried with her grandparents and Bernadette talked to her niece, joking that she is buried with the oldies.
The bereaved aunt found solace in the fact that Natalie was buried between two other girls, aged 16 and 17; it was nice that her niece had some young girls for company.
Nearby is the grave of a policeman, Albert Haag, who died in 1961 at the age of 35. Bernadette often told her niece, 'Nat, you have a nice policeman to protect you now.'
She weeded his grave too.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Never forget
Bernadette Naughton suffered more than her share of grief yet she tried never to let it beat her. She became her family's unofficial spokesperson after the horror that visited them on Friday 30 July 1993 when her niece was murdered. When Natalie became the third and final victim of serial killer Paul Denyer, her Aunt Bernadette became a public figure. Whenever the media wanted a quote from the family, more often than not, Bernadette would brave the reporters and the cameras and give a measured, dignified response.
While Bernadette hated what Denyer did, she was never bitter or vengeful. Her measured response was perhaps a lesson for everyone. Bernadette didn't believe in capital punishment; she just wanted Denyer to serve a life sentence and pay for what he did.
A few days after the High Court denied leave to appeal, Bernadette Naughton drove to the New Cheltenham Cemetery. Walking the familiar paths towards her niece's grave, Bernadette clutched a bunch of delicate purple flowers - purple was Natalie's favourite colour. Bernadette placed the flowers on the grave, bowed her head and said, in a quiet voice, 'Nat, we didn't win - but you know we tried.'
Bernadette would talk to friends for hours about Natalie and about how sorry she was for Paul Denyer's family because she felt that their suffering was similar to that of her own family. An ex-nun and practicing nurse, Bernadette possessed the finest qualities of both professions. She was anxious to meet with representatives of Denyer's family to reassure them that she didn't blame them for what Paul did, and offered them the hand of friendship.
More than anything, Bernadette wanted to be around for another 30 years so that when Denyer came up for parole, she could be the voice that reminded a forgetful public of what he did and what he took.
Sadly, it wasn't to be.
On Friday 13 August 1999, Bernadette Naughton succumbed to a year-long battle with cancer. Her twin brother had died on their 50th birthday a couple of years earlier. Bernadette always said the stress of Natalie's murder contributed to his fatal heart attack, as no doubt it did to her own premature demise in her early 50s, only six years after Natalie was murdered.
Her loss was yet another chapter in the Fran
kston murders tragedy. She was a truly wonderful, dignified woman to the end and one can only hope that in death, she is reunited with Natalie, the niece she loved so dearly.
Bernadette's fears that Denyer and his heinous crimes would be forgotten weren't unfounded. Paul Denyer's name was on everyone's lips for a couple of years after the Frankston murders, but a decade on, many would have been hard-pressed to remember his name.
Until - 11 years after his killing spree - he brought himself back into the spotlight.
Meet Paula
In 2004 Paul Charles Denyer - serial killer of women - revealed that he wanted to become a woman.
On Monday 28 June, a bizarre picture of Paul Denyer graced the cover of the Melbourne Herald Sun. Denyer, who had last been seen at his trial looking like a brutal thug with close-cropped hair, now sported two shoulder-length pigtails, sculptured eyebrows, and was posing like a grotesque catwalk model. The headline read: 'NOW LOOK AT HIM'.
For the man who became infamous by killing three women, the attention was no doubt exciting.
In all the coverage of the sex-change request by the convicted killer - including his desire to wear make-up and his alleged sexual liaisons with other prisoners - the names and ages of his three victims were given but a sentence or two.
Natalie Russell, 17, Elizabeth Stevens, 18, and Debbie Fream, 22. The names of these young women, regardless of what they meant in life, are now forever and inexorably linked with the name Paul Charles Denyer and will appear whenever his name is mentioned.
But while he continues his life, moving from one passing fancy to the next, the girls are frozen in time; remembered for their brutal deaths at the hands of a serial killer.
Other reminders came in 2004, courtesy of two TV shows that fed the public thirst for forensics and crime investigation.
Firstly, the premiere episode of a television series called Forensic Investigators, hosted by Lisa McCune, featured the Frankston murders. It got the public talking once again about the brutality and callousness that Denyer displayed consistently throughout his taped police interview, parts of which were shown on the program.
The public watched as Denyer reconstructed his crimes for the videotape; and showed no more emotion than if he was talking about the weather.
About a month after Forensic Investigators began its successful run, another television program called Sensing Murder touched on the possibility that Denyer could have been involved in the disappearance of Sarah McDiarmid in July 1990.
In the world of the media, one must take the good with the bad. If Denyer is happy for the media to assist in his cause for a sex-change operation, then he has to accept the timely public reminder of exactly the kind of man he really is.
He hates women.
And whether he keeps his penis or loses it in a sex-change operation, it is also worth remembering that Denyer never sexually penetrated any of his victims - he preferred his penetration to come via a razor-sharp homemade knife.
So, male or female, he is still a very dangerous killer.
Had she survived, one wonders what Natalie Russell's aunt, Bernadette Naughton, would have made of Paul Denyer's bid to become a woman.
She would recognise his bid for extra notoriety and be appalled by it. But a part of her would be glad that he is seeking the limelight, because it means people will be reminded of what he did. And that was Bernadette's goal - that people never forgot his brutality and the loss suffered by so many families.
And what of Paul Denyer's bid to become what he most hated. Would a sex change mean a transfer to a women's prison?
How safe would his fellow inmates be then?
Postscript
When I first documented the Frankston murders, I wrote to Paul Denyer in prison. You can't write a book about a serial killer without at least trying to contact him. In 1995, Denyer didn't respond and wanted nothing to do with the book. For this new edition, I again wrote to him, telling him that I was going to add a new conclusion. A short while later, I received the following reply from him in his female guise of Ms Paula Denyer.
Dear Ms Petraitis,
I received your brief note today, May 25. I believe you deserve the courtesy of getting a mature reply.
I take into account that after many years people deserve an explanation in regards to my offences. However, at this point in time, I wish to decline your offer of inclusion to your project. That's not to say I never will. I base this on two points:
1. I don't believe anybody should make money from selling the story which still hurts many people (including me). I despise this ugly side of Capitalism. The last thing I ever want to do is promote crime as a marketing tool. That's exploitation.
2. I may be considering my own biography in the future. Proceeds to be given to such charitable areas that I feel are worthwhile. I have the Right to write my own history. I trust it to be truthful and sensitive to all concerned. Without bias to any agenda that I see is missing in some literature. I won't condone anyone telling my story. However prove yourself what your true intentions are. I may consider your proposal at a later time.
Of course, there are some legalities to formalise. All people deserve Respect.
Please do not approach my family in a clandestine manner to obtain info. If you have my trust, you may ask me and only me for my point of view.
I wish to complete this reply with a ? for you.
You said you are writing a 'new conclusion'. How do you term that when my story/life is far from Concluding?
I plan to try to make this world a better place.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely,
Paula Denyer
PS: as a mark of
respect, don't
address me as
P_ _ l
Thank you
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This edition published in Australia 2011
by Clan Destine Press
PO Box 121 Bittern
Victoria 3918 Australia
Copyright © Vikki Petraitis 1995
First published in Australia, Nivar Press, 1995
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (The Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of any book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Petraitis, Vikki, 1965-
The Frankston serial killer / Vikki Petraitis
Edition: 2nd ed.
ISBN:9780980790078 (pbk.)
9780987160348 (ebook)
Subjects: Denyer, Paul.
Serial murders—Victoria—Frankston.
Serial murderers—Victoria—Frankston.
364.1523
Cover Design © Rae Cooper rae@anon.com.au
Design & Typesetting Clan Destine Press
Printed and bound in Australia by Trojan Press
http://www.clandestinepress.com.au
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