If Dawson's views were not abundantly clear before, they certainly are now.
Whilst many of the questions I sent through to the police were answered quickly and at length, some were not. How has the investigation affected Macro officers, personally and professionally? Anonymous stories of people who have come forward with false confessions or information? The difficulties in dealing with the parents, year after year, when no one is charged? Who are the heroes of this story to date? Comment on Peter Weygers complaining about police harassment? A comment on the perception that good people were driven out of the force when they did nothing wrong? What has happened to the DNA supplied by the cabbies? What is the police line re Robin Napper? Some, such as the last question, were met with outright indignation and either completely ignored or greeted with mirth. Others I was advised simply would not be answered and no reason given as to why.
But the police service wanted me to provide answers for them, such as why this story also concentrates on miscarriages of justice cases. What is the relevance of these, Neil Poh demanded to know, in a book about the Claremont serial killer? I replied, 'I have had police silence for eight months and am now have only six weeks until deadline. As we discussed on the telephone, I am not here to be critical of police simply because I can be, but nor is it my role to play police PR, as you understand. Re miscarriages of justice: I know they happen in all states and that Western Australia Police have got it right thousands of times (as Poh had pointed out to me). But the reality is that in cases like Andrew Mallard, that's what people remember and that is very often how sections of the force are judged, particularly if the feeling is that other cases may have been compromised as well. I appreciate the opportunity to even up the ledger and will do the best I can with the time I've got to do that.'
Amongst carefully worded police-speak, Paul Ferguson is a breath of fresh air. 'I've gotta say straight up,' he tells me, 'that I'm not talking to you to save anyone's arse. I'm blunt, and I tell it like I see it.' Now based in the Kimberley as a superintendent, Ferguson was surprised by the phone call a few days earlier from police hierarchy asking him to contact me. 'I wanted to talk to you eight months ago,' I tell him, 'but I was warned there was no way you would speak to me. Weren't you informed?' He is taken aback. 'No. Never heard anything about that. I never knew you were writing a book on Claremont. We courted the media for help all the time. It defies logic that we would pull the shutters down now.'
Ferguson is adamant that neither blame nor praise can go to one particular individual in the Claremont case. 'Caporn led Macro through its most critical phase, when the girls were missing and found murdered. But no one person solves a crime or comes to a conclusion. It is a combined effort by a group of people. The evidence draws a picture and people act on that picture.'
***
Months before the CCC handed down its findings into the Mallard case, the five police officers that were stood down early in 2006 – Caporn, Shervill, Brandham, Carter and Emmett – were reinstated. There was no evidence, according to O'Callaghan, of misconduct or corruption by any of them. Amid mounting speculation that the cold-case review would clear Mallard of Pamela Lawrence's murder, the commissioner reminded Western Australians about why they had been stood down in the first place: to avoid a perception they could interfere in any way with the cold-case review. The Corruption and Crime Commission, it appeared, had other ideas. Much to the Western Australia Police's chagrin, officers were gagged from talking about the review findings, and the CCC issued a request to further restrict access by the officers to certain documents and reports.
The reinstatement of Caporn and Shervill was short-lived. They were each put on 'special regional projects' pending the outcome of the CCC findings. 'Special projects' in police terms is often nothing more than a euphemism for 'appearing busy in purgatory'.
The police are circumspect in answering any questions regarding the CCC, refusing to speculate about the hearings or the possible findings. Their assessment is blunt. 'We don't see any relevant connection between the Mallard case and the Macro investigation,' Neil Poh writes to me after passing the questions to Anthony Lee. But the connections are obvious: that some of the same police officers were involved in both investigations and the outcome of the CCC hearings may reflect on their investigative techniques. But there is little point in pushing further: the drawbridge has gone up. I recall what Lee said to me during early conversations in Perth when I asked questions that police do not want to answer. 'We won't be bullied. There is no point being a white knight. It will only get people's back up.' In other words – back off.
Trevor Rimmer, already fed up with the lack of resolution to his daughter's murder, awaits the CCC findings with more than a passing interest. 'We've been told time and again that the cops have done a wonderful job. But it certainly doesn't inspire confidence in us to to see Caporn's name in the CCC list. Maybe everything will be fine when those findings are released, but what if it isn't? How can we be sure about the people who were investigating Jane and the other girls? How can we trust that everything was done exactly the way it should have been, that the wrong people haven't been hounded and the real killer has got away with murder? How can we be sure?'
After much ado, in October 2006 the Special Crime Squad released its cold-case review findings into the murder of Pamela Lawrence. For Andrew Mallard, it spelled complete and long-overdue exoneration. Eliminated as a person of interest in the murder of Pamela Lawrence, the evidence points to Simon Rochford as being her real killer. It also found that Pamela Lawrence's husband, Peter, who found her dying at the jewellery shop, had no part in her murder. The Special Crime Squad, O'Callaghan emphasised, was not tasked with examining the conduct of the officers involved in the original investigation. This is a matter to be considered by the CCC inquiry. Full details of the cold-case review report are to be kept under wraps until the CCC completes its inquiry.
While a beaming Andrew Mallard and a grim Peter Lawrence were issued with apologies, Mallard's lawyers renewed the cry for compensation.
John Quigley, awaiting the CCC findings in 2007, shakes his head about the Mallard debacle. 'It appeared that Caporn had solved that most difficult murder in about 12 days. This, despite not finding a murder weapon, no forensics, no eye-witnesses, no clues – just a meticulously documented dossier that claimed Mallard did it.' He is in high gear. 'What did they do then? They looked at Macro. Paul Ferguson hasn't made an arrest yet, and the commissioner is under the pump to find the killer. Ferguson is taken off the case and is soon under arrest himself – though they later found nothing against him – and he's replaced by Caporn and Shervill. They have a coterie of people underneath them who are taken up in their vortex, the people they want around them. And the wagon keeps rolling.'
79
Just days before the cold-case review findings are released, there is another bombshell: WA Police are set to question Briton Mark Dixie, aka Shane Turner, over the Claremont killings. At first blush, it appears that he could be the person responsible. Dixie was charged in July 2006 with the frenetic 2005 stabbing murder and sexual assault of 18-year-old Sally Anne Bowman, a blonde model whom Dixie stalked as she left a nightclub.
It was his hair-trigger temper that brought him undone: arrested after a post-World Cup pub brawl in Sussex, he gave a DNA sample which matched him to an indecent assault in London in 2001, when he allegedly masturbated in front of a woman who was standing in a public phone box making a call, and to Bowman's murder.
Reports that WA Police have requested Dixie's DNA samples dominate Perth media headlines. The 35-year-old had worked as a chef in Perth and the south-west between 1993 and 1999; the discovery that his visa had expired years before and his subsequent deportation was made only after he was arrested for exposing himself. A charming man with the gift of the gab, young tourists remember him as faking an Australian accent while workmates recall him as reasonably good looking with a fiery temperament.
If Dixie is responsible
for Claremont, the modus operandi for his alleged murder of Sally Anne is not consistent with an organised killer nor with the modus operandi the Claremont killer used. She was not abducted and put in a vehicle. Her body was not moved after death. The attack was frenzied, brutal, carried out on the street outside her home where she died. Her body was covered in bite marks and the sexual assault was clumsy, violent. None of the hallmarks of the cool, calculated abductions and murders of the Claremont victims. While Anthony Lee admits only that WA Police are using standard procedures to look at any possible links between Dixie and unsolved crimes in Western Australia during the time he lived there, by October Dixie's news value as the possible Claremont killer has diminished. And it again begs the question why, if there is comparable DNA from Jane and Ciara's bodies, did Dave Caporn admit that the disposal sites were 'not fertile'? And why, if DNA does exist, haven't they tested that against Lance Williams and either exonerated or charged him?
News that Mark Dixie may be in the frame for Claremont precipitated a strong reaction on the 'Gotcha' blogsite. The recipient of three prestigious Walkley Awards for investigative reporting, journalist Gary Hughes is the author of the website, which looks at national and international issues of crime, corruption and law enforcement.
'What would you say if the WA police had suspects and they weren't watching them?' One person writes in with a poignant question: 'How loud would the outcry be if one of these was the murderer and the police had not kept them under observation? It may not be pleasant, but no doubt, it is necessary. All I can think is that if the police checked immi-grants leaving Perth around that time the killings stopped & took a close look at why they have left i.e. deported, maybe the life of that young UK girl could have been saved.'
'The primary [sic] suspect seems to have been followed around the clock for a very long time,' another blogger commented. 'His life became unliveable. If it turns out not to be him, we are in for the mother of all compo payments.'
But Williams, according to a Macro insider, has no chance at all if he chooses to sue the WA police department. 'What would he go us for?' he asks. 'His behaviour has put him in our line of sight.'
'Can't he sue for harassment?'
'No, because it isn't harassment. It's an ongoing police operation and he knows bloody well that there are numerous reasons why we've kept him targeted as a suspect.'
The most scathing 'Gotcha' post is from a former neighbour of one of David and Catherine Birnie's victims. The opinions vented remind me of so many conversations I have had with Perth residents about Western Australia police.
'The WA police force has a deplorable record of investigating the disappearance of and attacks on women in Perth,' the former neighbour starts.
When the Birnies were hunting girls in the '80s, the police, despite credible and consistent reports from families and friends of the missing girls, refused to take the disappearances seriously. I was, at the time, a neighbour of one of the murdered girls and heard first-hand the appalling treatment that her parents received at the hands of police. They accused the missing 15-year-old, a straight A student with no problems and good references, of variously being a runaway, a prostitute, troubled, drug-addled and attention-seeking. All this in the face of over-whelming evidence to the contrary from fellow students, teachers, the parents, various teen counsellors and her neighbours. The police, either too incompetent or too shiftless to act, upped the ante against the teenager, accusing her of being an accomplished scammer and liar, experienced in hiding aberrant behaviour behind an angelic facade.
In fact, this poor young child was an innocent teenager, being brutally assaulted, and latterly murdered, by the Birnies. Young women have been routinely disappearing from Perth streets since the early '80s and the police have resolutely refused to do anything about it. The reason that the police have been brought to account, and their ineptitude exposed, more recently is that two of the parents of the missing Claremont girls had the political clout to compel the police to firstly, act and secondly, tacitly admit that they were, and had always been, out of their depth in major criminal cases.
Whilst no public statements have been issued by the international experts called in to assist WA police, it is well known by journalists that many of these experts were horrified by the lack of police process, diligence and expertise in the early stages of this investigation. The fact that the police continue to dismiss further disappearances of women is not surprising given that at times their desire to cover their ineptitude and plain laziness has by far outweighed their commitment to preventing any further incidences.
If this UK fellow does turn out to be the Claremont killer then the police will have some serious questions to answer, not the least of which will be why they continued to harass and bully suspects long past the date when ANYONE believed the suspects had a case to answer. I fervently hope that the Spiers can bury Sarah, that Julie Cutler's parents find out where she is, that Ciara and Jane's family can at last walk down Perth streets without peering into the faces of every male they pass and that Sarah McMahon's mother can at least know if her daughter is dead or alive.
But one blogger in particular caught my eye. His blog name is Dr Phibes, his real name Andrew.
Dr Phibes is a character in a Vincent Price horror film who is certain that his adored wife died at the hands of incompetent doctors and vows his revenge. He takes inspiration for his murders from the biblical ten plagues of Egypt. The police officer who suspects Phibes to be a killer is initially hampered by the incompetence of the force for which he works but eventually tracks down Phibes. The blogger has chosen the identity of a macabre murderous doctor through which he addresses his thoughts.
Professing that he had met and spoken to Sarah McMahon through friends a few days before she disappeared, 'Dr Phibes' claims that police flew over his property with heat-seeking radar in the search for her body, that they bugged his phone and also took his DNA sample. 'Since they haven't been back, they have discounted me too,' he adds. Jane Rimmer, he says, worked in a day care centre near his workplace and he surmises that Sarah Spiers's body is in water and offers to search the areas that he nominates. 'Sarah McMahon is near Mundaring Wier. Just a feeling i get.' He adds that he has two other lakes that he feels are strongly in need of a search, and that '1 is north near where Kiara was found'. Enigmatically he continues: 'I have had a woman giving me probs for ages. Don't ya hate that ppl accusing you of bopping sum 1 off then annoying you to hell thinking they can do that and sleep OK?'
He offers readers the opportunity to email him directly. I do. We exchange some emails and his full name appears in the address. In the second email, he offers to meet me in Perth – an offer I accept. Trouble is, this book will be published by the time we can meet. Is the name showing in the email address real?
Who is this blogger inserting himself into the case? I call Robin Napper and ask him to take a look at the site. 'The grammar is sometimes poor,' I tell him, 'but it frequently changes to a well-educated style. Do you think this person knows more than he is letting on, that he is mad or just playing a dangerous game?'
Napper gets back to me within 24 hours. 'This is seriously spooky,' he says. 'Whoever this blogger is, he has more than a passing interest in the subject and is teasing us with his knowledge of all three victims. How does he know that some of the areas he talks about are inaccessible and rugged unless he has been there? And if he has been there – why has he?'
Letters regarding the Claremont killings keep pouring into the police. In 2001 barmaid Maree-Ellen Bullard, following a phone call to Missing Persons with information about the disappearance of Sarah McMahon, starts a relentless campaign to have her voice heard, writing countless letters over the years to the premier, police minister and police, raising her concerns about the adequacy of the Macro investigation. A witness in the Susan Christie case, she has, she says, information about McMahon and 'a few other disturbing incidences I would like to tell you about.' One is a person whom she believes p
olice should be treating as a suspect. As polite letters from government departments advise her that her issues are 'being looked into', the tone of Bullard's letters becomes increasingly vitriolic: 'I also in October 2001 voiced my concern over different matters concerning the person I have grave concerns about . . . I will forever and a day stand by why I rang and what I am trying to do for these missing women and there [sic] families.'
Bullard and I meet at a South Perth café in 2006. A heavy smoker who runs on nervous energy, she strikes me as manic but determined, a woman who will not resile from her opinions. 'I am so frustrated,' she tells me. 'I can't get anyone in this city, apart from Robin Napper, to listen to me. In all these years, the only time I've ever had an interview with police was January 2002.' She hands me a sheath of papers to read. 'This circus they call the Macro taskforce must end!' one letter begins. 'Who's the next suspect? Bozo the Clown?'
I am startled by the contents of the letters. Her aggressive writing style, I suggest, will win her no friends in the police or elsewhere. This, to Police Minister Michelle Roberts in mid-2005: 'I did write to Jim McGinty with copies I sent to you also. I did not even get the complimentary "who gives a red rats arse" letter back . . .' Worse, I warn her, with her continuing use of the word 'youse' instead of 'you', she runs a great risk of being dismissed as uneducated and mad.
The Devil's Garden Page 30
