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Paul Leask soon mastered the voluminous detail of the brief. He was taken up in a police helicopter with Glen Browne, and they flew to Wauchope and the Hastings River, and then back to Girvan, where the chopper landed in a paddock next to the house. The place had long been abandoned but still contained many of the belongings of Anthony Perish and Brad Curtis from the time they'd lived there. Leask saw the screens in the lounge area that had been connected to the cameras that monitored the gates, and also the extensive collection of action videos the men had watched at night. He examined the interior of the big green shed where Terry Falconer had been dismembered, which now looked like any other abandoned workspace, its concrete floor covered with pieces of machinery and paint tins.

It is clear from the air, or even on a map, that the Karuah River comes close to Girvan, so Anthony Perish's initial request to Tod Daley to bring his boat up that river made good sense. But having said that, he was not very familiar
with the rivers of New South Wales: he'd thought the Karuah flowed through Bulahdelah. And he'd dumped Terry Falconer in the heavily fished and tidal Hastings River when it would have been possible to deposit his remains much closer to the ocean. This mistake remained one of the mysteries of the case. Possibly he'd been affected by drugs, or by the emotion of what he'd just done and the sense of vengeance he must have been feeling that morning. Whatever the case, his normally cool judgment had failed him. That one lapse was the reason he was now about to go on trial.

A major problem arose for the prosecution when Brad Curtis was diagnosed with liver cancer after the committal hearing. The cancer had spread and affected other organs, and Curtis had major surgery—with armed guards in the operating theatre even when he was unconscious. It was now expected he would die in prison before serving his fifteen years, so the big question was whether he was still prepared to give evidence. He might well decide there was nothing to gain from this as he would not be alive to enjoy the discount he'd received off his sentence, and for the sake of his family's safety he should stay silent.

Glen Browne took Paul Leask and Victoria Garrity out to Long Bay to meet Curtis. The meeting took place in his cell, which he had to himself, and he was plainly unsettled to have them there, in his private space. He didn't have a lot to say, and when they handed him a copy of his statement to police, he didn't seem interested. They got no idea of his intentions.

He might give evidence as he'd promised, but he also might refuse to go into the witness box at all, in which case Leask could be in trouble: in such a situation it is not automatic that
the Crown can produce previous evidence. A third possibility was that he might give evidence, but in a half-hearted way that would weaken the case. In that situation, Leask would be able to ask the judge for permission to show the jury some of his past evidence, such as the ERISP or the video of the walk-through done with police at Girvan. Curtis was intelligent, secretive, a planner and manipulative. Anything might happen.

There was another important development not long before the trial was due to begin. Some of the defence lawyers had talked to Merv Grogan about possible pleas, and now Anthony Perish's barrister Carolyn Davenport told Leask her client wanted to plead guilty to the manslaughter of Terry Falconer: he was prepared to acknowledge that he'd arranged for Falconer to be put in the toolbox and that he'd died there, but that this had not been the intention. It was up to Leask to decide if the Crown was prepared to accept this plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter, which carries a much shorter sentence than murder.

The attempted plea was a risky move, because if the Crown rejected it, the murder trial would proceed and the jury would be told of the plea. This would mean Perish would be unable to deny that he had planned the abduction and taken delivery of the box at Turramurra. This might make the jury more open to the idea that he was a murderer than if he'd been able to deny all connection with the death of Terry Falconer.

Why would Anthony Perish take such a risk? One possible reason is he (or his lawyers) had decided the outcome of the trial was highly unpredictable, because of the unusual importance of protected witnesses. Such witnesses are notoriously
unreliable in court, and if the jury decided Tod Daley or Brad Curtis was lying, the case might well fall over. Perish might have hoped the Crown was as uncertain about the trial's outcome as he was, and would accept the certainty of a lesser conviction over the possibility he might get off altogether—on the venerable legal principle that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If this was what he was thinking, he was perhaps unlucky with the change of prosecutors. Paul Leask has a reputation as a Crown who does not do deals; he rejected the plea.

It was interesting that the manslaughter plea had come from Anthony Perish and not Matthew Lawton, whose involvement in the crime was so much less. Had Lawton pleaded guilty to manslaughter at an early stage, there's a possibility it would have been accepted. But he stayed loyal to the end, and it was to do him no favours.

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While it is the job of defence barristers to ensure the jury hears no untruths about their clients, a great deal of effort also goes into the suppression of unpalatable
truths
. Juries almost never, for example, get to hear about any previous criminal or even disreputable activities the accused might have engaged in. So in the Perish trial, the jury could not be told that Anthony had once been charged with a drug offence (even though he was not convicted), or that Andrew was currently serving a prison sentence for one. Our legal system holds that such information might prejudice the jury against the accused, and make them think it more likely than otherwise that they committed the crime for which they're on trial. The system holds that such
an assumption would be unfair, especially when the previous charge or conviction was for an offence quite different to the one for which the accused is now on trial.

Where this gets tricky for practical purposes is when a piece of evidence is both prejudicial
and
what is known as probative, meaning it is directly relevant to the trial. In such instances, the Crown can argue that the principle described above is countered by the need to include the evidence if the jury is to get a clear and complete sense of what occurred. Barristers and judges spend long hours discussing such matters, drawing on a wealth of legislation and case law. Such a discussion, like others that occur in the absence of the jury, is known as a voir dire.

In this trial there was a voir dire before the jury was empanelled, when the defence barristers made an unusual application. Strike Force Tuno had been the subject of press articles over the years indicating the breadth of its activities and the number of murders it was investigating. Such articles had largely stopped since the arrests in early 2009, because once someone is charged, journalists are not allowed to speculate on their activities in case this influences the thinking of readers who later find themselves on the jury. But the articles, published mainly before January 2009, were still available on the newspapers' websites and Carolyn Davenport and the other barristers asked his Honour to order the
Sydney Morning Herald
and the
Daily Telegraph
to take down a number of specified reports. Such requests for ‘take down' orders were relatively new and controversial.

Justice Price agreed with the barristers and on 16 February ordered the articles be removed. The news organisations opposed this in court. They argued that the jurors, in this
trial as always, would be instructed by his Honour not to look up the case on the internet. They also argued that there was now such a volume of material on the internet about the accused (including versions of the articles that were to be taken down that had been copied onto other websites) that taking down half a dozen articles from two websites would not make much difference. Price rejected these arguments and the articles were removed.

It was a difficult situation. One of the bases of our trial system is the assumption that what jurors know about a case can largely be controlled by the court. The internet has undermined that control, but there has been no formal attempt in New South Wales to assess what this means for the integrity of the system and what, if anything, ought to be done about it. (One reason for this lack of action could be that it's a problem to which there appears to be no solution.)

Price's decision was naturally unpopular with the media, and after two articles about it were published in the
Sydney Morning Herald
, he postponed the trial for some months to ensure the controversy—which drew further attention to the fact that material was still on the internet—would not be fresh in the minds of the jury.

This delay was welcome for Paul Leask, as it gave him more time to prepare his case. The police were upset, though: the postponement produced havoc in their own jobs and consternation among all the witnesses for the trial, who just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. The protected witnesses in particular had prepared themselves mentally and emotionally for the ordeal of giving evidence, and now had
to wind down and prepare to do it all again in a few months. This sort of thing can take a heavy toll.

Tod Daley was particularly upset. He'd first talked to Tuno more than eight years earlier, and felt that in a way things had been on hold ever since. Now he pleaded to Jubelin, ‘When can I get on with my life?'

Unfortunately, Camille Alavoine's cancer had come back after her return to Tuno in 2007. Despite this, she was still coming to work as death approached in 2011, because there was much to be done before the trial started. Her last months were like some grisly farce from which she was incapable of removing herself. ‘I've got to hand over all the work I've done in the past ten years to another analyst,' she would say to Jubelin. But she could not be replaced until she stopped coming in. It was a terrible situation, and she never did get the chance to hand over her work. Only after she could work no more, and went into hospital to die, did Tuno receive its replacement analyst.

When 4 July 2011 came and the trial was due to start soon, the lawyers for Anthony Perish and Matthew Lawton asked that the two articles in the
Sydney Morning Herald
critical of the judge's decision in February also be taken down from the internet. Justice Price declined to make such an order. When the trial began on 11 July, in Court Number Two at Taylor Square, he told the jury it would be ‘a serious criminal offence' to seek information on the case from the internet, or indeed anywhere else outside of the courtroom. He reminded those members of the media present that there was a non-publication order on the names of a large number of witnesses in the trial.

Paul Leask opened with an address to the jury. He was intense and a little uneven at first, but soon settled into his stride and had the attention of the jurors, some of whom looked appalled as the terrible story of Terry Falconer's death was told. The jurors sneaked glances at the three accused men in the dock, perhaps looking for a sign of criminality in their faces. There was little to see: they looked like three tradesmen in early middle age, each with a tan and neatly cut hair, and dressed in a suit. Anthony Perish, the drug boss, was the most pleasant-looking of the three—he has a charming smile that reaches his eyes. Andrew is taller and has a coarser face. Lawton, who always sat on Anthony's left, appeared mild-mannered and reliable. Criminals in movies and on television generally look far more sinister than their real-life equivalents.

Carolyn Davenport opened her defence of Anthony Perish, whose failed manslaughter plea was known to the jury, saying he admitted to asking Brad Curtis to kidnap Falconer because he had been told Falconer had killed his grandparents and wanted to question him about this. He had no intention that Falconer would die, but he did die on the way to Turramurra. Once Perish saw that Falconer was dead, he decided to get rid of his body in such a way that it would never be found, and rang his associate Matthew Lawton to come to his house to help with this. The body was disposed of ‘not very professionally'.

As for Tod Daley, according to Davenport, Anthony Perish had lent him money to fix his boat from the goodness of his heart, and there had been no suggestion it was done so the boat could be used to dispose of a murder victim. Daley and Curtis were both lying, she suggested; Daley because he was paranoid and had mental problems, and Curtis (who was
lying about when Falconer had died) because he'd received a discount off his own sentence in return for agreeing to give evidence in this trial.

Matthew Lawton's barrister, Stephen Hanley, told the jury his client had known Anthony Perish for a long time and done work for him, but had had no involvement in the events under discussion until arriving at Turramurra and finding Perish and Curtis there with Terry Falconer's corpse. He said Lawton might be guilty of helping dispose of the body and hiding an offence, but of nothing more. He noted the Crown had not suggested Lawton would have had any motive for such a murder. (The Crown does not have to prove motive for murder, but usually tries its best as this can be a powerful indicator of guilt.)

Andrew Perish's long-time barrister, Winston Terracini, is a man with a grey beard, a squat, powerful body and a deep voice. His man-of-the-people manner goes down very well with clients. He began by telling the jury, ‘No one knows your names so please don't think . . . that you're anything but anonymous.' Then he continued in his normal homely style, covering a lot of territory. ‘You will hear about drug use . . . and rather depraved behaviour,' he told them sadly, but this should not affect their objectivity. Some of the next few weeks might be hard going: ‘There are no commercial breaks in trials. This is real.' The juror's job was important, he said, more so than someone who could make spaghetti marinara eight ways or dance the tango.