Crimwife (12 page)

So it wasn’t until April 2004 that we spent any real time together. My colleague went on annual leave and referred Jimmy, among others, to me while she was away. Jimmy took this as licence to wait at the Coach House at 8.30 in the morning of every other day to see me. He would tell the guard he had an appointment and they would let him in unannounced, or they would look at me and I wouldn’t say no, in part not wanting to take the risk of saying no. I didn’t know how Jimmy was going to react if I went against his wishes.

He would sit in my office as often as he could and talk. He discussed his childhood, the isolation, the lovelessness he felt. He had been young and rebellious, crashing dirt bikes and mucking up with his brother. His father was a mechanic, his mother a nurse. They were ordinary working-class people, but Jimmy was restless. He had started using speed occasionally at about fourteen and changed over the next few years from a committed sportsman to a committed drug user. He was caught with a bunch of drugs, and his family sent him off to the army at eighteen after he escaped punishment. He said he didn’t go through the usual process. A relative in the army had organised his acceptance.

He told stories of being in military jail for selling drugs, and said that it was far more brutal than regular civilian jail. Whether these stories were true or not, the Australian Army meant a lot to Jimmy and Anzac Day was a solemn time for him. The army was one of his main reasons for turning more seriously to crime. They had trained him up, he argued, in urban warfare and aggression. When he ran into trouble, he did what he had learned.

That trouble started as drug debts, and when these involved a bikie club, he was given a gun and told to go and get their money back. That’s how a simple suburban boy becomes an armed robber. Over the years it had been a cycle of jail and, immediately upon release, more drugs and more stick-ups. But he had no intention now of ever doing that again. He had woken up to himself during this whack in jail and realised there was no future in this life. He was thirty-three years old now, and the young plastic gangsters in the yard were frustrating and had no code. He felt old, and I recall him saying, before he knew how judgemental I was, that “It’s not like the old days when jail was grouse.” This was not where he wanted to be now, but at some point he had been right there with it.

In a jail, there are no signs of the crime. You cannot see where the victims are or what they went through, their injuries and fears. You have no real idea how brutal or serious the crime was. Usually, the person in front of you has done the same things a hundred times without being caught. You can get some idea of an inmate’s history from their case file and their own report. But that’s often a fraction of what they’ve actually done.

So in the absence of victims, a crime scene and anything much to do with the reason they’re in jail, the inmates shift into the victim role. They are the ones who are too cold or hot, frustrated or depressed.

On one of the Mondays when my colleague was away, I arrived at work to find Jimmy outside the Coach House again. This time, his face was serious. He wanted to talk for real.

In my office upstairs he told me that the Squad had paid a surprise visit to the jail on the day before. The Squad’s name interchanges regularly with words like Team and Crisis and Response, Inmate and Action. Squad members are there to back up prison staff during a crisis. You can tell they mean business, because they wear dark denim jumpsuits with elasticised waists. They wear high boots and they tuck their pants into their boots, while prison officers wear straight-legged pants and a sensible boot. These guys look ready to jump out of a plane at any minute. They know it and they love it.

Some inmates were in their cells when the Squad arrived, and some were in the yard. Those in the yard were ordered to muster while members of the Squad ransacked the cells. Jimmy said that he’d been smacked in the head a few times by the Squad. I didn’t know what to say. It sounded surreal that the entire prison staff would permit this to go on. I told him I would look into it. Later that day I spoke to a colleague who was also relatively new to the jail. I asked her what she made of Jimmy’s story. She told me that she’d had an inmate report an identical story that morning. My colleague’s client had a history of seizures. Being smacked in the head was the last thing he needed.

I called a senior officer in the department who I had met before coming to Parramatta. The senior officer had been in the job for fourteen years. She was cynical but still very human. After my issues at Mulawa, she had told me that the department continued to distress her, but it didn’t surprise her anymore. If anyone would know what to make of weekend attacks on inmates, she would. Her answer was that I should ask myself how it would benefit the inmate to tell such tales. It was highly unlikely that the Squad was turning up and bashing crims randomly. That sort of stuff just didn’t happen anymore, and the inmates obviously both had an agenda.

My colleague and I saw no choice but to get back to work, wondering how often these incidents that never happened would occur, and how to act ethically. When I later read the 2006 ICAC report implicating Deputy Governor Strange in
the “cover-up of an assault on an inmate at Parramatta Correctional Centre,” the questions I’d struggled with took on a different perspective.

Jimmy went back to seeing my colleague when she returned from leave. This made me hope that the problem I knew he was becoming would go away. Jimmy could instead try to enchant my colleague, who spoke very highly of him, saying he showed so much potential. But it was not to be.

Jimmy continued to run into me wherever and whenever he could. I couldn’t ignore him, but I couldn’t stop for long. He turned up everywhere. It was now getting scary. He knew that he should stay away from me and he knew that I wanted him to. Yes, we got on well, and he made me laugh. But every day at 3 pm he got locked in, and at 5 pm I went home to a small child. I had a job to do and I didn’t need Jimmy getting in the way. My probation was up in June. If I could make it two more months, I could have a permanent job and feel safe. They hadn’t kicked me out yet, so I figured there was a good chance of finishing the twelve months, getting off probation and maybe being taken seriously.

Jimmy would have none of that. He crossed my path as he saw fit. I resented him for it. Surely he understood what it would mean. But even though he promised, he didn’t stay away. And as April became May, which was so close to my probation end date in July, 06-05-04, the day that changed everything all over again, loomed closer as well.

Craig told Jess early on that he’d been in jail a few times. She knew all about his past by the end of that first night, when she met him at a club, but she says she didn’t care. She says the music was loud and they had to yell to hear each other. All Jess could see was a six-foot-tall man with big shoulders and huge biceps in a tank top. She says there was a tidal wave of instant attraction. They went home together that night and were inseparable for seven months before he jumped on her head.

By the time she found out just how much jail he’d done, and that his offences were severe and violent, she was already deeply in lust or love, or something in between, Jess tells me. Craig was courteous, insisted she do nothing but be herself, and was, from what she could see, falling in love with her.

“He was such a gentle person,” she says. “He loved spending time with me. When he wasn’t working, he would help me out around the house, and even catch trains with me to run an errand, just for the ride. He switched off his phone when I first met him, and he’d only been out a week. Everyone was trying to get hold of him, but he only wanted to be with me. It was amazing. And the sex was incredible. I think that’s what kept us together the most. He said he had all the patience in the world. We would spend days and nights in bed. He pampered me. He adored me. I’ve never been treated that well before or since, actually.”

While telling her story, Jess’s face warms when she speaks of these days with Craig. You can see she remembers these as good times. Jess is thirty-five, university-educated and works full-time. She is well presented, with big hazel eyes, and friendly, if a bit cautious. There’s no obvious reason why Craig was the first person to make her feel special. Then her nostalgia-filled face turns from smiles to furrowed brows of confusion. She shakes her head, confused, not knowing whether she’s allowed to remember the joy.

“He used to follow me around and tell me how beautiful I was. In the beginning it made me laugh. I’m not God’s gift to men by any stretch. But he was offended if I didn’t accept his compliments, so I did. I let him tell me how this light made me look even more sensational, that I was every man’s dream. That he was the luckiest man in the world to be with someone as beautiful and sexy as me.

“One time this guy came on to me at the bus stop, a creepy old guy, and when I got home I told Craig for a laugh, and he looked at me with a serious face and said, ‘Well you can’t blame him. What man wouldn’t try if they saw you?’”

“They’re old lines, but they work. And he was persistent. He would say it all the time, not just when he wanted something. He would notice what I did with my hair, my jewellery. He looked at me like I was the eighth wonder of the world.

“Funny, though,” Jess smiles again, “for the first month, it annoyed me. I thought he was playing up to me. By the second month I started to enjoy it. The attention to my ego started to change me. But I also liked being noticed; I liked being thought about. Then by the third month, I expected it. It didn’t take long for me to get used to being treated like a princess.”

The two spent every free moment together. They never moved in together because he couldn’t change his parole address, but they were never far apart. What surprised Jess was how early the violence started. Craig’s story about his jail time had been noble. He told her that after a mate dropped dead from a heart attack, his mate’s wife was preyed upon by the neighbourhood vultures, for money and his mate’s possessions. “Craig said he’d gone round and beaten the hell out of every single one of them that came over one day, but I think there was more to it. I saw some of his legal paperwork once and it looked pretty bad, hostage-taking and weapons, but I never questioned him. And it was cold violence, he said. He would never just snap.

“It had only been about six weeks, and I can’t even remember the first time what it was about. I’d given him some cheek about something, hadn’t even thought about it, but he wasn’t in a joking mood. He threw his cup of coffee at me. He missed most of me, then he grabbed me by the throat, pushed me up against the wall and said, ‘Don’t you EVER speak to me like that again. Nobody speaks to me like that.’

“Then he walked out, and I was left to scrub the coffee stains and figure out what I’d done wrong.”

Jess says that when he was angry, Craig would walk out on her. At first it seemed to her that the incidents came out of nowhere, but over time she learned what set him off: her connection with other people, mainly men, and the times when she disagreed with him.

“After the coffee incident, I let it blow over. I reminded myself that as much as he didn’t talk about jail, he considered himself a man’s man. I figured it was part of the package. A man like that would ultimately know how to control himself.”

Craig continued to adore Jess, and she continued to enjoy the highs of the relationship. He worked on construction sites and spent all his money on her, from what she could see. She saw the joy in his eyes when they met up every night, and during those times she woke up happier than she’d ever been before, in the arms of a man who wanted to be with her constantly.

“He was affectionate, too. He would tell me from time to time that he’d been years without feeling this way, wanting to hold someone like he did with me. And yeah, I lapped it up.”

Initially, Jess thought Craig’s jealousy was funny. She would relay a story to him about an acquaintance at the supermarket. “‘I ran into so-and-so from my old work today,’” I would tell him, “and he would cut me off there and say, ‘I don’t want to hear about some man you talked to.’ I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t.

“One day I went upstairs to borrow milk from a neighbour and ended up chatting for about twenty minutes. When I got back, Craig was sitting there all sad-faced. I asked him what was wrong because he was fine before I left, and he wouldn’t say. I had to kiss and cuddle him and reassure him before he said it: ‘I know you were up there fucking him.’ I wanted to laugh right at him but he wasn’t joking. He believed deeply that there were men lining up around the block to steal me away. Flattering as that started out, well, it ended up meaning I had to hide any conversation I had with a man, the butcher, a friend’s brother, anyone. And phone calls with my female friends were also suspected as a conspiracy against him.

“So, you end up spending less time with other people and, before you know it, this isn’t what you signed up for. You just kind of learn that it’s easier not to go out so often; it causes less drama. But it all happened quicker than I ever expected. I thought it took years for them to get violent and it didn’t at all.”

The second time Craig struck Jess was four months into the relationship. They’d had an argument over one of his mates. “It was quick as that,” Jess clicks her fingers. “I told him I thought one of his friends was sleazy and I didn’t want to go out that night if he was going to be there. Seconds later, there’s a backhand against my face and I got shoved to the ground.

“‘You better learn to watch your mouth, girl. You better get it clear who you’re talking about and who you’re talking to. I’ll finish you off if you keep going, and I’m not afraid to do the jail for it either, bitch. Is that clear?’”

“Of course,” Jess said and got up off the floor. She apologised profusely. Craig’s fury was still raging in his eyes, and he was a big, strong man. He told her she had a lot more to learn. And held her close. Then they had sex.

Craig didn’t show remorse for what he’d done, apart from the odd “sorry.” Jess let it slide for the most part because of their strong physical connection. “We had to be with each other when we could. When we were together, we had to touch each other. That feeling never wore off, still hasn’t really. It was the stuff you see in movies but it was happening to us. It was so intense and really kind of beautiful and special. And I noticed if I didn’t challenge him too much, he didn’t get sulky. Agreeing with him made him happy. So it was usually easier to go with the flow.

“And that’s how it went on. We’d carry on as normal. His outbursts were nothing to him. So they ended up being nothing to me. The idea of fighting back was a joke. So I let it breeze over. He was never angry for long, that’s the other thing.

“And then he’d go back to adoring me again straightaway, or if he left, then within hours, I’d get the call, ‘I miss you.’ But he only actually hit me, in all that time, three times, shoved me or twisted my hair or my arm. At first it’s hard to believe that it’s happened. Then you just concentrate on preventing it from happening. Most of the time we were happy, though – that’s the hardest part. He wasn’t a monster except when that was going on. He was good to me most of the time.”

Six months into the relationship, Jess says she took on a short-term contract assignment as a second job. Her weekends were filled now with work, and her attention was elsewhere. One Saturday night Jess felt Craig’s now familiar sulkiness filling the room, while she sat organising a mail-out of two hundred packages. She’d grown less tolerant of Craig’s moods, and she sighed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“Nothing.” He mumbled.

“I can tell there’s something wrong. Just tell me so we don’t have a fight.”

“All I hear from you is work work work, now all week and weekend. I’m not used to coming second to work.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Jess looked up from the dining room table at Craig brooding on the couch. “I get an extra chance to get ahead and you’re complaining about it already. Why does everything have to be about you?”

Craig jumped up. “Give me the keys,” he said, and walked towards her.

Jess jumped up, ran into the kitchen and grabbed the keys from their hook. “No,” she said. ‘You’re not taking my car.”

The warmth has left her face now. As if danger is close by, Jess’s breathing gets heavier, quicker, while she recounts the night’s events.

She felt Craig’s anger rising so she ran for the front door, keys clenched in her fist. If she could get to the car, she could drive away from whatever was coming next.

She was too late. He grabbed her, pushed her to the ground, lifted his leg and stomped his foot down on her head once, twice, and a third time.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

She says that even though she threw the keys behind her for him the first time she felt the weight of his boot on her skull, he didn’t stop. Those five or six seconds were life-changing.

Jess says she didn’t black out, she “whited out,” and when Craig stooped to get the keys, she scrambled up to reach for the front door.

When she was turning the doorknob, Craig turned around and saw her. As Jess made it to the front patio, he slammed her down again. He stomped on her head twice more, but because she was outside now, Jess started screaming. She broke free and ran to her neighbour’s house. Hoping her neighbours were home, that night of all nights, she ran until she reached their back door.

“I was running so slowly. I only looked back once and he was chasing right after me, so I had to run faster. I knew if I could get up the stairs to her flat, her front door might be open. My whole life depended on her front door being open.”

“So, I got there, and I ran up the front stairs and to this day I’ll never forget how much that door knob meant to me, and I turned it and it opened and Di was home. I stayed there on her couch that night, but Craig had left as soon as I’d got in. I still get nightmares about that run. What would he have done with me if he’d got me again, or if she wasn’t home?” Then Jess starts weeping.

“The thing is, I started seeing him again. I missed him straightaway. I saw him probably a week after that. I snuck him back in so the neighbours couldn’t see. But it wasn’t the same, and I was scared most of the time. He knew what he’d done, and he knew it had all changed. I wanted it to be the same. That’s the part I hate. I still wanted us to be how we had been before, but I couldn’t live like that. One night, when he was perfectly calm, and we were sitting outside, I told him quietly that he had to go. I cried the whole way through and told him it was my fault, that I was weak. It was like he knew it was going to happen one day. He didn’t put up much of a fight.”

Jess retreated from Craig, and he left her alone, for a while. While Jess found the loneliness unbearable, the violence had left her reeling. Her perception of the world had completely changed.

“You know what he used to say to me? Well, he told me once or twice – while I’m down there lying on the floor – that there was no way he’d get more than five years for doing the job on me properly, and that it’d be worth every day in the cell if I shut up for good. The world changes when someone tells you that, you know. My life is just somebody’s jail sentence. He’d get more for drugs.”

Her fears are somewhat justified. Plenty of people might fantasise about killing off their spouse, but stop the thoughts there, knowing they’d go to prison for murder. But if jail is a first or second home to someone, why should they hold back?

The infamous cult leader and killer Charles Manson was raised by the state in boys’ homes and juvenile detention. When he was sentenced to three life sentences in 1976, Manson told his prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, “You’re just sending me back where I came from. Makes no difference to me.”