The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (13 page)

A former boyfriend of Astone and friend of Trish, David Moon, supported her claim that Astone was prone to lying, ‘to create a bit of drama’. He’d even told Moon that his father was a policeman when he was, in fact, a cleaner. Nevertheless, he had known Warren, as far as Moon knew. And he’d said that Warren had staged his disappearance but, like he said, Anton couldn’t help telling lies.

The Operation Taradale investigation into the circumstances of Ross Warren’s disappearance was, as Detective Sergeant Page had earlier recognised, complex: there were more twists and turns, false leads and red herrings than solid evidence, and the situation was further complicated by what the officers were learning about other incidents around that time, violent incidents involving other members of the gay community. Primary among those incidents was the death of John Russell.

[1]
Warren’s unit was in Smith Street and he had no intention of buying it as he hoped to move to Sydney in the near future to further his career.

[2]
Ross Warren had only one brother.

CHAPTER EIGHT

John Russell’s Last Night

i

On Thursday, 23November 1989 a 43-year-old gym manager from Drummoyne, Neville Smith, was walking along the walkway at Mackenzies Point, from the Fletcher Street steps towards Notts Avenue. He happened to be in the Bondi area and had time to spare. From the walkway he took another set of steps down to the rock shelf at water level. It was a warm day in early summer and a few minutes in a secluded bay seemed like a perfect way to spend some time.

Once he’d reached the water, however, Neville Smith’s beautiful day came to an abrupt end. Not far from the steps a body lay face down in a small rock pool.

Smith approached the body, noticing, when he came closer, a few coins scattered nearby, and saw that the man’s jumper was pulled up from his waist, exposing his midriff. There was also, he noticed, what appeared to be blood in the water of the rock pool. From where he stood, Smith could see no sign of movement in the region of the ribcage and this, in conjunction with a discolouration of the visible flesh, persuaded him that the man was probably dead. To be absolutely certain, though, he felt for a pulse in the right wrist: there was none. Nevertheless, even though he was now certain that the man was dead, Smith wasted no time – he ran for help, returning to Fletcher Street the same way he’d arrived and knocking on a unit door to alert the occupant, to phone for the emergency services. There was no-one home.

Nearby, a block of units was being renovated and Smith saw a builder, Rick Saxby, working on the site.

‘Quick! I’ve just found a dead body. Can we get the police or ambulance?’ Despite the fact that the body was most definitely dead, Smith’s state of shock urged him to hurry.

Saxby called the emergency services from his car phone before accompanying Smith to where the body lay. A quick look told Saxby that Smith was right: the man was dead. They walked back to Fletcher Street to wait for the Police who arrived shortly before 10.15am.

Sergeant Ingleby listened to their story before they were joined by other police officers and two ambulance officers from Randwick Ambulance Station. They all made their way to the scene at the foot of the cliff where they saw the body lying near a large square-shaped rock. Ingleby noted that the body couldn’t be seen from above as it was located in the ‘dead ground’ concealed by the rock face. The ambulance officers examined the body, confirming that it was, as suspected, deceased. They then left.

Being an experienced police officer with 20 years of service behind him, Ingleby took in the details of the scene: the body was lying face down, the head turned slightly to the right. The head and upper body pointed towards the cliff face and the left arm was beneath the torso, across the body. There was blood in the water to the right of the body and a total of four dollars sixty lying nearby: a two-dollar coin, a one-dollar coin, two fifty-cent coins and three twenty-cent coins. He noted the exact position of each coin in relation to the body, thinking that the money had presumably fallen from the victim’s pocket when he fell. There was also a Peter Stuyvesant cigarette packet lying beneath the cliff overhang with a blue disposable lighter close by, and an empty Coke bottle on top of the big square rock next to the body. One strange item that caused Ingleby to pause for a moment was a small clump of blond hair attached to the back of the victim’s left hand just behind the index finger: the victim was dark haired.

As Ingleby was taking in the scene he and the others were joined by plain-clothes Constable Dunbar and Detective Owens.

Sally Dunbar also took in the details of the scene, the red jumper with its coloured motifs, the light denim jeans, white socks and black boots all worn by the dead man. She saw the coins but, when she made a formal statement in February 1990, she failed to mention the hair on the back of the man’s hand.

One of the other detectives to arrive at the scene, Constable Barrett, also catalogued the items found on or near the body, including the hair behind the left index finger, before the Crime Scene Unit arrived in the form of Sergeant Cameron and Detective Rivera. By now, at 11.30 in the morning, the tide had risen sufficiently to be lapping over the rock shelf on which the body lay. Rivera took a series of photographs at the scene and the detectives took possession of all the items of physical evidence found in the vicinity. Sergeant Cameron then removed a red plastic bank wallet from the right back pocket of the dead man’s jeans and found that it recorded an account in the name of JA Russell.

Having preserved the scene in photographic form, the detectives could then move the body, turning it onto its left side to expose a number of injuries: blood escaping the mouth and nose, a two centimetre gash running from the left eyebrow to the hairline, ripped jeans. The height from the top of the cliff to where the body lay was estimated to be 11.6 metres, a height great enough to cause instant death on impact.

Barrett booked the body of John Russell into the morgue at Glebe just after one o’clock that afternoon.

ii

John Alan Russell was a part-time barman at Coogee Bowling Club and a part-time school yardsman in Double Bay. He was living in Oakley Road, North Bondi. He’d moved there from Ocean Street, Bondi, with his brother Peter, 11 days before his death. He was ‘a happy-go-lucky guy’ with lots of friends and he was about to inherit enough money from his grandfather to build his own kit house on his father’s farm at Wollombi. In fact, in anticipation of the move, he had organised a going-away party for himself: it was supposed to take place on the Thursday, 23November – the day he was found dead.

On Wednesday evening, 22 November, John Russell – ‘Johnno’ – left home with his best friend of 13 years, Peter Redmile. They usually met two or three times a week, drinking in the local pubs around Bondi, talking about their futures, their plans. At about 7pm that Wednesday they were in the Emerald Wave Bar of the Bondi Hotel, drinking middies of Powers. Johnno was excited: his grandfather’s inheritance money was going to change his life. He would travel around the country – the whole of Australia – before settling in Wollombi … his own home … of course, he would lend his ‘best mate’ the deposit for his own home, too … ten grand? Fifteen? Johnno bought more beers. In fact, Johnno bought the beers all night as Peter Redmile wouldn’t be paid until the following day: about a dozen middies each, maybe 15. Not that John Russell was drunk exactly, just … happy, in ‘good spirits’.

Sometime around 11pm Russell explained he’d have to leave soon ‘because of the money’ and Redmile decided he might as well catch his bus back to Darlinghurst. When he left the hotel Johnno moved up to the bar and started chatting to the barmaid. He still had a drink in front of him.

When John Russell had finished his beer he would have made his way home either by walking up Curlewis Street and along Glenayr Avenue, crossing Warner’s Avenue to Oakley Road, or by going along Campbell Parade to Warner’s Avenue and then turning right to reach home. In either case he would have essentially moved northwards if he was taking the most direct route. Instead, he walked south along Campbell Parade before, presumably, turning into Notts Avenue and going along the walkway to the place near Mackenzies Point from which he fell to his death. But why would Johnno go to the Marks Park area after telling his friend he’d have to leave soon, implying that he was going straight home?

John Alan Russell was homosexual.

iii

On 29November 1989 a post-mortem was carried out on John Russell by Dr Sylvia Hollinger. Dr Hollinger found external bruising on both sides of Russell’s abdomen, a broken left collarbone, the gash on his forehead previously noted by Sergeant Ingleby, an abrasion on the back of the left shoulder, another on the left knee and yet another on the left elbow as well as several broken bones in the left arm. There were also three broken ribs and other injuries to internal organs. Russell’s skull was shattered.

Hollinger’s conclusion was that the cause of John Russell’s death was ‘Multiple Injuries’ consistent with having fallen from the cliff above where his body had been discovered by Neville Smith

A toxicology examination detected no sign of recreational drugs, cannabis, amphetamines, methadone, opiates, barbiturates or cocaine. However, a blood alcohol reading of 0.255 suggested that John Russell, even as an experienced and habitual drinker, would have been at least a little inebriated at the time of his death. It was this last detail that convinced PC Dunbar that, even though she was aware that Marks Park was a gay beat where violence against homosexuals frequently occurred, John Russell had fallen to his death because he was drunk. There were no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, no signs of what might be termed ‘unnatural’ violence – ie violence other than that which could be expected to have been inflicted by a fall of 11.6 metres onto solid rock – on his body and he retained personal possessions which could have been expected to be absent in the case of robbery.
[1]
At no time did Sally Dunbar mention the hair that other detectives had noticed sticking to Russell’s hand.

And neither did Constable Barrett. He too, found no evidence to suggest that John Russell had been pushed from the cliff.

iv

Detective Page read the documents wondering why Russell had gone to the Marks Park area when he was known to avoid ‘beats’ because he thought they were unhealthy and dangerous. He wondered why Russell had gone there without telling Redmile. And he wondered why the police saw no reason for suspicion over the death, despite the hair that had been found on the back of his hand, hair that was deemed important enough by the Crime Scene Unit detectives that it was photographed. Important enough to have cast doubts over the entire early findings in Detective Sergeant McCann’s mind.

Once again, Page followed McCann’s investigation.

Among McCann’s archived case files, Page located Sergeant Ingleby’s original statement from 26 February 1990. In it he explained that he had received a call at Bondi Police Station on Christmas Eve, two months earlier. Someone felt they had information that could be useful in the investigation into John Russell’s death. Ingleby arranged to interview the caller on Boxing Day at the Bondi Station.

Rod S was a 42-year-old employment analyst living in Newtown. He admitted to having frequented the Mackenzies Bay area for about two years for ‘training purposes’ and to ‘mix with other gay’ people who went there. One of those people he ‘mixed with’ was Red, a man he’d known for four or five months without ever knowing his real name.

Rod S met Red sometime around the beginning of December on the coastal walkway, and heard that there’d been a bit of a ruckus in the area ‘a few days ago’.

‘It was probably a bashing,’ Red said. ‘But I don’t know.’

Rod, not having heard about John Russell at that time, said nothing. However, he was told by a friend on Christmas Eve that Russell had been murdered at Bondi rocks. (Interestingly, the friend categorically said ‘murdered’ rather than ‘found dead’. The majority of the gay community seemed to have reached this conclusion despite police indifference to the case). Shortly afterwards he – Rod – was running around the walkway when he saw Red near the Fletcher Street steps.

‘I just heard a guy was murdered here a few weeks ago. You remember you told something about a bashing or something? Do you remember?’

‘Not really,’ Red said. ‘I was with someone and we were talking. We heard a lot of shouting but we didn’t see anything.’

‘Did you hear anything they yelled? How many voices were there?’

‘I couldn’t tell. I don’t know.’ Red seemed reluctant to say much, seemed not to want to talk about it.

‘Why don’t you at least tell the police what you heard?’

‘There’s no point. There isn’t much to say.’

‘But it would help them if they knew there were a lot of voices. It would mean there was a group.’ Couldn’t he see how important this was?

‘No. Look, I’m not getting involved. If they found out at work…’

Red’s anxiety stemmed partly from a desire to keep his homosexuality a secret and partly, Rod believed, from an incident that had happened to him only a couple of months earlier when he’d been approached by someone – again, near the Fletcher Street steps – who ‘wouldn’t take no for an answer’ and tried to push him off the path and over the cliff. ‘Some middle-aged loony. A crazy guy,’ he’d said. ‘It happens.’ But if Red had had these experiences, they were alien to Rod, who’d never witnessed any violence in the area. He did admit, however, that he was aware of the potential for such violence and, with that in mind, he only went to the walkway early in the evening when there was less likely to be trouble.