The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (15 page)

Or individuals who strayed away from the crowd to find privacy up and around Marks Park.

On 20 July 1990, almost exactly a year after Ross Warren disappeared, the night was sharp with winter. A light southeasterly breezed in off the sea bringing cold air up onto the beach. The day had been warm and bright but now … Now, at one o’clock in the morning, it was no longer warm.

In one of the shelters dotted along the grass three youths sat with cans of VB on the table, a cone passing between them.

The beer ran out … smoke was almost gone … they had no money. They drove around for a while, ended up near Marks Park: they could get money in Marks Park. One of the youths demurred, didn’t want to go into the park, didn’t want to go where the ‘poofters’ were.

Where did he think they’d get the money?

He still wasn’t convinced, hated anything to do with them … They all hated them, that’s why they were here. They’d rolled one down near here the other week, they said. Got heaps of cash.

Then where was it, the youth wanted to know? If they got heaps of cash, where was it now? They had no money and nothing to show. They was skitin’, the bastards.

Because it was cold there were few people around on the walk along Notts Avenue past Bondi Icebergs and when they reached the walkway leading to Tamarama there was no-one. For a while they sat on a ledge beneath an overhang, talking, smoking the last of their dope, killing time before setting off again, moving further away from Bondi. The third youth hadn’t said why he hated gays, hadn’t told the others about when he’d been a little kid, about how … how he’d been repeatedly raped by a supposed friend of the family, how he’d had no-one to turn to for help. So, he’d just let it boil inside, this hatred, this loathing of gays because, it was obvious to him then and it was obvious to him now, all gays and paedophiles were the same: they were all deviant bastard perverts and they all deserved…

‘I can hear voices. Round there.’ Pointing along the path past Mackenzies Point.

In the soft light of the stars the third youth saw the flash of the claw hammer, saw a large stick in the other youth’s hand. He hadn’t seen them before but seeing them now he knew, knew it was on.

ii

Jeffrey Sullivan and Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn faced the ocean, talking in quiet tones. It was three o’clock in the morning and they thought they were alone on the walkway. The blow from the hammer sent Sullivan reeling away from his friend, stumbling sideways as he clutched his head where the weapon had scraped past. For a split second no-one else moved. Time, suspended in the amber of total shock, stood still. Until the elder brother and the third youth laid into the Thai, raining blows down on him with the stick, with fists and feet, screaming at him as he screamed at them, pleading for them to stop.

‘Fuckin’ bastard poofter!’

‘Filthy faggot! Cunt!’

And the kicks kept landing … Kritchikorn’s face smashing, bones breaking, screams dying in the blood of his throat … the stick thudding into bone … into flesh … his cries subsiding … consciousness slipping away…

And behind them, the hammer … aimed at head and body … an arm broken … a…

And then, as quickly as it had started, it was over, Rattanajurathaporn’s broken and bleeding body motionless on the path. The three turning away, walking away, leaving their victims barely alive behind them. They’d taken no money but the sport was over. Finished.

A few paces, the ‘high’ of the attack gone, they were left with an empty feeling, a feeling of unfulfilment, a feeling of …

The third youth turned back, he would later tell the police, turned back and looked at the human damage they’d caused, outrage beginning to grow in him, outrage at having come away with nothing. He saw Jeffrey Sullivan, a man whose name he didn’t know, a man he’d never met before, lying in a shattered heap on the ground. And he saw the other, the ‘curry’, standing now, cowering in the darkness, his eyes shining with tears and fear and pain, a look of pleading in them as if all he wanted was to be left alone, to be allowed to hurt in peace. And the outrage he felt grew even more:
this … this fuckin’ maggot cunt expected …what? mercy?
Without thinking, without consideration of anything at all, he ran back, ran at the shivering defenceless Thai homosexual, seeing him backing away from him, backing towards the cliff edge, ran back with the stick he didn’t know he was holding raised in his hand, closed in swinging his arm, the club describing its horrible arc in the dark air, his other hand outstretched before him, connecting, striking hard, watching the slight form toppling, falling backwards…

Silently, Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn toppled over the cliff, his eyes widening as he fell, smashing on the rocks, to eventually drown, unconscious, in the sea below.

CHAPTER TEN

The Major Crime Squad Investigation

i

On 28October 1990 Constable James Bignell was transferred to the Homicide Unit of the Major Crime Squad to work as Detective Steve McCann’s partner. By the time Bignell joined McCann the latter had successfully concluded the investigations into the murders of Richard Johnson and Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn, although Bignell was involved in preparing briefs which would lead to the conviction of those responsible. It was during these investigations and a subsequent inquiry into the murder of another homosexual, Ludwig Johann Gertsch in Paddington, that other incidents were identified wherein homosexual victims were targeted by gangs of young thugs.
[1]
Mainly, though not exclusively, in Alexandria and Bondi. For the first time, Bignell believed, police discovered the beats that had been used by gay men for decades. And, for the first time, a connection was forged between the cases involving William Allen (murdered on 28December 1988 outside the same toilet block as Richard Johnson), John Russell (suspicious death, 22 November 1989), David McMahon (assaulted 21December 1989), Wayne Tonks (murdered 19 May 1990 in Artarmon), Raymond Keam (murdered 13January 1987 outside a toilet block in Alison Park, Randwick) and the disappearance of Ross Warren in July 1989.

• • •

Five months after he’d joined the team Bignell – and McCann – received the first communication from Anne Pascoe, the social worker who had overheard Adam French boasting about having thrown ‘a poofter’ off a cliff at Bondi. Two days after the claim was made Pascoe submitted a statement to detectives in which she said she’d been sitting at a lunch table in Keelong Detention Centre with French and two other ‘residents’ when the topic of homosexuality came up. In addition to hating ‘poofs’ French made his claim about having thrown someone from the cliff.

‘What, into the water?’ asked one of the others at the table.

‘Nah. Onto the fucking rocks.’

Pascoe asked why he hated homosexuals, pointing out that they didn’t have sex in front of him, but he laughed and said that they did, they had sex in the park, at school and ‘in the Cross’. And he’d not only chucked one off the cliff, he’d thrown a ‘poof’s’ keys into the sea, he said. And the ‘poof’ was pretty pissed off, enough to start a scuffle.

Unfortunately, Pascoe was called away and heard no more of French’s bragging on that occasion.

On the strength of Pascoe’s statement, the detectives decided to apply for listening device warrants to record conversations between French and others at the detention centre. One of those who had been at the lunch table with Pascoe was approached, ostensibly to make a statement to corroborate the facts as related by the social worker, but essentially to be persuaded to wear an electronic recording device and to garner potential evidence against French and anyone else who claimed to have been involved in gay bashings.

In his statement, Michael B, the petty thief from Western Australia, claimed that on the day French was overheard at the table, he, Michael, had heard a news item on the radio regarding a ‘fag’ being pushed off a cliff at Bondi and about general attacks on ‘fags’ in the Sydney area. He mentioned the report while he was playing cards with French and another inmate and that was when French admitted to having ‘thrown a fag off a cliff at Bondi’ too. He went further, claiming, ‘I’ve jumped on blokes heads you wouldn’t believe. We’re always going out bashing fags.’ French, Michael said, was always talking about going around to public toilets and bashing gays.

In exchange for Sergeant McCann agreeing to support his appeal in court, Michael B agreed to wear a recording device and to engage French in conversation about his homophobic activities.
[2]
On 12 April 1991 the first in a series of conversations was recorded.

After a number of inconsequential exchanges concerning Michael’s girlfriend and some indecipherable utterings, Michael says, ‘You can’t go down to fuckin’ Bondi.’

French: Can’t go no cliff jumpin’.

Michael: No what, cliff jumpin’? You’re a sick puppy, mate … Why be a fag-basher for?

French: Something to do mate. Mate, I made fuckin’ one …one guy I bashed I got thirteen hundred.

Michael: Thirteen hundred?

French: Yeah, he was fuckin’, I don’t know, He was doing a bank run … taking money to the bank. Stopped him. Smashed him. Fuckin’ jumped on his head, went out to his car, looked in his briefcase.

Michael: You’re a sick puppy, mate. And you just do it for fun?

French: Do it for the fuckin’ money, mate. It’s not fun, it’s a sport in Redfern.

Michael: Every cunt does it.

French: Oh, it’s a fuckin’ hobby, mate. What are you doin’ tonight, boys? Oh, just goin’ fag bashin’.

Michael: When you, when you bashed this cunt, did you get caught straightaway from it?

French: Nah.

Michael: How many cunts have you killed? [No response] Tell me some stories.

French: About fag bashin’? Oh, man, I fuckin’, oh, I’ll tell you one. The first time I went, mate. No, it wasn’t the first time, the second time. It was in a fuckin’ toilet block, okay? … There was a fuckin’ toilet block there and there was a window, okay? And the toilet’s just inside the window and my mate, the same guys that I was with this time, they were inside punchin’ the cunt out when he was standin’ on the toilet bowl, standin’ up, and the window was smashed and I was leanin’ through the window … It was heaps fun, you know? You know how it started? … There was one in each, chucked a golf ball in there, went ding, ding, ding … Then he comes out and goes, Who done that? Some fuckin’ boong. Crunch … Fuck. Caught heaps of blokes fuckin’ … three once, mate. Three.

Michael: In a toilet?

French: No, in the fuckin’ football grandstand. Heaps sick, man … Them cunts copped a bad hiding, two of ’em did, anyway … one got away …We were jumpin’ off the roof of his car … onto his head, mate. His head was in the gutter … You should see one of my mates. If you go back up to Penang you’ll see him. Brad Young, man. He’ll tell you some fuckin’ stories…

Michael: Have you ever bashed someone for his car?

French: Yeah, we took this cunt’s car that we killed … Man, I’ve belted heaps. I’ve belted one cunt three times, mate. Three different times.

Michael: Three different times?

French: I swear to god, mate. He had a wig … The last time I belted him I took his wig off and I chucked it in a tree … Heaps way up high, chucked it in there, and before I took his wig off I pissed on it. I picked it up with a stick and I put it on his head … He was down on his knees, ‘Don’t hit me any more …’ Took off his wig and pissed in it. Done heaps of fuckin’ sick things, man, heaps bad … mate, it’s a sport. It’s fuckin’ funny … Tied a cunt up one night with fuckin’ Telecom wire … And we come back and about three-quarters of an hour later he was still there. So we belted him again. We said, ‘You move, you cunt, we’ll find ya.’ Never fuckin’ moved, mate. We said, ‘You should’ve fuckin’ gone, you dickhead. How could we find ya?’ Heaps bad. … Mate, this cunt, we got him, okay? We didn’t hit him, we just got him on the ground and we said, ‘What are you?’ And first he said he was a copper … We said, ‘Show us your badge, cunt,’ and he goes, ‘Oh, I haven’t got it, it’s at home.’ I went fuckin’ Whack! ‘What are you, cunt?’ Said, ‘An ambulance driver.’ So I fuckin’ cracked him again and I said, ‘What are you, cunt?’ What are you? And he goes, ‘I’m a taxi driver.’ … bang, bang, bang … lied to me three times … and he goes, ‘I’m a homosexual.’ Fuck. Boot. Oh, heaps bad, mate … Stresses me out how they lie to me all the time. Can’t handle it.

• • •

The detectives of the Homicide Unit had hoped that French would incriminate someone in connection with either the death of John Russell or the disappearance of Ross Warren, especially in light of his admission regarding the throwing of a victim off a cliff at Bondi. However, as Constable Susan Emmett stated in her official report on 9May 1991, insufficient evidence was obtained by the use of the listening device for the arrest of any persons at that time.