The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (22 page)

Detective Sergeant Page arranged for wave measurement data, synoptic charts and tidal data for the period between 21 July and 20 August 1989 to be made available to Doctor Brander. Would he be able to say what would happen to a body dropped into the water beneath Marks Park during that time?

Brander’s response came in a six-page letter with maps and arrows and a detailed assessment of the data. Essentially, he said, ‘It is my opinion that around the Bondi/Tamarama headland it is unlikely that a body in the water off the shore platforms, or on the bed, would move landward over the time frames and climactic conditions described.’
[3]

In other words, if Ross Warren had entered the water off the Mackenzies Point headland on the night he disappeared, the sea conditions would have pulled him away from safety, away from land, out into the freezing Tasman.

But wouldn’t he sink at some point? Wouldn’t he fall to the seabed for a few days before the natural gasses produced by putrescence floated him back to the surface? Rob Brander had said that the wind conditions had changed on 25 and 26 July, had veered to the south and become strong. If Ross Warren had, indeed, fallen into the water and been taken seawards by the prevailing conditions before presumably sinking, wouldn’t the changed conditions have carried him back to shore when he resurfaced three or four days later?

The opinion of Doctor Alan Cala of the New South Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine suggested not.

In a letter to Steve Page, Cala explained that when a deceased human being is immersed in a large body of water like the ocean it will initially sink. What happens then, however, depends on the tides, winds and currents as well as the ‘local environment’ – whether or not there are rocks in the vicinity, the depth of the water, vegetation density and so on – water temperature and the presence of marine creatures. And after sinking there is no guarantee that the body will rise to the surface again. If the body does resurface it is as the result of decomposition, of gas formation providing a degree of buoyancy, and it usually happens after a few days. But bodies don’t always rise again, Cala warned. There are instances, he said, of persons entering the ocean whose bodies are never recovered.

vii

Rob Brander had already described the submarine area around Mackenzies Point as being predominantly sand with boulders and rocks near the cliff face and a shelf extending some 50 metres offshore. Could a body thrown into the water have sunk and become caught among the outcrops of rocks, Page wondered? And, if it had, would there be any trace of the remains after 12 years? Probably not on both counts, but there was enough of a long-shot chance to cause the detective to request the Special Services Group to arrange for the Police Diving Unit to conduct a search of the waters around the Marks Park area.

A series of dives were undertaken over a period of time and although no human remains were found, a number of interesting items were recovered. Ten minutes into the first dive one of the officers returned to the police launch with a section of corroded water pipe before rejoining the search. After another 10 minutes the same Constable surfaced with yet another section of similar pipe and while it might not be unusual to find odd bits of junk tossed into the water, Steve Page instantly recalled the water pipe used in the assault against Robert H in Centennial Park, remembered the association of Trindall to those responsible for that attack, and remembered the link between Trindall and Tamarama according to Adam French. As common as bits of piping might be, this was too much of a coincidence for the detective to ignore.

What he had expected to turn up, however, didn’t. With so much talk of keys being thrown from the cliffs, the detectives had thought that sets of keys would appear, if not in profusion, at least in some number. But no. No keys at all. Would they be too light to have resisted the tides and currents, maybe? Not really: the second dive produced a small silver-coloured bracelet that would have weighed far less than a set of car keys. If the tides hadn’t dislodged the bracelet, they would hardly have moved bunches of keys.

Expert advice was sought in relation to both the lengths of steel pipe and the bracelet: the pipes, the metallurgist said, had been in the sea for years (perhaps as many as 15 years) while the bracelet – silver alloy overlaid with pure silver – had been submerged for only a matter of weeks or months rather than an extended time frame of years.

• • •

By now, the detectives from Operation Taradale had moved further forwards than the point at which the earlier inquiries had stopped. Detective Sergeant Page had now identified 75 persons of interest to the inquiry, had organised video run-throughs of offence sites involving Ross Warren, John Russell and David McMahon, had conducted a thorough search of the waters around the Mackenzies Point area and had canvassed local residents who had lived in Kenneth and Fletcher Streets in 1989. He had also submitted John Russell’s clothing for DNA analysis (it had been kept by the family as they were convinced that John’s death was the result of foul play), located and transcribed tapes from the original Major Crime Squad investigation and searched for the duty books and notebooks of police previously involved in the investigations. Witnesses had been interviewed and reinterviewed and a number of technical experts had been consulted.

Detective Sergeant Page now proposed to begin his planned covert surveillance of Sean Cushman, issue a press release to stimulate the provision of further information from the public, and interview the ‘core group’ targets who were currently in custody.

[1]
Detectives from Operation Taradale discovered that PTK also stood for People That Kill, a far more definite and unambiguous sobriquet than the marginally metaphysical PSK of Philadelphia.

[2]
It seems likely that the gang Bishop is referring to is the splinter group from the PSK, the PTK. The PTK were closely linked to the Bondi Boys while the PSK operated out of the Randwick/Coogee area.

[3]
The wind between 20 and 24 July was offshore and would promote the offshore drift of any surface object regardless of size. Offshore winds also cause a drop in surface water temperature – an important factor when considering an injured body falling into the water. As spring tides were running at this time, stronger currents would have been experienced in the area even though, in general, tidal currents in the area are negligible.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Search for the Missing Hair

i

Despite the fact that Constable Dunbar failed to mention the blond hairs sticking to the back of John Russell’s left hand, Detective Sergeant Ingleby and Constable Barrett had both noted its presence. And both had recognised its importance. During the initial Major Crime Squad investigation Detective Sergeant McCann saw the importance of the hair and tried – without success – to trace it. Now, it was Steve Page’s turn: detectives from the 1989 Crime Scene Unit were contacted.

The police photographer who attended the scene on 23 November 1989 described the area where Russell’s body had been found and explained that he’d taken a series of photographs under the direction of a detective sergeant. In the photographs, he said, the position of Russell’s body can be seen as lying face down with the feet and legs together. In paragraph eight of his statement he noted that Russell’s left elbow and right wrist were broken and that there were
strands of hair adhering to one of the deceased’s hands.
These strands were collected by Crime Scene officers, he said.

A number of other items (cigarette packet, lighter, coins etc) were photographed in situ and were also collected. The photographer then left the scene and had no further knowledge as to what happened to the exhibits or any analysis of them.

Page was hardly surprised: why would the photographer follow up the evidence? His area of expertise extended no further than the camera and the film inside it. The detective sergeant would have a better idea.

Detective Sergeant Cameron was by now retired. His credentials, however, were impeccable. As a crime scene investigator since 1967 he had by his own admission, ‘carried out the full gambit’ of investigation. He had examined hundreds of crime and incident scenes among which were numerous ‘unknown cause of death’ investigations.

Cameron’s recollection of the Russell crime scene was perfectly detailed: he described the walkway precisely, was able to create a near-perfect visual picture of Marks Park and recalled that the day he attended the Russell scene was ‘fine and sunny’. As had the police photographer, so Detective Sergeant Cameron described the position of Russell’s body and the items lying around it, noting the water-filled indentations in the rocks and the injuries to the deceased. There was no watch or any other jewellery on the body, he said. He then gave a fully detailed account of the measurements relevant to the scene: how far from the body were the five coins scattered nearby, how far the cigarette packet. He gave the distance of Russell’s head from the nearest point on the cliff face and the distance of the Coca-Cola bottle from the head. He gave the height of the cliff above where the body lay. And, he said, ‘on the top surface of the deceased’s left hand just to the rear of the right index finger joint with the hand were a number of small hairs adhering to his skin’.

The former detective sergeant’s account was at all times clear and intelligent. He offered reasonable opinions as to what
might
have happened on the night John Russell met his death without prejudging the opinions of others and without compromising his own integrity or independence: the evidence, he said, offered any one of a number of possibilities that only a full investigation would reveal as being the truth. In the meantime, the existence of the clump of small hairs on the back of the deceased’s hand was irrefutable. Unfortunately, Detective Sergeant Cameron didn’t say what had happened to the hairs, didn’t say who had ‘bagged’ them or who had taken possession of them.

So, Steve Page asked, where were they? He had already asked for a search of the Sydney Crime Scene Unit – expecting little – and had heard from one of their Crime Scene officers. Not surprisingly, the response was negative:

A search of the exhibit rooms at Sydney Crime Scene Section reveals that the hair sample is not on hand at this section. There is no record here relating to the hair. In 1989 there was no formal procedure for receipt of exhibits at a crime scene section. Typically what would happen is that an exhibit would be brought directly back to the section from a scene and generally a record in note form would be made and held in the relevant brief. If the exhibit was moved from the section the brief would be endorsed.

Nowadays, the Crime Scene officer explained, the procedure is more accountable. An audit trail had since been established so that evidence couldn’t easily disappear. Which wasn’t any use to Steve Page in his search. But it was just possible that the hair from John Russell’s hand could have been lodged at the Crime Scene Unit – pre-audit trail – and sent away for analysis. In which case the Division of Analytical Laboratories at the Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research might have a record of having conducted tests on it. The reply from the DAL was brief:

According to our records for 1989 and 1990, the Forensic Biology laboratory did not receive any items for examination in connection with this matter.

Did this mean that no items were sent because they had already been lost? Not necessarily. Before the DAL was used to test DNA on evidence samples items were usually sent to staff working at the Lucas Heights Atomic facility for forensic testing. Maybe the hair found on Russell’s hand had been sent there. Steve Page made inquiries.

The particular part of the Lucas Heights facility that would have dealt with sample testing had since closed but, the detective was told, the staff who would have had responsibility for that work would have been Doctors Robertson and Goulding.

James Robertson was now employed by the Australian Federal Police Forensic Services and Steve Page emailed him outlining the position of the police regarding the Russell investigation. He not only gave precise details of the hair shown in photographs but also listed the police in attendance at the crime scene for purposes of cross reference, in case the testing had been done under an investigator’s name rather than that of Russell. Robertson replied promptly, sending Page a return email on the same day. Unfortunately, he said, he wasn’t the person to talk to: if the hair sample had been received, he said, it would have automatically gone to Goulding, now retired.

Robertson had contacted one of Goulding’s former colleagues to contact him and ask that he get in touch with Steve Page with any information he might have that could throw light onto the matter of the missing hairs.

Goulding’s reply came a week later. After checking his records he could safely say that he never received any hairs in connection with the Russell case.

Yet there was no doubt that the hair had been collected. Sergeant Ingleby had already stated that he specifically recalled two officers from the Scientific Section at the scene, one of whom he saw place the hairs into a bag which he believed was plastic. Ingleby became aware at the time of the Russell inquest at the beginning of July 1990, he said, that the hair was missing even though he wasn’t present at the inquest himself. The exhibits listed in the Exhibit Register at the coroner’s court included only the brief of evidence, notice of death, identification statement, post-mortem results, analysts certificate, photographs and plan of the area around which Russell’s body had been found. No evidence bag of short blond hairs.