The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (26 page)

‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘if I’m involved so is Melanie and Kylie.’

No sooner had she put down the phone than it rang again. It was her mother calling to say that she’d been thinking, thinking about things that had happened in 1989. She’d been living with Ron in ’89, she said, and one of the murders happened on Ron’s birthday so … It was worth thinking about, anyway.

Half an hour later she called back. She’d organised a legal representative, she said, a lawyer who’d look after her.

‘I don’t even know if I witnessed it, Mum. I don’t remember any gays being bashed … I didn’t do anything. I know I haven’t done anything.’

But what about the card machine,
her Mum asked.
What if the guy at the card machine was one of them that was killed? They’ve got DNA now they said. And they’ve got, there’s them three boys got 14 years and that. It’s all, it’s all linked … the … So what about the card machine? You told me about the card machine…

Shit, it was just a robbery, she said. They just took him to the bank and rolled him. Nothing, it was nothing. ‘They didn’t bash him bad,’ she said. ‘Like, why would I bash gays? Oh my god. I don’t fuckin’ hate them. They can do whatever they want. I swear to god, I don’t remember bashing any gays or being with anyone that bashed gays.’

And anyway, the one on Ron’s birthday … You were looking after the boys on Ron’s birthday. That’s 22 July. Had it been 28 July, I wouldn’t have a clue what you were doin’. But on 22 July I swear blind that you’d have been looking after your brothers … You were every other weekend. Why not then?

Yeah, why not? Course she would’ve been.

But they’re gonna want you today. The police. They’re gonna want your address. That’s why he’s comin’ here again. The cop. To sit here and stand over me. That’s why, why I thought the lawyer…

‘But I haven’t done anything,’ she said. Then screaming into the phone, ‘I know I haven’t. I would know if I’ve done something bad … I don’t even know what to think about … I don’t even …’ breaking down, ‘… oh, my god, I’m stressed. Shit!’

The phone again, the number already dialled. Her partner’s voice at the other end of the line, trying to calm her down, trying to make sense of her hysteria. Her own voice, high-pitched and wavering, incoherent as she gabbled snatches of sentences, snatches of thoughts.

‘The case … the case has been – it’s gay bashing – the case had been opened because of DNA … Three people have already served 14 years … are serving 14 years … it’s been reopened
’
cause there’s other cases … that wasn’t … other cases that weren’t … finalised…’

But you weren’t involved in any of these things?
Sounding reasonable, trying to take the savageness out of the situation.
Why would you bash a gay person?

‘I wouldn’t!’ That was exactly the point, she was saying: she
wouldn’t
bash a gay person. ‘I don’t …I, I don’t know anything … I’m so lost.’ There was nothing she could do. If the police came, there was nothing she could do or say. They would … she didn’t know what they would do … Fourteen years … Fourteen fuckin’ years!

‘I’m gonna tell the truth,’ she told her partner. ‘I never went around bashing people. We used to just, like, get drunk and you know, we didn’t even, like do hardly any naughty stuff.’ She’d spoken to Cathy, she said, told her how freaked out she was, how she was so shitting her pants. Okay, so she’d hung out in a … in a group. But they didn’t go around murdering people, did they? They were … were getting ‘on it’ a bit – meaning booze, meaning cones – silly things like that. Kids stuff was all. But they didn’t kill anyone. She had never murdered anyone, she said. She had never hit anyone to the point of murder. God, she’d never even knocked anyone out let alone fuckin’ murdered them. There was just the time – that one time – she said, when she and Kylie followed a guy to an ATM and they watched him put in his PIN number. The boys bashed him, she said. They took his key card and did a runner. The guy got up, he was fine. Shit, they didn’t kill him.

When she put the phone down yet again, it was barely past midday. On the intercept the police thought she sounded like she’d been wrung out. They could see an empty cigarette packet lying on the floor: it might have been full when she’d got up that morning. The cups were probably still on the kitchen bench, the bed unmade. She would be feeling so alone, so helpless, so … She would need to sleep but there was no way … She’d be sitting on the lounge, her head in her hands, crying silently for a while, crying for herself, the police thought: for herself and for her daughter.

Shortly before five o’clock in the afternoon she called her brother Simon.

She told him the story, said how she’d been talking to their mum and heard about all the shit that was going down, how the cops wanted to talk to her about the murders. She managed to stay cool, managed not to lose it.

Did you know any gay fellers?
Simon asked.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. Did she? Of course she didn’t … she might not have hated them but she didn’t have anything to do with them … all that stuff about AIDS and that, she said.

You sure? ’Cause … I dunno because like the feeling … I was just readin’ it in the ‘paper an’ there’s, like, fuckin’ five unsolved murders in the eastern suburbs with gays.

‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘Are you sure
you
weren’t doin’ gay bashin’?’

Nah,
he said.
It’s not me. They grabbed … like, they got a fuckin’ handful of someone’s hair and that’s who they reckon.

‘Yeah, that’s what Mum said. Hair or somethin’. Would they have grabbed my hair? How would they have grabbed my hair if I wasn’t there?’

Yeah, they grabbed the hair when he was bein’ chucked … like, when they chucked him off, you know.

‘Oh my god. I never … I don’t know … I wasn’t, I know I didn’t do it. I don’t know. I wasn’t even there when … I’ve never seen anyone bashed around and I’ve never seen anyone chucked off the bloody things.’

Steve Page wondered if she said it enough times she might begin to remember things differently. If she said it enough times she might be able to change the past in her mind.

iv

The next day she was at her Mum’s house early to meet the detectives not at midday as arranged, but before 10 o’clock. They took her to Waverley Police Station and interviewed her, recording the interview on video. She felt awful, had hardly slept, had been unable to eat. Cigarette after cigarette had been lit, dragged on, crushed, instantly replaced with another.

The nightmare was continuing.

The interview room was bleak, table, three chairs, electronic recording equipment. Blank walls and blank faces. She was sweating. Outside the temperature was already in the mid-20s and rising steadily towards a sweltering summer’s day. Inside the room it was cooler but she felt hot, suffocated, as though her lungs weren’t getting the air she breathed.

Steve Page spoke for the benefit of authenticating the recording.

‘This is an electronically recorded interview between Detective Sergeant Page and [the woman] at Waverley Police Station on 13December 2001. The time is now 10.40am. Also present is Detective Sergeant Nuttall. For the purposes of transcription, Sergeant Nuttall, will you say your name, rank and station?’

The official words, clear and emotionless, cut into her gut like a sword. She felt physically sick. Somewhere, the sounds of electronic machinery quietly marked off the time.

She was asked her full name, address and date of birth.

At the time of Ross Warren’s death she would have been 15 years old: when John Russell was murdered she was barely 16.

Sergeant Page explained that he was going to ask a number of questions relating to the Warren, Russell and McMahon cases and he advised her that anything she said – not that she was obliged to say anything at all, he said – would be recorded and could be used in court. Did she understand?

‘Yeah.’

And did she agree that he had already explained that he intended asking her these questions?

‘Yes.’

And did she agree that he had explained that everything would be recorded on both audio and video?

‘Yes.’ Audio and video … words … Later, it would seem to the investigators that reality was finding it difficult to penetrate the girl’s numbness: she appeared to be having trouble grasping what was going on. The detective cut straight to the issue.

‘You said you have no knowledge of the matter of Ross Warren’s disappearance?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have no knowledge.’

‘I also asked you whether you had any knowledge in relation to the suspicious death of John Russell at Tamarama in November 1989?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And you have no knowledge of this matter?’

‘That’s right.’

And David McMahon? She said she had ‘no knowledge’ of this matter?

‘That’s right.’

Sergeant Page kept his tone neutral, his voice businesslike without too much formality, without adopting a tone that might scare the woman into total silence. ‘What I’m going to do,’ he said, unsmiling but certainly not hostile, ‘to commence this interview, is ask you whether you’ve previously been to the area of Marks Park at Tamarama. And to assist you I’m going to show you an aerial photograph of the park. To orientate you, Bondi is slightly north of this location.’

She looked at the picture on the table.

‘I’ve never been to the park,’ she said. ‘But I’ve done the walk.’

‘When have you done the walk?’ Easy question, neutral, it was only information.

‘Several times,’ she said. ‘I grew up in Bondi.’

‘Would you have done the walk in 1989?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Would you have done it during daylight or darkness?’

‘Daylight.’

‘Who would you have done the walk with?’

‘Myself, friends.’

‘When you say “friends” who do you mean?’

‘I had friends from school,’ she said. ‘Friends I used to hang out with. My boyfriend.’

‘Are you able to give me the names of the, the people you believe you may have done the walk with?’

She gave him a couple of names, Charmaine, Ross.

‘Are you aware that Marks Park is a gay beat?’

The question came out of the blue.

‘No, I wasn’t aware,’ she said.

‘Are you aware now?’

‘I am now.’

‘When did you become aware?’

‘Yesterday.’

There was a short pause. The detectives seemed to be waiting for more, as if the notion that anyone could pinpoint the precise moment of becoming aware of something was an absurdity and they were waiting for her to say she was only taking the piss.

‘How did you become aware?’ The question delivered with the same evenness as the others, no different. They hadn’t been waiting for anything.

‘’Cause my brother told me. He’d read the newspaper and, obviously, told me.’

She seemed to force herself to listen to what he was saying now, saying something about a photo book, booklet or something, and that not all the people in the photos were known to the police … Sergeant Page was asking her something, asking if she understood.

‘Yeah.’ Yeah, she understood.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘What I want you to do is have a look at the book and any persons you identify, if you can just place a number next to their name? Place the number 1 against the first person, if you recognise anyone, and your initials. Number 2 against the next person. And your initials. Mark the book and then I want to discuss these individuals. I’ll now give you a pen.’

‘Thanks.’ She took the pen, the sense of unreality the police suspected she’d already experienced now appeared to be starting to solidify into an almost tangible substance, a fourth presence in the small room. ‘So, just mark it number 1 and then … and then I put my names?’

‘Just your initials.’ He moved her glass of water away from the book of photos. Her hand was trembling ‘You can have it back any time you want it,’ he said, meaning the water. Adding, ‘You don’t need to mark yourself.’

So she was in the book, then. She was one of those ‘known to the police’. The thought probably made her feel sick. When they’d been young tearaways, years ago, they’d had little run-ins with the local cops, back-chatting and stuff, laughing at them
’
cause they couldn’t do anything to them. Just tell them to go home or … She’d probably never dreamed they’d have a file on her, have her picture in a book. She focused on the pages of images, searched them for people she knew. There were a few she recognised, some of the kids she knew … some shocking photos, photos worse than she could imagine … She marked numbers on the pages, scrawled her initials … Another number, initialled and another … She could hardly deny knowing people she’d been at school with. And if they had her picture, then they knew she knew the others she hung around with … She numbered another, the last one.

Detective Sergeant Page saw she’d finished.

‘Alright,’ he said, coolly. ‘The photograph you’ve marked as number 1, can you tell me who that depicts?’