The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (34 page)

At 9.30 the next morning she was talking to her sister again, desperately trying to find reassurance that she wouldn’t be going to prison for something she knew she didn’t do.

‘Steven said the police contacted Vicki,’ her sister said.

‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’

Shit, they didn’t waste any time. And Vicki would’ve dobbed her in, would’ve made up all kinds of shit to get her in trouble, to get her … ‘Did they?’ she asked.

‘She doesn’t remember that conversation,’ her sister said, referring to Merlyn’s boast that she’d been part of the TV guy’s murder, that she was a killer.

But Merlyn probably wasn’t listening any more: she was more likely thinking that if Vicki had talked to the police, if she’d told them what she’d said …

‘Oh, I’m fucked,’ she said. ‘I’m fucked. I woke up at five o’clock this morning, mate, and was throwing me guts up. You know, like, I’m as nervous as fuck. I’m scared to death, alright? I don’t know what the fuck’s going on.’

* * *

Her sister rang again in the evening. Just to make sure she was okay.

‘I’m alright,’ McGrath said. ‘Gotta keep going. Fuckin’ scary, mate … I’m scared and it’s not even me.’

* * *

So what did Detective Sergeant Page believe? Was McGrath one of the perpetrators of the murder of Ross Warren as she’d apparently claimed? Was she involved in the death of John Russell? Was she one of the females present when David McMahon was dragged towards the cliff edge preparatory to being thrown to his certain death on the rocks below? Or was she simply the victim of malicious gossip, of self-aggrandisement, guilty of nothing more than trying to upset the former girlfriend of her brother? Had she been living in Mount Druitt at the time all these incidents were occurring in Bondi? Certainly, much of her statement was in conflict with what she’d said to people on the phone, much of it conflicted with other parts of the same statement. But was that deliberate obfuscation or nothing more than simply being unable to recall events from a troubled past? Because the detectives believed that McGrath definitely had a troubled history, was the victim of all kinds of violence and abuse. The period with the boyfriend in Ashfield, for example: she had genuinely suffered at the hands of the boy in Ashfield. On balance, it seemed likely that Merlyn McGrath was a sad and pathetic individual with nothing of value to offer the investigation. The only loose end Detective Sergeant Page wanted to tie up was the claim that she’d been living in Mount Druitt in 1989. He traced Bill to an address in Westmead and arranged to meet him at Paddington Police Station.

Bill confirmed Merlyn’s contention that she’d been living with him in Mount Druitt. Up to a point. They’d been boyfriend/girlfriend in the autumn of 1989, maybe for two or three months during which time she’d lived with Bill and his parents for no more than a month. They never went to Bondi and, as far as Bill knew, McGrath had never been involved in gay bashing.

So, even though she’d only lived in Mount Druitt for a short period of time – and that almost certainly before Ross Warren disappeared – the detectives from Operation Taradale were inclined not to pursue that particular line of inquiry any further for the present time. If additional information surfaced via phone taps or new approaches to the police, then they could re-examine what they had. In the meantime, there were many other leads to follow.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘We Used to Bash Heaps of People’

i

On the day of Morgan and Mihailovic’s interviews detectives went around to Sean Cushman’s mother’s home and told her about their investigations. Almost as soon as they left, Veronica Cushman called her son, told him about the visit, told him that they wanted to talk to him about something that happened ‘way back in 1989’.

Cushman knew all about it, he said. He’d been told about it the other day when he’d spoken to one of his mates.

Veronica was worried, though. She knew her son. ‘It was a couple of gay guys,’ she said. ‘Killed – or pushed off the cliff, cliffs at Tamarama. And the dead man had a clump of blond hair in his hand. And you’re a suspect.’

At the other end of the line, instead of the anticipated concern, the muted panic such news might be expected to produce, Veronica heard only laughter. Yeah, he’d heard all about this, he said. ‘I tell you, I’ve got nothin’ to do with this, mate. Alright?’

Did she believe him? Could she believe that the police would be asking these questions, making these …
insinuations
, if Sean really wasn’t a genuine suspect? She no doubt desperately wanted to believe what he was telling her but … But there was something about Sean, about his temper, his … Did he swear on his son’s life, she asked? Did he swear he had nothing to do with killing these men?

‘Yes,’ he said simply. Yes, he swore on his son’s life.

‘Oh, what a relief,’ Veronica sighed. She felt a weight lifting from her heart and with the lifting of it came the manic babbling that accompanied the sudden renewed ability to breathe freely once more. She told him what the detectives had said, how they had told her about the killings, the assaults, the attempted murder, told him how they’d thought he was the killer because of the blond hair. It had all taken place around from the Icebergs, she said. ‘You know, in that place where all the gay guys go to meet gay guys? You know, in that park up there? Between Bondi and Tamarama?’

‘I never used to go and beat gay guys up, mate.’ Serious now, as if he was somehow affronted by even the suggestion that he could possibly have done such a thing. ‘I’ve never done that before.’

‘So it’s not your hair?’ his mother asked.

‘Nah.’ Dismissive. ‘They can have, they can have my DNA. They can do whatever they want with it.’

‘Because, oh fuck, you don’t know how sick I felt after they left.’

‘Yeah,’ Cushman sympathised, ‘I sort of felt the same way. But then I thought to myself, nah, that’s rubbish, mate. You know what I mean? Honest, I’d remember something like that. I woulda told ya, mate, if I did somethin’ like that.’ As any son would:
Hi, Mum, I just murdered a guy because he was gay.

The conversation was almost certainly enough to placate Veronica, if only superficially. Like any mother would, the listening detectives thought, she wanted to believe that Sean was telling the truth,
had
to believe it. So, if he said he wasn’t the one…

The following afternoon she rang again. The detectives had called again, she said, the strain clearly audible in her voice. ‘I dunno,’ she said, ‘they’ve got it fuckin’ in for you, mate. Somebody has, uh, somebody has said that they witnessed that you were there on both occasions.’ Listening in, the detectives thought she sounded like she was going frantic with worry now. ‘And they’re after you for an attempted murder. Some guy called McMahon who was there with a group said … they’ve shown him photos and he, he’s identified you as - both times – as being there. And what they’re really interested in is that particular person said he … one guy that was being thrown over – or attempted to be thrown over – this guy has identified you as the one who was attempting to thrown him over the cliff.’

‘How can that be, mate?’

How could it be that David McMahon identified him? How could it be that the police thought he was guilty after all these years?

It was the same fucking detective, Veronica was saying, that bastard Page. On the phone, he was, telling her all the stuff her son had done, the murder, the attempted murder. She tried to tell them the truth, tried to tell them it wasn’t Sean. ‘You’re just wanting to pin this on Sean. Aren’t you?’ she reported to her son. She’d tried to defend him, she said. But, ‘he hung up on me,’ she said.

‘Yeah, it’s true, mate. It’s fair dinkum true, mate.’ Cushman obviously knew what she was talking about. ‘They fuckin’ hate me.’

For a moment neither spoke, each probably thinking about what might happen. ‘How are we gonna get out of this?’ Veronica finally asked, the detectives noting the ‘we’: they were in this mess together, mother and son, both claiming innocence but both presumably thinking innocence wasn’t enough.

‘I dunno, man.’ Was it hopelessness spreading before him like a vast void, black and limitless? The police tried to make out nuances that would give them a clue. ‘Like, I dunno. We’ll just … huh, I’ve done nothing wrong so I don’t know how they –’

‘Are you sure you haven’t been doing – are you sure?’

‘Yeah. I wouldn’t lie to you, Mum. I would not lie to you, mate, and I did not do it.’

Was she convinced? Could she let herself be convinced? The copper seemed so certain, seemed to enjoy telling her what … ‘At any time,’ she asked, determined to quell all doubt in her mind, ‘were you at any time doing sort of these things?’ Her question sounding more like a plea, pleading for him to prove to her once and for all…

‘No, no.’ What more could he say?

‘You never went up there with a group of people –’

‘No, I never.’

‘– you, know, giving fags a hard time?’ she asked,

‘Mum, I know. And I’d tell you if I did. You know I would.’ Explaining patiently, like he was talking to a child, like he was talking to himself. ‘I never did anything like that, mate. I never pushed anybody off a cliff, mate. I’ve never wit … I’ve never witnessed anyone falling off a cliff. No.’

‘Did you ever go up there with a group of friends?’

‘No.’

Never? It hardly seemed likely but Veronica evidently wasn’t going to dispute her son’s claims, wasn’t going to dig more deeply than she seemed to feel she had to. Anyway, the detectives weren’t only interested in Sean. ‘They’re looking for this Pacific Islander, too,’ she said, ‘but they don’t, he doesn’t know his name. And there were girls involved, too,’ she added.

‘Never fuckin’ hung out with girls, mate.’ Cushman replied sharply, almost shouting into the phone with a kind of
flourish. ‘Didn’t hang up with any girls, mate. And I was always at the beach, not up there. And I wouldn’t have done that, anyway, mate. Why would I do that for, mate? I haven’t … I do have a brain in my head, man, you know? I never fuckin’ hurt anybody in my life, mate. I haven’t … I’ve never bashed anyone for no reason, Mum. You know, not like, not pushed somebody off the fuckin’ cliff. No way, man … push someone else off? Like, come on. That’s a pretty heavy … I’m not worried, really,
’
cause I know I didn’t do anything, mate. You know what I mean?’

To the eavesdropping detectives Cushman sounded plausible – and his mother apparently believed what she’d heard. He’d never hurt anyone in his life. Never. Not once.

This conversation took place just after one o’clock on the afternoon of 18 December 2001, five years and three months after Sean Cushman and Aaron Martin had beaten Brian Hagland to death at Bondi Beach, had pushed him under a bus.

ii

‘They reckon I’m a prime suspect in a fuckin’ murder and an attempted murder. Shit like that, eh?’

A few hours after speaking to his mother Cushman rang Donovan Reynolds, the friend he’d mentioned to Veronica, who’d told him about the events of ’89, who’d warned him.

Reynolds listened to his mate. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘For that poofter that got pushed off the cliff?’

‘Yeah.’ Cushman said, yeah that fuckin’ poofter. ‘And they reckon they have an eye-witness that saw me fuckin’ do it. They’re sayin’, they’re trying to pin it on me, bro’, tryin’ to fuckin’ pin it on me and, like, there was a couple of chicks and a couple of white fellers and a few other Maories and that.’ If he was deliberately affecting a blasé attitude, giving nothing, he was getting nothing in return. Reynolds stayed silent for a minute, letting it hang. Cushman broke first. And there was this guy, McMahon, he said – had Reynolds ever heard of him? ‘’Cause there’s an attempted murder and there was a murder and he reckons he’s seen me on both occasions. Like, he pulled me out of a book or something. But why didn’t he do that 12 years ago?’

Reynolds sneered into the phone. ‘Well, it’s a load of shit, anyway,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, bro’.’

‘Yeah, I shouldn’t, eh?’

In the background Reynolds could be heard talking to someone else, another of the named Bondi Boys. Tim Alger was talking about some of the others who’d been interviewed, how they’d been shown a photograph book and had been asked to identify anyone they knew. Like, doing the fucking detectives’ work for them. Fuck that. Yeah. Still, it looked like they were tracking them all down, talking to everyone from back then. Alger took the phone from Reynolds.

‘What’s this fuckin’ bullshit?’ he asked, the jutting of his pointed chin almost visible on the other end of the line.

‘I dunno, mate.’ Sounding disinterested, more than just nonchalant. Like, it’s all just an irritation. ‘They’re lookin’ for me. They reckon I’m a prime, prime suspect in a murder and attempted murder, mate.’

‘I dunno,’ Alger said. Like, ‘how can they be so fucking stupid?’ ‘That’s bullshit. What the fuck’s goin’ on?’

‘I dunno, man. And they reckon that the dude that died, he had a handful of blond hair on him, in his hand. So that’s why they’re fuckin’ really after me, sort of thing.’

‘Well, just send them one of your fuckin’ hairs.’ Alger said in an ‘it’s as easy as that, man’ sort of way. He suspected that they – the D’s – would come to him at some point, probably soon, he said. If they’d already got onto Cushman … ‘I’m not gonna tell ’em a fuckin’ thing, mate.’