The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (37 page)

How could she not have heard anything about it, Kylie asked? It was on the news and everything. They were reopening the case and they were talking to everybody who was there at the time, going around to everyone’s house and asking questions about the park and the cliffs and stuff. Not that she was too worried for herself, she said.

‘I don’t care if they come to me,’ she explained. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide. And if any of those boys did something so stupid as to throw someone off a cliff, then they deserve whatever that’s comin’ their way. I had nothing to do with no fag bashings, mate.’

It seemed that, no matter that they had nothing to do with bashings, nothing to do with assaulting gay men at Marks Park, the vast majority of those associated with the Bondi Boys from the late ’80s were talking about little else: the telephone interceptions were producing an avalanche of interesting rumour, myth and potential leads. And principal among those who felt the need to discuss the reopened case was Kylie. For the first 10 days of 2002 she seemed to be on the phone almost all day, every day. She called Shari five times, ‘the other’ Kylie three times. Maybe, now that she lived out west, lived in Padstow, she felt distanced from her old hunting ground, felt unconnected, and had to call former friends who would make her feel she was still a part of it all.

On 8 January she rang the other Kylie.

‘One of the boys has done it,’ Kylie said after they’d discussed the fact that she was meeting the police the following day.

‘Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking,’ the other Kylie said. It was what most of the girls had been thinking, that one of the boys had done it.

‘One person … Okay, one person’s dead. One person’s missing and the other person’s a witness … They’re three gay men, yeah? And they got, uh, one got pushed off Marks Park cliff. Remember that a couple of weeks ago?’

But the other Kylie didn’t remember it, had no idea about the re-enactment. She knew about the case. Course she knew about that. But the stuff a couple of weeks ago? No idea.

‘Okay,’ Kylie explained. ‘Well, this guy got bashed in 1989 and thrown off a cliff. At first they thought it was suicide –’

Who were they, the other Kylie asked? Who were these guys who were thrown off the cliff?

‘Well, I don’t know who they were. But I know they were all gay men.’ Kylie was being as patient as she could, taking her time, explaining. ‘And one’s missing, one’s dead and the other one’s a witness.’

It was no good: the other Kylie didn’t know anything, didn’t know about the Valecky incident in Kingsford or Kensington. Or Matraville or Maroubra. Wherever it was. She didn’t know anything about the graffiti tags or nothing. She was hopeless.

Kylie rang Shari again. Shari would know plenty because she’d just been interviewed. She’d know what all the questions were about and that.

‘They asked me, ‘have you ever been to this park’,’ Shari said, answering Kylie’s own questions. ‘I said, no, not that I know. I don’t think so. Then they said, did you ever hear of, you know, of anybody doing these gay bashings, or whatever? I’m, no –’

‘Oh, the boys used to do gay bashin’s at the Cross,’ Kylie interrupted.

‘At the Cross but not at, there.’

‘But then who knows what they did when we weren’t around?’

‘I don’t know nothing,’ Shari said, in a I-don’t-want-to-know-nothing voice. ‘And I said what I said to you on the phone. I said, God, we might have been drinking and being stupid but we didn’t do anything that fucking dramatic.’

‘Oh, okay,’ Kylie said. Like, that’s fine. Then laughing, ‘They’ve probably got the phone tapped.
Come and see me
,’ she laughed to the phantom listener. ‘I wanna know, too!’ Laughing even more. ‘Oh, well,’ the laughter dying away, ‘we’ve done nothing anyway. Fuck you – Not you,’ meaning Shari, ‘If the phone’s tapped. Well, if the phone
is
tapped, they’ll know I’ve spoken to you, Kerry and Kylie.’

After she’d hung up the phone the police could imagine her thinking about the boys. Wondering if one of them had done it? Had Robert really … Or was it all bullshit? And what if the phone was bugged? If she thought it was, she’d know that they’d heard all that stuff about Kensington or Kingsford, about burning that bloke in the extinguisher or whatever it was called – incinerator, that was it. About burning the body in the incinerator. Could Robert really have done that? Man, if he could do that …

She rang Ned Hajdukovic. Maybe he’d know something.

She told him about the investigation, about the reopened case, but he already knew. And his knowing seemed to deflate her a little. ‘I just thought I’d ring you and let you know, you know?’ she said. The eavesdropping detective could sense her need to excuse her calling him up.

‘Yeah, yeah. I know,’ Hajdukovic said. ‘I got told.’

‘It’s quite fuckin’ pathetic,’ Kylie said scathingly. ‘Shari cracked up laughin’ when they asked her. Um, and they were, they just want to know everything and anything and they think, they wanna know if we hanged at this park, if we drank at this park.’

‘They’re fuckin’ trippin’, eh?’ Sounding like they’d never go to a park, never drink. Not in 1989. ‘I got told it’s Cushman,’ he said.

Excited, Kylie asked who’d told him. Was it Robert or –

‘No, no. What’s, that’s what, uh, Holmesy told me. Holmesy told me that they grabbed Cushman and that. And they’re lookin’ for Cushman and someone else, he said.’

Valecky? Cushman? ‘So, I mean, I’ve got, we’ve got nothing to hide,’ Kylie said. ‘I know that.’

‘Yeah, I don’t give a fuck. Let them come here. If, if they’re smart enough they know we ain’t no fuckin’ fag bashers.’

End of call. There was nothing else to be said, nothing that Hajdukovic wanted to say, anyway. Kylie though, was evidently flushed with adrenalin, needed to talk about it all some more. She rang Shari back to say she’d spoken to Ned.

‘The coppers have probably got my phone tapped, goin’
this chick’s just ringin’ everyone
. Aah, let them. That’s why they’re not comin’ to me. They know I’ve done nothing.’

‘Oh, like you just said,’ Shari agreed. ‘They all, they know we, we, none of us fuckin’ did nothing like that.’

‘Yeah, we’re not that fuckin’ stupid, like. Or did we when we were blind, or what? Like, who knows? No, I’m only joking.’

Joking? Shari sounded as if she wasn’t sure. Maybe Kylie
could
have done … something, if she’d been pissed enough, if she had been blind.

‘Nuh, I’m sure,’ Kylie assured her. ‘I’m sure we would’ve known if one of the boys threw someone off a fuckin’ cliff, mate. D’you know what I mean?’

‘Well, that’s something you wouldn’t forget, eh?’

But was that true? Was she thinking that, whoever had done it, whoever had thrown the fag off the cliff, he was in that photo album the police were showing everybody? Was she asking herself, why else would they be showing it? And if it was somebody in there, was she coming to the conclusion it was Valecky because … ? What about that time he said he’d found a body? Was it Shari who’d told her about that? Or was it the other Kylie? She couldn’t remember. She rang the other Kylie and asked her.

‘I wouldn’t talk on the phone,’ the other Kylie said. The line went dead.

v

At 8.55am on Wednesday, 9January 2002 Detective Senior Constable Pincham and plain-clothes Constable Morieson interviewed Kylie at Bankstown Police Station. The interview was recorded on audio and videotape in accordance with police regulations and was assigned the number 02/024.

‘As I’ve already explained to you,’ Pincham said, ‘Constable Morieson and I are making inquiries in relation to the disappearance of Ross Warren, the suspicious death of John Russell, the attempted murder of David McMahon in 1989. I’m going to ask you some questions about these matters. Do you understand that?’

Outside the police station the day was already warming up. The air was thick with diesel and the noise of traffic, the pavements strewn with rubbish. Kylie sat in the small interview room on an uncomfortable chair and started to sweat. For all her bravado on the phone, for all the stuff she’d said to Shari and Ned and the other Kylie, she looked as if she felt trapped, guilty. The drone of Pincham’s words seemed to act as a soporific, sounding like a kind of mantra, and she answered in a voice half nervous, half numb. Yes, she understood she didn’t have to say anything. Yes, she understood she wasn’t under arrest. Yes, she understood that her answers would be electronically recorded. Yes, yes, yes…

She gave her full name, spelled her maiden name, explained that she’d just got married. She gave her date of birth and her address, answered that she’d lived there with her husband and son for five or six years. She wasn’t employed.

It was all a dream, a game, unreal. Sitting here, in a room in Bankstown Police Station, answering questions like you see on TV.

‘Are you aware of this location?’ Pincham was asking. He’d been saying something about two deaths and an attempted murder. In the Marks Park area of Tamarama.

Was she ‘aware’ of the location, she wondered? ‘I’m trying to picture …’ she said. ‘I think I’ve got it.’ She looked at the photographs he was showing her, photos taken from up high – in the sky, they must have used a plane, she thought. ‘Yeah, I know it, now,’ she said. ‘I think. Yeah, I know the one.’

Okay, so she knew the park. Did she also know the walkway? The walkway that leads from Bondi Beach –

‘All the way over. Yeah. I thought you were talking about this –’ her finger on the picture, pointing to Hunter Park – ‘there’s a park up there somewhere. Yeah. Then I know there’s, there’s like, when you come around … Where’s Bondi Baths? Park there. So I thought you were talking about that one.’

‘No,’ Pincham said. ‘It’s the large park right on the headland.’

‘Okay. Yeah, I know that one. I didn’t know it was Marks Park, though.’

‘Well, it might also be known as Mackenzies Point.’

‘Yeah, Mackenzies Point. Yeah.’

Pincham seemed satisfied that they’d established the location, seemed friendly enough. For a cop. He reached into a folder and took out a kind of booklet, put it onto the table. Kylie could see what it was immediately: the photo album she’d heard about. He was telling her what she had to do, put numbers and stuff, names next to the pictures. She looked at the first photo … the next. There was no point in doing what Kerry had done, no point in pretending not to know the people when she did. They – the cops – they knew she knew. So why lie? Just because she knew who they were didn’t mean she’d done anything wrong, did it?

She numbered 30 images, put nicknames where she didn’t know their actual names, put first names only if she didn’t know surnames, and kept up a running commentary on each one as she examined it:
she didn’t hang down in Bondi … I might be wrong but I think she’s a prostitute and a junkie … I don’t know her name … She don’t look like that now … You’ll find her at Kings Cross … I know him, he’s from Bondi but I don’t know his name … Oh, wow …I can’t remember his last name … they call him DC … Bondi Police should know where he is ’cause they made him leave Bondi … Is that supposed to be me? …. Why would you have a picture of me with glasses on? … I can’t write his nickname … he’s in New Zealand … I can’t spell his last name … I’m not sure, can I go back to that one? … it looks like him but the eyes aren’t big enough … they left, got taken out of the country … he was around but I don’t know his name … they’re from out west way … he’s in the New Zealand army … that’s his sister … he’s a taxi driver … seen him before at Redfern … I think his mum works where youse work … he seriously looks like my next door neighbour …

Thirty photographs. All identified in one way or another, all given names or nicknames and all given a history. Kylie sat back, waiting for whatever came next.

Where were you living in 1989, Pincham wanted to know? Bondi Junction. No hesitation: Allens Parade, Bondi Junction. With her mum, her dad, her sister and her brother. Was she employed? At school? Neither. She was pregnant. And the father was her husband.

‘Now,’ Pincham said, ‘you’ve had a look at those photos. Who did you associate with during ’89?’

‘All of ’em.’

‘With all those persons?’

‘All the ones I’ve named. Yeah.’ At Bondi Youth Centre on the beach. ‘Sometimes we’d drink at North Bondi. Sometimes we’d drink at South. But mainly in the middle. Sometimes we wouldn’t go home, so we’d be there all night.’

‘So, was it just weekends, or was it –’

‘No. It was nearly every day. Monday to Sunday.’ She explained that they would usually meet up at the youth centre – the youth centre used to be at Bondi Junction but it moved to the beach – and hang out there when there was nothing else to do. That was during the day because it was closed at night. ‘At night we’d be off drinking,’ she said.

Where did you get the booze, Pincham asked? The bottle shop. They’d serve us.

‘You say you weren’t working,’ Pincham said. ‘How did you pay for the alcohol?’

A frown creased Kylie’s brow. ‘How did I pay for? On the dole.’ A shrug. ‘Most of the boys bought it anyway. I used to get in trouble a lot so I used to have money as well. When I was naughty.’

‘You used to have money when you were in trouble?’ It was Pincham’s turn to frown. ‘I don’t understand.’