The Devil's Garden (15 page)

Lance is late for lunch, and Norma and Jim have no idea where he is. They ring his unit but there is no answer; by 1 pm they decide to go over to see him. He isn't home. 'That's strange,' she comments to Jim, in the whining tone she uses when confronted with things outside her control. 'Where do you suppose he is?'

On her return, Norma answers her front door, squinting through the flywire at the two police officers, Detective Senior-Sergeant John Brandham and Sergeant Julie Hansley, standing on her doorstep. 'Hello, Mrs Williams. We'd like to have a talk to you about your son, Lance.' Brandham is in control; it is a demand, not a request. Norma takes up her customary stance, moving an arm across her waist and holding onto her right elbow.

'He isn't here. What's this all about?'

'He's helping with our inquiries.'

'Inquiries? What sort of inquiries? Has he been a witness to an accident or something?' Her voice is thin, plaintive and she doesn't move to open the flywire door.

'No,' Brandham replies, holding her stare. 'We believe your son to be the Claremont serial killer.'

They return that night with search warrants, six police officers with torches raking through drawers and cupboards. Norma stands back and watches in horror as their personal belongings are ransacked. 'There was nothing we could do,' she recalls. 'They had a warrant to search.' They cart away clothes and other possessions for testing, but find nothing. They also scour the now-vacant beachfront unit that had been owned by Williams. Again, nothing.

Norma, who had never had any dealings with police, is still shaken by the turn of events. 'We were living a normal life one day and suddenly it's all turned upside down. The trouble was, Lance didn't have an alibi for the two nights that Sarah Spiers and Jane Rimmer went missing. The night Jane was murdered – 9 June 1996 – we had been out for dinner with him and he dropped us home around 9.30 pm. He was perfectly normal. Just acted perfectly normal.' Her voice has taken on its wheedling tone, etched with bewilderment. 'It was the same with the night Sarah disappeared – no alibi. But with Ciara Glennon, that was different. He was home with us all night. Most definitely home with us, all night.' Their bathroom, she says, is right next to Lance's bedroom. 'We can hear every creak. And if he had gone out in the middle of the night, we'd have heard the car start up, wouldn't we? I mean, even if he rolled it out, quietly, like the police seem to think he did, well, we'd have heard it, wouldn't we? It's right outside our bedroom window.'

Not everyone in Macro buys Norma's argument. 'I don't think anyone believes for a moment that she knows her son to be the Claremont killer and is covering for him,' Stephen Brown says. 'But don't Mums always have a sixth sense about things?'

Luke Morfesse broke the story of Williams's takeout and the fact that a 'knife' was found in his vehicle. He also detailed that the only significant item discovered during a search of his flat was a receipt, dated only days after Ciara Glennon disappeared, for detailing a car. He recalls the story not just because it was an exclusive, a great 'get' in reporting terms, but also for the way in which a Perth television news director betrayed his trust by breaking the story ahead of an agreed time. 'I made an agreement with the approval of my editor, that they could run a brief in their late news at 10.30 or 11 pm,' he says. 'The agreed proviso was that they would not run the story until after our first, country edition – which goes out at 9.30 pm – had hit the streets. But instead of waiting, they started promoting the story through the evening and ran a 15- or 20-minute special report around 9.30.' The breach caused a huge fracas. 'My wife, who was four months pregnant at the time and one of their newsreaders, was so upset she threatened to quit.'

The story ran in
The West Australian
.'Senior police denied last night that the decision to pounce at the weekend came because of mounting pressure about the ever-increasing cost of what has become WA's biggest murder hunt,' Morfesse wrote. 'The Taskforce was told several months ago by experts that the offender may be of such a nature that he might never kill again.'

But not all of the story rang true. 'The suspect has obsessive compulsive disorder which requires medication,' Morfesse continues. 'Because of the disorder police have been unable to bug his flat. They fear he may notice the slightest change in surroundings.' Listening devices were placed inside Williams's parents' home. Given the secretive nature of the investigation and knowing Williams would read the news-paper, had police fed the media a line to throw Williams off the scent? Given deliberate misinformation?

With gritty determination, taskforce officers elucidate their opinion. The circumstantial evidence against Williams for the Claremont killings, Tony Potts says,is compelling. 'Not everyone agrees, for sure. But my personal opinion is that I can't rule him out. And I won't unless I am given good cause.'

Williams went to school with Julie Cutler, whose car was mysteriously found off Cottesloe Beach in 1988. Twenty-two-year-old Cutler was last seen at 12.30 am on 20 June 1988 when she left the Parmelia Hilton Hotel in Perth's CBD after a staff function. Her car was found floating two days later in the sea off Cottesloe beach.
Cottesloe.
The next suburb to Claremont. Despite extensive inquiries by police and family and comprehensive media coverage, there has been no information regarding Cutler's whereabouts since the night she disappeared. Wearing a black evening dress with a high collar and gold buttons on the shoulder, Julie was 162 cm tall, with dark brown hair and green eyes. Media reports consistently claim that police told Cutler's parents she may be the first victim of the Claremont killer, but in Macro's management meetings investigators failed to reach a conclusion on this either way. 'It's known she had two boyfriends of European extraction, and word from police is they are implicated in her disappearance,' a journalist tells me. 'Julie is definitely dead, no question. The location of her car, in the sea off Cottesloe beach – close to where Lance Williams lives with his parents – certainly went part of the way toward them building a circumstantial case against him.'

For months I try but fail to locate Cutler's parents, drawing blanks at every turn. Eventually, I call a unit in WAPS that I think may be of some assistance. The police media officer yawns and asks me to repeat the name. 'Cutler. Julie Leanne Cutler. Car found in the water off Cottesloe beach, 1988. Her body has never been found.'

He yawns again. 'Long time ago. Never heard of her.'

'The woman,' I venture, 'who police claim may have been the first victim of the Claremont serial killer.' Now I've got his attention.

'We've got heaps of missing high-profile girls on our books,' he snaps. 'Why the hell should one name stand out to me above the rest? And it's not my job to find phone numbers for journalists.'

'No, I understand. Could you just try to see whether you have a contact for them and ask them to call me?' He assures me he will look into it and call me back, either way. I never hear from him.

Lance Williams, according to police, has also driven past Pipidinny Road, where Ciara Glennon's body was found. That raises a dour laugh from Luke Morfesse. 'Look, to get to Yanchep where Williams apparently went to with his parents in 1996 for a leisurely Sunday afternoon drive, you
have
to drive past Pipidinny Road. There's no other way to get there.' Police won't confirm whether Williams has been to Wellard, but there is a protracted, pregnant silence after I ask the question.

Dave Caporn's concerns about media interference reach critical levels in April 1998 when he criticises
The West Australian
for publishing details of Macro's covert operations. It is not a criticism that sits well with then-editor Paul Murray; he had emerged from an earlier meeting with Deputy Commissioner Bruce Brennan satisfied with the manner in which the story will run, but he was equally concerned that the paper will be fitted up as a 'scapegoat' if Lance Williams slips through police nets.

How did journalists know about the Williams takeout in the first place? The leak about him being taken in for questioning, according to a longstanding police reporter, came from a copper at a suburban station. In a scribbled note to his editor, the reporter wrote, 'Taskforce chief Dave Caporn is angry about what he describes as a beat-up out of all proportion by
The West Australian
newspaper. That's HIS problem ...we actually interviewed a suspect some time back who was pulled in by the taskforce several times, grilled for six hours, DNA swabs taken etc . . . this apparently is no different.'

Not everyone inside the police force agrees that the case against Williams is overwhelming, either. For God's sake, they mutter. Are they trying to drive this bloke to suicide? It is a fact that offenders with an organised bent follow the progress of investigations through the media. In turn, police use the media to entice suspects to react in one way or another, to make a mistake or show their hand. And the best way to get them to do that is to leak information to the press.

Fear in Perth that the killer could be a cabbie has reached hysteria levels. Drivers are randomly abused and accused of being murderers – many are spat at or assaulted. From the time Ciara disappears, there is a 40 per cent drop in the taxi trade, despondent drivers waiting outside Claremont hotels and clubs for non-existent fares. The streets are virtually deserted. With the taxi industry under intense scrutiny, the pressure is on to install video cameras in cabs. The first tender to install them is cancelled by the government, with doubts raised about the reliability of any video taken while a vehicle is in motion. After fierce debate between the taxi industry and government, digital cameras are eventually installed. But it will take a lot longer for the public to regain confidence in cab drivers. Police crank up the pressure. For the first time in an Australian criminal investigation, they augment mass testing of DNA. Their target: taxi drivers.

By Easter 1997, the city's cabbies – around 2500 drivers – are asked to voluntarily provide mouth swab samples so their DNA can be obtained. Carried out at the taxis' licensing centres, most drivers are happy to oblige, to exonerate them-selves from the investigation. Some grumble that they are under suspicion simply because of the job they do, and a handful refuse to provide samples. The highly public and voluntary testing of DNA did not stop police pulling over taxi drivers who had passengers in their cabs. It caused an uproar, with female passengers rigid with fear in the back seat while police searched taxis and took the taxi drivers' samples.

The genesis for the mass testing came from within the taxi industry itself, which established an organisation called Cabbies Against Crime. Liaising closely with the police in setting up the testing, there were agreements made before they started. The DNA extracted from the mouth swabs would be used only for the Claremont investigation, and if a suspect was found from the pool of drivers who had volunteered their DNA, the remainder of the samples would immediately be destroyed. They are still waiting for that to happen.

It worked both ways, a former officer comments. 'If they refused to cooperate, then they were immediately under suspicion for not doing so. By virtue of their occupation they need to have police checks and clearances, but it wouldn't have looked too good against their name if there was a small note, "didn't provide DNA sample in Claremont investigation".' While police do not divulge whether any DNA was found on either Jane Rimmer's or Ciara Glennon's body, how do the taxi drivers know what they have to test against – if there is anything? Dave Caporn will neither confirm nor deny the existence of DNA evidence, so it is left to forensic scientists to deduce the possibilities.

Heavy rain had fallen at both Wellard and Eglinton before the discoveries of the two bodies. Almost eight weeks of hard rain over Jane Rimmer's body, almost three weeks over Ciara Glennon's; both too long in the elements for Macro forensic investigators to lift fresh, uncontaminated crime scene samples. Retired Tasmanian forensic pathologist John Presser worked on hundreds of cases in his long career, peering down a microscope to find the slightest trace of tell-tale evidence from a dead body, clothing or hair. Any blood traces the killer left behind on either girl's body would have been washed away, he believes. 'DNA is very fragile. Blood only lasts about a day if it is exposed to the elements, either rain or sun. The only way to stop rapid deterioration is if the DNA samples are frozen or dried. Semen will deteriorate quickly as well if it is on the body, but in the vagina – the body's natural cavity – it will last longer. The UV rays in sunlight destroy DNA, as do bacteria, so the chances of the girls having anything left on their bodies when they have been exposed to both heat and water is fairly remote.'

Civil libertarian Terry O'Gorman calls the mass taking of DNA from the Perth taxi drivers nothing more than an exercise in hype. 'On the information that's been publicly revealed, there's a very strong suspicion that there is no scene DNA; that is, there's no DNA left at the scene of the crime against which samples that are collected from the target, or from various cabbies, can be tested. Now if that's the case, then the whole DNA-gathering exercise has no criminal investigation value and is simply an exercise in hype whose end result again causes significant difficulties, either for the particular target who has been the subject of extraordinary police dubious practices or for some other person who's eventually charged.'

Using the dark humour for which journalists are well known, reporters knee-deep in the Claremont story let off steam in the sanctity of their newsrooms. 'After the cabbies gave DNA, we wanted to run a tongue-in-cheek piece,' Rex Haw remembers. 'We would have started it, in ponderous, dramatic tone like they start current affairs programs: "But first tonight – a public apology to all those hard-working, decent taxi drivers out there who keep being spat at, kicked and generally abused just for doing their job . . .'"

On another occasion, at a tense press conference, unbe-known to a senior officer, a bird flying overhead left a dropping on his coat shoulder, near his other pips. Haw kept a straight face. 'I understand you've been decorated today, Sir?' he quipped.