The Devil's Garden (7 page)

Despite the fact that Sutcliffe had been identified by several different police jurisdictions, a lack of appropriate data storage and a workable case management system meant British police had failed to recognise that he had already come under police scrutiny multiple times. To prevent the embarrassment of this reoccurring, HOLMES was created. The WA Major Crime Squad purchased HOLMES in 1989. Applied to Macro as its case management system, it has provided a database for all information gained during the investigation, identifies common denominators and allows priorities to be noticed and actioned. It also provides a case management tool that identifies how many lines of inquiry are currently active, how long particular information has been with an investigator and the current workload of investigators. With more than 60,000 pieces of information that need to be assessed and prioritised for 'action' or 'information only', it also quickly eliminates people from the investigation. Taking each step at a time, HOLMES picks over the known data. Starting with the capture of information, it moves through priorities, allocation of resources, investigation, suspects' alibis and quality control before it finally archives material.

The system is linked directly to the UK police via a telephone link, which allows the HOLMES system experts access to the data for quality assurance purposes. 'This was 1996, pre-internet days,' Tony Potts says. 'It was an innovative use of breaking technology aimed at ensuring we were doing it right. We averaged around 2000 calls per day to Crime Stoppers for the first few weeks after each disappearance. All that information was channelled into HOLMES.' But if it proved helpful, it didn't provide the one thing police desperately needed. A breakthrough.

Pre-HOLMES, police relied on three prongs to solve a crime: the crime scene, doorknocks and media. The Macro taskforce inveigle the press for help and they receive it. Reporters call in to identify ways in which to keep the case alive in the public eye and to offer clues on what can be packaged as a story. With a background of more than 30 years in journalism, veteran Channel 10 reporter Rex Haw recalls it was a time when the lines between police and the media were deliberately blurred for the sake of the community's safety. 'It didn't mean we didn't kick them if we needed to, but we did work very closely with them. The media is always ravenous for a new angle on a story this big, so that helped.' On one occasion, his cameraman had captured the name of a person of interest penned on the Macro headquarters board. 'The coppers knew we were shooting the image, but this bloke was so litigious, he'd have used every avenue he could to attack the police. We chose to reshoot instead.'

But Haw's efforts weren't always appreciated. Known as a gentleman in an industry that has more than its fair share of unscrupulous reporters, Haw was approached to run a news item regarding the mystery caller whom Don Spiers had desperately willed to call back. The upcoming news item was advertised in television news breaks for it to gain maximum effect, and Haw was startled when confronted later by a furious Spiers at an outdoor concert, accusing him of ruining Don's chances of hearing from the man because advertise-ments for the story had scared the caller away. It was a verbal attack that stung. 'I was trying to do the right thing, getting maximum exposure for the story,' Haw recalls, 'but it wasn't perceived that way. I wanted to write Don a letter trying to explain that, but I decided against it. He is so full of intense sorrow that it takes nothing to upset him and I didn't want to make it worse. It was a volatile time for police, media and, most particularly, victims' families.'

Shortly after the discovery of Jane Rimmer's body, criminal profiler Claude Minisini is invited to Perth by the Macro team to decipher any clues found at the scene of her disposal site. Minisini, a colleague of Commissioner Bob Falconer and founding member of the Victoria Police Rape Squad, had undergone a 12-month fellowship at the FBI's Behaviour Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, made famous by the movie
The Silence of the Lambs
. During his sojourn in the United States, Minisini interviewed notorious serial killers Ed Kemper – who, amongst his other victims, murdered his mother and put her voice box in the blender to finally 'shut her up' – and Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed at least 15 men and on whose character Hannibal Lecter was partly based. Returning to Australia after 13 years in the police force, Minisini left and co-founded the Forensic Behavioural Investigative Services (FBIS).

Criminal profiling is based on behaviour clues that are left behind at the crime scene and offers pointers to the offender's personality and the relationship, if any, that they had with the victim. It analyses the victim, why and how they may have caught the attention of the offender, and the similarity between each serial crime. Carefully studying the crime scene, the criminal profiler then layers the clues to put together a composite picture to help police. But profiling never replaces the hard investigative slog of good police work.

The profile that started the technique was that of New York's so-called 'Mad Bomber' in the 1950s. In open letters to a newspaper, he taunted police with clues to his identity. Psychiatrist Dr James Brussels examined both the bomber's handwriting and the bombs, shaped like a penis, to draw conclusions about his personality. This man, he advised police, was obsessively neat. He went further. When the bomber was caught, he said, he would be dressed in a buttoned-up, double-breasted suit. Brussels's profile proved uncannily accurate: as he walked out of his home on the day of his arrest, George Metesky wore a buttoned-up, double-breasted suit.

Minisini – a meticulous dresser who favours white shirts and cufflinks and sports an Inspector Clouseau moustache – flies into Perth with the city's expectations resting on his shoulders. The stakes are high, as are the public's hopes for a speedy arrest. Examining the site where Jane Rimmer's body is found, he maps out a profile of the killer. This person, he tells police, is organised and the murder was controlled, careful, planned. This is not the work of a disorganised killer with a dishevelled mind.

Paul Ferguson calls a press conference to spell out to the public the profile of the type of person the police are seeking. He asks Perth residents to help, by watching closely anyone who had a strange response to the media reports that Jane's body had been found. These signs could include 'absence from work, an inability to remain at work for the entire day, a sudden deterioration in work performance, an inability to concentrate, experiencing headaches, sudden changes in plans...' Ferguson also outlines other profiling clues picked up by Minisini. The killer would drive a late-model car that he keeps spotlessly clean, hold down a job and be of unremarkable appearance. Police release no further details, the lack of information inviting sharp criticism and no little incredulity. Minisini stands his ground. They did find enough evidence to deduce strong and incisive conclusions, he says. But he can't say any more than that.

Advertisements based on the profiling are shown on prime-time television, using the familiar faces of actor John Wood, from
Blue Heelers
, and singer Kate Ceberano. 'Like Sarah's family and friends you're agonising over the events of that weekend, because you think someone close to you may be involved in her disappearance, 'Ceberano says. 'You're worried because you've noticed a change in their routine or behaviour. Whatever it was, ease your mind.' The ads work, seducing people into coming forward with information.

Criminologist Paul Wilson, from Bond University, watches the unfolding profiles on television with more than a passing interest. 'This is all very general and quite superficial,' he says. 'Just because, for example, someone is showing signs of anxiety at work or decides to go off and wash their car, doesn't make that person a serial killer. The accuracy rate for the FBI profiling is less than 90 per cent and the whole technique is not scientifically based.' Minisini is used to the flak. If police don't perceive that profilers are doing a good job, he says, they are the first ones to say so.

Not so Dave Caporn. 'They left here winning the respect of the force,' he beamed. 'They did excellent work.'

Although the work of profilers in Australia has received a welter of publicity – it was profiling that targeted where Frank Denyer, who committed Victoria's Frankston murders, lived – it has never directly solved a case. So while profilers command huge sums for their services and boast they have worked on high-profile cases, they can never point to a result. 'Dave Caporn said that Claude Minisini did excellent work,' a former police officer says. 'Well, no doubt he did. But all we – the public – know is that he told us that the killer likes driving, keeps his car clean and is of neat appearance. Now that's all very fascinating, but does it take Einstein to work that out? Everything else he deduced is kept under wraps, in order, they say, to be able to tell the difference between a true and a false confession. But with the greatest respect to all concerned, without public scrutiny and without an arrest, it's a bit like farting in the wind.'

Minisini's generalisations about the killer's profile also exacerbate the rumblings of discontent heard after it was announced that FBIS had scored the lucrative one-year contract with the WA Police Service. Digging for background, and confirmed by documents released under the Freedom of Information Act,
The West Australian
journalist Luke Morfesse found that despite written advice to the deputy commissioner from the acting assistant commissioner that the $40,000 cost of their services could not be justified, it was awarded to FBIS regardless. 'The deal,' Morfesse wrote, 'included an option to pay FBIS... $350 an hour for each extra hour after the first 100 hours.'

The West Australian
newspaper was originally denied access to any documents pertaining to FBIS. Requesting a review by the office of the information commissioner, they were only then disclosed. 'The whole thing was like a scene out of
Yes, Minister
,' Morfesse recalls. 'We were told that we couldn't get our hands on the FBIS documents because the internal affairs unit, exempt under the FOI Act, had created them. They also told us that if Falconer had created any documents they were also exempt because as head of the police department he was also head of the internal affairs unit. So when the whole story came out, it didn't look great.'

Five hundred people attend Jane's funeral at Karrakatta cemetery on a sunny August morning, seven days after the discovery of her body. Her white coffin is adorned in pink, mauve and white flowers, her favourite song, 'Distant Star', played as mourners leave the church. Macro taskforce officers move unobtrusively through the crowd, blending in and watching to see who attends the funeral. All too often, the killer himself will move amongst the mourners, taking ghoulish pleasure from their grief, feeling momentous joy at his power to take a life. The Rimmers take no comfort in a religious faith, but they are nurtured by the speeches Jane's friends give about the generous-spirited, loving young woman who always had a ready smile.

After the service they adjourn to their local pub, inviting everyone, including Macro officers, to join them. Trevor puts $1500 on the bar for drinks. Tortured with grief, Jenny unashamedly drinks to her daughter's memory, alcohol numbing the pain as the evening wears on. She smiles wistfully. Jane was her best friend, she says. She would have understood. She would not have judged her for drinking too much that night. Shattered with grief, Jane's siblings, Lee and Adam, mingle amongst the crowd of mourners, trying to keep a brave face.

The rain has waterlogged Jane's car. It has sat outside her flat, water pouring through the warped sunroof and drenching the seats. A few days after Jane's funeral, Trevor climbs in to return it to the car yard. Here, alone in the quiet of the car's interior with water sloshing around his ankles, he puts his head on the steering wheel and sobs.

Christmas 1996. There is no family celebration, just an overwhelming realisation that Jane is not present at the table. The phone rings. It is Don Spiers, the first time, before or since, that he has approached the family. His voice is choked with emotion. 'I'll keep this brief,' he says. 'We are thinking of you all. We know you must miss Jane as much as we miss Sarah.'

Every year on Jane's birthday, 12 October, Jenny and some friends make the pilgrimage to Karrakatta, sitting in front of the plaque they erected for her in front of a baby pine tree. The plaque is simple. 'In loving memory of Jane Louise Rimmer. Taken from us on 9th June 1996, aged 23. Precious daughter of Trevor and Jenny, dearly loved sister of Lee and Adam. Our distant star, in our hearts forever.' They celebrate her life with Blush champagne, flowers and cake. Trevor goes alone every Saturday to talk to his daughter. It is, he smiles ruefully, the only chance he gets to see her. The questions never go away. She had had a fair amount to drink. Did she get into a car, thinking it was a taxi? Was she dragged into a vehicle as she walked down a dark street? Was she seduced in by a smooth talker who appeared to be on the level? What the hell happened to their Janie? It drives them mad, not knowing.

Jenny's mother tries to give them comfort. 'She's in a better place, now. She'll never get sick, never get any older, never be unhappy.' Jenny sees the flip side. Trevor will never walk her down the aisle. She will never have children. She loved life; she would have embraced getting older. They have mountains of cards and letters from friends and strangers, offering their prayers and support. They treasure one from Jane's friends, which arrives shortly after she is found. 'I remember once, not long after Sarah Spiers's disappearance, we were going to catch a train home late one night after having drinks at the Shenton Hotel. Jane offered to pay for a taxi for us both because she didn't think it would be safe after what had just happened to Sarah Spiers. Jane was a very caring person who always brought a smile to our face . . .' They treasure a lock of hair, too, that the police gave to them after they found her body. It stays in a keepsake chest with other precious mementos of their daughter.

As distraught as the family is that Jane has been murdered, her sister, Lee, recalls feeling a sense of relief that she had been found, that they can start the grieving process and lay her to rest with dignity. Jane's murder has strained Perth women's sense of safety, their personal boundaries. Lee will later march in 2001 with hundreds of others through Claremont streets, to reclaim the night and the space as safe. It is a small gesture, but important. Jenny joins in the march that starts at the Continental Hotel where she huddles in the warm safety of friends and family. It breaks her heart to be there, and she will never return.

The police are puzzled by questions they can't answer. Why did Jane leave her friends at the hotel? She was standing outside the Continental for a few minutes on her own – was she waiting for someone? If so, who? Was it a taxi and, if so, why would she choose such a bad spot to get a cab? What they don't tell the public is that after Sarah Spiers disappeared, a secret video was installed to monitor girls' movements outside the hotel. But a transport desk to arrange taxis home or to escort girls to the nearby Club Bayview is highly visible.

The taxi industry in Perth is intensely feeling the pressure. Parents pick up their daughters instead of allowing them to risk getting into a cab with a stranger, and drivers' back-grounds are scrutinised. Within a short time, for a variety of reasons, 78 drivers lose their jobs.

The police presence at the Rimmers' home dwindles off. Days turn into weeks, weeks to months. The family, police later say, asked that they receive visits only if there was important news. It is not a conversation Jenny recalls. Dave Caporn's visit – months after Jane's body is found – leaves Jenny nonplussed. 'He walked around with a huge radio phone, explaining he hadn't visited before as he hadn't wanted to get too close to the case,' she says. 'But he was the
head
of the case! Why
didn't
he want to get too close?' It seems ludicrous, and all a little too late. 'Why has he waited until now to visit us?'

The Rimmers are fair in their judgements of how Macro handled Jane's murder. 'I guess they did a good job,' Jenny murmurs. 'I guess there wasn't much more that they could have done?' It's a question, not a statement and one that hangs limply in the air. What she is most upset about, she continues, is the lack of communication. 'We never hear from them anymore, unless it's to tell us something that gets our hopes up and amounts to nothing.'

Anger for Trevor Rimmer is a wasted emotion. He is a gentle, private man, given to reflective comments. What does it matter, he shrugs, if they find Jane's killer or not. Punishment will not bring her back. He sees his daughter's murder as some perverse, reverse lotto: wrong place, wrong time, right type. A million people in Perth and a million-to-one chance it would happen to them. But he would like closure, that nebulous, grey concept that families cling to in situations like this. Closure, so that at least his daughter's killer doesn't strike again.

It is nine months since Jane's abduction, long enough for young women to tentatively hope that the disappearance of Sarah and the murder of Jane is simply an aberration. Shock and sympathy still spill out in letters to the press and the media, though police continue to warn women to take special care. And the young people do. For a time.

Winter turns to spring, denuded branches are now in blossom and the cool, clear nights become warmer, seducing people outdoors. And as the long, hot summer passes the baton to an unseasonably warm autumn, memories fade.

Then another girl goes missing.