The Devil's Garden (8 page)

Terror now replaces fear. It is unbelievable. How could
another
beautiful young woman simply vanish into the night when there is such a strong police presence in the area? Ciara Glennon, a feisty, spirited Irish woman with a gentle lilt, her face framed by a mass of dark curls streaked with blonde, had only returned a week before from a year-long backpacking trip around the world. It was dangerous, at times, but this willow-limbed, petite woman – only 152 cm tall – who hitch-hiked through Egypt, North America and Europe, had the gift of the gab, a way of engaging people with a smile. Born in a Zambian bush hospital when her parents worked for a Catholic mission, even as a young child Ciara drew people to her.

A lawyer who had majored in and spoke fluent Japanese, Ciara was friendly, fun-loving and extremely popular with her peers. Sporty, she excelled in ballet and had been excited about being the bridesmaid at her sister Denise's wedding the following weekend – a black-tie affair with 200 guests at the Royal Perth Yacht Club. Just five days before Ciara had started back with the law firm she had worked with prior to going overseas. At a quarter to five on Friday afternoon, her mother Una speaks to Ciara. She is feeling tired, Ciara says, but is expected to go for after-work drinks. 'Do you have to go?' Una asks. Ciara pauses, briefly.

'Oh yes, I'd better.' Una doesn't ask her what time she may be home: a 27-year-old who has been around the world can make that decision herself. But she is
expected
home.

'Have a good time,' Una says. 'And be careful.'

Ciara had done her law articles at the firm in which Neil Fearis is a partner. He has known Ciara's father, Denis, for 16 years and it was always understood that Ciara would practise in corporate and commercial law at Fearis's firm when she became a fully-fledged lawyer. She proves herself acutely intelligent, a gift to the firm. Six months earlier, whilst Ciara was travelling overseas, Fearis had met up with her in London for dinner. Travelling hasn't changed her, he notes: she is as engaging as ever and over drinks after work that first Friday night back, she proves to be still the same. But Fearis, a conservative man who is the Western Australian chairman of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, is tired. He has returned from Singapore only late that afternoon and is not up for a late night.

At 10.45 pm Ciara and her group, including Fearis, move to the Continental Hotel in Claremont for drinks. The Continental; two blocks away from the four-lane Stirling Highway and 150 metres from the next Claremont nightclub, Club Bayview. It is St Patrick's Day, time for a traditional Irish celebration, but Ciara is also weary. The Continental is only the next suburb from her home and she drifts around the crowd, chatting to people she knows. Neil Fearis yawns and looks at his watch. It is just after 11 and he needs to get some sleep. He slips out of the pub quietly without saying goodnight.

Ciara's bed is empty Saturday morning. Una calls one of Ciara's best friends, who promises to ring around and call her back. She also calls Fearis. 'What time did Ciara leave the hotel? Have you seen her since she left?' He hasn't, he assures her.

It is Denise's bridal shower that afternoon and Ciara has a hair appointment in the morning in preparation. She and Denise are very close friends; she would not miss today. There is an edge of panic in Ciara's girlfriend's voice when she calls Una back. 'Ciara went to Claremont and left the hotel around a quarter past eleven last night,' she says. 'She was only there for about 20 minutes.' Her voice is wavering, and she tries to control it with a deep breath. She has read the papers, knows what has been happening in Claremont. Everyone in Perth knows what has been happening in Claremont.

Una knows instantly, with the innate, sick feeling that mothers possess, that her daughter is not going to be found alive. Claremont. Something evil is happening at Claremont.

Reported as a missing person, by nightfall family and friends are frantically searching for Ciara. The last confirmed sighting of her is at 12.15 am on the southern side of the Stirling Highway, between Bayview Terrace and Stirling Road. Striding down the road, a confident young woman deter-mined to get home.

Paul Ferguson hears about Ciara's disappearance around 4.30 that afternoon. The station is buzzing with the news he is dreading as he calls senior command.
He's got another one. The bastard's got another one.
Macro taskforce officers take the news hard. It is bad enough that another woman has been taken. But this one has been taken on their watch, right under their nose. Paul Coombes remembers it as a 'where were you when?' moment – one that no one could ever forget. At his children's primary school function, he has his mobile switched off. A message is sent to him via another person. 'I was notified that I needed to get into work ASAP,' he recalls. 'We all knew how serious it was.'

Stage three of Macro has begun.

Stephen Brown, a Detective-Sergeant in the Organised Crime Squad, has kept abreast of the Claremont investigation since its inception. He is stunned when he hears news of Ciara's disappearance on television. It is, he knows, not only crystal-clear confirmation that there is a serial killer working in Claremont, but also the impetus for him to want to immediately join the Macro taskforce. He rings a colleague. 'Let's get in there,' he says, 'and make a difference.'

Within 24 hours, the number of core investigators on Macro has blossomed to 70. Unknown to the general public, there is a chilling reality underpinning the taskforce's need to beat the clock. After their third victim, a serial killer's level of violence escalates with frightening speed. Having escaped detection three times, they now feel indestructible. The next victims will be targeted hard and fast.

***

Jenny and Trevor Rimmer are taking a break at Rottnest Island, seven months after Jane's funeral, when police call. They have some bad news, the police warn them. Trevor squeezes his eyes shut in preparation for what he may hear; Jenny buckles at the knees, and cries.

Police circulate a press release to all media. 'Police hold grave fears for the safety of a woman who was last seen leaving the Continental Hotel in Claremont at approximately mid-night on Friday March 14, 1997...Given the circumstances of the disappearance of Sarah Spiers and Jane Rimmer and the similarity of this incident, the Macro taskforce has commenced immediate investigations. We have an assurance from police services state commander Deputy Commissioner Bruce Brennan that every resource will be made available to ensure a successful and speedy resolution.' Within four days they announce that as part of an increased allocation of resources to Macro, Superintendent Richard Lane – formerly in charge of the personal crime division – will join the Macro taskforce. They are bringing in their big guns.

By 16 March, Perth media are again saturated with head-lines about a missing girl. News bulletins alert the public to the harsh realities in stark language. 'The police are almost convinced a serial killer is at large in Perth following the disappearance of a third woman from outside a popular nightspot over the weekend,' ABC Radio Perth announces.
The West Australian
is equally blunt. 'Woman Missing: Serial Killer Fear'. The headline represents a chilling, though seismic shift: it is the first time that WA police publicly acknowledge their belief that a serial killer is operating in the city.

The government wades in, with Premier Richard Court – a personal friend of Denis Glennon's – offering a quarter of a million dollars for any information that may lead to Sarah Spiers or Ciara Glennon or to the arrest of the person responsible for the murder of Jane Rimmer. News of the reward – the biggest offered in the state – is greeted with cynicism in many quarters. Would that amount of money, many people ask, have been offered if Ciara had come from a less privileged background?

The Glennons go through the motions, consumed with numbness but clinging to some vague hope that she will be found alive. Una has little if any faith that Ciara is safe, but Denis – proud, private and extremely well connected in the Liberal Party and Perth society – launches an immediate appeal to the public. Pale with shock, he articulates the family's grief in his soft Irish brogue. 'We are a strong family and I don't cry easily but Ciara's alive, we believe that and we are confident that the way she's been brought up she will fight on, and we are hopeful that she will be found at this stage even. Only now do I even begin to understand the terrible trauma that the parents of Jane and Sarah went through and the degree of empathy that I have with them now is just enormous and my final comment is that no parent who loves their child, even a child of 27 like Ciara was, can even begin to comprehend the devastating pain that this is in any family.' His voice breaks throughout his appeal for help. 'Somebody in Perth must have noticed something unusual around that time outside the hotel. They may not remember it, but if they were in Claremont that Friday night around that area, could they please come forward and talk to the police. Una, my wife, she is numb with shock and she has asked me to appeal to the mothers, the wives, the girlfriends, the ladies in the community who may have some husband or partner that they notice is doing something different now or did on Saturday morning and Una says, please help her, we are just distraught and we just need your help and your prayers.'

Rainstorms are deluging Perth, rivers of rain that drench the city and the bush. Ciara Glennon has now been missing for 36 hours. Jenny and Trevor Rimmer try not to articulate what they are thinking as the rain pounds on their roof, demanding attention. Across the river, Don Spiers stands bleakly at his kitchen window watching crystals of water slide down the pane as the night closes in. This rain. It is an omen. A terrible, desolate omen.

Neil Fearis is questioned by police for seven hours immediately following Ciara's disappearance. He had organised the drinks at the hotel, he was one of the last people to see Ciara, he had caught up with her months earlier in London. Fearis understands. They are just doing their job. A young detective-constable quizzes him in detail about his movements from early Friday evening to Saturday lunchtime, when concern was first raised about Ciara's whereabouts. They also speak to his wife, Jasmin, to corroborate details: what time he got home from the hotel, what time he got up the next morning. The minutiae of policing. Fearis remembers the small moments in that ghastly time. The detective-constable is highly amused that Fearis corrects his spelling and grammar on the transcript of interview provided to him for checking. Obviously, he muses later, he has never interviewed a lawyer before.

Police are courteous, solicitous in their dealings with him, thank him for coming to the station as they walk him to the door.

Neil Fearis is under fire in the weeks following Ciara's disappearance. Perth's talkback radio airways are jammed with scuttlebutt about the nature of his relationship with Ciara. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion.
The relationship must have been improper
. Fearis shakes his head. He knows it wasn't, and this can only serve to upset Ciara's family further. The calls continue.
He was a senior partner and she was a young woman. He should have seen that she got home safely.
What can he say? He knows this is true. He
should
have seen that she got home safely. But what they don't know is that, as it transpires, Ciara had left the hotel five minutes before he did. But it is what he calls the 'extreme lunatic fringe' who upset him most. The rabid, strident rednecks with their rabid, strident opinions
. If that girl has been murdered, I reckon he did it. He must have.
Thank God, Fearis thinks, that the Glennons don't subscribe to that view.

The city has descended into the twilight world of outright panic and bedlam. The shockwaves are felt throughout Perth, permeating the press, taxi service, politicians and police. Dave Caporn, charged with the unenviable task of keeping Macro staff on track and placating the powers that be, is in the office as dawn rises over the city and leaves after 10 each night. Stricken with grief, Denis Glennon demands that his family not be given a junior liaison officer to work with them. Caporn, too, gets that role.

The West Australian
prints 5000 Help Find Ciara posters as a grim Paul Ferguson plays his hand. 'This is an appeal to the mothers and fathers of the young people who might have been in the area at the time. We don't want to see any other person or family go through the heartache that these families have gone through.' The appeal works, perhaps too well. Within weeks of Ciara's disappearance, 35,000 people phone police with information. Most of it is useless and none leads to an arrest. Ten teams comprising six investigators are on the floor, each with its own persons of interest. In the first weeks following Ciara's disappearance, there are up to 50 Persons of Interest that they can't eliminate. They need a breakthrough.

While women avoid partying in Claremont, they are only too aware that this killer could be anywhere. Throughout the city, in pubs and clubs, signs warning young women to be careful are placed in toilets and bars. 'Don't walk alone to your car. Don't trust strangers. Don't take risks.' Perth has reverted to the horrific, dark days when serial killer Eric Cooke indiscriminately ran amok in suburbs near Claremont, killing its beautiful young women. And as with Eric Cooke, they don't know when this one will turn up again.

When scrawny, two-bit criminal Eric Edgar Cooke started his murderous rampage in Perth's wealthy inner-western suburbs on Australia Day weekend, 1963 – ironically, the same weekend Sarah Spiers disappeared – he targeted complete strangers. Cooke's killing spree changed the heartbeat of the city: once coddled in innocence and with a low crime rate, its carefree air changed virtually overnight to one of unimaginable terror. Cooke's modus operandi changed at whim, his eight victims variously stabbed, shot, strangled, or run over – changes that police later asked the public to believe had attributed to the ill-informed judgements they made about the identity of the killer.

Finally caught, Cooke – who had a cleft palate and was bullied as a child – confessed to all the crimes he had committed: 8 murders and 14 attempted murders. All but two of the 22 confessions were accepted.

As Western Australians prepared for Christmas in 1959, beautiful 21-year-old Jillian Brewster, socialite and grand-daughter of millionaire chocolate manufacturer Sir MacPherson Robertson, was slaughtered in her bed. Brewster was butchered with an axe and scissors, sustaining shocking wounds to her upper body, breasts and genital area. The scene of her murder – her Cottesloe flat near Claremont on the Stirling Highway – would resonate years later as the same vicinity from where the Claremont women went missing. As the city's residents recoiled from the details of the senseless death, the cry went out for someone to be charged. Despite his confession to Brewster's murder, that someone was not Eric Cooke. Neither did authorities accept his confession for the hit-and-run murder of 17-year-old Rosemary Anderson. Cooke, they said, was an inveterate liar seeking glory for a crime he didn't commit. Cooke's confession, clothed in stark language, was ignored. 'I, Eric Edgar Cooke, now of Fremantle Prison, say on 10 February 1963, between 9:00 pm and 10.00 pm, I stole a Holden sedan car...I drove the car straight at her [Anderson]. At the time I struck her, I was doing about 40 miles per hour... She was scooped up onto the hood for a couple of seconds and then thrown over the bonnet.' As authorities did not believe Cooke's confession for these two murders, someone would have to take the fall.

True to form for serial killers, Cooke had also led up to his murderous spree with hundreds of smaller offences, including peeping through women's windows at night, burglary and theft. Seven women who lived in similar areas were attacked in identical ways; five survived, two did not. After breaking into their flats and stealing the door key, Cooke later returned, watched them while they slept and then made his move. In the Brewster and Anderson murders alone, Cooke's modus operandi was identical to 14 other crimes he had committed. He was finally caught when police found the gun he used for his last murder. They waited until he returned for it and arrested him.

Faced with the police not accepting his first confession, Cooke retracted it, but stood steadfastly by his second. As Peter Ryan, former editor of Melbourne University Press who published
The Beamish Case
, wrote of Cooke's hanging, 'His second confession was made at the very step onto the gallows, and was sworn on the Bible in the presence of a clergyman. No matter; he was turned off, and carried his confession with him into the drop.' Cooke, the last man hanged in Western Australia, was buried at the Fremantle prison cemetery on top of child killer Martha Rendell. But if Cooke had gone, his legacy lingered. It would return to haunt authorities years later in ways they could never imagine.