by Leigh Sales
Nick’s high profile on the art scene, and the horrifying nature of the crime and the violence of its circumstances, meant the deaths were front-page news for days.
‘The world separated, in a way,’ says Juliet. ‘And people changed, in my view of them. The people who I thought were my friends were maybe not so close friends. Other ones were extraordinary. People revealed themselves differently. Maybe the people with courage came to the fore, and I saw their courage clearly, and maybe the people who were frightened, I saw their fear. I could see it in their faces and in their behaviour. I still feel that now. But I have more compassion for the people who are frightened than I might have done before this, all this tragedy. I might have thought, Oh, that’s bad behaviour, that’s selfish. I might have judged them more. Now I feel their fear, and I feel more pity or sympathy for them.’
In the first days after Nick’s death, Juliet was in a state of deep shock and terror. Looking back, she sees that two very different people were instrumental to her survival: a priest and a detective. Father Steve Sinn, a Jesuit who worked on the streets of Kings Cross, had previously worked at the same school Antony attended and had met Nick then. Detective Graham Norris, with the New South Wales homicide squad, was the lead investigator on the double murder case.
‘If there were two people that were similar, it was the priest and the detective,’ Juliet says. ‘They stood back and listened and they asked questions and they waited for things to be revealed. They never presumed to know how I felt. They helped me because they trusted me. Well, they trusted maybe not me, but the whole endeavour. I got the feeling from the homicide detective, the priest, that I could have faith to trust myself.’
‘Because they trusted that you were strong enough to carry on?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. They didn’t give me a sense that I might not be able to. They never said, in words or gestures, Are you sure you can handle this?’
These two men fascinate me. How did they have such emotional intelligence at such an awful time? I ask Juliet to tell me more about them.
Father Steve appeared the day after Nick’s death. Juliet recalls that one of the first things he did was take dead sunflowers out of a vase in the hallway and throw them away. He didn’t ask if it was okay to do this, or even where the bin was. He just did it. The gesture is an incredibly memorable one to Juliet.
‘That just represented everything to me. It showed me someone who valued life. Or maybe the gesture said, There is death but there is also life. It was such a simple, thoughtful act and I don’t know, maybe the simpler and smaller, the better,’ Juliet says. ‘The big tragedy makes the small things more heightened and more vivid somehow. One gesture like that can change your life, in a way. It can open your heart to think that life is worth living. It doesn’t sound quite true, but it is true for me.’
Father Steve helped Juliet organise Nick’s funeral. Juliet remembers that when she went to his office, he began by saying to her, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to manage.’
‘Those were the kindest words,’ she reflects. ‘They acknowledged the depth of my pain and they didn’t try to push my grief aside or hide it. There was no way to avoid grief and nobody else could do it for me.’
Superficially, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to manage’ sounds similar to the words Juliet feared somebody would say to her: ‘Are you sure you can handle this?’ But they’re quite different. The second question contains an implied challenge – the situation must be handled and it’s doubtful whether Juliet is up to it. The first statement applies no pressure and contains no expectation. With those words, the priest gave Juliet permission to feel overwhelmed; indeed, he was saying how could she not be? By offering his own bewildered humanity, Steve Sinn allowed Juliet hers.
Detective Norris was utterly unlike Father Steve in many ways, but the two men had one thing in common: empathy. Both could put themselves in another person’s shoes and at the same time maintain the detachment necessary to carry out their work. Graham Norris would take a phone call at any time. Juliet once started sobbing in a post office and she rang the detective. He showed up to help her in a matter of minutes. At Nick’s funeral, when Antony was still at large, Detective Norris subtly sidled up to Juliet before the service and murmured, ‘You don’t need to be afraid, you can’t see us but we’re everywhere.’
It was exactly what she needed to hear: it freed her to pay tribute to Nick and say goodbye without the gut-churning terror that Antony would appear.
Both men went with Juliet when she attended the morgue to view Nick’s body. A counsellor named Jane Mowll met the group in the waiting room and began by telling Juliet what she could expect to see when she went inside. When she said Nick would feel cold to the touch, Juliet collapsed and began weeping uncontrollably.
Now, think for a moment what you would have done if you’d been there at the morgue with Juliet. I’m almost certain that I would have patted her and said, ‘It’s okay, Juliet, you don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.’ That is not what the priest did. He stood, silently walked to the door of the viewing room and opened it. Then he helped lift Juliet to her feet and led her inside.
‘I went in and when I saw Nick on the gurney, I just stopped crying straight away. It was suddenly this incredible peace, this amazing peace overtook me,’ she says. ‘Steve must have known. He must have known, now’s the time to take her in, not to console or hug her.’
Even though Juliet saw Nick’s body, in the weeks and months afterwards she had a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with the way he had died. She felt as if she were having a rolling bad dream while awake, replaying what she thought might have occurred. She had never read any of the media reports, so her state wasn’t triggered by that. It was her imagination at work. It had concocted a film that played over and over again, the same sequence of shots: Antony rummages in the kitchen drawers. Chloe is busy making dinner and isn’t watching. They argue and she doesn’t see Antony pull a knife. Then Nick is struggling with Antony in the hallway as they wrestle towards the front door. Every muscle in Nick’s face is strained and his eyes are full of terror. The final shot is a close-up of Antony’s twisted face.
After two years of enduring this horror, Juliet decided she needed to see the crime scene photos.
‘I thought that if I did, it might help me to see the reality of it as opposed to my imagination of it. Then it might stop the nightmare,’ she says.
Once more, she visited the morgue, Father Steve by her side. Jane Mowll was again the person who met them. Juliet didn’t know it at the time but she was in very good hands. Jane Mowll has a doctorate in psychology and her thesis was about viewings and how to sensitively handle them, in ways that give people the best chance of coping with death and loss.
‘She was a wonderful woman,’ Juliet says. ‘She went into a lot of detail. She had a huge folder of documents, photographs and photocopies. She described each one before she handed it over. She described the watchband on the ground; now you’re going to see another thing and another. And she did it in a very gentle way.’
‘Did her descriptions help to neutralise the effect of what you were seeing?’ I ask.
‘I think so. It took out any emotion. She only described factually what you would see.’
There were many images. One showed a close-up of Nick’s face, his eyes open and unseeing. Another showed him slumped on the ground, as if sleeping. There was a photo of Nick’s wrist, which had been cut to the bone, followed by an image of his broken watch on the floor. Juliet saw the kitchen knife on the ground next to a ruler. She saw Nick’s bloodied torso.
Juliet found the process of viewing the crime scene photos so helpful that she later gave a speech at a conference about forensic photography, describing the effect it had had on her:
I had been playing in my mind a fictionalised event for so long, that part of my consciousness had come to believe that I had actually ‘been there’. And if I had been there, why hadn’t I don
e more to help? Why was I a passive onlooker? To be able to see what had actually happened, and those images were far worse than my ideas of them, made me aware that I couldn’t have stopped the murders; I hadn’t actually been there . . . maybe that was the moment when I could let them go. Looking at Nick’s crime scene photos dissolved my fantasies. When I looked at the photographs, I felt my love for him and his love for me. I saw the emptiness of death and felt the fullness of love.
That speech made such an impact that it is quoted in The Australasian Coroner’s Manual as best-case practice of how professionals should conduct viewings of crime scene photos and bodies in order to help traumatised relatives. Whether it was the sensitive way Jane Mowll assisted Juliet with those photographs, or the practical and thoughtful actions of Father Steve and Detective Norris, at the heart of what gave Juliet a reason to keep going was something very simple: kindness.
How did Father Steve and Detective Norris know exactly the right things to do? I wish I had that sort of confidence and wisdom. Were they just naturally empathetic? Or had their years of experience dealing with sudden tragedy and grief taught them how to act? I decided to track them both down to find out.
Father Steve was easy to find because he and Juliet had kept in touch. Detective Norris had retired and was trickier to locate. A police contact finally emailed me an old mobile phone number, and when I rang it around 7 pm one evening the former homicide cop picked up. We began an email correspondence while I made plans to catch up with Father Steve first.
Steve asked to meet at a place called Two Wolves, a Mexican-style cantina near Sydney University where you can order cheap tacos or enchiladas and wash them down with beers or margaritas. The bar is run by volunteers and is affiliated with the Jesuits. It’s a not-for-profit social enterprise, raising money for disadvantaged communities in Thailand, Vietnam, Ecuador, Nepal and Sydney. It’s not ‘churchy’ or square in any way, it’s cool. There’s a deer head mounted on the wall, a sombrero jauntily perched on it. Bright triangular flags hang from the roof, and the shutters are painted colourfully.
I see a man with short white hair, perhaps around seventy or so, sitting alone at a table. He looks trim, fit even, and wears a patterned shirt, as if he’s going to a weekend barbecue. It fits the festive mood of the place quite well.
I introduce myself, take a seat and hit Steve with my first question: why did he want to be a priest?
He laughs. ‘Well, you tell your story but you never know whether it’s really the story,’ he says.
Steve grew up in a large Catholic family in Victoria, with four brothers and four sisters. His father was a doctor and they were affluent, living in Toorak. His mother had beautiful taste and a wonderful eye, although she found caring for so many children a strain. When Steve was around seven, his oldest brother, Bill, started drinking and playing up. Steve remembers going to Mass on Sundays, packed into the car with the rest of his siblings, while his parents talked about Bill and how worried they were.
‘I was in the back seat of the car and I remember picking up a holy picture – in those days there were holy pictures – and on the back of the picture, I read that if someone in the family becomes a priest, all of you will go to Heaven. And I thought, Well, I’ll become a priest, everything will be alright,’ he says. ‘And I still don’t feel it’s much different. That’s what a priest does. He holds up the pain, the anguish, the brokenness, the worries of our world to God on behalf of others. That’s all I do.’
Steve joined the Jesuits in 1967 and he was ordained in 1979. The society of Jesuits dates back centuries, and its priests and brothers are known for their deep commitment to social justice and education. Jesuits are particularly motivated by Jesus’ teachings on helping the poor, the marginalised and the disadvantaged. Steve has spent most of his ministry in Sydney’s Kings Cross, working with the homeless, mentally ill and drug-addicted. I asked the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, if he knew of Steve, given that his electorate takes in the Cross. He did, and he described the priest’s work on the streets as ‘saintly’. Another work contact of mine, a judge who is no longer a practising Catholic but spent six years of his youth living with the Jesuits, also knew Steve. When he was desperately conflicted about leaving the Jesuits, it was Steve who counselled him that it was okay to go. Like the prime minister, the judge also considers Steve Sinn to be genuinely Christlike.
One thing I very quickly learn about Steve is that I don’t think the way he does. I have come to the interview with a series of questions about how he does his job. He doesn’t think that he has a job.
‘Juliet was so touched that you arrived at her house and the first thing you did was take away some dead flowers,’ I say. ‘In a practical sense, in your line of work, how do you know what to do that will help?’
Steve pauses, then says, ‘I don’t even remember that. I don’t know if I do know what somebody needs practically. No, I don’t think I do know, actually.’
‘In your job,’ I say, ‘are you all the time listening and observing and trying to work out what to do? Or are you talking to God in your head? What is the process?’
There’s another long pause. There is nothing hurried about Father Steve. When I listen to the recording of our conversation, it’s peppered with pauses of five to ten seconds – very long silences when you think of a regular chat. But Steve is entirely comfortable with sitting silently. It alarms me at first, but after a while it’s quite pleasant to sit together without saying anything, restful to not have to rush to think of what to say next.
‘You see, Leigh,’ Steve says, ‘I was ordained for this. I’m not working, I’m not acting, I’m just myself. I’m not acting the shepherd, I am the shepherd; that’s what ordination is. I believe when I go into a situation, others know that because I’m a priest, God is with them. They’re not abandoned, their suffering is their entrance into His suffering and resurrection.’
‘But what if the person’s not religious? What if they don’t believe in God?’ I ask.
‘Oh, I don’t say that to people!’ he exclaims with a laugh. ‘If I’m there, they know. We are His presence to one another, human beings. God doesn’t dwell out there –’ Steve gestures away from us – ‘we are bearers of the divine to one another. It’s sacred, suffering is sacred. We don’t want it. We can’t avoid it. But you need to have someone with you. It’s just being present, it’s accompanying rather than helping. There is a deep truth in that, accompanying.’
‘In your role, being like a shepherd —’ I begin again.
‘I’m not like a shepherd, I am a shepherd,’ Steve interrupts and we both laugh. I really am having a hard time getting my head around this. I don’t see any sheep. Therefore to me, he is not a shepherd.
‘It’s like you are a mother,’ he says. ‘Your work is a journalist but you are a mother; you’re not working as a mother, you’re not acting like a mother, you are a mother. I am a shepherd.’
I finally think I get it. It’s complicated, though, because I don’t dwell in this religious world and I’m struggling. I suddenly think, Oh dear, I’ve been calling him Steve the whole time. Should I be calling him Father Steve? Or maybe the correct etiquette is Father Sinn? But somehow Steve doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who cares what he’s called.
‘Leigh,’ he says, ‘when I was a young priest, one of the Jesuits who was a very flawed human being but still a mentor, he said people are often afraid to visit someone in hospital. But he said, it’s not about you, it’s about them, forget about you. It doesn’t matter what I say or do, it’s not about me. It’s about that person. And so, you know, if you’re inadequate, you say the wrong thing, so what? If they have a go at you, so what? Fine. Just be there. It’s them that’s the focus. I don’t have a pathway or a lifeline, I just believe in people. And I believe in time.’
I ask him about accompanying Juliet to the morgue and taking her into the viewing room to see Nick’s body, even though she had broken down outside.
&n
bsp; ‘It was such a big experience for somebody,’ I say. ‘How did you know that what she needed in that moment was not to be consoled but that she had to go in?’
Steve pauses again for a long time, then says, ‘I’ve had a lot of experience with people who are dead, with their bodies. Our bodies are everything. If you love someone, you have to be next to them, you have to have time with the body. I would never, ever want to be apart from the body. I think we’ve taken it away too much, the funeral people take over. No! Let people bury their own!’
‘Do you think it helps people to go through the process and be intimately involved?’
‘Yes! Of course! Of course!’ It’s the most emphatic Steve has been about anything. ‘Keep the body at home! Put it on the dining table! Let the kids sleep under the table, paint the coffin, decorate it. Eat! When my brother died, we had fights over the coffin, drinking whiskey. I remember one brother pounding Bill’s coffin: “Oh you bastard!” It was our lives. We carried the coffin, we filled in the hole. I used to work in the garden as a boy with my father and I dug the hole to put his plants in and filled in the hole. In the end, we put Dad into the ground and I helped my brothers fill in the hole. We need to do it ourselves.’
‘Why do you think it helps to have that involvement?’ I ask.
‘It’s our responsibility, it’s not to help. It’s enabling us to grieve, it’s enabling us to go through it together. Otherwise it’s taken away and whoosh, it’s gone, and you can’t grieve. You’ve got to feel, you’ve got to touch, you’ve got to be there!’ Steve is passionate.
He reaches into his bag to pull out something to show me. It’s an old yellowing newspaper clipping. The caption reads, ‘Devastation: a woman in despair at the site of one of the blasts near the Turkey–Syrian border.’ The photograph with it shows a woman standing in a pile of rubble. She has her arms open to the sky and she is wailing, her head thrown back.