by Gary Jubelin
‘You can charge him with that,’ they tell us.
Technology is also making more changes to how we go about our business. The law has changed this year and interviews about serious crimes must now be recorded by an ERISP machine, which is short for Electronically Recorded Interview with a Suspected Person. It’s a combined film and audio recorder that puts an end to the practice of recording unsigned confessions in police notebooks. Watching the tape, the camera makes the interview room look like the inside of a goldfish bowl, with two detectives sitting facing each other on either side of the TV screen and the suspect sitting between them at the far end of the table, facing the ERISP.
As the tape rolls, I know the camera will record how Previtera looks physically unimpressive. He’s a loser, the kind of person who, if you saw him in the street, you wouldn’t take a second glance at. But Jim wants us to be friendly and to build up a rapport. The DNA proves only that he masturbated on Eileen, not that he killed her, Jim says. We need Previtera to open up.
And so we empathise with him. We say that we know how he’s feeling. We want to make him think that we are weak like him, that we’re the same, we all have our temptations. Yes, we have his DNA to help us but, as detectives, there is pride at stake here. We want to show how we can take that evidence and go one better. We want to get him to confess.
Previtera starts to get excited. He trusts us and he wants to talk about it. He desribes how he saw Eileen come home and watched her through the window inside her kitchen. He walked over to her door, intending to rob her, and Eileen let him in because he was her neighbour’s son. Inside, Previtera says he wanted to grab her only something didn’t feel right. He left, then returned later the same night, this time forcing Eileen down onto the floor and tying her hands and legs together.
He asked her if she had money and took $50 or $60 from her handbag. Then he started stroking her skin. It felt soft to touch, he tells us.
Listening to this makes me feel sick. It is offensive, having to sit there with a straight face while images of what he’s done invade my mind. The worst part is the sense that he’s enjoying telling us about this, and that we cannot stop him, because we need him to tell us everything that happened so we can use it as evidence. It’s like we’ve become complicit.
He tells us how he strangled Eileen with a table lamp cable. That’s it. That’s all we need. The interview can stop. We turn the ERISP machine off.
Normally after an arrest we’d celebrate, but this time we don’t. We feel dirty. Neither Jim nor I wants to talk much. The experience of getting that confession has taken something from us that we can’t recover.
* * *
At Previtera’s sentencing, a Victim Impact Statement from Eileen’s son John is tendered, describing the effect of her murder on the family. It’s something else I haven’t seen before, as the legislation allowing it to be presented only came into effect a month ago.
I believe in the idea of Victim Impact Statements, that those who’ve suffered from a crime should have a chance to say what it has cost them, and am disgusted when the judge, David Hunt, makes a point of refusing to take this one into account.
He says he sympathises with the family, but the new law is ‘poorly drafted’.
‘The task of the criminal court in imposing a sentence is to punish; it is not to compensate,’ he says.
‘It would therefore be wholly inappropriate to impose a harsher sentence upon an offender because the value of the life lost is perceived to be greater in the one case than it is in the other.’
Outside the court, John Cantlay tells the gathered reporters he provided the impact statement ‘so I could let the court know how my family has felt over the last two years and the pain and grief that we have gone through’. Doing so has helped him manage his grief, he says. It’s not about trying to influence the judge, or claiming that his mother’s life was worth a tougher sentence than that of any other victim.
‘Personally speaking, I am a Christian and I think vengeance is in the hands of the Lord . . . whatever the courts do, it isn’t going to bring my mother back.’
Previtera gets 20 years, but I wonder if it might not have been longer. This was an awful murder. Did the judge let Previtera off relatively lightly to demonstrate that he won’t be affected by these new Victim Impact Statements? I don’t know the answer. We don’t get to ask questions of the judges, but it is as if someone has inserted a knife and opened up another chink in my respect for the court process.
I have worked on two killings now – those of James Kelly and Eileen Cantlay – where it’s felt like nobody in court has stood up for the victims. Instead, the judges and the lawyers, wearing their wigs and robes, speaking a language few of us sitting watching them can understand, have done all the talking for them.
Well then, I am a detective, I think. I can catch the killers, but I can also listen to the victims. If no one else will take a stand, then I will.
Scar Tissue
Late 1995: 10 years in
The royal commission reveals that cops from the Armed Hold-Up Squads in other regions, were crooked. Once again, suspects were loaded up. Detectives lied in court to get convictions.
It feels like the rot is getting closer. At least, if I get called to the witness box then I could say, on oath, I saw nothing. But the truth is I knew enough to suspect it. I never got deep enough, unlike the Stick-Ups’ old poster boy, Roger Rogerson, who’s this year made more newspaper front pages, linked to allegations of drug dealing and murder.
Maybe I was fortunate Dad was so strict with me growing up. Although I defied him at the time, maybe it was enough to stop me wading out further into the darker waters. At work, I’m still in Organised Crime, but after working another murder with Jim, I’m even more convinced I want to be a Homicide detective.
Towards the end of 1995, I’m approached by Detective Sergeant Paul Jacob from the North Region Homicide Squad, a big, garrulous man who everyone calls Jaco. He’d been a year ahead of me at Epping High School and knew some of my friends. As a cop, he’d advised us on the Eileen Cantlay murder case and I’d made no secret of wanting some day to work in the same squad as he did.
Over the months since, whenever I pestered him about it, Jaco always smiled and told me, ‘We’ll find a place for you, little buddy.’ I realise now he meant it. He gives me a heads up that there might be a place on his squad coming up. He’s asked around about me and put in a good word with his boss. As far as I can tell, the transfer seems to happen solely on Jaco’s recommendation.
It’s everything I’ve wanted.
The squad’s led by a gruff hard man, Detective Senior Sergeant Paul Mayger. He calls me ‘son’. Some people find him difficult to get on with, but I respect him: he always backs his troops when we’re in the firing line from our bosses or the newspapers.
And our cases are always in the papers. If we’re called to a crime scene inside an inner-city housing commission block at night, it’s no surprise to walk out into the glare of the photographers’ flashbulbs and be on the next day’s front pages. Politicians read the papers, which means our bosses, right up to the commissioner, always want to know what’s happening, because each of them is only a phone call away from some MP or minister demanding to know why it’s not been solved yet.
As the boss, Paul has to deal with all of that exposure, and I quickly learn to trust him to make the right decisions. It only gets harder when we do make an arrest because, unlike in other squads, our work will always be examined in public. Each Homicide case means giving evidence either during an inquest or at a trial in the Supreme Court. And that means more newspaper attention.
It’s high stakes, and addictive. Each homicide means someone’s life. You can’t afford any mistakes. Within the squad, we work in teams, with one detective sergeant to two detective constables. I’m grateful Jaco is my sergeant. It means he’s there to lead me through it.
Jaco becomes my mentor, in the same way as Jim Williams at Hornsby.
An understated man, though always well-dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt with cufflinks, he seems to radiate calmness. Even his smile is reassuring. Following him through the corridors of our headquarters in Chatswood, I watch how he brings people together, greeting everyone from the region commander to a junior analyst with a handshake or a hug, and even stopping to talk to the bloke guarding the boom gate outside, ‘Hey champion, how you going?’
Like Jim, Jaco’s also meticulous, ruling off each task as it gets done in his red job book. And, like Jim, he is driven. We work long days and right through weekends. If we’re preparing a case for court, we might work until midnight, when we’re dead on our feet under the office lights, then come back the next day at 5am. Somehow, Jaco is always there before us. His goatee hides a double chin and he chain-smokes, while I’m younger and training every day but I look at him and wonder, How does he outlast me?
It’s mental toughness, I realise. Jaco can stand things that would break me. Six years ago, as a detective constable like I am, he worked a serial murder case, where six elderly women were bashed to death across Sydney’s north shore. The newspapers called it the work of the Granny Killer and Jaco was part of the team sent to catch him. The longer that they took to do it, the more people would be murdered.
Jaco was there, outside the house, when their main suspect, John Wayne Glover, killed his last victim, Joan Sinclair. Jaco went in with the other cops to find her killer lying in the bathtub and arrested him. It was a good result in one sense, but they had to live with the fact Joan might still be alive if they had moved a little faster.
Like Jim, Jaco knows how to work an interview. A gentle soul himself, he’s not afraid to be ruthless or put somebody under pressure. If it suits him, he’ll bring me in as the attack dog and the two of us will work the interview together. Some people weep. Some people sit in silence, terrified. One time, I watch a suspect’s nose start bleeding when we tell him we suspect him of a murder.
And if it takes a toll on us, and on our suspects, it does the same at home as well. Working a case, we might be gone for days or weeks. Debbie gets left alone at home with two young kids. She says she’s losing me to the Homicide Squad and though I tell her that she isn’t, I know there’s some truth in what she’s saying. I am making more money now than when we got together, which makes things easier in some ways, but we both know that if I have to choose between a weekend at home and working a murder, or between sitting up all night at our kitchen table preparing for a court case and going to bed with Debbie, then that choice is easy.
If I lose myself in work, I figure, it is justified because I’m trying to catch killers.
And I love it. I just can’t get enough. In Homicide, we take a lot of pride in our work and wear dark suits, partly because Jaco does and partly to intimidate the crooks, so they know they are dealing with professionals. We look the part, and pretty soon, I feel it. We’re the elite. We solve the worst crimes you can think of.
When we arrive in some quiet country town to investigate a killing, you can see people thinking, The A-Team are here.
I don’t realise how the job is changing me in other ways. Ways that nobody expected.
* * *
We only get the bare details at first: Martin Davidson, 60 years old, medium build, grey hair, blue eyes. Last seen in Waitara on 18 September 1995. The Homicide Squad is given the case and Jaco is asked to lead it.
We base ourselves in the nearby Hornsby Police Station, where I started out in the police, near where Martin ran a slot-car track that kids would visit in the evenings and at weekends to race electric cars around a giant, twisting indoor ring. The kids’ parents tell us Martin always told them not to worry when they dropped their kids off, that he would look after their children and they were not to hurry back. We go to the track and find a cardboard box on which someone has scrawled: ‘You paedophile.’
One boy tells us Martin was having sex with him. That makes the boy a potential suspect. I’ve seen enough in the police by now that an allegation of child sexual assault no longer shocks me. I also know that, even if it turns out Martin was a paedophile, we can’t let sympathy for his victims stop us finding out what happened.
Then we look at Martin’s business partner, Bruce Matthews, who first reported the 60-year-old as missing. Matthews also reported his own wife missing, about eight years before.
Her name was Bernadette. The missing persons file says she was 33, a medium build, with brown hair and brown eyes. Last seen in Belmore, southwest Sydney, on New Year’s Day, 1987. Last seen by her husband.
I speak to the cops who followed up her disappearance. They say they suspected Matthews was good for her murder but never managed to lock him up for it. When I ask, it turns out they never even did an interview with him.
I don’t understand it. It scares me that any cops could leave a case like this without working it harder. Maybe it was because Bernadette was only listed as missing, not murdered. Surely, they would have done more if her body was recovered. I can’t help wondering how many other cases like this there are out there.
Like Jim, Jaco encourages me to trust my instincts. While, publicly at least, the police treat Matthews as the worried business partner, we call him in and this time, Jaco says I should lead the interview.
I plan an ambush, politely inviting Matthews to sit down in the interview room and go through the formalities of asking if he can confirm his name and telling him he’s not obliged to say or do anything, then run through the details of his business partner’s recent disappearance, before dropping it on him about his wife’s disappearance.
There’s no reaction. It’s like a light has suddenly switched off behind his eyes.
Matthews and I sit in that room for hours, long into the night, as I try to lock him into his version of what happened. When exactly did he last see her? Had they argued? He gives me little more than the bare facts we know from the missing persons report; Bernadette just disappeared.
Afterwards, Jaco suggests we try increasing the pressure, and put listening devices in Matthews’ home to start recording his reaction.
We turn up without warning to question him about both his wife’s disappearance and Martin’s. Jaco makes no secret of the fact we think he was involved in both. Every time, Matthews just stares back at us in answer, perfectly calm, saying sorry but he can’t help us. Like there is nothing going on inside his head. No panic. No emotion.
We are convinced it is an act, only we cannot prove it.
We search his home and find a hydroponic cannabis setup, so charge him with drug offences. It’s another way of building pressure. We intercept his phone calls and listen as he telephones a store to organise a purchase and gives his name as ‘Paul Jacob.’ It’s strange, but what does that tell us?
One night, Matthews builds himself a bonfire in his backyard and just stands there, watching the flames.
Then he also goes missing. He’s on bail over the drug charges, so we circulate his details nationally and the cops pick him up in Innisfail, a small town in Far North Queensland. Jaco and I fly there, along with Glenn, the third member of our team. Knowing Matthews must be feeling the pressure now, and hoping he is close to buckling, when we walk into the local police station, I say: ‘Surprise! We’re here! You can’t run from us, Bruce.’
He sits there with his vacant look as we lay out the facts: he’s facing trial, he’s now skipped bail and we also know he previously used a false medical certificate to get out of attending court over the drug charges.
And then there’s his links to the disappearance of both his wife and his business partner. ‘We’re not going away,’ I tell him.
Once again he sits and stares at us. It’s frustrating. If he killed them, we need to understand the motive. Was it financial? Did they argue? We need to get inside his head.
We put Matthews back in the cells and watch to see what he does next. Maybe he’ll arc up, we think. Maybe he’ll pace up and down. Maybe he’ll ask to spe
ak to someone. Any one of these things might give us something to work with, an insight into his mind, or another opportunity to keep pushing down on him. But Matthews just looks around blankly, lies down and closes his eyes. He starts to snore.
I turn to Jaco, saying I understand that everyone is different. But sometimes when I’m under pressure, whether it’s guilt about something I’ve done or something different, it’s just easier to sleep.
The next day, Matthews sits in court as we get the extradition warrant to take him out of Queensland. He sits between us on the plane as we fly with him back to Sydney. During the flight, we try to talk to him, to keep the pressure up, but he only gives us flat, unemotional responses to our questions. At home, it’s my son Jake’s fifth birthday, 19 June 1996, and I’m missing his party for this?
At least getting Matthews back and into a prison in Sydney will be another shock to him, we figure. A few nights inside may change the dynamic. He’ll be vulnerable and frightened. More willing, perhaps, to cooperate in the hope of not being sent there again.
After leaving him to stew for a few days, I telephone Corrective Services, asking them to let Matthews know Glenn and I will be coming out for another interview this afternoon. I want him to get the message: We’re coming. It’s a matter of time before we get you.
As we’re about to leave the office, another detective, Andy Waterman, calls out, ‘Where are you off to?’
‘To see Bruce Matthews.’
‘Oh. Well, I don’t think he’ll be talking to you.’
Andy’s a detective sergeant and I’m just a detective constable, but I’m certain I know how to play this.
‘That’s up to him,’ I say. ‘He’s definitely going to see me.’
Andy’s grinning, like I’ve said something funny. ‘But I don’t think he’ll be talking,’ he says. ‘He’s necked himself.’ He says it like the punchline to a joke.