by Gary Jubelin
‘Can we leave you? We’ve got to go and do some work,’ we’d ask him on our way out. He’d still be floating round the pool when we got back in the afternoon, staring up at us as he downed another drink.
Another time, Jason and I arranged to meet him in a country town but when we got to his property, it was empty. We stayed a week, going back each day until he turned up. This time, when we parked, he started walking to the car, revving a chainsaw he was carrying and looking at us with a strange, violent expression.
Suddenly, he laughed. We lived. We still needed to stay close to him, because he was a witness. Like any couple, he and I fell out at times. He called me once to say that he was muscling up, ‘And then I’m fucking coming after you, cunt.’
‘Really? You’re muscling up? You’re coming after me? Well, fucking bring it on.’ I hung up.
A week later I got another call. ‘Oh, sorry, mate. I probably overstepped the mark a little there.’
Nothing has changed. I walk behind him on the beach at Port Macquarie, shouting, ‘Mate, come on!’ He waves a bottle of bourbon. ‘Mate, I love you like a brother. I’m not going to let anybody hurt you,’ I tell him.
Eventually, he takes the stand.
But Axeman is only one part of the nightmare.
* * *
The trial lasts a month and I can feel it slipping away from us before the first week is over. I’m used to prosecution lawyers having questions for the detectives about different pieces of evidence, or how a certain witness is likely to manage in court, but we’re asked nothing.
One morning the prosecutor says he wants Evelyn’s father, Billy Greenup, to give evidence. I try to say Billy’s been hit hard by the trauma of his daughter’s death. He drinks, and he and I have barely spoken. The prosecutor won’t hear it, so I drive to Bowraville, where it’s baking hot and find Billy, but he won’t do it. He’s nervous and horrified at the prospect of going into a court full of strangers and talking about his daughter. I try saying he should do it for Evelyn and do get him back to Port Macquarie but, while Billy and I are sitting outside the court on the footpath, talking through what him going inside the building will involve, he throws up all over my feet.
Inside, the prosecutor says that we don’t need him now. I tell Billy, feeling rotten at what I just put him through and am shocked when he grabs me and wraps me in his arms. He says he’s sorry for not talking to me, and for the vomit.
‘I know what you blokes have done for us,’ he says and we hug it out.
Another evening, I head into the local police station to do some work when a local cop in uniform comes up, smiling, and says, ‘Are you the ones bussing in all the Abos?’
‘What?’
‘Bringing all the Abos in for the trial.’ He laughs.
‘You’re a fucking disgrace,’ I tell him. ‘Get out of my sight.’ His laughter dies.
Back in court the next morning, I look at the jury, who are all white, and wonder if they feel the same way.
How much does racism, or at best, unconscious bias, come into their decision-making process? I’ll never know because, as a cop, I’m not allowed to speak to them. They’re the ones who get to judge the evidence Jason and I have collected. They have to choose whether to believe the black witnesses, who often look so out of place and nervous on the stand, and say Evelyn had disappeared on the night of 4 October 1990, after a party on the Mission, or the white woman who ran the Reibels store on Bowraville’s main street and swore she saw the little girl inside her store several days later.
This matters because if Evelyn did not disappear on the night of the party then there is no connection to James Hide, who was also in the house that night. In his closing speech, James’s barrister tells the jury the white woman’s evidence was ‘absolutely like a beacon’. It could guide you.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he says, ‘the death of Evelyn Greenup, there is no doubt it was a tragedy.
‘It is a fact that the Crown case comprises in large part the evidence of a large number of people who were extremely drunk at the time. It includes the evidence of a prison informer who has been convicted of perjury,’ – that’s Axeman. ‘And it includes the evidence of someone who you could only characterise as being a drunk now, and he has been for many years,’ – that’s Hilton, who said James had whispered to him about killing people and burying their bodies.
‘You simply cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and you might think that is the reality that the Crown is inviting you to embark on,’ James’s barrister continues. Listening, I feel all my certainty about the case drain out onto the courtroom floor. Jason’s shoulders slump forward. It’s taken us almost 10 years of work to get to this point and we are both exhausted.
According to court practice, the prosecutor has already given his closing speech, which means the defence lawyer’s is the last voice the jury hears, other than the judge’s. James’s barrister knows what words to use. These are decent, ordinary people. Port Macquarie is a small town set amid farming country. It isn’t the big city. ‘In all, it’s my submission to you that the evidence that you have received in this trial doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when you look at it objectively, as you will, and in those circumstances it’s my submission that you will have no problem at all returning a verdict of not guilty.’
Gary, Gary, Gary
3 March 2006: 21 years in
The jury walk out of the courtroom to decide their verdict, and I head back alone to my motel room, crashing out, fully clothed, on the bed.
I’m sleeping when a strange voice wakes me: ‘Gary, Gary, Gary . . .’
I look around and there’s no voice, just a panicky feeling that threatens to overwhelm me. It’s like I’m in the ocean, having fallen off my surfboard, and am being tumbled underwater.
Walking into the autumn sunshine, the colours of the motel walls are more vivid, and the shrieking of the lorikeets in the gum trees behind it sharper than I remember. I walk up the road towards the courthouse. I should feel comfortable in Port Macquarie, but I do not. I know this town. I brought the kids up here for weekends on the beach. The first few months of the investigation into Terry Falconer’s death was based in the police station. The place feels alien today. Arriving at the courthouse, I climb the steps and go inside.
The jury are coming back.
Too soon, I think. It’s rarely a good sign when they come back this quickly.
* * *
There are riot police in the courtroom. A decision had been made above our heads to send them here in case there’s trouble at the verdict, and I think that it is shameful. For the past month, the courthouse has been full of all three of the murdered children’s relatives and no one has caused problems. Now there are rows of big, intimidating cops in black uniforms taking up the chairs at the front of the court, so that some of these family members cannot even find a space to listen to the verdict and have to wait in the hall outside instead.
It sends a message that the police don’t trust the victims’ families. Jason and I are caught in the middle and, frankly, feeling closer to the families than we do to the cops right now.
The jury walk in and take their seats. They find James Hide not guilty.
James doesn’t react.
I look at him. There is no way of knowing what’s going on inside his head. He’s big, a beast to look at, but he’s no dope.
As one, the children’s families stand, turn their backs on the judge and jury and walk out of the court. I am so proud of them; it is the powerful peaceful protest I can imagine. Outside, one of the older women collapses and the others form a circle around her. They weep. They shout, but there is no violence.
* * *
It feels like somebody’s reached in and ripped out my guts. I can accept defeat, but the experience of letting those families down is more than I can manage. Their pain pours out and fills the courtroom.
Jason and I feel the water level rising. We told the families to trust us and we’ve failed them. The
water is above our heads.
Leaving the court building, I’m still kicking beneath the surface. All the effort we’ve put into the trial – organising witnesses, answering the families’ questions, trying to motivate the prosecutor, who never seemed to care about the case like we did – has left me with little strength.
I’ve given everything I could to bring this case to trial. It’s cost me my marriage – I’ve drowned myself in work and now all that I can see is blackness. And for what?
I walk away from the court.
* * *
‘Not guilty’ is a result, I think. It doesn’t mean ‘innocent’. Like the judge told the jury, the defendant doesn’t have to prove his innocence in court. Instead, the prosecution has to prove his guilt, and prove it beyond reasonable doubt. We failed. That is the justice system. It gives you a result.
* * *
The children’s families ask us, ‘What can we do now?’
I tell them, ‘Nothing.’
Once somebody’s been tried for an offence, that’s it, you can’t put them on trial over the same offence again. The lawyers call it double jeopardy. There’s nothing you can do unless you want to change the law itself.
‘Let’s do that, then,’ the families say.
I love their courage and determination. But I doubt that I can help them any further.
* * *
Jason and I load up our cars to drive our separate ways, him north to Ballina, where he has taken a promotion to detective sergeant and is living with his new wife, and me down south to Sydney.
‘Yeah, all right. See you.’
‘See you.’
We don’t know how to talk about it. We don’t know how to deal with the emotion.
The two of us have been partners now for almost a decade. It’s been like a marriage sometimes, in the way it was 24/7 on jobs, living with each other for weeks at a time while working in Bowraville, or driving for half a day to other crime scenes, working a full day when we got there, then checking into some cheap motel, trying to keep the cost down because we’re on a travel allowance, so we would get a double room and move the furniture around so the beds were further apart and the wardrobe in between us, to get an illusion of private space.
Jason knows my family. He plays football with some of my cousins. He’s got so close he ended up marrying my younger brother’s ex-girlfriend. He’s smart, he’s diligent. He cares about the victims. He’s one of the few people I can talk to about my father. Despite all that, I think we both find it easier to walk away because we remind each other of this verdict.
We don’t talk for six months.
* * *
Not one of my bosses calls me to say ‘Good effort’, ‘You did your best’, or ask how I’m doing. When I get back to work in Chatswood, people joke, ‘How was your holiday in sunny Port Macquarie?’ I get a message from the Homicide commander, telling me not to talk to the media about the case.
* * *
At home, I start to fight with Pam. It’s like I’m on auto-destruct. I don’t care about myself right now, so I don’t care about our relationship.
One day, the two of us are walking along the beach near home when Pam tells me, ‘You just have to let it go.’
She’s right, and her advice is well-intentioned, but it has the reverse effect. I want to scream. Fuck you, I think. You don’t know anything about it.
We have a huge fight and Pam leaves for a few days. It feels like our relationship is over. I’m stuck at home alone, thinking about the murders.
If I had the time or ability to realise what I’m going through, maybe things might be different. But I’m not making rational decisions. Instead, my attitude to every choice or obstacle in life right now is, Fuck you, I’m happy to take myself to the bottom. I’m dragging Pam down with me.
Soon afterwards, I tell her I’ve had enough. The two of us together are too intense. While I’ve been working on the Bowraville and Terry Falconer killings, Pam’s been solving gang and bikie murders. When each of us wanted some down time, the other was working. There’d been too many nights when one or both of us was out, working on different cases, or the phone rang and she would tell me not to answer it, but both of us knew I would.
Pam tells me I’m an extremist. That I need to feel pain and can only feel compassion for murder victims, not the people around me. That I treat witnesses, bosses, suspects, even my own family, like they have no value other than to help me solve cases. That it’s like an addiction.
We decide to call it quits. I tell myself our breakup will protect me, that I’ve let life get out of balance again, with too much work, too much darkness and not enough light. Pam tried her best with me, and we loved each other, but both of us were Homicide detectives. Being together meant there was never any respite from our jobs.
* * *
You can’t escape your cases. One month after the not guilty verdict, on 4 April 2006, Gordon Wood is arrested in London over the alleged murder of his fiancée, Caroline Byrne. It has been five years since I interviewed him in London during 2001.
Over that time, Caroline’s father, Tony, has protested at the slow pace of the investigation, even getting it raised in the State Parliament in October 2002. Like with the Bowraville murders, this case, too, has been a constant battle for resources. In February 2004, we’d sent a brief of evidence to the State Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), asking for their advice on charging Gordon with murder. Paul Jacob, who is still leading the investigation, went back and forth with the DPP for years, revising the brief, until in March this year, the DPP gave him the go-ahead.
The case made more headlines, with one photographer even getting on the plane carrying Gordon back to Sydney.
* * *
I keep looking backwards. I’m frustrated that so long after Caroline’s death and the deaths of the Bowraville children, their families still don’t have an explanation of what happened. I dwell on the fact that, around the same time as the Bowraville murders, I was working an hour away in Coffs Harbour with the Armed Hold-Up Squad, one of a dozen cops chasing something else, who could have been better used investigating the children’s killings. After a decade spent trying to put that right, I’m ashamed not to have jailed whoever killed Colleen, Evelyn and Clinton.
Within weeks of the verdict, I am approached by a woman from Bowraville, who wants to ask about Clinton, the third of the murder victims.
Have I heard about the truck drivers who saw a white man standing over the body of a black teenager lying in the road, on the morning after Clinton disappeared?
‘No,’ I tell her. ‘I haven’t.’
Norco Corner
19 September 2006: 21 years in
‘We’re in the delivery truck, coming along here quite early in the morning,’ says Michael as we retrace the route he took 15 years ago, on the morning 16-year-old Clinton went missing.
One of the former truck drivers I’ve been told about, he shows me how they drove into Bowraville from the southeast, where Wilson Road takes a blind left-hand turn known locally as Norco Corner.
My bosses told me to leave this case alone after the not guilty verdict, but I can’t do it. When you’ve been here and driven these roads, when you’ve looked up at the dark forest where Evelyn’s and Clinton’s bodies were found on the hillsides above the town, it’s impossible to leave it.
Only now, with Jason’s move to Ballina and the way the case has broken our relationship, Strike Force Ancud is me, working in my own time, or when I can justify getting away from work at Chatswood to come back here.
‘It’s 3.30, quarter to four, maybe 4.30, in that pre-dawn time,’ Michael goes on. ‘It’s dark, with no street lighting.’ He was one of two men delivering meat to the butchers in Bowraville that morning. The other, Greg, was driving the truck.
‘We’ve got quite powerful driving lights, so we could see him. The guy was lying with his head facing down by the hill.’
I turn to look at where Michael is pointing.
‘We had to go around him, pull in hard at the corner,’ he says.
Greg swore and yelled at the person lying motionless on the bitumen. He didn’t answer.
They saw another man, standing beside a stationary car with no lights on and its boot open. He walked towards them, out of the shadows and round to Greg’s window.
‘I leaned across and said, “Mate, what’s going on? We could have hit that guy, he’s lying in the middle of the road there.”’
The man told them it was all right, that the figure lying on the road was blind drunk but not to worry about it, he’d already called the police.
At the time, they just accepted it. There were no payphones on that road back then, and this was before anyone had mobiles, but maybe he’d used a phone in someone’s house.
Michael says the car looked like a Galant. It was a mustard colour, he says, somewhere between a yellow and an orange.
I think, James Hide’s mum drove a Chrysler Galant.
Michael says he didn’t know why the car had its boot up. Maybe the man standing in the road had been trying to put the sleeping man inside it, or maybe he’d just pulled him out. The man standing in the road was white, says Michael. The early-morning twilight made it hard to tell his age, but maybe somewhere between his mid-20s and early 30s, stocky, with brown hair and a little chubby in the cheeks.
Like James.
The figure lying on the bitumen was Aboriginal, and younger than the other man, says Michael. Maybe 18 to 25, slim build, long scraggy hair. He didn’t have shoes on.
Clinton fits that appearance, or close to it. And he wasn’t wearing any shoes when his body was discovered. Surely, this is important. I don’t like being on my own, without Jason to ask what he makes of this. For so long, it has been the two of us fighting together and now I feel lost. This evidence raises more questions than it answers.