I Catch Killers

by Gary Jubelin

  * * *

  On Wednesday evening, after three days of court hearings, I make my way to the boxing match. Dave Letizia, the boxer I trained with in Perth, has flown over to work my corner with another fighter, Glenn McDougal, and I’m grateful. I can think of no one better. Craig, who I count as a friend despite our disagreements over the William Tyrrell investigation, is also here supporting me. Jake and Gemma are among the spectators. So are the Bowraville mob. As the announcer calls my name, I can hear the families cheering, calling me their ‘Gumbaynggirr warrior’ and shouting out, ‘Knock ’em down, Bowra!’

  How good would it be if Dad could see me here, like this? I ask myself. I owe him so much. He made me unbreakable.

  Never give up.

  It helps me find the confidence to win.

  Is Everyone Happy?

  February 2018: 32 years in

  Forget anything else you’re doing, I tell the strike force. Focus on Paul, either to finally eliminate him from the investigation or find solid evidence against him.

  The start of February marks my third anniversary of leading the search for William Tyrrell and I don’t want to see a fourth one. At the end of last year, the Homicide Squad also got a new boss, Scott, the detective superintendent. He doesn’t want cases sitting on the books – I guess that, like all squad commanders, his life is ruled by statistics – and has brought in a rule saying all investigations should run for only six months before being reviewed to see whether they can be sent to the coroner.

  ‘This case is still solvable,’ I tell Scott. He doesn’t seem convinced. We brief him on the plan to focus everything on Paul and he gives his commitment to support it, but others on the strike force overhear him talking on the phone, saying, ‘It’s a waste of time, we’ll never get anyone for this.’

  During my recorded phone call with Paul on 3 November, I asked him again about the Spider-Man suit we planted on the forest track where he was walking. He said he saw a white top or a white bit of cloth on his walk, but not the blue and red material of the suit itself. I don’t know what to make of that. Like everything with Paul, it doesn’t lead us further forward, nor does it give me a good reason to stop pursuing him.

  Since then, we’ve kept on asking questions. We’ve approached his close friends and family but they didn’t tell us anything. We’ve still not got any DNA, forensics or witnesses that tie Paul to William’s disappearance, only an empty period of time, when he says he was on his own that morning.

  The biggest absence is the lack of any forensic evidence from the morning William went missing. For months now, I’ve been submitting written reports suggesting an update to the police force’s standard operating procedures regarding missing children, so a separate investigation team would be set up within hours, operating independently of any ongoing search. Had that happened, a crime scene might have been set up on Benaroon Drive, we might have gathered DNA, or fingerprints, perhaps a tyre track in the dirt. We’ll never know what we are missing and I don’t want to see this happen again, the next time a child disappears. But my suggestion goes unanswered.

  In April, Scott holds a formal review of the investigation, saying he wants to send it to the coroner. The coroner’s role is to finally establish how a person died. Once that is done, it is no longer an active investigation.

  We have too few detectives, I tell Scott. Right now, Strike Force Rosann is three detectives from the Homicide Squad, including myself and Craig, who is also currently working on a second, high-profile investigation. We have one detective from the Unsolved Homicide Unit, who is on annual leave, two from the Sex Crimes Squad, one on loan from Robbery and Serious Crime and two local detectives from Port Macquarie. After the review, I’m told to send the local detectives back to their commander, while Sex Crimes say they also want Laura back working with them.

  I formally protest, writing in my monthly progress report that the removal of these three detectives will have a significant and negative impact on the investigation. Despite this, I’m told all three are to leave the strike force.

  We now have over 2500 hours of listening device material piled up. It would take the entire strike force, working full time, more than 10 weeks to go through it. I ask for four more cops to clear the backlog. I don’t get them.

  * * *

  In the mid-afternoon of 2 May, I lean back on the bonnet of my car and look around me at the bushland outside the old, abandoned police station at Kew, near Kendall. This is to be our form-up point, where I’ll brief the strike force on the operation ahead and where they’ll wait, ready to respond if I need them, while I go into Paul’s house, alone, to talk to him.

  Again, I’m not going to collect evidence; I just want to provoke conversation, which we can then record on the listening devices inside his house. What we’ve heard so far on those tapes is contradictory and uncertain. We need to keep him talking.

  So I am going to confront him. The plan, which my bosses have signed up to, is to go in alone because we want Paul to identify me as representing the police force. We want him to think that I, alone, can resolve this. So, if he decides to reach out, he will do so to me.

  I’ll tell him how we’re planning a huge search of local bushland. No such search has been undertaken since William went missing and we need to do one before the inquest can begin, if only to be able to rule, with forensic certainty, that the three-year-old got lost in the bush.

  It’s also an opportunity to see how Paul reacts. A surveillance team is hidden in the bush behind his house, waiting to follow him if he leaves the property after my visit. At Kew, we get word they are in place and, also, Paul’s daughter is in there with him.

  That’s good, I think. I’d like him to have someone there.

  The low sun casts long shadows among the gathered detectives. ‘Can you show me how to record on my phone?’ I ask one. I’m planning to record this conversation with Paul on my mobile, just like I asked Greg to record our phone call in November, and for the same reasons. I’m wary of going to Paul’s house alone like this. I don’t enjoy putting anyone through this kind of experience and being there alone will be unusual for a police investigation. It means there will be no one there to defend me should I need it, or to back up my version of events.

  She shows me.

  ‘OK, got it,’ I say, putting the phone back into my jacket pocket, and getting into my car. On the drive to Paul’s house, my phone rings. It’s a real estate agent, calling about an apartment I’m trying to buy in Sydney. The purchase is meant to be the last step in putting the divorce from Tracy behind me.

  Fuck. Everything always happens at once. I pull over and take the call. The sale will continue.

  Approaching Paul’s house, I press record, narrating what I’m doing out of habit: ‘Time is 5.20. I’m just going into Benaroon Drive to speak to Paul. It’s the 2nd of May. Just pulling up now. Pulling in right behind his car.’

  Again, I cannot know that the recordings of my conversations with Paul will end up being tendered in court, when I will be the person put on trial.

  Inside, the house smells old and musty. The rooms inside it are cluttered. Paul leads me past a lounge room containing an old-fashioned sofa with curved wooden armrests and floral cushions. His kitchen fittings are timber and green Laminex. A tea towel is tucked over the handle of the upright stove. Through a glass door, I can see the verandah overlooking the road, where Paul sat with his tea and toast just before William went missing.

  I take one of the chairs and put my phone down on top of a stack of paperwork on the kitchen table.

  Paul watches me. Since I arrived, he’s kept it very civil.

  His daughter’s sitting with him. My stomach twists. It made me feel dirty going through the niceties of ‘G’day, Paul, how are ya?’ at the front door, knowing what I am going to tell them.

  I stumble over my words, ‘Look guys, I, I don’t know where to start with, start with this –’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paul interrupts.

 
‘And, er, as I said, er, um . . . I’m not interested in the gathering of evidence or whether, um, you know, you’ve committed an offence.’ I tell them I’ve got concerns about his erratic behaviour, and about some of the answers he has given us in the past, which we’re not convinced are true.

  ‘Such as?’ Paul asks.

  ‘Such as, from the time William disappeared –’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘– we don’t know where you were for two hours.’

  ‘Well, the main thing was I went looking for the boy.’

  He and I keep cutting across each other, starting to say something but being interrupted. His daughter watches me in silence. I get to the point: ‘How do you think we convict people?’ I ask.

  He says nothing.

  ‘Do you think every murderer I have locked up has sat there and gone, “Yeah, I did it”?’ I ask.

  A television is playing elsewhere in the house, but not loudly enough to trouble the listening devices, so long as they are working.

  ‘No,’ I answer for him. ‘We get witness statements. We get statements from people. We follow up phone records, we get CCTV footage.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paul is cautious. I’m leading the conversation. There is a strategy in place here. Each word I say, the way I sit, the way I look at him, is meant to make him think I’m in charge here. Look at me, I’m saying to him. I’m the person to reach out to. It’s like holding someone under water.

  ‘We do stuff like the Spider-Man suit,’ I say.

  Three times Paul starts to interrupt, but falters.

  ‘It’s not on people’s word,’ I tell him. This is the biggest police investigation in the state, maybe in the whole country. We have over 15,000 pieces of information.

  Time to let him take a breath. ‘Paul, I’m seeing, I’m seeing decency in you, and I’m seeing some confusion in you, and I’m seeing some trouble, a troubled mind in you. That’s genuinely what I’m seeing.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘And I am really trying to get to the bottom of this, just so we can bring William home, for his family. But we’re not getting that because I’m not getting to the bottom of what you’re saying. I’m not getting the truth from you.’

  ‘You are getting the truth.’

  Back under the water. By now, I am committed. I feel no emotion.

  ‘We have turned this town upside down,’ I go on. ‘I know things about this town, and people in this town, that you would have no idea about.’

  His daughter laughs. The moment’s lost. I have to hold him under the surface again.

  ‘There’s problems in this town but we have eliminated all those people. They weren’t here; they were somewhere else. We can’t eliminate you, Paul.’

  I let him take a breath of air, talking about the interview at the police station in August last year, when he broke down in tears talking about his childhood. I tell him I felt sorry for him.

  His daughter tries to interrupt us. I ignore her.

  ‘And I honestly see, with a lot of people, when they’re holding back secrets,’ I say. ‘Sometimes the start of working through it is to just own what’s happened, and once they’ve owned what’s happened, then they can start rebuilding their life.’

  He looks at me.

  ‘Could it have been a case of an accident with William?’ I ask him. This is another case theory: William’s foster father was due back from town at around the time the three-year-old went missing. Soon after, William’s foster mother, Jane Fiore, told one of the first cops on the scene, ‘William had had enough of sitting and started jumping off the deck and was being a tiger, he kept going around the side of the house to see if his father was coming.’

  William’s sister also said he was looking for ‘Daddy’s car’ before he disappeared.

  I put this theory to Paul: his neighbours said they heard a car’s wheels on gravel around the time William went missing. Paul drove a silver four-wheel drive, similar to William’s foster father’s. Paul was packing the car that morning, ahead of driving to Lismore to pick up his brother from hospital.

  ‘If he ran over here all excited, all excited to see his dad, thinking it’s his dad’s car,’ I tell Paul. ‘You’re moving the car.’

  Or, maybe it wasn’t Paul who was driving. Maybe it was his wife, Heather.

  ‘I’m not here to sit in judgment,’ I tell Paul.

  He looks at me. His skin is paper thin. He’s an old man.

  I tell him that, if William had come running over, all excited, thinking he saw his daddy’s car, that’s understandable. ‘It’s not something that you’ve got to carry with you.’

  His daughter interrupts, but I keep talking. ‘If that’s what’s happened, we can deal with that.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying,’ Paul says. He looks down at the table.

  We are both silent, for a moment.

  Paul looks up. ‘But there’s no way in the world I would have done anything like that,’ he tells me.

  * * *

  Late into the night, the listening devices record Paul talking to his daughter about the police investigation. I wonder: Has she started to doubt her own father? It’s one of the cruellest things I’ve ever done, to sow suspicion among a family, but I have to. This isn’t about me or her, or her emotions. It is my job to hold her father there, beneath the surface, until I know for sure whether we can exclude him.

  The next day, Paul wakes up early.

  I go back to his house that afternoon.

  Again, I press record on my phone as I pull up outside. Music is playing somewhere inside the house.

  I knock. He comes to the door.

  ‘Hey, Paul. How are you?’

  ‘Good, good.’ Only, I am sure he isn’t.

  He tells me a solicitor has told him not to talk to me.

  ‘That’s interesting, Paul. It’s the disappearance of a three-year-old and you don’t want to help us?’

  ‘I’ve helped you every way I can, and you come here and accuse me of doing it. And you say I’m not helping you? You’re kidding.’ He says I’ve lied to him about some of the evidence, like the neighbours who said they heard a car’s wheels on gravel around the time William went missing. He didn’t have a gravel driveway then, Paul says. His was a ‘sand-based thing’ instead.

  ‘I’ve helped you all I could,’ Paul says again. ‘I’ve had youse go through my house. I’ve done everything I can to help youse, and all you want to do is put shit on me.’

  ‘Put shit on you, Paul?

  ‘Yes, you did. Last night.’

  ‘I put shit on you last night?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ He is grim-faced, insistent.

  ‘How did I put shit on you?’

  ‘By saying that you better plead guilty or else.’

  I did not say that.

  He’s angry now. Standing in the doorway, pointing his finger at me. ‘“If you don’t plead guilty, it will go on further.” That’s what you said.’

  ‘I did not say that, Paul.’

  ‘Well, it mightn’t have been the exact words, but that’s what you were saying, Gary. And I’m not talking anymore.’

  He closes the door.

  Back inside the car, I switch off the phone recording.

  * * *

  Through May and June, I have a number of meetings with the deputy State coroner, Harriet Grahame, about holding an inquest into William’s disappearance. Like with Michael Atkins and Matt Leveson’s disappearance, I think I’ve pushed Paul as far as I can with police work. Maybe, like with Matt’s death, an inquest can help break this case open.

  The coroner and I agree an inquest would allow us to formally establish William’s disappearance was the result of human intervention. I say I’d like the hearings to focus on Paul as a priority; I know how long a court process can run and because of Paul’s age, his evidence may suffer if we delay talking to him. I don’t want to be working on this case in 10 years, wondering what we might have learned if we’d moved more
quickly. The coroner seems receptive to the idea.

  The counsel assisting the coroner is Gerard Craddock SC, who I last dealt with when he chose not to call me to give evidence at the inquest into the 2015 death of Courtney Topic, who was shot by police. I ask what they want to do with all the surveillance recordings we have of Paul. I’d like to bring him back in for interview and ask him to explain what he meant by some of them.

  ‘No,’ says Gerard. ‘Don’t do that. We’ll do it at the inquest.’

  * * *

  On 21 June 2018, I get a call from my daughter, Gemma’s husband, Matt. Their first son, my grandson, has just been born. His name is Zion. I’m not ready to be a grandpa. In my mind, I’m still 21. I also know that Gemma is part-way through a law degree and has been accepted to join the New South Wales Police Force. As a parent, I know being a mum will ask even more of her and there is little I can do to help.

  All these thoughts disappear the moment I see Zion. He is perfect.

  I see Debbie, Gemma’s mum, at the hospital. We smile at each other and I tell her, ‘We must have done something right to get such a beautiful grandchild’.

  * * *

  A little more than a month later, on 31 July 2018, I sit at the head of a long table in a briefing room in the Homicide Squad offices, looking at tired faces. The coroner has asked for a brief of evidence by the end of the year, laying out everything we know about William’s disappearance, which means we now have a huge amount of work ahead.

  In total, we’ve interviewed 263 local residents, collected CCTV from 12 businesses in Kendall and 169 cameras beyond it and received reports of over 2000 different sightings of William from around the planet.

  We still don’t know what happened. The last time William’s foster parents came to meet us, I could see the pain of this not-knowing written on their faces, as well as those of every member of the strike force. Looking down the table now, I see the same crestfallen faces.

  As usual, Craig doesn’t say much during the briefing. More than most of us, perhaps, he is adrift amid the ocean of what we don’t know about what happened to William, with over 3500 items on the e@gle.i computer system now waiting for him to review them.