I Catch Killers

by Gary Jubelin

  * * *

  Outside the cops, William Tyrrell’s foster mum, Jane Fiore, calls me often, though both of us have been told not to talk to each other. She tells me the police are shitbagging me to her, saying that I’m a bad detective, that I have mental health problems.

  I’m starting to lose faith in myself and those around me. I get a sense of what I’ve put people like Paul through. In June, I go on holidays to Portugal with Jake, while he’s on two weeks’ leave from Afghanistan. The plan is for both of us to find some quiet and go surfing, just like we did when he was little.

  It’s difficult to find the peace we’re after. I can tell Jake’s mind is still with his mates, on active deployment. It helps give me some perspective – I can’t whinge to him about what I’m going through when he will soon be heading back to a war zone – but I am never far removed from my own conflict either. Waking up in the mornings, I receive barrages of texts and emails from the Bowraville families, talking about a new parliamentary inquiry being held in July, looking again at the laws around double jeopardy.

  Once again, their hopes have been raised that this may finally clear the way for James Hide to have his acquittals overturned and face retrial. And, again, I’d been expecting to give evidence, but the families have now been told I cannot because of the allegations hanging over me.

  They tell me they are lobbying the police force and politicians to allow me to attend. I send a text to Mick asking for his approval.

  I like Mick, and I trust him. When he took over the Homicide Squad, he brought a good energy with him, he wanted to make a difference and respected his detectives. He stood with me at the first parliamentary inquiry into the Bowraville murders, back in 2014. Since then, he has risen through the police hierarchy, becoming an assistant commissioner.

  On Thursday 13 June, he texts back saying: ‘I understand the request and the issues you raise and am sympathetic to it. I will talk to the Deputy over the weekend and let you know.’

  On Friday 14 June, the police create the paperwork to begin the process of charging me over the recorded conversations with Paul. I am to be treated like a criminal. I later learn that, as the commissioner’s appointed delegate, this is Mick Willing’s decision.

  I arrive back from Portugal at 6am on 19 June and get a call from Darrin at 11am. He says I’m being charged under section 7(1)(b) of the Surveillance Devices Act. There are four separate charges, relating to the phone conversation with Paul that I asked Greg to record in the Homicide Squad offices and the three times I visited Paul’s house, recording what we said to each other on my phone, while the listening devices were also recording.

  Darrin asks if I will come and meet him, so he can serve me with the documents?

  The cops didn’t have to do this. They know that no one was harmed by those recordings, and I’ve explained why I made them. They don’t have to explain their decision. Maybe their thinking is that they can’t be seen not to charge one of their own; that failing to do so would be like going back to the bad old days before the Wood Royal Commission.

  They are also already publicly committed. Having taken me off the investigation into William’s disappearance, so close to the inquest, they have to have something to show for it.

  It is an awful moment and sickness chases anger around my stomach, but I realise this confirmation of my worst fears also releases me from the responsibilities I have as a police officer.

  I no longer have a duty to serve.

  Like a runner crossing the finish line only to collapse, without carrying this burden, I have no reason to keep moving foward.

  ‘How about you go and get fucked?’ I tell Darrin. ‘You’re treating me like a crook, I’m going to act like a crook. You want me, come and find me.’

  Nothing Here to Celebrate

  20 June 2019: 34 years in

  The worst part is the silence. After Darrin’s phone call, I train for hours, trying to exhaust myself, but at midnight, I am lying awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  At 2am I get up and read through the Surveillance Devices Act again. It’s all there: ‘A person must not knowingly install, use or cause to be used or maintain a listening device to record a private conversation’, unless the recording ‘is reasonably necessary for the protection of the lawful interests’ of that person. I did it to protect my lawful interests.

  But at night, alone in my apartment, I have no way of explaining this in public. I have to wait until the cops charge me. Then I have to wait until it gets to court.

  After day breaks, I speak to Margaret Cunneen SC, the barrister I have asked to represent me and who prosecuted the James Kelly killing in 2000, the first Homicide case I worked as a detective. She says the police have listed me as wanted, meaning every cop in New South Wales has the authority to arrest me. Feeling exposed, I call Darrin again and apologise for yesterday. He’s treated me like a crook, just like I told him to.

  Darrin says he wants to meet.

  I tell him that I’ll call him tomorrow morning. I want one more day of freedom.

  * * *

  The next day, before I ring Darrin, I call Mum to let her know what’s coming. I don’t call Jake, who is now back in Afghanistan and doesn’t need the extra worry. I call Gemma; it’s Zion’s first birthday, and I try to make a joke of it: ‘Happy birthday. Guess what your grandad’s going to do today! He’s getting charged!’

  At 8.30am I call Darrin and we agree that he’ll drive to my unit in an hour. At 8.50am, my phone lights up with a call from a TV journo. I don’t answer. At 9.06am, the journo tweets: ‘@7NewsSydney understands former William Tyrrell lead investigator, Detective Insp. Gary Jubelin, will be charged today.’ The news can only have got out so fast from the police force itself.

  Darrin doesn’t leak it. He listens to the same news being reported on 2GB radio as he drives to meet me. That means it came from somewhere higher, after he reported what was going on to his bosses. Around 9.30am, he and Neale park close to my apartment. I walk up, open the rear door and get in without warning. They jump. I tell them to relax. It’s a show of confidence on my part; I won’t let them know that I am broken.

  Darrin hands me the Court Attendance Notice, giving me details of when and where to appear, and I take it back into my apartment, collapsing on the lounge to read through it.

  I turn on the television and watch news of what’s just happened breaking on every channel I switch to.

  * * *

  On 24 June, I drive to Bowraville again to meet the politicians on the parliamentary inquiry considering another possible change to the double jeopardy laws. They are, understandably, suspicious.

  ‘I’m not Roger Rogerson,’ I tell them and, slowly, convince them to trust me. We talk about the murders, the long history of inquests, trials, the appeal court and the High Court. We talk about how the final decision came down to the meaning of individual words in the legislation, not evidence.

  In their report, published a few months later, these politicians will express their ‘profound and sincere empathy with the families of Colleen, Evelyn and Clinton’, and acknowledge that ‘at the root of this unique injustice are the inadequacies of the police investigation that immediately followed each of the murders, borne from systemic discrimination’.

  They will also say this is a complex area of law and they do not support a bill that’s gone before the parliament in an attempt to change the double jeopardy legislation again.

  That seems to be an end to the Bowraville families’ hopes of challenging the courts’ decision. It feels like only moments have passed since I was standing with them, celebrating victory in the boxing ring on the third day of an appeal court hearing in which we were feeling hopeful. And yet, since then, everthing is different.

  * * *

  On 6 July, I get ready to go into State Crime Command for the last time to pick up my few personal belongings. I start to put on my suit, but think, if they’re treating me like a crook, I’m not going to turn up in my det
ective’s costume. Instead, I wear jeans and a casual shirt. I catch the train in, just like I used to, and, when I arrive, am escorted back to the small glass-fronted office where I spent the past few months.

  I pack up everything in a few boxes and walk out, leaving my badge lying on the empty table.

  I hate the thought of being without it.

  Paul Jacob, my first sergeant in Homicide, drives me home and helps carry the boxes into my unit. He was my mentor, my sifu, a tough, hard-driven cop from the generation who’d survived the royal commission and who cared about the victims more than his chances of promotion. He’s everything I’ve always loved about being a detective but it now feels like he and I are two of the last gunslingers left standing, while the police force has changed around us.

  Now I am gone.

  Jaco invites me to lunch. Nodding at the boxes, I tell him, ‘No, I’ll deal with all this.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asks me.

  ‘Yeah. There’s nothing here to celebrate.’

  Red Sun

  13 July 2019: first day out

  The first day after my retirement, I get up at 4am and work till 8am, pulling together an outline of all the work Strike Force Rosann did on Paul under my leadership, to send to the lawyers working on the inquest. Before I was pulled off the investigation, they’d seemed ready to focus on Paul. They talked about playing him the tapes of our listening devices in the court and asking him to explain what he meant in certain recordings. We’d talked about offering him immunity from prosecution, as I’d done before with Michael Atkins. But now I worry about a conversation I had with the counsel assisting the inquest, who called me after the news I was facing an internal investigation leaked, suggesting he and I meet up for a drink.

  When we did so, Gerard seemed to now think Paul could be eliminated from the investigation. I email him, asking about this.

  Gerard writes back, saying, ‘I think you got the wrong impression about [Paul], or my views about him. I don’t think he’s even close to being a strong contender. The point is that he doesn’t look like a strong contender BECAUSE of all the work that was done on him.’

  William’s foster parents also tell me the investigation into Paul has been shut down. They’ve been told there just isn’t the evidence to keep going. That you have to make decisions based on facts, and there isn’t any evidence against him.

  ‘Why are the police stopping?’ Jane asks me. She and her husband, Tom, are struggling to understand what’s going on, except that the police are now looking at other people.

  I am no longer a detective, meaning I am powerless to answer.

  * * *

  On 30 July, I go to the Downing Centre Local Court in central Sydney for the first time. It is a short, administrative hearing, but a chance for me to say publicy that I will fight the charges.

  Standing beside me on the steps of the courthouse are Mark and Faye Leveson. Arms folded, looking out at the waiting TV cameras, they are just as decent and quietly determined as I remember from those long weeks of searching for Matt’s grave. Only, this time, everything is reversed: they are here for me, not I for them; I am no longer a cop but an alleged criminal; I am no longer providing my strength to others but looking for support.

  Mark reads a statement from the couple:

  We stand here today, with our support right behind Gary Jubelin. A former police officer who will work hard, push the boundaries, think outside the square and, very importantly, consider the victims of crime, always.

  . . . Gary was instrumental in gaining information that led to the location of our murdered son’s remains during the course of our coronial inquest. We could not conceive what it would be like to lose our ‘go to’ person during the course of that inquest. This is exactly what has been done to the families of little William Tyrrell and that is bloody disgusting.

  He says everything I wish I could say, but know I should not while the court process is in motion. Among the tattoos Mark’s had etched into his skin since his son went missing is a portrait of the actor Charles Bronson, from the 1974 movie Death Wish, playing a man who becomes a vigilante. In the tattoo, Bronson is holding a pistol but, ask Mark about it, and he says it is not a symbol of vengeance, but of refusing to be beaten. Of peace, not violence.

  I’m proud to be able to draw upon his courage today.

  * * *

  The days pass, though I have little influence over what they bring with them. Once I held the power to pursue a suspect, to arrest them and take away their freedom. Now I have nothing and nothing makes sense. On 5 August, Andrew Scipione’s replacement as New South Wales Police Commissioner, Mick Fuller, is asked about me during a press conference at the opening of a new police station in western Sydney. ‘If I saw him, I would certainly stop and shake his hand and thank him for what he did,’ Mick says. What am I supposed to do with that? You thank me but you charge me?

  I try to fill the empty time before my trial and go to Indonesia for a meditation retreat. It means doing it tough, forced to sit in an uncomfortable position for hours without distraction, fighting with my inner demons and my anger.

  * * *

  The inquest drags on and, in August, now that I’m retired, I am finally able to sit at the back of the courtroom. It is a strange experience, with months going by between short blocks of hearings, many of which are played out behind closed doors so none of the media, and even Tom and Jane, William’s foster parents, don’t know what’s going on inside.

  Sitting in the public gallery, it seems as if the two names that can’t be mentioned are mine and Paul’s. Last December, when I was still leading the strike force, I wrote out a long statement, explaining everything the police had done to find William and what we had learned over the years. I sent this to the inquest’s legal team, but William’s foster parents say they’ve never seen it – it was not in the brief of evidence they have received – nor have they heard it mentioned in court.

  Despite my request to be called as a witness, the inquest calls Laura, who left the strike force in July 2018 – over a year ago, and before my time there ended. The ERISP recording of the interview she and I did with Paul is not played in public.

  By now, Paul has a lawyer, Chris McGorey, who questions her about the interview, saying, ‘There are assertions in there that are troubling to my client . . . perhaps Mr Jubelin has been careless in what he did.’

  I sit there, listening in horror. The lawyer asks if I was right to question Paul over having a view to the back of the house opposite, where William went missing.

  ‘You can’t positively assert that [Paul] had a clear line of sight?’ he asks Laura.

  ‘Yes, I agree,’ she says. I feel like I’m going crazy, watching. I’m in the room but no one asks me to explain if I was careless, or why we asked those questions, or plays the tape of the interview in the courtroom to establish what, exactly, I said.

  Instead, I have to sit there and listen to my reputation being shredded. There is no consolation in the fact Laura seems to find it as uncomfortable an experience as I do. By the time she steps down from the witness box, it looks like she’s crying.

  * * *

  The inquest plans to call Frank Abbott to give evidence. Another witness talks about how he made her uncomfortable, that she didn’t want him near her children.

  During breaks in the hearings, Gerard Craddock goes out to tell the waiting journalists to expect big things. It’s clear the strike force is still working, and for a moment, I feel that same sense of fierce excitement I used to get when an investigation was making progress.

  It’s good to hear the cops are looking at Abbott. But, instead of the promised breakthrough, we hear about a dying man named Ray Porter, who apparently made a confession to a nurse at his aged-care home.

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ he told her. ‘All I did was give my best mate and a boy a lift.’

  The nurse said Porter claimed he picked up his mate and the boy behind the primary school in Kendall
and drove them 300 kilometres north. The nurse says she asked Porter if he thought the boy was William. She says he thought it was him.

  Only, Porter himself is now dead, so this account cannot be tested. It’s hearsay. Does Porter’s dying confession mean anything? Porter was known to have two friends: ‘Phil’ and ‘Frank’, the inquest hears. Could ‘Frank’ have been Frank Abbott? We’re left guessing.

  Abbott himself is smart. He’s also 78 years old now, and having been jailed for child sex offences, may well die in prison. The coroner’s allowed him to represent himself by videolink from where he’s being held, meaning Abbott gets to listen to other witnesses before giving evidence himself. He is also able to interrogate them in a mocking voice that echoes through the court’s audio-visual equipment.

  Surely, if you’re interested in what Abbott can tell you, you’d put him in the witness box first, before the other witnesses, so he doesn’t know what they say about him?

  Abbott has also been given a copy of the brief of evidence, so knows everything the police have gathered about William.

  When Tony Jones is called to give evidence, Abbott cross-examines him.

  ‘You’re full of shit,’ Jones fires back at Abbott. I imagine him inside the prison, laughing.

  Geoff, Abbott’s friend, whose phone records show a call between him and the house from where William went missing, is not called as a witness. One day Jane says she saw him sitting in the waiting room outside the courtroom.

  Some days, the inquest holds closed-door hearings at which even she, as William’s foster mother, is not allowed to be present. Not knowing what is going on is driving her mad, she tells me.

  Sitting in the public gallery, we are sometimes left guessing at what is going on, but it seems that Geoff is of interest because he may be a link between Abbott and the house itself, and he is not a suspect.