by Bob O'Brien
The clinic assessed Neil Muir as having a moderate physical dependence on opiates. He was being treated with methadone but when he complained about general discomfort and agitation from withdrawal, he was given Clonidine, an antihypertensive drug, and Rohypnol, a sedative and an hypnotic.
On the Friday, three days before he disappeared, he was at the methadone clinic at Hillcrest Hospital in a northern suburb of Adelaide. He was wearing a distinctive bulky knit cardigan, bone coloured, with black stripes running through it. The cardigan complemented his light-coloured cord jeans. An ebony bangle was on his wrist, and a sleeper was in one earlobe and a drop-earing in his other ear. He carried a flick knife. None of these items have been found.
Neil Muir, like Alan Barnes, was good looking but he had softer features than Alan Barnes. Neil Muir’s long brown hair and light beard tended to elongate his face, which was thinning from poor nutrition resulting from his drug habit. He was a poly (multiple) drug user. He abused heroin, methadone and barbiturates.
While Neil Muir’s murder was similar, with an anal injury, there were no other linkages to suggest it was connected to Alan Barnes’. Neil Muir was cut up while Alan Barnes was intact. They did not know each other so the common thread of being killed by an associate was discounted. Initially, Neil Muir’s killing was thought to be drug related. Neil Muir owed some money around town for drugs that he had scored. One theory related to the possibility that he was killed because he had not paid his debts. Detective Rod Hunter and others who were investigating the Alan Barnes’ murder were working on the possibility that he was murdered by the family of a girl that he allegedly raped. His anal injuries were thought to be a sadistic sexual payback. Over time we learnt this was not the case.
Major Crime and police generally were still basking in the success of Glen Lawrie and Peter Foster solving the Truro serial killings and, at that time, there was nothing to suggest we had another run of killings starting. John Woite and Lee Haddon were the detective sergeants working on Glen Lawrie’s team in the Major Crime Squad. John was tall — a big man in height and size. He was very methodical with his investigations. Lee was an older detective, single and dedicated to his work like most of the detectives at Major Crime. Lee Haddon was working on the murder of Neil Muir. The things that differentiated the detectives in the squad were their intelligence, experience and how much the pressure had got to them from their years as detectives. The pressure did not come so much from the amount of physical work although, often, long hours were worked; it was from the stress from having to perform and get results case after case.
There is always pressure on the Major Crime Squad when a murder occurs, especially when an old, very young, or some prominent person is murdered. There were the usual killings — a man was killed after a family argument at Waterloo Corner and a man was knifed and killed at Modbury. However, the murder of Derrence Stevenson, a homosexual lawyer, was the most unusual case.
Derrence Stevenson was murdered by his young boyfriend and stuffed in his food freezer. The Stevenson house and office on Greenhill Road was notable for its unusual design. The house was built on a triangular block on Greenhill Road, near Glen Osmond Road. It filled most of the block and not only was the house triangular but the roof rose to form a three-sided pyramid. The case is memorable because of the design of the house and the use of the freezer to hide the body.
The young boyfriend put the lawyer in the freezer and then used superglue to stick the lid down before he took his car and headed to Coober Pedy, the opal town in the far north of the State. The freezing of the body did not allow a time of death to be accurately obtained from body temperature. When a body is found relatively soon after death the pathologist places a thermometer into the anus to find the body temperature. After death, rigor mortis sets in and, also, the body cools at a steady rate. After so many hours the body temperature will be at so many degrees. By freezing the body the cooling process is interrupted and so time of death cannot be determined.
Here was another man murdered in a bizarre way. These killings seemed to be the start of something very strange in the quiet, conservative State of South Australia.
Not everyone thought Neil Muir was killed by druggies who wanted their money. The dissection of his body would just have been going too far. Lee Haddon wanted to keep his options open, so he sought help via a new science which was just starting in the 1970s.
Criminal profiling had been receiving a great deal of publicity at the time. Profiling was refined and marketed by the FBI in America but other law enforcement agencies in the 1970s were experimenting with it as well. The South Australia Police Department also tried it when Neil Muir was found. The crime was so different and so bizarre it warranted a try. So, detectives from Major Crime asked the police department’s psychologists to have a go at it after Neil Muir was found.
Most large police departments have psychologists working for them. However, they are not employed to do criminal profiling, as people may first think. Their primary role is to help police to recruit suitable people and also to help those recruits later in their careers. They help police deal with the stress from their work that can occur at different times. These problems may be from work or from stress caused by working in an hierarchical organisation, stress from marriage breakdowns or from drinking too much.
Lee Haddon received two reports from the police psychologists. Ray Dowd, university educated and the son of a police officer, furnished his report on 31 August 1979. Ray believed that Neil Muir’s murder was not a crime of passion in which the murderer lost control. If that was the case, Ray felt that extreme anger, hatred or fear would have affected the killer. Such emotions usually result in injuries to the head or body, with a number of wounds inflicted in a very short time. Neil Muir had received a blow to the head but there was no evidence of multiple blows to the head or body or multiple knife-wounds.
Ray felt that the killer might be psychotic — the murderer might have had a severe mental derangement involving the whole personality. Psychotic behaviour could be drug induced and Ray recommended investigating Neil Muir’s association with other drug users. Because Alan Barnes may have died in a similar way, he recommended that common associates be considered. As with Alan Barnes, it soon became obvious that this was not the case and speculation of Alan Barnes and Neil Muir being killed by the same person or group was starting.
Ray theorised that the killer might be a homosexual who had strong sexual fantasies. He considered the deliberate and meticulous mutilation of the body, which could have taken up to three hours, as completing some kind of plan. He also considered the insertion of an object similar to a tapered bottle into the anus. The pathologist, Ross James, was talking about the possibility that if it was a beer bottle, the metal cap had still been on it, causing some of the tearing. Ray considered this and the cutting up of the penis and the removal of the testicles to be part of the acting out of aggressive sexual fantasies. He thought that cutting off the fingers may have occurred because they were considered phallic objects. The mutilation was compared with the Boston Strangler, who also mutilated his victims.
There was a lack of agreement between the professionals as to whether or not the mutilation was done with some professional knowledge and skill. Ray Dowd worked on the advice that there was some skill involved. He said that the semi-professional nature of some of the cuts suggested that the killer could be a person with a medical or para-medical background or in a job where knowledge of the joints and cuts could be learned. The difficulty was that on 30 August 1979, the Chief Meat Inspector for the abattoirs gave a statement. He had expert knowledge about boning and skinning of animals. He believed that the skinning was not consistent with a person having any expertise in this area. It was done in a rough manner. He also observed roughness in the area of the legs where the muscular tissue was removed. Boning skills were not present. He said that a saw was used on the bone while a knife was used on the flesh. This meant that the person who butchered Neil Mui
r was not likely to be an employee of an abattoir. This did help Lee narrow things a bit but not that much.
Ray Dowd also kept his options open with his assessment. He suggested an alternative hypothesis: that much of the mutilation was done to reduce the possibility of identifying the victim. If the victim could be identified, then a suspect who was close to the victim could be identified. He argued the possibility that the cutting up was to disguise the identity of the body but the offenders’ resolve weakened as their gruesome task continued. Ray suggested that, in the end, they just wanted to get rid of it.
Ray was keeping his options open, which was fair enough, as criminal profiling was in its infancy. However, I had doubts about Ray’s alternative hypothesis. The tying of the body together with clothesline, stuffing it into plastic bags and taking it to Mutton Cove still indicated resolve and organisation enough to complete the disposal. Also, Neil Muir’s head had not been butchered in any way. His facial features were clearly intact. It was very likely he could be identified from his head alone but that wasn’t needed. Neil Muir’s fingers were left with his body and they were used to obtain fingerprints, which identified Neil. The killer could have easily disposed of them separately.
Ray Dowd also considered the possibility of a payback killing for Neil’s drug debts around town. This could not be ignored; nor could the idea that Alan Barnes’ murder was a payback killing. All of these theories expanded the possibilities that Major Crime had to cover. The motive for Neil Muir’s killing was not clear, and lack of a clear motive did not help lessen the number of areas to check for suspects.
Prosecutors like to prove a motive in murder cases. This helps ‘sell’ the case to jurors. If the jury can see that a murder happened because of a jealous rage, to cover up a rape or a robbery to get money for drugs then the case is much stronger. The law doesn’t require the police or prosecutors to prove a motive but it is better if they do. Motive helps convince the jury that the accused committed the crime.
Milton Kelly, the head of the Psychology Unit, followed with another report on 4 September 1979. Milton was not a police officer but he had many years’ experience in the police organisation. He considered Ray Dowd’s report and clarified several points. Milton stressed that the offender may not be mentally ill — may not be pyschotic. Milton Kelly did not discount the possibility of the killer being mentally ill but he extended the possibilities. He felt that if the person was not mentally ill, he would very likely be an extremely sadistic psychopath — a person with abnormal social behaviour.
He felt this because of the deliberate and controlled way the killer mutilated and disposed of Neil Muir. He theorised that the acting out of sexual or violent fantasies might have absorbed the person to such an extent that the butcherer may not have related to the corpse as another human being. He considered that the killer might not openly display a violent or aggressive personality and considered that the murderer might be seen as polite, gentle and passive to other people. The person would be seen as conventional and his personal habits characterised by neatness and cleanliness.
Milton listed the characteristics of a psychopathic person as:
• Non-conformist
• Egocentric and selfish with a lack of loyalties
• Having no conscience and no anxiety or remorse for his actions
• Manipulative
• Incapable of love and affection
• Impulsive
• Incapable of learning from past experiences
• Callous and sadistic
• Possibly charming and likeable
• An accomplished liar
A psychopath can receive a lot of sadistic or sexual pleasure, or a combination of both, from torturing and mutilating his victims. Milton said that the offender might not know a victim and the person might be selected at random. However, Milton also had a bet each way. He gave an alternative view that the victim may have been well known to the killer and that Neil Muir was dissected to punish him for real or imagined insults.
All of this information did not help Lee Haddon get any closer to his killer. The killer could be mentally ill, but he also could be a psychopath. Also, there was the possibility of drug debts, which Lee was already aware of and, finally, the offender may have been an associate or a stranger. This comment was not to denigrate the police psychologists but we had to keep our options open. As I said, criminal profiling was very new.
The pressure on detectives to solve the Neil Muir murder was always present but hadn’t risen to the extent to which people were being stressed. Lee Haddon was working on the Muir matter and things began to look promising when one person came to the attention of the police. Two telephone calls were received about a person who could have killed Neil Muir. This time the calls were not anonymous. Two druggies were prepared to give statements, and their names and who they thought might have done it.
That person, they alleged, was Peter Leslie Millhouse, a doctor from Mount Gambier in the south-east of the state. He was forty-five and single. He claimed to be a distant relative of Robin Millhouse, flamboyant Attorney-General with the Liberal government, Army Reserve officer and, after he left politics, a judge. The doctor was a general practitioner with degrees in medicine and surgery, although he did not do much surgery.
Millhouse lived in rented accommodation and drove a ten-year-old Holden. His leased Mercedes had gone and he wasn’t exactly making a lot of money as a doctor. When Neil Muir was killed, Dr Millhouse was living in a single-fronted attached house in Stanley Street, North Adelaide. The cottage was one of a dozen attached cottages, all refurbished in the same style. The blue stone sparkled under the veranda, which stepped out onto the small front yard, which was separated from the street by the low front fence. The fence was made of metal latticework, which is unusual for Adelaide. The white latticework matched the white wooden doors and white wooden window frames bordered by white shutters.
The front door on the left of the cottage opened to the passageway and rooms spread from the right-hand side of the passageway. The passageway ran the full length of the house to the courtyard garden out the back. The backyard was run down and uninteresting. A clothesline ran down the side of the rear yard, the lawn was overgrown but a large plane tree filled the opposite side and provided the dull yard with some colour.
Peter Millhouse was an alcoholic and his life was complicated even further by his homosexuality. He had realised that he was a homosexual in puberty and, as his preferences developed, he found he was having sex with men who were not well known to him. He would hang around hotels in Hindley Street and although he looked for company, he was a loner with few friends.
Doctor Millhouse had known Neil Muir for about four years but Lee found no evidence, statements or photographs to prove they had actually had sex. Neil Muir chased Millhouse for drugs but no evidence could be found to show that Millhouse supplied them to him. However, at the time Neil Muir was killed, Doctor Millhouse was worried that he might be in trouble for supplying prescriptions to other druggies.
Neil Muir initially was thought to have disappeared on that Sunday in August 1979. Doctor Millhouse and Neil Muir were together on Neil’s last Sunday. He was drinking with Peter Millhouse at the Hope Inn Sports and Social Club in the inner western suburb of Ridleyton. The old club was like Neil Muir and Peter Millhouse — all of them were showing signs of neglect. The long rectangular building was clean and neat but had seen better days. Its front fence of galvanized pipe and wire mesh was bent and broken.
After more investigation, Lee Haddon learned that a bouncer in one of Neil Muir’s regular haunts had seen him on the Monday. The bouncer at the Mediterranean Hotel knew Muir as a regular. He had seen him with Dr Millhouse on the evenings of Thursday and Friday, 23 and 24 August 1979. They were at their usual table in the front bar, next to the jukebox, drinking schooners of beer. On the Monday — the day before he died, Neil Muir was by himself back at the Mediterranean Hotel.
Neil Muir arrived at
about 1.30 in the afternoon wearing a long sleeved shirt with his brown corduroy jeans. His hair, goatie beard and moustache were worn exactly as shown in the photograph that Lee Haddon was using to show to people. Neil sat at his usual table and drank schooners until the waitress said to the bouncer:
‘One drunk sleeping at the table.’
The bouncer went to Neil Muir, picked him up and took him to the street.
‘I’m going mate. I’m going,’ said the quiet druggie and he swayed down the street heading for Morphett Street.
Neil Muir was next seen dressed in a garbage bag laying on the rocks of Mutton Cove.
In the days following Neil Muir’s murder, Dr Peter Millhouse was on a bender. However, this did not stop him contacting well-known criminal lawyer, Peter Waye, about his problems. He sought legal advice on that Friday and on the next day, on the advice of his colleagues, Dr Millhouse booked himself into Osmond House, a rehabilitation clinic in the eastern suburbs.
On 3 September 1979, Lee Haddon spoke with Dr Millhouse at Osmond House. The doctor produced his letter from Peter Waye saying that he didn’t want to answer any questions. Obviously, this made Lee Haddon even more suspicious.
Crime scene police examined the untidy house of the doctor. Witnesses were found who said that large garbage bags, similar to those used to clothe the body of Neil Muir, had been in the house. The yellow cord that tied him together was the same type that is used on clotheslines that are extended out and attached to a pole. That type of cord was no longer on the clothesline. A type of twine had replaced it. But the bags and the clotheslines were very common and were in the homes and backyards of many thousands of people. Also, Lee could not prove when the line was changed. It may have happened well before Dr Millhouse moved into the house. Witnesses were not clear in their evidence about the clothesline. All of this did not help Lee with his circumstantial case.