by Bob O'Brien
Von Einem was spoken to for a couple of hours. He confirmed he was a homosexual but denied any knowledge of the boys. Von Einem said that he was home in bed on Sunday, 5 June 1983, when Richard Kelvin was abducted. He said that he had the ’flu and he was in bed and off work for a week.
My first reaction was: Well, if you were off work for a week, then you had the opportunity to be with Richard Kelvin.
During Trevor’s interview, von Einem said that he suffered from a nervous condition and this led to questions about drugs in his possession.
‘What medication had you been prescribed for this nervous complaint?’ Trevor asked. He typed the response on the A4 piece of paper sitting in the Remington typewriter.
‘Serepax, Sinequan.’
‘You would have those medications in your house now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would there be any other form of drug there?’
‘Rohypnol, which I need to sleep.’
Trevor asked him questions about the length of time he had lived in his house at Paradise and the length of time he had lived in his unit at Campbelltown before returning to questions about drugs.
‘Have you ever been prescribed Mandrax tablets?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Would you tell me in detail about that, please?’
‘I took Mandrax some five years ago for sleeping and wanted to get off them but I still have a sleep problem and my doctor put me on Rohypnol.’
‘When was the last time you got Mandrax tablets?’
‘It would have been about twelve months ago.’
More questions were asked about other matters before Trevor came back to the Mandrax. When detectives move the questions around, it sometimes puts the person being interviewed off guard. Von Einem may have thought Trevor had finished with that topic and started to relax, but Trevor again asked about the Mandrax.
‘Do you have any left?’
‘I have some left but I don’t take them.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘They are at home.’
Trevor continued the interview and towards the end he asked:
‘Did you kill Richard Kelvin?’ No point beating around the bush. You never know what people will say.
‘No.’
‘Do you know who killed him?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know who abducted him?’
‘No.’
‘Could you conceivably abduct a youth, drug him, abuse him and then kill him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I think it would be unethical of me; I shy away from violence of any description.’
They were interesting words. I didn’t know what to make of them. They weren’t words a normal person would use.
‘Did you kill Alan Barnes?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know who did?’
‘No.’
‘Did you kill Neil Muir?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know who did?’
‘No.’
‘Did you kill Peter Stogneff?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know who did?’
‘No.’
‘Did you kill Mark Langley?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know who did?’
‘No.’
Trevor asked him if he had any objection to the police examining his house and the police doctor taking a sample of his blood and hair. He allowed these things to happen. One of the police doctors, Noel McCleave, came to the Angas Street building and took a small sample of von Einem’s hair, scraped under his fingernails and took a sample of his blood. These were standard samples taken by police when examining rape suspects. The blood allows tests to check whether or not it matches any sperm from a rape victim. The scraping from under the fingernails sometimes reveals tiny amounts of skin that have been scratched from a victim and, sometimes, pubic hair is left behind. These samples weren’t expected to produce any evidence because sperm wasn’t found on or in the boys and their skin wasn’t scratched but we were working on the belief that the killers received sexual satisfaction from their crimes and these were standard tests.
We returned to von Einem’s Paradise home the same day. Von Einem agreed that we could search his house. He returned to his home with Trevor and me. He agreed to leave his car with us to allow us to check its contents.
He didn’t appear too worried about our interest in him. He was going to let us search his home. He is letting us keep his car for a couple of days. He could have refused, and lawyers could have disputed our legal right to search if we went ahead. He lives at home with his mother. All of these things suggested he had nothing to hide. But we couldn’t ignore the possibility that he was involved. Some of his answers sounded funny. Especially saying it was unethical for him to kill someone.
Trevor Kipling led the return visit to Bevan von Einem’s home. This time we had Des Phillips, one of our crime examiners, with us, along with Daryl Kruse from police photographics and Arch Kempster from our Fingerprint Section. We arrived at 4.15 p.m., eight hours after we had gone there in the morning.
Des put on his overalls and surgical gloves and entered the home, followed by Arch and Daryl. The lounge room opened up immediately you entered the front door. The only notable thing about the lounge was that it was ordinary, with a three-piece lounge setting, table, television and a few ornaments. The furniture was not cheap and nasty, but Christies wouldn’t be auctioning any of it as antiques. Opposite the front door a narrow passage ran to the left from the lounge to the bedrooms, laundry and toilet. The carpets in the house were low quality. The passage carpet was a mild blue colour with a soft purple swirl in it. The kitchen was immediately behind the lounge. Trevor spoke to von Einem in the lounge while I did a preliminary search of his bedroom, which was at the front of the house nearest to the front door.
I walked on the dark blue bedroom carpet, which contrasted with the bright yellow bedspread covering his single bed. The bedspread had an orange check pattern over the base yellow colour. The bedspread was the brightest thing in the house. A white rectangular cupboard was standing against the wall alongside the bed. It was a standard affair with two doors either side of a central mirror which had drawers underneath it. A similar cupboard built without a mirror stood against the opposite wall. Small sideboards stood either side of the bedhead and at the foot of the bed on one side was an expensive looking harp. The harp was probably the most exceptional single item in the house. Police don’t often see harps in the types of home they visit.
The first quick search found his carry bag alongside his bedhead. A credit card with von Einem’s name on it helped prove the contents of the bag were his. I found a drug bottle in the bag. The bottle contained assorted drugs and a small slip of paper. On the paper were written the words ‘Uncle Bevan’. The bottle contained Sinequan, Serepax, Rohypnol and Valium.
The drug bottle in his bag did not contain Mandrax. I found three Mandrax drug bottles on the shelf of the cupboard with the mirror, but they were empty. They weren’t in the carry bag or the bottle of assorted drugs. They could be anywhere, even buried in the yard, or hidden in the garage or the roof of the house. How do you find some pills if someone wants to hide them?
I used the element of surprise. Sometimes a direct question can catch people off guard, and this time it came as a surprise to von Einem. He was not expecting it.
I walked from the bedroom to the passageway where Trevor was standing with von Einem and his solicitor.
‘Can you show us where the Mandrax are?’
‘Behind the mirror — there is a ledge there.’
Von Einem walked into his bedroom and moved toward the white cupboard with the mirror in it. He reached into the left-hand side of the cupboard and pulled out two bottles of Mandrax from a ledge behind the mirror and gave them to me.
‘There are tablets and capsules,’ he said.
Bingo, I thought. Trevor and
I had another win.
‘How many would there be?’ I said.
‘There would be about forty capsules and . . .’ He hesitated and I asked:
‘Is there anything else hidden in the room?’
‘No.’
To this day I don’t know why I did it but I looked inside the cupboard behind the mirror to see where von Einem had the drugs hidden. I saw a wooden ledge, which formed part of the framework of the cupboard that supported the mirror. Sitting on the ledge was another drug bottle. I reached in and took the bottle from the ledge. I read the word ‘NOCTEC’ on it. Before I said anything von Einem said, ‘I don’t use them much.’
‘When I asked if you had anything else hidden in the room you said you didn’t. That is right isn’t it?’
‘No, it isn’t but I had mentioned to Helena about it in Angas Street.’
Now things were starting to look promising. Von Einem had Mandrax that was found in Mark Langley and Richard Kelvin and now we had found Noctec, which was also in Richard Kelvin. And the drugs were hidden.
Why would he want to hide these two drugs if he has nothing to hide? His other drugs weren’t hidden.
Arch Kempster took photographs of the house inside and out. Other than the drugs, we didn’t find anything of interest. Des Phillips took fibre samples from the house to check for one-way transfers — the movement of fibres from items in the house that might have got onto Richard Kelvin’s clothes. He obtained fibre samples from the carpets in the house and the bedspread in von Einem’s bedroom. He did not check for possible fibres from Richard Kelvin’s clothing being in the house. Kelvin was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt and they were made of common materials and colours that did not stand out. Daryl Kruse made a general check for fingerprints in von Einem’s bedroom but did not find anything. However, what he did notice was that the door to the bedroom had been wiped clean. The fingerprint powder showed the marks left by the swirling motion of a cleaning cloth. Obviously, houses get cleaned and nothing could be made of this but Daryl was a very experienced fingerprint man and he was surprised just how much cleaning had been done in this bedroom.
We returned to the office about ten that night and gave work away. I was pretty tired after a long day and headed home. I didn’t go to the Police Club, a square 1960s building that was built behind the Angas Street police building that we often visited at the end of a shift. On my way home I was thinking about things and, on a hunch, I decided to drive past von Einem’s home. As I drove past, I saw a vehicle parked in the driveway. It wasn’t von Einem’s silver Toyota Corona hatchback or his older Ford Falcon.
Well, isn’t that interesting? I thought.
I drove past and turned around. I stopped in the street and turned my lights off about five houses away. Parked in von Einem’s driveway was a car, which would soon become very familiar to me. When I checked the registration details the next day, I learnt it belonged to an associate of von Einem. He may have been consoling von Einem after our visit to the house during the day. However, my suspicious mind suggested more sinister reasons. They would be talking about our visit. Talking about the implications of the seizure of the drugs.
Bevan Spencer von Einem just might be starting to get worried, I mused as I sat in my car parked in the darkened street, watching the house. The lounge room light was on. I gave it away at 1.30 in the morning. His friend was still there and I was satisfied that a close association had been confirmed.
Chapter 8
The Raids
The next morning we were back in the office. We didn’t have enough evidence to arrest von Einem for any of the murders but he had to be a hot suspect. He was a homosexual who visited the beats. He had the reputation for picking up boys and sexually abusing them. He had the drug, Noctec, which was found in Alan Barnes and Mark Langley. He had three of the four drugs that were found in Richard Kelvin and two of the drugs, Mandrax and Noctec, were found hidden in his bedroom.
By this time Trevor Kipling was making all the running with the murder investigations. His leadership came naturally and was starting to show through. Glen Lawrie was smart enough to let this happen. Technically, Glen was the administration sergeant coordinating the investigation but he was also responsible for doing the same with another murder at the time, that of Louise Bell. Trevor had a determination about him that drove the investigation forward.
We needed to keep the pressure on our number one suspect so we drove to von Einem’s workplace at South Road, Regency Park. It was critical that we got more evidence, so we quickly continued our search. With all murder investigations, the longer the investigation lasts, the less likely it is that the crime will be solved through the finding of evidence. Eight weeks had passed since Richard Kelvin had been abducted and we didn’t want to lose any more time. Murders that have been committed a long time ago are more likely to be solved if the body of a missing person is found, the killer brags about what he has done, or a guilty conscience causes the killer to tell someone what they did. James Miller, who was involved with Christopher Worrell in committing the Truro murders, was distraught when Worrell was killed in a car crash. During this period of anguish he told a friend what Christopher Worrell was really like. And so he ‘confessed’ and talked about the murdered girls.
Von Einem worked in a new industrial area not far from the Regency Park TAFE College. The business where he worked was described by its name, Pipeline Supplies of Australia. As we pulled into the car park out the front, we commented that its location was just two kilometres away from where Alan Barnes was picked up on Grand Junction Road all those years ago.
Von Einem was the accountant at the firm. He started there in 1965 as a book-keeper who picked up accountancy skills as he went along. As such, he had a position of responsibility in the business where he worked. This power allowed him access to the building on weekends. The buildings sprawled out over the large block of land, which measured about 120 metres by seventy-five metres. A wide driveway on the left-hand side of the land allowed access to the warehouse, which was attached to the office building and ran for 100 metres down the block. The warehouse was accessed on that side by two large rollerdoors — big enough to take a truck. There was one in the centre of the warehouse and one right down the back. The high metal warehouse was about thirty metres wide.
On the right-hand side the ground was covered by bitumen and different areas held piles of pipes. The rectangular office building crossed the block and was shielded from the road by native trees.
We parked and moved to the reception area.
‘My name is Detective Kipling from the Major Crime Squad. Can we speak to the manager, please?’
We spoke to Merv Martin and provided him with the general idea that our enquiries were about the murders and asked to see von Einem’s office. Von Einem was not there. We were taken to a typical, unexceptional office of the day, about three metres by four metres with the walls painted in a light yellow or cream colour. It contained a desk, chairs, computer and filing cabinets. The search of von Einem’s office gave us no further clues as to his night-time activities.
We again spoke with the manager and asked to be shown around his business, which he did without hesitation. We made a cursory search of the building and grounds, looking for a location where boys could be held captive or cut up. The business premise was not suitable for that sort of work and we found no evidence to show that Richard Kelvin had ever been on the premises. The warehouse was big and open and used for the storage of more pipes. The other areas of the office building included open space work areas, storerooms, meal rooms and toilets. There weren’t any rooms or areas to keep anyone captive in nor were there any areas to cut up bodies without leaving a mess.
While we were checking von Einem’s work, Ivan Sarvas and Des Phillips were minutely checking the maroon interior of the modern Toyota Corona hatchback owned by him and left at Angas Street. They put the car undercover in the workshops of the radio technicians and pulled the interior and boot apar
t looking for any evidence to suggest that Richard had been in the car.
We chased up the investigation that provided the first bit of evidence that started to give the investigation direction. Legendary police officer Sam Bass, a wrestler and motorcycle racer who later become a politician, had been working at the Holden Hill C.I.B. He investigated the case involving a boy who had been drugged with Mandrax before Richard Kelvin. We looked at this investigation to see what had happened with it.
The boy’s name was George. He was a sixteen-year-old who was hitchhiking home about midnight on Saturday, 13 September 1982, six months after Mark Langley went missing and nine months before Richard Kelvin was abducted.
George was walking past an old ice works on Lower Portrush Road, which crosses the River Torrens at Royston Park in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide. A man in a bronze Ford Falcon was filling up his esky at the ice works and offered George a ride. The bespectacled man talked to him for a while as they were driving along and offered to take him to a party. There would be girls and booze there. George would have a good time.
The boy was taken to a house where some women lived. He had sex with one of them but then passed out. He arrived home in a taxi twenty-seven hours later with a one-half centimetre tear in his anus. George believed he had been drugged and abused, and reported it to the Holden Hill police.
Sam Bass found the taxi driver who took George home. He learned from the people in the house where George was taken that the man who picked him up was Bevan von Einem. Sam went to von Einem’s work and spoke to him. Von Einem did not want to be spoken to at work and he agreed to meet Sam back at the Holden Hill Police Station where the short but muscular detective interviewed him.
Von Einem admitted picking up the boy, but said that George asked him for a lift. Von Einem agreed that he offered to take the boy to a party where there were drugs, booze and women. George was a willing party-goer, von Einem said. They drove to Alberton but the girls were not there. The homosexual who was at the house said they were working.