by Bob O'Brien
Richard Kelvin, however, was different. He was not seduced into a car, he was physically forced into one.
In my mind, the dog collar was the catalyst. Richard Kelvin was a young, fit boy and would have been attractive to homosexuals. Normally, homosexuals would not approach him because they would sense his distaste for homosexuality, but when a group gets together, people act differently. They can form a pack that roams together. Whether or not the pack comprises men or women, they can behave more aggressively in some situations than if they were alone. When von Einem was by himself he appeared gentle — until he had people under his control.
Control of people who became von Einem’s prey was achieved through drugs. On that Sunday night he was not alone, and, rather than being with just one other person, he was probably with two or three others. That number of people would be needed to force someone into a car. As police officers, we know just how hard it is to put an arrested person into a police car if that person does not want to get in.
It was a weekend and most likely they had drugs in their system. The drugs may have been alcohol, hypnotics or marijuana but most likely it was a combination of drugs. Either they were getting over them from their use on the weekend or they had come together and taken a fresh lot. This pack was out to play and when they had finished socialising they were ready to hunt for their prey. They were using von Einem’s beat, which included North Adelaide. They knew people would be going to the restaurants and shops at six o’clock on a Sunday night. Unfortunately, fate put Richard Kelvin in the vicinity of this pack as they cruised O’Connell Street and the dog collar Richard wore that night activated their ‘smell of blood’. From then on their hunt was uncontrollable.
Brian Martin, the senior crown prosecutor, couldn’t prove this, though. The scenario was very likely but prosecutors have to present evidence that is acceptable to courts. Supposition was not enough. Brian was intending to present to the court people who had been picked up by von Einem and drugged and abused by him. But he knew there would be difficulties with a legal concept which relates to that specific type of evidence. The type of evidence is called circumstantial, and the legal concept was called similar fact evidence. Our case relied on evidence which suggested that von Einem was with Richard Kelvin and evidence from witnesses saying that Richard would not go with strangers.
Brian Martin was going to introduce evidence to show that von Einem acted in such a way that a jury could conclude that he was the person who picked up Richard Kelvin. He could prove that von Einem picked up boys and drugged them with the same type of drugs that were found in Richard Kelvin. The boys we found were either given a Mickey Finn or they took the drugs voluntarily, for kicks.
However, the majority of the boys we found were given Rohypnol but we couldn’t prove that Richard had been given that particular drug. This presented additional problems. George, the hitchhiker, on the other hand, was given Mandrax, and that was the same drug given to Richard Kelvin.
Richard Kelvin would not have taken the drugs voluntarily, but they may have been in drinks that he was given. There were similarities there. Richard Kelvin was anally abused. This fact presented similarities with other boys. Richard Kelvin was beaten during his captivity and other boys who gave us statements about von Einem were not beaten. This presented differences, which a defence team could use; perhaps the bruises on his body resulted from his being beaten to make him take the drugs, but this was all speculation.
The differences between the boys who were drugged, abused and let go and Richard Kelvin, were going to present difficulties for Brian Martin. Our evidence of similar acts was weak, but he was going to try. The law of evidence was strict and Brian would have to use all of his persuasive skills to get that evidence accepted by a judge in a court. However, to a lay person, von Einem’s actions showed he was a person who picked up, drugged and abused boys. That makes him a very good suspect to be a person who picked up, drugged, abused and killed boys.
We had a boy who was abducted on a Sunday. That was 5 June 1983. We could show that he was probably dumped on a Sunday. That was 10 July 1983. The findings of the Maggot Lady and the pathologist showed that the boy was probably killed between 8 and 10 July 1983 and dumped at the airstrip on Sunday, 10 July 1983. A man who was walking his dogs on the airstrip on the Sunday said that Richard’s body wasn’t there earlier during the Sunday. He had four terrier dogs, with two younger ones on a lead whilst the other two were allowed to move through the bush. The dogs and their owner walked in the area where Richard was laid on the ground. If he was there when they were walking, then he would have been found. Also, the weather conditions and the growth cycle of the fly’s larvae showed that he couldn’t have been dumped after the 10th. He had to have been disposed of late on that Sunday.
So with Richard Kelvin, Sunday keeps coming into the picture. He was abducted on a Sunday and he was dumped on a Sunday. This fitted with our original theories about our murderers being working people who plied their deadly trade mainly on weekends. However, they were opportunists, and they were active on other days but were freer to hunt their prey on weekends.
Richard was kept alive for five weeks after his abduction. We could prove all of these things. We knew that Richard Kelvin was drugged and beaten during his captivity but Richard would not have been completely out to it. He still had to drink to stay alive. We could show that he had eaten food at some time during his captivity as he had food in his stomach. He had eaten an apple and cornflakes just before his death. But we still could not be certain about the cause of death. Richard could have died from his anal injury but suffocation could not be discounted.
So this was the sum of the case so far: We had an admitted homosexual who picked up boys. We could prove that he also drugged boys. He worked in an office and had weekends off. We found drugs hidden in his house that were similar to those Richard had in his system. Richard had Mandrax in his system. Mandrax was found hidden in von Einem’s house. He also had trichloroethanol in his system, which is the byproduct of having been given chloral hydrate, the active ingredient of the drug, Noctec, which was also found hidden in von Einem’s house. He also had the active ingredient of Valium, diazepam, in his system. Additionally, there was a suspicion that Rohypnol was also present in Richard but the amount could not be measured. This also presented problems as to whether or not that evidence would be accepted. Even so, von Einem also had quantities of Rohypnol in his pill bottle in his bag. We knew that he used Rohypnol to drug boys. Valium tablets also were found in his little pill bottle with the piece of paper with ‘Uncle Bevan’ written on it.
How sickly ironic were those words, I pondered. The doctor or person who wrote ‘Uncle Bevan’ and placed those words in his drug bottle knew von Einem gave the appearance of being a nice, ‘uncle’ figure. In reality he was a shocking deviate.
Another problem related to the fourth drug. A barbiturate was also found in Richard’s system but we did not find any at von Einem’s. However, we knew others were involved and they could have been drug users. Brian Martin could argue that one of the other killers supplied the barbiturates.
Not only did the evidence of von Einem picking up and drugging boys become more clear as time passed, but other circumstantial evidence became stronger. That evidence related to miniscule particles found on Richard’s clothing. Des Phillips took fibre samples from von Einem’s house when we first went there on 28 July 1983. Also, von Einem volunteered a sample of his hair, which was taken by police doctor Noel McCleave on the same day. When Des had dried Richard’s jeans, socks and T-shirt and taken tape lifts from them, he found trace evidence: sand, paint, fibres and hair.
The sand from Richard’s clothes was quite fine and it was subsequently looked at by AMDEL, a centre which examines minerals — but nothing came from this line of enquiry. The sand was quite common and we couldn’t determine where it came from.
Small particles of paint were found, which was predominantly coloured red. There were forty small
fragments, which was quite a large amount. Beneath the paint there appeared to be a yellow undercoat, possibly a metal primer, but we could not be sure. The size of the largest chip of paint found by Des Phillips was half a millimetre. This chip was a light green colour and was similar to paint found on Mark Langley. Other coloured paint flakes were four particles showing different green colours: particles of grey paint, blue paint and yellow paint. Unfortunately, we couldn’t match any of the paint with the colours at the homes we visited.
There were 525 foreign fibres on Richard’s clothes and they were sorted into their different colours: mainly red, orange, brown, violet and aqua. The red fibres were mostly synthetic but there were some woollen fibres. The orange fibres were a combination of synthetic and wool, and most of the foreign fibres were taken from Richard’s jeans. The brown fibres were predominantly wool but some were synthetic, while the violet fibres were synthetic and all over Richard’s clothing; the aqua fibres were also synthetic.
The scientific evidence to show that Richard Kelvin was at von Einem’s home was standing up to scrutiny. At the time of von Einem’s arrest the fibre evidence was still being checked. Scientific examination using a technique called thin-layer chromatography showed that nine different coloured fibres from four different sources — all relating to von Einem — were on all of Richard Kelvin’s clothes, including his underpants. There were blue and turquoise fibres that were exactly the same as fibres from von Einem’s bedroom carpet; blue and purple fibres that were exactly the same as fibres in his passageway and loungeroom; and yellow and orange fibres from the bedspread in his bedroom.
Of the 525 fibres recovered from Richard’s clothing, 196 were from von Einem’s home or his clothing. Thirty-eight came from his bedspread, twenty-seven came from his bedroom carpet, twenty-one from his hall and lounge carpet, and 110 fibres found on Richard were from von Einem’s brown cardigan. Only two fibres from Richard’s own home environment were left on his clothing. No fibres from the maroon velour seats of von Einem’s Toyota Corona hatchback were on Richard’s clothes. There could be no doubt that von Einem was with Richard and, with the number of fibres from von Einem’s cardigan, it showed close contact.
Many hairs were found on Richard’s clothing and while most of them were Richard’s, there were a number of hairs from a different source. Five of von Einem’s head hairs were found inside Richard’s jeans. The interesting thing about von Einem’s hair was that it had no medulla or central core, which gives hair its colour. The lack of pigmentation could be seen at the base of the hair while the top section was dyed.
The dye was a combination of N2 Schwarzkopf and Ingora Royal applied by the second person von Einem nominated as one of his best friends. He was a male hairdresser who had the nickname ‘Pussy’. He dyed von Einem’s hair once a month because von Einem had been greying since he was sixteen. On Monday, 6 June 1983, the day after Richard Kelvin went missing, von Einem had his hair dyed just before his hairdresser friend went to Melbourne on holidays. The hair samples from von Einem were found to be indistinguishable from the dyed hair found on Richard’s clothing. In other words, the hair was the same and the dye on the hair was the same.
Scientific evidence, of course, can be problematic. While the search for the serial killers who murdered the boys was going on, a Royal Commission was considering the scientific evidence in another murder case — the murder of Rosa Simper. This case caused Des and Ivan and the forensic scientists to be very careful with their tests and conclusions from the evidence they had collected.
Rosa Simper was a seventy-seven year-old lady living alone at Woodville in the western suburbs of Adelaide. She had been sexually assaulted and viciously strangled with her brassiere during the early hours of 3 December 1977. An iron bar was inserted into her anus and vagina before her house was ransacked. Two hundred dollars worth of property was stolen.
Crime scene examiners vacuumed the sheets of the bed where she was murdered and found microscopic evidence. Microscopic particles of wood, foam, fibres, paint and metal were found and taken for examination. Paint and metal were also found on the window ledge where the murderer entered the house at about two in the morning. This trace evidence provided the evidence that was used to convict Edward Splatt.
John McCall from the Major Crime Squad led the Simper murder investigation. John was a short and nuggetty detective who drank and smoked — not big drinks like some detectives but he could sip away for hours, reflecting on cases. He had been in the Squad for years and was in the Homicide Squad prior to that. John was very experienced and very competent at investigating murders.
As paint and metal were found at the home and, in particular, on the sheet where Mrs Simper was sleeping, similar to paint and metal used in the Wilson’s factory across the road about sixty metres from the house, John concentrated his investigations there. However, all of the factory workers had traces of metal and paint on their clothes so crime scene examiners searched for differentiating trace evidence.
Edward Charles Splatt, who was a spray painter at the factory, was arrested because police and forensic scientist believed trace evidence found at the Simper home came from Splatt and that there was circumstantial evidence to prove that Splatt murdered Rosa Simper. However, over time these beliefs were show to be incorrectly based.
An Advertiser newspaper story questioned the guilt of Edward Splatt and sufficient pressure was brought on the government to have a Royal Commission into the evidence presented at the trial. The Commission sat for 196 days and finished in March 1984, three months before Richard disappeared. The Royal Commissioner handed down his finding and said that the additional scientific evidence that was produced during the Commission ‘cast doubt on the validity of the jury’s verdict’. Edward Splatt was released from jail and given $300,000 from the government.
The Royal Commission questioned the validity of the scientific evidence because assumptions were made by one of the crime scene examiners and by a forensic scientist. The findings from the Royal Commission made police crime scene examiners and forensic scientists very careful and wary when presenting their evidence in court; all of this was happening while we were investigating the murder of five boys. We couldn’t afford for such evidence to be criticised again as it would affect our case and the credibility of the whole justice system would be open to attack.
When trace materials are used in evidence, the prosecution must show three things, which are that: the trace evidence was found where it was said to be found; the trace materials, which link the victim to the murderer, must come from the same source; and the accused was so closely in contact with the victim that he must have committed the murder.
These comments of the Royal Commissioner confirmed past court judgments and these three points had to be covered in any trial using the finding of trace evidence. Crime scene examiners and forensic scientists had been severely criticised in the Royal Commission. This provided opportunities for the defence to criticise our case.
Barry Jennings was now assisting Helena Jasinski with the defence of von Einem. They were told about the evidence concerning the drugs, fibre and hair prior to the committal. They checked the evidence with their own experts, and also checked the reputation of the people who were presenting the evidence. They had the criticisms of the Splatt Royal Commission to use as a guide. Von Einem said that he was not with Richard Kelvin but the hairs and fibres told us differently. Richard Kelvin was at von Einem’s house at some stage but that was a long way from proving abduction and murder. Also, von Einem had the opportunity and the pills to pick up and control Richard Kelvin.
Von Einem didn’t have to say anything and we would have been presenting a circumstantial case to the jury because no one could say that they saw him with Richard Kelvin at any stage. But the trace evidence presented strong circumstantial evidence to show that Richard was with von Einem. That, with the drugs and similar fact evidence of the drugged boys, presented a good case but there’s nothing like a witness to te
ll the jury what really happened. So far we didn’t have one. As well, Brian Martin and Paul Rofe were concerned because the public and potential jurors would be aware of problems with scientific evidence because of the Splatt Royal Commission.
The committal to determine whether or not there was enough evidence to send von Einem for trial started on 20 February 1984. There was an adjournment after the first day and it restarted on 27 February 1984. Barry Jennings and Helena Jasinski knew that they didn’t have to say anything at this stage. The committal was an opportunity for the defence to test the prosecution case.
Things started to get interesting on the 28th. Barry Jennings said to the court that he had instructions from his client, von Einem.
‘Your Honour, my instructions are that on the night of Sunday, 5 June 1983, Richard Kelvin was willingly in the company of the defendant and that he had a conversation with the defendant in the course of which he mentioned inter alia the fact that, paraphrasing and putting this in broad terms, that he had problems at school and was ragged. This was something he was upset about.’
Von Einem wanted to say that he was with Richard Kelvin. This was sensational news and a fantastic development. This statement showed our scientific evidence was right and now we should have less concerns about presenting it in court.
Barry and Helena advised him not to say anything but von Einem had wanted to provide an explanation about why his hair and fibres from his house and cardigan were on Richard’s clothes. Von Einem thought he was smarter than the system. He thought he could beat the system, perhaps, just as he had done previously. But judgment day was fast approaching — we would have to wait and see just how smart this deviate really was.