‘Look, mate, I can’t say. I would appreciate your counsel and quietness.’ Couch knew they would soon be the talk of the town. The officers turned in early. They had a 5.45 a.m. start.
9 THE WRONG
MAN
Detective Allan Duncan was studying Burrell’s face, not so much the fleshy cheeks punctured with dimples, but what lay beyond the superficial glibness and apparently easygoing nature. Nothing seemed to fluster the man, even here, in a police station, where he was about to be interviewed in relation to a woman’s kidnap, a crime which Duncan reckoned he was absolutely good for. Duncan could not detect any nervousness—indeed, for the next eighty-five minutes, he would find Burrell jovial, polite and very accommodating.
‘Now as I’ve already explained to you, Detective Walsh and I are making enquiries in relation to the disappearance of a Mrs Kerry Whelan of Willow Park, Cedar Ridge Road, Kurrajong, who was last seen on May 6, 1997, in Parramatta,’ Detective Duncan began.
In a leisurely way, Burrell described how he knew the Whelans, and how his business relationship with Bernie had extended to a social one. Burrell’s voice became slightly pompous as he rounded his vowels, ‘Bernie and I had similar interests in farming. We were interested in wild pig shooting, which was one of the major things we did.’ Burrell leant back in his chair a bit and spread his legs apart. ‘We went away together on those little trips.’
Burrell and Dallas had met Kerry at a company Christmas party. The couples clicked and they started having occasional dinners together, and going on weekends away. ‘We went to dinner to celebrate Bernie’s divorce from his first wife,’ Burrell said, a faint smirk passing over his lips.
Even when Burrell recounted how Bernie retrenched him in 1990, no trace of bitterness crossed his face. ‘I understood because the whole situation was that, like a lot of manufacturing companies in Australia, Crown was suffering through the economic circumstances at the time. Bernie had spoken to me about it on a couple of occasions and, um, I basically knew it was coming. It was literally a matter of when.’
Burrell said that after the retrenchment he kept in ‘irregular contact’ with the Whelans, talking to Bernie and Kerry on the phone. ‘It’s one of those situations, he’s an old friend and I make a call every once in a while and he’d make a call every once in a while and that’s about all. Bernie used to ring me up and just say: “G’day, how’re you going?” It used to be more when we were talking about the trips away on the pig shooting, just general chitchat and conversation, just between friends.’ Burrell told the detective it had been ‘several years’ since he had physically seen Bernie.
Duncan saw an opening to trap Burrell, and went for it. ‘When was the last time you visited their property at Kurra-jong?’ Duncan asked.
‘Just recently,’ Burrell replied without hesitation. ‘I went up to try to catch Bernie.’
Leaning forward, Burrell admitted he dropped by the Whelans’ Willow Park property on 16 April after calling the house. ‘Kerry met me at the door,’ he explained. ‘She was most effusive. She said, “Oh, Bruce, it’s you! Hello. How are you?” She gave me a hug and a kiss and we went inside.’ He said ‘the young son’—he could not remember James’s name—was in and out, playing with the dog. He and Kerry had a coffee and a good chat in the courtyard and ‘we sat out there in the sun’.
Duncan and Walsh were surprised at Burrell’s apparent candour. Burrell seemed to have nothing to hide.
‘Do you remember what you spoke to Kerry about?’
‘Only in very general terms because I . . . we basically discussed, um, she said she was really sorry to hear about my separation from Dallas. Um, we talked about my wife’s cancer because Kerrie had been aware of it through the period that she was being treated.’
Kerry had mentioned Sarah’s illness and the horses. ‘Kerry then said to me: “Well, what did you want to speak to Bernard about?” And I said: “Well, um, in all honesty, I was actually hoping to sit down and talk to him about the possibility of getting some work in the future again”. She basically said, “Well, he’s not home for a couple of days”. Kerry said, “Would you like me to mention something to him?” I said, “Well no, I prefer you didn’t. It’s something I’d prefer to speak to him about because I don’t want it coming from a third party”. Kerry said he’d been very busy lately with an overseas trip and a new facility they were building in Adelaide. I said if that’s the case I’ll leave it for a while and I’ll get back to him, you know, when things quieten down a little bit.’
Burrell reckoned he was at the house for about an hour and a half. ‘Kerry actually asked me if I wanted to stay for a sandwich and I said: “Thanks very much but I’ve taken up enough of your time already”.’ Burrell said he gave Kerry a kiss on the cheek and said: ‘It’s great to see you, thanks very much for the coffee and speak to you soon.’
Burrell denied he had arranged to meet her three weeks later. ‘No, why would I?’ Burrell frowned; he had simply left.
‘Where were you on May 6?’ said Duncan.
‘Incapacitated,’ was the reply.
‘In what way?’
‘I had a sciatic problem from an accident I had about sixteen years ago and it came back on the second. It progressively got worse over the next week.’ Burrell said he spoke with his local GP in Goulburn, Dr Chris Harmon, on 2 May. ‘Laying down or sitting down are absolutely bloody murder.’ Burrell told Dr Harmon over the phone that he had some morphine-based tablets but asked if there was an alternative because ‘they’re pretty potent’.
He said he was in bed on 6 May, ‘all day and all through the night. I was able to move around to a degree but mostly around the house. I think for example going out, I remember chopping the wood for the fire was absolute bloody murder.’ It was a disturbing choice of words, Duncan thought.
Burrell said his neighbours and a friend, John Mac-Culloch, knew he was in a bad way. MacCulloch had given him the name of a physiotherapist in town, Robyn Doolan, who he had been to once before. ‘I was prepared to do damn anything, it was giving me hell.’ Burrell said he rang Doolan on the evening of 8 May, and made an appointment for the following morning but he had to cancel.
As Doolan would later tell police, Burrell phoned her at 6.30 p.m. on Thursday 7 May. At the time she was treating Burrell’s friend, John MacCulloch. Doolan picked up the phone.
‘It’s Bruce Burrell here.’
‘Speak of the devil. John’s here and he tells me you have a sore back.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. I was going to make an appointment to see you tomorrow. My back’s really troubling me.’
She booked him in for 8.30 a.m. the next day, but around 7.30 a.m., Burrell called her at home to cancel. ‘I won’t make it in this morning. I’m too sore. I’ll just veg out here and take this medication.’
Doolan found it unusual for a patient to call her at home. She had never given Burrell nor any other patient her number.
Burrell told the detective that for the first nine or ten days of May he was in pain and there was ‘no way’ he could drive as far as Sydney. Duncan probed further, curious about whether he’d had other meetings with Kerry.
‘Never.’
‘Did you have any kind of relationship with Kerry that Bernie was unaware of ?’
‘No, I did not. As far as I was aware she was totally devoted to Bernard. I haven’t had an extramarital situation in my marriage, and that’s a fact,’ he said.
He knew no one who held any ill will towards the Whelans, neither had he asked Kerry to lend him money.
Duncan turned to his offsider, Detective Sergeant Peter Walsh, and asked if he had any questions for Burrell. Walsh pulled his chair forward. He wanted to know whether the conversation with Kerry on 16 April had ever become ‘heated’.
‘Not at all. I was talking to her, trying to talk to a guy about getting a bit more work out of him, I’m not going to upset his wife.’
Walsh locked eyes with Burrell. ‘See, we’ve been infor
med that there was a conversation heard where Kerry said words similar to: “Why is this bastard doing this to me?” ’ ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Burrell exclaimed. ‘Well it certainly wasn’t me,’ he said, half laughing, then paused dramatically and hit his temple with a hand. ‘I know what it was!’
‘What’s that?’ Walsh said.
‘She’s talking about her being pulled over by the police for speeding. Now that you said that. Okay. That was part of the conversation that we had. She mentioned she’d been pulled up for speeding, um, that’s . . . but that’s what it would’ve been. Certainly it wasn’t directed at me.’
‘Do you remember those actual words being said, do you?’
‘I can vaguely remember she was upset about the guy who pulled her up, yeah. But only now that you’ve mentioned it, I mean that’s all. She certainly wasn’t directing any of it at me.’
Walsh and Duncan knew this was a slip-up, yet Burrell said it with such vigour he was almost convincing himself.
‘Do you have any knowledge whatsoever in relation to the disappearance of Kerry Whelan on the morning of Tuesday 6 May 1997 at Parramatta?’ Walsh asked.
‘Absolutely none,’ Burrell replied in a raised voice.
‘Just one other question,’ Duncan said. ‘As you’re aware, this is a major enquiry that we’re carrying out. Would you be willing to provide assistance to police such as hair or blood samples for analysis?’
‘Certainly.’ Burrell was gushing now.
The interview finished at 5.47 p.m. While Burrell darted outside for a cigarette, Duncan went into an office to call Bray.
‘I don’t think he did it,’ Duncan told Bray. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong man.’
It was well below zero and still dark when the Operational Support Group assembled in the motel car park for a muster. They poured water on the vehicles’ windscreens to soften the ice, and then scraped off the sleet.
Their aim was to start searching by 7.30 a.m., but on that day and the others to follow, the conditions didn’t allow it. A thick cloud of fog hovered over Hillydale for much of the early morning hours. It sorely tried their patience. It was after nine o’clock when the mist lifted and the officers could begin. Even then, the conditions were difficult. The rain poured down unceasingly, making the ground a bog and the rocks slippery under their boots. It was cold too. Bone-slicingly cold, even under layers of police-issue blue overalls, polar fleeces, rain jackets, woollen socks, beanies and gloves.
The team worked in a grid pattern on the ground. Spaced three metres apart, the line would sweep an area, looking for freshly dug ground or any foreign object. They started on the great expanse of empty land surrounding Burrell’s house before moving into the wooded gums and around the dams. Officers Frank Goodyer and Margaret Suanez followed behind the line of ten of their colleagues, waiting for the much wished-for verbal signal: ‘Find’. It rarely came. Occasionally a bone would spark interest, but it always belonged to a wombat or a kangaroo. Through gullies, over loose stone and into heavy scrub, they raked the ground meticulously with their eyes. Two cadaver dogs walked ahead.
Gary Duncan knew the officers were skilled and determined but he wanted to reassure Dennis Bray, the taskforce chief investigator, who on this day was watching the searchers. When Duncan placed a triple-A battery in the search area as a test, the officers immediately found it. It quietly impressed Bray.
When the weather permitted, the police aeroplane and helicopter buzzed overhead, often with Couch or Duncan on board. One morning they spotted a concealed shack on a property adjacent to Burrell’s. ‘Here’s one, land here.’ Couch was excited. Please God, let this be Kerry, he thought to himself. But inside the hut, hung with a sign which said ‘The Lodge’, was some old furniture and plenty of cobwebs. Disappointment—again.
For the police divers, conditions were even tougher. This group was hugely admired for its search and recovery of bodies in hazardous situations. While no one relished the thought of finding a decomposing body, the stakes were higher when you encountered death in the depths of a river or dam. It wasn’t just bodies they were employed to find, but murder weapons, vehicles, any object that might shed light or clues on an investigation.
Hillydale’s six dams ranged in depth from one to three metres. Some mornings, the divers would have to crack the layer of surface ice before they plunged into the freezing water. Tailor-made ‘dry’ suits and hoods protected them from hypothermia. They were 100 per cent waterproof. Even so, the divers’ time in the water was limited. Visibility was poor in the dams and they relied heavily on touch and feel. Disappearing into the murky water, they emerged each time with a shake of the head, the signal for ‘no find’.
One afternoon during a heavy downpour they had an unusual encounter with Burrell himself. The fire trails had turned to mud and as they manoeuvred their dive truck up Inverary Road, the vehicle became bogged. Shivering and dog tired from their day, the four divers, still in their dry suits, tried to dig their way out. It was hopeless. Couch and Duncan came to help, with a winch line attached to a four-wheel drive. The truck would not budge. To the officers’ astonishment, Burrell materialised through the rain on his tractor. He hopped out, a rolled-up cigarette stuck in his mouth. ‘You blokes want a hand?’ he said.
The next day, Gary Duncan’s encounter with Burrell was somewhat different. Duncan would spend his days surveying new areas for the teams to search. He was in a wooded area about two kilometres from the house, when he caught Burrell staring at him. Duncan felt unnerved but also excited by the thought that perhaps he was close to something that Burrell did not want him to see. He ordered a new search of the area.
By now Burrell had taken on a cavalier attitude to the whole search process. He would sit on his verandah drinking VB, his bravado gathering momentum as he drained each stubbie. On one afternoon, he offered Couch a beer. The inspector shook his head in disgust.
With his vehicles confiscated, Burrell was confined to Hillydale and that suited Bray, who was coordinating the investigation from the Richmond base. At 6.55 a.m. on 23 May, after more torrential rain overnight, Burrell called his neighbour, Phil Broadhead, on his mobile phone to ask whether he could borrow a vehicle. Police were listening on a phone tap.
‘What happened to your vehicle?’ asked Broadhead, who was unaware of the massive search operation underway.
‘I’m having problems with Dallas and vehicles.’
Broadhead had lived on the adjoining property, Hillyford, for forty-two years, but had no idea that Dallas had left Burrell a year before. He was at the house of his girlfriend, Diane, that morning, and told Burrell he would be home sometime after eight o’clock. At 7.20 a.m., Burrell headed over to Broadhead’s house. Senior Constable Warren Hamilton, who was stationed at the command post, saw him leave and recorded it in the police logbook: ‘7.20 am POI leaves the residence’. Burrell was waiting at the front gate when Broadhead arrived home, and he handed Bruce the keys to his Nissan Navara ute.
Unbeknown to the police, Burrell was feeling desperate. The pressure had got to him and he made a decision on the spur of the moment, without forethought, and without consideration for the consequences. He drove into Goulburn and at 9.20 a.m. and stepped into a phone box opposite the Empire Hotel. Believing that calls from public phone boxes could not be traced, Burrell dialled Crown Equipment.
Part-time receptionist Kathleen Pemberton was working on the switch. ‘Good morning, Crown Equipment. How may I help you?’
‘Mrs Whelan is okay,’ came the voice at the other end.
Mrs Pemberton gasped.
Before she could say anything, the deep, husky voice continued: ‘Mr Whelan must call off the police and media today. Tell him the man with the white Volkswagen—’
‘Let me transfer you to his office.’ Mrs Pemberton’s voice was high pitched now.
‘No,’ the man said, ‘stop and listen and write it down.’
‘What man and what Volkswagen?’ Mrs Pemberton’s hand was shaking.
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‘Mr Whelan will know,’ the man said. ‘He must call off the police and media today . . . will be in touch in two weeks.’
‘Two weeks is too long!’ Mrs Pemberton cried, but the man had hung up.
10 GOING PUBLIC
Wednesday 21 May
At 10.45 a.m. the constable entered the office of Mick Howe, Taskforce Bellaire’s commander, to warn him. It was, the young officer told the inspector, ‘crazy out there’ in the media room. Hanging from the rafters, sir, the officer said.
Taskforce Bellaire was lifting its blackout on the Whelan case and every newspaper, radio and television outlet in town had converged on police headquarters in College Street, opposite Sydney’s Hyde Park. Television cameras on tripods were lined up like a battery of heavy ordnance aiming at the desk which was cluttered with microphones and tape recorders. Among the Australian contingent were stringers for British newspapers and a representative from Time magazine.
At 11 a.m. Mick Howe and Chief Superintendent Rod Harvey walked into the roar of voices. Reporters and photographers seemed to surge forward at them, then stop.
The room fell silent.
Mick Howe gripped the microphone. He would run through the basic facts of the case, but there was not a great deal he could say. His brief was to make an appeal for information and eyewitnesses without giving anything away. He spoke of Bernie and Kerry Whelan’s plans for 6 May, how Mrs Whelan had failed to meet her husband, and how police had found her vehicle at Parramatta. He explained to the assembled mob about the stalemate they had endured since. He said the police had conducted an intense investigation and were now seeking help from the public.
‘We would like to speak with anyone who has seen Mrs Whelan outside the hotel,’ he said. Howe declared it was possible Mrs Whelan had driven to Parramatta for an appointment with a hairdresser, beautician or skin specialist. ‘We would like to hear from any person in the community who may be able to assist in regard to whether she made that appointment,’ he said.
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