Ladykiller

by Candace Sutton

  He ran through Kerry’s clothing and jewellery and asked that the public report any attempted sale of items matching her rings, bracelet, earrings and the TAG Heuer watch. ‘We have grave fears for the safety of Mrs Whelan given the nature of the demands,’ he said. ‘The investigation is at a critical stage.’

  Rod Harvey gave little away about the ransom note, refusing to disclose the amount, or anything about the VW. ‘Mr Whelan endeavoured to meet certain conditions of that demand,’ he said, ‘but there has been no further contact with those people responsible.’

  There was the faintest of pauses, then suddenly it seemed everyone was yelling out a different question. Rod held a hand behind one ear and frowned.

  ‘Why have the Whelans been targeted?’ a reporter asked.

  ‘There have been no previous threats and there’s no rhyme or reason why they would be selected,’ Harvey replied.

  He had a photograph of Kerry ready for copying, but the media wanted one of Mrs Whelan wearing her jewellery. They had none. Howe knew Dennis Bray had had trouble even getting a picture of the camera-shy mother and Bernie was insisting a ‘nice’ photo of her be released. Eventually, they settled on one which was three years old, in which her hair was different. The image would frustrate news editors, who found it of such poor quality it was barely suitable for reproduction.

  To the great distress of Leo Ryan, Kerry’s father, Channel 7 would run with another photograph of Kerry, taken by a neighbour. It was a clearer image, but in it she was wearing ghostly make-up for a Halloween night she had attended years earlier. No matter how many calls the family made to Channel 7, the station refused to change it.

  After the press conference, New South Wales Premier Bob Carr made a statement from his office at Governor Macquarie Tower and urged the public to come forward with information about Mrs Whelan. ‘The anguish of the family would be unimaginable at this time,’ he said.

  The Daily Telegraph splashed the story over the front page of its afternoon edition with a photograph of Mick Howe and Rod Harvey and the headline ‘SYDNEY WOMAN KIDNAPPED’.

  News crews headed for Kurrajong. The Whelan home itself appeared empty except for a gardener and horses; inside, a lone detective sat by the telephone waiting for the kidnappers’ call. A high-security gate and fencing kept the media vehicles off the property; instead they were parked on the road while their occupants descended onto the neighbours. Most people in Kurrajong lived on two- to ten-hectare properties and they were country folk or families seeking refuge from city life.

  The media tore through the previously sleepy village like a locust swarm—within hours a newspaper story would publish the headline ‘Mystery Shatters Peaceful Township’. Each human being in sight was stripped of every possible piece of information before the reporters moved on to the next local.

  A journalist for the Australian newspaper, Diana Thorp, found Ken Bolton in his garden. He knew the Whelans well, although he did not disclose everything he knew about them. After his face appeared in the news, the police would invite him in for an interview. He described the Whelan family as ‘absolutely delightful’ and Kerry as ‘a mother who looked after the kids and did all the motherly things’. ‘Bernie just puts his whole life into his family. My boy and girl are the same age as two of their children . . . it’s always been Uncle Bernard and Auntie Kerry,’ Mr Bolton told Ms Thorp. ‘I just want her back.’ He described the suburb as ‘God’s country’ and said, ‘We just don’t get weirdos around here.’

  Mrs Lola Wright said people would ‘be absolutely terrified’. Along Kurrajong’s main street, a woman in the newsagency said people were ‘shocked’ because ‘things like that don’t happen here’. However, the Whelans’ neighbours soon tired of the intrusions and kept their doors closed.

  Telegraph reporters tracked down Bernie Whelan at Crown Equipment headquarters, but he was not prepared to be interviewed. His friend and colleague Anatole Kowaliw said Bernie was ‘a very strong man . . . he would not let Kerry go without a fight’. Kowaliw said the forklift industry was riddled with competitive jealousies, gossip, rivalries and grudges. ‘This business is insidious,’ he said, ‘but Bernie Whelan is an ethical, straight-up, no-nonsense man.’

  ‘Bernie’s very friendly, well liked and very rich,’ another industry source said. ‘Bernie is one of the biggest names in forklifts.’

  The national appeal encouraged hundreds of calls to Crime Stoppers. Twenty-four hours after the first press conference police scheduled another. They were determined to keep the story in the spotlight and the media were feverish. Rod Harvey decided to release the surveillance video of Kerry’s last known movements. Reporters strained to watch Kerry on the Parkroyal Hotel security footage. It was just twelve seconds of black-and-white film and showed her parking and then walking up the car ramp, a dark-haired man a few paces behind her. Rod Harvey said police had discounted the man as a possible suspect.

  A mannequin, dressed as Kerry had been sixteen days earlier, was set up outside the hotel. Kerry’s hairdresser had prepared a shoulder-length brown wig with auburn highlights for the dummy’s head. Reporters reckoned the doll looked more like Elle Macpherson than the missing, plump housewife, but the photograph rang bells with people who called the Crime Stoppers phone number. Sightings were coming in from all over Australia. Kerry had been ‘seen’ at airports, in parks, at Parramatta, with a man in a limousine at a dozen different times on the day she disappeared.

  Psychics rang in with ‘visions’ of Kerry.

  The Taskforce was encouraged by the enormous public response, but the detectives knew the chance of finding Kerry alive was diminishing. The police hierarchy decided Bernie Whelan should make an appeal to the kidnappers, written in his own words. In order to protect him from the media glare, it would be pre-recorded.

  On Friday 23 May, the media again advanced on New South Wales Police headquarters and at 10 a.m. Mick Howe and Inspector Warren Davis entered the room. The officers looked tired and disappointed. A junior officer slotted a video into the machine and pressed ‘Play’. The screen flickered and a man with grey hair, dressed in a navy jacket and dun-coloured trousers, came into view.

  On camera, Bernie Whelan walked to a desk, sat down and glanced at a handwritten page. He twisted the gold wedding band on his finger and seemed sapped of energy and terribly sad as he looked up at the camera and began to speak. ‘I am here to make a public statement regarding the kidnapping of my wife Kerry Whelan,’ he said. ‘Two weeks ago Kerry was kidnapped and shortly afterwards a ransom note was received. For ten days we tried to comply with these demands, but for reasons unknown to us the kidnappers have stopped contact. On behalf of my family, I beg them to contact me again.’

  Bernie’s voice had gone high with emotion. He took a deep breath and continued. ‘I will do whatever they ask and will go anywhere to ensure the safety of my wife,’ he said. ‘We appeal to the members of the public to report anything, no matter how small, to the police, that may help this matter. The crime against us can only be described as mental terrorism.’ In the media room, the journalists were grim-faced as they took notes.

  ‘The children and I have only kept our sanity due to the love we have for each other and the love from close friends who have been minding us,’ Bernie said. ‘I wish to thank the media for their help in helping to find Kerry, but I do ask that you do not approach my children. They are very vulnerable at this time and barely coping with this tragedy.’ Bernie paused. His eyes had the look of someone staring into a void. ‘I wish to thank the New South Wales Police for their extraordinary sensitivity to my children,’ he said. ‘It’s times like this when you find out what a professional police force we have.’

  On the screen, Bernie folded his typed script and placed it in a pocket. Facing the camera again, his eyes awash with tears, Bernie pleaded: ‘Kerry, if you can hear what I’m saying, I want you to know that we all love you and we will do anything to get you back, but most of all, don’t give up.’ Bernie’s
chin quivered. He stopped, swallowed and added a quiet ‘Thank you’ before the screen went blank.

  Inspector Howe fielded the journalists’ questions. ‘We have had some reported sightings,’ he said in response to one. ‘Information has come from a variety of different sources. A lot of anonymous information that we are following up. Not one piece of information that comes in won’t be checked. There’s no chance of anything being overlooked.’

  Sydney Morning Herald reporter Greg Bearup asked whether Mother’s Day, 11 May, had been ‘the turning point’; he had a tip that police knew Kerry was in real trouble when that date passed with no new developments.

  Mick Howe confirmed it. ‘Mother’s Day has just gone and she has got a sick child. I couldn’t see anybody leaving the family like that,’ he said. Rod Harvey told Mick Howe there was a problem brewing which could jeopardise the exchange of the ransom for Mrs Whelan. The Daily Telegraph’s advertising manager had taken Bernie Whelan’s call when he placed the last advertisement for the kidnappers. She was suspicious. It was a peculiar advertisement which she believed was written in code and she recognised the name of the man whose wife had just been kidnapped. She alerted the news desk. The paper was now determined to run a front-page story about the secret ransom arrangements for Kerry Whelan, Rod Harvey told Mick Howe.

  Rod Harvey spoke with his Crime Agencies boss Clive Small. Exposing the details of the devil’s bargain might impel the kidnappers into action. The legal branch of the New South Wales Police prepared to file an injunction in the Supreme Court that afternoon. The police had a salient argument: if Kerry Whelan were still alive, the court order might preserve her life.

  11 BUNGONIA

  NIGHTS

  The white Commodore turned left on an unsealed road and drove past pine trees, more property gates, kangaroos and bush; the road was muddy and slow going. Now and again its occupants caught the faint wop-wop sound of a helicopter in the distance. At one point the driver, Sun-Herald photographer Jackie Ghossein, saw a vehicle come flying up behind them in the rear-vision mirror. The car passed them. Two police officers in blue caps sat in the front, but did not wave and the car sped away up the road. Ghossein and the two reporters with her in the car, Simon Crittle and Fia Cumming, pressed on. The helicopter noise had ceased and Ghossein reckoned the aircraft had landed somewhere ahead; that must have been the search area.

  It was after lunch on day four of the search, wet and freezing cold. Even though the search warrant by the local court had only been issued for three days, police believed that once they had taken possession of a property, they were entitled to remain on it until the completion of their search. On Hillydale’s front lawn, Inspector Bruce Couch was standing in his heavy-weather gear as his team fanned out all over the property. Suddenly an officer came running up the driveway: a white Commodore was coming down Inverary Road. Couch had a terrible hunch. He jumped into his vehicle and took off up the road until he saw the car coming for him. He stopped in the middle of the road and got out. The Sun-Herald team crested a rise and saw the car and next to it the police officer, standing stock still in navy coveralls, coat and cap. He did not look friendly. Jackie Ghossein touched Fia’s arm. She recognised the policeman from the Belanglo forest searches a few years earlier.

  They got out of the car and Fia shouted ahead, ‘I believe you’re searching for Kerry Whelan.’

  Couch knew it was the press. ‘No, I’m running a training course,’ he said. ‘Now this is private property. Get out.’

  Fia Cumming insisted. ‘Inspector Couch—’ she began, but Couch held up his hand like a stop sign and shook his head.

  ‘You did the search for the backpackers in the Ivan Milat case,’ the reporter stated.

  Couch shook his head again.

  ‘But you are Inspector Couch, aren’t you? We know that.’

  ‘And I’m telling you, young lady, we’re down here training. I don’t know what you are talking about. Now you and the rest of the press get the bloody hell out of here.’

  Fia smiled at him as Ghossein took photos. Couch advanced on them and they backed off , into the Commodore and up the road.

  Couch was furious. When he got back to the property, he padlocked the gate and phoned the taskforce. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ he told Mick Howe. ‘I just got sprung by a journo.’

  At Richmond, Howe and Bray agreed that by the time the newspaper hit the pavement the following morning, journalists would be crawling all over Bungonia.

  Fia Cumming knew she was onto something. Her news desk had received a tip-off of a search operation in the Goulburn area, and they were certain they had found it. They headed back into town to interview some of the locals and then returned to Sydney: their story would make the paper’s first edition.

  By 7 a.m. the next day, Sunday 25 May, the first helicopter hovered over Bungonia. Then another flew in, and another— five in total, full of Sydney television crews descending en masse in a hungry posse bigger than the town’s population. They started photographing everything that moved. There was no avoiding them on the street.

  A press conference was slotted for 1.30 p.m., right in the middle of Inverary Road, on the first crest after the turn-off for Hillydale. Almost the whole town turned up, emerging from their houses and properties to form a quiet cluster on the roadside. The last local to appear was Eric Schmidt, an 85-year-old retired plumber with a sonorous voice. He was drunk, and lurched over to the cameras, one arm flapping as he demanded to know what was going on. Couch sent an officer over to shut him up.

  Dennis Bray kept the press conference brief. He was in no mood for talking today—the search of Hillydale had been wound up, and police were no closer to finding Kerry.

  ‘Mrs Whelan’s well-being is paramount,’ Bray told reporters. ‘We will use every resource available to locate and return Mrs Whelan safely to her family.’

  Asked what led police to the Bungonia property, Bray brushed off the question. ‘This is one of the many enquiries we have had and we’re not discounting any information . . . there’ll be other properties, I would imagine, that will be visited in the course of the investigation.’

  Detective Bray said the property’s owner had been cooperative. A reporter asked whether the man had once worked for Crown Equipment.

  ‘I don’t believe that has any consequence in this enquiry,’ Bray said and brought the conference to an end, adding that police were keeping a positive attitude that ‘Mrs Whelan is still alive’. Bray’s instincts told him otherwise. Privately, he believed it was likely that Burrell was involved, and if Kerry wasn’t already dead, she soon would be.

  If the Bungonians thought that the media contingent would go on its merry way, they were wrong. Camera crews and reporters became temporary residents of their village as they kept a constant watch for Bruce Burrell. Photographers from the daily newspapers, the Telegraph and the Herald, stayed in their cars on Inverary Road as the Bungonia nights plummeted to minus two. Inside their vehicles, the photographers could not sleep; they were like sausages frozen in tin cans.

  Burrell surprised the media, although not police, the following day when he came to his gate and gave a sort of sermon on how he had welcomed the police onto his property. He wore a brightly patterned blue, turquoise and black sweater and had tied a woollen scarf around his neck. ‘My attitude was very straightforward. I simply said it is open, please do what you want,’ Burrell said. ‘The only involvement that I have to date is the fact that my property has been searched and that’s it.’

  Later, he gave a lengthy interview to Channel 9’s A Current Affair, declaring he had nothing to do with Kerry’s disappearance. ‘I have been asked the question by police. I absolutely know not a thing and I wish to God it would be resolved,’ he said. ‘I know nothing of her disappearance. I just want it to be resolved, like everyone else.’

  Burrell confirmed he had worked for Mr Whelan, but he said he left on ‘good terms’. ‘It’s been an extremely tough five days for me and my family, w
ith implications which extend into the future,’ he said. He did not know why the police had searched his property. ‘I wish to God I did. It has turned my life upside down,’ he said. ‘I can’t begin to understand how Bernie and his family feel. All I can say is that the experience I have had has been the most horrendous of my life. I want everything back on an even keel for me and my family.’ Burrell said he had remained a good friend of Bernie Whelan since his retrenchment, adding that ‘several employees were being investigated. I happen to be one of them.’ Both statements were lies. ‘The unfortunate portrayal of my role in the case being investigated by the police has to date given an appearance of guilt and contamination by association,’ Burrell said, smiling into the camera. His words sounded rehearsed.

  Back in Sydney that night, a police officer watched the television news with growing astonishment. She grabbed the telephone, dialled police headquarters and asked for Dennis Bray. Detective Sue Whitfield had some intriguing information for him. Almost two years earlier, Whitfield had investigated the disappearance of an elderly woman, Dorothy Davis. The woman had left some meat defrosting on the sink while she walked to visit a sick friend and she had not been seen since. Whitfield told Bray: ‘the case was unsolved’. But among those interviewed about the disappearance was one of Dorothy Davis’s neighbours, a man in his forties. His name, Whitfield said, ‘was Bruce Allan Burrell’.

  12 THE LADY

  VANISHES

  Undine Street, South Coogee inclines steeply down to the cliff top above the rocky foreshores of Lurline Bay, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. What had been a working-class area in Sydney’s eastern suburbs during the 1950s turned nouveau riche in the late twentieth century; property values in the street had skyrocketed. Old houses were being knocked down or refurbished and, amid the smell of sea salt, the air hung with cement and sawdust. At the bottom of Undine Street, Marine Parade curves around the coast, offering its residents stunning views across the Tasman Sea. Beyond the fenced edge of the cliff, the sandstone drops steeply to waves which crash on boulders the size of Range Rovers.