This bout of surgery was more serious. Afterwards, Sarah would have to wear a colostomy bag and heal in time for a third operation when, her doctor promised, the bag would be removed and her system ‘all hooked back up again’. She was very frightened: about the pain, about what it would do to her body, about the prospect of having a colostomy bag. The specialist had telephoned Bernie a few days previously to say she could postpone it. But Sarah told her father, ‘No, Mum would have wanted me to have it.’ Bernie agreed. At the same time, he was privately scared. He risked losing his daughter on the operating table, but he knew that without the surgery, she might die anyway.
The following morning when a nurse arrived with tablets to prep Sarah for surgery, she burst into tears. With her mother holding her hand, Sarah had previously ‘gone under’ with an injection. She was still crying when Bernie arrived with a teddy bear for his little girl. The surgeon assured her that ‘Teddy Merrick’ would be allowed into the operating theatre. Sarah felt she couldn’t let her father down. Two orderlies wheeled her off to theatre, where Bernie appeared, scrubbed up in hospital greens. Above his mask, Bernie’s eyes filled with tears and father and daughter wept together. They were crying for Kerry.
When Sarah awoke in the recovery room, the first thing she saw was her father, his head slumped on the shoulder of his suit, his tie still perfectly knotted. For the next two weeks, Sarah stayed in her hospital bed getting progressively more bored. Her usual stream of visitors was cut off because the hospital predicted that the arrival of relatives and friends might tip off the media. All Sarah wanted to do was get back to school. She had already taken three weeks off after her mum disappeared.
18 TRICKED YOU
It was a bitterly cold night on 15 June when Detective Bray and two taskforce detectives drove out to Hillydale. The gate was kept padlocked these days. Burrell was virtually a prisoner in his own home, stalked by reporters and stared at by locals whenever he left the place.
Burrell was not expecting any visitors. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he bellowed from the verandah.
‘We want to have a talk with you about Kerry,’ Bray said.
Burrell looked at him and shrugged. ‘Come up then. It’s bloody freezing out here.’
Inside, near an open fire, Detective Bray continued. ‘Listen, we’d like you to come into Goulburn with us.’
‘Tonight? It’s too cold. Too late.’ Burrell hunched his shoulders.
‘But I’d like to record our interview on tape,’ Bray said.
‘Can’t we do it here? I don’t want to go to Goulburn at this hour. Can I ring my solicitor first?’
‘Yes,’ Bray said, knowing that Burrell’s lawyer would likely put an end to any questioning.
Burrell, who was wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt and dirty trousers, returned, confident and with his hands on his hips. ‘Well, I’ve spoken to David and he’s advised me that I don’t really have to say anything. But I’ve got nothing to hide. What do you want to know?’
Bray couldn’t believe it. His gut feeling told him that this was the last interview he was likely ever to get with Burrell, so he had better make it a good one. Better than that, he had to nail him. Earlier, he and four senior detectives had discussed the interview strategy. They desperately needed to prove Burrell was in the Goulburn telephone box on 23 May when Bernie Whelan’s secretary at Crown Equipment had picked up her phone to hear the kidnapper’s demand, ‘Call off the police and media today . . . Mrs Whelan is okay.’ The taskforce had pulled surveillance off Burrell only the day before that call, and Bray had kicked himself more than once for that. But his instincts told him another thing: that Bruce Burrell believed he was still under surveillance when he went to the telephone box, and he would invent a reason for being there. And if he did that, they had him. In the phone box and, Bray allowed himself the thought, in a jail cell. He looked across at Burrell and hoped his own face was as impassive.
Detective Constable Darren Deamer went out to the car and returned with an antiquated-looking cassette recorder and a few blank tapes. They sat at Burrell’s dining room table, Burrell at the head, Bray to his right, and Detective Sergeant Peter Walsh and Deamer opposite, to operate the recording equipment and take notes.
It was ten to eight. Bray began with the normal formalities: ‘For the purpose of this interview, will you state your full name, your date of birth and address?’
‘Bruce Allan Burrell, January 25, 1953, Hillydale, Bungonia.’ He stated that he was a grazier but was not in work at the moment.
‘Okay. Do you have any income?’
‘No, I don’t at this point, except in selling stock and borrowing from my father.’
‘How many stock, what stock have you got on the property?’
‘I’ve got some cattle at the moment.’
‘What are they valued at?’
‘I must be honest, in the last few weeks I haven’t been up with this stock market so I don’t know what their value would be.’ Leaning back in his chair, Burrell folded his hands on his head. He chuckled. ‘Guessing maybe four thousand.’
This was an outrageous exaggeration, but Bray did not challenge him. Instead, he would slowly reel in the so-called country squire. Over the next two hours, the detective switched from one topic to another, back and forth, trying to bamboozle the usually smooth operator. A person who was telling the truth wouldn’t have a problem. But for a man who stacked lie upon lie, it would prove confusing.
‘All right. How long has it been since you’ve had any income off the land?’
‘I sold some stock, oh, two months ago, two and a half months,’ Burrell said.
It was another lie, which Bray let pass. Emboldened, Burrell gave the name and address of a sales agent.
Bray asked about his marriages, his money, and in particular Burrell’s financial position in April, a month before Kerry was kidnapped.
‘It wasn’t brilliant, that’s why I’ve been out looking for work,’ Burrell said. ‘I realised I couldn’t continue to borrow any further money from my father and with everything that’s happened emotionally with Dallas, our separation, I started to just ferret around and things like that, trying to work back in the industry.’ He said he had repayments of $1016 a month on his $123 000 mortgage.
‘How do you service the loan?’
‘Well to date I’ve been, as I said, borrowing some money from my father, selling the stock and it reached the point recently where it was obvious I’m going to have to do something about getting back into the workforce. That’s when I started making some calls to people I knew, clients, get to see them and find out about getting back into the workforce.’
‘Prior to this, in respect of your second wife Dallas Burrell, what income did you have?’
‘Well,’ Burrell replied, putting on an air of bravado, ‘we were driving income through the family or through Dallas and my business.’
Asked whether he was active in the business, Burrell gave a long-winded answer, eventually admitting that Dallas did all the work. ‘I was trying to get things functioning down here in drought conditions,’ he said.
It had just passed eight o’clock. The tape recorder stopped and for a moment Deamer could not get it working again. He fiddled with the buttons and gave it a shake. The cassette started turning once more.
‘Thank you,’ said Bray. ‘Before it cut out I was asking in relation to your employment with Crown. You’ve previously been employed with Crown as an executive?’
‘Yes.’
Bray could tell Burrell liked the word ‘executive’. It played to his ego.
Burrell talked about his work at Crown and the friendships he developed with the rich executives of the company. He said he kept in touch with the Whelans after he was retrenched.
‘On a personal level or business level?’ Bray asked.
‘On both.’
Burrell became expansive: ‘Well personally, I’d say on a personal level Bernie and I always basically kept in touch over
the period of time. I mean, he had other people that he’d done business with in the past and we kept in contact. Plus the occasional phone calls to each other on a business level. After I left Crown I did a couple of projects for them.’
‘Do you agree that you told us the last time you were interviewed that you told police that you had spoken to Mr Whelan by telephone on April 7?’
‘I don’t remember if it was April 7, but I spoke to him early, late March early April, I certainly did.’ Burrell looked very congenial.
‘What was that for?’
‘I originally rang him, number one, to say hello how are you because we hadn’t spoken for quite some time, quite a long time actually as everything had been going on with my marriage break-up. It was also part of my wanting to try and get back into the workforce in some means by speaking to Bernie about trying to do some freelance work with him, but I couldn’t ask him about that by phone.’ Burrell’s voice was calm and measured and one hand was placed comfortably beneath his chin.
‘Why couldn’t you ask him by phone? You were a good friend?’
‘It’s not the sort of thing . . .’ Burrell was searching for the right words—or maybe whatever sounded good.
‘Sorry,’ Bray said, ‘didn’t you say you were good friends with him? Is that right?’
‘Well I’d always thought that I had been, but I must be honest, some of the impression I’ve seen, I’m only an acquaintance. My only response to that is I don’t recall any acquaintances at my wedding.’ Burrell pouted. He had clearly been reading the interviews in which Bernie denied they were friends.
‘Prior to that call how long was it since you had spoken to Mr Whelan?’
‘Oh! A long time, must be months and months.’
‘Well, was it years?’
‘No . . .’ Burrell drew out the word.
Bray wanted specifics and pressed Burrell for an answer. But Bruce was struggling to get his dates right and was getting slightly rattled. ‘Dennis,’ Burrell lowered his voice, ‘I have no idea exactly. I mean, we spoke relatively irregularly.’
‘All right.’ Bray backed down. ‘You agree that physically you hadn’t seen him for a couple of years?’
‘True,’ Burrell said. He pressed down his shoulders as if trying to appear relaxed.
‘Now, what about Kerry Whelan?’ Bray said casually. ‘Have you contacted her by telephone?’
‘No. Hell, I can’t tell you the answer to that question, ’cause I’ve got no idea.’
Bray returned to Burrell’s 16 April visit to the Whelans’ home three weeks before the kidnap. ‘You told me earlier you wanted to see Bernie?’
‘Mmm-hmm . . .’ Burrell nodded.
‘Why did you go to Kurrajong to see Bernie?’
‘Well, I’ve already answered this question before,’ Burrell rolled his eyes, ‘but I’ll say it again. I rang the office in the morning, can’t recall what time. It was unusual because I wanted to be put through to the executive office. I was told to hold on and eventually a girl at the switch came back and said, “I’m sorry Mr Whelan won’t answer his phone”. I said, “Okay, look, it’s Bruce Burrell. I’m an old friend of Bernie’s”. She said, “Oh, well look, he probably won’t be in today”.’
The tape jammed. Deamer put in a new one. Burrell’s answers were long. He wanted to appear as forthcoming as possible and had not found the line of questioning particularly challenging—yet.
Burrell continued, saying he knew that Bernie usually took Wednesdays off and worked around the place up at Kurrajong, so he decided to take a run out there. He said he had stayed overnight at his father’s place at North Balgowlah. He was not exactly sure whether Bernie would be at home.
‘Wouldn’t you at least make a call to see before travelling that distance?’
‘Well I mean, the alternative I had that day was to sit around on my backside and do nothing in my father’s place.’ Burrell said that when he arrived at the Whelans’ property, he found Mrs Whelan and her younger son.
Bray asked him about the conversation he had with James Whelan.
‘I didn’t actually talk to him as such,’ Bruce lied. He denied mentioning anything to James about being at a pistol club. He denied talking to James about the Jaguar.
Bray jumped from this visit back to the day Kerry disappeared.
Burrell rejected any suggestion he went near Sydney on 6 May. ‘No I did not,’ and later, ‘No way . . . My phone records would tell you, I mean …’ Burrell shut his mouth quickly.
Bray asked about his bad back and his sciatica.
‘The problem I had with this condition is, when it hits, the only position that’s even slightly comfortable is standing up . . . and sitting down for any period of time or even laying down is impossible.’
‘You haven’t got that problem anymore?’ Bray glanced over at the woodpile near the fire.
‘Occasionally I get twinges but that’s about all.’
Burrell went on to speak about his family, his father’s birthday, his sisters, his need for work. Then Bray turned up the heat and asked about the disappearance of Dorothy Davis. Burrell answered the questions, providing an alibi for where he was on the day the widow disappeared.
Bray handed him the original police statement, taken on 29 June 1995. While Burrell read it, Deamer paused the tape. It was only six pages long yet Burrell seemed to be poring over every line. For a copywriter, he was a slow reader, or perhaps he was using it to remind himself of the version he gave to police.
Burrell went on to explain the loan, the favour he did for Dottie, and the separate account he opened for himself to deposit the money. For at least fifteen minutes he spoke calmly about Dottie, the events of that year, where he was living.
Bray decided the moment had come. Enough of pussyfooting around with Bruce, time to make a serious attempt to nab his person of interest.
‘Just a couple of things Bruce, a few more things. On April 16 you said . . .?’ Bray had established that when Burrell made his surprise visit to the Whelans’ property on 16 April, presumably to kidnap Kerry that day, he had been confronted by a newly installed security gate requiring a PIN number. There was no intercom on the gate yet so Burrell needed to phone the house to get the security code. Rather than use his mobile phone, which would leave a trace, he drove ten minutes into North Richmond to use a public phone. Bray knew Burrell had his mobile phone with him that day because their records showed he’d later used it to call his father.
‘Bruce, why did you drive all the way back into Richmond to a public phone box?’ Bray asked.
Burrell rubbed his nose, then said he probably did not have his mobile phone with him that day. ‘Or maybe there was no signal,’ he said quickly.
Not true and Bray could prove it. Bray shifted back to the subject of mortgage repayments and Burrell spoke about his income, or lack thereof. His shoulders relaxed. He had been over this territory many times.
At 9.14 p.m., Burrell offered them a drink and the detectives declined. He poured himself a Coca-Cola. Bray wanted to know about Burrell’s firearms. A number of people had claimed to have seen Burrell sporting a .357 Magnum revolver, while others said he owned a .44 pistol and they had fired it at Burrell’s Hillydale property, yet police searches had not found the weapons. Police had recovered nine spent rounds of .44 ammunition from a large gum tree beside Burrell’s house. Ballistic experts told Bray they would fit a pistol, but Burrell denied it was his. ‘I’ve never owned one,’ he said with some force. Bray asked him about the ammunition recovered from his weapons stash at Hillydale.
‘Oh,’ Burrell said, frowned and then tapped his forehead as if he had just remembered. ‘Oh yes, the guy from the pistol club in Sydney, he was out here some time back. He fired some shots and I kept a couple of shells.’ Burrell volunteered the name of Adam Pantle, one of his weekend guests at Hillydale.
Bray moved around a few more topics before briefly returning to the subject of Dottie. He looked Burrell in the eye as
he said, ‘Dottie hadn’t given you that money as a loan, had she?’
‘Definitely not.’ Burrell stared back and shook his head.
Bray turned to Burrell’s movements on 23 May. This was the main reason the detectives were there and Bray kept his gaze level as he gently probed him about what he did in Goulburn that day.
Burrell said he bought milk, some beer and a couple of stamps.
‘Did you do anything else in town on that day?’
‘I rang my solicitor.’ Burrell spoke with confidence. Just as Bray had rehearsed what he would say, so, it seemed, had Burrell.
‘Oh, did you?’ Bray was trying to remain calm. ‘Where did you ring your solicitor, David Tyler, from?’ There was a pause.
Finally Burrell answered, ‘From a public phone. I originally rang once from the post office . . . and I rang back the second time further down the street.’
Bray’s heart rate was quickening, but Burrell did not notice. ‘All right. We’re just trying to get your movements, like I’ve done all the way through this. Understand? So you rang from the post office and didn’t get onto him at the time . . . and you went to another—’
‘Twenty minutes later,’ Bruce interrupted.
Bray measured his approach. Gradually he extracted from Burrell the exact location of the phone box he had used.
Burrell was getting confused. ‘Um . . . my memory’s just a bit, um . . . you asked me what I did and I’m trying to remember.’ Eventually he admitted it was from the second booth on the western side of Auburn Street, the phone box outside the Empire Hotel.
Bray had his rat in the bag but he endeavoured to keep his voice even and his eyes neutral. Burrell had assumed police surveillance had been on him, and had concluded that to deny being in the phone box would expose him as a liar. It was the fatal admission Bray had banked on.
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