Camera number 7 was a fixed camera, which faced inwards to the entrance of the hotel nightclub. By day, when the nightclub was closed, its glass door reflected all that was happening on the outside. Cars coming and going, workers rushing to work. And now Bruce Burrell, waiting. Bray could not believe his luck, the first piece of evidence to place Burrell at the Parkroyal Hotel on the day Kerry Whelan disappeared.
Bray called Mick Howe. ‘You’re not going to believe this. I’ve found footage of a two-door Pajero at the Parkroyal. It’s pulling away from the kerb forty-two seconds after Kerry leaves the top of the ramp,’ Bray said.
The discovery created a hefty new workload for the taskforce, who began a nationwide search, questioning 1640 people who owned a two-door Mitsubishi Pajero four-wheel drive. Bray wanted to know their whereabouts on 6 May, 1997. Were any of them in Parramatta, near the Parkroyal? None of them had been.
Bellaire believed it now had enough evidence to charge Burrell with Kerry’s murder, but the DPP was reluctant to rush in. It was extremely frustrating for the taskforce but they had another plan to outfox their person of interest. Very soon, Bruce Burrell would find himself in a four-by-three metre prison cell. Standard size.
21 GRAND THEFT
AUTO
The two-tone Mitsubishi Pajero in the car yard had an unfortunate registration number, given that it was about to be lifted—HOT-007.
In October 1993, Bruce Burrell wandered into the Sydney Mitsubishi showroom on Parramatta Road, Glebe, where salesman Timothy Thng had just finished his six-month probation period working for the car company. Bruce Burrell, wearing black wraparound sunglasses which he did not remove, even indoors, knew what he wanted, and made a beeline for Thng.
‘Good morning, sir, how can I help you?’ said Thng. Burrell claimed he had already teed up a test drive with the manager, John Ryder, of a Mitsubishi Pajero. Burrell was interested in the model with an asking price of $45 000; it was fitted with factory extras, including air conditioning, a sunroof, a bullbar and tinted electric windows.
Thng could not find his manager, and although he would normally have taken a photocopy of any potential customer’s driver’s licence before letting them test drive a car, he waived the rule on this occasion because Burrell had spoken to Mr Ryder. ‘I thought I was doing the manager a favour,’ Thng would later tell police.
Burrell slid behind the wheel of the green Pajero and took off with Thng for a test drive to the city. Burrell told Thng he had an office in the Queen Victoria Building and had arranged to meet his wife, Jane, on the eastern side of the building, where she ran a fashion store. Driving along busy George Street, Burrell looked puzzled as he squinted at the footpath in search of his wife. ‘Where the hell is she?’ Burrell said, as though muttering to himself.
They drove around the busy block in the heart of the CBD, dodging buses and taxis. Burrell did three loops but Jane was nowhere to be seen. He finally said to Thng, ‘Can you run upstairs and go to the office on the first floor and get her?’
Thng was hesitant, but because he believed Burrell knew Mr Ryder, he agreed to go. The young man twice searched the top floor and then went to the ground floor information desk to check. ‘I began to realise my worst fears,’ Thng would tell police. Thng called his boss to report the theft .
Burrell’s brazen car theft was not a one-off. He would do it again, using exactly the same modus operandi. In late 1995, Burrell showed up at the Artarmon showroom of New Rowley Motors, where Gavin Judd sold Jaguars. ‘This man just appeared in the yard, as if from nowhere. He introduced himself as Allan George,’ Judd would later recount.
‘Mr George’ appeared relaxed and confident. He said, ‘My partner has driven a Jag and likes them. At the moment we’re both driving S Class Mercedes Benz. We’re thinking of changing them over.’ Here was every car salesman’s dream: a customer with money to buy not one car, but two. He was no tyre kicker.
Judd was twenty-five years old and in his first job as a car salesman. He desperately wanted to close this profitable sale. He worked on commission and could see a strong payday ahead, especially as this buyer was interested in one of the more expensive models, a Sovereign, which would normally retail for more than $170 000. Fortunately for Burrell though, Judd had two demonstration models on the floor and each was marked down by $30 000 to $139 950.
Judd took Burrell for a test drive, neglecting to follow the usual process of asking to see the customer’s driver’s licence. They were planning only a ten-minute run around the neighbouring suburbs.
As they pulled back into the car yard, Burrell turned to Judd and said, ‘I’m suitably impressed. Could I take the car to my partner for a look? He’s in the city.’
Betting on a jackpot, Judd agreed. As they crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, they discussed business and their golf swings. Burrell said he was a member of the Australian Golf Club.
‘What do you do for a crust?’ Judd asked.
‘I’m a GO engineer.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, sorry, a geological engineer,’ Burrell said, ‘at Ferguson Allan.’
Burrell told Judd his office was in the Queen Victoria Building. It was the same story he had spun Thng, only this time Burrell was searching for his business partner, a chubby man with a beard. When Burrell suggested Judd run upstairs to fetch him, Judd proffered his mobile phone, but Burrell shook his head, ‘No, he’s very busy, he’s not likely to answer the phone. The secretary isn’t there. Quicker just to run up.’
Judd didn’t suspect anything. ‘I guess with selling people in excess of $300 000 motor cars, if they were to buy two, they expect a little bit of, perhaps old-fashioned service, and running upstairs to grab his partner didn’t seem like a tall task,’ he said.
Burrell said his office was at the top of stairs: ‘You won’t miss it.’
Judd climbed the three flights. On the third floor, there was no office for Ferguson Allan. ‘At that stage I was getting a little worried. It sounded a bit funny that there was no office there but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I walked outside to where he had dropped me off and waited there for about twenty minutes.’ But Burrell and the Jaguar were gone.
Judd was shocked. He telephoned his boss at Artarmon and was told to report the theft straight away. After leaving Town Hall police station, Judd flagged down a taxi to return to work, feeling angry and stupid.
Clearly Burrell could charm and, it seemed, con people into doing anything. Police only learned about Burrell’s masterful talent as a car thief with the advent of Taskforce Bellaire. Timothy Thng saw Burrell’s photograph in the Daily Telegraph and telephoned his local police station. Dennis Bray’s detectives were already on the case of trying to match the engine numbers on Burrell’s seized vehicles, which they had deduced were both stolen, as well as identify his numberplates. When Bray was told about Burrell’s methods of duping car salesmen, it only worried him further. Burrell was daring and he played by his own rules. So how then had he lured Kerry Whelan to their secret meeting?
The taskforce formally interviewed Burrell about the car thefts at Goulburn police station. His account of how he had acquired the vehicles was so implausible as to be laughable. Burrell told police that a man named Tony, whom he met in a pub, had given him the Jaguar. Just like that. Bruce did not know Tony’s last name or where he lived. All he knew was that Tony was a driver for the Fairfax newspaper publishing company.
‘I used to drink at a hotel in the city. Over a period of years I got to know this guy, Tony, and it was through him that he arranged to get the car,’ Burrell said. ‘Tony said to me, “Are you interested in another car?” and I said, “No, not really”. He said, “You might be interested in this one”. We had another beer at the time. He told me about it. I thought, well that’s handy.’
Tony told Burrell the Jaguar was worth around $70 000, but Tony was a generous man: ‘He only wanted twenty-five grand for it. I said, “It does sound interesting”.’ Burrell was not conce
rned about who owned it. All he wanted was to get his hands on the car. Within days, Tony delivered the Jaguar to him and then he simply disappeared. Burrell had agreed to pay the trusting Tony a week later, but Tony failed to show up to collect his money. There was no transfer of paperwork, no exchange of receipt or registration papers.
Detective Ricky Agius interrupted the narrative: ‘Actually, the insurance value on that motor vehicle is approximately $140 000.’
‘Holy Jesus!’ Burrell said.
‘Now do you agree that you were getting a bargain?’
‘On that basis, you’re not kidding.’
‘An unrealistic bargain?’
‘Looking back on it, absolutely, yes. I should’ve stayed away.’
‘Do you agree that you must have known the car was stolen?’
‘I didn’t know, but obviously the suspicion was there. I’ve been extremely bloody stupid, that’s all,’ Burrell said, shaking his head.
Following the interview, Taskforce Bellaire had another priority—to locate a third vehicle stolen by Burrell, a Suzuki Vitara, a photo of which had been found during the search of Burrell’s house. Bray believed it could have been used in the murder and, although he could not find the vehicle at Hillydale, the numberplates bolted onto the Jaguar belonged to a Suzuki Vitara which had been stolen from another car yard.
Car salesman Peter Giddings told police the Suzuki was stolen on 30 September 1993 by a man who took the $16 000 vehicle for a test drive. The Suzuki was never returned and the test driver bore a remarkable resemblance to Bruce Burrell. When police now confronted Burrell about it, he claimed to have bought the Suzuki from ‘an unknown female at an address somewhere in Lugarno during 1992 or early 1993 for $5800’. He had since sold it to another unknown person in November 1996, but he refused to tell police the purchaser’s name.
Bray was desperate to locate the Suzuki to enable him to conduct DNA tests on it for traces of Kerry Whelan. In the meantime, he charged Burrell with receiving and disposing of the Suzuki. Burrell was ordered to appear in Goulburn Court on 30 July 1997, to face six counts of car stealing charges and weapons charges.
Goulburn Courthouse, with its sweeping colonnade and Italianate dome, had been completed in 1888, just before Queen Victoria celebrated her Jubilee year, when the town served as the administrative centre for a huge area of southern New South Wales. It seemed a little grand for a car thief, more fitting for a heinous criminal.
A large media contingent gathered at the court on 30 July. Bruce Burrell sat impassively just two metres from six detectives of Taskforce Bellaire, waiting for the magistrate, Mary Jerram. He pleaded not guilty to all charges, including stealing the Jaguar and the Pajero, possessing a prohibited crossbow and stealing Bernie Whelan’s rifle.
Magistrate Jerram found Burrell had a case to answer and committed him to stand trial at Parramatta District Court. ‘Do you have anything to say regarding the charges?’ the magistrate asked Burrell.
‘No, Your Lordship,’ said Burrell, grandiosely awarding Ms Jerram an instant elevation on the bench, ‘except that I am not guilty.’
Outside the court, Detective Bray addressed the waiting media, and made a national appeal for the 1989 Suzuki Vitara. ‘The vehicle was last seen in the Goulburn area around December 1996, although it is believed it may have been seen later than that time,’ Bray said. Reporters knew Bray suspected the vehicle could hold clues to solving the Whelan crime.
Car dealer Steve Eslick, of the New South Wales country town of Orange, saw the appeal on the evening news and contacted police. He had bought the vehicle from Burrell for $7000 in December 1996, and sold it in June 1997 to a Sydney woman, Julia Hopcraft . Given that Eslick had acquired the car before Kerry Whelan’s disappearance, it was eliminated from the investigation. A dejected Bray clung to the hope that Burrell would soon be locked away.
On 22 October 1998, Burrell faced Parramatta District Court on the car stealing and firearm charges. His father and his two sisters were in the public gallery. Before Judge Charles Lulham, Burrell surprised everybody and changed his plea on all six charges to guilty; in doing so, the intricate details of the crimes and any scrutiny of Burrell would remain untested. Judge Lulham sentenced Bruce Allan Burrell to two years and six months’ imprisonment. Addressing the defendant and a crowded court, Judge Lulham said that Burrell was motivated purely by greed.
As Burrell was led away, he looked over at his father and raised an eyebrow. Tonia and Debbie, his sisters, left the courtroom in tears and in their wake were the six detectives. One of them turned to his colleague and whispered, ‘Fan-bloody-tastic!’
The prisoner was taken to the cells below Parramatta Court to wait for transportation to the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre (MRRC) at Silverwater, in Sydney’s west. A white prison van—fitted with the non-optional extras of a pair of handcuffs—took him away to the state’s newest and largest remand jail, where he would be classified for the prison in which he would serve his sentence. The MRRC held 900 maximum security inmates, a large number of whom were as yet unsentenced for crimes which ranged from minor ones like Burrell’s to sexual assault and murder. It would always be a hard place, but in its early years, an unusual number of its prisoners committed suicide in their cells.
Burrell was bundled from the vehicle and put into a holding cell with half a dozen other prisoners. A clerk filled out his paperwork and then he was taken to a stall with saloon-style doors, asked to remove his clothing and bend over for a strip search. Afterwards, a prison officer handed him a pair of tracksuit pants, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, shorts and underpants, all in the same bottle-green colour, and the standard prison issue footwear, a pair of white Dunlop Volley sandshoes with Velcro fastenings. He handed over his street clothes and followed an officer to a pod down the unfamiliar grey-corridored maze. Burrell’s cell had a toilet with no lid, a dirty light fixture and a shower encircled by a raised row of bricks. A blue vinyl shower curtain hung limply from the wall.
Burrell was classified as a minimum security prisoner and, six days later, was transferred to the Kirkconnell prison farm, 30 kilometres west of Lithgow in the Blue Mountains. One of the coldest prisons in the state, Kirkconnell got snow even in summer, but while it was no Swiss chalet, a sentence there meant an easier time than in many other jails. Bruce worked in the prison ‘box shop’, mending furniture, and his father and sisters visited often.
Although it was Burrell’s first prison stretch, the publicity surrounding the Whelan and Davis cases had ensured that everyone knew about it—all his old friends, his football acquaintances and his father’s mates from the Goulburn wool trade. The old man found his son’s fall from grace hard to bear.
22 GOLDEN BOY
Bruce Allan Burrell was a chubby blond child and his parents thought he was adorable. Not long after his birth in Goulburn on 25 January 1953, Allan and Linda Burrell nicknamed their firstborn ‘Tiger’.
Allan had lofty hopes for his son, and spoiled him rotten. For the first eight years of his life before his sister, Deborah, was born, Tiger got everything he wanted. If things were not going his way, Tiger would throw a tantrum, sometimes in the main street where he would hurl himself onto the footpath. Other mothers were shocked at Bruce’s hysterics and gawped at Linda Burrell’s patience. Time after time, she would pick her son up, wipe away his tears and coo soothingly until his rage subsided.
Another of Tiger’s tactics was to hold his breath, a stunt which would panic his mother into an urgent placation, usually the promise of lollies. Linda never succumbed to the other women’s suggestions that leaving Bruce to scream once in a while might cure him of his temper. Even as a toddler, Bruce towered over other children, whom he loved to torment with verbal or physical threats. In kindergarten, he made school life hell for little Donna Riley. ‘I was absolutely terrified of him,’ Donna remembered. ‘He was a thug and a bully, even at that early stage.’
Donna was one of the smallest in her class. She had blonde plaits
tied with ribbons. Burrell would pull her hair, tease and threaten her. Donna was so scared she spent lunch and recess sitting in the girls’ toilets, her only refuge from his torment. ‘When the bell rang I’d come out but Bruce would be still there, waiting outside for me. I told no one, because I was so frightened.’
Next door to the Burrells’ house in Betts Street, West Goulburn, Sue Gladman recalled watching Bruce with his blond curls bully her little brother, Gary. Bruce would ride on his billycart down the street or play with his dog, Rusty. One day she watched him swinging Rusty around by his tail, the dog yelping in pain.
Bruce’s bedroom was filled with toys. His father was always bringing home something new for Tiger. Bruce had a wooden rocking horse on the verandah that Sue coveted, and one day, in front of Mr Burrell, she mustered up the courage to ask for ‘a go’ on Bruce’s horse. Allan Burrell turned to Bruce and said, ‘Tiger, let Sue have a go on your rocking horse.’ Bruce’s face went red and he shouted, ‘No!’ Allan Burrell looked at Sue, shrugged, and walked off .
Allan and Linda Burrell and the Gladmans, Iris and Fred, visited each other’s houses for drinks, card games and barbecues, but the friendship ceased suddenly around 1960, when Bruce was seven years old. Bruce regularly threw stones at other children, but on this day he was standing on the Gladmans’ garage roof and spitting down on Sue and Gary. Unbeknown to Bruce, Fred Gladman was standing under the overhang of the roof and could see what was happening. Fred picked up the garden hose and stepped out from under the roof, muttering, ‘You little bastard,’ as he turned the hose on Bruce. Tiger got the shock of his life. He jumped off the roof and ran home crying.
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