His lawyer, Philip Young, visited him frequently as they prepared for his upcoming trial for the murder of Dorothy Davis. Another regular visitor to Burrell was Dennis Roberts, a balding fifty-something invalid pensioner who had become a familiar sight around the Supreme Court as a conscientious attendee at high-profile murder trials.
During the previous year, Roberts had sat through the trial of triple murderer Sef Gonzales, a nineteen-year-old convicted of killing his parents and sister. He even began visiting him in jail. In 2006, Roberts turned his attention to Bruce Burrell, sitting through each day of the Whelan trial, listening to the minutia of evidence and enduring the tedious legal argument. Unlike the other elderly court watchers who maintained a distance, Roberts began to develop a rapport with Bruce.
This had not gone unnoticed by Detective Dennis Bray who watched as Roberts and Burrell began to exchange furtive glances in the courtroom. It started with a nod of the head, a smile between the two, and escalated towards the end of the trial to the pair exchanging notes as they left court. Burrell at the time was on bail. Bray was not happy with the association, and could see that Roberts—like so many others before him—was being sucked in by Bruce, but there was nothing the detective could do. Bray’s instincts, however, would prove correct.
In the meantime, Bray had other matters on his mind, in particular Burrell’s appeal against his conviction for the Kerry Whelan murder. Burrell was appealing on ten grounds, including that a dissenting juror had been coerced into finding him guilty. Burrell was also appealing against the severity of his life sentence.
At the hearing in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in November 2006, the Chief Justice at Common Law, Peter McClellan, Justice Brian Sully and Justice Greg James appeared to be in disagreement over whether the jury’s sacked foreman had been forced into agreeing with his fellow jurors. It buoyed the confidence of Burrell’s counsel who entered the New Year with some hope of overturning his conviction. Inspector Bray cloaked himself in his usual pessimism that the case was doomed. But on Thursday 15 March 2007, the judgment was delivered. Dennis Bray did not attend the court and nor did Bruce Burrell. There was no need as it was over within minutes. Burrell had failed in his appeal against both his conviction and sentence, the full bench finding Justice David Kirby had not erred in sending the jurors back to continue their deliberations.
‘The fact that the minority juror felt pressure from the other jurors was not surprising,’ the Chief Justice at Common Law, Peter McClellan, said in his judgment. ‘Antipathy between individuals, however caused, is unfortunately an unavoidable fact of life and must be expected to exist amongst jurors from time to time. It could not provide a reason to discharge the jury.’
The decision removed an enormous weight off Bray’s shoulders and those of the Whelan family. But for Bray and Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, it was far from over— they were preparing for Burrell’s next trial for the murder of Dorothy Davis. As was usual with anything involving Burrell, nothing ran smoothly.
45 STORM IN A
TEACUP
Milk with one sugar was how Dennis Bray liked his tea. Patricia Abbey knew that.
The grey-haired, cherub-faced woman ran the Sisters of Charity tea stand in a back room at Darlinghurst Court complex and had come to know the faces of the Detective Inspector and his offsider, Nigel Warren, from the long months of the previous two Whelan trials. Each day throughout those trials, Bray and Detective Sergeant Warren would join the queue of lawyers, journalists and court watchers at the morning tea adjournment for a hot drink and an Arnotts biscuit in exchange for a coin donation.
On Monday 6 August 2007, Ms Abbey and her volunteers wheeled out the great urn in preparation for the 11.30 a.m. rush as His Honour Justice David Kirby opened the trial into the murder of Dorothy Ellen Davis. The court case was already late by several weeks after Burrell’s counsel applied for a stay on the grounds that his client would be unfairly prejudiced because the jury would recall his recent conviction over the Whelan murder. The application was rejected. However Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, concerned at the potential of a juror to be reminded—and the trial aborted—advised Bernie Whelan to stay away. Bernie had wanted to show his support to Maree Dawes and Lessel Davis, but his well-known face in the public gallery could jeopardise proceedings.
Bruce Burrell was escorted from the courthouse’s subterranean depths and he stood in the dock as the freshly empanelled jury filed in for the Crown’s opening address. Burrell wore his old grey suit and a gold tie flopping over a poorly ironed white shirt. He had once again engaged legal aid at taxpayer’s expense. Philip Young, SC, who had been the junior counsel in the Whelan matter would be defending Burrell.
In the public gallery, Burrell’s new and perhaps only friend Dennis Roberts had taken his place among the other court watchers. Unbeknown to anyone, including Dennis Bray, Roberts had maintained contact with Burrell since the Whelan trial, regularly making the drive to Lithgow prison to visit the lifer.
On 5 August 2007, the trial of Bruce Allan Burrell V R opened in court three of the NSW Supreme Court at Darlinghurst. In his opening address Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, told the jury that Dottie Davis was a wealthy and generous woman, energetic and vibrant. Dottie, he said, was close friends with not only Burrell’s wife, Dallas, but also her parents. She had access to ‘virtually whatever amounts of money she wanted’ and was a ‘bit of a soft touch’, helping out family and friends in need. On 30 May 1995 she simply ‘vanished’.
Leaving meat defrosting on her sink and her Mercedes parked outside, the 74-year-old told her builder, Ken Hulse, she was going to walk to visit a friend who’d had cancer, undergone chemotherapy and lost her hair. The description, Tedeschi said, fitted that of Dallas Burrell, the then wife of Bruce Burrell. ‘The Crown case is that the accused, by some means, convinced Dorothy Davis to walk to his home, expecting to see Dallas’, Tedeschi said.
Dottie probably met her death at Burrell’s home, in his car or at his property Hillydale in Bungonia, Tedeschi said. ‘She has just literally disappeared off the face of the earth,’ he said. ‘She was never, ever seen again by anyone.’
He said the motive for the killing was greed. Burrell wanted to buy his neighbour’s $600 000 ocean-view house for Dallas who was undergoing chemotherapy. Without telling his wife or in-laws, he approached Dottie for a secret short-term loan of $500 000. ‘He told her how much it meant to him to buy this house for Dallas,’ Tedeschi said. The astute widow offered him $100 000 instead, and bank records showed that Dottie had made out a cheque for $100 000 to Bruce Burrell in July 1994. He deposited it in his bank account and then withdrew $90 000 in cash on 20 July 1994. The money did not go towards buying the house, which was funded by a $654 000 bank loan. Instead, Tedeschi told the jury, an unemployed Burrell used it for himself.
Burrell, who had been without a regular income since 1990, had no intention of paying the old woman back, and, Tedeschi said, when an impatient Dottie threatened him with legal action, Bruce reacted in the only way he knew how. ‘He had ample motive to kill her,’ Tedeschi said. ‘The Crown case is that Bruce Burrell decided in order to get rid of this problem of Dorothy Davis wanting the money back, he decided to murder [her].’
In the dock, Burrell had resumed his usual antics, frowning at Tedeschi’s assertions, blowing his nose and scribbling in a black folder.
At the morning tea adjournment, Burrell was led downstairs to the cells where he sucked on a cigarette, while everyone else enjoyed some fresh air, lining up at the Sisters of Charity tea stand for a pick-me-up. Amongst them, Bray noticed Dennis Roberts was in the background, perhaps eavesdropping on the musings of journalists, members of the prosecution team and witnesses.
Was he Burrell’s ears and eyes to the outside world? Bray wondered. Whatever he was up to, Bray did not like it and warned journalists and anyone associated with the case to be careful of comments they were making outside the court. Bray knew that Burrell would be looking for an
y excuse for the trial to be aborted.
Back inside, Tedeschi continued his opening address. He alleged Burrell somehow got Mrs Davis to walk over to his house, before he ‘subdued her by some means’ and placed her in his car. Burrell ‘suddenly and unexpectedly’ left Sydney soon after, with mobile phone records showing he was in the NSW Southern Highlands area for some hours before returning to his Lurline Bay home that night. Phone records showed he returned to the Bungonia property the next day, a five-hour round trip. ‘The Crown case is this was an opportunity for the accused to dispose of the body of Dorothy Davis,’ he said. A later exhaustive police search of the area, which was dotted with abandoned mine ventilation shafts, failed to find any trace of Mrs Davis.
The first witness called to the stand was Dottie’s daughter, Maree Dawes, whose voice was strong and often choked with emotion as she recounted the futile search for her dear mother. Maree said her first suspicions of Burrell’s involvement came a month after her mother vanished. She said Bruce visited Maree at her home and gave her a ‘crazy’ story of how Dottie had given him a cheque for $100 000 and asked him to open a bank account for her. ‘He was very rigid, smoking very nervously, chain-smoking,’ Maree recalled. Bruce told Maree that Dottie later got him to withdraw $90 000 in cash for her, and let him keep the remaining $10 000 for his trouble. ‘I was just blown out of the water,’ Maree said. ‘What he was telling me just didn’t make sense.’
When her brother, Lessel Davis, next took the stand, Burrell’s defence counsel sought to cast suspicion on him. Lessel told the jury his mother lent him $1 million for his business but ever the astute businesswoman, Dottie had charged her son nine per cent interest, which Lessel said he considered a good deal. Slightly rattled even though he was prepared for the defence’s attack, Lessel said his mother made no other advance payments to him, and he ‘definitely’ did not receive $90 000 in cash from her.
Two weeks into the trial, the last known person to see Dottie alive—her builder, Kenneth Hulse—was called to give evidence. Hulse was working on Dottie’s Lurline Bay home on 30 May 1995, when around 1 p.m., Dottie told him she was going out. ‘She was going to visit a friend that’s had or got cancer, and was going to walk around there because it wasn’t far,’ Hulse told the court. The friend was female, Dottie told Hulse, and had lost her hair through chemotherapy.
A 75-year-old woman who had just got out of hospital lived near Mrs Davis. Under cross-examination by Philip Young, SC, the builder acknowledged that he had originally told police that Dottie said she was going to see a friend who had just got out of hospital. Police later interviewed the woman, Blanche May, but while she said she had seen Dottie in the neighbourhood—and not on the day of her disappearance— she was not her friend or acquaintance.
A Buddha-like Burrell sat in the dock, his eyes glazed over as he listened to witness after witness give evidence he had previously heard during the inquest. But his back suddenly became rigid as James Chittendon, then branch manager of a bank in Maroubra in Sydney’s south-east, revealed some startling new details about a conversation he had with Burrell in 1994.
Chittendon told the jury that Burrell deposited a cheque at his branch for $100 000 on 12 July 1994, and at the time made mention of applying for a loan because he was interested in buying a property near his home. Eight days later, Chittendon said Burrell made a cash withdrawal of $90 000 from the account. Not only that, but Burrell had told him ‘a lady was waiting outside for him to take the cash out’.
On the morning of 12 August 2007, Burrell’s ex-wife, Dallas Bromley, was driven by detectives into the grounds of the Supreme Court to avoid the media glare. Wearing the same outfit as she did for the Whelan trial, Dallas’s face was strained, angry that her former husband Bruce Burrell continued to haunt her. Inside the court she avoided all eye contact with Burrell, and where previously in the legal arena she had referred to her ex-husband as Bruce, now it was as if she was talking about an acquaintance—Bruce Burrell, she repeated throughout her evidence.
Dallas said that Bruce Burrell told her in early 1995 that Dottie had asked him to set up a bank account with $100 000 of her money, and to then withdraw $90 000 for her and keep $10 000 for his trouble. ‘I think he said he had done it to help her,’ Dallas said.
Burrell told her that Dottie did not want her to know what she had done. ‘He was adamant that I didn’t tell her I knew,’ she told the court. ‘He said that she had been very specific that I wasn’t to be told.’ Dallas said she was not happy about this, but did not say anything to her then husband because he was ‘a very volatile person’.
Questioned by Tedeschi about Burrell’s trips to Hillydale, Dallas said he would sometimes ‘just go and call me when he was there’. But, Dallas added, it would have been unusual for him to do the five-hour round trip on consecutive days.
When the trial resumed the following week, Burrell’s former boss, Peter Grace, took his place in the witness box, telling the jury of a series of conversations he had with Burrell after Dottie went missing. During the chats, Burrell claimed to Grace that Dottie had lent him a sum of money and she was demanding he pay it back. ‘[Bruce] claimed he had received the money from her and she wanted to get the money back from him,’ Grace told the court. ‘He said that she was an annoyance . . . he was annoyed at her temerity. He told me that she had gone as far as saying: “I’ll take legal action to get that money off you” .’
Tedeschi: ‘Did he tell you whether or not he’d said anything in response to the demands?’
Grace replied: ‘Bruce said that he’d eventually gone to her and confronted her, [telling her] to back off with her threats. I got the impression he was very serious in the way he approached her.’
Tedeschi pressed Grace about Burrell’s alibi but Grace was confused about the dates and under cross-examination by Philip Young he wilted in his memory about Burrell’s movements on Dottie’s last day alive.
Grace said that after the lunch, Burrell had gone back to the office with everyone, leaving between 4.30 p.m. and 5 p.m. Luckily, Tedeschi had Burrell’s mobile phone records which showed Grace must have been wrong in his recollection, because data showed Burrell made a phone call from the Mittagong area at 4.30 p.m. The records showed Burrell had come back to Sydney on the night Dottie was last seen, only to return to his property the next day.
At the start of the trial’s fourth week, a dark-haired man with an anxious expression took the witness box. Martin John Meagher had been in courtrooms quite a few times before but never in the witness box. The former chloroform addict had convictions for assault and resisting arrest.
On the day Dottie disappeared, Meagher told the court he had been ‘off his face’ after sniffing chloroform in a toilet block near Maroubra Beach. He was picked up by police for loitering in the shower cubicles of the women’s toilets and, after being released, Meagher arrived back at the area—which was not far from Dottie’s house—about midday to collect his bicycle and the remains of his chloroform.
Meagher endured a grilling from Burrell’s defence about his criminal history and whether he had seen an old lady on the day, before stepping down from the witness box, believing his civic duty was over.
In his closing address to the jury the next day, Tedeschi rejected as ‘manifestly absurd’ the possibility that Dottie was abducted and killed by Meagher. He told the jurors they could be satisfied Dottie was on her way to Burrell’s home when she was last seen. ‘We submit she was going to the Burrell house thinking she would see Dallas,’ Mr Tedeschi said. ‘We know from the evidence that Dallas was at work that day. There was only one other person who lived in that house at this time, that was Bruce Burrell. In all probability she was killed in the [Burrell] house on that day,’ he said.
Mr Tedeschi said Burrell, within 24 hours, made two short trips to his remote property, Hillydale. ‘The crown case is he probably hid the body on the property on May 30 and came back the very first thing the next morning to finish disposing of the body.’
Tedeschi said Burrell’s mobile phone records tracked his movements during this time, and destroyed his alibi that he was at his workmate’s 40th birthday lunch in Sydney on the day Dottie disappeared.
Tedeschi said Burrell was motivated by money. The evidence that Dottie was pressuring Burrell to repay the $100 000 loan was ‘a very cogent motive’ for Burrell to kill her, he told the jury. ‘He preyed upon Dorothy Davis in the sense of using her deep affection for Dallas as a tactic of extracting this money from her.’ Burrell somehow ‘induced’ Dottie Davis to his house, perhaps by saying he had the money for her and Dallas would love to see her.
Defence counsel Phillip Young, who called no witnesses, rose to give his final address, telling the jury the Crown case could not lead them to convict Bruce Burrell.
Young said the case was based ‘almost wholly on circumstantial evidence’. He said the Crown had not eliminated the possibility of the chloroform addict being responsible for Mrs Davis’s disappearance. ‘I would suggest to you he was in a condition, he was in the area, he is a potential explanation— that is as high as we put it,’ Mr Young said. ‘There is nothing the Crown can say about Mr Meagher that rules him out as an alternative explanation.’ Mr Meagher had convictions for assault, Young continued, and asked the jury to consider the possibility he decided to grab the elderly woman’s handbag.
Young said the prosecution has been unable to pinpoint who Dottie was going to visit on the day she vanished. Too much time, Young insisted, had passed between Dallas Bromley’s cancer treatment in August 1994 and Dottie’s disappearance for Dallas to be the ill person with no hair that Dottie was planning to visit. Instead, Young suggested Dottie was heading to her neighbour’s house, Blanche May, who was recovering from cancer.
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