Thirdly, Young told the jurors, they could not eliminate the possibility that Burrell was at a colleague’s 40th birthday lunch at the time Mrs Davis disappeared. Even though phone records showed his client was in Mittagong on the afternoon Dottie disappeared, a logical alternative explanation was Peter Grace got the day of the lunch right and the time wrong. ‘It remains for your consideration and if that is the case, you cannot exclude the fact Mr Burrell has an alibi,’ Young said.
On Wednesday 5 September 2007, at 12.40 p.m., the jury retired to a back room of the Darlinghurst complex to begin its deliberations. At 4 p.m. the following day, the jury indicated it needed a bit more time and Justice Kirby sent the ten-man and two-woman jury home for the forthcoming long weekend. Sydney had been turned into a fortress for the arrival of world leaders for the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC). The city was deserted for the country’s biggest security lockdown with US President George W. Bush the star attraction.
Dennis Bray was feeling positive as he embarked on the four-day break, confident a guilty verdict was imminent, but as had become a pattern of the Burrell trial, nothing ran to plan. And nothing had prepared Bray for the twist that was to come.
On the evening of Sunday 9 September, Bray was sitting down to a quiet beer when he took a call from Mark Tedeschi informing him of a bizarre development in the trial. Court watcher Dennis Roberts had visited Burrell earlier that day at the Metropolitan Remand & Reception Centre at Silverwater Correctional Complex, where Burrell was residing during his trial. Roberts informed Burrell of a very interesting conversation he had with the court tea lady, Patricia Abbey.
Abbey said a witness, Martin Meagher, had told her he had seen Dottie on the day she disappeared, which contradicted his evidence to the jury. Burrell immediately informed his defence counsel, Philip Young, who alerted Tedeschi.
For the prosecution to ignore the matter would open up the possibility of an appeal down the track. The wheels had been set in motion and Burrell was delighted: Bray and Detective Sergeant Nigel Warren spent Monday taking statements from Patricia Abbey, Martin Meagher and Dennis Roberts.
On Tuesday morning, Justice Kirby informed the twelve jurors that their deliberations would have to be interrupted to hear some evidence. Until this moment, the Davis trial, which had run for seven weeks, had been very different from the unpredictability of the Whelan one; there had been fewer interruptions by legal argument on the road to a verdict. But the journalists who witnessed the events in Kirby’s courtroom that day could hardly believe what was happening— and all about a conversation the tea lady apparently had while serving one of her customers.
Patricia Abbey blushed as she entered the courtroom, and placed her hand on the bible to be sworn in. She was used to pouring tea for lawyers outside the court, not being cross-examined by them. Pale and slightly confused, Ms Abbey said Meagher had told her a different story in the court’s tea room before he entered the witness box. She said Meagher told her he had seen ‘the old lady’ on the day she disappeared. Ms Abbey later detailed that she had been hospitalised twice for depression and suffered from migraines, which affected her memory.
Martin Meagher was recalled and, looking even more pained than on his previous appearance, told the court he had not seen Dorothy Davis on that day, nor had he told the tea lady he had done so.
Roberts, on a disability pension for a speech impediment, did not make eye contact with Bruce as he took the stand. ‘[The tea lady] told me that she was in the tea room with Martin Meagher and Martin Meagher told her that he was in the park on the day that Dorothy Davis was in the park and he was talking to her,’ Mr Roberts told the court. ‘She said that Martin Meagher was talking to an elderly lady that was carrying a white handbag.’
But in her evidence, Ms Abbey denied Mr Meagher had ever used the name Dorothy Davis, that he had spoken to the woman, or that he mentioned a white handbag.
Maree Dawes was then recalled to be questioned on her mother’s fashion sense. Maree testified that her always impeccably dressed mother had never owned a white handbag. ‘She and I shared a joke about white handbags and white shoes: only Minnie mouse wore them,’ Maree quipped.
Mark Tedeschi told the jury that all evidence about the tea room conversation should be dismissed as an ‘irrelevant distraction’. Ms Abbey had given five different versions of the chat she allegedly had with Mr Meagher, he said. ‘What we submit to you is that a casual conversation in the tea room has been completely misunderstood, taken out of context and given a currency way beyond what was said.’ He attacked the credibility of Ms Abbey’s version of events. He said at various times in her evidence to the court, Ms Abbey recounted the conversation by saying Mr Meagher told her he had seen ‘the old lady’ at the beach, the park, twice in one day, near the beach and the park and near a toilet block.
Defence counsel Philip Young said Ms Abbey’s versions of events were consistent and she could not be dismissed as ‘a crackpot’. The tea lady’s evidence was ‘clearly something of enormous significance if it is accepted as fact’.
As reporters rushed outside to report the ludicrous developments, those involved could see the case appeared to be lurching towards high farce, and much worse, a hung jury. The jury returned to its back room to deliberate, the maddest moment of the trial had passed, but with the lingering potential to dramatically change the direction of the case.
Maree Dawes was fuming that Burrell had managed to so successfully distract the jury from their purpose of finding justice for her mother. And she was even angrier that the court system allowed ‘some hearsay’ from a tea lady, a chloroform addict and a court watcher to be brought into evidence. She could tell the jury was under pressure and felt the jury members were avoiding her glance and it terrified her that they were going to let Burrell off .
Burrell appeared to be harbouring a newfound confidence, as did his friend Roberts who sat alone on a wooden bench outside court three, far removed from the detectives, journalists and Dawes family milling on the grass awaiting a verdict.
On 13 September the jury sent a note to Justice Kirby, signalling they were struggling to reach a unanimous verdict. But Justice Kirby sent them back to the jury room to make further attempts to overcome their differences and work on their ‘sticking points’. ‘You strike me, if I may say so, and others in court, as being especially conscientious in the way you have gone about your task,’ the judge told the jury. Nonetheless, he said, it was important not to give up without at least exploring possibilities to ultimately obtain a unanimous decision.
The following day, Justice Kirby said he would accept a majority verdict on which eleven jurors agreed, if they could not reach a unanimous decision. He also reminded the jurors they must be true to their own conscience and told them he ultimately had the power to discharge them if he was satisfied there was no prospect of genuine agreement.
But agreement came three days later at 2.15 p.m. on Monday 17 September, when the court was reconvened with a verdict imminent. The courtroom was crowded with a restless hush of people—Tedeschi possessed a calm confidence, journalists bristled with notebooks, Maree Dawes, her chest rising and falling below her mother’s stringed pearls, Lessel Davis squeezing his wife’s hand. Burrell sat frozen in the dock, staring through the glasses down his nose, his lips pursed.
At 2.20 p.m., the jury filed in and presented a white envelope for His Honour. Justice Kirby opened it and paused for two long seconds before asking the foreman for the verdict. As the word ‘guilty’ rang out, Maree Dawes half rose in her seat, tears filled her eyes and she bit on her fist to stop herself from shouting. Bruce Burrell’s head flung back and he looked upwards for a second before shaking his head, just once. As always there was no emotion.
Reporters streamed from the press box in an encore of bows to His Honour and out the door with ears on their mobile phones to news desks around the city.
Justice Kirby thanked the jury, telling them they had been ‘a quite remarkable and exce
ptional jury’. He then turned to the killer: ‘Bruce Allan Burrell, I convict you of the murder of Dorothy Ellen Davis.’
A uniformed guard clasped a hand on Burrell’s arm to take the prisoner down and Maree stood in victory and mouthed the words at him: ‘You bastard!’
Outside, under scudding clouds, a press corps thrust forward with microphones towards Maree as she emerged, jittery and smiling alongside Lessel and his wife, Tanna. ‘Dottie Davis was a loving mum and a grandma,’ Maree began. ‘She was a loyal sister and a trusted friend. No verdict can ever give us the peace that we so desperately crave. It will only be when we bring her home and bury her with the dignity that she deserves that we will truly be able to be at peace . . .’
Behind the group, Dennis Roberts loitered briefly before turning away and heading down Oxford Street.
Out in the far west of Sydney’s outskirts, Bernie Whelan had been something of a basket case for the twelve days since the jury first retired. Depressed, anxious and angry, he had shaken off the comfort of his wife’s assurances that no matter what the verdict, Burrell was still in jail. For Bernie, a second conviction was essential. While Burrell was guilty of only one murder, some people would still believe the jury had it wrong and that Bernie was involved in Kerry’s murder. Only when Burrell went down for the two crimes, would the suspicion surrounding Bernie hopefully evaporate.
Debra Whelan was out on the tractor that afternoon harrowing the paddocks with manure, when she spotted Bernie walking towards her. He had a phone to his ear and a big grin. Debra knew it was good news, but yelled anyway, over the tractor engine: ‘Is he guilty?’
Bernie held up one hand, nodded his head and broke down. Deb killed the engine, stepped down from the tractor and ran to embrace her husband.
Upstairs at the Judgement Bar in Taylor Square just opposite the Darlinghurst Court, the drinks were on Maree Dawes who was also celebrating the lifting of a suppression order which allowed the media to link Dot’s murder with Kerry Whelan’s.
Lessel Davis and his wife, Tanna, stood by Maree, watching themselves on the evening news as the cameras tracked their exit through the court gate and Maree’s triumphant punch in the air, kicking up a heel in her newfound lightness of being.
A few weeks after the verdict, Dennis Bray and Nigel Warren were formally recognised for their exceptional work on the Burrell investigation. Assistant Commissioner Graeme Morgan awarded them Commissioner’s Commendations. New South Wales was ‘fortunate to have detectives of this calibre’, Graeme Morgan said. ‘The leadership, dogged determination, resilience and perseverance shown by Inspector Bray and Detective Sergeant Warren in particular, often under considerable pressure, deserves the highest commendation.’
The awards acknowledged that murders where no bodies are found were notoriously difficult to solve and that enormous hurdles were overcome to get Burrell before a jury, including the no-billing of the Whelan case in 2002.
Bray paid tribute to the twenty-three detectives of Task-force Bellaire, who were awarded a unit citation. ‘I’m very proud of the young men and women we worked with and what it taught me is what can be achieved in a team environment,’ Bray said.
On the second Friday in December 2007, Maree Dawes and her daughter Kate sat nervously in court five at Darlinghurst as they prepared to read victim impact statements to Justice Kirby. Kate Dawes was fourteen years old when her grandmother vanished and remembered being sad and scared of Burrell. ‘The fear that gripped me was overwhelming. In my head I saw him in our house, I knew this man was a suspect but he was still out there. He knew who we were . . .’
Maree was trembling as she told the judge: ‘How do I begin to describe the impact of the last twelve and a half years . . .’ She explained that when the fear-choked weeks after Dottie went missing turned into months and years, she had the task of keeping her mother’s house clean, the lawns mowed, the car charged, and even filing her tax returns because Dottie’s life was in limbo as she was not officially dead.
Then the nightmares started. They were ‘always the same. I see only her face and me begging her to tell me where she is. Then her face disappears and the “faceless” man appears, a large man with curly hair wearing an overcoat. The face is always blank. Each time I have that nightmare I wake up crying. I wonder how she died, was she frightened, did she suffer physical pain, did she call for us, her family, to help her.’
She said the trauma had ruined her ability to be an effective mother to her own children. In conclusion, Maree turned to her mother’s murderer. ‘I don’t give a damn what happens with Burrell,’ she said, diverting her eyes from him. ‘I just ask you to be very sure that he can never put another family through the hell we have suffered. I ask that he not be allowed any extra privileges and is afforded only the most basic of human rights because he violated the most basic of all human rights, the right to life.’
In the dock, Burrell removed his glasses and sucked on one of the wings. His hair had grown curly at the edges, but otherwise he looked unchanged.
Mark Tedeschi called on the judge to sentence Burrell to a second life term. He said Burrell’s crime was calculated and bore many of the hallmarks of the first—a contract killing, committed purely for his own financial gain.
When Philip Young rose to argue for leniency, Maree and her family drifted out of the court. They could not bear to hear Burrell’s counsel bargain points of law about the length of his meditation before he struck or the breadth of grief felt by a family who could not bury its dead.
On Friday 8 February 2008, familiar faces gathered at Darlinghurst Supreme Court for Burrell’s sentencing. Bruce Burrell looked baggy-eyed and weary in the dock. He had shed a few kilograms and his hair was cut short and he wore new spectacles. His birthday had fallen three weeks earlier and he looked old for fifty-five.
Justice David Kirby began his judgment in a steady fashion, starting with the relationship that developed between the Davis and Bromley family, the loan to Burrell and moving on to Dottie’s murder. While Justice Kirby likened Mrs Davis’s murder to ‘a contract killing’, he accepted that Burrell did not form the idea of murdering Dottie until shortly before she disappeared on 30 May 1995. ‘I cannot be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Burrell formed the intention to kill Mrs Davis before she pressed him for the repayment of the loan,’ he said.
Maree, tense and upset, clung grimly to the court bench as what she had feared most on this day rolled out in the court like a death knell.
‘Without diminishing the awful and brutal nature of this crime, which was certainly committed in cold blood for purely financial gain,’ the judge said, ‘and with no regard for the sanctity of human life, I believe that a determinate sentence is appropriate, rather than a life sentence.
‘Bruce Allan Burrell,’ Justice Kirby continued, ‘I sentence you to imprisonment for twenty-eight years . . . with a non-parole period of twenty-one years.’
Outside the court, Maree said she was disappointed the sentence was not harsher. ‘I don’t understand how . . . two women who were murdered, as far as I’m concerned, with equal intent . . . how the sentencing can be so different,’ she said. ‘I guess what we do take comfort from is that given the previous sentence, he won’t walk the streets again. He won’t do this to another family. He won’t create the hell and the havoc that he’s brought to our lives, so while we are disappointed, this means for us, finally this is over.
‘It gives us the opportunity to move forward and to remember Dottie for who she was and the great contribution that she made to our lives, the joy she brought to our lives, rather than the focus on how she died. That’s been a very difficult journey that has taken much too long.’
Of Burrell, she said: ‘Maybe one day—if not out of respect for us, perhaps out of respect for his own parents—he will make some atonement and he will tell us where they are . . .’
The normally reserved Lessel Davis said he didn’t take much comfort from the sentence, adding: ‘I guess the
good news is the bastard will die in jail.’
46 THE
TEN-MILLION-
DOLLAR RIP-OFF
Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate and ruthlessly plough their way through life, leaving a trail of broken hearts and shattered expectations, without the slightest sense of guilt or regret. The world authority on psychopaths, criminal psychologist Dr Robert D. Hare, who has dedicated more than three decades to investigating psychopathic behaviour, says that when the psychopath’s deeds are done and all is left in their wake, ‘their bewildered victims desperately ask: Who are these people?’
The Whelan and Davis families, who once welcomed Burrell into their home and fell for his superficial charm could not at first believe that jovial Bruce was the creature who tore their lives apart.
In the early stages of the investigation, Detective Dennis Bray called on forensic psychiatrist Rod Milton to profile Burrell. Milton diagnosed Burrell with suffering an antisocial personality disorder whose characteristics included persistent lying or stealing, narcissism, being manipulative, deceitful and aggressive, lacking in remorse and possessing an inability to keep jobs or control anger. Such qualities do not simply make a person a persistently antisocial individual, but a psychopath.
Psychopaths are not necessarily murderers: they can be thieves, conmen, the nasty neighbour up your street or the boss who makes life a misery for his staff and is never held to account. But psychopaths who kill are remorseless predators who use charm, intimidation and, if necessary, impulsive and cold-blooded violence to attain their ends.
In assessing Burrell, Dennis Bray and his fellow detectives also consulted the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual which defines the disorder as ‘a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood’. Such individuals, who make up four per cent of the population, drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our self-esteem and our very peace on earth. Dennis Bray believes Burrell fits the testbook criteria . . . a sense of entitlement, apathetic to others, unconscionable, blameful of others, cold, conning, disregardful of social obligations, nonconforming to social norms and irresponsible.
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