Underbelly 2

by John Silvester

  Legg rang three members of the squad and told them to head to Fawkner Cemetery immediately. The other three members were allowed to sleep on for several hours. It was not a matter of kindness. They would be needed in the morning. The crew would run nearly two days around the clock trying to break the back of the case.

  In murder cases the first seventy two hours are the most important. If police have no suspects after three days it can mean settling in for a long and difficult case.

  Greg Hough returned to head the investigation after a week. He knew then it was going to be ‘a hard slog,’ as he put it.

  Police looked into the background of the victim. Did she have enemies? Had she done anything that could enrage someone enough to kill her?

  But Mersina Halvagis wasn’t the sort of person who made people angry. They couldn’t find anybody who would say a bad word about her. Workmates, friends and family said the same things. She was was warm and kind, loving and compassionate. She worked voluntarily with the underprivileged.

  Secret love interests also drew a blank. Mersina had only had one boyfriend, Angelo, whom she had known five years and planned to marry within twelve months.

  The detectives began to sift through a wider range of possible motives. Perhaps there was someone obsessed by her, who followed her to the cemetery, where she was known to go on most weekends. It would not be the first time a young woman was stalked without her knowledge. In 1984 a woman walked into a shop in Hawthorn followed by a man, a vague associate, who was besotted by her. He noticed a new engagement ring on her hand, flew into a rage and stabbed her to death.

  Had Mersina surprised a thief? There had been a series of minor thefts from cars in the cemetery. Certainly, while she was obviously ambushed, it seemed unlikely an attacker could have sneaked up without her sensing their presence. The gravel paths made it almost impossible to approach silently.

  She may have assumed the person walking towards her was just another mourner and, by the time she sensed danger, it would have been too late. ‘She may have initially been surprised and then struggled with the offender,’ Detective Senior Sergeant Hough speculated.

  The killer would have been splattered with blood, but he would only have to walk or run forty metres to the car park or about fifty metres in the opposite direction to a small, tree-lined creek bed that led out of the cemetery.

  Perhaps some mentally-disturbed person was in the cemetery that day and attacked Mersina, at random, because she was the only person there. But if that were the case, why hasn’t he struck again?

  Some police suggest a psychotic offender may have stopped taking medication and committed the murder; then, once back on his drugs, has no recollection of the crime.

  The crew worked full time on the case for more than three months. The seven investigators, aged from twenty-nine to forty, chased down four hundred leads and interviewed 1500 people. They organised police to walk shoulder to shoulder around the murder scene, trying to check under every bush and every blade of grass along the creek bed.

  Detectives worked eighteen hours a day on the investigation as the weeks blurred into months. They compared the case with similar murders around Australia and sent all their material to the FBI crime-profiling centre for review. It came back with nothing new. The government then offered a $50,000 reward, a sure sign the trail was going cold. A year later, the reward was doubled.

  ‘We have looked at every scenario. We throw up every possibility to see if we missed anything,’ Hough says.

  But the truth is that they are no closer to catching the killer than when they were on the night of the murder.

  For homicide investigators it is not so much life, as death, that goes on. By February the crew was back on call and in the next eight months they had another thirteen jobs.

  While they continued to investigate the Halvagis case, the detectives had other obligations. Not only new cases, but internal courses to attend, autopsies to observe, suspects to interview, prosecution briefs of evidence to complete and sworn evidence to give at magistrates, coroners and supreme courts.

  Five of the seven detectives are married and three have children of their own. Solving murders is their job, but they are also entitled to holidays and private lives.

  The six big blue binders that contain the Halvagis file sit on the desk of one of the detectives in Crew One and is constantly updated and reviewed. ‘There is still work to be done. This investigation will not be complete until we get a result,’ says Hough.

  But police concede it will probably not be brilliant detective work that will provide the breakthrough. They remain convinced that someone in Melbourne has a nagging feeling that a person they know killed Mersina Halvagis. The killer must be someone’s brother, someone’s husband or someone’s son.

  One phone call could provide the breakthrough.

  GEORGE and Christina Halvagis are an Australian success story. Separated from his family in post-war Greece, the young George Halvagis joined the Greek merchant navy with the aim of one day being a ship’s captain. But his ambitions changed in the first few days of 1956, when his ship was moored at Station Pier.

  He jumped ship.

  He had no money, no contacts, a smattering of French but no English, and a burning desire to succeed.

  For the next seven years he was on the road, seeing more of Australia than do most people who are born here. No job was too hard. ‘Work never really worried me.’ He cut cane in Queensland, learning how to do it the right way while watching fellow workers’ hands turn to bloodied pulps, hacking away for days amongst the snakes, rats and dust. He picked pears in Shepparton, grapes at Murray, built railways and bridges and cleared scrub from Hamilton to Edenhope. He drove taxis in Melbourne and taught himself English, listening to his fellow workers.

  While many itinerant workers gave their wages back to publicans, two-up schools and brothels, George saved. He was a man with a plan.

  He believed that to make it in Australia, to have real financial security, you must be the boss. Less than three years after he jumped ship he went to the authorities with his work record. Nearly thirty men who arrived as illegal immigrants were interviewed. He was the only one allowed to stay.

  Christina had seven brothers in Greece. She was told that as a girl her duty was to care for the males of the household. She resented being taken out of school. People couldn’t understand why the young girl wanted an education when her future was to look after her family until she married and started her own.

  But Christina wanted more. She emigrated to Australia in 1964. She met George in 1967 and they married the next year.

  By 1969 they had a big-enough stake to buy their first business, a modest milkbar in Warracknabeal. After the first week they began to doubt what they’d done. Their takings from that first seven days were $45. Christina burst into tears and wondered if they would be ruined, but they decided to just work harder.

  ‘We had to do it, we had no alternative,’ George recalls.

  Eight years later the small milk bar was a restaurant, mixed business, greengrocers, a takeaway and bakery. George drove to Melbourne once a week to buy fresh produce.

  Their takings had risen to $7000 a week. ‘We worked seven days and twenty hours a day,’ Christina says. They had four children over seven years.

  The family was happy in country Victoria. In their rare spare time, they went yabbying and fishing in the bush together, but both parents were driven by the need to give their children what they themselves had lacked – formal education. They moved to Melbourne where they bought and sold businesses. They retired in their late fifties, close to the beach in the southern bayside suburb of Mentone.

  The wanted a house big enough for their children and grandchildren, and they got it. The walls are decorated with photos of family members in happier days and the garden is filled with flowers and fruit trees.

  It is a home built for a large family, and ideal for entertaining. But the family doesn’t use the formal di
ning room any more. It has been turned into a shrine for Mersina. Photographs, teddy-bears, a condolence book, the cross from her coffin and paintings of Christ sit on the table as a daily reminder of the tragedy. Upstairs, Mersina’s bedroom has been almost untouched since she was killed. Fluffy toys sit on the bed and bookshelves, a sewing machine on her small desk. Her parents say she taught herself to sew to make linen for when she was married.

  Dimitria points to the bookshelves filled with children’s books. Mersina began to collect them when she was studying child development at university, then continued to buy them for the children she planned to have with Angelo.

  Outside the bedroom is a polished wooden glory box, carefully packed with items Mersina selected for married life.

  George, a strong, self-sufficient man, stands in the middle of the room, tears silently rolling down his cheeks, arms moving in little gestures of helplessness.

  He points to a dark backpack that was delivered by police. It was found in the car at the Fawkner Cemetery. ‘We have never opened it. We don’t know what is in it,’ he says.

  On the desk a candle flutters. It is kept alight all day, every day.

  Christina opens the wardrobe, filled with pretty party dresses, all carefully covered in dry-cleaning plastic. She grabs them, buries her face in her daughter’s clothes and begins to sob: ‘The bastard, the bastard.’ She then asks the question they have asked thousands of times since November 1997. ‘Why? Why us? What did we ever do to deserve this?’

  You look at the floor, and out the window into the darkness, searching for words of comfort.

  There are none.

  MERSINA Halvagis was not the sort of young woman who would take risks. While many of her friends were out clubbing she was more likely to be home, studying or sewing.

  In years eleven and twelve at school she was determined to excel. ‘She would lock herself in her room every night to study,’ says Dimitria. ‘We would tease her because she didn’t know what shows were on TV or what were the latest songs on the radio.’

  Her efforts were worth it. She was accepted into an early child development course at Melbourne University and later worked in child care.

  But after a few years Mersina decided on a career change and moved into banking, starting as a teller before being promoted into a responsible position in the International Tax Department of the ANZ bank while studying accountancy at Monash at night.

  Christina and George Halvagis are proud of their kids. In a time of drug abuse, crime and unemployment all their children moved into adulthood without great problems.

  But of the two boys and two girls, Mersina was the one who was the least likely to get into mischief or be caught up in the wrong crowd. ‘She was never the sort to put herself in danger; she didn’t go out like me,’ Dimitria said.

  The Halvagis girls were close as sisters but like many siblings, had differing personalities. Dimitria could be fiery, determined, stubborn and outgoing. Mersina was quiet, compassionate and caring.

  ‘I wanted to be more like her, to be patient and have time for people,’ Dimitria said.

  Weeks before she was murdered Mersina was sick for a few days and Dimitria gave her a get well card. It read: ‘Just remember, every time you feel a bit down, think about how much I love you and you and all should be OK!’ She was later to learn that Mersina had told friends she wished she was more like her sister – prepared to ruffle feathers to get what she wanted.

  Everyone says that Mersina was that last person likely to upset anyone or place herself where she could be a victim of crime.

  But somebody killed her.

  HOMICIDE squad detectives who stare into the faces of grief with depressing regularity have never seen a family so shattered by a death. ‘It is eating them up,’ says one.

  The family swings from disbelief to mourning and then to anger – set on an emotional loop that appears never ending. Their life was built on the unshakeable belief that if you work hard you can reap the rewards of your efforts.

  Then how can this happen?

  Family members contacted police and asked if they could do anything to help. George wanted to mortgage the family home, to spend all their savings to put out a reward for information. He wrote letters, spoke to the media and demanded meetings with politicians.

  He got sympathy when he wanted answers.

  Dimitria had been a travel agent for three and a half years when Mersina was murdered. She tried to go back to work to get on with her life, but she was still in shock.

  ‘People save for years for a holiday and it is one of the most important things in their lives. I like to share their excitement, but after Mersina nothing else seemed important.’

  She found herself excusing herself from clients, who were bubbling with anticipation as they scanned glossy brochures of their planned destinations. She would slip outside the office and burst into tears.

  In April, 1998, she quit. ‘I slept for three weeks. I was exhausted.’

  She then decided that she would not sit at home and wait for news from police. She wanted to get involved. She had more than a thousand posters printed urging anyone with information on the murder to contact police.

  She saturated the suburbs around Fawkner, including Broadmeadows, Thomastown and Brunswick. She put posters in banks, post offices and convenience stores, looking to spark people’s memories before it was too late. She remains bitter that some people she approached would not believe the attack was random. It is as if some want to demonise the victim because if they accept the killer struck without reason then they must face the fact he could strike again and anyone, including their own families, could be at risk. It is much easier to ‘blame’ the person who was attacked as if it is somehow their fault.

  Dimitria refuses to accept the killer may never be found. She constantly thinks of ways to keep the case alive. Anything to get people thinking.

  ‘I know that nothing is going to change what happened and even if we find who did this it will not bring Mersina back,’ she said. ‘But I can’t accept that in a community like Melbourne we have someone like this on the streets.

  ‘I’m doing everything to be a good person. And he’s out there, unpunished, buying his dinner at the supermarket and going to the movies.

  ‘I’m not going to give up. I’m running out of options, I don’t know what else to do.

  ‘People can get on with their lives. They can’t understand what this does to a family like ours.’