My Mother, a Serial Killer

by Hazel Baron

  Dulcie Bodsworth had entered an exclusive and wicked group. Around the time of her arrest, on the other side of the world in England, the so-called Moors murderers, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, killed five children between July 1963 and October 1965. Four of their young victims were sexually assaulted and at least three buried on Saddleworth Moor, hence the name given to their killers. They were arrested not long after the death penalty was abolished in 1965 and jailed for life.

  In the 1980s, the deranged Perth couple David and Catherine Birnie lured five women to their suburban home in Moorhouse Street, Willagee. They chained and handcuffed them, tortured and raped them, murdering four of them before the fifth, Kate Moir, somehow escaped through a window on 10 November 1986 and ran for help. She had left evidence she had been in the house by hiding pictures she had drawn and remembered the name she saw on a medicine bottle — David Birnie. They were also jailed for life.

  There are few female serial killers in Australia who acted alone. Babysitter killer Helen Patricia Moore was one of them. In 1979 and 1980, Moore killed three of the boys and girls she was babysitting at Claymore and Dharruk in Sydney’s west, including her fourteen-month-old stepbrother and a cousin, aged sixteen months, by smothering them to death. Her last victim was her brother Peter, seven, who she said had fallen down the stairs. She had strangled him to death and her own mother took her to the police station and made her hand herself in.

  Another female serial killer was Kathleen Folbigg who was convicted in 2003 of murdering her three infant children and of the manslaughter of a fourth between 1991 and 1999. Their deaths had been put down to natural causes until her private diary, discovered by her husband when the family had moved to Singleton north of Sydney, revealed otherwise. The prosecution case was that Kathleen couldn’t cope with the demands of motherhood and had smothered the children. Aged forty-nine at the time of writing, she is serving a thirty-year jail sentence with a non-parole period of twenty-five years.

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  On the morning of 6 December 1964, one of the first of Australia’s female serial killers had regained her composure and some of her control. She had had a good night’s rest despite the noise from the other cells.

  Ray Kelly and Angus Ritchie sat down opposite her in the interview room, with Kelly doing the talking and Ritchie the writing this time. A non-smoker like Dulcie, Kelly hated the stench in the bleak interview room as much as she did but they were stuck in there all day as he took her through the three murders. Ressler noted that most serial killers like to boast about what they had done. Not Dulcie. She was casting about for one of her famous escape plans, a plan B, but there wasn’t much to go on.

  Dulcie said that drowning Ted Baron had never been discussed. She said she had been helping Tommy Tregenza who was old and infirm and setting fire to his bed had been a spur of the moment thing.

  Then Kelly moved on to the death of Sam Overton, the murder that the police had most of the evidence on against Dulcie. This time her answers were closer to the truth.

  ‘How long had you been using the arsenic for poisoning the ants and the weeds before you started to give it to Mr Overton?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘I would say a fortnight.’

  Kelly: ‘Will you tell us on how many occasions and in what manner you administered the poison to Mr Overton?’

  ‘Once on his own and once when he had a meal with us. I sprinkled it over the vegetables and the chop and I poured gravy over the chop. I know I put a good bit on.’

  Kelly: ‘Did Mr Overton make any comment about the taste of the food after he had eaten the food with the arsenic on it?’

  ‘Yes, only the once. He said it tastes bitter, but he kept on eating.’

  Kelly: ‘How long after the first dose of arsenic did he become ill?’

  ‘I am not quite sure. It could have been that night or the next day.’

  Kelly: ‘When did you give him the second dose?’

  ‘If you ask Harry, the day after Mr Overton had his dinner with Mr Daniel English, he might be able to tell you. That was the day I gave him the second dose in the morning with his breakfast. He didn’t have vegetables then, he had chops and eggs. I think I put gravy over the chops.’

  She had given the second dose within a week of the first one, putting on a ‘fair bit. I put my fingers in a couple of times and sprinkled it over his food.’

  Kelly: ‘Did Mr Overton complain to you about his condition after you had given him the poison?’

  ‘Yes. He said he had the stomach ache, he had diarrhoea. At one time he said “A man would be better off dead”.’

  Kelly: ‘Who got the doctor to come and see Mr Overton?’

  ‘I did. When he got very sick I got worried. I rang the doctor a couple of times and he said to bring him into Wilcannia but he wouldn’t go. Then when he got real sick we rang the doctor on the quiet and I think I went off and got the doctor . . . I should have told you the truth from the start.’

  Kelly: ‘Your son Allan has informed us that on one occasion when Mr Overton was going out shooting with Dr Potts, your husband and the parish priest, you told him to shoot Sam Overton and make it look like an accident. Is that correct?’

  ‘I am up against it there. I don’t know whether I told him that or not.’

  When it came to reading through that final record of interview, Dulcie admitted she couldn’t read very well and another police officer was brought in to read it all through to her before she signed every page.

  The next morning, Kelly and Palmer sat next to Dulcie and Harry Bodsworth in the back row of the economy section and were flown to Sydney after their extradition from Melbourne. Neither of them had been on a plane before but this was no time to enjoy the thrill. Dulcie was livid with Harry for buckling but continued to be nice to him to keep him on side.

  Kelly had decided not to handcuff them but made sure the media were tipped off to get the shots of the couple arriving to face justice. Dulcie and Harry had been taken from the airport to the ‘Old Hat Factory’ where the charge against Harry for murdering Ted Baron in the state of Victoria was withdrawn and he was freshly charged with ‘feloniously and maliciously’ murdering Baron in the River Murray near Buronga in New South Wales.

  At 3.35 pm that day, Dulcie was finally charged with the ‘felonious and malicious’ murders of Ted Baron, Sam Overton and Tommy Tregenza.

  The couple who had not been apart for one night since their marriage in December 1951 were split up. They were taken by separate prison vans to Long Bay jail where Dulcie was placed in what was then known as the Women’s Reformatory at the State Penitentiary Centre. She had to swap her coat and hat for prison attire. Harry was locked up next door in the men’s jail and they would only see each other again in a courtroom dock.

  The photographs of Dulcie and Harry made it onto the front pages of that afternoon’s newspapers. Hazel had to confront these shots as she and Bill drove along Crown Street in Sydney on their way home to Wilcannia with their adopted son. It was the first time in five years that mother and daughter had been in the same city or town and even as she tried to feel brave as she held the baby boy to her chest above her six-months-pregnant belly, Hazel was totally unnerved.

  She couldn’t stop sweating and shivering and felt ill all the way back to Wilcannia. That night when they stopped the car to get some sleep, Hazel couldn’t rest. She was feeling unwell when they got home and then realised she was bleeding. A miscarriage at six months is unusual and at the hospital, the doctor could give Hazel no answer as to why she had lost the baby so late in the term. She and Bill were devastated.

  He was a new doctor and didn’t know Hazel’s past and she didn’t tell him that the woman all over the news who had been charged with three murders was her mother. He didn’t make the connection as their names were different. But Hazel knew why she had lost her baby. She put it down to the stress and panic of realising that she was going to have to face her mother in the not too distant future and stand up to her in public.
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  She was in turmoil.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DEL FRICKER

  ‘MRS BARON, HAVE YOU EVER TOLD A LIE? YES OR NO.’

  In the witness box, Hazel took her time answering public defender Fred Vizzard QC’s first question. He was so short and old she thought he looked like a Chihuahua with a smirk on his face that was as mean as all get out. This was the fourth time she had given evidence and this was the sort of trick question she had come to expect from him. She had grown to dislike this fancy lawyer who liked to play ping pong with questions and answers. It made her feel that she was the one on trial.

  She thought if she said no, the jury would know she was lying because no one had never told a fib. But if she said yes, Vizzard would make it a big deal. She thought about saying she had told little white lies but Vizzard told her the answer had to be yes or no. So she told the truth and said yes.

  Vizzard turned to the jury in the seats on his left so his black robe wafted around him like the dark smoke that accompanied the appearances of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. He waved his arms in true theatrical barrister mode: ‘This woman admits to being a liar.’

  That afternoon it was all over the front page of The Daily Mirror: ‘Daughter admits to being a liar.’ Next to it was a photo — of the wrong woman. It wasn’t Hazel. It was a woman totally unconnected to the case although strangely she had the same surname. It was the only thing Hazel could laugh at, given the prospect of having to face her mother six times in the courtroom — three times to give evidence at committal proceedings to determine if there was enough evidence to send Dulcie to trial, and then three more times during the trials.

  The prosecution decided to proceed in order of the deaths with the first committal for the murder of Ted Baron beginning on 16 February 1965 in the imposing wood-lined Central Local Court on Sydney’s Liverpool Street. The first time she saw her mother after all those years, Hazel fainted. She was in the public area waiting to give evidence on day one when there was a scuffle. She looked up to see Dulcie in handcuffs being led into the court by Ray Kelly and another officer, with Dulcie trying to get to Hazel.

  She heard Dulcie say ‘Oh Hazel, oh Hazel’ before Hazel hit the floor as if she had been shot.

  Later that day, Dulcie asked if she could talk to her daughter. It was highly irregular for a defendant to speak to a witness — never mind a key prosecution witness like Hazel — but the police thought something valuable might come out of it. They stayed in the interview room as Hazel was led in to meet with her mother. All Hazel could recall afterwards was Dulcie looking down and seeing cigarettes in her handbag.

  ‘Oh my God, they are not yours, are they? Hazel, I hope you don’t smoke,’ Dulcie said.

  Hazel lied that the cigarettes belonged to Bill. Such was the strange dynamic that existed between mother and daughter. Hazel was prepared to give evidence saying her mother was a murderer but afraid to own up to smoking. Despite all that had gone on between them, Dulcie could automatically revert to being the one in charge.

  Seeing her unease, Ray Kelly gave Hazel a guardian angel to guide her through the marathon court process. Sergeant Adele Dorothea Fricker, known as Del, would later be dubbed the ‘powder puff detective’ but this trailblazer for women was anything but a ‘powder puff’. Like Hazel, she knew that women could be tougher than men, emotionally if not physically. In the days when female officers were given police-issue handbags but not handcuffs, and just three years after policy was changed to allow women who married to remain in the police force, Fricker was a favourite of Kelly’s. Less than a year later, Del Fricker would show her mettle when she acted as bait to lure notorious armed robber and murderer Ronald Ryan to his capture after he escaped from Melbourne’s Pentridge jail.

  Ryan was a career criminal serving an eight-year sentence for a series of breaking and entering offences when on 19 December 1965, he and fellow prisoner Peter John Walker made their escape at 2 pm as the guards took turns to attend the staff Christmas party. They stole a guard’s M1 carbine rifle, which Ryan used to shoot dead warder George Hodson as the prison officer pursued them. They grabbed a prison chaplain as a human shield before rifle-butting him in the head.

  As a national manhunt got under way, the desperate fugitives fled to Sydney where Walker sought to catch up with a former girlfriend, a nurse at the Concord Repatriation Hospital in Sydney’s west. She wasn’t at home when they visited her house but her daughter was — and she recognised Ryan from the blanket media coverage of the escape. There was also the suggestion that one of Ray Kelly’s legendary network of informants, the powerful career criminal Lennie McPherson, had betrayed Ryan when he and Walker had asked for help to get false passports and cash to flee the country. In an elaborate sting, the nurse agreed to meet Ryan and Walker, saying she would bring along a friend for a double date. They arranged to meet at 9 pm at the gates outside Concord Hospital in Sydney’s west, the fugitives unaware that the couples, hospital staff and passers-by were really plain clothes police officers.

  In all, fifty armed marksmen led by Kelly had staked out the area.

  Fricker was called on to work late after her day shift to act as the ‘secret date’. Her job was to protect the nurse at all costs, even to take a bullet for her if necessary. ‘Get in front of her and see she runs to safety,’ were Fricker’s orders.

  On the warm summer evening, the women waited in the dark for half an hour and had just walked into the hospital for more instructions when Ryan and Walker turned up. They were quickly arrested by Kelly, shotgun in hand. On 3 February 1967, Ryan became the last person to be hanged in Australia when he went to the gallows at Pentridge jail.

  Del Fricker had joined the police in 1951, the year after Dulcie and Harry killed Ted Baron. A former kindergarten teacher, she went on to receive a Commissioner’s Commendation for her role in the capture of Ryan. Her work later earned her a British Empire Medal and the Queen’s Police Medal for bravery.

  In 1967 she joined the CIB Drug Squad and in 1971 she became one of the state’s first two female detectives and Del’s ‘D’ girls were born. She ran the twelve-strong elite female detective section, which was likened to Charlie’s Angels. The TV series was then at its zenith and breathless newspaper reporters wrote: ‘To the hardened crims of Sydney’s underworld, they are Del’s “D” girls.’ ‘Like TV’s Charlie’s Angels, they fight crime with feminine flair and fervour.’ ‘They can handle a gun or a tight situation with the same ease as a lipstick or mascara brush.’

  In an interview many years later, Fricker, ever pragmatic, said she never had a problem with the way those first female officers were portrayed. ‘You have to remember the seventies brought worldwide change when we had women like Germaine Greer telling us to burn our bras,’ she said. ‘It was doing our job and doing our job well that mattered and the men never excluded us. We were a team.’

  Fricker also appreciated the fact that the police were one of the only employers at the time that paid women the same as men.

  She and Hazel hit it off straight away. Hazel knew she needed someone to rely on and her trust in Del Fricker was not misplaced. Del quickly became Hazel’s rock. She guided her through what was going to happen and told her about court etiquette, but most importantly she kept Hazel calm and boosted her confidence, giving her the courage to keep getting into that witness box.

  Bill and Hazel’s two kids were too young to understand what was happening and far too young to be told. How would their parents tell them that their grandmother was a murderer who had killed their grandfather? Hazel and Bill told them that ‘Mum and Dad have to go and do something important’ and left them with Bill’s family when they were flown to Sydney where they were put up in a motel. In plain clothes, Del Fricker accompanied Hazel to court every day.

  At the committal hearing, the prosecution was represented by a police prosecutor, Sergeant C Bush, who was organised and disciplined but lacked the flair and practised sarcasm of a trial lawyer
like Fred Vizzard. The prosecutor began by calling witnesses who had given evidence at Baron’s inquest including Captain Bill Collins who had found the pyjama-clad body in the Murray River, and William Corby, then a sergeant, who had been the constable who investigated Ted’s death. Ray Kelly and Angus Ritchie were called to give evidence about the confessions made by the two defendants. But the star witness was Hazel.

  Both Fricker and Kelly had warned Hazel about Vizzard, the state’s well-known sole Public Defender who was paid by Legal Aid to defend Harry and Dulcie. Outside of the courtroom he was said to be rather shy, but he hid his shyness with tenacious advocacy inside the court. He was actually very good at his job, it was just that Hazel did not like to be on the receiving end of his modus operandi.

  Vizzard had a practice of sitting in the waiting room outside court reading The Sydney Morning Herald, then a broadsheet. To try to put witnesses off balance, he read the paper upside down. Hazel had been warned he would try to intimidate her but she knew he could never be as intimidating as her mother.

  As she walked through the swinging doors and along the right-hand side of the court to the witness box, Hazel was aware — without having to look — of her mother sitting in the big dock to her left, next to Harry. Dulcie still scares the shit out of me, she thought. Del Fricker and Ray Kelly were sitting in the public benches, which were full. After she swore the oath to tell the truth and took her seat, Hazel looked up to see both Dulcie’s and Harry’s eyes on her. Dulcie wore a green knitted three-piece suit that Hazel had never seen before and she carried a light green veiled hat on her lap. Harry wore a dark blue suit; it was the first time Hazel had seen him dressed up since his wedding.