The video, filled with the typical close-ups and zoom shots of a practice tape, captures Jane’s three children, Holly, Ashley and Scott hunting for hidden eggs. The Magills’ three daughters are there – Sandra, the eldest, Susan, and Jane, the youngest. So too is Jane’s husband, Mark, and Susan’s husband, Steve.
Jane is wearing a green top and black skirt, the same clothes she wore when she was photographed about two weeks earlier at her birthday. That picture now sits on the Magill’s glass coffee table and is always published in the newspapers when there is a story of her murder. It’s the one where she gazes at the camera and you look back, wondering why such a woman could be stalked and murdered outside her suburban home. But on that Easter Sunday that nightmare was in the future. For John Magill, it was a good time to practice with the camera.
It was no big deal and the tape would have eventually been used again to capture a more important event – something worth remembering. As it was, John Magill forgot about the tape and it remained in a drawer untouched.
Now it is one of the family’s most precious possessions.
SATURDAY, 6 DECEMBER: Came across the video of the last family Easter gathering together in 1997, I was trying out the new camera before going away in May, the tape has given us a lot of memories of Jane and we can’t believe she has been taken from us.
HELEN sits forward on the couch and John also leans closer in his comfortable lounge chair, though they are both no more than a metre from the screen. Their faces crease in smiles as they watch the family as it once was.
For the moment they can block out their loss and wrap themselves in the protective warmth of nostalgia as they watch the Easter video again.
People pull faces at the camera, the kids ham it up. A watcher eavesdrops on snatches of conversation between sisters who are, or were, good friends.
Jane is sitting in a white plastic chair at the outside table. Holly is on her knee and Jane has her arms draped around her in a relaxed pose, unaware the camera is on her.
She makes all the kids paper hats. Gets up and makes an attempt to do a River Dance routine with Susan. ‘We really miss her laugh,’ says Helen with warmth, not bitterness.
Jane waves at the camera: ‘Hi Dad,’ she says. Few say anything witty when they have a video camera pointed at them.
Later the music is louder and the party moves inside. The three sisters dance in the same room where they would have danced when they were kids.
Jane stands, swaying to the music. Holly walks up and stretches her arms in the air. She wants to join in. Almost without looking Jane sweeps the two-year-old into her arms and continues to dance with her child clutched to her chest. It is the unconscious act of a natural mother.
THE shock has long worn off for the Magills. It has been replaced by bitterness, almost unbearable grief and a sense of helplessness that will not go away. If there is a more crushing burden than losing a child and not knowing the reason why, they can’t imagine it.
From the outside, there is little to betray the torment that this nice retired couple in their neat Niddrie home go through every day. The garden is immaculate, with a row of flowers adding a splash of color. They are well-dressed and try to push on as best they can. They don’t show obvious signs of their grief. They have been brought up to keep such things private.
But it is not private. It is front page news. Their friends and neighbours know they are the family whose daughter was murdered by a two-man hit squad for reasons that no-one knows, but many speculate about.
Inside their neat house the Magills cry every day. They won’t go on any long trips in case the police have a breakthrough in the case. John has started to read crime books to try and understand more about the underworld.
Every day they look at the clock around 3.50 pm and think that was the moment their youngest girl was being chased around her own car by a man with a gun. Every day they ask why.
Few people can comprehend how their grief is doubled by not knowing why she was chosen as a murder victim. George and Christina Halvagis understand. Their lives were destroyed when a man with a knife killed their daughter, Mersina, at the Fawkner Cemetery five days before Jane’s murder.
They know there is no tomorrow and the pain just doesn’t go away. Peter and Sarah MacDiarmid know. Their daughter Sarah was murdered at the Kananook railway station in July, 1990, and her body was never found.
They had to move to Queensland to leave the memories, but distance does not diminish the injustice nor bring any answers.
RON IDDLES has been a policeman for twenty-six years. He is married with children. He has worked in the National Crime Authority, the drug squad and has had two stints in the homicide squad.
He takes policing seriously and once quit the force when he felt an investigation was sold out through corruption, only to rejoin and then be fast-tracked to run a homicide team as a senior sergeant.
He is determined to find out the truth about Jane Thurgood-Dove. After more than two years on the case he was not prepared to say he knew who pulled the trigger, but he believed he was getting closer.
He has travelled down every orthodox path as an investigator and has begun to look at the unorthodox. He has used a lie detector test on two men connected with the dead woman.
One is Mark, her husband. He passed every test.
The other was a man who was (and remains) obsessed with Jane. He agreed to the polygraph test, but failed it miserably.
The polygraph is not evidence. It is not foolproof, but it may be a start. Theoretically, at least, it establishes when people are ‘being deceitful.’ In short, it might find liars – but can it find gunmen?
A former Western Australia police commissioner, Bob Falconer, who introduced the use of a lie detector in the search for a serial killer in Perth, believes the use of a polygraph is a sensible way to reduce the number of suspects.
Using that theory the polygraph test has so far reduced the number of known suspects in the Thurgood-Dove case to one.
But two men stalked Jane Thurgood-Dove and police believe there are others who know what happened.
Detectives have been told the handgun used in the murder was a ‘loaner’ provided by a gangster from Ascot Vale, unaware it was to be used to kill an innocent mother.
Several times heavy criminals have come close to passing on information. But each time they have walked away.
One has said he would be prepared to make a death-bed confession about the handgun. But, until then, nothing.
THERE is no right way to deal with tragedy, no blueprint to grief. Some people find talking a cathartic experience. Some who are close to a murder victim want to share their feelings in a prime time, multi-channel wake.
But the Magills are not like that. Their natural reaction is to grieve behind their wire screen security door, away from prying eyes. But they have learnt to play the media game.
They talk, not because they enjoy it, but in the hope that publicity will prick a conscience and provide a new lead for police. It also helps provide a momentary release from their constant feelings of helplessness. They have been interviewed by Ray Martin for A Current Affair and have appeared in press conferences organised by police.
They are prepared to co-operate with this story in the hope it may help provide a breakthrough. They know it is unlikely but a slim hope is better than none.
They have kept a scrap-book on what has been written and a mental note on how some reporters have behaved. Two days after the murder a pair of reporters turned up at their door. They wanted an interview and a photograph. The female reporter then urged them to hurry – ‘We’ve got a deadline, you know.’
That was the end of the conversation.
Another knocked on the door to ask if the family was related to an AFL footballer. ‘I don’t know how they live with themselves,’ John says.
THURSDAY, 13 NOVEMBER: It is now a week since Jane’s funeral … it leaves you with a feeling of emptiness knowing there are no answers
as yet.
Ron Iddles was telling us yesterday that the police were going to do a media release … the press will probably try to talk to us. The pressure on all of us is very hard to handle.
The children must be suffering dreadfully inside being without their mother.
This morning’s paper was on the kitchen table with a picture of Jane and a police report asking for any information about the two suspects in the photo fit pictures. Ashley (Jane’s daughter) was at the the table and very gently put her hand on Jane’s picture as if to say hello (that moment will never leave my mind) and with two fingers, pointed at the suspects and said ‘bad men’. Holly saw the paper as well because Ashley said ‘There’s mummy.’
SUNDAY, 23 NOVEMBER: I wanted to help Jane’s cause, I wanted to get on the phone and ring people, anybody who might listen. I wanted to go to the TV stations to ask for help to assist the police to catch the two responsible for taking Jane from us. It is only a short time since her parting but it seems like an eternity. I do miss her so.
SATURDAY, 27 DECEMBER: Nothing much today except Ron (Iddles) rang to say that the media wanted to speak to Mark or ourselves. They are desperate to try for a story, which they already have anyway. All they want to do is sell papers.
THE Magills are a loving couple who were looking forward to life without the pressure of running their own butcher’s business. After twenty-six years at the Victoria Market and twenty at the Moonee Ponds Market this was supposed to be their time.
John is wiry and still has the muscle definition in his arms of a man who has been active all his life. He sometimes struggles with breathing and requires constant medication for asthma – a legacy from smoking the roll-your-owns he gave up ten years ago.
The house is always clean. She drinks tea and he prefers coffee but they agree on almost everything else. They know each other’s thoughts so well they can finish each other’s sentences with the shared speech rhythms peculiar to close married couples.
They have a daily routine that rarely changes. They eat breakfast together at the kitchen table but split the paper. He reads the news while she tackles the crossword. He takes his asthma medication and then has the inevitable sneezing bout.
They can still laugh about the little things. It is a distraction from the almost constant ache of their loss.
They don’t spend every day in a black cloud of grief. They emerge from it to talk about normal events – Essendon’s great form in the football, stories about their grandchildren, reminiscences about family holidays – but the conversations always return to Jane.
They should be spending these years travelling and enjoying their family. They are doing none of these things. The family will never be the same. When they gather it is a reminder not of what they have but what they have lost.
SUNDAY, 28 DECEMBER: I’m just thinking what a close family we were and all the work to keep it that way is taken away by one evil deed.
THEY won’t travel in case they miss a development and they continually verge on tears. John Magill is a tough man and his wife is stoic, but their resolve is weakening. ‘I just want to be alive when they catch these bastards,’ he says.
It is always with them. The newspaper says a man was caught with illegal guns; they wonder if it could be a breakthrough. They go to the local shops and see a man who looks vaguely like the description of one of the suspects. They wonder, then ring the police for an update. They don’t want false hopes. They are tired of well-meaning platitudes. They want a breakthrough.
’Those who want to help us can’t and those who can, won’t,’ he says.
FRIDAY, 21 NOVEMBER: I am alone at the moment, sitting at the table outside the back door, just listening to the birds, hearing the traffic on the freeway and quietly gathering my thoughts, looking at a family photo of Jane, Mark and the children, thinking what could have been. It is very hard to accept that Jane is with us no longer and I expect her to walk through the door. I want to believe I feel her presence all the time, the feeling comes and goes. I think she is there with me.
RON IDDLES never met Jane Thurgood-Dove but he knows more about her than her best friend. He comes to the case with compassion but also with a detective’s eye for detail. He looks more for weaknesses than strengths of character because he knows from experience that identifying flaws in victims and suspects can solve murders.
Every person means different things to different people. Jane was a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a friend. She has been referred to as an ‘ordinary’ mum. There is no such thing.
Iddles had to break down all the little walls between roles to find out everything he could about the woman so that he could find out why she inflamed someone to the point of wanting her dead.
He has looked in every closet and found every skeleton. He found her every secret. Or has he?
Rarely has a murder created such unsubstantiated gossip about the victim. There have been stories that she was a star witness in an armed robbery case, was a drug courier or was having a torrid affair with a gangster and was murdered by another underworld figure.
None of the stories are true. It is as if we want to blame the victim for her own murder. That if she is somehow responsible then we are somehow safer. If Jane was ‘just’ a suburban mum who was stalked and killed then it could happen to anyone. And that means none of us would be safe.
SATURDAY, 22 NOVEMBER: I tried to have an early night, but while lying there all I could see in my mind was the terrible situation in which Jane was cast, not knowing what was going on.
The more I think about it and what happened to our Jane the madder and more disillusioned I am becoming about the law not looking after its citizens. I am so angry at the moment I just wish I could get out there and find these arseholes myself, but I would not know where to start.
It is now 10.10pm. I can’t believe the information trail has stopped. It is constantly on my mind what that girl suffered and neither Mark nor myself could do anything to help her. I am trying to stay on top of things, but finding it hard.
Nobody needs to die the way she did and I looked forward to the time when the police catch these evil bastards for what they did to Jane. I look at Mark at the moment and all I see is despair.
FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER, 1998: Another hard day ahead. Even though it is twelve months ago the heartache, the despair and the pain never leaves.
MONDAY, 31 MAY, 1999: Nothing, not a damn thing we are hearing. I think of all the good times and the best things the family was involved in. Then my mind will take me to the moment of Jane’s death and I will be filled with revulsion for the two individuals who took Jane’s life. Who gave them the right to make that decision? I will never give up thinking the police will get whoever is responsible. We gave Jane life, what gave them the right to give her death?
6 NOVEMBER, 1999: Two years to date and still no further ahead, no substantial news to get our hopes up, we patiently wait with utter frustration, meanwhile the pain goes on.
RON IDDLES and his team have had to investigate many murders since Oaks Day, 1997, but they keep coming back to the Thurgood-Dove case, refusing to believe it is unsolvable.
They have had other detectives review the case to see if they have missed anything. They have travelled around Australia, interviewed more than a thousand people and chased down nine hundred tips. They believe the answer is somewhere in the material they have gathered.
Now the polygraph test has added some hope. It is not a breakthrough; it is just a lead, and there have been leads before that petered out to nothing. But it is a hope.
EVER polite, the Magills show you past the front door and out through the covered porch. Helen points to new shrub still in its black, plastic pot, a Camellia they will plant later that week.
We had to get that one,’ she says with a tired smile. ‘It’s a Sweet Jane.’
&nbs
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