Justice Denied

by John Suter Linton

  CHAPTER

  4

  Hoodwinked—The Blind Prison Escapee

  Over the years miscarriages of justice have inspired movies, books and media attention. But Carl Synnerdahl was not an innocent person betrayed by the criminal justice system. And little did I think my client would inspire a book and movie about how he hoodwinked the police, the courts, the prison authorities and me.

  * * *

  Carl Synnerdahl was a professional criminal. He was a very active criminal. He was a ‘heavy’. His lengthy criminal record chronicled many occasions when his planning of crimes had failed. A stretch in prison, therefore, was just looked upon as being an occupational hazard.

  When I was briefed to appear for him, he faced a long sentence for armed robbery. With his record, even allowing the discount for a guilty plea, he was facing a sentence of the order of ten to fourteen years. He was looking at serving more than half of this term before he would even be eligible for parole. In any case, with his record, he was far from a strong candidate for parole being granted.

  Unknown to me, however, Synnerdahl had hit upon an audacious scheme to have his sentence drastically reduced: he feigned blindness.

  Police and prison authorities were highly sceptical of this claim and set out to debunk it. Officers would sneak up behind Synnerdahl in the court cells and ignite a cigarette lighter millimetres from his eyes. He never flinched. Others would create an obstacle course for him to manoeuvre. Failure to do so would result in falling face first. What happened? Carl Synnerdahl fell face first. Exhaustive tests were carried out by a battery of ophthalmologists. Intense pinpricks of light were shone in his eyes and, under magnification, the doctors looked for any reaction in the pupil or iris. There was none, whatever the intensity of the light.

  Synnerdahl passed—or perhaps one should more accurately say failed—each time with flying colours. The eye specialists certified his loss of vision as genuine.

  Carl Synnerdahl was a pathetic sight as he was helped into court. Because of his disability, he was unable to climb the steep stairs leading to the trapdoor admitting him to the dock in No. 3 Court at Darlinghurst. In my submission on sentencing, I sought extreme leniency because of Synnerdahl’s blindness. The judge could only act upon the expert evidence, which was unanimous: he was blind.

  The sentencing judge, Judge David Hicks, was a tall, impressive, patrician judge, and although he would have denied it, he had a heart of gold. His reservoir of compassion could more readily be tapped if the man in the dock pleaded guilty and showed contrition. On the other hand, brazening it out and attacking the police were not features that the judge rewarded with leniency. Sentencing Synnerdahl to six years without a minimum term was severe, but merciful. Judge Hicks correctly mitigated the sentence because of the unchallenged evidence before him of Synnerdahl’s blindness. Judge Hicks had not been hoodwinked.

  * * *

  Not long after arriving at Cessnock Correctional Centre, in the picturesque Hunter region north of Sydney, Carl Synnerdahl escaped custody. He wore dark glasses and used a white cane, and walked out the front gate in the guise of attending church counselling. Making his way into town, Synnerdahl hitchhiked his way to Sydney.

  The escape from gaol of a blind man attracted wide media attention. It occupied the whole front page of the afternoon Daily Mirror of Wednesday, 22 June 1977. The headline read:

  EXCLUSIVE

  BLIND MAN ON THE RUN TALKS TO THE MIRROR

  ‘I CONNED COPS’

  TRANCE FOOLS EYE DOCTORS

  While on the run, Synnerdahl granted the exclusive front-page interview to journalist Steve Pivetta. The pair met at Redfern railway station, an inner-city Sydney suburb. Synnerdahl was well dressed and wearing sunglasses. He told of an Asian doctor who had taught him how to temporarily induce blindness by going into a trance. He claimed this enabled him to deceive even specialist eye surgeons. This deception could only be maintained for short periods, but the feigned affliction had enabled him to achieve his wish of detention in the minimum security part of Cessnock gaol, where he found it easy to escape.

  Synnerdahl was only on the run for a short period before being rearrested.

  * * *

  Inevitably, the day of reckoning arrived for Synnerdahl to answer for the escape and the multitude of serious offences committed while on the run. Although there was no escape this time, it was not his lawyer’s job to hold Synnerdahl to account—the police and courts had that aspect well and truly covered. This was why the decision to brief the tall, scholarly, Public Defender Ken Shadbolt was such a sound one. Shad-bolt had those precious assets of insight and persuasive realism judges trusted. Even so, Shadbolt’s skill could not avoid his client being required to serve the balance of the sentences from which he escaped. In addition, by law, the sentence for escape must be a cumulative one. Shadbolt’s low-key approach was to seek total sentences which would realistically leave open prospects for rehabilitation. He achieved that result: the sentence was three additional years behind bars. Carl Synnerdahl’s good fortune had not deserted him.

  In 1981, Synnerdahl published his book on the elaborate ruse entitled Hoodwinked. To protect us, or maybe not to embarrass us, he changed the names of the innocent. By coincidence, years later I encountered Carl Synnerdahl in the visiting area of the gaol and chided him for deleting ‘Bill Hosking’ from the manuscript of his book and the two-hour movie blockbuster it spawned. My role was replaced by a character with the fictional name of ‘Patrick Burroughs’. In the book ‘Burroughs’ is described as one of the most able and respected lawyers in Australia. The depiction of the fictional ‘Patrick Burroughs’ in the book was so favourable, however, it caused many to say this proved that indeed the book was a work of fiction.

  Carl Synnerdahl was quite unapologetic. He brushed aside my attempt at humour, saying he had to look after his public image. He couldn’t have people knowing he relied on a Public Defender to represent him in court.

  If I may, the book lacked the literary polish of Charles Dickens, and if there was any theme of remorse, it must have been edited out. Likewise, the movie narrative was bland and criminal. It featured a cross-section of well-known Australian actors, though it did not attract any industry awards. Any shortcomings, however, were those of the plot and not the cast.

  The conservative broadsheet, the Sydney Morning Herald, published a full-page interview with Carl Synnerdahl on Saturday, 3 October 1981. The interview was a promotion for the book and film, with journalist Sally McInerney speaking with Synnerdahl from Parramatta Gaol. The headline that Saturday read, BY DAY, BANK ROBBER CARL FAKED BLINDNESS, BY NIGHT, HE WROTE HIS STORY.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Who Shot Harold Price?

  The Thursday before Easter, 2 April 1980, seemed like just another autumn afternoon on the Price family’s farm, a 20-hectare property on the outskirts of Peak Hill, in the central west of New South Wales. Peak Hill is a wheat and sheep town with a long history of gold mining. With fewer than one thousand local residents, it would be wrong to call it a ghost town, but the faded shop fronts and long verandahs suggest a grander past, when people hastened west from Sydney to join the gold rush. Today, the highway joins the main street and big semi-trailers roar through the little town without stopping.

  Harold and Lorraine Price lived and worked on the property, along with their three young children, all boys under ten years of age, the youngest just over two. The family was well known among the local community. Mr Price was from a respected local family, while Mrs Price, originally from the city, was the typical lady next door, helping in the school tuckshop and teaching Sunday school.

  Harold Price was a busy man juggling a second job on top of his farm work to make ends meet: he drove the forty kilometres to a bakery in the town of Parkes to work the night shift. It was tiring work and he often took a nap during the day. On that Thursday, he lay down on the double bed he shared with his wife. Out the back of the farmhouse, hawks swooped ove
r the aviary he had built, cutting black spirals in the blue western sky. It was a large aviary with more than two hundred parrots, squawking in protest at the attack. He dozed off to sleep with the calls of the birds drifting through the bedroom window. When the sound of a gunshot echoed across the land, no one thought much of it. Mr Price kept a rifle in the house to scare off the hawks and would often run out of the house and fire warning shots into the air.

  Lorraine May Price later told the police she was knitting a pullover for her husband in a room at the back of the house when she heard the gunshot. She walked around to the bedroom and discovered him lying in bed with his face covered in blood. It was a neat shot, right through the middle of the forehead, just above the eyes.

  Mrs Price called the local doctor and tried to help her husband, who lay bleeding on the bed sheets. The local policeman, Sergeant Moore, was having a beer at the bowling club with some friends on his day off when he was called to the scene. The local doctor was also on his day off, relaxing at his house behind the hospital.

  When the ambulance arrived, Mrs Price was treated for shock. She was told her husband had suffered a surface graze and that there was ‘nothing to worry about’, and taken to the local hospital to be given some sedatives. But her husband never regained consciousness. After a few hours, Harold Price was dead.

  Local gossip soon spread that Mr Price had been killed by a stray bullet from a random shooter which bounced off a window frame and struck him right between the eyes. He was terribly unlucky. The other theory going around town was Mr Price had become depressed and shot himself in bed. Not an uncommon scenario in outback Australia.

  It was only after a post-mortem examination that the police decided this was a case of murder. Within the week, detectives from Parkes were called in to formally interview Mrs Price. She freely answered all of their questions and denied any involvement in her husband’s death. Lorraine May Price certainly didn’t fit the typical killer profile, but she was alone in the house at the time of the shooting and it wasn’t long before she became the only suspect. Police also found a spent .22 Winchester Super Speed cartridge in the kitchen bin. The cartridge matched the family’s Stirling rifle, which had been sent to ballistics to determine if it was the murder weapon. In the meantime, Mrs Price was charged with her husband’s murder.

  The Price household appeared an ordinary one. Mrs Price told the police ‘there was no one before Harold and there has been no one since’. She also said her husband was a hardworking man who ‘provided a lot for us’. So, Mr Price was a loving husband and father, and Lorraine Price a devoted wife and mother. Both were pillars of their community and church. But beneath the surface, all was not well. It was not a happy marriage at all. Mr Price had confided to their local Uniting Church minister, Reverend Henry Martin, that he was contemplating leaving home. Mrs Price had had a similar conversation with the minister.

  Unknown to Harold Price, town gossip linked his wife romantically with the same gentleman. This gave the police a motive. If Mrs Price had been in love with the minister, then she had shot her husband to clear the way for a new romantic life with Henry Martin.

  As Mrs Price awaited trial, things got even worse. The police ballistics expert’s opinion was the fatal shot was fired from Mr Price’s Sterling rifle. Unfortunately for Mrs Price, the ballistics expert said the shooter was standing one metre away from the victim when the fatal shot was fired. The ballistics expert, however, was unable to entirely rule out the possibility the fatal wound was self-administered, but he thought it unlikely. The forensic evidence also suggested the rifle was too far away from the head to be a suicide. In other words, somebody other than Harold Price had fired the weapon.

  * * *

  The case against Mrs Price was wholly circumstantial. Her introduction to the legal system at the tiny Peak Hill Court House before district magistrate Mr Robert Stent was a gentle, almost reassuring one. She had been allowed out on bail and returned to her home, not far from the courthouse where the committal proceedings were heard. In those days, as now, bail is rare for someone charged with murder.

  The Peak Hill Court House consisted of an office, a courtroom, a verandah and the living quarters of the lock-up keeper and his family. I remember the tiny courtroom at Peak Hill precisely because it is so unmemorable. I was the acting clerk of petty sessions there in 1961. The courtroom is tiny and sparsely furnished. One time when the Dubbo magistrate, Jack Craddock, made his monthly visit to Peak Hill, the court office was closed and I recorded court proceedings on a noiseless—in name only—typewriter, which all but drowned out the spoken work with its clatter. There was a connecting door from the lock-up keeper’s quarters to the courtroom and, one day, court proceedings were interrupted when the toddler daughter of the lock-up keeper wandered through the door holding a teddy bear. The little girl was pursued by her mother, who scooped her up and retreated back through the connecting door. Proceedings continued as though nothing had happened.

  The almost informal atmosphere of Mr Stent’s court was no preparation for Mrs Price’s coming ordeal. The proceedings were brief. The case, being wholly circumstantial, called for little cross-examination by her Sydney barrister, Mr William ‘Bill’ D Peoples, instructed by Parkes solicitor, Mr Chris Helby. Mrs Price was duly committed for trial in the Supreme Court at Dubbo, but the venue was eventually changed to Sydney’s historic old Banco Court in St James Road, across the road from Hyde Park and nearby St Mary’s Cathedral. The St James Road Court was rich in character and history and part of the old Supreme Court building designed by architect Francis Greenway. Greenway would not have been unfamiliar with court architecture: he owed his presence in the colony to a commuted death sentence passed at the Bristol Assizes, arriving at Sydney Cove in 1814.

  The St James Road courtroom is quite small. Lavishly restored in 1895, it was a replica, of all places, of St Stephen’s Court in Dublin. Its conservative opulence and splendour reflected the values of a bygone age. The former Chief Justice’s huge chambers had French windows which opened onto a tiny garden and lawn. In sharp contrast, Mrs Price’s holding cell, below street level and windowless, had a toilet but zero privacy. There were no facilities at all for a conference. This was not intentionally cruel; the cell, too, was a symbol of a bygone age.

  The trial judge was the dour Justice John O’Brien, Chief Judge of the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court. Representing Mrs Price was high-profile barrister Peter ‘Tex’ McInerney QC, a fearless advocate.

  During the trial, Mrs Price’s solicitor, Mr Helby, gave evidence. This was in support of the optimistic theory, consistent with Mrs Price’s innocence, that a stray bullet had come through the bedroom window and killed Mr Price. In such a circumstantial case where the accused says she is innocent, the exploration of all exculpatory theories does not depend upon the client’s instructions alone. Her case was simple: she did not do it and did not know how it happened. Thus, Mr Helby took it upon himself to try to prove the stray bullet theory. This involved the wire flyscreen from the Prices’ bedroom window, with what might appear to have been a bullet hole in it. Mr Helby’s wife travelled to Sydney from Peak Hill and produced the flyscreen as evidence. Even so, this theory did not explain how a spent cartridge was found in the kitchen bin. The ballistic and forensic evidence did not support the stray bullet theory either.

  The Crown’s suggestion that Mrs Price was having an affair with Reverend Martin was highly prejudicial. It was never overtly stated, but there was more than a strong hint by the prosecution that she and the Peak Hill minister were actually lovers. This was dangerous territory for the accused because it gave her a motive and made the shooting look like a cold, calculated murder. While there were no admissions to an affair by either party, and no evidence to support the rumour, any whiff of an affair could have an enormous impact on the jury and required very careful directions from Justice O’Brien to ignore such gossip when considering the facts of the case. The judge failed to make any such instructi
on. After one hour of deliberations, the jury found Mrs Price guilty of murder. She was given the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.

  Mrs Price appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal, and her Parkes solicitors retained the famous Chester Porter QC for her appeal. In front of Chief Justice Sir Laurence Street and Justices Jack Lee and Edwin ‘Ted’ Lusher, Mr Porter argued the suggestion of the affair by the Crown was, as expected, prejudicial to Mrs Price’s defence. Infidelity was implied but never directly alleged because it never happened. She denied it. So did the clergyman. And there was not a shred of evidence to support this scandalous rumour. Chester Porter’s arguments prevailed. The conviction was quashed. Chief Justice Street held, ‘The prospect of prejudice is of such a high degree that I have reluctantly reached the conclusion that the verdict should not be allowed to stand …’

  Sir Laurence Street also noted, ‘There was a volume of medical evidence indicating the unlikelihood, indeed the impossibility, of the deceased having inflicted this wound on himself.’

  A new trial was ordered, again in Sydney, and Mrs Price’s hopes were alive again, but barely. She was freed from prison on bail, having served just a few months of a life sentence, to await retrial for her husband’s murder.

  * * *

  Three years after her husband’s death, Lorraine Price, the widow and mother of three from Peak Hill, had undergone committal proceedings in the Local Court, a trial by jury in the Supreme Court in Sydney, and a successful appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal. As a result, the stray bullet theory was abandoned by the defence, and the clergyman–Sunday school teacher lovers’ scenario was abandoned by the Crown.

  Lorraine Price was back exactly where she started when she was first arrested, but with a big difference. For all the proceedings so far she had the benefit of being represented by top-ranking silks, junior counsel and solicitor. She had used all of her late mother’s inheritance and sold the family home to finance her desperate bid for survival and freedom. But now the money was all gone. She was broke. She applied for, and was granted, legal aid.