by Belinda Neil
I was now thirty years old. I had no idea about motherhood, having always been a career-minded girl, and definitely no maternal instincts, but I did read a lot of books. The five months I spent full time with my son was an amazing experience, although I don’t profess for a minute to say it was easy. I knew I would find it very hard to leave him and go back to work.
We had agreed that Rob would take six months off from the State Protection Group to look after Jake while I returned to work. He was hyped up, not sleeping properly and coming home irritable, often flaring up over the slightest things. I had always been a very patient person but my patience levels were sorely tested now and this created tension in our marriage, especially as I was trying to look after Jake too. The time off would be a good chance for Rob to have some time out and to think about the possibility of transferring out of the State Protection Group, as well as spending bonding time with our son. At this time, we didn’t know that Rob, too, was displaying all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and we didn’t even consider counselling for him.
I returned to work in January 1999. I am going to say this to all the mothers out there — going back to work was like going on a holiday. At work I was not checking feeding or sleeping times or worrying about what Jake was doing. And while I had loved every minute of my very special bonding time with Jake I had never really relaxed. I think stay-at-home mothers are amazing, but that is a lifestyle choice for all concerned and not everybody has that opportunity.
The first night I came home from work I was feeling great, I felt intellectually stimulated. However, as soon as my car pulled into the drive, Rob flew out of the front door with his dog, Conan, a Jack Russell, in tow. His face was taut and angry.
Before I could say anything he said, ‘I’m taking the dog for a walk,’ and then he was gone.
I had no idea what had happened. I went into the house; Jake was sleeping and there was no dinner prepared. After an hour Rob returned, visibly cooled off, but he offered no explanation as to his immediate departure.
The next day I went to work stressed wondering what would I find when I got home. Would we have to reconsider our leave and look at other options? That evening I returned home tense and anxious. I opened the front door and the smell hit me: a baked dinner. I relaxed; all was well.
After my return to full time work in January 1999 I decided to leave the Homicide and Serial Violent Crime Agency (as the Homicide Unit was now called). I didn’t feel I would be able to cope with an investigation into the death of a baby or child, and being asked to go anywhere in the state at short notice could also present a problem. A number of detective sergeant positions were being advertised throughout the state so I decided to apply for one of those close to home, and if I was unsuccessful I would apply for a lateral transfer instead.
Although the positions I sought were investigative, they were not specific to Homicide investigation but involved other kinds of crime, including armed robbery, sexual assault, fraud, and drug investigation for example. I was tired of being totally immersed in violence and death and looked forward to a change.
In September 1999 I successfully applied for the position of investigations manager, at detective sergeant level, at Kogarah Local Area Command. However, I would not be released from my current job until the following January.
While I had decided to leave Homicide, I couldn’t bear to give up my negotiator’s role as well. I found the work incredibly interesting, and particularly enjoyed the professionalism and working within a strong cohesive team. I also felt that I could make a difference. This did put me under extra pressure now Jake was born, but as a police officer this was work truly close to my heart. There was an amazing bond between negotiators. It didn’t matter that the pager went off at 2am after little sleep, because I wanted to get out of bed and go to the job whatever it entailed. Having a partner who understood the work I was doing definitely helped.
For the first six months when I went back to work full time this was relatively uncomplicated as Rob was on leave. However, when he went back to work we had to do some quick thinking when I was on call as negotiator. Rob was often late for work as he had to drop Jake off at the child-care centre because I had been called out and had not arrived home in time. It was very helpful that my mother lived close by (she and Dad had separated some years before and he was now living and working in Fiji). She provided help whenever she could.
On the morning of 1 June 1999 various teams of police were searching premises throughout Sydney because of a major Kings Cross drug syndicate. The head of the syndicate was Michael Kanaan, currently on bail after being involved in a shootout with police at the White City tennis complex near Paddington in December of the previous year. One police officer had been shot and Kanaan himself was now confined to a wheelchair. Because he was considered dangerous and in possession of firearms, a team of police negotiators was involved when Kanaan’s home in Bruce Avenue Belfield was to be searched.
If police are carrying out a normal search with a warrant, they will knock on the front door. For a high-risk search warrant the usual procedure is for Tactical police to surround the home and for negotiators to speak with the occupants on the phone or by some other means to ensure that the occupants leave the house safely. There is always the chance that they will refuse to come out and a siege will ensue. On this occasion that is exactly what happened. Kanaan refused to come out.
About 10pm, as I was getting ready for bed, the commander Graeme Abel rang me. The siege at Belfield was well and truly under way and did not look like being resolved in the next few hours. He needed to put together a second team of negotiators to relieve the initial team who had been working for nearly fourteen hours, and I agreed to lead that second team.
On arrival I saw the Tactical teams and the negotiators’ truck. The Tactical teams were heavily armed; Kanaan was a suspected killer and the boys were not going to pull any punches should negotiations fail. In the negotiators’ truck was Radar, leader of the first team, who looked exhausted. In the truck I saw numerous empty coffee cups and cartons of stale cold leftover McDonald’s, and noticed the faint smell of body odour. It had been a long day.
Radar and Graham briefed me and I learned more about Michael Kanaan. He was a career criminal, a hardened drug dealer and gang leader. He was suspected of the shooting deaths of two men as well as murdering his own former gang leader Danny Karam. Then there was the shootout with police at White City. This later earned him fair coverage in the television series Underbelly 3.
When the rest of my team arrived we discussed strategies with the shortly-to-be-relieved morning team. Our main aim was to try and resolve the negotiation peacefully and our initial step was simply to use a new negotiator to see if there was more chance of rapport. Kanaaan had smashed the landline phone in his house, so we had to communicate from the negotiator’s truck via a special telephone that had been thrown into the house, one that was much hardier and better able to sustain ill treatment.
Over the next twelve hours Kanaan constantly abused Glenn, my primary negotiator. It was amazing how Glenn kept his cool, but this is one of the skills of a good police negotiator. I had constant briefings with the Tactical team leader and also the operation commander to discuss strategies after most of these telephone calls. Exchanging information with the Tactical commander was important; the Tactical teams might see or hear things we couldn’t, and we could also pass on information that might be helpful in carrying out various action plans.
These fall into two main categories. An Emergency Action plan (EA plan) is devised within thirty minutes of arrival if an emergency situation becomes life-threatening. For example, if the suspect starts killing hostages or threatening to detonate a bomb, the EA Tactical team may be deployed immediately into the stronghold. A Deliberate Option (DO) is a more detailed plan that may use additional resources as the incident continues. It is established within two hours of arrival and is continually updated and revised as more resources and
intelligence become available. The DO may include a more detailed plan for breaching a stronghold and require more Tactical team members and outside agencies than the EA.
The media were breathing down our necks just waiting for a gunfight between Kanaan and Tactical police. We were not looking for a quick fix as that was too dangerous and more likely to end in a shootout. However the following morning, an assistant commissioner arrived with her entourage. They asked me why negotiators were not just ordering Michael Kanaan and his family out of their home and why police were not storming the place.
I was a little surprised by the question and wondered whether the overtime budget had become such an issue that human life came second to the desire to fast-track an arrest. I had been awake since six the previous morning, and perhaps I was a little terse as I reminded the assistant commissioner and entourage that the NSW police guidelines specified ‘contain and negotiate’ as the first response. I pointed out that storming the house could lead to deaths and the possibility of very damaging publicity for the police, and said that at least everybody was alive and unhurt. Well, nearly everybody: the assistant commissioner’s ego was perhaps bruised. I was lucky not to be transferred somewhere else.
By 10.30am the following morning Radar and the initial team were called back to the siege to take over from us, as we had been operating for over twelve hours, some of us working through from the previous day. We were well and truly exhausted and after briefing the oncoming team and debriefing our own we left the area, knowing full well we might be back later that day if the siege continued.
Fortunately it ended later that afternoon with nobody hurt. Michael Kanaan was arrested peacefully and is currently serving three life sentences for murder.
CHAPTER
15
Which brother?
In November 1999 I felt I had been coping reasonably well with full-time Homicide investigation but I was still counting the days before I could transfer to Kogarah Local Area Command. However, a case came along that changed my perception of the world. At that stage, though I did not know it, my mind was filling with all the traumatic memories of horrific investigations. At some stage I would overload. This case saw the beginning of that overload.
On Wednesday 3 November I started a normal 8am to 4.30pm shift at the Homicide Unit. I had just completed an on-call negotiator week, dropped off the pager that morning and was filling out job sheets for situations that included a man dousing himself with petrol before mutilating himself and a man wanting to jump off a rooftop. Both men had been taken for psychiatric assessments. That night I went to bed early and was probably asleep by 9.30pm. At 11.30pm my lovely rest was disturbed by a phone call from Detective Sergeant Russell Oxford, my Homicide team leader. A woman had been found murdered in her home at Berala and I was to meet him at her address.
When I met Russell, he looked at me and said, ‘How can you be smiling after getting out of bed at this hour?’ By then I was used to getting out of bed at all hours to go to Jake, so when I was called out I needed no time to become fully alert. An adrenalin surge kicked in very quickly even if I had only been asleep for a few hours.
Investigators from Flemington Local Area Command (LAC) told us that thirty-year-old Donna Wheeler had been brutally bashed and stabbed in her home. Her body had been found by her ex-husband and, tragically, by her twelve-year-old son, both of whom had been taken to Flemington police station to make statements. When Donna’s son was asked what he saw when he went into the room, he said, ‘My mother was laying in the lounge room in the corner with all blood up against the wall, and no pants on. Basically Dad got me out of there straight away.’ I felt overwhelming pity for this poor child.
It was decided that Nigel (another Homicide investigator) and I would go back to Flemington to assist the young investigators who were taking statements from Donna Wheeler’s son and ex-husband while Russell Oxford remained at the crime scene. Incredibly, the commander would not allow the detective sergeant at Flemington LAC to attend the crime scene due to overtime restrictions. Detective Sergeant Jenkins, who would start at 8.30 the next morning, would be put in charge of the homicide investigation nearly twelve hours after it began. The most important information in a homicide is usually obtained in the first forty-eight hours, often involving an enormous amount of detail. Trying to play catch-up twelve hours later would be very difficult.
Nigel and I discovered that Donna had taken out an apprehended violence order (AVO) against her ex-boyfriend, Keith Bond. He had been physically violent towards her during the relationship and had not been happy when she ended it. In fact, Keith appeared to be obsessed by Donna. Even with the AVO in place, it was believed he slashed the tyres on her car. Bond lived in Amy Street, Regents Park, with his brother Colin and another man, Peter, only a short distance from Donna’s home at Berala. He became our number-one suspect.
Armed with this information we went to Keith Bond’s home address in Regent’s Park. It was 7.30am on Thursday 4 November. We had been working all night but now wasn’t the time to stop. No one answered the door and it appeared no one was home. After a quick conversation with neighbours we decided to come back later. At that point we were going to view the crime scene at 9 Kingsland Road.
I have absolutely no independent recollection of the crime scene, as shocking as it was; by this stage I had internalised as much horror as I could handle. I have taken the following description from diaries, statements and photographs.
The fibro home was small with a carport in which was parked a red Mitsubishi Lancer. This was Donna’s car. The front door of the house led to a small hallway with a bedroom on the right and the lounge room on the left. At the entrance to the lounge room I saw the brutally murdered body of Donna Wheeler.
She was lying on her back with her head towards a corner of the room but it was her face that drew my attention. It was covered in blood and swollen and bruised as if she had been hit by a hard object. Next to her head were a pillow and plastic bag, both covered in blood. A blood spray pattern was on the wall above her head. I felt numb: it was such a shocking sight and I knew her young son had seen his mother like this.
Her body was naked from the waist down apart from a black sock on her right foot, and her legs were spreadeagled. I felt as I had at the Paula Brown and Kim Meredith crime scenes: why couldn’t her killer have covered her up? Why rob her of her dignity in death? The other sock lay near her black underpants and slacks on the carpet near her feet. Her hands were covered in blood. Her maroon top was also covered in blood and there were three holes or cuts in the top left side, which we later discovered hid stab wounds to her chest. There was also one stab wound and smears of blood on her abdomen.
In another corner of the room lay a small bloodied knife with a thirteen-centimetre blade. It was slightly bent, perhaps from hitting bone. From the positioning of her body, the knife and various items strewn around the room, it was obvious a violent struggle had taken place.
On the coffee table were three partly eaten Chinese takeaway meals, two ceramic eating bowls and a bottle of Tooheys beer. Two spoons and forks were on the floor and another bottle of beer and a can of UDL were at the base. Who did Donna have her last meal with? And what or who had interrupted dinner for two that evening? There was no sign of forced entry to the home.
After reviewing the crime scene we returned to Amy Street Regents Park. This time Keith Bond’s brother Colin was at home, and he let us in. Colin told us that Keith was not at home but would be at work. The other occupant of the house, Peter, was also absent. Russell asked Colin when he had last seen Donna.
Colin replied, ‘Tuesday night I met her at the pub and then we had some Chinese at her place.’
‘What time did you leave there?’
‘About 7.30, or eight she got a phone call and she had to leave to meet someone at Ashfield.’
Russell also asked Colin about the relationship with Donna and his brother Keith.
Colin replied, ‘There were heaps o
f blues.’
One of the investigators noticed what appeared to be a spot and smear of blood on the floor in the lounge room. At that point Russell had a short interview with Colin, recorded on tape. Whilst we had believed Keith was our main suspect and Colin even inferred this, Colin himself was not beyond scrutiny. He had known Donna and appeared to be one of the last people to see her alive. The fact that he admitted having eaten a Chinese meal with her was very significant. I also noticed that Colin’s right hand seemed quite swollen. So now we had two very good suspects for the murder.
Keith had been in a tempestuous relationship with Donna, which had ended some weeks prior to her death. He had a history of violence towards her. Then we had Colin, who had been seen in Donna’s company for the past couple of weeks. We learned that he had been released from gaol on parole some months earlier after serving ten years for bashing another woman in the face and leaving her for dead, naked from the waist down.
When Colin had been interviewed about the attack on this woman he said, ‘With a few beers under my belt, I got the shits and hit her.’ This had not even come close to what took place. The man who found this woman said she was ‘gurgling’, and that her face had been so badly beaten it appeared ‘just pulped.’ She had died sixteen days later. This crime scene also indicated that the woman might have rejected his sexual advances. However, Colin was adamant Donna that had taken a call and left to go and meet someone. We had to work out which brother had been responsible for her death – or whether the murderer had been the person Donna had left to meet at Ashfield.
Colin agreed to accompany detectives to Flemington police station to be interviewed further, and we made numerous phone calls to try and track down Keith and Peter, the other occupant of the home. Keith had a new girlfriend, Debbie, so we were trying to contact her as well. We also needed to organise a search warrant for the house where the Bond brothers lived.