by PD Martin
‘And there could be some crossovers,’ I note, looking at the years that have two boys missing. In some cases there’s six months between the abductions, but in others there’s only a couple of months and that would fit with my vision, in which there seemed to be multiple victims held against their will. There have even been cases of children kept in captivity for years.
‘It’s definitely feasible, but it’s impossible to confirm when we don’t know what actually happened to these boys.’ She points at the list of missing persons. ‘They could be alive and well…somewhere.’ She says it with uncertainty…not many young boys voluntarily disappear from the face of the earth.
‘What about cause of death?’ I ask. ‘I’m thinking manual strangulation.’ While this would tie in with the personal nature of the crime, I have the added insight of seeing the killer’s hands close around John’s neck. Again, I’m relying heavily on my visions for clues and I hope my gift isn’t leading me astray. Can I trust my visions when the case is so personal?
‘It would be a good fit.’ Lily leans back in her chair and finishes the last of the wine. Unlike me, she didn’t have to worry about driving home. ‘But impossible to prove without a fresher body. We need marks on skin.’
‘We need skin.’
Even in Cameron Howell’s body, found just six weeks after death, decomposition was too advanced to see ligature marks on the skin.
She nods. ‘It’s the same with the presumed sex crimes. I know it’s highly unlikely, but it’s possible these boys aren’t being sexually assaulted.’
I force myself to think about it. ‘Like you say, possible, but I doubt it.’
‘What if the underwear isn’t about remorse? It could be because he doesn’t see them as sexual…a sign that he hasn’t taken their underwear off at any point.’
The prospect that only John’s life was taken, and not his sexual innocence, is comforting and a notion I’d love to latch onto, but I know that statistically speaking a perpetrator targeting and killing young boys…the chances are incredibly remote. ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Hopefully we can close in on him through the jail records or crimes in another country.’
‘True. And the profile should help, too.’
I nod, almost being able to taste a suspect pool. Names…man, that’d be great.
‘Signature?’ Serial killers are known to have a signature—something they do with their victims or at a crime scene that is part of their ritual and something they’re compelled to do every time. So what’s our guy’s signature? ‘We could be back to the underwear. Maybe part of his signature is leaving the bodies the way he found them, as innocent boys. Or it could have some other personal significance to him.’
‘It’s part of his ritual, whether it’s a sign of remorse or not,’ Lily agrees. ‘But signature’s hard to definitively identify when the remains are so old.’
I nod. It could be something we can’t see because the bodies are always bones. Could be he marks the flesh in some way…but the flesh is gone. Or maybe he poses the bodies in a certain way…but the scavenging activities of animals mean we’ve never found an intact skeleton.
‘Hell, we don’t even know where he kills them,’ Lily says. ‘Does he take them out to the bush and kill them, or does he kill them in his house and then dispose of the bodies?’
‘A sadistic paedophile usually kills in anger, for sexual pleasure, so it’s more likely they’re killed at his house or wherever he holds the boys, and then transported once they’re dead.’
‘Agreed.’ She picks up her empty glass of wine, trying to drain the last drop before letting out a deep sigh. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m toast.’
With my eyes getting heavier, I have to agree. ‘Me too. Will we call it quits?’
‘Yeah.’ Lily stands up. ‘This is going to be a tough one to profile. We’ve got contradictory information and the possibility of two perps…one who keeps the children alive.’
I nod. ‘God only knows what happens in the hell-hole where it keeps them.’
Chapter 8
I arrive back at my parents’ Camberwell home at 1.30am—late by any standards, let alone with how I’ve been feeling. Factoring in the shift from LA’s time zone, it’s the equivalent of staying up all night and being at work for a couple of hours. No wonder I feel like a train wreck. At least I can sleep in a little tomorrow.
Pulling into the driveway, I notice Matt leaning against a black BMW a few metres away. What’s he doing here, and at this time? I give him an awkward wave, not sure on the protocol when an ex-boyfriend is at your doorstep in the middle of the night. I’ve seen this scenario a few times in case files, but it never ends well—then again I’m talking about murder, and jealous stakeouts, which wouldn’t be in Matt’s repertoire. Especially not now, over two years on.
As soon as the car’s in park and the ignition’s off, I clamber out and walk back down the driveway.
‘Hello, stranger.’ Matt’s making his way up the drive and we meet halfway.
‘Hi.’ I manage a smile. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Well, given you won’t take or return my calls, I figured this was the only way to talk to you.’ He gives a little shrug. ‘I know what you’re like when you’re on a case…even if it is your brother’s.’
I don’t have to justify my actions to Matt, but he’s a good guy and maybe he does deserve an explanation. ‘I haven’t been avoiding you, Matt. When you called tonight I was with the profiler who’s working the case and we were in the middle of something.’
He nods, but his face says Whatever.
Silence.
Eventually he starts shaking his head. ‘All that time. Seven years we were together and you never told me what happened to John.’
I look over his shoulder, avoiding eye contact. ‘I told you he died.’
‘Yeah. In a car accident.’ Another shake of the head. ‘No wonder you told me not to bring him up with your parents. It wasn’t because it would upset them, it was because you lied.’
‘Look, Matt. I’m tired…wrecked. Let’s talk about this tomorrow.’
He grabs my free hand. ‘I could have helped.’
I give a little grunt. ‘How?’
‘By talking to you about it. Helping you through it.’
‘It happened eighteen years before we even met, Matt. It was in the past.’
‘Something like that is never in the past, Soph.’ He shakes his head. ‘And you of all people know that.’
I’m silent, caught between not knowing what to say, and not having the energy to respond. Besides, I went through this with Lily Murphy five hours ago and I don’t need round two.
He crosses his arms. ‘You think the rules don’t apply to you?’
I sigh. ‘What rules, Matt?’
‘Grief.’
Now it’s my turn to shake my head. ‘There are no rules, Matt. Not when it comes to grief.’
‘You’re wrong, Soph. There is one rule: you have to let yourself grieve, let yourself feel it.’
I don’t respond.
‘You couldn’t even tell your boyfriend, me, what happened all those years ago.’ He gives a hurt laugh. ‘I had to hear it on the news. The media said the murder of Ted Strawasky had been linked to three victims from the seventies. Then they said John Anderson of Shepparton in 1975…at first I didn’t believe it could possibly be your John. But I guess part of me always knew you were hiding something from me.’
‘I wasn’t hiding it, Matt.’
‘Sure you were, Soph. You kept your past between us like a wedge. You always kept me at a distance. At least now I know why.’
‘Cause this is all about you, right? How it makes you feel. How this works in regards to my relationship with you.’
A pause, then, ‘You’re right, Soph. It’s not about me. You’ll do what you want…as you always do.’ He gets his keys out of his pocket. ‘I do have one question for you, though.’
I roll my eyes.
>
‘How many tears have you shed since you heard the case was reopened?’
I gulp because I know the answer is not as many as I should…not enough. ‘It’s not something you have to worry about any more, Matt.’
He gives a few nods. ‘You’re right.’ His voice is softer, calmer. ‘I’ve moved on, Soph. I know we weren’t right for each other, but I still care about you.’
‘So you sat on my doorstep to attack me? That’s really caring.’
A silence. ‘This conversation didn’t quite turn out the way I’d planned.’ He glances down at his keys. ‘I came over to see if you were okay. But—’ He shrugs. ‘Guess I got kinda angry while I was waiting. And then seeing you looking so calm…it just reminded me of how shut off you are. It’s not healthy, Sophie.’
‘Let me worry about my mental health. Okay?’
He takes a breath, about to protest but then thinks the better of it. ‘Fair enough. But do me a favour…at least think about what I’ve said. For old time’s sake.’
He says it with a cheeky grin, and I can’t help but give a little smile back.
‘See you round.’ And with that, he ambles back down the drive.
By the time I’ve got my key in the door, I can hear Matt’s car starting. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in years and chances are our paths won’t cross again. We moved on a long time ago.
Lily Murphy and I spend most of the next day working on the profile, brainstorming back and forth, each working on separate documents before combining them into one central profile.
Part of drafting a profile is getting to know the victims. We’d already done most of that process last night, including looking at all the police reports and analysing the victim risk. Generally victims are classified as high-, moderate- or low-risk. High-risk victims include prostitutes and children, although for very different reasons. Prostitutes are accessible and vulnerable because of the type of work they do—they go to a secluded place with a man they don’t know. Children are also considered high-risk because for the most part they’re not street wise and they’re physically weak. Younger children can also be enticed with toys, balloons, pets, lollies, etc., and older children with gadgets, cigarettes or alcohol. Of course, there are also individual differences, and Lily and I agree that all our vics were low-risk for children. They were confident and physically fit—problem is, that’s not enough against an adult male predator.
From there, we look at the perpetrator’s decision-making during the crime and classify the offender on a variety of scales. For example, the offender also has a risk “rating”. Did he take risks during the crime? If so, why? Often these risks give us an insight into his personality. But in this case the only risky behaviour the perpetrator undertook was taking the children from their homes. It was a calculated risk—he stalked the victims, managed to silence them in some way first, and he chose hot nights and country towns for easy access. His body dump sites are low-risk—isolated state parks, with lots of unchartered bushland. And the fact that all the bodies, to date, have been found so long after death is a testament to his ability to plan.
We also have to assume he has an isolated location where he holds the victims, given he spends so much time with them, holding each boy for three to ten months—or possibly longer in the cases of the missing boys whose bodies were never found. Problem is, that’s not hard in rural Victoria. You’d only need an acre or two to ensure any screams or other noises were unheard by your closest neighbour. And if our perp’s property is nestled between farms, it’s possible we’re talking much larger distances between his house and the nearest surrounding homes.
Part of the profiling process is also crime assessment, where we reconstruct the crime to determine how things happened and how people behaved, focusing on the interaction between the victim and perp. Considering how long he holds the victims, our knowledge of that time frame is extremely limited. We know he stalks the boys first, possibly selecting them from various sporting events, then he abducts them from their homes on hot nights…and many, many months later he dumps the body in state parks. My gift has given me another small snapshot into his crimes—he holds at least two victims at once at times and keeps them in small, prison-like rooms. I also know he kills them by manual strangulation. It’s such a small portion of the whole crime, but it’s all we’ve got.
By the end of the day, we’ve drafted a profile that we’re both happy with and we’ve been able to get answers to some important questions—like we can now eliminate jail time, at least in Australia, as the reason for the long gap between John’s murder in 1978 and the next round of abductions in 2008. There are no ex-prisoners who match our scenario in terms of the time they were inside and the crimes they committed.
Sex:
Male
Age:
Option 1: 50-70
Based on the length of time that the perpetrator has been at large, we have to assume he’s at least fifty (if he started at 20) although it’s more likely he was in his mid- to late-twenties. This would place him in his mid- to late-sixties.
It’s also possible he has a submissive partner. This person could be younger—in fact, it’s possible this accomplice has changed from the first set of killings in the seventies to the most recent spate of murders and abductions. This accomplice may help with the execution of the abductions if our perpetrator is unfit or unhealthy in any way.
Option 2: 50s
If the current perpetrator was a submissive partner in the earlier abductions and murders, he would have been young at the time, and would now be in his fifties. Under this scenario the original perp is probably dead.
Race:
Caucasian
Type of offender:
Organised. The abductions are well planned, with seemingly nothing left to chance. Even the most recent abduction probably involved the killer parking his car some way into the property and then walking to the house. The boys are silenced extremely quickly (either knocked unconscious or drugged) and the body dump sites are well chosen for their isolated nature.
Sadistic paedophile (this is the only type of paedophile that tortures and kills their victims).
Occupation/ employment:
The killer is based in the country or travels extensively in rural Victoria for his job. Possible occupations include:
Sales
Local government (white collar like planning permission or blue collar occupations such as roadworks)
Tech support worker of some description, possibly involved in infrastructure such as phone lines, electricity, etc.
Truck driver or delivery/messenger service employee who travels for work
Health worker (e.g. rural nurse working across Bendigo, Shepparton, Seymour and Euroa)
It’s difficult to say if the killer is a white collar or blue collar worker—either is possible and nothing from the crime scenes leads us in one particular direction.
Marital status:
Currently single.
Although many paedophiles are married, often with children, the sadistic paedophile is more likely to be a loner. In addition, unless the killer keeps the victims at a second property that only he has access to, there’s no way a partner and/or children could live with him and not know that the victims are being held for such a long time.
The gap in time between the killings could be explained by a perpetrator who married and had his own family between 1978 and 2008 and is now separated, divorced or widowed with no children living at home.
If he does have children, it’s likely he has one boy and a younger girl (in line with the sibling structure in most of the victims and missing persons).
Dependants:
Could have children, but they are no longer dependent on him in any way.
Childhood:
The offender probably had a traumatic and abusive childhood, definitely violent and quite possibly involving sexual assault. At some level he feels what he does with these victims is “normal” behaviour, so
it’s likely an early male role model was violent.
Given his difficult childhood, he would have had problems at school and quite possibly run-ins with police during his childhood and adolescence.
He’s also drawn to young boys who are good at sports. This will mean one of two things: either he was extremely sporty himself as a boy and is targeting victims he sees as like himself; or otherwise he was always on the outside looking in at these types of individuals as a child. In this case, he’s choosing the boys because he wishes he was like them as a child.
It’s also possible he has a younger sister, in line with the sibling structure of the victims.
Personality:
He will be a quiet individual, someone who others perceive as being polite, honest and hardworking. However, people who know him well may have seen another side, including a temper. Given he keeps the boys for such varying times, I believe he kills them impulsively, in the heat of the moment.
He’s involved in sports in some capacity—mostly likely as a follower/fan although it’s possible his involvement is more official (coach, umpire, etc.). However, if he is involved in a team he wouldn’t target anyone this close to him.
Disabilities:
None.
Interaction with victims:
The perp stalks the victims, probably always keeping his distance. Given he abducts them in the middle of the night rather than charming or luring them away from their homes, the children are most likely strangers to him. However, his perception might be quite different—he probably feels that he knows them very well. Like the stalker who convinces himself or herself that a celebrity is their soul mate.