by Robin Bowles
That was all Galbally needed from Dr Lynch.
O’Neill’s job was to protect the police, so his questions related to the meeting at Balencea attended by Dr Lynch, Neil Bone, and the three police officers.
Dr Lynch couldn’t recall Neil Bone saying that he didn’t think it was possible for a person to climb into the waste chute unaided. Nor could he remember Bone saying that had the unit been in auto mode someone would have had to switch it to manual for a body to pass through in one piece.
Ms Siemensma picked up on this and asked, ‘Do I understand that you can’t exclude the possibility that Mr Bone said those things and that you just didn’t hear?’
‘He may have, but irrespective of what he said, I formed the view that it wasn’t impossible for someone to get in there. If Mr Bone had a different view then, that’s his view.’
‘Thank you very much for your assistance, Doctor, it’s been a very complex reconstruction. I thank you for your effort.’
But before he could leave the box, Len Handsjuk stood up. He had some medical questions. His main line of questioning related to the type of damage that would be sustained by someone free-falling feet first over a distance of 30 metres.
‘I am interested mainly in the damage to the femur. Dr Google tells me that over that distance you reach a velocity of 87 kilometres per hour.’
Dr Lynch said it wasn’t necessarily a free fall, but it was a very complex fall. She may have been able to slow herself a bit. She may have landed on several bags of rubbish awaiting compaction in the 45-degree part of the chute, but her injuries were still very significant.
The fact they were confined to her lower body suggested it absorbed most of the force, he said. He couldn’t really say if he’d expect more extensive injuries in someone falling that distance, ‘but if they landed on their legs, often injury is confined to lower limbs and to, say, spinal column and pelvis’.
When asked why he hadn’t attended the scene earlier, he said that he’d been informed that Phoebe was last seen at about midday, so he decided that rectal temperature wasn’t going to provide any useful information.
Dr Lynch withdrew, and the court adjourned for 15 minutes. We needed a break! In the foyer, I spotted Ant Hampel with Bob Galbally. I was tempted to go and introduce myself, but I thought he might be nervous and decided there’d be plenty of time later.
*
But when we resumed, someone else was called — a young woman with long black hair and a pale, anxious face. As soon as she was seated, I saw her looking nervously into the courtroom. She seemed to be looking at Ant, who was sitting waiting his turn.
It turned out that she was Linda Cohen, Phoebe’s confidante and a long-time friend of Ant’s. Why did she look so apprehensive?
Ms Siemensma began by asking Linda about her long discussion with Phoebe on 17 November, when Phoebe spent the night at the Cohens’ house.
Linda said, ‘Phoebe talked to me about alcoholism, self-mutilation, cutting, and self-loathing. She wasn’t particularly referring to herself — we were just generally talking about depression, and I didn’t have the idea that she was referring to herself at all. But still, it was a shock to me, because I’d never really heard much about this sort of self-loathing and cutting. I suppose we were talking about all sorts of aspects of depression and that was one of the things.’
At some point, Phoebe had mentioned using Stilnox, Linda said, ‘And I advised her not to, only because I’d had one before and it made me feel so depressed when I woke up in the morning [that] I threw the packet out.’
Ms Siemensma asked, ‘What was said in relation to alcoholism?’
‘Well, she liked alcohol, but in the relationship with Ant, it was an issue. But she said that Ant was going to support her going to AA. I didn’t know the extent of her drinking. When I saw her, she was always in good form and never messy and never out of control. So I was surprised it was an issue.’
The Coroner asked if Phoebe said anything else that seemed to acknowledge that she had an alcohol problem.
‘That she liked alcohol, yes, but not that it was a particular problem.’
Ms Siemensma asked Linda what she meant when she said that she and her husband Arch ‘were trying to give Phoebe strength’.
Linda said, ‘She was feeling quite insecure in both her relationship with Ant and with her relationships in general with family, and felt a need to break away and possibly travel and do all these things that she’d always wanted to do. She was 24 and wanted to travel and see the world.’
Linda said that they were just trying to encourage Phoebe to be herself without regrets and recognise that she was a fabulous person with a lot going for her.
‘She could do anything she wanted,’ Linda said.
Linda kept glancing across at Ant. She obviously found it difficult giving her evidence while he was sitting there. I wondered if they were still friends.
She told of the time when Phoebe had said ‘in a non-serious way’ that she’d once pulled a chair out to the Level 12 balcony at the apartment and thought about jumping.
At the time, Linda said, ‘We laughed it off and it wasn’t a serious cry for help at all.’ Especially when they’d discussed the effect something like that would have on her family, particularly her brothers. ‘She loved them all so much.’ But when Linda was told Phoebe had committed suicide, that conversation came back to her.
She said she knew Phoebe was seeing a counsellor, but not a doctor, ‘So I didn’t know the depth of what I was told later of her depression.’
Ms Siemensma asked who had informed her about Phoebe’s depression after she died.
‘Ant,’ Linda replied.
She remembered telling Lorne Campbell that Phoebe was worried about going to Paris with Ant. She was a little bit nervous that he could have been planning to propose when she wasn’t ready at this time in her life. But Linda added that Phoebe was also excited about Paris because she’d never been, ‘and it was something very romantic to her in poetry and architecture and many things’.
Ms Siemensma also asked about Lorne’s claim that Linda had encouraged Phoebe to make a clean break from Ant and had driven her over to their apartment to help her pack for her visit to her grandmother.
‘I can’t remember using the words “clean break”,’ Linda said, ‘but she was in need of a break, to maybe recollect her thoughts, and I knew she was very fond of her grandmother and that Mallacoota was a very safe place for her.’ She said Phoebe always felt safe in Mallacoota. There was always a job for her and somewhere for her to live.
The Coroner remarked that being in Mallacoota would involve a big change from Phoebe’s rather glamorous lifestyle with Ant. He asked whether Mallacoota was ‘a serious long-term option’.
Linda said that Phoebe certainly wasn’t with Ant for money reasons. ‘I don’t think she was very attracted to the money and the lifestyle, to tell you the truth. It wasn’t a part of Phoebe, and if anything she almost objected to it. Wasn’t attracted to money, lifestyle, fashion, anything like that.’
She said that Phoebe ‘loved poetry, and it was a way that she was able to put her emotions out on paper, which I think is such an amazing gift’. She was ‘creative beyond words’. Although her poetry was sad, her drawings were beautiful and very positive, offsetting any negative inferences from the poems themselves.
Phoebe was unhappy that her talents weren’t being utilised in her ‘girl Friday’ job at the advertising agency. She was looking into other courses to undertake, and Linda had suggested that she look into learning copywriting. ‘She needed to grow.’
On the day of 26 November, when Phoebe and Linda had lunch together, Linda said ‘our conversation was a bit more positive about her changing her life’. She’d advised Phoebe to ‘lay everything on the table’ with Ant, ‘and if you’re not going to agree on something I think that maybe you sh
ould finish it’.
She said that Phoebe had told her that ‘Ant was quite controlling. Although she knew he loved her, she felt that she didn’t have a voice in the relationship.’
‘When you left each other, what sort of mood was she in?’ Ms Siemensma asked.
‘A good mood, because if not, that would have been a concern for me. I would have worried about it, and that would have been something that stood out.’
Linda said that Phoebe had phoned her from the balcony the following Monday, after she and Ant had left the dinner at the Rockmans’ early. Phoebe was sounding cross. She told Linda that the reason they’d left early was that she’d begun opening up with Julie Rockman, whom she really liked, but Ant ‘shut her down and prevented her from speaking’.
Ms Siemensma read from Ant’s statement referring to that episode. He’d said, ‘On Monday night she spoke to Linda, our mutual friend, on the phone. She was telling her she was upset and the way she spoke to me, yelled at me, she said to Linda that she wouldn’t leave this time. She told Linda she was thinking of jumping off the balcony. Linda knew little of her illness and told her it would be OK and not to worry about the argument as all couples argue.’
Linda said, ‘I remember she called him many bad words under the sun. So I said don’t worry.’ But she seemed a bit thrown by the question. She asked to be given time to read Ant’s statement, and afterwards she said, ‘I can’t recall whether she said that she wasn’t going to leave. I think differently. I think at that time she was ready to leave.’
She was also puzzled by the reference to jumping off the balcony. That ‘wasn’t the night of their argument after the Rockmans’, she said. It referred to a much earlier conversation she’d had with Phoebe.
Ms Siemensma pointed out that Phoebe had spoken of being on the balcony when she stayed the night of 17 November. ‘She was telling you about a time three or six months earlier that she’d been on the balcony?’
Linda said, ‘I can’t guarantee that it was three to six months, it was purely a rough estimate, but it was months before this particular time.’
The Coroner remarked that her statements to police could be interpreted as suggesting that Phoebe was having suicidal thoughts immediately before she died.
Linda replied, ‘I think when I was giving these two statements, I was under a lot of stress, grieving, and I was very emotional, and that sort of coupled with what was going on around me, with the talk and the hype of Phoebe’s depression, I felt a little bit … not brainwashed but swayed in the area that she was severely depressed, more than I actually knew at this stage of her being alive.’
The Coroner asked her why she thought she didn’t get the ‘tomato soup’ text message, when it went to Phoebe’s boss.
Linda said she couldn’t speak for Phoebe’s intentions. She added, ‘I think it was a very, very bizarre, unusual text message. And unlike the others that I’d received before.’
His Honour said that subject to submissions he was inclining to the view that it was not a cry for help and perhaps it had been sent to Phoebe’s boss to let her know she wouldn’t be in for a couple of days.
Mr Moglia asked, ‘Did you ever observe anything that could be described as aggressive between Phoebe and Ant?’
Linda said she thought Ant had a very strong personality and for some that could possibly be seen as verbally aggressive. She added that Phoebe had spoken to her about leaving Ant on three occasions. On the night of 17 November, Ant had left early, and then there were text messages between the two of them that ‘became an argument. That’s why her … her need to leave at that time was quite definite.’
Linda had never seen Phoebe being physically uncoordinated because of alcohol, and she’d never been argumentative or aggressive. ‘Not in my company, and I never saw her outside my company. She was fun to be with.’
She told the Coroner that Phoebe was looking forward to all the family birthdays coming up. Linda was having a birthday too, on 16 December, which Phoebe was going to help organise. She had an exciting, positive time ahead.
Linda especially didn’t believe Phoebe would ever have taken her life in that way, because it would have made her feel like garbage.
When Galbally stood up, it was evident that he intended to grill Linda, and he did. He fired off a series of questions casting doubt on her recollections of times and places. She admitted that in her first statement, she’d given the time when she arrived at Balencea as being about 8.30 p.m. when it was actually 9.05.
But Galbally seemed especially interested in her second statement, which he thought had been made after Lorne had interviewed her, possibly putting thoughts into her head.
She corrected him on this and said she’d made her second statement, dated 7 February 2012, before she’d met Lorne. She said in her statement, ‘During the investigation other matters have come to light and I have been requested by Detective Payne to make this additional statement clarifying some issues.’
Galbally asked whether Mr Payne had asked her to make the statement or whether she’d offered to. She couldn’t remember. She said Payne had spoken to her quite often, sometimes to get the phone numbers of people who might be able to help him with his enquiries.
He said, ‘To get this clear, between your first statement and your second statement, you’re talking on the telephone to Mr Payne?’ He said he wasn’t suggesting that there was anything wrong with that and continued, ‘After having spoken to him several times he then says, “I want you down at the police station, we need to take a second statement.” Is that how it happened?’
Linda couldn’t remember exactly, but said she was in no way forced to make a second statement.
‘He’s ringing you up, wants information, you help him to the best of your ability, you make the statement for the purposes of what, clarifying some issues?’
‘Things I needed to get off my chest.’
‘Did he actually ask you whether you wanted to make a statement about matters which might be unusual or out of the ordinary?’
‘Not at all.’
‘So you had some concerns and wanted to get them off your chest?’
‘Yes, I thought it would be valuable.’
‘Fourteen months later?’
‘Yes.’
Galbally challenged her about her recollections of the night in the little room downstairs at Balencea. He put to her that she only remembered one of several comments by Ant recorded by Justin O’Brien. She also agreed that Ant wasn’t on the floor in the foetal position all the time, but got up and sat on a chair.
He moved forward to 7 December, the day the police visited the apartment to tell them the murder enquiry was over and to collect Phoebe’s iPhone.
‘Do you remember the police asking Antony Hampel about that iPhone?’
She did remember that, but not much else of what was said and done that day. There were a lot of people in the apartment and she didn’t hear or remember various conversations.
‘Well, in any event, it would seem that you do recall two police officers asking about the phone, and Antony Hampel saying he’d dropped it in at that shop on the Thursday?’
Linda said, ‘He didn’t drop it in, his father did, or he gave it to his father, I remember.’
‘Your recollection is that he said he gave it to his father what, to drop in?’
‘Yes.’
What’s this? Ant gave the iPhone to his father to drop in? When could that have happened? If it was correct. But Linda didn’t remember a lot of things, and she said as much.
‘I can’t remember two and a half years ago when I was grieving. One day turned into the next.’
Ms Siemensma again asked about the mention of Ant handing the phone to George.
Linda pointed out that the iPhone was only one of Phoebe’s phones. The Nokia ‘was her personal phone that she used calling fa
mily — I don’t know, maybe she didn’t want Ant to know about, I’m not sure … She would often call me on that phone when she was distressed, the second phone.’
Ms Siemensma took her back to the iPhone. ‘I take it you weren’t there when the phone was handed by Ant to his father for repair, but you were there for some discussion about the phone, is that right?’
‘When I was there, the phone was discussed. I didn’t see it actually physically handed over.’ So that’s cleared that up then, I suppose.
*
The media were packing up, disappointed. No star witness today, but still plenty of grist for their mills. Ant was now scheduled for Friday, the day after tomorrow.
CHAPTER 21
ANALYSIS AND TEARS
The first witness on Thursday was David Finlay, a statement officer at Optus, who appeared over a video link from Sydney. In an effort to follow Ant’s movements on 2 December, Mr Finlay had been asked to provide information about the towers that caught his phone’s signals during the day. They showed up as Tooronga, Abbotsford South, Collingwood, Abbotsford South, and Syndal. He said that signals could be bounced around tower to tower, so whilst a person might not be physically in Syndal (which is about two kilometres from Abbotsford), that tower might relay a signal. Same with voicemail. One tower might pick up the call and another tower relay the message when the phone owner checked messages.
Moglia asked whether data on a SIM card could be downloaded and stored on the handset.
Finlay replied, ‘Yes, that’s correct.’ But he said the storage capacity would depend on the manufacturer’s settings, which weren’t something he knew about.
He did know a lot about mobile phone calls though, and his answers were long and detailed. At one stage, the Coroner asked him very politely to try to say yes or no, followed by a brief explanation.
Galbally sought some clarification on the way the towers worked.
‘Is it possible for a person to make an Optus phone call from anywhere in Melbourne, and then make another Optus call, perhaps two minutes later, and it’s picked up on a different tower?’