by I. J. Fenn
The Coke bottle sitting on top of the nearby rock was another matter, though. John Russell would not have drunk any soft drink after he’d been drinking beer, his brother insisted. He might have drunk the stuff as a hangover cure the following day, but not immediately after a ‘session’.
If the Coke bottle hadn’t belonged to John Russell then, argued Detective Page, it most probably belonged to someone who had gone down to the rock ledge after John Russell had fallen to check if he was alive. And as no-one had contacted the emergency services before Rick Saxby and Neville Smith the following morning, it would be reasonable to assume that whoever the soft drink belonged to, whoever had found the lifeless body of John Russell, had a good reason for not making a ‘000’ phone call. The only viable reason was that whoever it was had been the person who had pushed Russell from the cliff top.
And medical evidence suggested that it wouldn’t have been too difficult to accomplish the feat.
A senior physician had already been canvassed for his opinion on the physical state of John Russell on the night of his death, given the known facts. The police medical officer specialised in, among other subjects, the pharmacology of alcohol. He examined the post-mortem findings and concluded that John Russell, having the blood alcohol level as stated (0.255mg) ‘would have had impaired balance, impaired coordination and impaired spatial orientation. He would have diminished vision and hearing as well as poor judgement of things such as speed and distance. He would probably have personality and mood changes as well. He would have a diminished capacity to protect himself from danger.’
What the doctor appeared to be saying was that John Russell, having drunk more than a dozen beers during the course of the evening, would have been drunk enough to have staggered off the pathway beneath Marks Park, over the cliff and onto the rocks below. He wouldn’t have been able to judge the distance between himself and the precipice and was, therefore, possibly the cause of his own death.
Alternatively, the doctor could have been suggesting that, in his drunken state, John Russell wouldn’t have heard if someone had approached him from behind, wouldn’t have had the ability to fend off an unwelcome approach, would have been totally vulnerable to someone – some sober someone – intent on causing him harm. Taking into account the other reported (and unreported) events in the area, and the fact of the hair found on the back of Russell’s hand, it seemed even more likely that John Russell hadn’t staggered to his death but had been propelled to it.
v
While Steve Page pondered the police medical officer’s expert findings, information on the feral gangs of 1989 landed on his desk. A senior constable at Waverley Police Station had a fairly comprehensive record of events dating back to the beginning of January 1990, when he worked out of Bondi Police Station on Hastings Parade.
Between November 1989 and June 1995 Constable Bishop performed criminal investigation duties while he was attached to the Bondi Detectives Office. According to Bishop there was a group of youths who roamed the area at that time. They were the PSK (Parkside Killers) who also referred to themselves as the Bondi Boys.[2] He listed 17 names including those of three girls. They were, he said, particularly notorious for assaults and robberies around the Bondi Beach front where they usually congregated, and also for breaking and entering in the area. Occasionally, they associated with other gangs from Randwick and elsewhere, as well as with individuals who seemed to be members of the group on only a part-time basis, individuals who were never quite fully accepted into the circle.
During the late ’80s and early ’90s a suspected paedophile lived in Oatley Road, Bondi where many of those Bishop had named stayed for extended periods. Absconders from juvenile detention centres were often found hiding out in the Oatley Road apartment, two of whom were implicated in many of the local assaults (and one of whom had earlier made allegations of sexual assault against the man).
In January 1990 Constable Bishop had reason to call on one of those juveniles who hadn’t been allowed full membership in the gang. The youth lived in Moore Street and Bishop asked him about the sudden appearance of PSK graffiti in the area. The 17-year-old knew nothing about that, he claimed, but he did know something: the Bondi Boys had thrown ‘a poofter off the cliff at South Bondi’. He described the area as that beside the Fletcher Street steps at Marks Park and as he spoke, Bishop had the feeling that the youth had actually seen it happen. However much he probed, though, the boy divulged nothing else, no further details, no names. Bishop, however, submitted a full report as he recalled a body being found at the base of those cliffs not long before. Now, more than a decade later, he couldn’t find a copy of that report and the notebook he’d used at the time had been destroyed in a cull of old records at Bondi Station.
Around this time, Bishop recalled, he understood that the youth who’d told him about the person thrown from the cliff was living at the same premises as Sean Cushman.
vi
The easy conclusion for Steve Page to accept was that all the talk about a body being thrown from a cliff referred to John Russell (even though Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn had also been thrown over a cliff those responsible weren’t members of the Bondi Boys). However, as the detective had already established that there had been at least two gay men who had met their deaths beneath the walkway around Marks Park – Russell and Rattanajurathaporn – why not a third? Why should the insinuations, whispers and rumours not also refer to Ross Warren? What if he’d been disposed of in the same way as the others but, instead of being found on the rocks or washed up against the cliffs, he’d been washed out to sea by the tide? Would that be possible, Page wondered?
Expert advice was sought.
A lecturer specialising in coastal geomorphology at the University of New South Wales was consulted in the hope that he would be able to confirm one way or another that Ross Warren could have been washed out to sea, rather than have been returned to the shoreline, if he’d fallen into the water.
Doctor Rob Brander had gained his PhD from Sydney University with a thesis on the measurement and behaviour of rip currents. His research, which he fully expected to take another 20 years or so to complete, was ongoing. Brander had been the resident caretaker of the Tamarama Surf Club for a while and he used to snorkel around the rocks in the Tamarama and Mackenzies Bay area where he continued to conduct research into the movement of sediment as the result of wave conditions. As the author of the entry on ‘Rip Currents’ in the Encyclopaedia of Marine Science, Brander was the ideal expert witness.
Describing the action of wave cycles Brander explained how the water carried shorewards by the wave returned to the open sea by either reflection (the wave coming in at an angle and reflecting out again at an equal angle in the opposite direction), undertow (the wave occupying the upper part of the water while the return occupies the lower reaches) or rips (narrow channels of fast flowing surges between sandbars, usually on beaches). In Mackenzies Bay, wave reflection is turbulent and energetic, Brander said, as there is more exposed rock face for the water to crash against and because there is little room for the returning water to escape by because of the shape of the bay. Rips at Mackenzies Bay tend to flow along the rock face because of the small size of the bay and, when the waves are larger, the entire bay could exhibit rip current flow. During large storm conditions, Brander said, with waves higher than three metres, Mackenzies Bay is characterised by ‘mega-rips’ which can extend up to half a kilometre offshore. (Ordinarily, a rip travels between 50 and 100 metres).
Detective Sergeant Page arranged for wave measurement data, synoptic charts and tidal data for the period between 21 July and 20 August 1989 to be made available to Doctor Brander. Would he be able to say what would happen to a body dropped into the water beneath Marks Park during that time?
Brander’s response came in a six-page letter with maps and arrows and a detailed assessment of the data. Essentially, he said, ‘It is my opinion that around the Bondi/Tamarama headland it is unlikely that a body in
the water off the shore platforms, or on the bed, would move landward over the time frames and climactic conditions described.’[3]
In other words, if Ross Warren had entered the water off the Mackenzies Point headland on the night he disappeared, the sea conditions would have pulled him away from safety, away from land, out into the freezing Tasman.
But wouldn’t he sink at some point? Wouldn’t he fall to the seabed for a few days before the natural gasses produced by putrescence floated him back to the surface? Rob Brander had said that the wind conditions had changed on 25 and 26 July, had veered to the south and become strong. If Ross Warren had, indeed, fallen into the water and been taken seawards by the prevailing conditions before presumably sinking, wouldn’t the changed conditions have carried him back to shore when he resurfaced three or four days later?
The opinion of Doctor Alan Cala of the New South Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine suggested not.
In a letter to Steve Page, Cala explained that when a deceased human being is immersed in a large body of water like the ocean it will initially sink. What happens then, however, depends on the tides, winds and currents as well as the ‘local environment’ – whether or not there are rocks in the vicinity, the depth of the water, vegetation density and so on – water temperature and the presence of marine creatures. And after sinking there is no guarantee that the body will rise to the surface again. If the body does resurface it is as the result of decomposition, of gas formation providing a degree of buoyancy, and it usually happens after a few days. But bodies don’t always rise again, Cala warned. There are instances, he said, of persons entering the ocean whose bodies are never recovered.
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Rob Brander had already described the submarine area around Mackenzies Point as being predominantly sand with boulders and rocks near the cliff face and a shelf extending some 50 metres offshore. Could a body thrown into the water have sunk and become caught among the outcrops of rocks, Page wondered? And, if it had, would there be any trace of the remains after 12 years? Probably not on both counts, but there was enough of a long-shot chance to cause the detective to request the Special Services Group to arrange for the Police Diving Unit to conduct a search of the waters around the Marks Park area.
A series of dives were undertaken over a period of time and although no human remains were found, a number of interesting items were recovered. Ten minutes into the first dive one of the officers returned to the police launch with a section of corroded water pipe before rejoining the search. After another 10 minutes the same Constable surfaced with yet another section of similar pipe and while it might not be unusual to find odd bits of junk tossed into the water, Steve Page instantly recalled the water pipe used in the assault against Robert H in Centennial Park, remembered the association of Trindall to those responsible for that attack, and remembered the link between Trindall and Tamarama according to Adam French. As common as bits of piping might be, this was too much of a coincidence for the detective to ignore.
What he had expected to turn up, however, didn’t. With so much talk of keys being thrown from the cliffs, the detectives had thought that sets of keys would appear, if not in profusion, at least in some number. But no. No keys at all. Would they be too light to have resisted the tides and currents, maybe? Not really: the second dive produced a small silver-coloured bracelet that would have weighed far less than a set of car keys. If the tides hadn’t dislodged the bracelet, they would hardly have moved bunches of keys.
Expert advice was sought in relation to both the lengths of steel pipe and the bracelet: the pipes, the metallurgist said, had been in the sea for years (perhaps as many as 15 years) while the bracelet – silver alloy overlaid with pure silver – had been submerged for only a matter of weeks or months rather than an extended time frame of years.
• • •
By now, the detectives from Operation Taradale had moved further forwards than the point at which the earlier inquiries had stopped. Detective Sergeant Page had now identified 75 persons of interest to the inquiry, had organised video run-throughs of offence sites involving Ross Warren, John Russell and David McMahon, had conducted a thorough search of the waters around the Mackenzies Point area and had canvassed local residents who had lived in Kenneth and Fletcher Streets in 1989. He had also submitted John Russell’s clothing for DNA analysis (it had been kept by the family as they were convinced that John’s death was the result of foul play), located and transcribed tapes from the original Major Crime Squad investigation and searched for the duty books and notebooks of police previously involved in the investigations. Witnesses had been interviewed and reinterviewed and a number of technical experts had been consulted.
Detective Sergeant Page now proposed to begin his planned covert surveillance of Sean Cushman, issue a press release to stimulate the provision of further information from the public, and interview the ‘core group’ targets who were currently in custody.
[1] Detectives from Operation Taradale discovered that PTK also stood for People That Kill, a far more definite and unambiguous sobriquet than the marginally metaphysical PSK of Philadelphia.
[2] It seems likely that the gang Bishop is referring to is the splinter group from the PSK, the PTK. The PTK were closely linked to the Bondi Boys while the PSK operated out of the Randwick/Coogee area.
[3] The wind between 20 and 24 July was offshore and would promote the offshore drift of any surface object regardless of size. Offshore winds also cause a drop in surface water temperature – an important factor when considering an injured body falling into the water. As spring tides were running at this time, stronger currents would have been experienced in the area even though, in general, tidal currents in the area are negligible.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Search for the Missing Hair
i
Despite the fact that Constable Dunbar failed to mention the blond hairs sticking to the back of John Russell’s left hand, Detective Sergeant Ingleby and Constable Barrett had both noted its presence. And both had recognised its importance. During the initial Major Crime Squad investigation Detective Sergeant McCann saw the importance of the hair and tried – without success – to trace it. Now, it was Steve Page’s turn: detectives from the 1989 Crime Scene Unit were contacted.
The police photographer who attended the scene on 23 November 1989 described the area where Russell’s body had been found and explained that he’d taken a series of photographs under the direction of a detective sergeant. In the photographs, he said, the position of Russell’s body can be seen as lying face down with the feet and legs together. In paragraph eight of his statement he noted that Russell’s left elbow and right wrist were broken and that there were strands of hair adhering to one of the deceased’s hands. These strands were collected by Crime Scene officers, he said.
A number of other items (cigarette packet, lighter, coins etc) were photographed in situ and were also collected. The photographer then left the scene and had no further knowledge as to what happened to the exhibits or any analysis of them.
Page was hardly surprised: why would the photographer follow up the evidence? His area of expertise extended no further than the camera and the film inside it. The detective sergeant would have a better idea.
Detective Sergeant Cameron was by now retired. His credentials, however, were impeccable. As a crime scene investigator since 1967 he had by his own admission, ‘carried out the full gambit’ of investigation. He had examined hundreds of crime and incident scenes among which were numerous ‘unknown cause of death’ investigations.
Cameron’s recollection of the Russell crime scene was perfectly detailed: he described the walkway precisely, was able to create a near-perfect visual picture of Marks Park and recalled that the day he attended the Russell scene was ‘fine and sunny’. As had the police photographer, so Detective Sergeant Cameron described the position of Russell’s body and the items lying around it, noting the water-filled indentations in the rocks and the injuries to th
e deceased. There was no watch or any other jewellery on the body, he said. He then gave a fully detailed account of the measurements relevant to the scene: how far from the body were the five coins scattered nearby, how far the cigarette packet. He gave the distance of Russell’s head from the nearest point on the cliff face and the distance of the Coca-Cola bottle from the head. He gave the height of the cliff above where the body lay. And, he said, ‘on the top surface of the deceased’s left hand just to the rear of the right index finger joint with the hand were a number of small hairs adhering to his skin’.
The former detective sergeant’s account was at all times clear and intelligent. He offered reasonable opinions as to what might have happened on the night John Russell met his death without prejudging the opinions of others and without compromising his own integrity or independence: the evidence, he said, offered any one of a number of possibilities that only a full investigation would reveal as being the truth. In the meantime, the existence of the clump of small hairs on the back of the deceased’s hand was irrefutable. Unfortunately, Detective Sergeant Cameron didn’t say what had happened to the hairs, didn’t say who had ‘bagged’ them or who had taken possession of them.
So, Steve Page asked, where were they? He had already asked for a search of the Sydney Crime Scene Unit – expecting little – and had heard from one of their Crime Scene officers. Not surprisingly, the response was negative:
A search of the exhibit rooms at Sydney Crime Scene Section reveals that the hair sample is not on hand at this section. There is no record here relating to the hair. In 1989 there was no formal procedure for receipt of exhibits at a crime scene section. Typically what would happen is that an exhibit would be brought directly back to the section from a scene and generally a record in note form would be made and held in the relevant brief. If the exhibit was moved from the section the brief would be endorsed.