The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders

by I. J. Fenn

  The press release concludes with a request: Tell us what you know – it may be the key piece of information we’re seeking which could lead to an arrest. Reading between the lines, the release was designed to stimulate activity among those whom the police suspected of being involved, activity most of which would be conducted along the eavesdropped phone lines.

  On the morning of Sunday, 9December a film company mannequin dressed in clothes similar to those worn by John Russell on the night of his death was pushed from the cliff six times. A large group of curious onlookers watched as a Police Rescue officer toppled the dummy forwards onto the rocks below where a police photographer recorded the position of the fall. The procedure was repeated with the dummy going over backwards while fathers explained what was happening to their small children in the gathering crowd. As the performance continued, officers called out to each other, orchestrating the action, ‘inadvertently’ reinforcing details they wanted to be known: was the hand visible where the hair would have been sticking to it? Did the position suggest more than one assailant? In truth, Steve Page knew that the dummy had no forensic value whatsoever. It weighed only a few kilos and, being rigid, behaved nothing like a human body would behave under similar circumstances. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to get the grapevine working, get those involved talking. Make them anxious.

  And by Wednesday, 12 December some of them were becoming anxious in the extreme.

  At 8.20am one of the suspected girls rang her partner. Her mother had been talking to her, she said, had told her about the re-enactment with the dummy. Her mother knew she’d been in a gang, knew she’d been involved in ‘shit’ even though she’d only just had her 16th birthday two months before Russell died. Had she been there when…?

  ‘Were you?’ her partner asked. ‘Like, was it … was you one of ’em what … y’know?’

  Sounding hysterical … maybe remembering all the stuff, all the bad stuff … ‘I don’t know,’ she screamed into the phone. ‘How … I don’t fucking know. What’s she going on about? I didn’t kill anybody!’

  She’d hardly put the phone down when her mother called again, told her the police wanted to speak to her. Listening in, the police could imagine her hand shaking, her mind unable to stay in one place. The officer knew this was a nightmare for her. She rang her partner again.

  Four minutes after talking to him the first time she was sobbing to him again.

  ‘I don’t remember anything,’ she said. ‘I didn’t kill anybody. I’ve never seen anybody die. But … Mum just rang me and the police are there looking for me because 12 years ago I was in a gang and somebody got murdered and now they want me for murder …’ sobbing into the phone, barely coherent, ‘I don’t remember … I’m so scared…’

  But if you don’t know nothing, her partner suggested, if you wasn’t…

  ‘They want me at my Mum’s at 12 o’clock … I didn’t kill anybody … I’m shaking really bad … I never killed anybody…’

  And you never seen nothing, her partner asked, his words sounding more in support than interrogation. You never done nothing you shouldn’t’ve?

  Deep breath, a pause. ‘We used to do, like, naughty stuff. But I never fuckin’ killed anybody. Never.’

  Twenty minutes later she called her mother. Calmer now, she needed to know what it was all about, why the police thought she was involved.

  It’s them … the killings at Tamarama, her mother explained. Twelve years ago, the detectives said. There was one bloke was … he went missing an’ they think he’s gone off the edge … off the cliff. They reckon he was murdered. An’ there was this other one … what, he went, was found on the rocks … the one they showed last … the other day. They says he was pushed off as well. Two murders…

  ‘What’s it got to do with me?’ The tape machine recording rising panic in her voice, starting to surge like a storm building in her gut, sounding like a tidal wave of bile and fear.

  They think you know somethin’ … think you, y’know, you could be, know something. But I said, I … if you don’t know nothin’ there’s nothin’ to panic about. They was gays that was killed. They think it’s gay bashings that went wrong and that. But if you wasn’t there … I mean, you don’t have to panic…

  ‘No, I’m not panicking ’cause I know I haven’t done anything … I don’t even know what they’re talking about. I’m sitting here thinking, Mum, and I can only remember once when it was on the beach. But they bashed him and they didn’t kill him.’

  Yeah, but now we know what they’re talking about, her Mum said. It was on the news on Sunday night. They’re talkin’ about these gay bashings and the bodies was found in Bondi and Tamarama and that. In 1989.

  ‘I never bashed gays.’ Her voice cracking with the strain maybe of lying, maybe just fear. She hadn’t even watched the news on Sunday.

  Yeah. But like, even that day down at the beach … You’ve gotta think about your baby and trust them, alright? Fuck with being a little kid, right? We … we’ve gotta tell the truth.

  ‘If somebody did something wrong, I’m gonna tell, Mum. I’m not gonna get fuckin’ taken away from my daughter … I didn’t even hang, hang out at Tamarama. I don’t, I never even went to Tamarama. I don’t know … somebody’s said my name where it’s bullshit. As if I’d go and bash gays. Oh, my god.’

  And her mother’s words seemingly faltering, Oh, baby. I don’t even want to say anything but I just remember some of the things that you used to tell me … I don’t know, about card machines an’ that?

  ‘That’s the only one I’m thinking about,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t bash him. That’s where we took him to the bloody bank and got money out an’ the boys rolled him.’

  Later, reading the transcript of the call, Steve Page couldn’t help but picture the scene, seeing her in his mind’s eye, biting her lip, pushing fingers through her hair as she replaced the receiver and sat down. Imagined her asking herself: could all this really be happening? Could all that come back to haunt her after all these years? By nine o’clock, 35 minutes after she’d first spoken to her partner, she rang her friend Shane and explained what she’d already heard that morning, her tone sounding as though she was trying to sound in control, calm and analytical. The police, she said, wanted to talk to her about a couple of murders that had happened when she was 16. Gays, she said. As if she’d know, she said. As if she’d know anything about murders for fuck’s sake.

  ‘I’m stressed out, Shane. I don’t even know what they’re on about.’ If she told the lie often enough, maybe she’d begin to believe herself.

  I was at Bondi Primary School, Shane said. I think it was when the two faggots got murdered.

  ‘That’s what Mum said. It’s gays at Tamarama. But I never hung out at Tamarama. So I don’t know.’ It sounded true, she thought, sounded like she was being picked on for – for what? For whatever: it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that everybody understood she was being set up. ‘I’d never … I’d never have killed anyone. I’d … I’d know. I’d never, like, bashed anyone that bad or anything … I can’t believe this is happening now when I’ve just finally got my baby … If I was gonna have a fight with someone, it would be a girl. I don’t like goin’ punchin’ with guys, or especially gays, because I think that they’ve got AIDS or something. My god. I’m so scared.’ There was silence for a few seconds, long enough for the police to think later that the call had ended. It hadn’t.

  ‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘if I’m involved so is Melanie and Kylie.’

  No sooner had she put down the phone than it rang again. It was her mother calling to say that she’d been thinking, thinking about things that had happened in 1989. She’d been living with Ron in ’89, she said, and one of the murders happened on Ron’s birthday so … It was worth thinking about, anyway.

  Half an hour later she called back. She’d organised a legal representative, she said, a lawyer who’d look after her.

  ‘I don’t ev
en know if I witnessed it, Mum. I don’t remember any gays being bashed … I didn’t do anything. I know I haven’t done anything.’

  But what about the card machine, her Mum asked. What if the guy at the card machine was one of them that was killed? They’ve got DNA now they said. And they’ve got, there’s them three boys got 14 years and that. It’s all, it’s all linked … the … So what about the card machine? You told me about the card machine…

  Shit, it was just a robbery, she said. They just took him to the bank and rolled him. Nothing, it was nothing. ‘They didn’t bash him bad,’ she said. ‘Like, why would I bash gays? Oh my god. I don’t fuckin’ hate them. They can do whatever they want. I swear to god, I don’t remember bashing any gays or being with anyone that bashed gays.’

  And anyway, the one on Ron’s birthday … You were looking after the boys on Ron’s birthday. That’s 22 July. Had it been 28 July, I wouldn’t have a clue what you were doin’. But on 22 July I swear blind that you’d have been looking after your brothers … You were every other weekend. Why not then?

  Yeah, why not? Course she would’ve been.

  But they’re gonna want you today. The police. They’re gonna want your address. That’s why he’s comin’ here again. The cop. To sit here and stand over me. That’s why, why I thought the lawyer…

  ‘But I haven’t done anything,’ she said. Then screaming into the phone, ‘I know I haven’t. I would know if I’ve done something bad … I don’t even know what to think about … I don’t even …’ breaking down, ‘… oh, my god, I’m stressed. Shit!’

  The phone again, the number already dialled. Her partner’s voice at the other end of the line, trying to calm her down, trying to make sense of her hysteria. Her own voice, high-pitched and wavering, incoherent as she gabbled snatches of sentences, snatches of thoughts.

  ‘The case … the case has been – it’s gay bashing – the case had been opened because of DNA … Three people have already served 14 years … are serving 14 years … it’s been reopened ’cause there’s other cases … that wasn’t … other cases that weren’t … finalised…’

  But you weren’t involved in any of these things? Sounding reasonable, trying to take the savageness out of the situation. Why would you bash a gay person?

  ‘I wouldn’t!’ That was exactly the point, she was saying: she wouldn’t bash a gay person. ‘I don’t …I, I don’t know anything … I’m so lost.’ There was nothing she could do. If the police came, there was nothing she could do or say. They would … she didn’t know what they would do … Fourteen years … Fourteen fuckin’ years!

  ‘I’m gonna tell the truth,’ she told her partner. ‘I never went around bashing people. We used to just, like, get drunk and you know, we didn’t even, like do hardly any naughty stuff.’ She’d spoken to Cathy, she said, told her how freaked out she was, how she was so shitting her pants. Okay, so she’d hung out in a … in a group. But they didn’t go around murdering people, did they? They were … were getting ‘on it’ a bit – meaning booze, meaning cones – silly things like that. Kids stuff was all. But they didn’t kill anyone. She had never murdered anyone, she said. She had never hit anyone to the point of murder. God, she’d never even knocked anyone out let alone fuckin’ murdered them. There was just the time – that one time – she said, when she and Kylie followed a guy to an ATM and they watched him put in his PIN number. The boys bashed him, she said. They took his key card and did a runner. The guy got up, he was fine. Shit, they didn’t kill him.

  When she put the phone down yet again, it was barely past midday. On the intercept the police thought she sounded like she’d been wrung out. They could see an empty cigarette packet lying on the floor: it might have been full when she’d got up that morning. The cups were probably still on the kitchen bench, the bed unmade. She would be feeling so alone, so helpless, so … She would need to sleep but there was no way … She’d be sitting on the lounge, her head in her hands, crying silently for a while, crying for herself, the police thought: for herself and for her daughter.

  Shortly before five o’clock in the afternoon she called her brother Simon.

  She told him the story, said how she’d been talking to their mum and heard about all the shit that was going down, how the cops wanted to talk to her about the murders. She managed to stay cool, managed not to lose it.

  Did you know any gay fellers? Simon asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. Did she? Of course she didn’t … she might not have hated them but she didn’t have anything to do with them … all that stuff about AIDS and that, she said.

  You sure? ’Cause … I dunno because like the feeling … I was just readin’ it in the ‘paper an’ there’s, like, fuckin’ five unsolved murders in the eastern suburbs with gays.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you weren’t doin’ gay bashin’?’

  Nah, he said. It’s not me. They grabbed … like, they got a fuckin’ handful of someone’s hair and that’s who they reckon.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what Mum said. Hair or somethin’. Would they have grabbed my hair? How would they have grabbed my hair if I wasn’t there?’

  Yeah, they grabbed the hair when he was bein’ chucked … like, when they chucked him off, you know.

  ‘Oh my god. I never … I don’t know … I wasn’t, I know I didn’t do it. I don’t know. I wasn’t even there when … I’ve never seen anyone bashed around and I’ve never seen anyone chucked off the bloody things.’

  Steve Page wondered if she said it enough times she might begin to remember things differently. If she said it enough times she might be able to change the past in her mind.

  iv

  The next day she was at her Mum’s house early to meet the detectives not at midday as arranged, but before 10 o’clock. They took her to Waverley Police Station and interviewed her, recording the interview on video. She felt awful, had hardly slept, had been unable to eat. Cigarette after cigarette had been lit, dragged on, crushed, instantly replaced with another.

  The nightmare was continuing.

  The interview room was bleak, table, three chairs, electronic recording equipment. Blank walls and blank faces. She was sweating. Outside the temperature was already in the mid-20s and rising steadily towards a sweltering summer’s day. Inside the room it was cooler but she felt hot, suffocated, as though her lungs weren’t getting the air she breathed.

  Steve Page spoke for the benefit of authenticating the recording.

  ‘This is an electronically recorded interview between Detective Sergeant Page and [the woman] at Waverley Police Station on 13December 2001. The time is now 10.40am. Also present is Detective Sergeant Nuttall. For the purposes of transcription, Sergeant Nuttall, will you say your name, rank and station?’

  The official words, clear and emotionless, cut into her gut like a sword. She felt physically sick. Somewhere, the sounds of electronic machinery quietly marked off the time.

  She was asked her full name, address and date of birth.

  At the time of Ross Warren’s death she would have been 15 years old: when John Russell was murdered she was barely 16.

  Sergeant Page explained that he was going to ask a number of questions relating to the Warren, Russell and McMahon cases and he advised her that anything she said – not that she was obliged to say anything at all, he said – would be recorded and could be used in court. Did she understand?

  ‘Yeah.’

  And did she agree that he had already explained that he intended asking her these questions?

  ‘Yes.’

  And did she agree that he had explained that everything would be recorded on both audio and video?

  ‘Yes.’ Audio and video … words … Later, it would seem to the investigators that reality was finding it difficult to penetrate the girl’s numbness: she appeared to be having trouble grasping what was going on. The detective cut straight to the issue.

  ‘You said you have no knowledge of the matter of Ross Warren’s
disappearance?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have no knowledge.’

  ‘I also asked you whether you had any knowledge in relation to the suspicious death of John Russell at Tamarama in November 1989?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘And you have no knowledge of this matter?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  And David McMahon? She said she had ‘no knowledge’ of this matter?

  ‘That’s right.’

  Sergeant Page kept his tone neutral, his voice businesslike without too much formality, without adopting a tone that might scare the woman into total silence. ‘What I’m going to do,’ he said, unsmiling but certainly not hostile, ‘to commence this interview, is ask you whether you’ve previously been to the area of Marks Park at Tamarama. And to assist you I’m going to show you an aerial photograph of the park. To orientate you, Bondi is slightly north of this location.’

  She looked at the picture on the table.

  ‘I’ve never been to the park,’ she said. ‘But I’ve done the walk.’

  ‘When have you done the walk?’ Easy question, neutral, it was only information.

  ‘Several times,’ she said. ‘I grew up in Bondi.’

  ‘Would you have done the walk in 1989?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Would you have done it during daylight or darkness?’

  ‘Daylight.’

  ‘Who would you have done the walk with?’

  ‘Myself, friends.’

  ‘When you say “friends” who do you mean?’

  ‘I had friends from school,’ she said. ‘Friends I used to hang out with. My boyfriend.’

  ‘Are you able to give me the names of the, the people you believe you may have done the walk with?’

  She gave him a couple of names, Charmaine, Ross.

  ‘Are you aware that Marks Park is a gay beat?’

  The question came out of the blue.