The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders

by I. J. Fenn

  Not stressed? Just concerned about why the police had her name? She called her sister.

  ‘Do you remember when the shit happened with that feller?’ she asked. ‘Ross Warren? Was I in Nowra?’ If she’d been in Nowra she couldn’t have anything to do with it, could she?

  ‘I don’t know,’ her sister said. ‘I know you were in Nowra around the time it happened. I don’t know if you were there when it happened, though. Because, like I said, I remember … I know that you were in Nowra shortly, like, close to the, around the time that it happened, because I remember you being there when Vicki, when it happened. ’Cause Steven said Vicki, Vicki said something, oh, about finding him and Steven said, what are you worried about, he’s gay, anyway. And I remember you were there when we had that conversation. And that was, could’ve been just days after it had happened. I don’t know if you were there prior to, or what. But I know you were around.’

  What was she saying? Was her sister saying that she wasn’t in Nowra, that she was in Sydney, could have been there? Was that what she was saying?

  ‘What I said was,’ her sister tried to explain, ‘that Vicki had said you had something to do with it and that … See, I don’t remember if she said you and some other guys went gay bashing – I don’t know if she said it or if you said it – but I know you were there when the conversation took place.’

  ‘But I’ve never been gay bashing,’ McGrath exploded, apparently forgetting for the moment the two incidents she’d mentioned the previous day, the incidents involving gays in Hyde Park and Oxford Street. ‘Why would I go gay bashing? Fuck. I’m a bisexual.’

  Yeah, yeah, her sister was saying. ‘I remember thinking that you were just skitin’.’

  ‘Yeah, I would’ve been,’ she said, her voice trailing off a little as if she was thinking of something. Maybe trying to recall events from a dozen years ago, maybe just going blank in the face of such pressure. Whatever the cause, her silence didn’t last long. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s not just this Ross Warren feller. There’s two fuckin’ other fellers, mate.’ And she sobbed into the phone with her sister listening at the other end. ‘I don’t remember anything,’ she wailed, her crying sounding like that of a child. ‘Not a fuckin’ thing. If I did, I’d tell them.’ Trying to catch her breath, to regain control. ‘God, I don’t know what the fuck’s goin’ on.’

  Her sister listened to the obvious agony in McGrath’s last words. She could talk to the cops, she said, tell them Vicki had been making stuff up to get her into shit. She could leave out the bit where Merlyn admitted to killing Warren, leave out the incriminating stuff and just make out that Vicki was a vindictive liar. She could do that. Would that be okay? And as for gay bashing, well …

  ‘Look,’ McGrath said, still crying but now sounding aggrieved too. ‘I remember everyone I’ve ever fuckin’ hit in my life.’ Three people, she said, three. That was all. ‘And these three people are all at the same place. Now, any gay bashings that I’ve ever fuckin’ been involved in – fuckin’ two – me an’ a couple of other girls said, “fuck you cunts” and that was all in Oxford Street. And one fuckin’ guy that got bashed, me an’ two of my friends fuckin’ stopped the bashing. Like, this guy was getting flogged.’

  ii

  On the morning of Wednesday, 19December 2001 Merlyn McGrath arrived at Nowra Police Station with her four-year-old son. She met Detective Sergeants Page and Nuttall in the foyer of the building to be told that, whilst not under arrest and free to leave at any time, anything she said could be used in later court proceedings. She nodded and said she’d come down to help in any way she could. Arrangements were made for someone to look after her child and Merlyn went with the officers to an interview room inside the station.

  The formalities were completed and the interview proper began. Sergeant Page explained that he would be asking questions about the deaths of Ross Warren and John Russell as well as the attempted murder of David McMahon. Yeah, she said, he’d said that on the phone when he called to arrange the meeting. So, where did she live in 1989? Ashfield, she thought. But it was only a guess: it was so long ago. Did she ever go to the Bondi area? No. She seemed fairly certain despite her obvious nervousness, certain she’d never been there.

  ‘No. It wasn’t one of my hangouts,’ she said. ‘We just went there a couple of times. In a hotted up car. Hung out with all the wogs.’

  No, she’d never been there. Only a couple of times? Page let it pass. He had a feeling he was going to be hearing a few more contradictions before the day was much older.

  ‘When you say, hung out with all the wogs, who do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘There was, like I said, all these people would just turn up in their hotted up cars down at Bondi Beach. I don’t even know who most of them were. I remember just going down there with friends.’

  Page produced the aerial photograph of the Marks Park area, asked if she’d ever been there. But she seemed confused, shaking her head. No, she’d never been to the park, didn’t really know where it was. ‘See,’ she said, ‘when I went to Bondi, we just went to Bondi.’

  Meaning, Page supposed, the beachfront. The promenade. McGrath studied the photograph more closely, asking the whereabouts of Campbell Parade, the pavilion … That’s where they hung out, she said, the pavilion area. She seemed totally confused by the image she was looking at, totally unable to orientate herself to the geography in front of her. Steve Page used his finger, drew her attention to the area south of Bondi. So, she’d never been there, never been to Marks Park?

  ‘Might have, like, driven through it in a car,’ she said. ‘But never stopped, to my memory. No.’

  And the walkway? No. Adamant, had never walked along that walkway. She’d only – not even the pavilion, really, just once when there was a jazz thing going on – only really hung out in the car park. With the wogs, y’know.

  The detectives glanced at each other knowing they would have to be patient.

  ‘In, in 1989,’ Page asked, ‘do you recall any times going to, going to Bondi?’

  McGrath frowned with the effort. ‘1989? No,’ she said uncertainly. ‘See, I’m trying to … in ’72, ’82, ’92 … take off the … so, I was nearly 18, wasn’t I? So, I was living in Ashfield.’ As though living in Ashfield precluded her from going to Bondi.

  ‘During 1989 were you employed in any capacity?’ Page asked. ‘Were you going to school in 1989?’

  McGrath couldn’t really say, didn’t know if she was at school or working. Or neither. Like she said, it was so long ago. Nor could she recall the names of any associates from that time, only her boyfriend, George. He used to beat her up, she said. She had to run home to her parents all beat up because he wouldn’t let her go out, wouldn’t let her do anything. ‘That’s why I said, there’s no way I could go to Bondi,’ she explained. Because he wouldn’t let her.

  Sergeant Page continued with his questions, asking them as simply as possible. McGrath seemed to have difficulty in understanding some of them, had trouble with some of the words. Conscious of his legal responsibility he made sure he didn’t lead her into answers he might want to hear, made sure he didn’t coach her either directly or indirectly. He asked about graffiti, did she ever do graffiti, did she have a tag? She rambled on about a friend of hers when she was, maybe, 19, in Nowra, Adam Somebody, graffiti artist, busted at Nowra Fair by a security guard. As a graffiti artist, she failed miserably, she said, jabbering inarticulately, talking over the detective’s questions in a rush.

  ‘Okay, what are your –’ he waited until she’d paused for breath, until he had her attention again. ‘What are your feelings about gay males at this point in time?’

  ‘I have no feelings against gay males,’ she babbled. ‘I’m bisexual myself. So I don’t have any problem with any gay people.’

  He’d expected nothing else. And back then, he wanted to know, how did she feel about gay males in, say, 1989.

  ‘I was still gay myself, then,’ she answered. ‘Or bisexua
l. I don’t class myself as gay ’cause I like both men and women. But I was the same. I’ve been like this ever since I was a kid. Like, half the town knew before I did. This town, anyway.’

  He waited until she’d finished before continuing. He didn’t want to have to repeat every question he asked. When, he finally managed, when she went to Bondi, was it usually daytime or at night?

  ‘It’s nighttime,’ she said. ‘Everyone turns up in the hotted-up cars. I only went there maybe half-a-dozen times, if that. And that’s including the time I went, I went with someone’s mother to a jazz festival. I can’t remember who it was. They were from Mount Druitt. His name, I can’t remember his mother’s name and she took me to a jazz festival, like a Jamaican thing. Other than that, I’ve only been there, like four or five times.’

  And were those four or five times before, after or around the same time as the jazz festival, Page asked?

  ‘Yeah, in between. After, before. I’m not sure. Like, it wasn’t somewhere we hung out. That’s where all the, like, snobs hung out. Like, we were sort of the poorer ones. Or we thought back then. So we didn’t really hang out in Bondi.’ In fact, she said, the only reason she remembered Bondi, really, was because she used to sit on the concrete wall with her feet dangling over the edge, above the sand on the beach, and one time she sat down and leaned back with her hands on the ground and she put her hand on a little gold bracelet with a bluebird on it and she said, look what I’ve found, and one of the girls said, has that got a little bird on it? And she said, yeah, and she gave it to her. And that was why she remembered hanging her feet over the edge and that was why she remembered going to Bondi.

  Page moved on. Did she know of the Bondi Boys, a gang called the Bondi Boys? No. Did the letters, PTK mean anything to her? No. PSK? Seen it on trains, on buses, but no. People that Kill? No. Parkside Killers?

  ‘I’ve heard that before,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know. I think I know. There was a young boy got killed in a stolen car … his name was … his tag name was … I’m pretty sure it was Knocker and the Ashfield boys had a fight … I’m pretty sure that’s who they had a fight with. Do they tag as well, these park boys? Did they do tags?’

  ‘Yes,’ Page said. Yes, they did.

  ‘I’m pretty sure they wrote something nasty about that boy one day.’

  Another few minutes of inconsequential to-ing and fro-ing while McGrath tried to remember the irrelevant, the meaningless: the make of the stolen car, the fact that Knocker died in North Sydney, the name of the Ashfield gang – the Rebels – the reason why … The detectives let her run: maybe among all the drivel there might be something useful.

  When she eventually came to a stop, Page ran through the photo booklet routine, explaining how she should put a number next to anyone she recognised, how she should initial the picture and so on.

  ‘How do you mean, a number?’ she asked. ‘Like one?’

  ‘Like one, two. One to a hundred,’ he said, not even smiling. ‘And just your initials next to that. And just tell me if you recognise anyone.’

  McGrath studied the booklet with interest. One of the photographs looked like Nathan, a boy she knew. Well, it didn’t really, it was just that his nose was a bit like … And that looked like Veronica might have looked 10 years ago … And he looked like another boy from Nowra, a Koori fella … But the only one she definitely recognised was herself.

  Page produced a photograph of Ross Warren. Did she recognise him? No. ‘Now, Ross Warren, we believe, disappeared from the area of Marks Park in the early hours of 22 July 1989,’ he said. ‘What can you tell me about his disappearance?’

  ‘Nothing. Sorry.’

  At least she hadn’t gone into complicated and pointless detail: this was almost her first straightforward answer since they’d entered the interview room. Following procedure, Page produced the newspaper headlines from around the time that Ross Warren had vanished, placing the photocopied sheets on the table in front of her.

  ‘Are these meant to mean anything?’ McGrath asked, a hint of trepidation in her voice. ‘Or just to jog my memory?’ Not that it mattered: they meant nothing to her. Nor did those from around the time of the Russell and McMahon incidents. She shook her head, not really understanding. They meant nothing.

  ‘Typically what day of the week would you go to Bondi?’ Page asked.

  ‘Always on weekends, if we went.’

  ‘And when you say, weekends, which day?

  ‘It’d be Friday.’

  Another photograph. John Russell. Could she tell them anything about his death as the result of a fall at Marks Park? On 23 November 1989?

  She put her hand to her head for a moment, wiped a finger across her brow. ‘No. See, when I was 17 George wouldn’t let me go anywhere. I wasn’t allowed to do anything. So I don’t really have much … And as far as newspapers and stuff go – like, I barely even watch TV.’ She paused for the briefest moment. ‘Like this, that mark?’ Showing the policemen an old scar. ‘That’s ’cause tea was 10 minutes late on the table and he hit me with a crowbar. Like, this guy didn’t let me go anywhere. Like, so most of this is just nothing to me.’

  The whole rigmarole repeated with photographs and explanations of David McMahon. McGrath knew nothing.

  ‘As far as gay bashings and anything like that,’ she said. ‘Like, I have nothing to do with them. I have seen one gay bashing and that was – you know the wall? Where all the poofters go? And that was I seen this boy getting his arse whopped and me and these two guys I was with went over and pulled these blokes off him and told them, too. And that’s the only thing I’ve ever had to do, that I can recall, with any gay people. Like, I don’t, nothing. So none of this means anything to me, really.’

  ‘Okay,’ Steve Page said. ‘When you attended Bondi in 1989, were you ever involved in any offences of violence?’

  ‘Not that I can recall, no.’

  ‘Have you ever been involved in bashings where members of the gay community were targeted?’

  ‘Not that I can recall.’

  ‘Have you ever been involved in robberies targeting members of the gay community?’

  ‘No.’ Then thinking, ‘I had a fight with a girl but she wasn’t gay. But, like I said, anything I’ve ever done that’s bad, I’ve been caught for. So, everything I’ve got, all this, like when, like, even when you rang my sister, my sister freaked. She goes, ‘What the heck is going on?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ And, like, all this is just too much.’

  It was all too much. Of course it was all too much. But it had all been too much for Ross Warren, too. And it had all been too much for John Russell, for David McMahon. If Merlyn McGrath hadn’t been involved in any of the incidents the detectives were investigating, then she had their sincere sympathy but the victims had been involved and for two of them at least there could never be anything other than sympathy.

  ‘We’ve been informed by several witnesses,’ Steve Page said calmly, ‘that you’ve told them that you were involved in the bashing and subsequent disappearance of Ross Warren.’

  McGrath swallowed, did she look about to cry? ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘There’s only one person that would say that and that’s my brother’s ex.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Vicki Morgan.’ No hesitation, no qualms about giving up a girl she’d disliked. ‘It’s the only person that would say anything like that. She hates my guts ’cause I told my brother she was cheating on him.’

  Vicki Morgan, whereabouts unknown, a girl from the bush, from the same town as McGrath. They’d both moved to Nowra from the middle of nowhere. She hadn’t seen Vicki Morgan for … for 10 years.

  ‘Have you ever informed people that you were involved in an attack on Ross Warren?’

  ‘Not that I can recall.’ Which sounded lame because you’d remember something like that, you’d remember telling people you’d killed somebody. Obviously, the detectives picked up on just how lame it sounded.

  ‘Wh
en you say, not that you can recall,’ Page quietly demanded, ‘is it the case that you might have said it, but you can’t recall it, or you never would have said it?’

  ‘I might have said it to Vicki to piss her off,’ McGrath answered, almost certainly unaware that this could be the pivotal question. ‘But I wouldn’t have said it to anyone else. Like, this was a woman I watched,’ she continued. ‘Like, practically, you know, doing it in a nightclub and she’s going out with my brother. So I went and told him. And me sister was, me sister was telling me actually. She said to me, she said, “Vicki used to have a big crush on him”.’ Meaning Ross Warren.

  So, apart from Vicki Morgan – and that just to piss her off – there was no-one else she’d told that she was involved in Warren’s death? And there was no-one else who she might have told that she’d been involved in an attack on him? No. No.

  ‘Look,’ she said, maybe a little desperate, but not quite frantic. ‘This is a long time ago and I don’t know what I may or may not have said, but I know one thing – I got nothing to do with this, nothing at all. So, like I said, I would have said some harsh things to Vick ’cause she was a real, not a, not a very nice sheila. But other than that, no.’

  ‘Right,’ Page said. ‘Well, the information we have is that from, currently from three separate individuals, is that you’ve told them at various stages that you were involved in the bashing of Ross Warren.’

  If he expected her to collapse, to crumble under the allegations, he was disappointed. McGrath looked at him wide-eyed with denial. ‘No, that’s crap,’ she spat. ‘I’m, look, like I said, if I did this I’d know I did it and I don’t care what I may or may not have said, I didn’t have anything to do with any of these poor people getting hurt. Why would I want to target gay people when I’m bisexual myself? That’s just ridiculous. You know, like, when I started going out with my last girlfriend, we were together for 12 months and the crap that we copped in Nowra was unbelievable. And I didn’t give a shit. ’Cause I’d copped it all before from, from like, being inside and all the rest of it. So why would I want to target people that are exactly the same as me? That cop the same crap? Like, I don’t know.’