by Megan Norris
PERFECT VICTIM
ELIZABETH SOUTHALL is the pen-name of Elizabeth Barber. She was born in Victoria in 1959, one of four children of Ivan Southall, a distinguished Australian writer of children’s literature. Elizabeth herself is known for her work as a children’s book specialist.
The disappearance and murder of Elizabeth and Michael’s eldest daughter Rachel first made headlines around Australia in the first weeks of March 1999. Elizabeth kept a journal from that time on, including letters she’d written to Rachel. Perfect Victim stems from those writings.
Elizabeth lives in Heathmont, Victoria, an outer suburb of Melbourne, with her husband Michael who is a toymaker and designer, and their two other daughters, Ashleigh-Rose and Heather. Elizabeth has a Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing. She is currently studying for a Bachelor of Theology degree.
MEGAN NORRIS is a UK-born journalist experienced in the criminal justice system. Her career in journalism began in 1976 as a reporter in the UK covering courts, police rounds and general news. Later, specialising in court coverage, she wrote about the impact of crime on victims and their families. She has covered stories including the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre and some of Australia’s most high-profile serial killers and stalkers.
Her first contact with Elizabeth came when she was preparing a story about the Barber family for Australian Consolidated Press. Elizabeth and Megan became firm friends and a collaboration began. Megan’s following of the Rachel Barber case and her research for Perfect Victim occupied her life for several years. She lives in Melbourne, Victoria, with her husband Stephen and their two sons Alex and Peter.
PERFECT
VICTIM
Elizabeth Southall and Megan Norris
Penguin Books
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (Australia)
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(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Viking by Penguin Books Australia, 2002
This edition published, 2003
Text copyright © Elizabeth Southall and Megan Norris, 2002
The moral right of the authors has been asserted
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
penguin.com.au
The extract from Margaret Mahy’s A Lion in the Meadow on p.51 is reproduced with kind permission from Margaret Mahy and Dent Children’s Books.
Text copyright © Margaret Mahy, 1969, 1986
ISBN: 9780857969132
For Rachel
– E.S. and M.N.
CONTENTS
PART ONE – VANISHED
1. An Autumn Evening
2. The Search Begins
3. Missing Person
4. Making Someone Notice
5. Descent of Loss
6. No Foul Play
7. The Runaway Note
8. Quantum Leap
9. Growing Fear
10. The Poster Campaign Continues
11. Escort Agencies
12. A Gut Feeling
13. Front-page News
14. The List
15. ‘Do We Know a Caroline Robertson?’
16. Finally Found
17. A Statistic
18. A Vital Sighting
19. Single White Female
20. ‘All Things Come to Pass’
21. Charged
PART TWO – MURDER
22. Sunday
23. Burial
24. Letters to Rachel – Extracts from the First Year
25. Murder Making Headlines
26. A Friendless Nobody
27. Obsession
28. A New Persona – Total Revhead
29. Tortured Soul
30. The Sentence
PART THREE – APPEAL
31. Letters to Rachel – Extracts from the Second Year
32. Profiling a Killer
33. Instant Recall
PART FOUR – RACHEL
34. The Importance of Photographs
35. Unconditional Love
EPILOGUE
A Letter to Rachel, March 2002
Acknowledgements
Photographic Credits
Some time in the first week of March 1999, the body of Rachel Elizabeth Barber was unceremoniously dumped in the wardrobe of a second-floor flat in Trinian Street, Prahran, an inner suburb of Melbourne. A black, old-fashioned telecommunications cable was still tight around her neck.
In another room were all sorts of scribblings: hate lists, catalogues, notes about Rachel, her family, her personality, her likes and dislikes – and one note in particular with the ominous words, ‘All things come to pass’.
1
AN AUTUMN EVENING
Monday, 1 March
An uneasy thought occurred to me while I gave the two younger children their evening meal. It was only 7.15 but Mike and Rachel should have come, exhausted, through the door about 6.45 p.m.
I have a vivid imagination and this night I had Mike rammed between two other cars, or with a flat tyre, or yes, that’s it, without petrol. We were always running on empty. They probably didn’t have the cost of a phone call between them and, unlike many families, we didn’t use mobile phones.
I looked at the clock again: 7.17. I picked at my food and thought back over the day. An easy day. An ordinary day beginning with an ordinary morning. Rachel had wanted me to drive her to Richmond because Mike was running late, and she hated travelling on trains. She was cross at my lack of understanding for even suggesting the possibility of a train. She hadn’t wanted to miss breakfast with her new classmates at her friend Kylee’s place. But it was my work-free day and Mike wasn’t long ready and so the two of them sailed off. That’s what it had seemed like. She called ‘goodbye’ and ‘love you’ from the door and leapt off the steps in her day-old Bloch dance pants and petite blue top. It was said of Rachel that she often appeared to neither walk nor run. The white sedan reversed up the driveway with Rachel smiling and waving goodbye.
After her fifteenth birthday in September 1998, and at the end of her third term in Year 9, Rachel pleaded to be allowed to leave school. She had the full support of Mike, but this was not an easy decision for me who had completed Year 12 and tertiary education. However, we were confident she would start a Diploma of Dance in late January, so when her English teacher claimed she’d danced down a row of des
ks, I said, ‘Okay, Rachel, if you can find something constructive to do for the last term. But I’m not going to have you sitting idly at home.’
What followed was a two-week period of diligent experimentation for Rachel applying for part-time jobs: everything from café waitress to sales assistant. Unfortunately she was afraid of handling computer checkouts. Once, she had hidden for long periods of a two-hour try-out in the toilet of a café in Bridge Road, Richmond: scared stiff.
One afternoon when she went for a job as a kitchen hand she came out and sat in the car.
‘I’m in shock,’ she said. ‘Do people really work like this?’
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘And what you have to remember is by leaving school you will be putting all your eggs in one basket. If you do this, Rachel, you must commit yourself one hundred per cent.’
‘I am a dancer. I want to be an entertainer. You know that.’
‘Okay, then,’ I said. ‘You know you’ll have our full support.’
There was silence. ‘The money was good though,’ she said, her blonde-tipped ponytail bobbing with agreement.
‘Oh, you don’t get to keep it all. You have to pay about $70 to the government as tax.’
She laughed. ‘Well, they’re not getting any of my money.’
I was amazed she didn’t fully understand about tax. ‘Haven’t you learnt about this at school?’ But with her head filled with dancing there would be little space for a rendering of tax.
‘Sorry, Rach, they will get your tax. They take it out before you receive your pay packet.’
She scoffed. ‘Well, someone should do something about that.’
At the end of this long two weeks for Rachel, I received a phone call from Dulcie, the artistic director at her dance school. She said Rachel had just been in her office.
‘Dulcie,’ Rachel had begun. ‘You know my fourth term scholarship? Could you please extend this to a full-time scholarship? Mum said if I could find something constructive to do I could leave school.’ Dulcie, who had apparently been so impressed with Rachel’s handling of the request, had agreed, if this was okay with me.
Rachel struggled through school. Her academic grades were low, not because she was mischievous but because teachers could not get through to her. In Year 8 she had cried one night, telling me it wasn’t that she deliberately didn’t want to do the work, it was because she could not understand it. It was in dance she excelled, never receiving less than a high distinction for her Royal Academy of Dance or contemporary dance exams. Rachel Star – that was the name she gave herself. One day, she would have her own Rachel Star dance studio.
Now she was into the fifth week of a potentially wonderful two years and her dreams were being answered in an almost fairytale way. Everything was coming together. Life was good.
So what was keeping them tonight? Rachel hadn’t called to say she would stay at Kylee’s: she had already arranged with me to spend Tuesday night with Kylee. At lunch I had thought of calling the dance school, just to see how she was going, but I thought they would start to get annoyed with me if I rang them too often. I wonder now why I had sensed the need to make contact.
The phone rang. It was 7.40. At last, I thought, they’ve found a phone, and how silly I’d been to worry. After all, they were barely an hour late.
Mike’s voice sounded concerned. He was ringing from his parents’, Rose and Arthur’s, in suburban Blackburn. Rachel had not got off the tram at Wattle Park. Had she called? Did I have any ideas? Maybe she had forgotten Mike was collecting her at Wattle Park? Not so. Mike said that this was the last thing they’d discussed. She’d be there for him at around 6.15 and had said, ‘Love you, Dad,’ as she always did.
He’d been there at ten past six and waited an hour. Kept hoping she’d step off. So where was she?
I could sense his panic stirring.
He’d go back to Camberwell and see if she’d got off the tram, mistakenly, where I had started to pick her up Tuesday to Thursday, the week before. After all, it was only her second pick-up from Wattle Park. If she wasn’t there, what then? It was dark now and Rachel hated the dark. I’d call the police immediately. Call Mike back. Then I’d call Rachel’s boyfriend Emmanuel and her dance school.
I rang the Box Hill police station around 7.40 and reported Rachel missing. They wondered how long she had been missing? An hour and a quarter. And how old was she? Fifteen. Yes, well, they didn’t exactly laugh, but I had the feeling they thought I was over-reacting. But to give them credit we were told that if Mike could not trace her in Camberwell then we should come to the police station and fill in a missing person report.
I rang Emmanuel, and he immediately feared the worse. ‘She meant it,’ Manni said. ‘I didn’t think she’d go.’
Panic. She’d meant what?
During the day Rachel had taken Manni into a shoe shop and had pointed out a pair of chunky blue Spice Girl shoes she was going to buy the next day. How was she going to pay for them? She’d said to Manni that she had been told not to tell her parents or boyfriend, but she was going to a job where clothing would be provided and she would make a lot of money. Nothing immoral. No need to worry.
No need to worry? Manni was worried. Mike and I were worried.
She had definitely left the dance school. Waving goodbye and calling ‘love you’ across the road as Manni and his brother disappeared down an alley to get their car. She had said she’d ring him that night to tell him all about it and told her girlfriend Kylee that she would be there for breakfast on Tuesday as usual.
I called her school. I called Kylee. I called Manni back. She had simply vanished. Perhaps there was really no need to worry. Maybe I was over-reacting. But Rachel knew how I worried. She would know I’d over-react. She would know I’d contact the police. It was past 8.30. She’d have contacted somebody by now. And she hadn’t.
Michael searched the leafy, middleclass streets of Camberwell but never imagined he’d find her there. The events of the evening were beginning to feel ominous. At 8.45 p.m. he officially reported her missing at Box Hill police station. Perhaps an odd choice, considering her dance school was in inner-city Richmond and we lived in suburban Heathmont about half an hour’s drive from Box Hill, but it was at least near where she was to get off the tram.
Mike doesn’t believe in over-reaction, and he was not over-reacting. Rachel had never disappeared before and it was so unlike her not to contact us if she’d been delayed. She hated the dark. She feared public transport. She would have phoned by now.
The police reaction was not to worry. What else could they say? She had most likely gone off with her friends and would turn up tomorrow.
My mother, Joy Southall, came to take care of our younger daughters, eleven-year-old Ashleigh-Rose and nine-year-old Heather, while we drove to Richmond to search for Rachel. Her dance school hadn’t seen or heard from Rachel since she left around 5.45 that afternoon. They were closing when we arrived.
We searched the streets of Richmond calling her name. It’s a dusty and busy inner-city suburb, famous for its footy club, and sitting in the shadows of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. But really our searching was pointless. We had no idea where she was. We knew, as others did who knew Rachel well, that the story she’d partly shared with Manni already reeked of foul play. I think we realised, even then, that Rachel had been baited with the equivalent of a bag of sweets a small child is warned about, and in her naivety been snared.
Another story.
The afternoon before …
Sunday, 28 February
Some time between five and six in the late afternoon, Rachel was on the phone. She was laughing and gossiping, probably to her boyfriend Manni, sharing with him the events of her day. During the morning she’d had breakfast with her mum at Doncaster Shoppingtown where she’d bought her new Bloch dance pants. She had grizzled to her mum about wanting a new top, and was upset that Mum had dismissed the need for extra-strong deodorant.
Rachel’s weekend had been ful
l, too. Manni had been working all weekend, so she busied herself on Saturday afternoon handsewing him a giant purple velour heart created from some old scraps she’d found in her dad’s workshop. She would surprise Manni with it on Monday, telling him to keep her ‘heart’ safe somewhere, always.
On Sunday afternoon, at the Bayswater Family Pet Care Day, Rachel finally persuaded her mum to allow her to have the kitten she so desperately wanted, ever since Sable, their eighteen-year-old cat, had been killed by two stray dogs outside her bedroom window. The new kitten was to be named Humphrey.
But Rachel wasn’t speaking to Manni that afternoon on the phone. No one knew she wasn’t speaking to Manni. She spoke for some time. Telephone records indicate that during this one hour period, two calls were received – a fifteen-minute call and a twenty-nine minute call – received from someone with a silent number. Goodness knows what that person was filling Rachel’s head with.
Later that night, Rachel, Ashleigh-Rose, Heather, Mum and Dad sat together watching television. It was an episode of ‘Vanity Fair’ on Channel Two. Rachel enjoyed the series because of the period costumes and the tangled romance.
Rachel knelt on the floor in front of her mum, asking for a back massage. But Mum was tired and said no. Rachel persisted. Ever since she was little she had enjoyed massages. After a day at primary school she would often come running up the long driveway, flinging her bag down at the front door. She would climb onto the kitchen table where a towel and pillow would already be waiting for her. A trail of clothes from the door. Her mum would massage her, with Rachel stripped down to her knickers.
This Sunday evening, her mother looked at the smoothness of her daughter’s clear skin. ‘Please,’ Rachel’s voice urged, and her mother just managed a rub.
Rachel went to bed happily this night, revealing to no one, as promised, the details of these private calls. Maybe she thought, yes it will be all right, I’ll buy that new pair of shoes. The new pair of shoes she tried in vain, the week before, to show her mum, but the pair of shoes about which Mum had said, ‘I’m tired. I haven’t got time to look at a pair of shoes. And anyway, we can’t afford them.’