by Megan Norris
Justice Vincent told Robertson, who sat in the dock weeping, her head still bowed, that in sentencing her he had taken into account her age; the nature of the offence; the time she had already served on remand; and her eventual change of plea, which indicated her remorse. But, given the impossibility of understanding the motivating factors underlying the murder, he harboured grave reservations about her future and still considered that she posed a serious threat to other members of the community.
Jailing Robertson for twenty years, with a non-parole period of fourteen years and six months – but deducting from her final term the 627 days she had already spent in pre-sentence detention – the judge said he was still not confident that she showed any real insight into the significance of her crime, and suspected that her reactions were based on self-pity.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘the situation will change with the passage of time and with increasing maturity, you will find yourself able to make a full disclosure.’
31
LETTERS TO RACHEL – EXTRACTS FROM THE SECOND YEAR
The days leading up to the first anniversary of Rachel’s death …
Tuesday, 8 February 2000
Dear Rachel,
Yesterday was torrid. I took your daddy to the doctors as suggested by Michael Clarebrough and he totally collapsed while he was there. He hyperventilated, got the shakes, was crying, lost his mobility, got pins and needles in his hands, and numb lips, on top of the continued pressure in his chest. It was very distressing.
Kathy, our doctor, ordered ECG and blood tests but she thinks the symptoms are related to a post-traumatic panic attack. He’s had about four of these now, always slightly different. He admitted to Kathy that he falls into depressions, sometimes three or four times a day, and admitted to periods of depression before your murder as well. She’s told him to see Michael Clarebrough once a fortnight and she is going to prescribe him anti-depressants which will also relieve his panic attacks. He couldn’t even hold a paper bag to his mouth to breathe in carbon dioxide. When he left he was walking like Frankenstein or like someone recovering from a stroke. He eventually got back to the car but couldn’t even hold a pen to sign his name properly. Afterwards he laughed about it but said he was scared at the time …
This time last year you had approximately twenty-one days to live. I have a book on how to have thin thighs in twenty-one days. Sometimes twenty-one days seems like a long time but then so does the last hour of school on a hot day. Twenty-one days more.
I wonder if Caroline Bloody Reed Robertson has any regrets. I wonder if she wished she could turn the clock back. Only twenty-one days, Rachel, a number of years that will elude you. You will never be twenty-one years old, or eighteen years or sixteen. Darling, I’ll have to leave now, I’m getting tired.
Loving you for ever,
Mum.
15 February 2000
I went back to work today for the first time since the committal hearing. My boss Deb let me have some more time off. It wasn’t too bad today, but I don’t know, by the end of the day I was so miserable. I can’t ever get over this, Rachel. I so desperately need you. Come on, walk or burst, as you so often did, through the front door, laughing and shouting for fun.
Caroline must be made accountable for what she has done.
17 February 2000
Dear Rachel,
It’s 11.35 p.m. and Dad is tinkering on the guitar in the living room. The television was turned off at 7 p.m. and we had a musical evening …
When Dad came back with Ashleigh-Rose she must have played her new flute for about two hours, sipping water and playing Celtic pieces. She’s going to play in a flute quintet at her secondary school fete.
Heather played her violin and was very excited – she could sight read a new piece her teacher was going to show her. We are at long last getting past the scratchy bits and she knows four open notes and four string notes and is very proud of herself. She also played the clarinet for us and can play ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ and ‘Hot Cross Buns’, and also played a long G note for sixteen seconds. She wants to play at school assembly next week.
So from 7.45 until 9.45 we adoring parents sat and listened. I said, ‘Once it was dancing,’ and that was nearly every night. Ashleigh-Rose and Heather are now developing their own individuality – their own space. Rachel, the guts were knocked out of this household. It became a very silent house without you – without their choreographer and director. There was no dancing, no theatre productions. But now they are re-forming the family entertainment soirées. Music – yes, but no dancing. Just then I thought of Garry Disher’s The Bamboo Flute because in this story, after the father had returned from war, there was no longer any place for music. And I suppose that’s a bit how I felt – for a long time. Once I could never have imagined a time without music.
I could see Daddy smiling again. He saw Michael Clarebrough today and I believe it went very well. He wants your dad to keep a journal so I’ll buy him one, even though your daddy doesn’t think it will work.
29 February 2000
Well, dear Rachel,
Today is a leap year. If you had been living it would only have been your fourth leap year, and yet of course you are not. And for the leap year reason I feel as if this date represents your death. But your death date will also appear to go on for three days. Like your disappearance, discovery and funeral. Everything in slow motion.
On Sunday morning I went to church by myself. I sat there thinking that, regardless of the outcome of the trial, Caroline would still be accountable before God. As I was listening to the readings I felt as if God had spoken to my heart and asked me directly, ‘Do you believe in capital punishment?’
‘You know I don’t,’ was my response in thought.
Rachel, the answer that came back was so immediate it was as if God had said directly, ‘So then, why should I?’ I understood this to mean that if I don’t believe in capital punishment on earth why should I then expect God to believe the equivalent after death.
Rachel, it made a lot of sense. Caroline will only need to ask for forgiveness. God would know if her heart was sincere. But then, why would Caroline care for what God thought?
I came home after church thinking we’d go to the Bayswater Family Pet Care Day, like last year, but Ashleigh-Rose didn’t want to and was watching Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. After a while I went to bed to sleep.
Later I decided to go to the Pet Care Day by myself, but Heather said she would like to go with me. I just thought it had been such a lovely day last year why not go and remember the day …
No letters were written from 1 March until 6 March 2000, the week of the first anniversary of Rachel’s death.
6 March 2000
Dear Rachel,
See how long it has been? Our lives have been so full of grief this past week, it would be folly for me to try and remember it all.
The last week began with the thought that this particular date should not be remembered as ‘one year dead’, ‘two years dead’ et cetera, but rather, ‘one year with God’, ‘two years with God’. Yet on 12 September, your birth date, I know at the same time every year, I will be thinking … sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years …
Your father and I relived your death date for three days. Monday, 28 February 2000 representing Monday 1 March last year. Then Tuesday, 29 February representing the day of your death, because if not for the leap year it would have been 1 March. And then Wednesday, 1 March as the day formally recognising your date of disappearance and death.
On Wednesday at about four o’clock we all went to the cemetery. Manni and his mum and dad had already been in the morning and many of your school and dance friends left flowers.
I placed notices in the Age and the Herald Sun in the In Memoriam section. I had problems with the Herald Sun because they did not want me to use the word ‘murdered’. They said it would upset their readers. I said, ‘I am a reader, I am the mother, and you are upsetting me.�
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I had written:
Barber, Rachel, born 12th September 1983
Disappeared 1/3/99.
In loving memory of our beautiful daughter and sister, Senselessly and cruelly murdered.
A tragedy that cannot be undone.
But we remember her soul can never be destroyed.
For Rachel is with God.
Remembered and loved by many.
I said to them, what about all the murder and mayhem in your paper every day? They said I could use the word ‘taken’. ‘What about “killed”?’ I said. ‘No,’ came the reply, apparently from the supervisor. So I said, ‘Forget it.’
I spoke to my boss Deb and she went on about the justice system again and I said it had already been agreed that you had been murdered. She said, they probably didn’t want to distress little old ladies, like her friend, who read the Death and In Memoriam columns daily. But half an hour later this elderly friend was in the bookstore looking for a crime novel with a good murder plot!
Anyway, I rang up Rob Read to check the legalities. He said, fax the notice to him and he would ring the Media Liaison Unit. Later on the same day the Herald Sun rang me back, apologising, and placed the ad for me.
Rachel, I know you wouldn’t want us to continue to be sad but how can we not be? It’s like your dad saying he’ll see something funny on television and then laugh but think, ‘How can I laugh when Rachel’s not here?’ I know what he means because I feel the same.
Susan gave us a photo album of graveside photographs that you may or may not approve of, but I find them really interesting and I am pleased she has done it.
My thoughts are all over the place. Sorry. I took your dad to see Dr Wallace for his check-up. I think the tablets are easing him. He seems as if he’s floating. I’m the one who is very tense and irritable.
Last year was so hard. I mean the fortnight when no one knew what had happened to you. And we are reliving it all now – every day – this day. It was on 6 March last year that I called the policewoman behind the front desk a fuckhead. I still find it hard to believe. But I was so frustrated.
I’ve been lying here in bed remembering times we shared together. Do you remember the time Manni rang you from a public phone box in Moonee Ponds, at night, and told you how he had to hang up quickly because he was scared of some hoodlums in the street? You were sitting alongside me in bed and collapsed in tears. You wouldn’t rest until you received a phone call from him at home. ‘What will I do if they kill him?’ you cried. ‘I couldn’t live without him.’ And now of course Manni has to learn to live without you.
You were a funny girl sometimes, Rachel. I remembered the time you and Manni broke up, for I think thirty to forty minutes, and then how pleased you were when you made up. I remember watching you kissing and hugging Manni in the car-park behind the dance school while Rosa and I waited in our cars.
Tomorrow is my birthday. I’ll be forty-one, and next year I’ll be forty-two. So many years ahead without you …
8 April 2000
Dear Rachel,
March was an awful month – always will be. I have not kept in touch through these letters, and I am sorry, not only for you but also for your sisters and myself. My memory isn’t very good and I’ve realised that so much of our lives is forgotten. Writing things down restores that part of our lives. I contemplated stopping addressing these letters to you. Thought I should just date them like a diary entry. But it is comforting speaking to you in the first person. And does it really matter what other people think?
I think I stopped writing because I was so desperately sad, but I need this sadness, Rachel, to ‘recover’, although that is not the right word.
So many things have happened.
We remembered so many significant days in March.
I saw Michael Clarebrough.
I went to the Victorian Missing Persons Meeting and met an assistant commissioner of the Victoria Police who asked me if I was the mother who had the problem with the police. I realise now that there was nothing they could have done to save you. I told him how Michael Clarebrough felt I should speak to the police but I was nervous of this. He felt it was a good idea and the outcome of this is that Michael spoke to the assistant commissioner and a meeting with him is being organised.
I’ve handed in my notice at work. That’s it. I’ve made the decision, finally, with your dad’s help, when we went to Indented Head for a weekend by ourselves.
Indented Head – so good – long drives along the Great Ocean Road to Lorne. Erskine Falls – so many steps. Dinners at pubs and walks through Queenscliff. Walks along the beach and mudflats. Afternoon tea at the Soho Gallery and Tea Rooms – an exciting place. We collected ‘Henry Moore’ rocks from the beach (rocks with interesting holes). Anyway, this time away by ourselves helped me with the decision to resign. I realised I had been expecting too much of myself.
Manni is doing well. He’s got a place with a regular dance group on television in a new program called ‘Stardust’.
We’re taking a one hour walk each day …
I haven’t seen much of my friend Chris lately. In fact I haven’t seen much of anybody. We, too, now have a silent number …
I am pleased I am taking the rest of the year off. I will veg out. I will walk daily, garden and write. I will be creative. I will live the dream I once held for myself because your dreams were cut short.
I will write for you, and I will write for myself, and I will write for our family. I need to believe in my dreams, as you once taught your friends to believe in theirs.
Rachel, be with me for ever. Be with your dad and sisters, and give your darling Manni strength and hope for the future. Help him when the time is right to one day find a loving partner. He is only seventeen …
Love, Mum.
Later in the day …
Dear Rachel,
I’m scared. Help me, please, my darling Rachel, I’m scared for Ashleigh-Rose and Heather. How are we going to get through the next few years? I honestly don’t know.
Ashleigh-Rose is now in Year 7. I remember your Year 7 and you grew up so much in that year. She wants to be grown-up, Rachel. She has a Year 8 friend over tonight. I can hear them giggling and being silly. I thought that because of all the tragedy last year Ashleigh-Rose would concentrate on school and tread easily, but I think she’ll want to move on into independence more quickly than I am prepared to grant it.
I’m scared for their future. I’m scared because of the trial, and I’m scared because of all the media attention. There is apprehension in me, a bubbling, simmering confusion of despair. I want to cry. I want to raise your sisters to be happy and successful – whatever that means – but sometimes I wish that this had already happened. I’d like to wish my life away just to know I’ve done it. Raising children is a big task – and I failed you. I know your death wasn’t my fault but I still feel I failed as a mother because I didn’t get you through your teenage years safely. Some bastard killed you, and there was nothing I could do to protect you, and I still feel helpless for it …
15 April 2000
I’m truly sorry if the agony in my heart distresses you. How much do you love me? Hold me tight – close to your soul. Let me feel your love near. Let me dream of you. I feel jealous when Rosa tells me Manni has dreamt of you. I ask myself, perhaps selfishly, what about our family?
Do you think we betrayed you by not seeing your body? You do understand the police didn’t want us to. I’m sorry if I’m saying things I shouldn’t but I grieve so much and constantly go over in my mind whether the events of 1 March could have been altered. But then who is to say that Caroline would not have killed you on another day? It is so EVIL. And HATEFUL.
I’ll tell you how I feel – I don’t want to make new friends. My old friends don’t contact me. I feel like a social leper. But then I don’t make it easy for them. I cannot fail to talk about you. Even if I try not to, I still do. I feel as if we have been marked. Dulcie said she didn’t thi
nk it was good for Manni to talk about you to the press because of his career, but it wasn’t you or Manni who had done anything wrong. It is cruel. I don’t want any part of it. Yet, I can still place the Reids’ names on prayer lists and even pray for Caroline.
I so desperately want you back. I am scared of the coming trial and I am scared Caroline will get off. Is it true that money can buy freedom?
I am scared of struggling.
I feel everybody else wants to forget – to move on. But I can’t move on. Your death is always in the present tense to me, yet when people talk of you they talk of you in the past tense – ‘hads’ and ‘beens’ and ‘was’ and ‘used to’s’. But for myself, Rachel, you are always present. I think of your quirky butterfly kisses – a thousand butterfly kisses, memories …
1 May 2000
Dear Rachel,
Today was the date of the arraignment. We thought we were going to attend this with your sisters but Paul Ross rang on Friday to say Caroline would not be present and that an arraignment was really only the bit where Caroline is brought before the court and the charge of murder is read out to her. We thought this procedure would not have been too harrowing for the girls, who really want to attend court. Anyway, I have spoken to Paul twice today. There is a tentative date of 25 September for the trial. There is to be another committal mention on 15 May to confirm the number of witnesses.
Paul said that he wished Caroline would have the ‘common decency’ to tell us what happened. But Rachel, we know Caroline can be deceitful, so how could we ever believe her anyway? Paul Ross still uses the word bizarre to describe the murder, and the more I hear, the more it sounds exactly right …
I do want to go inside Caroline’s unit but we can’t go until after the trial. But I promise you we shall. It’s symbolic to me. I want to take you out of there and bring you home.