by Megan Norris
Dear Rachel,
Last week Paul Ross, the Homicide detective, called in to deliver our statements in preparation for the trial. He also had some interesting news. The defence have informed the Office of Public Prosecutions that there may be a change in the plea. This is only a slight possibility, but nevertheless a possibility. Yes, Rachel, she may plead guilty. Events may take a completely different course.
But 10 October will still be the date of action in the Supreme Court. Paul Ross also said that from the time of the verdict to the date of sentencing there could well be two weeks because of the nature of your murder. It is a uniquely bizarre murder. Caroline has committed, or allegedly committed, a murder that might be the first of its kind in European history in Australia. Maybe the judge will be setting a precedent in his sentencing.
It was during Paul Ross’s visit that I said I would like to work as a chaplain, possibly in the police force. He said, doesn’t that take about eight years training? To be honest I’m not sure how long it would take. But first I would have to do a Bachelor of Theology and follow this by training as a chaplain. And Rachel, since Friday I believe God, crazy as it may seem, has guided me towards this. Working as a chaplain with victims of crime seems to be the absolute right direction. It’s this decision that has made me feel so positive and good and I can’t believe this has happened two weeks before the trial. I feel as if a weight has been lifted off my back – yet I feel guilty for feeling so good when last week, before this decision, I was feeling so wretched. Nothing is going to bring you back, Rachel, and I did make a public statement that some good was going to come out of all the tragedy. And, thank God, your dad is working with me on this.
I discussed it with your dad and he said, ‘Go for it.’
I am making good out of evil.
6.30 a.m., 3 October 2000
The Olympic Games closing ceremony was great, but unfortunately I was very agitated. There were so many parts of it that reminded me of you. The dancing! Kylie Minogue singing ‘Dancing Queen’ (the song your friends from Canterbury Girls wanted played at your funeral but the words were not appropriate). Jimmy Barnes was singing, and remember, you have danced with Jimmy Barnes on stage. Everybody was so alive and so happy and I cried.
It’s gone beyond saying it’s not fair.
5.30 a.m., 10 October 2000
Events changed yesterday afternoon, just as Paul Ross had suggested.
I must admit I felt, or at least acted, in an extremely ungrateful way. I woke this morning realising that I should have been saying thank you to God and thank you to Paul and thank you to the Office of Public Prosecutions for doing their job so well.
I walked into the house about 3.45 yesterday afternoon with Heather. Your dad had driven Ashleigh-Rose to her pottery class. Susan rang me about five minutes after I walked through the door. Poor Susan, she must have wondered at my reaction. The OPP rang her because they could not contact me: the defence had contacted them yesterday afternoon – Caroline would be pleading guilty.
I should have been pleased – relieved. Even Heather knew it was good news. She said, ‘Mummy, doesn’t that mean she gets to stay in jail?’ But instead I thought, ‘She’s getting off easy.’ One side of me wanted her to stand in a courtroom for two weeks and be confronted by what she did to you. I wanted her name to be printed in the papers. And suddenly I realised that this had been the revenge I had wanted. I had wanted the public to know you had had no part in asking for your own death. All too often the public fall into the trap of saying that if someone has been murdered, then the victim must have contributed somehow, particularly where the accused knows the victim. This is what is so appalling in this wicked and selfish crime.
I rang the OPP after Susan had spoken to me, and the following advantages were pointed out: Caroline is unlikely to appeal on the guilty verdict since it is her own plea; a jury cannot be conned by a clever defence barrister, and there will be no trial, so witnesses do not have to be called.
I realise now this is the absolute best result. The OPP have done their job – Paul Ross has done his job.
And then I thought, in an outrageous way, that I too held deep inside a hope that Caroline had not killed you, only because for me it seemed more reasonable to accept that a total stranger had killed you than anyone who even remotely knew you. Anyone who knew you would not have wanted to kill you.
30 October 2000
My darling Rachel,
Caroline did plead guilty and 25 October was set for the plea hearing, which we were told would be heavily swayed towards the defence. And yes, my darling, there were lots of your family and friends there for support.
I think of the words your Nanny Joy wrote to me this week, after the plea: ‘I think of all the past years enjoying Rachel, all those lovely family occasions, birthdays, christenings, Easter holidays, Christmases … all the while we looked forward to the next time, Caroline could well have been plotting how to bring our dear Rachel’s life to its end.’
Caroline came out and I was thinking, you silly girl. I sat down after the judge left the courtroom. There was no way I was going to stand for Caroline.
She was a very sad and depressed woman, but Rachel, she was not insane. She cold-bloodedly plotted and killed you. It is cruel, wicked, evil – all of that – yet I pity her.
But the judge must not soften, because her act was evil. Let’s not forget what she did to you. You are the victim. You were her perfect victim.
No more letters were written for the remainder of the year.
Developments …
32
PROFILING A KILLER
A completely transformed Caroline Reed Robertson was escorted back to the Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Centre at Deer Park to begin her twenty-year jail sentence.
Through Rachel’s death, Robertson had finally attained her magical goal of becoming someone completely new, said Dr Barry-Walsh outside the Supreme Court. ‘In destroying her, she recreates herself. That’s exactly what’s happened.’
Robertson, her golden-brown shoulder-length curly hair tied neatly off her face, looked far removed from the miserable girl who had been arrested twenty months earlier. Slim and attractive, her slight frame revealed the outline of ribs through her clinging white top. She certainly resembled someone very close to the Jem Southall of her imagination.
So perhaps her fantasy, in some respects, offered an acceptable ending – even if it meant spending a significant amount of her adult life behind bars; even if it meant an existence far from Jem’s planned retreat in Bondi or Byron Bay.
‘She’s playing out a whole new fantasy role now,’ observed the Melbourne-based criminal profiler Claude Minisini after studying voluminous reports on the killer and her crime. ‘She’s back to playing the victim again, a role her writings tell us she is familiar with. And this time she appears to be playing it to perfection. “Look at me, I’m being punished again … I’m the victim.” ’
Minisini is the director of a consultancy firm called Forensic Behavioural Investigative Services. This highly regarded authority on criminal behaviour and killer psychology has studied the Rachel Barber murder very closely and remains intrigued both by the motivation for the killing and by Robertson herself. A former member of the Victoria Police Rape Squad, Minisini honed his craft at the FBI’s internationally recognised profiling unit, Quantico, in Virginia. The lessons he learnt during fourteen months of intensive study during the early 1990s, which included interviewing and studying some of America’s most notorious serial sex killers, has given him a valuable insight into the make-up of the criminal psyche, into the predatory nature of murder, the motivating factors underlying such killings, and the varying ways in which murderers kill.
Studying victimology, grisly crime scenes, known serial killers, repeat sex offenders, and those suspected of multiple murders, Minisini has devoted his career in latter years to the study of serial rape and murder. His success in profiling has resulted in much collaboration wit
h Australian police departments, including his work on the Frankston serial killings, which cost three Melbourne women their lives.
The art of profiling, while originally viewed with some scepticism by police and psychologists on its introduction in the United States in the late 1970s, was the FBI’s response to the escalation in the numbers of serial killings. With many crimes unsolved, experts developed and refined the technique, which involves matching the psychological make-up of a likely suspect with the crime scene left behind and the type of victim chosen by the killer. Profilers are consulted around the world.
‘Profiling,’ Minisini explains, ‘is based on the premise that behaviour reflects personality. And there is so much about this crime – from the predatory way in which Robertson chose and targeted her victim, to the manner in which she executed the killing, and, of course, her behaviour after the event – which reveals volumes about her complex personality.’
Minisini says that in any violent crime certain behaviours are clearly exhibited, from the way the victim dies to the manner in which the killer disposes of the body. These things, and others, give the profiler a graphic picture of the interaction which has taken place between killer and victim. Every little detail tells its own story.
‘Robertson exhibited many behaviours during the time leading up to Rachel Barber’s murder, during the crime, and afterwards which tell us a lot about her,’ says Minisini. ‘They allow us, in effect, to walk in her shoes, as do her writings – all of which give us a keen sense of what occurred before the killing, why she chose Rachel as her victim, and what took place during that final fatal interaction.
‘In profiling, we start with the victim. We look at factors like when and where the victim was approached, where the death took place, the method by which she was murdered, what effort was made to hide, or dispose of the body, the type of injuries inflicted, either before or after death. All of these things offer an insight into the killer’s personality, helping me, in essence, to build up a behavioural ID.’
The most striking thing about Robertson’s identifying behaviour to an observer like Minisini is that it placed her well outside the stereotype of a female homicide offender. International data shows that it is exceedingly rare for women to kill. A study of homicide published by the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra reveals that only one in ten murders in Australia between 1989 and 1999 were committed by women. When women kill, it says, their victims are generally intimates: lovers, partners or children. Most crimes are committed in the context of a longstanding abusive relationship, and the typical female killer is aged around twenty-nine.
But Robertson was much younger than this when she killed Rachel Barber – and unlike the stereotypical woman offender, who is unemployed, she had a stable job. She was also single, whereas the typical perpetrator would be married or in a de facto relationship. Finally, Robertson had a comfortable middleclass background, while the typical female killer would be from a lower socioeconomic background.
Robertson’s choice of victim and her motive set her aside too, since not only did she kill someone outside her family but she chose to target another female – which is extremely rare. Few women kill other women, and even fewer kill distant friends, or commit murder out of jealousy. The only factor she shares with the more typical female killer is that she chose to carry out the murder in her own home.
To Minisini, the unusual motive and nature of the Rachel Barber case set it apart from many of the other murders he has studied. Moreover, he says, it is very unusual to compile the personality and criminal profile of a killer who has already been caught. In some respects this means working backwards. In most cases Minisini would study the crime scene and the nature of the death, and examine the victim. All of the information gleaned would give him an understanding of the type of offender most likely to have committed the crime, and offer some insight into the motive.
In this case, the killer’s identity being known, there were many other significant factors that told him not only why Robertson chose Rachel Barber as her victim but why she killed her in the way she did. They also explain her behaviour in the lead-up to the crime, and in the days following the murder.
Robertson’s writings reveal, as does her behaviour, the startling story of a girl who, rightly or wrongly, perceived herself to be a victim. They convey the clear picture of a girl who had a vision of where she wanted to go in life, and what she wanted to be. But lacking the means to achieve these things, she retreated into fantasy.
‘From the piles of letters and writings (which certainly seem to span at least a seven-year period as best we can gather) we can see her anger slowly building up. I see her as an inadequate individual and her letters take us through a journey of extremely low self-esteem and low confidence, which would understandably have made her an isolationist, leaving her void of the skills she’d need to successfully interact with others.’
Given her poor interpersonal skills and inability to interact with girls her own age, it was little wonder that her writings illustrated deep paranoia and a belief that she was being gossiped or laughed about. These hurts, real or imagined, says Minisini, would have triggered her subsequent retreat into the safety of her imagination, where she could dream of a more acceptable life.
Fantasising, he explains, offered her the chance to be someone else, someone successful and attractive who mingled in showbiz circles; someone who could amaze friends on Oprah’s ‘If You Could See Me Now Reunion’, leaving them incredulous that she had finally left behind the ‘little deadbeat scum bag’ she perceived herself to be.
Minisini remains in no doubt that Robertson role-played being someone else, until Rachel Barber became the object of her fantasy. When the fantasy lost its buzz, it would have taken a sinister turn, evolving into a dream of death.
‘A fantasy is a daydream in which everything ends perfectly,’ says Minisini. ‘We all have them and they all involve role-playing some part in which everything turns out the way we want. It’s the usual pleasant harmless stuff and goes nowhere.
‘But this woman, like many killers I have seen, appeared to live most of her life in fantasy. She would have “acted out” the role of being someone like Rachel Barber over and over again, until it lost its appeal. Then, in her developing new fantasy, she would have role-played killing the victim who symbolised everything she wanted – acting it out in her mind until it was perfect in every little detail, before finally crossing the line into a dangerous new realm and actually killing her.’
Minisini says it is known from studies of murderers that each has a perfect victim in mind. ‘Some murders, especially serial killings, are the products of that fantasy. They are almost invariably committed by highly organised and intelligent killers who plan to act out in real life the fantasies they have had for years. These killers often look for someone who is an ideal or perfect victim in their fantasy. It could be that a victim fitting that ideal just happens to come along and finds themselves in the wrong place at the right time – a victim of opportunity. But more often than not, the victim is someone a predator actively targets. Robertson’s ‘perfect victim’ was young, pretty and talented and a performer too – exactly the type of victim Robertson needed to fulfil her fantasy.
There were other reasons, though, why Rachel was ideal. And Minisini agrees with Justice Vincent’s view that Robertson targeted the girl partly because she was known to her and was someone she could build some sort of trust with, so that she could lure her victim away and isolate her from help. ‘She was accessible and vulnerable, and would probably not offer resistance which might result in a loss of control for Robertson, who would have wanted to have avoided attracting attention.
‘This was anything but a crime of opportunity. There are no signs here of primitive behaviour or spontaneous, explosive rage. The level of planning and organisation is indicative of an extremely intelligent person.’ He said that the careful way Robertson had prepared the double-knotted noose suggested she’d
done this well in advance. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to have rustled this up while attempting to overpower her victim.
Minisini read court reports stating that Robertson had ‘some intelligence’, and found this an understatement given the scholarship she had won to Camberwell Girls Grammar, and the cunning nature of her plan. ‘I suspect, given the evidence about her plan and writings, she is much more intelligent than has been recognised.’ He noted from reports that Robertson’s IQ was 114. And he was cautious about any medical assessment based on observations gleaned in just two hours with a manipulative killer capable of convincing anyone of anything. Minisini says the strong element of ‘preparedness’, and the length of time the crime had been taking shape in Robertson’s thoughts, showed that she intended to execute a perfect crime and get away with it.
Minisini believes that Robertson’s ruse of the psychological study she invited Rachel to take part in must have been very convincing. She had the foresight to consider where and how she would kill the young girl, ensuring that the secret meeting remained confidential to increase her chances of escaping undetected.
The drugging referred to in Robertson’s plan, while strenuously denied by the killer, would have been central to keeping Rachel under her control, he claims. He doubts very much whether a killer acting out a detailed fantasy would have suddenly chosen to diverge from that plan. Alcohol could also have formed part of the plot to subdue the victim, in combination with drugs to minimise noise and resistance. In spite of Robertson’s denials that either was administered, the autopsy did not rule out the possibility that both were used, he points out.
Minisini feels the same way about Robertson’s proposed disfigurement of the victim, referring to Justice Vincent’s observations in court that it indicated Robertson’s ‘wish to smash and destroy that other person’: a crime of rage and hate. Again, this disfigurement clearly formed part of her fantasy, so why abandon it? Given the advanced state of decomposition of the victim’s body, it is again very difficult to discount the fact that Robertson might well have vented her anger on the victim in this way. It is also in keeping with a highly organised personality executing a very deliberate plan, since disfigurement would hinder identification of Rachel Barber’s body.