by Megan Norris
Now, carefully avoiding eye contact with her victim’s mother, Robertson adjusted her fine-framed metal spectacles. She acknowledged, with a smile, a young woman sitting at the back of the court. She appeared to be a new friend, about Robertson’s age; a face not previously seen during Robertson’s plea or sentencing hearings.
Elizabeth Barber had only heard about the preliminary appeal hearing a few days earlier, and had been informed that Robertson was unlikely to make a personal appearance. The hearing, she’d been warned, was likely to be a non-event; a paper shuffle among lawyers, over in a few minutes. Robertson’s request to appeal was likely to be instantly rejected. If it were successful, the process could take months. And even if it were unsuccessful, the prisoner could re-appeal again within fourteen days. There would be no result today. So she was told it would not be worth her while attending. Elizabeth Barber thought otherwise.
Mike Barber refused to join her, claiming there was little point to the exercise. Nothing would bring Rachel back, he said. Secretly, though, Elizabeth suspected he was daunted at the prospect of revisiting the imposing court complex, of reliving the process all over again; of having no closure when the family had already been struggling to come to terms with last year’s jail sentence. And she wondered if he might be even more afraid of the anxiety he’d experienced during Roberton’s earlier appearances; frightened of another panic attack.
But Elizabeth vowed she would be there to remind people who the real victim in the case was. She didn’t want Caroline Reed Robertson assuming the role of victim. Yet by her notice of appeal, Robertson was claiming she was being victimised by the system; being punished too severely. As Robertson’s lawyer later put it, this was a sentence Robertson considered to be manifestly excessive. Elizabeth Barber determined that her presence was a necessary reminder of the family’s loss; of Rachel’s loss; of the price an innocent fifteen-year-old had paid for another’s jealousy. Rachel, in the legal process, had already become the deceased; another type of victim. Perhaps by now Rachel might not even warrant a mention. The appeal process, said Elizabeth, would be entirely about Caroline; about her unfair harsh treatment. The victim’s mother wanted to look Rachel’s killer straight in the eye and be sure Caroline knew Rachel still had a voice in the proceedings.
In court, Caroline Reed Robertson’s comfortable, relaxed demeanour was in direct contrast to the highly agitated state of the victim’s mother as she sat with her hands tightly clasped together, waiting.
The president invited Robertson to move from the dock to a seat directly in front of the bench where he could address her. Winneke confirmed he’d read all the evidence; the witness statements and doctors’ reports; the judge’s sentencing remarks. He explained his own role in the proceedings, telling Robertson that if her appeal had any reasonable prospects of success he would order it to go on to the full Court of Appeal. But this didn’t mean her appeal would eventually succeed, simply that it had reasonable prospects. The Court of Appeal had a very different role to that of the sentencing judge whose task had been to hear all the evidence in her case. The Court of Appeal, said Winneke, intervenes only in cases where a judge’s discretion in sentencing might be considered erroneous. Or where the sentence was too harsh for the crime.
Robertson’s lawyer, Colin Lovitt QC, was not present in court that morning, though the prisoner told the hearing that she had expected him to represent her. Several attempts had been made to contact him, but when a brief adjournment failed to trace either the prisoner’s lawyer or his report, another barrister, Nick Papas, agreed to represent Robertson. He spoke briefly with the prisoner in the cells during the adjournment. He knew of her case since he had reviewed it in another role for Legal Aid.
Robertson sat silently as the court was told about her crime; a cold-blooded murder, executed by a very young woman with no prior criminal history, in ‘extraordinary circumstances’. Winneke agreed. Robertson’s case had been based on facts which the criminal courts rarely saw. But all this had been taken into consideration by Justice Vincent, the most experienced trial judge, who had included his observations in ‘very detailed and considered sentencing remarks’, Winneke said.
Winneke also noted that there were ‘exhaustive efforts’ made by both sides to reveal more about the circumstances leading up to Robertson’s crime. But each of the persons who sought to achieve some insight into Robertson’s mind was frustrated because of what was said to be real, or unreal, amnesia.
Mr Papas responded by saying that although the plea had involved ‘most experienced counsel’ and a very experienced judge, Robertson’s QC, Mr Lovitt, had struggled ‘to come to grips with what this case was about in terms of instructions and explanations’.
Then Mr Papas told the court something quite extraordinary. Robertson, he explained, had told him she was experiencing ‘detailed improvement in her recollection’. She was now able to provide the court with fresh information which could explain, ‘in an aggravating or mitigating way’, her conduct at the time of the crime. Mr Papas added that this new material meant the prisoner could offer details to explain her role, ‘her participation’, in the murder of Rachel Barber. And because of her impaired memory at her plea and sentencing, this crucial material had been unavailable to Justice Vincent.
But, argued Mr Papas, if Justice Vincent had been aware of these details, it might have influenced his subsequent sentencing and perhaps resulted in a different outcome for Robertson. He further contended that her appeal was being made on the basis that her twenty-year jail sentence had been at the upper end of, if not outside, the range of sentencing options available to Justice Vincent. Even the prisoner’s parole period of fourteen years and six months, he contended, was considered manifestly excessive for such a young offender with no prior convictions. For all these reasons, he urged the court to consider granting Robertson a full appeal hearing.
But Winneke said he was prepared to neither allow nor deny the request. Justice Vincent ‘was a very experienced trial judge who had engaged in very careful consideration in this case, and very careful sentencing,’ he said. And even with a lack of information in the lower courts, this didn’t mean there had been any sentencing error. Justice Vincent had sentenced Robertson with all the available evidence before him. However, if this new material had been presented to him, it might possibly have explained the facts of the case in a ‘more understandable way,’ Winneke said.
Winneke called for time to explore the new information and adjourned Robertson’s application to a date to be fixed. This, he said, would allow Mr Papas more time to speak with the prisoner, and to collect further details for the court.
Retiring from the bench to his chambers, Winneke was unaware of a drama about to unfold behind him. As barristers collected their piles of documents and chatted amongst themselves, the victim’s mother took a few paces forward, blocking the entrance to the dock where her daughter’s killer was standing. Elizabeth Barber had sat silently throughout the hearing, trembling with nerves. Her anger had been building as she listened to arguments on Robertson’s behalf, claiming the sentence was excessive – too harsh for such a young offender. Overcome with rage and frustration, Elizabeth Barber confronted Robertson, standing directly in her path as prison guards unbolted the door to allow the prisoner to pass. She stared intently into the killer’s face. Robertson tried to look away.
But two years of pent-up grief and distress spilled from Elizabeth, erupting into the silence of a stunned court. She was oblivious to the warnings of the officers guarding the prisoner. ‘Stand back, madam! Stand back!’ commanded the burly male guard.
‘You think you are being treated too harshly, do you? Too harshly!’ Elizabeth shouted. ‘You think your sentence is unfair? You were not fair to my daughter … you were not fair. You gave my daughter death … You were unfair to my daughter. You are a killer … a killer …’
Obviously concerned by these developments, the guards closed in on the prisoner and the tense silence conti
nued as the despairing mother refused to move. ‘Stand back, please!’ urged a female guard, pushing Robertson past. But Elizabeth, her voice loaded with emotion, screamed at the back of Rachel’s killer as she hurried down the aisle towards the staircase and was ushered into the sanctuary of the cells below. Barristers stopped in their tracks, lifting their grey-wigged heads to observe the commotion. Journalists leaving the press bench in front of the dock stood in silence, too astonished by the unexpected outburst even to take notes. A routine court appearance had just been transformed into another news break.
Stunned by her own actions, Elizabeth Barber rushed from the court, sobbing. ‘She is a killer. She is not the victim here. Rachel was the victim. Rachel. Yet she feels hard done by and unfairly treated. How can that be?’ Lawyers waited for things to clear before creeping past in an uncomfortable silence, avoiding the tears of a grieving mother; avoiding the tangible, unmistakable grief every person in the waiting area could feel.
Outside in the street, a TV journalist ran briskly up the footpath towards Elizabeth, asking for an interview. While the journalist went to organise her camera crew, others crowded around, keen to hear a mother’s thoughts on the morning’s proceedings.
‘How much sympathy did she have for Rachel?’ Elizabeth continued. ‘She says she suffered from amnesia. Yet now that it suits her, it appears her memory is coming back. She had no memory at the Supreme Court, though she remembered my daughter begging for her life, pleading with her, “Please, please don’t.”
‘She should do the time that was allotted to her, but she thinks the courts have been unfair to her, too harsh. How much sympathy did she have for Rachel when she was squeezing the life out of her? And how much more can she remember?
‘I wanted her to see my eyes. They are Rachel’s eyes. I wanted her to look at me and see Rachel.’
Throughout the afternoon and evening the story made news on TV and radio broadcasts. Distraught mother confronts her daughter’s killer. By the following morning it was news around the State as the newspapers picked up the story. Envy killer lodges appeal – teen’s murderer remembers more stated the weekend’s Herald Sun, reporting the latest twist in one of Australia’s most bizarre murders.
Caroline Reed Robertson was making headlines all over again.
But not for long.
Because of the backlog of appeal applications waiting to find their way into the Court of Appeal, a lengthy waiting game followed Caroline Reed Robertson’s preliminary appeal hearing.
It would be eight long months before her name surfaced on the court’s lists.
Her case, still on the grounds that her punishment had been ‘manifestly excessive’, was finally listed to be heard on 16 February, 2002.
But on 5 February, just days before she was due to make her final appearance in court, Robertson changed her mind again; this time formally withdrawing the appeal.
Robertson offered no explanation for the sudden turnaround. Speculation was rife that she’d been given ‘sound legal advice’, no doubt warning her that she might not only lose her appeal, but receive a stiffer sentence.
Either way, she simply signed off on the official court documentation, indicating that she wished to abandon her appeal against the length of her sentence. There was no going back.
So, finally, by February 2002, almost three years after stalking and strangling Rachel Barber, the wait was over for the Barber family. A lawyer from the Office of Public Prosecutions contacted the Barbers with the news.
The Barbers had harboured hopes that any information from an appeal hearing might at least fill in some of the gaps in their knowledge of Rachel’s final hours. But their hopes of adding a date to Rachel’s headstone recording the exact day of her death, and the time she died, would be locked away with many other disturbing unknowns.
34
THE IMPORTANCE OF PHOTOGRAPHS
I wrote in a letter to Rachel not long after her death concerning the importance of photographs. I remember my cousin Michele telling us how lucky we were to have so many photographs of Rachel, and recent ones too.
Yet the most recent ones were described to us as horrific. ‘Prepare yourselves,’ we were told, and we were asked to sign indemnity forms.
Photographs. We have photographs of our memories. We have now seen photographs from all of Rachel’s life, her birth – and death.
What a struggle this has been. We were unable to view her body for reasons I have already given, but we experienced guilt for abandoning our daughter to the laws of the land. And how ridiculous this sounds. We had searched, we had struggled with police to find our beautiful daughter and yet, when she was found, we did not even ask the detectives who announced her death if we could go to Rachel’s side. We never asked. And then when we were strongly advised not to see her body because this would jeopardise the trial we never argued. Did we accept this all too easily?
Somehow at the time it wasn’t important. It was the conclusion of our mammoth quest that was important. We might as well have been fighting Arthurian black knights and dragons, so hard had our struggle been.
But with time we felt we had abandoned Rachel. How could we not have insisted on being near Rachel? Could we not even have shared a silent moment in the same room? Could we not have sat beside Rachel with a sheet over her body, protecting our eyes from whatever it was we could not see because of the trial? Could we not have sat there and held her hand?
Paul Ross wanted to protect us. He had always been our gallant knight. He told us how he would look at the loveliness of Rachel’s photographs adorning our walls. He told us there was no resemblance between these and the forensic photographs. Over a period of two years the subject would be broached. He wanted to spare us from a lasting memory of Rachel’s decomposed self.
‘Remember her as she was,’ cried my distraught mother. ‘Rachel was so beautiful. Don’t do this to her, please,’ she begged. ‘Think what Rachel would want. Don’t leave Michael with ugly memories of his beautiful daughter.’
At first I did not want to see the photos. I was scared. But seeing the photographs would not replace our memories of a physical contact with Rachel. Caroline not only murdered Rachel and stole her life from us, she stole from us the parental right to be with our daughter’s body after her death. By wrapping her, and burying her in a shallow grave at the conclusion of a hot, hot summer, she also denied Rachel the right of having her mother and father say goodbye and embrace her body. A right denied for the protection of memories. A right denied so justice could be done.
Did Mike broach the subject first? Was it Mike who said, ‘Rachel’s not in a position to tell us we can’t see her death photographs.’
We were advised to cremate Rachel, so horrific were her decomposed remains. But we knew Rachel had always said, ‘If ever I die young I don’t want to be cremated.’ So we thought, we all die, we all decompose – often at different rates, but decomposition always has the same result – bones. Rachel knew this, and from her knowledge that her bones were to be left within the confines of our planet earth, we imagined her saying, ‘Hey world, I existed here once.’ So we did not cremate Rachel.
But we were denied access to our daughter’s body before its burial. And now we were being denied access to our daughter’s photographs. What was the hidden reason for this? Perhaps Rachel’s body was not at rest, nine feet down, clothed in rosewood. Maybe she had been cremated against our will. I know this was not the case. But there was always the hint of these disquieting mind games.
We spoke to Michael Clarebrough, our psychologist, who said this was a decision we would have to make for ourselves. Not what the police thought, or what my mother thought, or even what he thought. What mattered was what we thought. I asked him if he had viewed the body of his brother who had been murdered in his twenties, and if he had, was his lasting memory this image, or rather the memories of his brother’s life? Michael said he had seen his brother’s body and that his memories have always been of his living brot
her. It is to these memories that Michael continues to wear his brother’s motorbike jacket.
From the time we decided we should see Rachel’s photographs there were always the gentle put-offs, or not so gentle put-offs. ‘You are Supreme Court witnesses. You must wait until after the trial,’ or ‘Counselling must be sought on this matter.’
Caught up in the photograph dilemma was my realisation that we had forgotten to arrange for prayers to be said over Rachel’s body. Some months earlier I had been watching a movie about a passenger jet crash in the United States. Those killed were to remain on the tarmac overnight covered in blankets until the investigators arrived the next day.
One senior fire officer had said, ‘I don’t know, this doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t they at least have a few words said over them, you know, like a prayer.’
The other officer said, ‘Yes, I’ve just arranged for a priest to say prayers over each body.’
Until then it hadn’t occurred to me that Rachel had not had a prayer said over her body until her funeral. Even though we had said prayers for Rachel’s departing soul thirteen days after her murder, it was still twenty-four days before prayers were said close to her body. It seemed that this was one more right her killer had robbed her of. And it was our mistake, and only ours, for not thinking of it while we were immersed in shock.