Looking haunted and gaunt, Barry Kennedy takes the stand and admits the doors of the unit were closed, but not locked the night Deidre was abducted and that they would have pulled the window shut to self-lock. It was, he says, found slightly ajar the next day.
Byrne is gentle. ‘Do you recall hearing anything that night?’
‘No, I didn’t hear anything.’ Barry puts his head down as he says it, rubbing his forehead with a shaky hand. There is something in his demeanour that alerts the jury that this is more than an expression of his grief. Something deeper, more troubling.
Both Byrne and Davis are grateful the Kennedy’s have finished giving evidence, at least for the time being unless they are recalled. The next witnesses’ evidence won’t be nearly as heartbreaking.
36
The police had found them, the Crown have lined them up and now they are here, in Brisbane’s Supreme Court: RAAF witnesses reflecting on something that happened 27 years earlier.
Warrant Officer Roland Gay says he has given the matter a great deal of thought since he spoke to police. He tries to be as specific as possible but it sounds confused, convoluted. ‘It started to fall into place, this particular thing involving an individual leaving the course early, and what hit me again was a period of time which was pre-Easter for the Easter break … It fell into place, an instant where a recruit was going to leave the course early.’ It could be perfect evidence for the prosecution but, Gay admits, try as he might, he can’t remember if that recruit was Raymond Carroll.
The Flight Sergeant in charge of administrative records, Ronald Oldmeadow, explains the different types of RAAF leave. For recruits, compassionate leave related to death or illness of a family member is known as ‘special’ leave and given at the discretion of the Commanding Officer. If a recruit has problems at home, that leave can be given. The story will be checked to see if it has substance, perhaps by the Commanding Officer, or the padre. There are no records kept.
Liz Wilson appears to struggle with the concept, and Justice Muir intervenes. ‘It seems to me he has made his position perfectly plain. He’s saying RAAF has compassionate leave and there are terms and conditions which are attached to it … but recruits … are treated on a different basis … which is called special leave … and dealt with at the Commanding Officer’s discretion.’
Robert Matthews had worked in the clothing store, handling uniforms and clothing cards, signed by air-force personnel when they were moving to another base. If a recruit was absent, the notation was made in a leather-bound register book but, he tells the court, he could not find that book when police inquiries were made into this matter in the mid eighties.
Former recruit Darryl Stevensen cannot recall much of Carroll, except that he was once dragged outside by a group of fellow recruits and hosed down. The evidence he gave in 1985, he tells Byrne, was that he recalled introducing Carroll to his parents in the canteen after the passing-out parade. Now, he cannot remember if it had been Carroll he had introduced. It is just too long ago.
RAAF witnesses are milling outside the court, talking as they wait to be called to give evidence. It is obvious, Davis thinks, that there is discussion between them, an opportunity to jog their memories and present hearsay evidence.
Witness after witness has no recollection of Carroll being on the train with them leaving Edinburgh. It is possible he may have been in another compartment, they concede, but they don’t remember seeing him. He definitely wasn’t in their group. And now recruit Raymond Sager recalls there were two people missing from the parade. One was back-coursed and the other, Carroll, had gone home. He had omitted to tell police this in his original statement because he had forgotten, but just prior to the first committal, he signed an amended statement. ‘I now remember that Raymond John Carroll travelled home on compassionate leave about one week prior to our graduation.’
There are also lighter moments to break the monotony of the stream of RAAF witnesses giving evidence. Trevor Kitson reiterates what he had said at the first trial – that he didn’t relate to Carroll, didn’t have much time for him at all. He also remembers, now that the course instructor, Raymond Martin, had gone and had a chat to Carroll, went to tell him something.
Wilson wants to be sure that false memories are not being carelessly aired.
‘It’s not something that came into your mind today?’ Wilson asks.
‘No.’
‘Or you’ve been talking to others about this?’
‘Negatory.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Negatory.’
‘That would be “no”?’
‘Well, when I went to school that’s what it meant, yeah.’
Lunch breaks. Adjournments. Legal argument. Bowing to the judge. Taking the oath. The jury in and out of the courtroom. The legal banter: I object. Overruled. May I seek instructions? You’re excused. If your Honour pleases …
Recruit Michael Sheean is confident, militarily trained to answer questions in a snappy voice. Yes Sir! No Sir! He is adamant that Carroll was called away, and that he and another recruit had had to pack up Carroll’s weapons. He may have given conflicting evidence in the past, he admits, but it was not deliberate. He remembers everything now, and his memory is right.
Is this, Davis asks, some flash of inspiration, perhaps? Selective memory?
No, Sheean responds. It’s just that he is nervous and frightened in the witness stand. But he knows what he knows. And he knows this: ‘… I don’t want to get Raymond into trouble for something he hasn’t done. I don’t want to lie to you. I don’t want to lie nor to the police. I don’t want to lie to my bloody self, because this is what I can recall. I can only say exactly what I recall and how I recall it.’
Sheean also says that, even if someone didn’t march, they would still be in the photo as it went into RAAF records. Each recruit got a copy, as did the instructor.
‘Was Carroll present at the time of your parade?’
‘No, definitely not.’
Raymond Martin particularly remembers course 1203 as it was the first time he had acted as an instructor to recruits. Raymond Carroll, he says, did not graduate with the rest of the course.
‘And why was that?’
‘Because he wasn’t on the base to graduate.’
‘Why was he not on the base?’
‘Because he was in Ipswich or Brisbane; he left the base on leave.’
Former recruits have faded memories but similar recollections. Andrew Frankland, who had spoken to police in 1983 during early investigations, says he remembers that, some time prior to the graduation, Carroll left on compassionate leave. ‘I recall he was late getting to Wagga. The train which travelled from Melbourne to Wagga arrived after the Anzac Day weekend and Carroll arrived days, if not a week, after that.’ Other former recruits Flynn and Godwin, who did not give evidence at the murder trial, have been located and are now on video-link from London. They share similar recollections. Carroll didn’t finish the course … Left about a week before … Subsequent days he was missing from the course … He did not return, to my knowledge.
Barry Kennedy sits behind Faye in court, watching as she dips her head in tears and Derek consoles her. The evidence is harrowing, and he wants to cry himself; does so when he escapes the public gaze. He has made eye contact with Carroll on numerous occasions, once passed him as he walked into the men’s toilet. He held on tightly to his anger, knowing that hauling off wouldn’t achieve anything.
He is riding down the court elevator to go outside and have a smoke, and the lift door has stopped. Ilma Carroll and her daughter Sandra are poised to step in, before they notice who is inside. Barry gestures for them to enter. ‘You can take this lift, if you like,’ he says. They ride in silence, go their separate ways when they reach the ground floor.
This whole nightmare isn’t their fault, he reasons.
Day seven. The Crown calls Desley Robyn Hill.
By her own admission, she’s not very bright. Left school a
t 14 with limited education. She can remember years, but not dates and times. Desley speaks softly, in little more than a whisper, like a breeze is blowing through her windpipe. Speaks with a dawdle in her voice. ‘I thought he would stay the night, but he never. I seen him …’
She drives the defence to distraction.
She doesn’t remember when her daughter, Natasha, was conceived but she remembers the place, on a weekend down at the Gold Coast. It wasn’t like the bloke was a one-night stand or anything, she says: their fathers knew each other from work. But he wouldn’t have a bar of it when she told him, instead snorted, dug his hands into his pocket and shook his head back and forth, his mouth gasping for air like a fish on dry sand. He doesn’t believe her, he said; no, no bloody way. Well it’s true, she insisted, her chin trembling, because her period is late and her mother guessed she was expecting even before she saw the doctor. A young woman in her late teens doesn’t usually get sick just for no reason. No, no bloody way, he said again and he was out the door while she stood there, flustered and humiliated with fingers trawling across her belly and eyes swollen with tears. She is married now and that was years ago, but the memory has left a rancid taste, so bitter that even now when she mouths his name it comes out in a half spit, her lip curled around it. Desley was 19 years old, pregnant and alone, and now she is aghast when asked if she has any more children. No way, she says. One was enough. She was glad when the baby, whom she named Natasha, made her debut 10 weeks premature on 25 July 1973. A few months after she conceived, she says, she and Raymond started seeing each other again.
Desley reiterates what she told Detective Hitch. How Raymond just materialised, out of the blue, and then bolted when he saw a news report about Deidre Kennedy.
Davis can’t believe what he is hearing. Could she help him calculate when Natasha would have been conceived if she had gone full term with the pregnancy? Surely she must have fallen pregnant in January 1973?
‘I never thought about it. It’s a time I wanted to forget …’
He tries to be logical, patient. If Natasha was conceived in January, and it took six weeks to realise she was pregnant, then she would not have known until some time in February? So was it then that she told the father, who didn’t believe her? What did she do; strike up the relationship with Mr Carroll immediately after? Wasn’t it a couple of months later?
Desley bites her lip. ‘I know it was a while. I don’t know how long.’
‘Mr Carroll did not come and visit you around about the time Deidre Kennedy’s body was discovered, did he?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘You’re just lying … it’s a complete fabrication, isn’t it?’It is not possible, Davis continues. She could not have known she was pregnant until February and by then, Carroll was in the air force. There was no time for her to have a relationship with him. She was living with her parents, but no one can check with them that he visited that night, because they are both deceased.
Watching the exchange between the defence barrister and Desley, Faye wants to cry for her. Davis is picking her apart like a crow.
And he keeps at it. She had not remembered anything of his visit for 27 years, until Detective Robert Hitch jogged her memory – is that what she is saying? Yes, that’s right. Does she remember going to the toilet that particular day? No. ‘See, you gave evidence about this … before the judge at the committal hearing … and you said, “When I got home, I went and used the toilet and just laid down.” Do you agree you said that?’
‘Yes.’
Davis is dripping now with unrelenting sarcasm. ‘You just said a moment ago that you clearly remembered that you didn’t walk Mr Carroll to the train station. You just said that, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘But before the other judge on another day you say that you walked him to the station, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, which one is right? Did you or didn’t you?’
‘I walked him halfway.’
‘Part way?’
‘Yes.’
Davis tips forward on the balls of his feet, a dramatic gesture designed to grab the jury’s attention. ‘I see. So, before, you said you walked him to the station. That is what you said on another occasion. And now you are going to split the difference and say that you walked him part way. Is that seriously your evidence?’
‘Yes.’
Unrelenting. She didn’t see any news of Deidre’s murder, did she? The truth was, that Detective-Sergeant Herpich had shown her the video of that news broadcast.
No, Hill says, she cannot recall seeing any other story about the murder, even though it had extensive coverage at the time.
So, Davis continues, how can she tie down Carroll’s visit 27 years after the event? All of it is just lies, a nonsense. ‘I suggest to you that my client did not visit you and did not have a relationship with you at all while you were pregnant with Natasha?’
‘He did.’
‘And that any relationship between you and he wasn’t reignited until 1975 when he was visiting from Darwin …’
‘He came down to see me that day. He only stayed a few hours. He said he had to go home because his mother was sick.’
Desley Hill is starting to tire but she will not change her story. The relationship petered out, she says. She heard he had gone to Darwin, that he had married and she wrote two letters. One was to his wife Joy, telling her about their affair. She looks hangdog when attacked on this. She thought the wife had a right to know her husband was playing up.
The defence doesn’t think so. It was a vendetta, wasn’t it, aimed simply to get back at Carroll? A case of hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?
Desley shakes her head. The other letter was directed to Raymond, apologising for the first. She never seen him again, she says, until her twenty-first birthday party in June 1975.
Peter Davis was exhausted at the conclusion of the Hill cross-examination. Desley, he recalls, is one of those people who just naturally looks bewildered all the time. Once, while asking her a very important question, she was staring over his shoulder, fixated on something at the back of the court. He thought, there must be something really spectacular back there, and turned around to look. There was nothing. He wanted to shout out ‘Oi! Concentrate, please?’ but Desley eventually re-focused. It was tough going.
But if Desley was hard work, it wasn’t going to get any easier.
37
Joy Meyers avoids looking at Carroll when she takes the stand. She reiterates that, as it was so hot in Darwin, Kerry-Ann was usually dressed in singlet, nappy and plastic pilchers – clothing that easily allowed bruising to be seen. The courtroom falls silent as she again recounts the nightmare of how her daughter was abused.
Davis will have none of it. ‘You’ve gone out of your way not to tell anyone about it.’
‘I wouldn’t say I’ve gone out of my way. It was just that I was very young and a lot of people would probably think, well, she’s only a young mother; she’s just, you know, being over-protective or whatever.’
‘I see.’
‘It was 20-odd years ago. Young mothers didn’t have the system, you know, like they’ve got now.’ Meyers concedes that she made the allegations in 1983 only after she was approached by a policeman in connection with the investigation into the murder of Deidre Kennedy. But she is adamant, defiant: she is not lying about anything. ‘That’s wrong,’ she fires back at Davis, ‘totally wrong, and stop trying to mislead me … and I know what I’m saying; that happened.’
‘I put it to you that my client never bit the child.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘And that he never went in the room and locked you out while he was – ’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘… changing a nappy.’
‘Wrong.’
‘I put it to you that he proposed the name Desley for that child but never the name Deidre – ’
‘You’re wrong in
those cases, too.’
‘Now, the break-up of your marriage – I suggest to you that you received a letter from Desley Hill … suggesting there may have been some infidelity by Raymond. Did you get that letter?’
‘I don’t remember, I could have but I don’t remember it now.’
This sounds preposterous to Davis: she can recall that Carroll accused her of having an affair when he returned to Darwin from a brief trip to Amberley Air Base at Ipswich, but not a woman alleging an affair? Davis reminds her that at the first trial she was asked the question and she had admitted she had received a letter. She hunches her shoulders, takes a glass of water with trembling hand. She hates being on display like this.
Davis moves to another subject. Yes, she agrees she knows Kerry-Ann was suffering, but she wanted to find out what was going on.
‘You mean, you wanted to keep putting the child through the pain to see what occurred?’
‘I didn’t really want to put her through it but it was the only way I could find out to see what was happening again.’
‘This is just an invention by you, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s not an invention at all.’
‘It didn’t occur.’
Although, intellectually, Meyers is no match for Davis, she is spiky when cornered. ‘It did occur, and what right have you got to say that it didn’t?’
Justice In Jeopardy Page 22