Wilkinson was taken to the site by Corrective Services’ special-operations officers. Because of his stroppy behaviour on his last outing, they were in no mood for any of his nonsense and told him that if he tried to escape, they would shoot him. This seemed to calm him down. As the search began and Smith and he walked, he asked if the detective had had a chance to look into the matters he’d raised the other day. Smith told him he’d been busy organising the search: ‘I’ve done what normally takes a week in a couple of days.’ Wilkinson, as always, appeared to have absolutely no interest in the immense effort involved in the searches and began rambling yet again about Julie’s supposed rape. After a while, he complained about some of the police he could see, and Smith said, ‘We’ve got about nine detectives. We’re supposed to have twenty, twenty-one, and we’ve got nine.’ He wasn’t sure how long the officers from the Forensic Services Group could stay: ‘I’m pushing the envelope now with them . . . they’ve said that they’ve been out here three times [already].’
The two men kept chatting. Wilkinson was in a fairly good mood today and Smith was keen to keep him talking in the hope he might provide some useful information. At one stage he said to the prisoner, ‘While I think of it, just make sure you have a good check for ticks and leeches. I picked a tick up probably last Wednesday when we came up here and I didn’t find it until Saturday, I was starting to feel a bit ill. I’ve still got the lump on my neck there . . . It’s still sore.’
Wilkinson: ‘You know they can’t hurt you but.’
Smith: ‘No, but they just make you feel a bit ordinary.’
Wilkinson: ‘You got any, you know, these weeds called thistles?’
Smith: ‘Yeah.’
Wilkinson: ‘When you break the stem it’s like a milky poison that comes out. You can get some of that and rub it on the, fuckin’ where it was.’
Smith: ‘Okay, I’ll give it a run.’
Wilkinson identified a patch of bush in a fifty metre arc and Smith looked at it, saying, ‘The bush is pretty thick, in four years it’s grown, so it’s hard to walk through. How deep did you bury the body?’
Wilkinson: ‘I’d say about a foot.’
Smith: ‘So not much soil on top?’
Wilkinson: ‘I wouldn’t even say a foot, though. I wouldn’t even say a foot.’
Smith kept questioning Wilkinson, trying to get him to recall the events of 28 April and be more specific about where the grave might be. One of the things in his mind was that Wilkinson was lazy. His history showed he didn’t like physical exercise, or indeed effort of any kind. It was unlikely he would have taken Kylie far from the track or buried her deeply.
Wilkinson gave the appearance of trying to be helpful, saying, ‘I’m more than happy to keep walking down the track. I don’t want to get back into court and youse come in there and say, well, the barrister gets up, the prosecutor gets up and says, “Your Honour, we’ve looked but again—nothing.” ’
Smith: ‘Um.’
Wilkinson: ‘I don’t want to have to go through that again.’ Then he changed direction suddenly: ‘What’s the prosecutor reckon?’
Smith: ‘How do you mean?’
Wilkinson: ‘Well, in terms of length of sentence.’
Smith: ‘He hasn’t even spoken about that to us.’
Wilkinson: ‘Why did he mention to Terry [Healey] thirty on the top and eighteen on the bottom?’
Smith: ‘I can only guess. I wasn’t present when that happened . . . Our barrister doesn’t talk to me direct a great deal. When he gets questions in court he’ll come and ask me, and we’ll talk for a short time sometimes before court or sometimes just after. The rest of the time it’s through the solicitor, Helen Rallis. I’ve not asked him about sentence . . . we’re not even at that stage.’
Wilkinson: ‘I’ll probably get into shit for talking to you, but it’s my life, I make the decisions for myself. You know, sixteen, fourteen, sixteen, it’s not a problem. If youse come out to the jail tomorrow and say, “All right, we’ll accept that,” well, fuck, I’ll take it . . . I just don’t want to waste any more time, you know what I mean?’
Smith: ‘Yeah.’
Wilkinson: ‘Coz I’m sure you’ve got fuckin’, plenty of other jobs to fuckin’ do.’
Smith: ‘I’ve just been concentrating on this one lately. It’s keeping me more than busy.’
The detective tried to get more information from Wilkinson about the night of the murder. He said Kylie had left home with two suitcases but Wilkinson could remember only one. He asked what had happened to it, and Wilkinson said Julie had dumped it in the Georges River; he seemed determined to try to take Julie down with him.
More searches were conducted over the next few weeks. They involved the use of ground-penetrating radar, excavators and slashers, a cadaver dog, a boat and many police officers doing a line search at arm’s length from each other, accompanied by an anthropologist and an archaeologist. On one weekend, Smith and another Gosford detective, Steve Norton, went to Karool Road on their own time and cleared some ground. Despite all this effort, no grave was found. Alan Wilkinson, whose house is fairly near the search sites, was not seen. The searchers did encounter funnelweb spiders, a diamond python, and various leeches and ticks. The cost of these latest efforts was $26,900.
*
Kylie’s family was advised of each search before it occurred, and Carol was so anxious that she took time off work and sat by the phone at home. These experiences contributed to the depression she suffered for years after Kylie’s disappearance. There were also more court hearings over various legal matters, all placing yet more pressure on the family.
On 12 November there was another surprise: Wilkinson changed his mind again and announced he was now prepared to plead guilty to murder. John Kiely, still wary about his unpredictability, asked Justice Johnson to formally convict the prisoner, and he did so. It was a dramatic moment.
Kylie’s family were deeply affected, in some ways pleased but also bitter. Leanne realised that by avoiding a trial, Wilkinson would be able to keep many of his secrets and she would never learn much of what had happened in the last months of Kylie’s life.
John had tears in his eyes, tears of hope that the court process was finally over. When the family left the courtroom, he felt dizzy and had trouble breathing. He sat down on a bench in the foyer and began to feel pains in his chest and a tingling in his fingers. Loosening his tie did not help and the pains got worse; he had to lie down. An ambulance was called and he was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital. He was discharged later that day.
The next and final step in the state’s judicial response to Kylie’s murder was for Wilkinson to be sentenced. This is a two-part process. First there is a court hearing, at which the prosecution and defence barristers present submissions regarding an appropriate sentence. The prosecution usually includes victim impact statements, which in a murder case may be read aloud by members of the victim’s family. The defence often presents statements from psychiatrists or psychologists seeking to explain the prisoner’s actions. The judge then considers this and other relevant material, and about a month later there is another court appearance where the judge announces the sentence and the reasons for it.
Sentencing submissions for Wilkinson were due to be heard on 21 November. But first, he again said he wanted to help police find Kylie’s grave. He again said he wanted to be interviewed by Glenn Smith. Again he was interviewed. And again, on 14 November, police returned to Mooney Mooney Creek for another search. Again Carol Edwards waited by the phone for a call from Smith to say whether her daughter’s body had been found.
The site Wilkinson now identified was some six hundred metres from the previous one, along the same track. This time the cadaver dog expressed interest in a particular spot and returned to it later. The vegetation was cut down with a slasher, and an excavator was brought down
the long track to dig the site. Several days later, the cadaver dog was brought back but no grave was found.
On 21 November, Wilkinson appeared in court, and yet again his barrister said he wanted to tell police where Kylie was buried, which was somewhere else along Mooney Mooney Creek. ‘The prisoner instructs me this morning that he is prepared to go to the site with the police,’ said Terry Healey. ‘I know there’s been some misinformation supplied in the past . . . He instructs me that if the cadaver dog was an efficient dog, he would have located the body of the deceased [already] . . . It would seem that every effort should be made in the interests of justice for the family of [Kylie] to locate her.’
John Kiely put Glenn Smith back in the witness box to confirm that Wilkinson had not indicated this new location on either of his two previous visits to Mooney Mooney with police. ‘What’s the attitude now of the police to attending the scene a third time with the prisoner?’ he asked.
‘I’m loath to do it,’ said the detective, ‘on account of the cost, both in time [and] organisation.’ Kiely established that the searches so far had cost a bit over $119,000, and said to Smith, ‘You of course would have to approach your senior officers to obtain permission for [another expensive search]?’
‘I’m trying to think of a nice way to put it,’ Smith replied. ‘My name is not very good with the various sections involved . . . It would be problematic . . . to organise another one.’
Discussion turned to the two searches that had been conducted years earlier in the Royal National Park, and finally Smith stepped down to discuss the prospect of another search (which might delay sentencing) with Kylie’s family. They gathered, with the lawyers, in a small room near the court.
There’d been much discussion among the detectives as to just what to make of Wilkinson’s claims about the location of Kylie’s grave. Was he simply lying or had he genuinely forgotten? Or had he had help in burying the body, which had later been moved without his knowledge? They decided it was likely he was simply lying. Homicide police have experience with being shown graves and know that their location is not something murderers forget. Usually, it is seared in their memory. Even if the body had been moved later by an accomplice, Wilkinson ought to have been more certain about where the original grave had been.
There were other reasons for thinking Wilkinson was playing games with them. He’d given two completely different general locations for the grave, the Royal National Park and Mooney Mooney. Obviously, at least one of them had to be wrong. But even at the Mooney Mooney Creek location, the places he’d indicated were several hundred metres or more from each other along a straight road marked with a very obvious landmark: the enormous bridge. Anyone who visits Karool Road can see that the potential for confusion on this scale is just not there.
Smith went over some of these matters with the family now. Michael had flown down from Singapore, so they were all there. Smith thought further searches would be a waste of time but he was prepared to abide by the family’s decision.
John said, ‘I don’t want them to search again, I don’t want to play his games anymore. He’s pleaded guilty, let’s draw a line in the sand and move on.’
The others agreed. They wanted Wilkinson sentenced as soon as possible.
When Smith returned to the witness box, Kiely said, ‘[The family have] expressed their opinion that [the searches have] gone on far enough?’
Smith: ‘Yes.’
Kiely: ‘That they had been traumatised by it as far as it has gone?’
Smith: ‘Yes.’
Kiely: ‘And as far as they’re concerned, I think they want to draw a line in the sand and say “That’s it”?’
Smith: ‘That’s correct.’
The family were sitting on the court benches with straight backs, mostly not touching each other. There was a tremendous sense of isolation and bleakness. It was a big decision they had just taken, and completely understandable. The wear and tear of the court process and the futile searches had been enormous. Michael had been appalled when he returned a week earlier and saw the emotional toll. Later he said, ‘The week leading up to that hearing, being at home, I could see the family changing a bit as everybody prepared in their own way. After attending the hearing I was shocked. I don’t know how my father, mother and sister could handle coming here week after week.’
The sentencing was further delayed for various technical reasons, including the difficulty the defence was having in obtaining a report from the psychiatrist Olav Nielssen. At a court hearing on 2 December, one of Kylie’s cousins had an altercation with Wilkinson’s mother outside the court. Fortunately, Glenn Smith came around the corner and got between the two women. When the court reconvened and the judge came in, Wilkinson said, ‘Could I just say some thing, your honour?’
Johnson said, ‘I suggest you don’t say anything without speaking firstly to your counsel.’
‘No, I’m going to say something,’ said Wilkinson. ‘I can well understand the family’s got the shits with me, I can well understand that, but don’t take it out on my mother, don’t take it out on anyone else in the family. If you want to have a problem with me, have a problem with me.’
To which Johnson replied, ‘Yes. Just have a seat, thank you, Mr Wilkinson.’
On the same day, during an adjournment, Wilkinson said he wanted to talk to Glenn Smith. Helen Rallis and Wilkinson’s lawyers witnessed the conversation.
‘At about 10.15 p.m. I phoned Alan about the body,’ he said, presumably referring to 28 April 2004. ‘But Alan has moved it on the left of the clearing on the left of the slope.’
‘You mean your uncle Alan?’ said Smith.
‘Yeah . . . someone told me, but I’m not saying who, that Alan has gone back and moved the body.’
There is no evidence that Alan Wilkinson had any involvement in Kylie’s death or in the disposal of her body.
Wilkinson asked Smith if he’d received a letter he’d sent him about Julie. Smith hadn’t, but the letter turned up a few days later. It read: ‘Detective Smith, Julie is involved much more than you realise.’ It claimed Wilkinson had never taken her to an alleged gravesite in the Royal National Park. Most of the rest of the three-page letter consisted of ravings about the alleged rape of 2001. Like much else that Wilkinson said and wrote, it makes a layperson curious about how the psychiatrists found him sane.
*
At what was to have been a sentencing hearing on Monday 15 December, John Kiely stood up and announced yet another surprise. Wilkinson had sacked Terry Healey and Frances McGowan, the lawyers who’d been representing him for three and a half years.
McGowan had received a letter:
Dear Frances,
After an extended visit with family this morning I regret to inform yourself and Terry that I will be seeking further legal representation. I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience that this decision may have caused, my decision is based upon the family pressure I am currently experiencing. I wish to thank both of you for everything that you have done for me over the time.
Yours truly,
Paul James Wilkinson
PS Gaol is hard enough without family and friends continuously bombarding me at every given chance.
The new solicitor, Paul Donnelly, was in court. He had been hired two days earlier, and asked for an adjournment until Friday so he could bring himself up to date and hire a new barrister. Johnson, plainly concerned at the introduction of further delays—it was now two months since the trial had been due to begin—mentioned that the case ‘already has a long history’ and ‘a change of legal representation at this stage has a significant impact upon the administration of justice. What do you expect to happen on the next occasion, the sentencing hearing to proceed?’
Donnelly had one more surprise for the court: ‘My instructions are that he wishes to withdraw his plea of guilty.’
For a while there it had looked as though this stage of the suffering of Kylie’s family was almost over. Now Paul Wilkinson had made everything uncertain once again.
In order to change a plea from guilty to not guilty, you need to have a good reason. Wilkinson claimed he’d been duped into pleading guilty by false information from his lawyers. The only ‘trial’ Paul Wilkinson would ever have was about to begin, however it was not he who was being accused of anything but his barrister and solicitor. The six-day hearing that followed, spread over several months, was to expose details of the dealings between lawyers and client, something not often done because they are usually confidential, being protected by legal privilege.
In an affidavit, Wilkinson set out his argument, all of which was later denied by his former lawyers. He admitted giving police false statements about Kylie’s grave and how she died: ‘I did so at the time because I was deeply depressed and saw it as a form of retaliation against my aggressors.’ He said his lawyers had told him there were to be 150 witnesses for the prosecution, and he didn’t know who they would be or what they would say. He was depressed by this and ‘decided to enter a plea of guilty to end it all . . . I was aware that any person who had been charged would receive reduced sentence if they entered a plea of guilty.’ He had not been informed of the conclusions of the psychiatrists who had interviewed him, and if he had been aware of Olav Nielssen’s original concerns about his fitness, ‘I would not have entered a plea of guilty for murder or manslaughter’. He had been influenced to plead guilty because his barrister, Terry Healey, had said to him, ‘Your sentence could be anywhere from sixteen years to eighteen years.’ Wilkinson said, ‘I thought about the length of the sentence and was of the opinion that I could serve such a sentence’ [but not the longer one he now knew was standard]. Finally, he wrote, ‘I state clearly that I did not kill Kylie Labouchardiere. I am not aware that she is dead and alternatively if she is dead I do not know where the body is currently located.’
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