Leanne Goodall was twenty years old and living at North Lambton when she disappeared on 30 December 1978. An investigation at the time of her disappearance established that she was last seen by her brother Warren and a family friend, boarding a Newcastle train at Muswellbrook railway station on the afternoon of Saturday, 30 December 1978. However, Fenwick discovered that Leanne arrived in Newcastle late that afternoon and that she was seen at about 4 p.m. by a former school friend, Kathryn Pearson, who spoke to her outside the Star Hotel in King Street. Leanne had left some belongings behind the counter of the hotel. The hotel had been quite crowded that afternoon and among the patrons who would have seen Leanne were Pearson’s partner at the time and his mate, both of whom had died before the coroner’s inquiry. A recreational drinker and smoker of cannabis, Leanne was known to hitchhike alone. ‘She came and went like a bird,’ was how her mother described her, but the evidence was that ‘Goodall would go to great lengths to contact her family when she was away.’
Robyn Hickie was eighteen years old when, on 7 April 1979, she left her home in Belmont to meet some friends at the Belmont Hotel. She did not arrive at the hotel and has not been seen since.
Amanda Robinson was just fourteen and lived in Swansea. On 20 April 1979—thirteen days after Robyn Hickie disappeared—Amanda went to a school dance with friends. Around midnight, she phoned her stepfather and told him she was about to catch a bus home. Amanda caught her bus and was later seen walking along a road in Swansea towards her home. She did not arrive.
The coroner found that his inquiry had been significantly hampered by the passage of time since the three went missing, and by the fact that several witnesses were now dead or otherwise unable to give evidence. He was also scathing of the original investigations, particularly those into the disappearances of Robyn and Amanda, noting a lack of adequate record-keeping; the failure to locate original documents, including statements, running sheets, notebooks, exhibits and other records; the failure to obtain written and/or signed statements, particularly from persons of interest and people who purported to provide alibi evidence for persons of interest; the failure to follow up important leads; and the failure of police to comply with their obligation to report these matters to the coroner. Abernethy observed that after Leanne’s disappearance was reported to Newcastle Police on 7 September 1979:
Amazingly, no formal, detailed investigation was undertaken by the New South Wales Police Force into the disappearance of Leanne Beth Goodall. Leanne was merely listed as a ‘missing person’ and only the most cursory inquiries into her disappearance were made by police . . . no Newcastle police officer appears to have made any attempt to link Leanne’s disappearance with the disappearance of Robyn Hickie and Amanda Robinson a matter of four months later . . . The overall failure of the NSW Police Force and its personnel to investigate the disappearance of Leanne Beth Goodall as a likely homicide must also be heavily criticised. This criticism is aimed at all relevant Newcastle police officers, together with personnel of the Missing Persons Bureau over the years.
It was, the coroner concluded, a ‘parlous initial investigation’.
Ivan was interviewed by police and called as a witness at the Robinson, Hickie and Goodall inquest. Fenwick had been unable to account for Ivan’s movements on the days each of the three disappeared, although this was not surprising given the disappearances had occurred around twenty years earlier. At the inquest Ivan again denied any knowledge of or involvement in the disappearance of the girls. He did concede that he had worked and stayed in and around the Hunter Region at or about the time the three disappeared, and that in the 1980s he had owned numerous weapons. Other evidence given by Ivan was contradicted by various witnesses, causing the coroner to observe:
Given the past history of Ivan Milat, his known propensity for violence, his picking up of hitchhikers going back to . . . at least 1971, his possession of a large number of firearms, and other weapons, and his connection with the Hunter Region both in a work and social setting make Ivan Milat a major person of interest in relation to the missing girls, perhaps more so Leanne Goodall than Robyn Hickie or Amanda Robinson.
On 5 July 2002, after a lengthy inquest, Abernethy handed down identical findings for Robyn Hickie, Amanda Robinson and Leanne Goodall, stating that each was ‘deceased despite the fact that her body has never been located’.
A fourth disappearance in the Hunter Region investigated by Strike Force Fenwick was that of 24-year-old Debbie Rae Pritchard, who was living at Merewether, a suburb of Newcastle, when she was reported missing in the early hours of 7 March 1982. The previous evening, Debbie had completed her shift as a barmaid at the Federal Hotel in Hamilton, returned home, drunk some wine and then gone to a party in Merewether with her female housemates. After leaving the party she visited a number of nightclubs in the Newcastle CBD. Sometime after midnight Debbie spoke to the doorman at the Palais Royale dance hall in Hunter Street, telling him she had argued with her boyfriend, and asking him about the cost of a taxi fare to the boyfriend’s home in Whitebridge. Soon afterwards Debbie was seen crossing Hunter Street in the company of a ‘dark-skinned, well-built man’. Both got into a taxi. She was not seen again.
An investigation into Debbie’s disappearance—which was regarded as suspicious—began the next day at Newcastle Police Station. A pair of men’s Wrangler trousers, a pair of brown Windsor Smith shoes and a denim skirt were quickly found underneath the Stockton Bridge, Kooragang Island. The skirt belonged to Debbie. A search of the area failed to find any more clothing or anything else that could be linked to Debbie’s disappearance. While Newcastle Police soon concluded that Debbie had been murdered, for the next ten years she was recorded only as a missing person.
On 11 May 1992, a road crew widening and excavating Coxs Lane, Fullerton Cove, for the construction of a small bridge, found skeletal remains, including an upper and lower jaw. Dental records identified the remains as being those of Debbie. The discovery sparked a murder investigation. The condition of the remains made it impossible to determine the exact cause of death, but underwear found with the remains had been slashed. Four years earlier, a bone found nearby had been handed in to police. An inquest held into Debbie’s death by the Newcastle coroner in April 1993 resulted in an open finding. It found the last confirmed sighting of Debbie was by a taxidriver named Garry John Renshaw.
Five years later, Strike Force Fenwick reopened the murder investigation. Again, it uncovered serious flaws and omissions in the initial investigation, and the loss or disposal of crucial evidence. The bone handed in to Stockton Police in 1989 and later disposed of as a cow’s bone was now believed to have been Debbie’s right femur. Fenwick also identified significant avenues of inquiry that had not been pursued during any previous investigation.
In 2003 Fenwick’s findings convinced the state coroner, John Abernethy, to conduct a second inquest into Debbie’s disappearance. The findings of the coronial inquest a decade earlier were quashed. Once again, the coroner was scathing of the original police investigations:
[M]y heart goes out to this family [the Pritchard family] who have remained so dignified in the face of a somewhat insensitive bureaucracy [the New South Wales Police] which has not handled the most serious case of homicide of its daughter particularly well, but even in my witness box has not been prepared to admit its failings . . . At the time in Newcastle [the 1970s through to the 1990s] there appears to have been a criminal investigation system which was below acceptable standards inherent in the investigation of homicides.
Even the Newcastle Coroner’s Court could not escape Abernethy’s wrath. Searches by both Fenwick and the coroner had been unable to find either taped recordings or typed transcripts of the 1993 inquest into Debbie’s murder. The tapes had apparently been recorded over, causing Abernethy to order that in future, ‘transcripts must be obtained and placed with the papers on all “open finding” cases, and a range of other cases’.
The taxidriver, Garry Renshaw, told the 2003
inquest that on 7 March 1984 he had driven Debbie and a male passenger to a cul-de-sac in Whitebridge where Pritchard’s boyfriend lived. After Debbie and her companion left the taxi, Renshaw drove off but, based on what he called ‘a hunch that something was wrong, that something wasn’t right’, he returned to the cul-de-sac, but saw no one.
Twenty-two-year-old Maurice Joseph Marsland, a sex offender serving a prison sentence of three and a half years for burglary, had escaped from Cessnock gaol about fifteen hours before Debbie disappeared, and matched the description of the man who had shared a taxi with her to Lonus Avenue. Seven weeks after his escape, Marsland was arrested in Cairns, Queensland, for robbery and assaulting a police officer. Newcastle detectives travelled to Cairns and interviewed Marsland, who claimed to have an alibi for the night Debbie vanished: he was in Sydney. At the same time Marsland admitted to stealing a yellow station wagon after his escape. The station wagon had been found on 21 March by police in Tamworth. When the owner picked up his car he found two ticket stubs for a concert at Newcastle’s Civic Theatre on 6 March in the glove box, and a blood stain on the front seat. No forensic tests were done on the car. A pair of men’s Wrangler trousers and a pair of brown Windsor Smith shoes that had been in the car were missing.
Despite Marsland’s admission that he had stolen the wagon, its link to Debbie (the owner’s missing shoes and jeans were found with Debbie’s skirt the day after her disappearance), Marsland’s resemblance to the man who had shared a taxi with her (Marsland, a Torres Strait Islander, was dark-skinned and powerfully built), and the stubs for the Newcastle concert on the night Debbie disappeared, the police accepted Marsland’s alibi. The second investigation, which was launched after the discovery of Debbie’s remains in 1992, ignored Marsland and went down a ‘tunnel’ by chasing the taxidriver Garry Renshaw as the killer. Renshaw remained a suspect after the 1993 inquest.
Evidence was given to the 2003 inquest that Marsland’s alibi had never been adequately tested. After his arrest in Cairns, Marsland spent a little time in gaol before emerging in Sydney in the mid-1980s, where he robbed and raped women in the city’s eastern and inner western suburbs. In 1986 Marsland was arrested and charged with raping four women in the eastern suburbs. Inexplicably, he was given bail, which was continued even after he was committed for trial.
In late October 1987, Marsland, then unemployed and living at Summer Hill, was again arrested and charged with two counts of sexual assault, two of assault and robbery, two of breaking and entering with intent, and one of entering a building with intent to commit a crime. This time bail was refused. Two weeks before his arrest Marsland, wearing a mask, had broken into a house at Summer Hill, threatened the two inhabitants with a knife, assaulted and robbed the man of $5000 and then raped the man’s partner several times. A week later he had broken into another Summer Hill house and raped a woman after robbing her of $30.
In May 1990 Marsland was gaoled for twelve years. Six years later Marsland, aged 35, was stabbed to death in Goulburn gaol, apparently as part of a gaol-yard dispute. Three days later, convicted murderers Mark Morris and Jason Richards and armed robber Raymond Carrion were charged with his murder. On 24 February 1998, Morris pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to attempting to persuade a witness to give false evidence and was sentenced to 21 months’ gaol. The murder charges against all three were dropped, due to a lack of evidence.
Five months later Carrion was stabbed several times in the chest and head with a ‘shiv’ (a gaol-fashioned knife) while in the shower block of Wing 12 at Long Bay gaol. Long-term inmates Peter Buchanan, Trevor Thomas and Justin Smith were charged with the murder. Again, it was believed to be the result of a gaol dispute. All three were committed for trial for murdering Carrion; in 2004 all charges were dropped because of difficulties with the evidence.
Fenwick presented a compelling case against Marsland to the 2003 inquest. It included his long criminal record for sexual assaults and other serious crimes; the timing of his escape from gaol; the fact that he had given a false alibi (Marsland had been seen in the Newcastle area on the night of the disappearance); his habit of going to local nightclubs, including the Palais Royale; statements by several witnesses who had seen Debbie near the Palais Royale with a man closely fitting Marsland’s description; evidence linking soil samples taken from Pritchard’s skirt with Whitebridge, where she left the taxi with a man resembling Marsland; the fact that Debbie’s underwear had been cut with a knife, Marsland’s weapon of choice; and the fact that fifteen months before Debbie’s abduction Marsland had been charged but acquitted of raping a woman he had met at the Palais Royale.
The coroner, John Abernethy, agreed with the strike force, finding that ‘Debbie Rae Pritchard on 7 March 1982 at or near Newcastle, was murdered by a person since deceased’—that person being Maurice Joseph Marsland. He formally cleared Garry Renshaw of any connection with Debbie’s murder.
Debbie’s sister-in-law, Val Pritchard, described the findings as an ‘opportunity of bringing this to a closure . . . We firmly believe that Debbie’s murder should have been concluded in 1982 when it was committed. We’ve waited 21 years.’
Commenting on the series of inquests into the deaths of Robyn Hickie, Amanda Robinson, Leanne Goodall and Debbie Rae Pritchard, the coroner observed: ‘The strike force [Fenwick] is in my view something of a showpiece. It shows what can be done where the resources are provided. My hope is that from it, many of the innovations of the strike force will be utilised in other major investigations, particularly of homicides and other critical incidents.’ In his correspondence to the police commissioner, Ken Moroney, Abernethy recommended:
That this case and my comments be analysed by those responsible for the training of criminal investigators and of leaders of teams of criminal investigators, with a view to ascertaining whether it is appropriate to utilise it as a teaching tool.
That NSW Police implements the recommendations made in the Hickie, Robinson and Goodall Inquests to the extent that they have not been implemented.
That the NSW Police Homicide Squad be adequately resourced on a ‘teams’ basis with each team to be led by an experienced investigator, preferably a Commissioned Officer with proven Homicide experience; that the Squad contains a team deployed to deal solely with unsolved Homicides; that the State Coroner’s Support Section contain Homicide Squad members in order to ensure the proper presentation of unsolved Homicides to the State Coroner.
The coroner also recommended that ‘the NSW Police formally commends the leadership and membership of Strike Force Fenwick for the exemplary manner in which it conducted a re-investigation into all relevant matters’.
In February 2004 Moroney announced the creation of a unit dedicated solely to the investigation of unsolved historical homicides—four years after the Police Executive had argued against the establishment of such a unit. In 2006 The Sun-Herald reported that, contrary to promises Moroney had given to the families of victims, detectives were still being diverted from unsolved historical homicides to current cases. It took another two years for the ‘teams’ recommended by the coroner to be established within the Homicide Squad to pursue cold case reviews.
Suspicions that Ivan Milat was involved with at least three of the Newcastle disappearances did not end with Ivan’s denials. Yet for all its efforts, Strike Force Fenwick could find no evidence linking Ivan to the disappearances of Robyn Hickie, Amanda Robinson or Leanne Goodall. At the time the three went missing, Ivan was living with his then partner and future wife, Karen. Ivan’s abductions and attempted abductions appear to have occurred when he was not in what he considered to be a stable and controlling situation with a woman. Ivan’s violent history will always make him a person of interest but, unless new evidence comes to light, it is not possible to implicate him in the Newcastle disappearances.
17
COLD CASES REOPENED
The achievements of Task Force Air and Strike Force Fenwick were catalysts for the reinvestigation of unsolved mu
rders in New South Wales. Of the 400 unsolved homicides identified by the cold case unit, around 100 were eventually given priority. As the years passed, reopening or even reviewing these cases had become increasingly difficult due to the loss or destruction of operational records and other irreplaceable documents and exhibits. The loss of this material denied investigators the opportunity to take advantage of new technologies and investigative methods in areas such as blood and DNA analysis, fingerprint comparison and ballistics. But, as the following chapter shows, where exhibits had survived, modern technology could sometimes be used to extract vital new information that could both transform and energise an investigation.
Around 1 a.m. on Saturday, 18 February 1984, 24-year-old Johanne Coral Hatty from Victoria finished her shift in the restaurant at Sydney’s Regent Hotel, where she worked as the assistant manager. It was the last time Johanne was seen alive. The next morning police received a call from two people who had found the body of a woman at Spains Lookout at Neutral Bay, on the harbour’s north shore. Hearing the police car arrive, Johanne’s partner went to the lookout across the road from the flat they shared and identified her body. She was lying face-up on a narrow rock ledge. Her car was parked nearby. The evidence suggested that Johanne had been attacked after leaving her car and taken to Spains Lookout, where she was bashed, sexually abused and strangled. It appeared her clothes had been removed during the attack, and put back on after her death.
Swabs taken from Johanne’s body showed the presence of semen, but at that time DNA testing did not exist and the police inquiry came to a halt. Five years later police asked the Division of Analytical Laboratories to re-examine the exhibits, but the technology available did not allow extraction of sufficient material for DNA testing. In May 2004 the police again asked for the exhibits to be re-examined. This time the examiners were able to produce ‘a very clear complete profile’.
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