Western Australian Ellis Taylor, who has written numerous books about the occult and published articles on the internet about the Claremont case, warns that to understand these people it is important to listen to cult witnesses without prejudice. 'I have it on very good authority and from more than one source that the police have often been informed about satanic cults operating around Perth,' he told me. 'Yet they failed to give these people any credence. Perhaps it is time this attitude changed. Satanic cults and individuals are a reality. It doesn't matter whether you want to believe it or not. A retired homicide detective with a lifetime of experience assured me that when they came to an impasse they would look at anything and every-thing. I pray that this is the case with the Claremont case.
'Inevitably,' he continued, 'the Old Bill is provided with all sorts of strange leads by well-meaning people which turn out to be a waste of time. Surely though, the police role is not to prematurely judge the information but to check it out thoroughly, no matter what their personal opinion? It is probable that a group of people are committing these crimes and not impossible that they have links within the police force, government, media and clergy.'
Taylor sends me the transcript of an interview he con-ducted with a Western Australian woman some years ago. 'It's harrowing and hard to believe if you haven't heard about these things before,' he warned. That was an understatement. The stomach-churning material – pages and pages of it – is unrelentingly bleak, incredibly bizarre and, in parts, highly defamatory. But Taylor wanted me to see a particular section. 'The woman told me that one of the Claremont victims was brought to her home; it was Jane Rimmer, I think. She said she has attempted to tell the police her story but they hadn't believed her. She is definitely traumatised and there is, of course, the chance that she could be making it up, but I don't think so. She is articulate and intelligent.'
In elaborate detail, Taylor outlined complex numerology and other psychic phenomena that he believes are connected with the killings, and sent some of his information to the police. Mindful that his ideas can be misconstrued as the imaginings of a wacky fantasist, he keeps his correspondence with me grounded in fact. 'I spoke at length by phone and in person to a very senior police officer at the time,' he says. 'There must have been something about my information that meant something or he wouldn't have bothered with me, would he? He was very concerned that we used a secure line. I have since been concerned at the shuffling and accusations emanating from WA police. My gut feeling has been that certain people may have got a little too close. Paul Ferguson actually allded to my accuracy on television once, after Ciara's body was found. Not long after this, he was suspended. I still think he would have solved it by now. There are a lot more victims than Macro is letting on.'
Is the woman to whom Ellis refers mentally unstable, or are her recollections real? I think of the warning he attached to the piece: 'Don't look too long into the pit, lest you become it.'
'This woman described in vivid and horrific detail their abuse at the hands of well-known business people and professionals in Perth,' he wrote. 'She named some of the perpetrators, the dates and the places and also describes how they were present as children at the ritual abuse and murder of others at various locations around the area.' She had come to him, he continued, because she believed that the same people who had ritually abused them were the perpetrators of the Claremont serial killings. He writes of secret societies, of the twilight, dangerous world they inhabit. 'It is all so hard to believe, and I don't want what I'm saying to be taken as the ravings of a conspiracy nut. But I am confident that the witness is telling the truth.'
Stories of satanic worship continue to unfold. A psychiatric patient in her mid-20s, in a secure ward for her own protection, told her psychologist she had lured Sarah Spiers to a car in which her boyfriend was waiting. Driving her outside the metro area, she said Sarah was bashed to death and left at the scene. The patient also claims she visualised where Jane Rimmer's body was found two weeks before the body was discovered. Her story becomes more bizarre. The offender, whom she names, is a police officer who works in conjunction with two other men. The officer took her to where Ciara Glennon's body was lying and warned her that if she didn't shut her mouth, she would be next. The abductions and murders, she claimed, are related to satanic worship activities dating back to an area past Margaret River 20 years ago. The psychologist, who taped a long video session with the patient, called in a colleague to assess the woman's claims. 'She is telling the truth,' he said. 'She is terrified and fears for her life.'
71
In January 2006 I make contact by telephone with the head of the Special Crime Squad, Anthony Lee. Put my request in writing, he advises.
Dear Mr Lee,
Following our recent phone conversation, please find a request to interview Macro officers for inclusion in the book I am writing for Random House Australia, regarding the so-called 'Claremont murders' . . . I would like to talk to as many officers as possible who have been, and still are, active on this investigation . . . I understand that as this is an ongoing investigation, many questions will not be answered. I will include them anyway, with the hope that the reason why they cannot be addressed is made clear so I can include in the book . . . The more police 'voice' in the story, the better the balance will be ...
I forward a list of questions.
Two weeks later I prepare to travel to Perth for my first research round, and speak to Robin Napper on the phone to line up an interview time with him. 'Good luck with the police,' he says. 'Listen for their defensive phrases. They will tell you that the review team praised them for having world best practice. Yet the crimes are still unsolved!'
Detective Senior-Sergeant Anthony Lee and Senior-Sergeant Ken Sanderson, a forensic specialist, meet me near where I am staying. Forty-year-old Lee, with rugby player shoulders, is imposingly tall and wears a slightly arrogant air. Sanderson – older, ginger-haired and with a gentler attitude – does not appear as hard-bitten. Forensic investigation is a less abrasive field than working the mean streets as a detective.
Sanderson swings the unmarked police car out of South Perth and heads toward the Kwinana Freeway. It will be a long day, starting with the disposal site of Jane Rimmer, moving to Claremont and on to where Ciara Glennon's body was found.
There is a tacit camaraderie between Lee and Sanderson. That's not surprising: police work is tough, the reason why camaraderie is so entrenched in the force. They protect each other and protect themselves, as soldiers did in the trenches; part of their mateship ethos. Police work their way up through the ranks, coming into daily contact with the sordid side of life. But it's this that bedevils them most, the murder of innocents and the girls that never came home. Bodies thrown away like trash and the despair on their parents' faces when they knock on the door with the news. I'm sorry to tell you, we believe we have found your daughter. Lee is only too acutely aware of it all, and it is in talking about this that his sensitivities show. 'He uses a well-rehearsed line: For the sake of your soul, be careful what you see.' he says. 'Once you see, you cannot un-see'.
We cruise along the Kwinana Freeway toward Jane Rimmer's disposal site, an hour away. With Lee free to talk, it's a good time to start the taped interview. 'Why is this investigation so secretive?' I ask him.
He turns from the front seat. 'If we open up the case to journalists, how does that help the investigation? It doesn't. It just means the paper has got a good story. If they are critical of the police, we're not interested. That's not arrogance – it's just that we've consulted with all the people we should be consulting with.'
Journalists. They are a common theme in Lee's conversation, appearing as the great stitch un-pickers in a carefully woven police garment. 'They are not always fair,' he says, 'not always right'. It sounds like a siege mentality – us versus them.
'The fact is,' he continues, 'with unsolved cases, we're always going to reach a level of controversy. That's the nature of the beast.'
It seems a reasonable point. 'And you've reached it, have you?'
'We've well and truly reached it. We probably reached it after two years in the Claremont case. People are asking, are we competent? Are we good enough to do the job anyway? Are we big enough to handle this? And my answer is I'm confident that police have been innovative in their approach and looked at the case as broadly as we can. And the review came out and said the things we are doing are world best practice. Designed and innovated here in Western Australia.' There it is. He has said it. World best practice.
'What sort of things?'
'I'll leave that for Dave Caporn to talk to you about.' Dave Caporn. As the face of the investigation during its most critical period, he is the one Macro officer I am most hoping to speak with.
'Macro has copped a lot of criticism, not least over the fact that these crimes are still unsolved. What is your reaction to that?'
'I think I've just given you an insight into that. The reviews weren't critical.' Those reviews. They rear their heads at every opportunity.
'But isn't that part of the criticism? That the police have been too insular, in waiting too long to look outside Western Australia? Isn't that intrinsic to the criticism?'
He leans around from the front seat of the car again. 'How long's too long?'
'Ten years, probably.'
'It hasn't been ten years!' It is February 2006. The first known disappearance was January 1996. The murders have been unsolved for ten years; the first complete and independent review in 2004 – eight years. He is splitting straws. I let it go.
'I would like to know what has been done, and by whom and when.'
Lee nods. 'It is the public's fundamental right to ask, are they getting the service they pay for from the state?'
'That's right.' I agree. 'Certainly the people I've spoken to in the short time I've been in Perth – general members of the public – say they feel discouraged, ripped off. The attitude is, "why don't the cops do something?" They seem to deeply resent the lack of transparency.'
Lee noticeably bristles. 'Why should we lay bare the facts if it's going to compromise the investigation? Why should we?'
'Because people are saying they feel they have a false sense of security, they are blindly walking around in the dark and that no one, least of all the police, knows who this serial killer is. They want the investigation back on track.'
'How do you know it's not on track already?' He has taken his sunglasses off and is in a half-turn, staring at me. 'How do you know it's not on track already?'
'But it isn't, is it.' It's a statement, not a question. 'You're asking about perceptions, and the answer is that this case is very, very cold. And people in Perth are very, very unhappy.' That is an understatement. The response from almost all victims' families – including those not directly or overtly linked to Claremont – was relief when I contacted them to seek interviews for this book. 'Thank God someone is doing something on this story,' one told me. 'The police would love it to go away, and we need to keep it in the public eye.'
We have passed some of Perth's major landmarks: Kings Park, the Old Swan Brewery and the University of Western Australia, and are now driving parallel along the wide expanse of the Swan River, where ferries lazily cross in the bright morning sunshine and pedestrians stroll along its foreshore. Now we are in the Claremont area, Western Australia's answer to Melbourne's Toorak, where the beautiful people play.
'Does the perception of the community outweigh the needs of the investigation?' Lee asks. He doesn't wait for my response. 'If we did release information, what purpose would it serve and will it help our case? The simple answer, I believe, is no.'
72
Lee talks the talk of a media-savvy officer: about internal mechanisms within the police service; checks and balances; hoops they need to jump through in deciding how to spend money; the actions they are taking. Then he moves to cover the topic so hotly debated in Western Australia: the external assessments. 'The second thing in relation to this investigation is that we invited numerous' – he stretches the word –'numerous people in to look at the process that we have.' One of those forensic reviews – still ongoing – was started by Senior-Sergeant Sanderson, now attached to the Special Crime Squad. The officer driving the car. 'We don't believe we suffer from short-sightedness, that the reviews are too close. We still have people saying to us, "What you have done is right, justified and at times, best practice."' There it is again. Best practice.
'Who said that, particularly?'
'The Schramm review.'
Paul Schramm has a reputation as a highly regarded officer who deftly plays the media. We are only an hour into our meeting and I wonder should I comment. 'With all respect,' I venture, 'as good a police officer as Paul Schramm is by reputation . . .' I don't get to finish the sentence.
'He wasn't the only person involved in the investigation,' Lee interrupts. 'Dave Barclay from the UK was also on that team.'
'Was his response positive?'
'Yes.'
'Everyone was 100 per cent positive about the way the police have run this investigation?'
He nods emphatically. 'Yes. There was certainly no major criticism amongst those people in terms of how the operation was conducted.'
'Has there been a time when overseas experts, not including anyone from the Australian police service, have looked at the entire case?'
'That happened in the Schramm review.'
'But wasn't part of the criticism, that Paul Schramm headed it up? That he would hardly criticise his colleagues in another state? That it should have been completely independent?' Lee's cool demeanour is changing, his voice harder-edged and louder.
'This is the media's problem. For them the interesting story has stopped and they need to find new angles . . .'
I can see where this is heading. 'But the media represent the community, and the community is unnerved.'
'I do concede that individuals in the community might feel that the police are somehow incompetent, incapable,' he says. 'I can see that there is concern we haven't looked broadly enough, that we've made mistakes.' I nod and Lee starts to generalise about history showing that around the world there have been horrendous errors made in investigations. He moves to bring the interview back onto sure ground. 'You accept that?'
'Yes.'
'Well I don't think this is one of the horrendous errors. If I did, I would certainly be making some noise about it.'
I want to talk about police culture. 'It's known that professionally, officers become very close. So given that, is there room for criticism within your ranks? Is there room for someone like you to say to officers who have previously worked on the case, look, you've really mucked it? How much clout do you really have?'
Lee's sunglasses are again obscuring his eyes. 'How much clout do I have? As much as I dare to take on.' I think about that answer for a moment. Given the hierarchical chain of command in the police service, and the incredible secrecy surrounding Macro's work, it seems a hollow response.
We go through what police have released. Property out-standing. Photographs taken. Lee wishes, he says, that he could publicly release what they have done, their operational techniques. It is, he assures me, outstanding, innovative work. World's best practice. He will talk to Dave Caporn, see what he can organise.
Lee admits that police could have looked in the wrong place for the Claremont killer. He spins the negative into a positive. 'As an investigator, wouldn't it be great if we had looked in the wrong spot; not because of poor police work, but merely because of circumstances? And suddenly, we look in the right place and find all the things we've missed?' He continues. 'What's the best friend of the investigator? Evidence. So if we've looked in the wrong spot and then we look in the right place and find the evidence, that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?'
I agree. 'So why, for example,' I ask, 'would you stay on overt surveillance of Lance Williams for years and years, the community knows you're looking at him
, he knows you're looking at him . . .'
'Yep.'
'He's never charged . . .'
'Yep.'
'Bucketloads of money have gone into it...'
'Yep. Relatively large amounts of money . . .'
'Which the taxpayer is funding . . .'
'Yep. Fair enough.'
'So the community has a right, doesn't it, to demand to know why you did that. Where their money has gone? To ask what has it achieved?'
'Yep.'
'So what has it achieved? Anything?'
'I don't know,' he smiles. 'There hasn't been a murder since then.' Now I am finally getting wha he is saying without him articulating it.
'Right. So there apparently hasn't been a murder for ten years. If you take that by extension then it could be Lance Williams, but you just don't have enough to charge him with?' Now I'm laughing. 'It does sound a little like, "We let John Button go, but we still know we had the right bloke."'
'How do you know we don't with Claremont?' he asks, before turning back to look out the front window.
We move to another topic. 'Why won't the police release modus operandi?'
This time, Lee's answer is swift. The nature of police work demands confidentiality. Persons of interest – that ubiquitous police term – should not be targeted by the media and held up to ridicule or criticism by the public. Trial by media is unfair. His voice rises. 'And who says that members of the community need to know how Ciara Glennon was found, and all the nice sordid details that make for an interesting read? A large percentage flick to the next page and Ciara Glennon will mean nothing to them other than a story to debate in the office. They don't know her, they don't care about her. All they care about is themselves, that they have had an interesting read and they hope it doesn't happen to them or their kids. All the public need to know is, are the police doing their job?'
The modus operandi, he says, needs to be kept secret so that in the event of someone coming forward and making admissions about a murder, police can verify and validate that admission. 'And as for suspects: a number of people in Perth, by virtue of their odd behaviour, have been extensively investigated, in effect creating a database of information about their activities.'
The Devil's Garden Page 27