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Authors: Andrew Fraser

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Killing Time (18 page)

BOOK: Killing Time
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Having checked out my new home and dropped off the groceries, I was at the Centrelink office in South Melbourne by ten o'clock. I walked in with my receipt and the bloke who served me looked at the piece of paper and said “What's this?” I explained to him what I had been told. He checked his computer and he said, “Well, I can tell you nothing's been done, nothing's been lodged and there is no unemployment benefit for you.” Two hours later, I left with an emergency payment of a few dollars and no Medicare card. Thank you very much to Fulham Correctional Centre for properly looking after my “welfare”. I know it's popular to bag Centrelink but I should give a tick where it is deserved: all the people I had dealings with at Centrelink were patient and caring, and nothing was too much trouble. They helped me through a difficult period and I thank each and every one I dealt with.

I strolled out of the dole office into the beautiful spring day and as I had no car I decided to walk from South Melbourne to the Albert Park Deli and have another coffee (guess what I missed most in jail!). It was a lovely day, I was “out” and life looked good for the first time in a long while. I thought I would sit in the sun and gradually ease my way back into the community. No such luck.

Little did I realise the furore that Dupas's new charges would bring. When I arrived at the deli, I happened to bump into a great mate of mine, Mark Finnegan, who has been a great support to me all the way through my experience. We sat down in the glorious sun to have a quiet coffee and a catch-up. Just then Mark looked straight over my shoulder and said “Here we go!” I turned around to see a reporter from Channel 9 heading towards me with a camera crew hanging around behind her. I couldn't believe they had found me. I hadn't rung anybody or spoken to anybody about where I was going or what I was doing and it was only after I left Centrelink that I decided to have that coffee. After years in the nick I was enjoying the freedom of being able to do just as I pleased.

At the same time my former wife rang me, distressed that there was a Channel 10 camera crew at her house and that they had harassed my young daughter at the front door. She was very upset and hadn't been able to get out the door to go to school. I asked my ex-wife to get one of the reporters to the phone. A young smartarse told me that as a member of the media he was entitled to be there. I'm not renowned for my subtlety and I told him in no uncertain terms that if he stayed there and went onto my wife's premises one more time I would have him charged with trespass. “Being a member of the media,” I told him, “does not give you carte blanche to do what you like and if you don't leave there will be trouble.” He then asked a stream of questions, to which I replied “No comment.” He said he was going to run the story. I told him that, as I had not answered one question, if he went on the air and made it up, as I anticipated he would, I would sue him personally. The call was very acrimonious, but it turns out Channel 10 left my ex-wife's premises immediately after the phone call, and no story was ever run.

Back at Albert Park, however, Rachael Rollo of Channel 9 wouldn't take no for an answer, so we picked up our coffees from the kerbside table and went inside. The people who own the Albert Park Deli are old friends and said we could use the back door and leave via the back lane. My mate went to get his car and drive it around the back. He immediately rang my mobile and said “Don't bother coming out the back door. Channel 7 have got a crew hanging around the laneway in case you do a runner.” I was totally dazed by the media furore that had developed around my release and Dupas being accused. I had, after all, only been out of prison a few hours and suddenly I'd become public property. I'd had no time to re-adjust to the real world.

I decided that I would accept my own advice, the advice I had given to clients many times over the years. Walk straight at the camera, shoulders back, chest out and chin up and look 'em straight in the eye. That way, they get their photo and usually that satisfies them and they go away. Well, that didn't happen on this occasion. There's Ms Rollo tagging along next to me, asking me inane questions, each of which I answered with “No comment.” In the end I got so frustrated with her stupidity that I stopped and asked her (this bit was edited out of her report) “What part of no comment do you not understand?” With that, she stopped asking me questions, but it was at that moment that the Channel 9 camera brushed up against me. In jail when somebody touches you unexpectedly you get on the front foot immediately, and purely as a reflex, I nearly hit this guy. I'm glad I didn't. That would have looked just fantastic on TV: day one on parole belting a cameraman! Anyway thank goodness they all went away.

I went home and thought to myself: If this is day one, what's the rest of my time out going to be like? It didn't take long to find out. Later that day a reporter from the
Herald
Sun
, Keith Moor, rang me and I had a chat with him. I've known Keith for ages and in my somewhat rattled state, didn't even think that the chat was a ‘story'. I was still so upset from all of this media attention that after the conversation I completely forgot I'd had it. My children came to visit and stayed with me for the afternoon and we went out for dinner that night. One thing I have never been able to get over is the amount of publicity my case has generated and continues to generate. After all, I was charged nine years ago and the media still love to mention my transgressions. Hasn't anything else happened in the state of Victoria in the last nine years?

As soon as I was released the Homicide Squad swung into action. Dupas was taken from jail to the Supreme Court where he was directly presented with one count of murdering Mersina Halvagis at the Fawkner Cemetery.

I had placed myself front and centre in one monumental bun fight. I have a well developed sense of the ridiculous and was only too well aware of the irony of my situation: here was Andrew Fraser, the lawyer heaps of coppers loathed and whose demise they had celebrated, now emerging as the Homicide Squad's secret weapon against Dupas. The Homicide Squad had done a terrific job of keeping the lid on my co-operation and I had been released unscathed, no thanks to Fulham and the Office of Corrections. I could not help but ponder the fireworks that would erupt once Dupas was raced into the Supreme Court as I anticipated would happen. I didn't have to wait long for the event!

A direct presentment means that there is no preliminary hearing or committal. A committal is designed to supposedly sift through the evidence and ascertain if there is sufficient evidence that a jury, properly instructed, could return a verdict of guilty. There are, however, provisions to dispense with those proceedings and have the matter taken directly to the Supreme Court for trial – and this is what the Homicide Squad and the Director of Public Prosecutions chose to do. The Halvagis family had done more than enough waiting for justice.

Dupas and his lawyers now had my Can Say Statement, which became public before it was included in the brief. It was now up to me to stick to my word and give evidence against Dupas. The media went into a frenzy. Only recently, after two years out of prison, have the media stopped prefacing my name with “disgraced former lawyer”. I became so sick and tired of the epithet that at one stage I was considering changing my name by deed poll to “Disgraced Former Lawyer Andrew Fraser” and saving journalists, particularly Greg Wilkinson of the
Herald Sun
(known in jail as the “Police Gazette” due to its obvious police bias), the bother of using any extra words every time they wrote a story on me. There were huge photos in the papers of me and Dupas, and the electronic media were beside themselves.

The next morning I woke up to see Keith Moor's article as the front page lead in the
Herald Sun
. It drew on our conversation of the day before and it was in lock step with my statement to the police.

The committal proceedings that had been commenced the year before were abandoned once Dupas was directly presented for trial. In cases where additional evidence has come to light after an accused has been committed for trial, a practice has developed in the state of Victoria that allows a pre-trial examination of witnesses before the trial judge. This is called a “Basha inquiry” (after the 1989 case
R v
Basha
). It now became apparent that I would have to give evidence in the Supreme Court twice, once at the Basha inquiry and once at the trial proper. This matter was going to trial, come hell or high water!

A trial judge was appointed, His Honour, Mr Justice Phillip Cummins, a most experienced trial judge and one who is awake to every defence and prosecution trick in the book. He is scrupulously fair, even-handed and straight down the line. However, if convicted by him, you invariably receive a large whack.

The furore that greeted my release died down and I was left alone for some time. The Homicide Squad were concerned about how I was travelling and checked on me. I was fine, if still rather shell shocked at the reception I received on release. I started working on my mate's farm in the Otway Ranges, a couple of hours southwest of Melbourne. I was down there on my own, spraying weeds, fencing, helping out shearing and whatever else was required. I loved being there alone, with all the freedom to go into town if I wanted to go and get the papers and to work my own hours, no screws looking over my shoulder and noting my every move. Each day I was waking up very early and I revelled in being able to start work when I felt like it. I would often start at six o'clock in the morning and go through till three or four. Open a bottle of wine and sit out on the balcony and look at the Gellibrand River Valley and think that life wasn't too bad after all.

Jail has affected me in numerous small ways but I only notice these if I go looking for them. For example, before going to jail I couldn't sleep, either during the day or at night, unless the curtains were fully closed. Even a small chink of light peeping in would keep me awake. It didn't really worry me if the window was open or closed. Claustrophobia is something I developed in jail. It was after being banged up in a two-out cell with Andrew Davis for summer that I developed this problem. Our cell was downstairs facing west, with insufficient ventilation, and as a result it was like an oven. Now, before I can sleep, I have to have both the door and the curtains wide open, allowing any available light to pour in.

Jail did seem to leave me more easily shaken, though. One night I was asleep in my house in St Kilda on my own. I didn't have the kids that night. At about one o'clock in the morning, someone started bashing on the front door, ringing the doorbell, bashing again. This went on incessantly for quite some time. I tried to ignore it. In fact, I was so panicked by it that it didn't occur to me to ring the police. Whoever it was would not answer when I yelled out “Who's there?” There was no way I was going to open the front door to see. Who knows what might have happened. I was totally spooked by this incident and finally grabbed the phone and rang the local police. They arrived quickly, to find nobody there. The banging had stopped just as the police car arrived in the vicinity. The coppers interviewed me but it was pointless. I didn't know who it was and I hadn't seen anybody, so I wasn't of much help to them.

The second time I received a visit, it was far worse. As I said, I can't sleep with the curtains or the door closed. The house had a balcony and a very short backyard facing the light rail line that ran from St Kilda to the city and beyond. The view from my balcony looked across the light rail to Albert Park and the city – a beautiful sight indeed, with a huge area of parkland and the lake so close to the CBD. The added bonus was that it was an expansive view, after having been in such cramped confines for so many years. I delighted in just sitting out on the balcony looking, watching people walk their dogs and kids playing cricket, and I started running around the lake everyday. It was fantastic.

However, on this particular night, I was asleep when a beam of light flashed into my bedroom. I thought it was odd because the clock told me it was about three o'clock in the morning, and there are no trams running at that time. I lay dead still and looked across the balcony to my back fence and the light rail. I could see somebody standing on the rail of my back fence shining a torch into the backyard. It was not an indiscriminate flicking around of a torch; the person holding the torch was moving it methodically almost in a grid pattern over the backyard and across the back of the house, as if looking for somewhere to get in. I was scared stiff. However, as there was only one bloke, I barged in where angels fear to tread and raced out onto the balcony, yelling “Oi, you. Fuck off!” The bloke didn't move a muscle. He looked straight up at me but I couldn't see his face. Then I realised he was hooded – not a good omen. With that, two more blokes stepped out from behind a bush. They both had hoods on as well. All three of them stood with their arms crossed, looking straight at me. Nobody said a word but I was clearly being given a message. I don't think I have ever had such a fright, including all the time I spent in jail. I nearly fainted.

That night I had my son, who was fifteen at the time, and my daughter, who was thirteen, sleeping over, with three of my daughter's girlfriends. I was beside myself with fear. I grabbed the phone and went to the linen press, closed the door and rang the coppers. I didn't want the light from the phone screen to signal to these people what I was doing. I then crept back into bed and saw that they were still standing there. After a few minutes, the three of them stepped back and walked towards the city along the light rail. Not hurrying, not looking back, just walking.

BOOK: Killing Time
10.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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