Ladykiller (22 page)
The taskforce formally interviewed Burrell about the car thefts at Goulburn police station. His account of how he had acquired the vehicles was so implausible as to be laughable. Burrell told police that a man named Tony, whom he met in a pub, had given him the Jaguar. Just like that. Bruce did not know Tony’s last name or where he lived. All he knew was that Tony was a driver for the Fairfax newspaper publishing company.
‘I used to drink at a hotel in the city. Over a period of years I got to know this guy, Tony, and it was through him that he arranged to get the car,’ Burrell said. ‘Tony said to me, “Are you interested in another car?” and I said, “No, not really”. He said, “You might be interested in this one”. We had another beer at the time. He told me about it. I thought, well that’s handy.’
Tony told Burrell the Jaguar was worth around $70 000, but Tony was a generous man: ‘He only wanted twenty-five grand for it. I said, “It does sound interesting”.’ Burrell was not concerned about who owned it. All he wanted was to get his hands on the car. Within days, Tony delivered the Jaguar to him and then he simply disappeared. Burrell had agreed to pay the trusting Tony a week later, but Tony failed to show up to collect his money. There was no transfer of paperwork, no exchange of receipt or registration papers.
Detective Ricky Agius interrupted the narrative: ‘Actually, the insurance value on that motor vehicle is approximately $140 000.’
‘Holy Jesus!’ Burrell said.
‘Now do you agree that you were getting a bargain?’
‘On that basis, you’re not kidding.’
‘An unrealistic bargain?’
‘Looking back on it, absolutely, yes. I should’ve stayed away.’
‘Do you agree that you must have known the car was stolen?’
‘I didn’t know, but obviously the suspicion was there. I’ve been extremely bloody stupid, that’s all,’ Burrell said, shaking his head.
Following the interview, Taskforce Bellaire had another priority—to locate a third vehicle stolen by Burrell, a Suzuki Vitara, a photo of which had been found during the search of Burrell’s house. Bray believed it could have been used in the murder and, although he could not find the vehicle at Hillydale, the numberplates bolted onto the Jaguar belonged to a Suzuki Vitara which had been stolen from another car yard.
Car salesman Peter Giddings told police the Suzuki was stolen on 30 September 1993 by a man who took the $16 000 vehicle for a test drive. The Suzuki was never returned and the test driver bore a remarkable resemblance to Bruce Burrell. When police now confronted Burrell about it, he claimed to have bought the Suzuki from ‘an unknown female at an address somewhere in Lugarno during 1992 or early 1993 for $5800’. He had since sold it to another unknown person in November 1996, but he refused to tell police the purchaser’s name.
Bray was desperate to locate the Suzuki to enable him to conduct DNA tests on it for traces of Kerry Whelan. In the meantime, he charged Burrell with receiving and disposing of the Suzuki. Burrell was ordered to appear in Goulburn Court on 30 July 1997, to face six counts of car stealing charges and weapons charges.
Goulburn Courthouse, with its sweeping colonnade and Italianate dome, had been completed in 1888, just before Queen Victoria celebrated her Jubilee year, when the town served as the administrative centre for a huge area of southern New South Wales. It seemed a little grand for a car thief, more fitting for a heinous criminal.
A large media contingent gathered at the court on 30 July. Bruce Burrell sat impassively just two metres from six detectives of Taskforce Bellaire, waiting for the magistrate, Mary Jerram. He pleaded not guilty to all charges, including stealing the Jaguar and the Pajero, possessing a prohibited crossbow and stealing Bernie Whelan’s rifle.
Magistrate Jerram found Burrell had a case to answer and committed him to stand trial at Parramatta District Court. ‘Do you have anything to say regarding the charges?’ the magistrate asked Burrell.
‘No, Your Lordship,’ said Burrell, grandiosely awarding Ms Jerram an instant elevation on the bench, ‘except that I am not guilty.’
Outside the court, Detective Bray addressed the waiting media, and made a national appeal for the 1989 Suzuki Vitara. ‘The vehicle was last seen in the Goulburn area around December 1996, although it is believed it may have been seen later than that time,’ Bray said. Reporters knew Bray suspected the vehicle could hold clues to solving the Whelan crime.
Car dealer Steve Eslick, of the New South Wales country town of Orange, saw the appeal on the evening news and contacted police. He had bought the vehicle from Burrell for $7000 in December 1996, and sold it in June 1997 to a Sydney woman, Julia Hopcraft . Given that Eslick had acquired the car before Kerry Whelan’s disappearance, it was eliminated from the investigation. A dejected Bray clung to the hope that Burrell would soon be locked away.
On 22 October 1998, Burrell faced Parramatta District Court on the car stealing and firearm charges. His father and his two sisters were in the public gallery. Before Judge Charles Lulham, Burrell surprised everybody and changed his plea on all six charges to guilty; in doing so, the intricate details of the crimes and any scrutiny of Burrell would remain untested. Judge Lulham sentenced Bruce Allan Burrell to two years and six months’ imprisonment. Addressing the defendant and a crowded court, Judge Lulham said that Burrell was motivated purely by greed.
As Burrell was led away, he looked over at his father and raised an eyebrow. Tonia and Debbie, his sisters, left the courtroom in tears and in their wake were the six detectives. One of them turned to his colleague and whispered, ‘Fan-bloody-tastic!’
The prisoner was taken to the cells below Parramatta Court to wait for transportation to the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre (MRRC) at Silverwater, in Sydney’s west. A white prison van—fitted with the non-optional extras of a pair of handcuffs—took him away to the state’s newest and largest remand jail, where he would be classified for the prison in which he would serve his sentence. The MRRC held 900 maximum security inmates, a large number of whom were as yet unsentenced for crimes which ranged from minor ones like Burrell’s to sexual assault and murder. It would always be a hard place, but in its early years, an unusual number of its prisoners committed suicide in their cells.
Burrell was bundled from the vehicle and put into a holding cell with half a dozen other prisoners. A clerk filled out his paperwork and then he was taken to a stall with saloon-style doors, asked to remove his clothing and bend over for a strip search. Afterwards, a prison officer handed him a pair of tracksuit pants, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, shorts and underpants, all in the same bottle-green colour, and the standard prison issue footwear, a pair of white Dunlop Volley sandshoes with Velcro fastenings. He handed over his street clothes and followed an officer to a pod down the unfamiliar grey-corridored maze. Burrell’s cell had a toilet with no lid, a dirty light fixture and a shower encircled by a raised row of bricks. A blue vinyl shower curtain hung limply from the wall.
Burrell was classified as a minimum security prisoner and, six days later, was transferred to the Kirkconnell prison farm, 30 kilometres west of Lithgow in the Blue Mountains. One of the coldest prisons in the state, Kirkconnell got snow even in summer, but while it was no Swiss chalet, a sentence there meant an easier time than in many other jails. Bruce worked in the prison ‘box shop’, mending furniture, and his father and sisters visited often.
Although it was Burrell’s first prison stretch, the publicity surrounding the Whelan and Davis cases had ensured that everyone knew about it—all his old friends, his football acquaintances and his father’s mates from the Goulburn wool trade. The old man found his son’s fall from grace hard to bear.
Bruce Allan Burrell was a chubby blond child and his parents thought he was adorable. Not long after his birth in Goulburn on 25 January 1953, Allan and Linda Burrell nicknamed their firstborn ‘Tiger’.
Allan had lofty hopes for his son, and spoiled him rotten. For the first eight years of his life before his sister, Deborah, was born, Tiger got everything he wanted. If things were not going his way, Tiger would throw a tantrum, sometimes in the main street where he would hurl himself onto the footpath. Other mothers were shocked at Bruce’s hysterics and gawped at Linda Burrell’s patience. Time after time, she would pick her son up, wipe away his tears and coo soothingly until his rage subsided.
Another of Tiger’s tactics was to hold his breath, a stunt which would panic his mother into an urgent placation, usually the promise of lollies. Linda never succumbed to the other women’s suggestions that leaving Bruce to scream once in a while might cure him of his temper. Even as a toddler, Bruce towered over other children, whom he loved to torment with verbal or physical threats. In kindergarten, he made school life hell for little Donna Riley. ‘I was absolutely terrified of him,’ Donna remembered. ‘He was a thug and a bully, even at that early stage.’
Donna was one of the smallest in her class. She had blonde plaits tied with ribbons. Burrell would pull her hair, tease and threaten her. Donna was so scared she spent lunch and recess sitting in the girls’ toilets, her only refuge from his torment. ‘When the bell rang I’d come out but Bruce would be still there, waiting outside for me. I told no one, because I was so frightened.’
Next door to the Burrells’ house in Betts Street, West Goulburn, Sue Gladman recalled watching Bruce with his blond curls bully her little brother, Gary. Bruce would ride on his billycart down the street or play with his dog, Rusty. One day she watched him swinging Rusty around by his tail, the dog yelping in pain.
Bruce’s bedroom was filled with toys. His father was always bringing home something new for Tiger. Bruce had a wooden rocking horse on the verandah that Sue coveted, and one day, in front of Mr Burrell, she mustered up the courage to ask for ‘a go’ on Bruce’s horse. Allan Burrell turned to Bruce and said, ‘Tiger, let Sue have a go on your rocking horse.’ Bruce’s face went red and he shouted, ‘No!’ Allan Burrell looked at Sue, shrugged, and walked off .
Allan and Linda Burrell and the Gladmans, Iris and Fred, visited each other’s houses for drinks, card games and barbecues, but the friendship ceased suddenly around 1960, when Bruce was seven years old. Bruce regularly threw stones at other children, but on this day he was standing on the Gladmans’ garage roof and spitting down on Sue and Gary. Unbeknown to Bruce, Fred Gladman was standing under the overhang of the roof and could see what was happening. Fred picked up the garden hose and stepped out from under the roof, muttering, ‘You little bastard,’ as he turned the hose on Bruce. Tiger got the shock of his life. He jumped off the roof and ran home crying.
Minutes later, a furious Allan Burrell emerged. Bruce loitered behind him, watching as his father challenged Fred Gladman. ‘What did you do to Bruce?’ Allan Burrell demanded of Gladman, who explained what the boy had been doing. ‘He could have fallen off the roof,’ Burrell shouted. Gladman shouted back at him something about the fact that little Tiger was not the innocent boy he might seem. The two men began throwing punches at each other. Neighbours came out onto the street and the police were called. After that, the adult Gladmans and Burrells never spoke again.
Betts Street and the neighbouring Evans Street were little more than lanes with modest houses occupied by working-class families headed mostly by labourer fathers. Just over the fence from St Patrick’s Catholic College for boys, this area lay on the west side of Goulburn. From the years when Bruce Burrell was growing up there, to the late 1960s when he left and it entered a decade of rural decline, Goulburn was a town bursting with provincial pride. From its handsome Victorian and Neo-Gothic buildings to the wealthy farms on the rich plains famous for grazing sheep with fine wool fleece, Goulburn well deserved its status as Australia’s wealthiest inland city. Lying some 160 kilometres south-west of Sydney at the crossroads between Australia’s three major cities— Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne—the ‘Queen City of the South’ was also a rail town, where any hardworking man could find a job, if not at the prison or with the Post Master General, then on the trains. In the 1950s, Goulburn was a tale of two cities and Bruce Burrell grew up caught between them.
Bruce attended Bourke Street Primary School, along with John MacCulloch, whose father was president of the Goulburn Rugby Club, and Spiro Pandelakis, the son of one of Goulburn’s few immigrant families. Allan ‘Splinter’ Burrell, nicknamed because of his thin frame as a youth, regularly took young Bruce around with him when he was conducting business on weekends or in school holidays. Allan worked in the wool department of Farmers and Graziers, which, along with Goldsbrough Mort and Elder Smith, governed the sales and export market in Australian wool. In turn, the wool business dominated the town.
From August, shearers, rousabouts and wool classers would travel to the vast grazing properties on the rolling, fertile lands surrounding Goulburn for the biggest wool clip sale in the country. Goulburn was known for its fine wool and growers like the Pickers produced ultra fine fleeces at Hillcreston Merino Stud in the Bigga Valley. Trains would rumble in from Bombala, West Wyalong and Temora with thousands of bales of wool. In the 1960s, wool prices soared and buyers flew in from the United Kingdom, Japan and Europe. Once the clip was sold, the bales were loaded onto freight trains and transported along the Great Southern Railway to the seaboard.
Once a week during the season, the graziers—dressed for town in clean moleskins, double-pocketed long sleeve shirts, wool ties and plaited leather belts, topped off with a flat Akubra—would come into town from their properties at Yass, Cootamundra or Crookwell to spend money. They would send their wives and children off for lunch at the Paragon café, in Goulburn’s main thoroughfare, Auburn Street. Families like the Maple Browns, the Faithfulls, the Chisholms, the Osmonds from Bungendore and the Merriman boys, would seat themselves in the cool, mirrored interior of the Paragon, where Spiro Pandelakis’s parents would serve them up toasted sandwiches, iced coffee, ‘Chicken Affroditi’ or the famed Paragon seafood steak. On sale days, auctions were held in the Lilac Time Hall. The Farmers and Graziers store straddled the corner of Verner and Sloan streets, at least until the 1980s, when it was knocked down and replaced by a Woolworths supermarket.