Ladykiller (41 page)
The judge described Burrell’s crime as ‘calculated, clinical and persistent’. Only one penalty was appropriate—the maximum. Life.
Burrell would die in jail. He squinted and frowned in the dock but otherwise showed no emotion.
Matthew Whelan had clenched his teeth and shaken his head as he watched Burrell being taken down the stairs below the dock to a cell.
Outside, Bernie Whelan was blunt: ‘He’s not an insane person—he’s just a cold-blooded killer who would do anything for money,’ he told the assembled media. ‘It doesn’t bring Kerry back but at least a murderer is off the streets. I have no doubt he would have killed again.’
Bernie said he remained shocked that a person who had once been a friend could inflict such a devastating blow on his family. ‘Bruce Burrell was my friend. He was an employee first, then became a friend. He was welcomed into my home. He met my children, cuddled my children. Then he betrayed me in the worst way imaginable: killing their mum.’
Bernie said he was hurt by Dalton’s suggestions of his adultery. ‘This has taken almost ten years out of my life. All I want now is to get away and enjoy the rest of my life that is left .’ He praised Bray—‘one of the finest police officers in the country’—and the jury—‘it was a complex investigation and it must have been very difficult, but they’ve given it the time to really consider their verdict. I thank them for that.’
As dusk gathered over Darlinghurst a battered Mitsubishi sat as if abandoned in its parking spot. Its owner wouldn’t be needing it anymore. Three days later, the car would be towed away.
Bernie Whelan announced a $50 000 reward for the recovery of his wife’s body. ‘If we had to choose between Bruce being convicted of her murder, or having Kerry brought home so we could give her a proper burial, the children and I would without a doubt choose to bring Mum home,’ he said.
They say that during the winter months and sometimes well into spring, the wind that whips through the yards at Lithgow Correctional Centre can cut a man in half.
Prisoners and guards alike endure howling south-westerlies which blow off the Blue Mountains and sweep through a wind tunnel created by the east-west layout of the facility. In the dead of winter, the temperature can drop to minus two degrees Celsius, and the cruel design of the prison only enhances the chill factor.
The maximum security prison lies on the Great Western Highway north-west of Sydney and is surrounded by a high concrete outer perimeter wall and an internal fence topped with coiled razor wire. Between the fences, a powerful lighting system illuminates a sterile zone which is mined with an electronic surveillance system to register the slightest movement.
Lithgow houses some of the state’s worst criminals among its 330 inmates, some of whom will die inside its walls. When Bruce Burrell trucked into Lithgow as a sentenced lifer, he joined some notorious killers: John Travers, who with the Murphy brothers had gang-raped and murdered beauty queen Anita Cobby in 1986; Darryl Francis Suckling, a prostitute killer said to have carried around intimate body parts of his victim as trophies; and Rodney Francis Cameron, the ‘Lonely Hearts Killer’ who murdered five women. It was too late for Bruce to meet the Granny Killer, John Wayne Glover, who the previous year had hanged himself in his Lithgow cell, fifteen years after being incarcerated for battering to death six elderly Sydney women.
Lithgow also houses problem inmates who were shanghaied up the road from Goulburn prison, sometimes in the middle of the night, after jail intelligence had identified them as gang leaders.
Burrell was moved into Lithgow’s Four Wing and in the months following his sentencing he seemed a model prisoner. The one-time advertising executive worked in the textiles shop where prison industries ran a profitable business making hospital sheets and shrouds for the morgue. Burrell was paid around $50 a week, which he was allowed to spend on toiletries, cigarettes and snacks.
His lawyer, Philip Young, visited him frequently as they prepared for his upcoming trial for the murder of Dorothy Davis. Another regular visitor to Burrell was Dennis Roberts, a balding fifty-something invalid pensioner who had become a familiar sight around the Supreme Court as a conscientious attendee at high-profile murder trials.
During the previous year, Roberts had sat through the trial of triple murderer Sef Gonzales, a nineteen-year-old convicted of killing his parents and sister. He even began visiting him in jail. In 2006, Roberts turned his attention to Bruce Burrell, sitting through each day of the Whelan trial, listening to the minutia of evidence and enduring the tedious legal argument. Unlike the other elderly court watchers who maintained a distance, Roberts began to develop a rapport with Bruce.
This had not gone unnoticed by Detective Dennis Bray who watched as Roberts and Burrell began to exchange furtive glances in the courtroom. It started with a nod of the head, a smile between the two, and escalated towards the end of the trial to the pair exchanging notes as they left court. Burrell at the time was on bail. Bray was not happy with the association, and could see that Roberts—like so many others before him—was being sucked in by Bruce, but there was nothing the detective could do. Bray’s instincts, however, would prove correct.
In the meantime, Bray had other matters on his mind, in particular Burrell’s appeal against his conviction for the Kerry Whelan murder. Burrell was appealing on ten grounds, including that a dissenting juror had been coerced into finding him guilty. Burrell was also appealing against the severity of his life sentence.
At the hearing in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in November 2006, the Chief Justice at Common Law, Peter McClellan, Justice Brian Sully and Justice Greg James appeared to be in disagreement over whether the jury’s sacked foreman had been forced into agreeing with his fellow jurors. It buoyed the confidence of Burrell’s counsel who entered the New Year with some hope of overturning his conviction. Inspector Bray cloaked himself in his usual pessimism that the case was doomed. But on Thursday 15 March 2007, the judgment was delivered. Dennis Bray did not attend the court and nor did Bruce Burrell. There was no need as it was over within minutes. Burrell had failed in his appeal against both his conviction and sentence, the full bench finding Justice David Kirby had not erred in sending the jurors back to continue their deliberations.
‘The fact that the minority juror felt pressure from the other jurors was not surprising,’ the Chief Justice at Common Law, Peter McClellan, said in his judgment. ‘Antipathy between individuals, however caused, is unfortunately an unavoidable fact of life and must be expected to exist amongst jurors from time to time. It could not provide a reason to discharge the jury.’
The decision removed an enormous weight off Bray’s shoulders and those of the Whelan family. But for Bray and Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, it was far from over— they were preparing for Burrell’s next trial for the murder of Dorothy Davis. As was usual with anything involving Burrell, nothing ran smoothly.
Milk with one sugar was how Dennis Bray liked his tea. Patricia Abbey knew that.
The grey-haired, cherub-faced woman ran the Sisters of Charity tea stand in a back room at Darlinghurst Court complex and had come to know the faces of the Detective Inspector and his offsider, Nigel Warren, from the long months of the previous two Whelan trials. Each day throughout those trials, Bray and Detective Sergeant Warren would join the queue of lawyers, journalists and court watchers at the morning tea adjournment for a hot drink and an Arnotts biscuit in exchange for a coin donation.
On Monday 6 August 2007, Ms Abbey and her volunteers wheeled out the great urn in preparation for the 11.30 a.m. rush as His Honour Justice David Kirby opened the trial into the murder of Dorothy Ellen Davis. The court case was already late by several weeks after Burrell’s counsel applied for a stay on the grounds that his client would be unfairly prejudiced because the jury would recall his recent conviction over the Whelan murder. The application was rejected. However Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, concerned at the potential of a juror to be reminded—and the trial aborted—advised Bernie Whelan to stay away. Bernie had wanted to show his support to Maree Dawes and Lessel Davis, but his well-known face in the public gallery could jeopardise proceedings.
Bruce Burrell was escorted from the courthouse’s subterranean depths and he stood in the dock as the freshly empanelled jury filed in for the Crown’s opening address. Burrell wore his old grey suit and a gold tie flopping over a poorly ironed white shirt. He had once again engaged legal aid at taxpayer’s expense. Philip Young, SC, who had been the junior counsel in the Whelan matter would be defending Burrell.
In the public gallery, Burrell’s new and perhaps only friend Dennis Roberts had taken his place among the other court watchers. Unbeknown to anyone, including Dennis Bray, Roberts had maintained contact with Burrell since the Whelan trial, regularly making the drive to Lithgow prison to visit the lifer.
On 5 August 2007, the trial of
Bruce Allan Burrell V R
opened in court three of the NSW Supreme Court at Darlinghurst. In his opening address Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, told the jury that Dottie Davis was a wealthy and generous woman, energetic and vibrant. Dottie, he said, was close friends with not only Burrell’s wife, Dallas, but also her parents. She had access to ‘virtually whatever amounts of money she wanted’ and was a ‘bit of a soft touch’, helping out family and friends in need. On 30 May 1995 she simply ‘vanished’.
Leaving meat defrosting on her sink and her Mercedes parked outside, the 74-year-old told her builder, Ken Hulse, she was going to walk to visit a friend who’d had cancer, undergone chemotherapy and lost her hair. The description, Tedeschi said, fitted that of Dallas Burrell, the then wife of Bruce Burrell. ‘The Crown case is that the accused, by some means, convinced Dorothy Davis to walk to his home, expecting to see Dallas’, Tedeschi said.
Dottie probably met her death at Burrell’s home, in his car or at his property Hillydale in Bungonia, Tedeschi said. ‘She has just literally disappeared off the face of the earth,’ he said. ‘She was never, ever seen again by anyone.’
He said the motive for the killing was greed. Burrell wanted to buy his neighbour’s $600 000 ocean-view house for Dallas who was undergoing chemotherapy. Without telling his wife or in-laws, he approached Dottie for a secret short-term loan of $500 000. ‘He told her how much it meant to him to buy this house for Dallas,’ Tedeschi said. The astute widow offered him $100 000 instead, and bank records showed that Dottie had made out a cheque for $100 000 to Bruce Burrell in July 1994. He deposited it in his bank account and then withdrew $90 000 in cash on 20 July 1994. The money did not go towards buying the house, which was funded by a $654 000 bank loan. Instead, Tedeschi told the jury, an unemployed Burrell used it for himself.
Burrell, who had been without a regular income since 1990, had no intention of paying the old woman back, and, Tedeschi said, when an impatient Dottie threatened him with legal action, Bruce reacted in the only way he knew how. ‘He had ample motive to kill her,’ Tedeschi said. ‘The Crown case is that Bruce Burrell decided in order to get rid of this problem of Dorothy Davis wanting the money back, he decided to murder [her].’
In the dock, Burrell had resumed his usual antics, frowning at Tedeschi’s assertions, blowing his nose and scribbling in a black folder.
At the morning tea adjournment, Burrell was led downstairs to the cells where he sucked on a cigarette, while everyone else enjoyed some fresh air, lining up at the Sisters of Charity tea stand for a pick-me-up. Amongst them, Bray noticed Dennis Roberts was in the background, perhaps eavesdropping on the musings of journalists, members of the prosecution team and witnesses.
Was he Burrell’s ears and eyes to the outside world? Bray wondered. Whatever he was up to, Bray did not like it and warned journalists and anyone associated with the case to be careful of comments they were making outside the court. Bray knew that Burrell would be looking for any excuse for the trial to be aborted.
Back inside, Tedeschi continued his opening address. He alleged Burrell somehow got Mrs Davis to walk over to his house, before he ‘subdued her by some means’ and placed her in his car. Burrell ‘suddenly and unexpectedly’ left Sydney soon after, with mobile phone records showing he was in the NSW Southern Highlands area for some hours before returning to his Lurline Bay home that night. Phone records showed he returned to the Bungonia property the next day, a five-hour round trip. ‘The Crown case is this was an opportunity for the accused to dispose of the body of Dorothy Davis,’ he said. A later exhaustive police search of the area, which was dotted with abandoned mine ventilation shafts, failed to find any trace of Mrs Davis.
The first witness called to the stand was Dottie’s daughter, Maree Dawes, whose voice was strong and often choked with emotion as she recounted the futile search for her dear mother. Maree said her first suspicions of Burrell’s involvement came a month after her mother vanished. She said Bruce visited Maree at her home and gave her a ‘crazy’ story of how Dottie had given him a cheque for $100 000 and asked him to open a bank account for her. ‘He was very rigid, smoking very nervously, chain-smoking,’ Maree recalled. Bruce told Maree that Dottie later got him to withdraw $90 000 in cash for her, and let him keep the remaining $10 000 for his trouble. ‘I was just blown out of the water,’ Maree said. ‘What he was telling me just didn’t make sense.’
When her brother, Lessel Davis, next took the stand, Burrell’s defence counsel sought to cast suspicion on him. Lessel told the jury his mother lent him $1 million for his business but ever the astute businesswoman, Dottie had charged her son nine per cent interest, which Lessel said he considered a good deal. Slightly rattled even though he was prepared for the defence’s attack, Lessel said his mother made no other advance payments to him, and he ‘definitely’ did not receive $90 000 in cash from her.