Perfect Victim (17 page)

He remembers being struck by the persistence of the family and, although this was not a particularly unusual case, and it still failed to meet the Unit’s criteria for further investigation, he had a feeling that he needed to take a closer look at it.

‘It didn’t surprise me that there were posters about,’ he says. ‘Obviously, when a loved one goes missing it is a very worrying, traumatic time for families. But what it triggered in my mind was that this family was very serious indeed. It was a little bit more than the usual level of concern families show when a child disappears. And this was the first time I had ever seen a poster of a missing person displayed on a railway station.’

He again called up Rachel Barber’s case on screen. There was nothing of any particular note about it. She’d been missing eight days, and although reports contained in the police computer system are subject to updates as more detailed information emerges, no further updates appeared to have been made to Rachel Barber’s file. The narrative was the same straightforward, factual brief that would have been made on the night of her disappearance.

‘I just wanted to find out more about this case,’ says dePyle. ‘Sometimes, as you make inquiries, you just get a bit of a feel for a case and you run with it. Nine times out of ten it fizzles into nothing, but I still thought I would take a better look and just see what I could find out.’

He called the Barbers on the mobile number Elizabeth Barber had given Neil Paterson. They were already at Richmond police station, however, waiting to speak with detectives about the preparation of a press release being distributed by Victoria Police Media Liaison to the print and electronic media. It would be appealing for information about Rachel’s disappearance and would include new evidence that had emerged the previous evening.

A young woman who knew Rachel from their days as ballet students together had recalled seeing the teenager shortly after her disappearance on 1 March. Alison Guberek was two years older than Rachel but had known her well. She told police she had been travelling on the number 6 tram from St Kilda to Prahran after 6.20 p.m. on 1 March when she saw Rachel getting onto the same tram with an older girl.

The pair got on in Chapel Street at around 6.40 p.m., said Alison, and although she had not seen Rachel for some time, they made eye contact and it was obvious to her that the younger girl recognised her. But Alison
didn’t
recognise the older girl. She said that the pair sat close enough to her on the tram to allow her to overhear a conversation they were having. She’d heard Rachel, who seemed to be talking more than the older girl, discussing her boyfriend, and a cat. Rachel seemed ‘excited’.

She’d been wearing black dance pants and looked ‘quite beautiful … striking in contrast with this other girl, who was plain …’

Alison assumed that Rachel must have been attending a dancing class, and watched as the two girls got off the tram at the corner of Williams Road and High Street, Prahran. Rachel had given Alison a ‘small wave’ as she walked along the footpath with the older girl. It struck her as odd that Rachel had been on this particular tram because she knew Rachel lived some distance away, and she had never seen her travelling in this direction before. Alison had no idea that Rachel had disappeared until Monday, 8 March, the day before dePyle noticed the poster at his railway station.

Unable to make contact with the Barbers, dePyle rang a researcher on Channel Nine’s national program ‘Australia’s Most Wanted’, to discuss the possibility of airing a story on Rachel Barber’s disappearance. The Missing Persons Unit had become a regular contact point for researchers on the show, who would ring one of the officers every couple of days looking for potential material. Often Missing Persons could not provide the sort of visual story the news team was seeking. Sometimes they had nothing mysterious or intriguing enough to make good viewing.

The researcher was very interested in the Rachel Barber case. How long had the girl been missing? Would the family be prepared to talk to them? Would they agree to be filmed?

The police officer offered to seek the family’s permission and ask for photographs of Rachel to be sent to the studios in Sydney if they were agreeable. Media Liaison would help coordinate coverage of the story.

When dePyle spoke to Elizabeth Barber she was receptive to the idea of TV coverage and arranged to come to the police complex to answer further questions and supply recent photographs of her missing daughter. Meanwhile the officer discussed the case with his colleagues and a new line of inquiry began.

The Barbers came in late on Tuesday afternoon with the photographs he had requested. There was still no hint of foul play, though Missing Persons were now aware of Alison’s new evidence. The press release would be put out in time for the following morning’s news. Rachel Barber still might be a runaway. But dePyle, posting his bundle of photographs overnight to Sydney, had a continuing uncomfortable feeling about the case and wanted it solved.

By the time Senior Constable David dePyle boarded his train for work the following morning, Wednesday, 10 March, the Rachel Barber disappearance was already making headline news around the State. Arriving at the office he sat down with Rachel Barber’s file again, and together with his colleagues Dave Rae, Neil Paterson and two other experienced detectives, he decided to begin their inquiries at Rachel’s former school.

Detective Senior Constable Dave Rae and Detective Sergeant Anthony Thatcher spent a couple of hours at Canterbury Girls Secondary College, where Rachel had been a student for nearly three years. When they returned to their office some time later bearing a hand-made card produced by students who had known Rachel, they too felt that there was something ‘not right’ about the case.

Studying the giant purple card closely, the police noted that more than two hundred students and staff from the school had signed their names, expressing their concern to the Barber family and hoping for Rachel’s safe return. This did not paint the picture of an unhappy girl who had run away. It told police that the girls themselves thought this was out of character for their friend. To all concerned it was strange and worrying that Rachel had not contacted a single friend in over a week.

‘This card made the case seem all the more unusual,’ recalls Senior Constable dePyle. ‘Everything we found out seemed to build up a picture that offered no reason at all for this girl disappearing. If she had been an unhappy girl at school, socially isolated and with few friends, who wanted to run away from her life, that would have explained a little at least. There was none of that here … the more we dug the more baffling and mysterious the whole thing became.’

But in spite of the card there was still no evidence that anything suspicious had occurred. Still, Rachel had been missing now for ten days. It didn’t
feel
right. Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Waddell left the office with Detective Senior Constable Neil Paterson to pursue further inquiries. They began with a meeting at Richmond CIB to share their information with the detectives handling the case and to establish the status of the investigation: Waddell informed Richmond police that the Missing Persons Unit would now be assuming responsibility for the investigation into Rachel Barber’s disappearance.

Richmond CIB had already conducted preliminary interviews with staff and students at the Richmond dance school a week earlier, closely questioning Rachel’s boyfriend, Emmanuel Carella, to establish whether he might have secretly known the girl’s motives for disappearing. They had to rule out any possibility that pregnancy might have caused her to disappear. Perhaps her dancing was becoming too punishing? They discovered from another student that Rachel had sat out of dance class on the day she disappeared due to a sore back. Was it possible, the police speculated, that the rigorous dancing routine was becoming too much for her? Was she taking time out from her life perhaps? The police also learnt from dance students that Rachel had mentioned the job interview and had been noticeably quiet during the day.

But what kept rearing its head throughout their discussions was the story of the possible job interview and the prospect of earning a large sum of money.

No one knew a thing about this job. Perhaps it was the sort of work her parents wouldn’t have approved of?

The Missing Persons officers also learnt that Richmond detectives had visited the Barbers’ home the previous Friday and scoured Rachel’s room for any evidence to explain her sudden disappearance. During that search they found a note bearing the words ‘running away’. Her parents had later assured police that the note referred to a brand of shoes called ‘Runaways’. Their daughter had misinterpreted the name of the shoes.

Then there had been the Barbers’ visit to Richmond station to tell police about a man known to Elizabeth Barber who had been effectively ‘stalking’ her.

And there was the most crucial evidence to emerge since Rachel disappeared: the sighting by Alison Guberek. Yet even this information did not necessarily suggest foul play. After all, Rachel had been laughing and chatting on the tram and did not appear to be in the throes of any sinister abduction.

But she had not told anyone she wouldn’t be home that night. She had promised to call her boyfriend and arranged to meet friends for breakfast the following day. Her wallet had been found in her locker at the dance school, containing her ID and some loose change. That didn’t suggest someone who intended to stay away.

Later on Wednesday morning Neil Paterson paid a visit to Rachel’s dance school in Church Street, Richmond, where he spoke to Rachel’s teacher about the girl’s disappearance and was struck by her concern about the teenager. He then went to a modelling school in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, to speak with its head about Rachel’s recent modelling and photographic shoot.

Meanwhile, back at the Missing Persons Unit, Senior Constable dePyle continued to make telephone checks to see what he could turn up on the missing girl.

Now aware of the importance of Alison’s sighting, Steve Waddell had made arrangements for her to meet Detective Sergeant Adrian Paterson, the officer in charge of the Criminal Identification Squad of the Victoria Police CIB. An appointment was made for the following day.

Later that evening, Missing Persons having now assumed responsibility for the investigation, sent Steve Waddell and Neil Paterson to visit the Barbers’ home to discuss the disappearance in more detail. It might not necessarily have meant that there were any obvious grounds for concern about the girl, but they certainly felt it was not a routine missing persons case and wanted more information to work with.

Although the family had previously made two lists of female friends, Missing Persons asked the Barbers to make a third list, this time adding simply everyone they could think of: faces from the past, friends from kindergarten, anyone …

The next day a girlfriend of Elizabeth Barber’s urged Elizabeth to remember anybody who had lived close to the Barbers at Mont Albert: a face from the past came up, only tenuously linked with Rachel. Caroline Reid’s name was included on the list for the first time.

On the following morning, Thursday, 11 March, David dePyle and Neil Paterson began a new series of inquiries – a trace on all calls coming into the Barbers’ home the day before Rachel disappeared.

Meanwhile, Alison Guberek helped Detective Sergeant Adrian Paterson to assemble a computerised image of the young woman she had seen with Rachel on the tram. The finished image was circulated to the media for publication in subsequent stories.

Later in the day dePyle received a list of the incoming calls traced to the Barbers’ house on that Sunday night. A silent number appeared on the list. Since silent number tracing requires further intelligence work, the police analyst had to wait until the next day for more information. Someone had used the number twice. One telephone call lasting fifteen minutes had been made at 5.24 p.m. and the second call lasting just over twenty-nine minutes followed soon after.

That Friday morning, the photofit of the young woman police wanted to interview in connection with the Rachel Barber disappearance was all over the press. The face was a mystery. And there was still no
concrete
evidence of foul play.

The Barbers had been asked to obtain samples of the sorts of clothing Rachel had been wearing on the day she disappeared, so that detectives could construct a dummy to erect in Prahran, where she had last been sighted.

Rachel Mannequin May Jog Memory
, ran the Melbourne
Herald Sun
headline. But by now Missing Persons had the crucial piece of information: the identity of the mysterious caller who had phoned the Barber household the afternoon before Rachel disappeared.

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INGLE
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HITE
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EMALE

The person who had phoned the Barber house that afternoon had rung from a silent number that was listed to a Caroline Reed Robertson. David dePyle spent the morning exhausting his contacts. It emerged that Caroline Reed Robertson was a twenty-year-old single woman living alone in a rental flat in Trinian Street, Prahran, the inner-city suburb where Rachel had last been sighted. As far as he could determine, Caroline Reed Robertson was not known to the police, had no past record for any kind of misdemeanour, and did not have a current driver’s licence.

Waddell and Paterson immediately left for the Prahran flat to see if the young woman in question could shed any light on Rachel’s disappearance. It seemed at least that she might be responsible for the two mystery telephone calls. And a young woman of about her age had been sighted with Rachel. So the police hoped she would know something of the missing girl’s whereabouts.

The detectives were already on their way when dePyle notified them via radio that the young woman they were looking for had changed her name. Caroline Reed Robertson had previously been called Caroline Reid.