Perfect Victim (35 page)

Later I commended the caring attitude of this senior constable to the assistant commissioner whom I met at a ‘Missing Persons In Suspicious Circumstances’ meeting.

After he left (and meanwhile Heather had disappeared into another part of the house) we went back to the living room. Ashleigh-Rose sat down and sobbed. She didn’t just cry. She sobbed. And she trembled. ‘I just wanted to
go
to the trial,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to be a
part
of it.’

‘It’s all getting very real,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to go to the trial if you don’t want to, apart from being called as a witness and then we’ll look into that video link-up possibility.’

Rachel, Ashleigh-Rose was adamant. ‘I want to go to the trial. I want to hear everything. I just didn’t want to be a witness.’ Ashleigh-Rose was eleven when you were murdered. Now she’s thirteen.

She was upset like this for about twenty minutes, when we heard Heather’s serious little voice say, ‘I didn’t get five dollars.’ We stopped and laughed …

29 July 2000

Your grave looked so lovely today, Rachel. The grass was mown and the white pansies in the terracotta pots were in full bloom against the grey granite of your headstone. I thought of you, nine feet down. So far from reach – so sad.

There is no fear in the aftermath of death. I mean your decomposed body – your bones. I don’t feel apprehension on seeing the forensic photographs of your body. In fact I would like to see them before the trial.

I said to your dad yesterday that all of this – the trial, being subpoenaed, the magazine article – all this seems removed from you. Official and important, but not a part of you. You died – no, correction – you were murdered, nearly one and a half years ago and yet this still goes on. Until the trial has finished your burial has not been completed.

3 August 2000

Your cousin Tamzin rang tonight from Coffs Harbour. She spoke to all of us for about two and a half hours. She said that during the committal hearing it seemed to her as though Caroline was writing down addresses of witnesses. I had forgotten addresses of witnesses were given out in court. There is absolutely no way I will allow that.

We will be going to the court network at the Supreme Court on 17 August and I have begun to think about a Victim Impact Statement.

12 August 2000

Caroline has been so wicked, so wicked. She needs to stay in prison for a very long time. I don’t want to face the reality that one day she will be wandering around free …

15 August 2000

Rachel, I’ve just realised that apart from our friend David, who calls in once a fortnight, and the man I reported, who still seems to call in about every eight weeks – apart from them, my friends seem to have abandoned me. Even some members of my own family find coming to the house too difficult. Memories. This is why I see myself as a social leper. Your dad reckons that’s the wrong expression but I cannot think of another one to adequately describe how I feel.

Through all of this I have been thankful for your Granny Susan who is there for me. I can talk to her about you, Rachel. Nanny Joy is also there for me but I cannot speak freely with her because she becomes too distressed, and then this distresses me. For instance, last night when I looked at a video of you dancing I really needed to speak to Mum. I rang her up but I couldn’t tell her I had been crying. I thought of ringing Grandad Ivan, but like Mum, I feel the need to be careful when I speak to him as well. I don’t want to upset them further. I thought of ringing Robbie but at 5.30 in the afternoon she would have been busy with her children. I do feel isolated, Rachel, and some people may say I am drowning in self-pity. But, Rachel, I miss you so much.

Ashleigh-Rose has a friend whose sister turned seventeen on the weekend. She went to her party. In four weeks time you would have turned seventeen. I would have a very excited seventeen-year-old, and what’s more I wouldn’t be fearful for my new teenager …

2 a.m., 26 September 2000

Dear Rachel,

Last week Paul Ross, the Homicide detective, called in to deliver our statements in preparation for the trial. He also had some interesting news. The defence have informed the Office of Public Prosecutions that there may be a change in the plea. This is only a slight possibility, but nevertheless a possibility. Yes, Rachel, she may plead guilty. Events may take a completely different course.

But 10 October will still be the date of action in the Supreme Court. Paul Ross also said that from the time of the verdict to the date of sentencing there could well be two weeks because of the nature of your murder. It is a uniquely bizarre murder. Caroline has committed, or allegedly committed, a murder that might be the first of its kind in European history in Australia. Maybe the judge will be setting a precedent in his sentencing.

It was during Paul Ross’s visit that I said I would like to work as a chaplain, possibly in the police force. He said, doesn’t that take about eight years training? To be honest I’m not sure how long it would take. But first I would have to do a Bachelor of Theology and follow this by training as a chaplain. And Rachel, since Friday I believe God, crazy as it may seem, has guided me towards this. Working as a chaplain with victims of crime seems to be the absolute right direction. It’s this decision that has made me feel so positive and good and I can’t believe this has happened two weeks before the trial. I feel as if a weight has been lifted off my back – yet I feel guilty for feeling so good when last week, before this decision, I was feeling so wretched. Nothing is going to bring you back, Rachel, and I did make a public statement that some good was going to come out of all the tragedy. And, thank God, your dad is working with me on this.

I discussed it with your dad and he said, ‘Go for it.’

I am making good out of evil.

6.30 a.m., 3 October 2000

The Olympic Games closing ceremony was great, but unfortunately I was very agitated. There were so many parts of it that reminded me of you. The dancing! Kylie Minogue singing ‘Dancing Queen’ (the song your friends from Canterbury Girls wanted played at your funeral but the words were not appropriate). Jimmy Barnes was singing, and remember, you have danced with Jimmy Barnes on stage. Everybody was so alive and so happy and I cried.

It’s gone beyond saying it’s not fair.

5.30 a.m., 10 October 2000

Events changed yesterday afternoon, just as Paul Ross had suggested.

I must admit I felt, or at least acted, in an extremely ungrateful way. I woke this morning realising that I should have been saying thank you to God and thank you to Paul and thank you to the Office of Public Prosecutions for doing their job so well.

I walked into the house about 3.45 yesterday afternoon with Heather. Your dad had driven Ashleigh-Rose to her pottery class. Susan rang me about five minutes after I walked through the door. Poor Susan, she must have wondered at my reaction. The OPP rang her because they could not contact me: the defence had contacted them yesterday afternoon – Caroline would be pleading guilty.

I should have been pleased – relieved. Even Heather knew it was good news. She said, ‘Mummy, doesn’t that mean she gets to stay in jail?’ But instead I thought, ‘She’s getting off easy.’ One side of me wanted her to stand in a courtroom for two weeks and be confronted by what she did to you. I wanted her name to be printed in the papers. And suddenly I realised that this had been the revenge I had wanted. I had wanted the public to know you had had no part in asking for your own death. All too often the public fall into the trap of saying that if someone has been murdered, then the victim must have contributed somehow, particularly where the accused knows the victim. This is what is so appalling in this wicked and selfish crime.

I rang the OPP after Susan had spoken to me, and the following advantages were pointed out: Caroline is unlikely to appeal on the guilty verdict since it is her own plea; a jury cannot be conned by a clever defence barrister, and there will be no trial, so witnesses do not have to be called.

I realise now this is the absolute best result. The OPP have done their job – Paul Ross has done his job.

And then I thought, in an outrageous way, that I too held deep inside a hope that Caroline had
not
killed you, only because for me it seemed more reasonable to accept that a total stranger had killed you than anyone who even remotely knew you. Anyone who knew you would not have wanted to kill you.

30 October 2000

My darling Rachel,

Caroline
did
plead guilty and 25 October was set for the plea hearing, which we were told would be heavily swayed towards the defence. And yes, my darling, there were lots of your family and friends there for support.

I think of the words your Nanny Joy wrote to me this week, after the plea: ‘I think of all the past years enjoying Rachel, all those lovely family occasions, birthdays, christenings, Easter holidays, Christmases … all the while we looked forward to the next time, Caroline could well have been plotting how to bring our dear Rachel’s life to its end.’

Caroline came out and I was thinking, you
silly
girl. I sat down after the judge left the courtroom. There was no way I was going to stand for Caroline.

She was a very sad and depressed woman, but Rachel, she was not insane. She cold-bloodedly plotted and killed you. It is cruel, wicked, evil – all of that – yet I pity her.

But the judge must not soften, because her act was evil. Let’s not forget what she did to you. You are the victim. You were her perfect victim.

No more letters were written for the remainder of the year
.

Developments …

32

P
ROFILING A
K
ILLER

A completely transformed Caroline Reed Robertson was escorted back to the Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Centre at Deer Park to begin her twenty-year jail sentence.

Through Rachel’s death, Robertson had finally attained her magical goal of becoming someone completely new, said Dr Barry-Walsh outside the Supreme Court. ‘In destroying her, she recreates herself. That’s exactly what’s happened.’

Robertson, her golden-brown shoulder-length curly hair tied neatly off her face, looked far removed from the miserable girl who had been arrested twenty months earlier. Slim and attractive, her slight frame revealed the outline of ribs through her clinging white top. She certainly resembled someone very close to the Jem Southall of her imagination.

So perhaps her fantasy, in some respects, offered an acceptable ending – even if it meant spending a significant amount of her adult life behind bars; even if it meant an existence far from Jem’s planned retreat in Bondi or Byron Bay.

‘She’s playing out a whole new fantasy role now,’ observed the Melbourne-based criminal profiler Claude Minisini after studying voluminous reports on the killer and her crime. ‘She’s back to playing the victim again, a role her writings tell us she is familiar with. And this time she appears to be playing it to perfection. “Look at
me
, I’m being punished
again … I’m
the victim.” ’

Minisini is the director of a consultancy firm called Forensic Behavioural Investigative Services. This highly regarded authority on criminal behaviour and killer psychology has studied the Rachel Barber murder very closely and remains intrigued both by the motivation for the killing and by Robertson herself. A former member of the Victoria Police Rape Squad, Minisini honed his craft at the FBI’s internationally recognised profiling unit, Quantico, in Virginia. The lessons he learnt during fourteen months of intensive study during the early 1990s, which included interviewing and studying some of America’s most notorious serial sex killers, has given him a valuable insight into the make-up of the criminal psyche, into the predatory nature of murder, the motivating factors underlying such killings, and the varying ways in which murderers kill.

Studying victimology, grisly crime scenes, known serial killers, repeat sex offenders, and those suspected of multiple murders, Minisini has devoted his career in latter years to the study of serial rape and murder. His success in profiling has resulted in much collaboration with Australian police departments, including his work on the Frankston serial killings, which cost three Melbourne women their lives.

The art of profiling, while originally viewed with some scepticism by police and psychologists on its introduction in the United States in the late 1970s, was the FBI’s response to the escalation in the numbers of serial killings. With many crimes unsolved, experts developed and refined the technique, which involves matching the psychological make-up of a likely suspect with the crime scene left behind and the type of victim chosen by the killer. Profilers are consulted around the world.

‘Profiling,’ Minisini explains, ‘is based on the premise that behaviour reflects personality. And there is so much about this crime – from the predatory way in which Robertson chose and targeted her victim, to the manner in which she executed the killing, and, of course, her behaviour after the event – which reveals volumes about her complex personality.’

Minisini says that in any violent crime certain behaviours are clearly exhibited, from the way the victim dies to the manner in which the killer disposes of the body. These things, and others, give the profiler a graphic picture of the interaction which has taken place between killer and victim. Every little detail tells its own story.

‘Robertson exhibited many behaviours during the time leading up to Rachel Barber’s murder, during the crime, and afterwards which tell us a lot about her,’ says Minisini. ‘They allow us, in effect, to walk in her shoes, as do her writings – all of which give us a keen sense of what occurred before the killing, why she chose Rachel as her victim, and what took place during that final fatal interaction.

‘In profiling, we start with the victim. We look at factors like when and where the victim was approached, where the death took place, the method by which she was murdered, what effort was made to hide, or dispose of the body, the type of injuries inflicted, either before or after death. All of these things offer an insight into the killer’s personality, helping me, in essence, to build up a behavioural ID.’