Perfect Victim (40 page)

Her case, still on the grounds that her punishment had been ‘manifestly excessive’, was finally listed to be heard on 16 February, 2002.

But on 5 February, just days before she was due to make her final appearance in court, Robertson changed her mind again; this time formally withdrawing the appeal.

Robertson offered no explanation for the sudden turnaround. Speculation was rife that she’d been given ‘sound legal advice’, no doubt warning her that she might not only lose her appeal, but receive a stiffer sentence.

Either way, she simply signed off on the official court documentation, indicating that she wished to abandon her appeal against the length of her sentence. There was no going back.

So, finally, by February 2002, almost three years after stalking and strangling Rachel Barber, the wait was over for the Barber family. A lawyer from the Office of Public Prosecutions contacted the Barbers with the news.

The Barbers had harboured hopes that any information from an appeal hearing might at least fill in some of the gaps in their knowledge of Rachel’s final hours. But their hopes of adding a date to Rachel’s headstone recording the exact day of her death, and the time she died, would be locked away with many other disturbing unknowns.

34

T
HE
I
MPORTANCE OF
P
HOTOGRAPHS

I wrote in a letter to Rachel not long after her death concerning the importance of photographs. I remember my cousin Michele telling us how lucky we were to have so many photographs of Rachel, and recent ones too.

Yet the most recent ones were described to us as horrific. ‘Prepare yourselves,’ we were told, and we were asked to sign indemnity forms.

Photographs. We have photographs of our memories. We have now seen photographs from all of Rachel’s life, her birth – and death.

What a struggle this has been. We were unable to view her body for reasons I have already given, but we experienced guilt for abandoning our daughter to the laws of the land. And how ridiculous this sounds. We had searched, we had struggled with police to find our beautiful daughter and yet, when she was found, we did not even ask the detectives who announced her death if we could go to Rachel’s side. We never asked. And then when we were strongly advised not to see her body because this would jeopardise the trial we never argued. Did we accept this all too easily?

Somehow at the time it wasn’t important. It was the conclusion of our mammoth quest that was important. We might as well have been fighting Arthurian black knights and dragons, so hard had our struggle been.

But with time we felt we had abandoned Rachel. How could we not have insisted on being near Rachel? Could we not even have shared a silent moment in the same room? Could we not have sat beside Rachel with a sheet over her body, protecting our eyes from whatever it was we could not see because of the trial? Could we not have sat there and held her hand?

Paul Ross wanted to protect us. He had always been our gallant knight. He told us how he would look at the loveliness of Rachel’s photographs adorning our walls. He told us there was no resemblance between these and the forensic photographs. Over a period of two years the subject would be broached. He wanted to spare us from a lasting memory of Rachel’s decomposed self.

‘Remember her as she was,’ cried my distraught mother. ‘Rachel was so beautiful. Don’t do this to her, please,’ she begged. ‘Think what Rachel would want. Don’t leave Michael with ugly memories of his beautiful daughter.’

At first I did not want to see the photos. I was scared. But seeing the photographs would not replace our memories of a physical contact with Rachel. Caroline not only murdered Rachel and stole her life from us, she stole from us the parental right to be with our daughter’s body after her death. By wrapping her, and burying her in a shallow grave at the conclusion of a hot, hot summer, she also denied Rachel the right of having her mother and father say goodbye and embrace her body. A right denied for the protection of memories. A right denied so justice could be done.

Did Mike broach the subject first? Was it Mike who said, ‘Rachel’s not in a position to tell us we can’t see her death photographs.’

We were advised to cremate Rachel, so horrific were her decomposed remains. But we knew Rachel had always said, ‘If ever I die young I don’t want to be cremated.’ So we thought, we all die, we all decompose – often at different rates, but decomposition always has the same result – bones. Rachel knew this, and from her knowledge that her bones were to be left within the confines of our planet earth, we imagined her saying, ‘Hey world, I existed here once.’ So we did not cremate Rachel.

But we were denied access to our daughter’s body before its burial. And now we were being denied access to our daughter’s photographs. What was the hidden reason for this? Perhaps Rachel’s body was not at rest, nine feet down, clothed in rosewood. Maybe she had been cremated against our will. I know this was not the case. But there was always the hint of these disquieting mind games.

We spoke to Michael Clarebrough, our psychologist, who said this was a decision we would have to make for ourselves. Not what the police thought, or what my mother thought, or even what
he
thought. What mattered was what we thought. I asked him if he had viewed the body of his brother who had been murdered in his twenties, and if he had, was his lasting memory this image, or rather the memories of his brother’s life? Michael said he had seen his brother’s body and that his memories have always been of his living brother. It is to these memories that Michael continues to wear his brother’s motorbike jacket.

From the time we decided we should see Rachel’s photographs there were always the gentle put-offs, or not so gentle put-offs. ‘You are Supreme Court witnesses. You must wait until after the trial,’ or ‘Counselling must be sought on this matter.’

Caught up in the photograph dilemma was my realisation that we had forgotten to arrange for prayers to be said over Rachel’s body. Some months earlier I had been watching a movie about a passenger jet crash in the United States. Those killed were to remain on the tarmac overnight covered in blankets until the investigators arrived the next day.

One senior fire officer had said, ‘I don’t know, this doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t they at least have a few words said over them, you know, like a prayer.’

The other officer said, ‘Yes, I’ve just arranged for a priest to say prayers over each body.’

Until then it hadn’t occurred to me that Rachel had not had a prayer said over her body until her funeral. Even though we had said prayers for Rachel’s departing soul thirteen days after her murder, it was still twenty-four days before prayers were said close to her body. It seemed that this was one more right her killer had robbed her of. And it was our mistake, and only ours, for not thinking of it while we were immersed in shock.

In discussions with the State Coroner’s office, I asked that, if it was not advisable for families to view a body because of forthcoming court procedures, could it be possible for Homicide detectives to advise families further in this area? To tell them that if they wished, a police chaplain could be asked by the State Coroner’s office to say a prayer over their loved one? Provision should also be made for religions other than Christianity.

The Principal Registrar wrote in reply:

Arrangements can be made at any time for prayers to be said whilst a person is retained at this office. A number of religions require that whilst a person is retained, their ‘holy man’ spends the night at this office.

In your case I note that it was necessary for Rachel to be retained for ten days. In most cases this period is two days and issues such as religious observances are dealt with by the funeral directors.

We attempt to be responsive to the needs of people who come into contact with this office. In the circumstances outlined by you, arrangements could have been made for prayers to have been said for Rachel. In future, if contacted by family members with a similar request to that as outlined by you, we will make every effort to comply …

I was pleased that this service was possible. But the main issue for me was that in our shock we had
forgotten
to contact the office. We didn’t stop and think, ‘Oh yes, we must arrange this today.’ How comforted we would have been if this service had been made known to us. The Registrar did say that I could contact him further if I had other queries relating to this matter. But, at the time, it appeared to me that he had missed the point, so I did not reply. I have since discovered that the Coroner’s office have an information booklet for family and friends about the Coroner’s process. Perhaps this could be where such information could be put, possibly in the ‘Practical Issues’ section, under funeral arrangements.

After Caroline had been sentenced we again tackled the subject of photographs. The Homicide department really did want to protect us from images they considered would be too distressing.

‘We don’t need to be protected any more,’ we argued. ‘It is your protection of us that is making us distraught.’

Paul Ross said he would inquire further. Rob Read from the Victims Advisory Unit also said he would pursue the matter for us. Rob explained that there were other factors for Homicide to consider before allowing us to view the photographs. But after a lengthy discussion he had said, ‘What right have we to play God?’

On 14 December 2000, having signed an indemnity form, and in the presence of Rob Read and our psychologist Michael Clarebrough, we sat before a very thick but ordinary-looking photograph album.

Rob Read told us he had taken the liberty of looking at the photographs first and had marked with sticky tabs the spot where the photographs of Rachel’s body began. He explained that a lot of the photographs were of Caroline’s flat and her father’s Kilmore property.

‘Are you ready?’ I asked Mike.

‘Ye-es,’ he said, in a ‘come on – get on with it’ tone.

Rob Read warned us again that the photographs were horrific.

We opened the album, flipping through the pictures of Caroline’s flat with some curiosity.

The next page was marked with a tab.

Immediate relief. It was Rachel. Our daughter was dead.

I have likened the story of the photographs to an archaeological dig. There were photographs of each layer of the gravesite as it was meticulously investigated. It was obvious why parents could not be present. Our first response would have been to have lifted our beautiful parcel in our arms. It would have felt just like the image I’ve mentioned of the little girl who found her puppy, dead, in her Christmas parcel. We would not have noticed the exposed flesh and the raw bone. We would have recognised, as we did, our Rachel.

What I don’t think we would have been prepared for was the smell. Mike said he felt this would have stayed with him for ever. He wondered how the investigation team dealt with the smell. How difficult this must have been for detectives. For the forensic pathologist.

I had prepared myself for this. Susan had shown me a book she had of black-and-white photographs showing body remains from Sarajevo. My first thought was, oh how grotesque – not the photographs themselves, but rather that some photographer had been inclined to photograph such grief, such misery. However, looking at the photographs, if I imagined these remains as modern sculpture, I could see the work of Henry Moore. Ugliness is often only how we perceive an image.

Paul Ross had warned us that the photographs did not resemble Rachel. Rob Read repeated that the photographs were horrific. The Homicide Department had struggled to protect us from ourselves. And looking at the photographs of what was once our daughter, we could understand their reservations. But these images were not grotesque to us. That is how it was. We saw the Rachel within.

My first words were, ‘I can remember massaging those shoulders.’ Shoulders? Her beautiful neck could now have been a beautiful spring cut from the finest gems.

I could not see her toes. Where were her toes? Had the detectives left them in the soil, buried beneath the bark floor? She was a dancer. All her life she had needed her toes. We needed to see her toes now.

We turned the page and the photograph we now viewed was of Rachel on the forensic table.

‘There,’ said Mike. ‘There are her toes … She looks as if she is asleep,’ said Mike. ‘Remember her asleep in bed?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, gazing at the photographs everyone else thought were so awful. There was our daughter, resting, as if asleep.

‘Her hands,’ I said. ‘Look at her hands.’

Her hands did not appear decomposed. Her beautiful hands. The image I shall remember for ever. They glistened. Perhaps she had been frozen.

And I remembered Caroline’s hands in the Supreme Court. It’s the image I shall have imprinted on my mind, from the day of sentencing, for ever. I sat looking at the profile of a murderess, looking at her hands. The hands that squeezed the life out of our daughter.