The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (25 page)

About 17 … 18, he supposed.

Seventeen or 18 in 1986? They were too old to be of much direct interest to Steve Page. Still, the attack on Rod further substantiated the police belief that violence against gay males was an established and long-standing ritual in the eastern suburbs, a heritage ritual passed down from one generation of street scum to the next.

• • •

After exactly two hours the interview was concluded. Rod knew no more about John Russell’s death than he’d said and whatever information he’d gleaned from the press and the rumour mill regarding Ross Warren, it was largely wrong. Rod left Waverley Police Station having tried desperately to help, hoping that what he had told the detectives would be of some use. Only time would tell.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Phone Tapping the Bondi Boys

i

Sydney street gangs are by nature transient. Members kind of drift in (once their credentials have been established) and stay for a while before moving on. Sometimes the ‘moving on’ is voluntary: parents move house, the gang member leaves the area because of work or the location of a girlfriend or because they’re the target of unwelcome attention from the police or from other gang members. Sometimes they leave through no choice of their own, arrested and sent to prison or a juvenile detention centre. When the move is involuntary the gang member usually comes back at the end of their ‘time’ but, more often than not, when they do return they find that things have changed while they’ve been away, the hierarchy has changed, liaisons have realigned in their absence, personnel (never a stable element in the first place) has changed, the hangouts are different. At some time or another it seems that everyone is at least temporarily away from the core gang.

The core gang members of the Bondi Boys circa 1989, however, had been well documented and those who were still around were subject to surveillance by the officers from Operation Taradale. As Detective Sergeant Page explained in his situation report 4 on 1 November 2001:

Current Position

The major tasks identified for evidence gathering in the matters of the deaths of Warren and Russell are nearing completion, with the major task outstanding being interviewing the Persons of Interest. It is proposed to have T.I. Operations targeting six POIs believed to be involved in these matters and an LD [Listening Device] operation targeting two inmates also believed to be involved in these matters. Further, the target group will appear before the NSWCC where coercive powers will be used to gather evidence.

The principal target Sean Cushman is now known to be living at Bondi and working at Botany. Cushman is currently in a de-facto relationship with [someone] who is known locally after being involved in a critical incident at Bondi.
[1]
Current TI monitoring includes landlines of Cushman’s residence and mobile in addition to his mother’s residence.

A conspiracy for the ongoing supply of MDMA (ecstasy) has been identified and persons to be charged at a later date include Cushman, [his de-facto], Adam Barclay (flatmate of Cushman) and Timothy Alger.

On 2 December the first of the phone taps produced important information which, although not directly connected to the investigation, provided the police with serious ammunition both in their war against drugs in Sydney and as leverage against their targets.

At 9.10am on 2 December the phone rang in Cushman’s home. Cushman answered and heard the voice of Juan Lawson. He was calling from New Zealand having left Australia on 11 November. Could Cushman get hold of ‘ten grand’ of ecstasy early the following month to send it to New Zealand? Cushman said he’d see what he could do. Shortly after midday he rang 22-year-old Storm Seiden: could Storm fill Juan’s order within the next week? No problem, bro, that would be … Six hundred, Cushman said: 600 e’s for 10 grand.

Steve Page logged the incident in his next situation report and suggested that the Australian Federal Police be informed in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding between the two law enforcement bodies.

ii

Telephone conversation between Sean Cushman and Donovan Reynolds: 5pm Monday, 3 December.

Reynolds: Little faggot … he was tellin’ me he’s a poof. He’s selling his bum … Fuckin’ little poofter.

Cushman: Yeah. He’s goin’ out with a trannie and that.

Reynolds: Why didn’t you hit him and that? Just for tellin’ ya. Just for being … just for pretending to be normal and being a mate and that?

iii

The following week the Public Affairs department of the NSW Police issued a media release appealing for information. Police from Operation Taradale, it read, were investigating two serious offences near Marks Park in 1989. A brief outline of the Warren and Russell cases was followed by a statement by the Crime Manager at Rose Bay (Detective Inspector Terry Dalton had by now replaced Warwick Brown) in which he planted the seeds that would bear a great deal of fruit over the forthcoming days and weeks:

It’s been more than a decade since Mr Warren’s disappearance and the suspicious death of Mr Russell, but police are still trying to piece together information which may solve these crimes. Changes to policing and technology in the last 10 years are assisting Operation Taradale’s investigation. DNA testing is currently being conducted on a number of exhibits relating to John Russell’s death.
[2]
Hair samples found on Mr Russell’s hand may belong to an offender
[3]
… Tests will also be conducted at Tamarama this morning [9 December] which will assist in determining whether Mr Russell fell from the cliff, or was pushed. A weighted dummy, dressed in clothes similar to those worn by the victim, will be dropped onto the rocks to simulate a fall. The procedure will then be repeated, with the dummy thrown off the cliff. Police will photograph the figure’s landing position in both simulations to assist with Taradale’s inquiries.

The press release concludes with a request:
Tell us what you know – it may be the key piece of information we’re seeking which could lead to an arrest.
Reading between the lines, the release was designed to stimulate activity among those whom the police suspected of being involved, activity most of which would be conducted along the eavesdropped phone lines.

On the morning of Sunday, 9December a film company mannequin dressed in clothes similar to those worn by John Russell on the night of his death was pushed from the cliff six times. A large group of curious onlookers watched as a Police Rescue officer toppled the dummy forwards onto the rocks below where a police photographer recorded the position of the fall. The procedure was repeated with the dummy going over backwards while fathers explained what was happening to their small children in the gathering crowd. As the performance continued, officers called out to each other, orchestrating the action, ‘inadvertently’ reinforcing details they wanted to be known: was the hand visible where the hair would have been sticking to it? Did the position suggest more than one assailant? In truth, Steve Page knew that the dummy had no forensic value whatsoever. It weighed only a few kilos and, being rigid, behaved nothing like a human body would behave under similar circumstances. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to get the grapevine working, get those involved talking. Make them anxious.

And by Wednesday, 12 December some of them were becoming anxious in the extreme.

At 8.20am one of the suspected girls rang her partner. Her mother had been talking to her, she said, had told her about the re-enactment with the dummy. Her mother knew she’d been in a gang, knew she’d been involved in ‘shit’ even though she’d only just had her 16th birthday two months before Russell died. Had she been there when…?

‘Were you?’ her partner asked. ‘Like, was it … was you one of ’em what … y’know?’

Sounding hysterical … maybe remembering all the stuff, all the bad stuff … ‘I don’t know,’ she screamed into the phone. ‘How … I don’t fucking know. What’s she going on about? I didn’t kill anybody!’

She’d hardly put the phone down when her mother called again, told her the police wanted to speak to her. Listening in, the police could imagine her hand shaking, her mind unable to stay in one place. The officer knew this was a nightmare for her. She rang her partner again.

Four minutes after talking to him the first time she was sobbing to him again.

‘I don’t remember anything,’ she said. ‘I didn’t kill anybody. I’ve never seen anybody die. But … Mum just rang me and the police are there looking for me because 12 years ago I was in a gang and somebody got murdered and now they want me for murder …’ sobbing into the phone, barely coherent, ‘I don’t remember … I’m so scared…’

But if you don’t know nothing,
her partner suggested,
if you wasn’t
…

‘They want me at my Mum’s at 12 o’clock … I didn’t kill anybody … I’m shaking really bad … I never killed anybody…’

And you never seen nothing
, her partner asked, his words sounding more in support than interrogation.
You never done nothing you shouldn’t’ve?

Deep breath, a pause. ‘We used to do, like, naughty stuff. But I never fuckin’ killed anybody. Never.’

Twenty minutes later she called her mother. Calmer now, she needed to know what it was all about, why the police thought she was involved.

It’s them … the killings at Tamarama,
her mother explained.
Twelve years ago, the detectives said. There was one bloke was … he went missing an’ they think he’s gone off the edge … off the cliff. They reckon he was murdered. An’ there was this other one … what, he went, was found on the rocks … the one they showed last … the other day. They says he was pushed off as well. Two murders…

‘What’s it got to do with me?’ The tape machine recording rising panic in her voice, starting to surge like a storm building in her gut, sounding like a tidal wave of bile and fear.

They think you know somethin’ … think you, y’know, you could be, know something. But I said, I … if you don’t know nothin’ there’s nothin’ to panic about. They was gays that was killed. They think it’s gay bashings that went wrong and that. But if you wasn’t there … I mean, you don’t have to panic…

‘No, I’m not panicking ’cause I know I haven’t done anything … I don’t even know what they’re talking about. I’m sitting here thinking, Mum, and I can only remember once when it was on the beach. But they bashed him and they didn’t kill him.’

Yeah, but now we know what they’re talking about,
her Mum said.
It was on the news on Sunday night. They’re talkin’ about these gay bashings and the bodies was found in Bondi and Tamarama and that. In 1989.

‘I never bashed gays.’ Her voice cracking with the strain maybe of lying, maybe just fear. She hadn’t even watched the news on Sunday.

Yeah. But like, even that day down at the beach … You’ve gotta think about your baby and trust them, alright? Fuck with being a little kid, right? We … we’ve gotta tell the truth.

‘If somebody did something wrong, I’m gonna tell, Mum. I’m not gonna get fuckin’ taken away from my daughter … I didn’t even hang, hang out at Tamarama. I don’t, I never even went to Tamarama. I don’t know … somebody’s said my name where it’s bullshit. As if I’d go and bash gays. Oh, my god.’

And her mother’s words seemingly faltering,
Oh, baby. I don’t even want to say anything but I just remember some of the things that you used to tell me … I don’t know, about card machines an’ that?

‘That’s the only one I’m thinking about,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t bash him. That’s where we took him to the bloody bank and got money out an’ the boys rolled him.’

Later, reading the transcript of the call, Steve Page couldn’t help but picture the scene, seeing her in his mind’s eye, biting her lip, pushing fingers through her hair as she replaced the receiver and sat down. Imagined her asking herself: could all this really be happening? Could all that come back to haunt her after all these years? By nine o’clock, 35 minutes after she’d first spoken to her partner, she rang her friend Shane and explained what she’d already heard that morning, her tone sounding as though she was trying to sound in control, calm and analytical. The police, she said, wanted to talk to her about a couple of murders that had happened when she was 16. Gays, she said. As if she’d know, she said. As if she’d know anything about murders for fuck’s sake.

‘I’m stressed out, Shane. I don’t even know what they’re on about.’ If she told the lie often enough, maybe she’d begin to believe herself.

I was at Bondi Primary School,
Shane said.
I think it was when the two faggots got murdered.

‘That’s what Mum said. It’s gays at Tamarama. But I never hung out at Tamarama. So I don’t know.’ It sounded true, she thought, sounded like she was being picked on for – for what? For whatever: it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that everybody understood she was being set up. ‘I’d never … I’d never have killed anyone. I’d … I’d know. I’d never, like, bashed anyone that bad or anything … I can’t believe this is happening now when I’ve just finally got my baby … If I was gonna have a fight with someone, it would be a girl. I don’t like goin’ punchin’ with guys, or especially gays, because I think that they’ve got AIDS or something. My god. I’m so scared.’ There was silence for a few seconds, long enough for the police to think later that the call had ended. It hadn’t.