The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (31 page)

‘We’d like to play another track,’ Dagg went on. ‘Track 11 from the CD. This is a legally obtained listening device product between a Dean Howard and Adam French –’

‘Can I just say something,’ Morgan interjected. He was looking at the transcript he’d been given, looking at the dates. ‘On 10 April 1999 I was locked up and at no time was I ever with Dean Howard, so that’s … We were split up immediately.’ He reiterated his sentence time, proving he was where he said he was, explaining that Howard was never in the same prison, that Howard went one way, he the other…

‘Okay,’ Fountain said. ‘You said that. Had you ever served any time at all with Dean Howard? Had he ever crossed you in the yard, passed you in the yard?’

‘No.
’
Cause, like I said, we were split up.’ He argued further, denying that they’d ever crossed paths, Howard and himself, inside the system except for maybe one day at a cricket game between his place and Howard’s. But he hadn’t wanted to speak to him, hadn’t spoken to him. They were separated for a reason, he said. They were separated because Howard had given evidence against the others in court, against him. The authorities knew to keep them apart. The cricket game? It had been in, what? ’98. Not before. So the stuff on the tape, that stuff couldn’t be … he’d seen the dates and they just triggered … They went over it again and again, back and forth, testing his argument, checking for flaws. But there were none.

‘Okay,’ Dagg finally said, returning to the next track, to track 11. ‘This is between Dean Howard and French.’ They listened in silence as the conversation unfolded, the ugly words sneering into the room, filling the space between them. It seemed to go on for a long time until Fountain finally pressed ‘stop’. ‘I’ll just take you back to that spot,’ Dagg said. ‘Page 9. D’you know who –?’

‘I know who he’s referring to,’ Morgan spat. ‘I’d be a stupid idiot to sit here and tell you they’re not referring to me.’

‘Okay. And he goes on to say, “Morgan hit him across the head with a sledgehammer”. What have you got to say about that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Morgan said. ‘I’ve never hit anyone with a sledgehammer.’ And another thing, he said, all the way through they’re calling him Morgo and Ron and Ronnie and then suddenly they’re using his full name, mentioning Ronnie Morgan. Sounded weird, like it was, like rehearsed. And they seemed to know – one of them seemed to know a lot about the Allen killing … Howard seemed to know a bit…

‘And you don’t know that Allen bloke that they’re talking about?’

‘No. Definitely not.’

And what about the claim that he’d ‘done heaps of them’, that he’d ‘gone nearly every day’, what about that? Did he know what they were talking about there? Of course he did, they were talking about gay bashing but he’d never, never hit anyone with a sledgehammer, never even known anyone hit somebody with a sledgehammer. But what they had to realise, what the police had to realise was that Howard had already given up names to assist the police when they were all arrested for their ‘do’. He was obviously doing it again, giving his name in exchange for … for what? Some deal, he supposed. It was all bullshit, he said.

‘To me,’ he said, indicating Dean Howard, ‘he don’t hold nothing. He don’t exist in my opinion, Mr Dagg. He doesn’t exist. None of them do. They’re all just a distant memory to me. Howard assisted the Crown or the authorities in another matter and French was the one that did it to us during court. Pointed the finger at us while we were sitting there, so. Well, I hope youse can appreciate me being a bit disgusted at it.’

‘So you think he might’ve just been saying things –?’

‘I’m dead set certain on my dead mother’s grave,’ Morgan said vehemently. ‘That’s exactly what he’s doing and I believe that
’
cause I’ve never had an opinion of them. I don’t hate them and I don’t like them. Hate’s a feeling and I have no feeling for them at all. They’re just, they’re – as far as I’m concerned, I understand you boys are doing your job and youse have just dredged up a ghost –’cause far as I’m concerned, Howard’s a ghost. So is French. I want absolutely nothing to do with them. I mean, I get calls from Alex – which I don’t even know if it’s against the law any more – and we just have a chat, how we’re doing, yeah … and I’ll stick to that till the day I die.’

v

Later that afternoon, other officers from Operation Taradale were talking to Alex Mihailovic at Redfern Police Station. Detective Constable Pincham explained his rights to Mihailovic, introduced plain-clothes Detective Brown and the interview was under way.

The routine questions relating to Ross Warren, John Russell and David McMahon elicited the expected answers: don’t know, never heard of him, was never there, know nothing. Marks Park was unknown to him, didn’t know it was a gay beat, had never been there. Didn’t recognise anyone in any of the photographs. Didn’t hurt anybody.

‘Do you remember where you were on 22July 1989?’ Pincham asked.

‘Yeah. I was at school.’

‘The 22nd is actually a Saturday.’ The photocopied newspapers brought no memory back. Same for the dates around Russell’s murder, McMahon’s assault.

Mihailovic knew nothing, had heard nothing. His answers were short, sounding deliberately unhelpful. He admitted to having hung out with Morgan at school, with Morgan and Sharkhead – Justin King – but nothing else. He admitted nothing else.

vi

Morgan’s phone rang. Ty’s voice at the other end, asking, ‘Well, what happened?’

Dismissive, hardly worth the reply. ‘Oh, they got nothin’. They got jack shit … They’ve got a prerecorded tape of … supposed to be me. Like, it sounds fuckin’ nothin’ like me, not even close.’ Pausing, sounding as though he was breathing hard. ‘And this other putrid dog that give us up? It’s all them. Been them two again. These other two, the two give us up for our things.’

At nine that night Mihailovic rang Morgan, told him he was interviewed that afternoon. And what did they get from it? ‘Nothing. Fuckin’ shit.’

They talked about how their interviews had been run, what they’d been asked, how it was all crap.

‘I said to him,’ Morgan said, ‘I said, “off the record, mate,” I said, “you’ve got nothing.” I said, “you have nothing.” I said, “you were grabbing at straws.’’ ’

‘See, I’ve don’ even remember them,’ Mihailovic said, hardly listening to Morgan, seeming more intent on telling his story.

‘No,’ Morgan continued. ‘That’s what I told him. Said I honestly just don’t even remember him. I said there’s certain ones that I remember, because they happened after our case … and he goes, “yeah, that’s understandable.’’ ’

‘Fuck. I know I’ve never even heard of them.’

‘No, neither have I.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

McGrath: Fantasist or Accessory?

i

The day after police interviewed Ron Morgan and Alex Mihailovic they took a statement from an ex-police officer. Sara O’Brien had seen the ‘re-enactment’ of John Russell’s murder with the dummy being thrown off the cliff at Marks Park and had contacted detectives from Operation Taradale. She’d followed the media interest, she said, had seen a TV story on the Warren disappearance and contacted the police a short while later wanting to make sure they had the information she’d previously given to Steve McCann in 1991.

She’d joined the NSW Police Service in late ’85, she said, and after graduating from the academy she worked out of Central before transferring to Wollongong in the spring of ’86. In 1989 she started detective training at Nowra and stayed there until she left the force in 1993. While she lived in Nowra she shared a unit with a Navy rating, a stewardess aboard HMAS
Albatross
. This flatmate, Jeanette Pradanovic, was a friend of a girl called Merlyn McGrath, O’Brien said, a girl of 17 who nominally lived with her mother in Antares Place, Nowra. Nominally, O’Brien explained, because she spent most of her time living at friends’ houses.

Pradanovic and McGrath were friends who often went out together in the evenings and on those occasions McGrath would turn up at their house to change. Maybe a couple of times a week. O’Brien knew that their visitor was involved in petty crime and tried to persuade Pradanovic that it wasn’t a good idea to associate with her: it certainly wasn’t a good idea for McGrath to frequently hang out in the home of a police officer. If she understood the seriousness of the situation from O’Brien’s point of view, Pradanovic seemed not to care and McGrath continued to call around. At some point in August 1989 McGrath had come over to see Jeanette and took the opportunity to talk to O’Brien.

‘I saw these blokes in Sydney flog some feller for being a poof. What do you reckon I should do?’ Her hands made nervous little movements as she spoke, her fingers curling and uncurling as she touched things on a small table almost, O’Brien thought, as if she didn’t realise she was doing it.

‘Depends on how bad they hurt him,’ O’Brien said. ‘But you should go to the police station and have a chat to them in there.’

McGrath seemed to consider this advice. ‘I don’t trust anyone else,’ she finally decided. ‘I’ll only talk to you.’

O’Brien sighed. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘What happened, then?’

McGrath looked up at her. ‘I was in Sydney with a car full of mates,’ she said. ‘And we would just drive along and they would just pick out blokes and flog ’em. Just roll ’em and teach ’em not to be fuckin’ poofters.’

‘Well, what are you telling me for?’ What was the point of this silly confession, Sara wondered. Did she just want to let a copper know that she knew some ugly people? Was this all about showing off?

But McGrath’s quiet voice stunned her in reply. ‘I think one of ’em might have died,’ she said, her words barely taking shape in the room, her voice was so low. ‘I think one of them may have been that TV guy.’

‘Who do you mean?’ O’Brien’s own voice sounded far too loud in the small space, a sudden surge of adrenalin sending her vocal chords into a kind of spasm.

‘That Warren guy,’ McGrath almost whispered. ‘They robbed him and bashed him.’

‘Where did this happen?’ O’Brien wanted to know.

‘I don’t know. Near some cliffs.’

O’Brien calmed herself a little, took her time before speaking again. There were procedures to follow and she didn’t want to stuff it up. ‘From what you’ve told me,’ she said as dispassionately as she could manage, ‘it’s certainly something you should discuss with the detectives.’

But McGrath shook her head. ‘No,’ she said simply. No, she wouldn’t do that.

‘One of the detectives at Nowra is Mark Winterflood,’ Sara said. ‘He’s really easy to get along with…’

‘No. I don’t want to.’

O’Brien later admitted that at times she wondered if McGrath was lying, if she was trying to prove some point or other. She thought maybe the girl was ‘off her head’, either then, when the attack supposedly took place, or now, when she was telling the story. But on reflection it just didn’t seem true: McGrath seemed to genuinely believe what she was saying. She wasn’t smashed. Not booze or drugs, O’Brien thought, she was straight and sober.

‘Look, Mark’s really easy to talk to. Very nonjudgemental,’ she said gently, feeling that she wanted to help this girl. ‘At least just try and talk to him. If you meet him and don’t like him, just come back to me
’
cause it’s a pretty serious matter.’

For a moment McGrath seemed to hesitate. And then Jeanette walked into the room, the subject was dropped and they left together for an evening out.

• • •

Did the police have this information? Were the detectives aware that Sara O’Brien had provided this statement a decade earlier? Yes, they were. Not only did Steve Page know all about Merlyn McGrath’s admissions to the former police officer, he had the tapes from a telephone conversation between McGrath and her sister from the previous afternoon.

In trying to locate McGrath detectives had contacted her sister, had gone to her house and told her that they wanted to speak to Merlyn about Ross Warren, told her that Merlyn was somehow involved. The ploy worked. Phone lines started to hum with activity.

‘Ross Warren,’ McGrath’s sister explained. ‘A newsreader that went missing.’

Was it fear that sprang immediately into McGrath’s voice? ‘Who’s Ross Warren? I don’t even know who Ross Warren is.’

‘He went missing,’ her sister said. ‘When we were teenagers. I remember there was a story,
’
cause remember Vicki? Steven’s ‘ex’ had a crush on him and you said something about him. You said that … that you’d got stuck into him. Or something like that. I remember you had a story to tell about him. About his disappearance.’ She waited to see what Merlyn would say but there was silence from the other end of the line. ‘I don’t remember exactly what the story was,’ she said. ‘’Cause I remember thinking you were being a tough girl an’ just skitin’.’

‘No,’ Merlyn said. ‘No, fucked if I know. Wouldn’t have a clue.’

Well, look, her sister said, maybe if the police had her mobile number, called her direct? Clear this shit up.

Distractedly, McGrath agreed, said it would probably be the best thing. In the long run. Did she remember anything about this shit? She didn’t think so. Ten years ago.

Another call came in. People had heard about the police visiting her sister, had heard they were looking for Merlyn and assumed they’d already spoken to her.