The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (40 page)

Okay, Page said. But her sister did say there was a story…

‘No, she said there was a story that …’ Could he play the tape again, she couldn’t get it straight in her head.

The recording was played a second time while McGrath listened to her own words, tinny sounding words that seemed to grate on the very air of the interview room. When the track ended, Page switched off the machine.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘What can you tell me about that story?’

‘Nothing,’ McGrath said. ‘Like I said to me sister, you’ve probably got this taped on your thingo too, the only time I remember saying anything – and I can’t even be sure that I did say it – was,
’
cause Vicki used to have a crush on him and, like, she wrote him bloody love letters and everything, and I remember I had a fight with her one day in Mum’s house and I pushed her up against the freezer and me sister said that I’d said something to her then, about her pretty boy, but I would’ve just been shit stirring her. Like I said to youse, I’ll take a lie detector test and everything. I know I’ve got nothing to do with this. So, yeah, that’s, that’s just, like I said to you, mate, when I, when we had the first interview, anyone would’ve said anything like that would’ve been Vicki because she was the one that had the crush on him.’

‘Well, I can tell you now that Vicki Morgan is not a person who has given us any information –’

‘Oh, no,’ McGrath said. ‘I know that. Yeah, no. No, I know. No, that’s …’

The detectives listened in silence while McGrath rambled in a barely coherent manner, talking about her sister and what her brother had said, what Vicki had said she’d said, how the police probably had it all on tape anyway. They let her run on, waiting for her to come to a stop, to possibly realise that she was making little sense.

‘Do you agree,’ Steve Page asked when she eventually seemed to have run out of steam, ‘that now, looking back at it with hindsight, that you may have said to people that you were involved in the death or the bashing of Ross Warren?’

‘I can’t, like, no. I can’t and that. Like I said, if I had of said it to anyone, it would have been Vicki to fuckin’ give her the shits. But I can’t, and like I said, I know who I’ve put my hands on in my life and, when I did, I paid for it. I’ve had scraps but I’ve never, and I, and I’d know, that’s what I mean, like, and I’ve done some pretty stupid things, but I’ve sat in my home, mate, and bawled my eyes out racking my brains, and I just can’t think of anything. Fuck.’

‘Do you agree that previously you told me that you’ve never been involved in gay bashings?’

‘Yeah.’ She thought for a second or two. ‘Not, I’ve been there, but I’ve not, I’ve, I’ve saved the bloke, me and some friends. And I’ve, I’ve been with a group of people and they, these guys started and me and the girls were with them. But we didn’t have anything to do with the physical punching or anything.’

She couldn’t remember who the guys were, couldn’t remember the girls either, except Simone Davidson – and she was dead, now. There was a big Samoan boy, didn’t know his name, somebody used to live in Ryde, couldn’t describe any of them, they were so much younger then, see? Would’ve been, like, ’86 or ’87 and –

Steve Page cut her short. He was going to play another track, another call: her and her brother in which she admitted to taking part in two gay bashings, one in Hyde Park, the other in Oxford Street.

‘Not me physically,’ she said. ‘Like I just said to you, like I was telling you before …’ It wasn’t the girls who bashed them. The boys bashed them, the girls were just there, and the boys got this bloke, took him into an alley near DCMs club, and hit him a few times, took his wallet and that was it. The other one, the one in Hyde Park, was a big fight, gays against straight guys. The police were there, she said. It was all around ’86 or ’87, she said.

There was mention on the tape of a photograph and a diary, could she let the police see them? If her sister could find it – the diary – she said. They could have the photograph, no problem, it was of her and her sister at Darling Harbour. There were two policemen in the background, she said.

• • •

When detectives interviewed her sister four days later she corroborated Merlyn’s statement, confirmed that Merlyn had been living in Mount Druitt in 1989 (without disclosing the fact that it had been only for a short period during that year) and offering the fact that Merlyn was prone to bragging about her involvement in things she, in fact, had nothing to do with. So, while she might have said she’d been involved in the bashing and killing of Ross Warren, it was unlikely, her sister said: it was just talk.

iii

Detective Sergeant Steve Page created sitrep 2001/5/8 on 29January 2002 for submission to the Rose Bay LAC commander outlining the status of the investigation at the time. Since the media release in early December and the re-enactment with the dummy, more than 40 formal interviews involving persons of interest had been conducted – but there were still more than 90 incomplete ‘jobs’ to be finalised before the brief could be submitted to the coroner. Among the interviews already logged were those of the convicted McAuliffe brothers, convicted for the Rattanajurathaporn murder. The interviews proved of little value, as did the covertly recorded conversations the brothers had with their mother both before and after the interviews: there was a profusion of profanity, a plethora of swagger and not much else. Steve Page decided that, apart from the murder they’d been arrested for, the McAuliffes and Matthew Davis knew nothing, weren’t worth pursuing.

Besides the McAuliffes, Operation Taradale officers had also interviewed seven of the eight perpetrators of the Richard Johnson murder, the eighth killer’s whereabouts being unknown. There were still questions outstanding in relation to some of the information they’d uncovered in talking to the seven, questions mainly centred around Adam French’s admission to Dean Howard that he’d been part of an assault in which the victim was thrown off the cliff at Tamarama. Sergeant Page and his colleagues weren’t inclined to discount what he’d said as the bragging of someone who, by his own admission, had been young and dumb.

But if there were still questions to be asked, they weren’t necessarily going to be answered to the satisfaction of the police. One of French’s co-convicted refused, point blank, to give a statement, turning up at Surry Hills Police Station merely to inform the detectives that he wouldn’t say anything to help their inquiries. Another claimed that the attack on Richard Johnson wasn’t motived by homophobia at all, it had been a robbery gone wrong. The former prison inmate seemed unaware that Johnson had been lured to the toilet block because his phone number had been written on the wall, a known contact method for homosexuals in search of casual sex.

On the other hand, Merlyn McGrath had freely given her statements even though, in the final analysis, she was regarded as being nothing more than a nuisance: she was prone to ‘big-noting’ and, the detectives ultimately concluded, was not involved in the Warren case – or in any other case within the parameters of the investigation.

Well within the parameters though, was the indication by one of the Bondi Boys’ associates that Sean Cushman and Ned Hajdukovic were both consistently involved in gay bashing. As were, according to Adam French, Ron Morgan and a friend of his, Norm. These two, French said, went bashing gays at Tamarama almost on a ‘daily basis’.

Interviews were ongoing.

Although no details were specified, the investigation was focusing sharply on the Bondi Boys and Sean Cushman in particular. During his schooldays and immediately thereafter, one of Cushman’s closest associates was thought to be Joey Phillips, a fat boy of Maori appearance, with hair closely shaved at the sides, longer on top. Phillips had been at Dover Heights School with Cushman, had left in 1989, at the end of Year 10, and had eventually gone to work for his father-in-law as a carpet layer out in the far west of Sydney. Joey Phillips was interviewed on 23 January at Mount Druitt Police Station.

Throughout the early questioning Phillips’ answers were monosyllabic: ‘yes’ and ‘no’ whenever he could avoid a longer response. Detective Sergeant Nuttall patiently went through the list of prepared questions, explained the procedure concerning the photograph booklet, asked him to sign the back page, to put the date and time next to his signature.

‘What’s the time?’ he asked.

It was 10.26am. He started to look at the pictures. Next to the first photograph he recognised he put the number 1.

‘Who is this person?’ Sergeant Nuttall asked. The transcription later showed Phillips to have answered a name that sounded like ‘Sean Cussell’. It was Cushman. Number 2 sounded like ‘Tim Elka’ – Tim Alger … ‘Aben Sulway’ – Adam Selway. All in all, the transcription showed nine instances where Phillips’ diction was so poor that an accurate record of what he’d said was barely possible. He knew those people he’d indicated as having hung around Bondi Beach, drinking in ‘the huts’. And there were others, he said, others who weren’t in the book, although he couldn’t remember their names. They all hung out at the beach. It was where he’d scrawled his graffiti, too, using the tag, ‘Joey’, or sometimes, ‘Poker’. He knew the tag, ‘PTK’, he said. It stood for Prime Time Kings. Not People That Kill? No. Who was in the Prime Time Kings? All the people he’d mentioned, he said, and the others whose names he couldn’t remember. And they used ‘PTK’ as a tag? Yes. Did he ever use ‘PTK’ as a graffiti tag? Yeah.

‘In what area did you use the tag “PTK”?’ Nuttall asked.

‘Only the Bondi area. City area. Wherever.’

Sergeant Nuttall showed Phillips a photograph of Ross Warren, asked the usual questions: did Phillips recognise him? Could he say anything about Warren’s disappearance? Did Phillips recall where he was in July 1989? No. No. No. Was he working in ’89?

‘No, I don’t think I was working,’ he said. ‘I was probably down the beach getting drunk.’

Nuttall showed him the photograph of John Russell, ran through the questions and listened to the same negative answers: Phillips knew nothing about it. Was he socialising around the Bondi area in November 1989, the month in which John Russell was murdered?

‘Most probably.’

The photograph of David McMahon … repeated negatives, no, no, no…

So, he used to hang around the huts on Bondi Beach, mainly on Fridays and Saturdays, usually from 5pm until after midnight – 1am, 2am, drinking alcohol. Did he know what a gay beat was? No. Sergeant Nuttall explained what a gay beat was, asked if Phillips was aware of such areas. He wasn’t. Did he know of
any
gay areas in Sydney? No. What about Marks Park? Did he know that Marks Park was a gay beat? No.

‘What were your feelings towards gays in 1989?’ Nuttall asked.

‘I didn’t mind gays,’ Phillips said. ‘They never hassled me so I never hassled them.’

‘When you say hassle, what do you mean?’

‘I mean that was their, their own problem what they wanted to be. Had nothing to do with me. They were gay, they were gay. I mean, I didn’t have anything against them.’

‘Are you aware of any people who had hassles or contact with members of the gay community in 1989?’

‘No.’

‘Excuse me for a moment,’ Sergeant Nuttall said, articulating his words very carefully so that there could be no misunderstanding. ‘Mr Phillips, we’re going to take you back to May 1991. I think you were involved in an assault on a man by the name of Ivan Smith. Do you recall that incident?’

‘No.’

‘Were you charged with assaulting a man by the name of Ivan Smith at Paddington on 7 May 1991?’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘Information I’ve obtained from fact sheets relating back to the assault of Ivan Smith indicate that you were a member of a group of people that assaulted Ivan Smith at Paddington on 7 May 1991 and that you were charged with this offence. What can you tell me about that?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘During this incident you have yelled out, “you fuckin’ poofters”. Do you recall why you made this comment?’

‘No.’

‘Do you recall why you assaulted this man after yelling, “you fuckin’ poofters”?’

‘No.’

‘Whilst Mr Smith was being assaulted by a group of people – of which you were a member – he was continually yelled at, from you, “Poofter … bastard … fuckin’ cunt … arse hole … faggot”. Why were these comments directed at Mr Smith?’

‘Don’t remember.’
[2]

‘I’m looking at a statement supplied by Mr McMahon,’ Nuttall continued after explaining that he was moving on to the attempted murder of David McMahon, ‘specifically referring to paragraph nine which is headed, “Suspect Two”. “Suspect Two” is described by Mr McMahon as male, Maori appearance, 15 to 18 years old, 168 to 172 centimetres tall – which converts to five feet six, to five feet eight inches tall – a solid build, round solid face, was carrying a little body fat, olive complexion, dark hair. Do you agree, Mr Phillips, that the description as I’ve supplied to you from the statement of Mr McMahon is similar to the appearance which you have supplied police in this interview of you in, in December 1989?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there anything you wish to say in relation to the assault and rob of David McMahon on 21December 1989?’

‘No.’

Exactly one hour after the interview began it concluded with another volley of monosyllables. According to Joey Phillips, he’d done nothing, knew nothing, heard nothing, was never there, was probably too drunk to remember. The detectives had expected little else.