The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (42 page)

I do not believe that Warren or Russell attended Marks Park for the purposes of committing suicide, as both were gay men attending a location that they knew as a gay beat, and were likely there for clandestine sexual encounters. Both Warren and Russell appeared to be in good spirits around the time of the disappearance.

Taking into account violence that was detected at the park against members of the gay community, which includes the Boxsell and McMahon assaults in December 1989 … and the homicide of Rattanajurathaporn in July 1990, I believe it is likely that both men met their deaths at that location as a result of violence.

Examination of available evidence shows that the groups known as The Bondi Boys, The Tamarama Three
[1]
and The Alexandria Eight were involved in offences of violence targeting members of the gay community in the vicinity of Marks Park at Tamarama. After examination of all available evidence, I am not able to offer an opinion as to who I believe is likely to be responsible for the deaths of Warren and/or Russell.

In my opinion, the [original] Warren investigation was flawed in that:

(a) the investigation was retained by a command not responsible for the incident scene,

(b) the positioning of the subject vehicle [Warren’s Nissan] and keys were not recorded by way of photograph,

(c) there appears no organised canvass [was] conducted,

(d) there was no brief of evidence submitted to the Missing Persons Unit or Coroner’s Court (as required by legislation) to assist any subsequent investigation

(e) the Diving Unit was not utilised to conduct an underwater search in an effort to locate the body of Warren,

(f) crime trends in relation to violence against members of the gay community were not monitored to establish whether it was likely that Warren was the victim of foul play. It was illogical that the scenario of accidental death was considered likely in the very early stages of the investigation with foul play almost eliminated,

(g) other than the primary response controlled by Constable Robinson, the investigative follow-up was negligible

In my opinion, the (original) Russell investigation was flawed in that:

(a) there is no evidence of a canvass being conducted locally,

(b) the likelihood of death by violent means discounted at an early stage,

(c) the investigation failed to take into account the unusual positioning of the body of Russell not consistent with a forwards motion fall, the existence of hair on the hand of Russell, and the disturbance of vegetation on the cliff top above the body of Russell,

(d) the hair evidence, which may have belonged to an offender, appears misplaced and was not submitted for further examination.

In relation to the survivability of notebooks, duty and exhibit books, I have obtained a report from Laraine Tate, archivist at the Police Service, together with a copy of the ‘Functional Records Disposal Authorities’. Police notebooks, duty books and exhibit books are retained for five years then destroyed. I believe that continuing this practice will result in a loss of evidence by subsequent inquiries, together with a weakening of the continuity process of exhibits. These are the documents likely to show actions conducted by police, details of potential witnesses, the finding, location and continuity of exhibits. In ordinary matters, all court actions would ordinarily be completed within five years, but the matters I see that would be affected would be cold case investigations, together with those matters where an offender is not immediately identified. This would include cases, including homicide, where the offender is not as yet on a fingerprint or DNA database.

Essentially, Page was saying, the system is a shambles and it has cost the state at least one conviction in relation to the present brief: had all the procedures been in place – and working properly – then the perpetrators of John Russell’s murder would almost certainly have been arrested following examination of the hairs found on the back of his hand. As it was, however, unless the system was drastically overhauled, these crimes would continue to go unpunished.

[1]
The McAuliffe brothers and Matthew Davis were together referred to by detectives involved in Operation Taradale as the ‘Tamarama Three’, a shorthand reference for the purposes of police convenience

SECTION THREE: EPILOGUE & PROLOGUE

CHAPTER TWENTY

A Thorough and Impeccable Investigation

i

Under the Terms of Reference for Operation Taradale Detective Sergeant Page’s remit was fairly straightforward: he was to investigate the disappearance of Ross Warren, the death of John Russell and the assault on David McMahon
‘With a view to establish any links between these matters.’
While the remit was simple enough, the investigation had proven as complex as Page thought it would be: 2500 documented pages of evidence, cross-referenced and annotated, had established to his satisfaction that there were links between the incidents. Location, the targeting of specific groups identified by sexual orientation, the fact that they were only three instances within a far broader picture of hitherto unrelated incidents – all these suggested that the cases were linked.

Which wasn’t to say that the crimes against the three men named were commited by the same person or persons. In fact, while the Russell and McMahon cases were very possibly perpetrated by at least some of the same people (offending gang members threatening to throw McMahon off the cliff,
‘where we threw the other one’
, the description of one of McMahon’s attackers being blond-haired and the fact that Russell had blond hairs adhering to his hand when his body was found, and so on) it is quite possible that they weren’t. The culture of gay-hate crime was so widespread in the eastern suburbs in the late ’80s and later that it’s even quite likely that youths from various gangs would have talked about their violent activites, real and imagined. The word – including that on methodology – would have spread. Adam French wouldn’t have been the only one who was ‘young and dumb’: there would have been plenty of other insecure adolescents bragging about fantasy exploits to gain the approval of their peers (witness a workshop conducted by Sue Thompson at Cleveland Street High School in the early ’90s during which boys, when asked to graphically describe how they saw homosexuals, drew pictures of gay men being thrown off cliffs). It was possible that two separate groups of thugs had embarked on similar crimes along simliar lines, the throwing of their victims from the cliffs having become the accepted method of concluding a bashing. This, after all, had been the finale to Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn’s savage beating, but those convicted of his murder, Page was convinced, weren’t responsible for the Russell or McMahon attacks.

But if the attacks on Russell and McMahon might – were even likely to – have been the actions of the same gang, or part thereof, Ross Warren’s case was slightly different, different enough to believe that other persons were responsible for his disappearance. And murder.

Not only was Warren never found (this in itself, is of minor significance as it’s certainly credible that he could have been thrown into the sea and his body carried away on the tides) but there are two other factors that point to an unrelated group of people being involved: time and keys.

Ross Warren disappeared in July 1989, the middle of winter. The Russell, McMahon and Richard Johnson incidents all occurred during the summer months, in fact, they occurred within a two-month period between the end of November 1989 and the middle of January 1990. They are ‘grouped’ by time. Warren’s disappearnce is far enough outside the time grouping to cause doubt as to a link by perpetrator. Of course, there’s the possibility that Warren was murdered as a kind of ‘tester’, a trial killing to see if they – the killers – could really go through with it. During the following months gang members would have to deal with their fear (of being caught), their guilt (some at least would have nighmares and other manifestations of psychological trauma) and, in some cases, their remorse. There would be endless talk until they’d become used to the fact that they had killed, until they had reduced their act to the level of being mundane, an ordinary act which could be repeated four months later.
[1]

The second, and more compelling factor, however, is the key ring. If Ross Warren had been beaten and thrown from the cliff top, his keys – which it may be fairly assumed he’d been ‘rattling’ to attract a sexual partner – would have fallen to the ground beside the walkway or would have fallen with him. In which case they would either have been found on the rock shelf or, having gone into the water, might not have been found at all. Detective Sergeant Page concluded that the keys could only have been ‘placed’ in the position in which they were found, either by Warren himself or by a ‘finder’. It seems unlikely that anyone who found the keys on the rock shelf would half conceal them in a hole in the wall: a fairer assumption is that Ross Warren put them there deliberately, possibly while he committed sexual acts with someone else, someone who murdered him afterwards.

Of course, without corroborating evidence this is mere speculation, speculation that throws up as many questions as answers: why would someone murder a stranger they’d just had sex with (the placing of the keys suggests that sex had at least started) when the express purpose of their being together is that very act? How could someone have overpowerd Warren without leaving signs of a struggle (blood, scuff marks etc)?

One possible answer was presented to Steve Page in April 2001.

ii

[In accordance with an agreement between Steve Page and the family of the victim in the following scenario, the victim’s name has been changed.]

Ricki Moore lived in the Wollongong area where he was waiting to die. His doctors had given him six months to live before he became yet another victim of AIDS. He was spending whatever time he had left working for the AIDS Council of NSW, Our Pathways Incorporated and the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation. He was a female impersonator, a ‘drag queen’ known as Barbie. He’d worked as Barbie since 1968.

Barbie grew up in Wollongong and worked in drag acts at Kennedy’s Nightclub where she met Ross Warren and other WIN TV employees who’d come to the essentially straight club to watch the shows. Ross and Barbie became friends, although not close, going to the same parties and sharing friends. Ross, Barbie said, was ‘in the closet’ at the time, hadn’t publically declared his homosexuality.

Between 1988 and 1990 Barbie lived in Sydney and went to a lot of gay beats, including Marks Park, which she’d known about since 1966 when she was 12 years old. In fact, she went to Marks Park almost every night while she lived in Sydney although not always for sex. Sometimes she went there just to sit, to talk.

Barbie smiled thinly when she talked of Marks Park, her eyes took on a far away look and her hands moved restlessly as though trying to grasp something just out of reach, something that had gone forever. Marks Park wasn’t just for gay men, she said. Bisexual men also went there to engage in sex in the honeycomb caverns and the bushes along the walkway leading from Bondi to Tamarama.

‘A lot of people think that men meet and have sex in the toilets there at the southern end of Marks Park,’ Barbie said. ‘But this isn’t necessarily the case. The toilets are too open and people can walk in on you.’ Besides which, she explained, gay men went to Marks Park to pick up men regarded as ‘straight’, closet gays. ‘In any case,’ she went on, ‘the rock area around the outside of Marks Park and the bushes on top of the flat area of the park are where people go to have sex because it isn’t as open to the public and therefore there’s a lesser chance of being accidentally discovered or disturbed.’

Sometime at the beginning of January 1990, Barbie said, she went to the bank on Bondi Road. It was around ten o’clock on a Thursday morning and the money she withdrew was for her rent. As she was about to go through the gate at the back of her house in Carlisle Street she was struck on the back of the neck and fell to the ground. Three pairs of feet came into her view. Someone took her wallet out of her pocket and the assailants ran off towards the beach. All Barbie had seen of her attackers was their feet.

A couple of weeks later Barbie was drinking at the Bondi Hotel and left sometime after midnight to go home. It was a Friday night, hot and close, and Barbie was wearing black nylon cycling shorts with a black G-string underneath, and a white Bonds singlet. With her almost waist length black hair flowing in the night breeze and weighing no more than 45 kilos, she looked waif-like and young. She was 35.

Leaving the hotel bar she headed off up Notts Avenue, walked towards the coastal walkway preparing to cut through the park to Fletcher Street and Carlisle Street. At the top of the stairs at the north end of Marks Park she rested on a seat overlooking the ocean, watching the moon rise.

‘Another man came and sat beside me,’ she later told Sergeant Page. ‘He had dark hair which was parted in the middle and came down to his shoulders. I thought he was aged between 20 and 25. At least 10 years younger than me.’ This was a white boy, she said, with no recognisable accent, an Aussie. The hair on his chest was visible at the open neck of his light cotton shirt and he was wearing jeans. He asked Barbie if she had a light. ‘As I lit his cigarette he held my hand and put it on his crotch. At this point I realised that he was “on”, that is, he was there to have sex with another man.’