The Devil's Garden (28 page)

Catherine Birnie ceased all correspondence with David shortly after starting her sentence, but his sexual violence continued in prison, where he relentlessly preyed on vulnerable, younger prisoners who were incarcerated with him in protective custody. He also helped other prisoners prepare their appeals. One was Robin David Macartney, sentenced to life in September 2001 for the murder of 27-year-old Lalita Horsman, whose remains were recovered from sand dunes two days after her disappearance in Geraldton in December 1999. Macartney, who ran his own appeal, accused police of framing him, claiming DNA evidence – semen found on a singlet near her body – had been planted and that they had refused to investigate other suspects. Critics of his claim argue it is impossible to 'plant' semen that has dried onto a garment.

The appeal caused a public furore when it was revealed Macartney had shown other prisoners tapes, given to him to prepare his case, of Horsman's semi-naked body. Macartney also sent the graphic footage that showed police recovery of Horsman's body to Margaret Dodd. She met him four times in prison in the hope he would admit to murdering Hayley. He never did.

The legacy of the Birnies' killing spree continues to cast a pall over Western Australia. How many women did they actually kill? A class manipulator, Birnie would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. And what he wanted, years into his sentence, was to see Catherine again. On a Saturday afternoon in the late 1980s, Bret Christian took a phone call from Brian Tennant, a self-educated law reformer. Tennant had heard from Birnie: in exchange for a meeting with Catherine, he said, Birnie would confess to other murders that they had committed. 'Here was this bloke wanting to use these unspeakable crimes as some sort of bargaining chip,' Christian says. 'There was no way I was going to get involved with this, beyond alerting police to the claims. But who knows if he was telling the truth?'

Passing the information on to a detective he knew, Christian learned that despite driving Birnie around some areas that he nominated, he was not forthcoming with police with any new information. Birnie whined that the police had not believed him, that they dismissed him as using the information simply to score an outing from jail.

On 23 April 2005 David Birnie was questioned about viewing the Horsman tape but less than six months later, he was dead. In early October he fashioned a crude noose and hanged himself in his cell. The man who had terrorised and tormented women in life, was ignored in death. No one claimed his body and he was given a humble pauper's funeral, for which the taxpayers footed the bill.

Ironically, his death was the same night that his final victim, who had escaped and led police to the Birnies, gave birth to her second child. Catherine's contempt for their victims also returned to haunt her. She was barred from attending David's funeral lest she spit on his grave.

With Birnie's suicide, and Catherine's belligerent, continued silence, the police are now left with little more than speculation and rumour about whether or not they committed other murders. Was he telling the truth? 'Who knows?' Christian shrugs. 'Dead men can't tell tales.'

In late February 2005 a prolific serial killer, who had eluded police for 31 years, was finally arrested in Wichita, USA. Linked with at least ten murders, he penned a terrifying nickname for himself: BTK – Bind, Torture, Kill. He consistently taunted police with letters alluding to his identity.

BTK was 59-year-old office worker Dennis Rader, who was actively involved in serial murder between the mid-1970s to 1980s, when he suddenly, inexplicably, went to ground. Twenty-five years later, he was back, again taunting police with knowledge of an unsolved murder in 1986 and enclosing photos of the victim's dead body and driver's licence. Occasionally he would send jewellery, believed to be trophies taken from victims. Known to neighbours as a belligerent man with an unpleasant personality, he was also a respectable Scout leader and Lutheran churchgoer with a wife and two grown children.

His first victims were a husband and wife and their two children. Later, he murdered only women. But he loved the limelight: when he perceived he was not receiving enough media attention, he grizzled to the local newspaper. 'How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?'

While police refused to disclose how they came to arrest BTK, he had a positive DNA match with some of his victims. His modus operandi also changed with his later two victims: their bodies, unlike the other women, were removed from the crime scenes after they were murdered.

Why would BTK resurface after more than two decades? Police chief Richard LaMunyon could only proffer a theory. 'It is possible something in his life has changed. I think he felt the need to get his story out.'

The BTK case, Robin Napper says, points to an undeniable reality; unless a serial killer is caught or dies, the amount of time in between murders is inconsequential. Nothing will stop them.

Nothing.

With the rest of the review team, Paul Schramm addresses the press in early December 2004. 'Clearly, there are different views from there being some connection to the offender or offenders to this location, to it simply being a spot that was blindly driven to to leave the body,' he says. They found no major problems with the taskforce work but, he added, 'we still hope this case can be solved and we have not recommended scaling down the investigation. It's not the end of the journey, forensically speaking, which is good news for WA police and of no comfort to whoever is responsible for these crimes.'

The team find that by virtue of the three girls' profiles, they could not rule out the possibility that the killer could be responsible for other murders. But they doubt it. After a detailed review of the 24 other young women either missing or murdered since 1980, they are confident, they say, that there are no definite links to these crimes. 'But,' Paul Schramm cautions in a tone that suggests he is having a bet each way, 'it must be pointed out that links of this nature can never be ruled out.' However, the team does
not
rule out Julie Cutler and the girl who was brutally raped at Karrakatta cemetery as possible victims. 'How do you explain why one woman got away and others are murdered?' Schramm muses later. 'Only the offender can tell us this.'

Trawling information from the 'living witness' project – girls who had been picked up by offenders and survived – proved as lucrative as it did frustrating. 'We could be looking at numerous offenders. We could be looking at just one. The Snowtown 'bodies in barrels' murders taught us this lesson. In that case, there were four offenders working in concert with each other. They exhibited some traits and motivations common to serial killers but by no means all of them. I don't like to refer to criminals as clever or professional. There is always a degree of luck involved in them getting away with murder.'

Joy Kohout speaks about several other suspects. 'They fit the profile pretty well. The conclusion that I reached is . . . these persons of interest or suspects are worthy of the attention they are getting. That isn't to say that there might not be further suspects that develop that are worthy of the same attention.' There is no doubt, she adds, that this is the work of an organised offender. 'This is somebody who's put some planning into these crimes; he's methodical. Probably looks very normal on the surface, might have a steady job, no problems with employment. Many of these organised offenders are very charismatic.'

Malcolm Boots advises that the panel has uncovered several matters worth pursuing. 'We haven't found the big missing bloodstain, the missing hair or whatever – we never expected to. But we have found a few things that are quite interesting.' What are those things? An email from the commissioner's office makes the WAPS position clear. 'Before you ask what they are – we aren't saying!'

That the review team had found areas in which the Macro taskforce could further investigate contradicted Commissioner Matthews's earlier indication that the taskforce would have to be disbanded. 'This has got permanency in terms of the structure we are putting in place,' Deputy Commissioner Chris Dawson commented. 'Quite frankly we have set our jaw and our resolve and we are going to keep going. I'm not prepared to make a decision to park the thing while we've got unresolved matters of inquiry.' In line with the secrecy inherent in the investigation, Dawson refuses to disclose just what those matters are. 'I've got absolutely no intention of giving the direction we will target. I'm not going into details about the unresolved matters of the inquiry but there is sufficient to say, "Look, we need to follow these things through".'

With the benefit of two years hindsight since the review gave its findings, Schramm still believes that it is drawing a long bow to rule anyone identified as a strong person of interest out of the investigation. 'How much weight can be put on profiles?' he asks. 'It is not an exact science. We must keep an open mind.'

Jenny and Trevor Rimmer are decidedly unimpressed with the Schramm review. 'They invited us in to talk to them, saying they might have something we could look at,' Jenny recalls. 'It got our hopes up, but it amounted to nothing. Again.'

Two years after the review, the subject of forensics is still sensitive. When Bret Christian ran a story in the
Post
reporting Commissioner O'Callaghan's decision to change the forensic unit, he claimed that 50 samples had been taken from Jane Rimmer's body.

'Qualified civilians will take over the role from police officers who have moved up through the ranks from other duties to the forensic section,' Christian wrote. 'It was horrified overseas experts inquiring into the disappearance of three women from Claremont in the mid-1990s that triggered the dramatic action. They reported to Mr O'Callaghan in 2004 that forensic procedures in WA were way behind international standards. Among other problems, there were 50 samples recovered from the body of Jane Rimmer that had never been compared with other material.'

Jenny Rimmer is devastated and angry after reading the article. 'What's going on here?' she asks. 'Why haven't the police told us about this earlier?'

I ask Barclay the question. '
Post
newspaper reported that 50 samples were found at Jane Rimmer's disposal site,' I say. 'Is this figure correct?' I have been told in no uncertain terms by the Western Australia Police that it isn't, but want to check again.

'To be honest, I have no idea where that figure came from,' Barclay says. 'No idea at all.'

'That must be frustrating.'

'Yes, it is. It doesn't benefit anyone.'

It certainly didn't benefit Jenny Rimmer, who had asked me to check the information for her. She cried when told it appeared to be incorrect. 'We go on an emotional seesaw every time we read something,' she tells me. The memory of that conversation raises another issue with Barclay. '
Post
newspaper also reported that changes in the forensic section were triggered by the reaction of "horrified overseas experts" inquiring into the Claremont case. Is that right?'

'It's not true that we had a lot of criticism about how forensics was handled at the crime scene. It was how it was organised. In Western Australia there is no integration of forensic laboratories. Chemistry and biology are separate and are funded by different heads. What is needed is one forensic scientist in overall charge working with the police. In Australia, the scenes-of-crime people run the scene and they take and recover material. But they cannot understand all the possibilities for evidence recovery. We were horrified when we found how much was missed because of the moving around of forensic material. Pathologists then take over, and the biologists and chemists are handed the recovered items. This would not happen in the UK. It should all immediately be in the hands of the forensic scientists, who know what they are looking for.'

The police are in no temper to mince words on the accuracy of the
Post
report. 'We have never released that information and never will,' I am told by one incensed former Macro officer.

In September 2005 the announcement was made that the Special Crime Squad would replace the Macro taskforce. Under the auspices of the Major Crime Division, the squad's overall brief was to take over the management of cold cases in Western Australia. Heading it up is Detective Senior-Sergeant Anthony Lee, who joined the force in 1988 and became a detective in 1994. He has already had a brief stint as Macro leader in 2003.

The squad, enlarged to 13 members, has a lot to handle. Unsolved murders and serious sexual assaults over two years old fall within its radar. Some cases stretch back 30 years. One of the more celebrated cases is that of flamboyant Perth madam Shirley Finn, whose slumped body was found in her parked car in June 1975. While her murder remains unsolved, it did instigate a review into policing of the sex industry.

The squad is also briefed to investigate murder cases that have been under the microscope for appeal or acquittal. John Button shakes his head when this subject is raised. 'With just that alone – apparent miscarriages of justice – the squad will be flat out.' It is a cosy set-up, investigators moving from the madding crowd at police headquarters into their own offices on Adelaide Terrace. The thinking behind the squad is rational: time may well induce people to come forward with information they had previously been too scared to offer, or to share recollections of suspect behaviour. The squad will also zero in on the transient offenders who blow in across the Nullarbor Plain and blow out again.

With the squad given the seal of approval, Deputy Commissioner Chris Dawson praised Macro's work and insisted that because a crime was unsolved, it was not closed. 'The cases remain under the spotlight and under our notice and if anything additional causes us to take further action then of course we'll do that.' Not everyone agrees. There are perceptible groans from some police officers when the new squad is announced. 'How many more bloody changes of tack are they going to take?' one asks. 'It's becoming akin to changing the deckchairs on the
Titanic
. The perception is that the boat is sinking and there's no rescue in sight.'

Luke Morfesse aired his comments on the formation of the crime squad. For those who had cast a critical eye over the Macro investigation, they were not well received. Praising the decision to keep the investigation open, Morfesse opined that if the case had been referred to a coroner's inquest, that would have exposed 'how thorough and intense the police investigation has been'. 'But,' he continued, 'given that work of the Macro taskforce has been subjected to an unprecedented 11 independent or external reviews that have found little fault, it's almost impossible to mount a sound case against the police handling of the inquiry. The exception has been the odd new chum trying to make a name while at the same time giving a voice to parties with a vested interest in undermining the investigation.'