The Devil's Garden (31 page)

8 March 2006

Dear Mr O'Callaghan . . .

It is with some concern I write to you...I accept that this case is still operational and therefore delicate, but I would ask that the decision for these officers not to speak to me be reconsidered. I travelled to Perth in good faith, believing I would be afforded some interviews and was disappointed to find this was not the case on my arrival. I also desperately need the material promised me and am still waiting for a response to my last email...This book will go ahead but without the voice of WA police, it will not have the balance I require . . .

Shortly after, an email is sent from the commissioner's PA, confirming that I will not be afforded police cooperation in writing this book. No reasons are given.

I want to know why, beyond the case being 'operational', police are not allowed to talk to me. Or why they won't talk.

A former police officer with his ear to the ground vents his opinion. I am 'not very popular' with the WA police, he says. 'Why?' I ask him. 'I've only met one, Anthony Lee. What's all this about?' He agrees to try to find out, on the proviso that his name is not divulged.

'I would call what I have heard about you as Chinese whispers,' he writes a few weeks later. 'Who knows where it started, but it seems a lot of people have heard you are up to something, but they aren't really sure how it will affect things for them. This is all about police culture. They never like an outsider looking in their dirty laundry, or potentially critiquing police work. Despite the fact that most of your book is about Macro, this actually goes right to the top. This whole Claremont thing was about image, about demonstrating how effective their new style of policing was.'

I have asked for information on other missing and murdered girls. I do not get it. Can I at least have press releases that have gone out to the media in the past which relate to the case? No. Verification of facts to avoid possible repetition of error? No. Lists of clothing and jewellery taken? No. I will be given nothing at all. Instead, part of the information I need is supplied to me by the sole, independent volunteer operator of the Australian Missing Persons website. It is important this story is told, she tells me. She will help all she can.

It is tempting to walk away from the story, to admit defeat. But I think of what some journalists have told me:
Good luck getting anything out of the West Australian police. You'll need it.
I think about what Jane Rimmer's mother, Jenny, said to me when I made contact with her again after a few months
.I thought you may have given up, changed your mind about writing this book. I'm so glad you haven't.
And I read the words taped to my desk, spoken by Dr Christopher Waddell in 2003 at an international conference on policing and security: '. . . the healthy distance that a democratic society requires between police and the media is narrowed . . . [when] police and the media can see themselves as working together for the benefit of the community. That compromises and in some cases eliminates the media's ability to fulfil its role of holding public institutions up for scrutiny and accountability.'

I keep writing, and the stories of alleged bungles by Western Australia police or judiciary keep making headlines.

In February 2006 Canadian police officer Joe Slemko was asked to have a look at the evidence in the Mallard case. His expert opinion on blood splatters in the celebrated murder case of Susan Christie was partly responsible for Rory Christie's release from prison. Working from photographs – a fact criticised by beleaguered police who claimed he did not have the Mallard case knowledge to which WA police were privy – Slemko was blunt in his assessment. 'I would stake my reputation on the fact that another man and not Mallard was responsible for Lawrence's murder,' he said. That statement, too, would come under scrutiny and attract no little scorn. 'He didn't directly name the man he was referring to,' police sources told me, 'but it wasn't the man he was hinting at.'

The same month – almost 12 long years after his conviction for murder – DPP Robert Cock withdrew the charge against Mallard. He is a free man, but with a catch. Mallard, Cock says, is still their prime suspect.

Neil Fearis, a decent, conservative man, offers to drive me to a trendy eatery on the riverbank in South Perth on a Saturday afternoon in early February, almost ten years to the day after Sarah Spiers vanished. Tourists and locals wander the foreshore, eating ice cream under an unblemished azure sky, the air pregnant with humidity and the soulful sounds of live jazz. I have been in the city only a week, seduced as I am each visit by its languid charms, its sensuous, laidback air. But on this trip, paranoia and a heightened sense of personal safety have firmly kicked in. The trouble with this story, a Perth colleague warns me, is that no one knows who's who. No one knows who they can trust.

Fearis, casually dressed in shorts and loafers, graciously agrees when I ask if he minds if we talk instead in the restaurant where we have met. I don't tell him the real reason I decline to get in his vehicle. Beyond the two police officers from the Special Crime Squad and my colleagues, whom I know, I will not get in
any
man's vehicle here, regardless of who they are. I spend much of my working life either chasing, interviewing, researching or writing about killers, but I don't take unnecessary risks unless they are unavoidable.

Don Spiers has earlier invited me to talk to him at his apartment in Darkan where his shearing company is based and where he works during the week. I decline for the same reason, offering the spurious, though true, excuse that I am allergic to spiders and that Darkan is a distance from medical care. His poignant response makes me feel ashamed of my lack of trust. 'There are more poisonous spiders in the city than the bush, Debi,' he says.

I avoid taxis here, too, if possible. Who knows who's who? Since the Claremont murders, taxi companies boast that they have cleaned up rogue drivers, that women are safe. How then to explain the behaviour of the driver on my first day in the city, who put his hand on my knee as I paid the fare, accompanied by a running commentary on what he would like to do to a pretty young thing like me if he got the chance. 'I am neither pretty, nor young,' I responded, nervously slapping his hand away and fleeing the cab. It is broad daylight and I shudder at what may have happened had it been deserted and dark.

Fearis swivels his cold drink with a spoon and reflects on Ciara's murder. Nine years later, the subject is obviously still raw for him. Guilt that he did not see her home safely weighs heavily on his conscience. 'Traditionally, men are the hunter gatherers who look after women. We are the ones who offer shelter and protection. It is ironic that had we been out having a drink with women 30 years ago, there would be no question that we would see them home to safety. But the world has changed,' he sighs. He ruminates on how unbelievable her murder is. 'This wasn't 3 o'clock in the morning at a place like Redfern in Sydney. This was 11 at night, in a classy, safe suburb of Perth.'
Safe?

'Two girls had already gone missing from there,' I remind him. 'One had been found murdered. How can it be regarded as safe?' Fearis nods.

'That's another irony, isn't it,' he says. 'Ciara hitches in some of the most unsafe areas in the world, and she comes home to Claremont. Comes home for a wedding, and ends up going to a funeral. Her own.'

Sarah Spiers's birthday, 12 September, comes and goes, the day passing in a sombre blur for her family. A decade on, the years of searching and finding nothing have ground them down, made them wary of the world. Don, fatalistically resigned to perhaps never knowing where Sarah is, does not dress his heartache in fancy words. 'I feel as if someone has got a scalpel and cut my guts out,' he says. His brooding eyes, set in a rugged bushman's face behind large glasses, are ringed with black from years of little sleep and he has the curt, no-nonsense air of the wounded. Sound sleep eludes him: nightmares haunt his rest and he nominates to meet me at a South Perth café at 6 am. Dawn has only just nudged out the moon, the sun only now on the rise, but already he has been long awake. Despite this, he is uncharacteristically late; almost an hour. There is very little traffic at South Perth this time of morning, near the trendy Windsor Hotel where Sarah Spiers was dropped the night she disappeared. I feel vulnerable, vaguely unnerved and conspicuous, sitting alone on a wooden bench waiting for him to arrive. So few people around, save for the young, sleepy man behind the cash register at the service station opposite, and the occasional vehicle that pulls in for petrol. How easy, I think; how frighteningly easy for a car to pull up, with one or more passengers, and to be forced or lured inside. No one would notice. It could be all over in a matter of seconds.

Be gentle with Don,
I was warned before we met.
He is so heartbroken.
He is more than heartbroken; he is stricken and tormented. His huge hands strangle the coffee cup, as though he may crush it when he says his daughter's name and grief slices through his sentences like a knife. Tired of talking to the press and getting nothing back, he seesaws between quiet and reflective to loud and aggravated, punching his fingers on the table to make a point.

There is a solitariness to Don Spiers that is impossible to penetrate, an emotional drawbridge that he never lets down. Shattered hopes for Sarah's safe return have frayed his edges, robbed him of joie de vivre, and he wanders off mid-sentence when a memory of his daughter suddenly threatens to over-come him. He is savagely critical of me when he thinks I may in some way be censuring the police, and I feel his verbal sting. 'I want to know where my daughter is,' he says. 'You are only writing this book to make money.' Grief has robbed Don Spiers of gentle tact. He lives only for one purpose: to find Sarah.

A decent man who follows the Ten Commandments, Don has been dogged by depression and numerous nervous break-downs in the past ten years, and works obsessively to keep from sliding into that dark mental abyss from which he may never return. He pushes himself hard to keep his demons at bay. Up before the sun, working until 8 o'clock most nights. His marriage to Carol is strained by emotional fatigue and the inconsolable bleakness under which the family labours. He is tired of life; sorrow and dread have stripped him of the will to continue. Carol, the older image of Sarah, shies from the media, battening down in an emotional fortress.

Don doesn't trust the press, either. Not long after Sarah disappeared, he and Carol wrote a letter to the local newspaper on Mother's Day, a heartfelt re-creation of a conversation between Carol and Sarah. But the published result was so changed, so distorted, that Don developed a rancid distrust for the fourth estate. But still he courts the press; it is a pragmatic solution, for how else to get his messages to the public? 'Will the man who called me in the week that Sarah disappeared and who told me she is at Gnangara Pine Plantation, please call me back?' He wants to hear that yuppie, educated voice just one more time. Just one more time.

No one calls. Silence is his enemy.

But even if that voice was captured on tape, what good would it do? Even if Don Spiers instantly recognised it, what would it achieve? It is not evidence that could be used in court; and even if it were, it is inadmissible. Even if it were, the defence would decimate it as the hopes of a grieving father clutching at straws. What good would it do? None, except to stir up emotions that are already raw and bleeding. Inadmissible in court, and so nothing to stop the caller ringing back just one more time.

A decade after she vanished into the night, Sarah would be 28 years old. Don is now 57. The search for her, for this young woman full of uninhibited love for her family, has cost almost a quarter of a million dollars, including medical bills, research and time off work.

Don is certain Sarah would not have willingly got into a stranger's car. He can't bear to articulate what may have happened in her final hours. It is an obscenity to even have to imagine.

Karrakatta, a vast cemetery on more than 400 hectares of land, is two kilometres long. Opened in 1899, the head-stones offer a peek at lives long gone, of suicides, murder, old age, illness. Without a reference to gravesites, it is impossible to find where Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon are laid to rest. It is empty, eerily quiet here in the dying hours of this Sunday afternoon as I begin the lonely trek to locate their headstones. The office is closed and my footsteps echo on the winding pathways as I peer down at names etched in marble and stone. I shiver. It is unbearably warm, but I have an uneasy sense that someone may be lurking behind me. I keep turning to check I am alone. A woman is fussing over her brother's grave, and stands up as I draw near.

'Hello,' I say. 'Sorry to disturb you. I wonder if you could tell me where I might find Jane Rimmer's gravesite?'

Her hands fly to her mouth. 'My brother was obsessed with that girl,' she says. 'He often commented on how tragic it was for such a beautiful young woman to be murdered. He died fretting about her. If Jane were near this site, I would know. I know all the graves near here. You will need a reference guide to find the site. The office is open tomorrow.'

The next day, reference in hand, I find it. Jane Rimmer's memorial plaque, in the old part of the cemetery, is protected by tall pine trees and dainty flowers. 'In loving memory of Jane Louise Rimmer. Taken from us on 9th June 1996, aged 23 . . .'

It is here that Jenny comes to celebrate her daughter's birthday on 12 October, serenading her with pink blush champagne and cake. Here, where Trevor makes the sad pilgrimage each Saturday, brushing stray leaves from the plaque, replacing fresh flowers and talking quietly to his daughter. Here where leaves fall like teardrops, marking the changing seasons of the years. All the years that Jane has been denied.

I locate Ciara Glennon's gravesite. Number 231, behind the desolate children's memorial garden dotted with heartbreaking tiny graves and headstones hugged by teddy bears. 'Gone but never forgotten, our precious daughter and sister, Ciara, born 20th November 1969. Taken from us 15th March 1997. The mercy of God will gather us together again in the joy of his kingdom.'

I bend down to touch the headstone, tracing the letters on it and think of two days earlier, when I had stood above the cross symbolising the end of her tragically short life. That ghastly place of ticks and snakes, her disposal site at Eglinton. Here at least she has dignity. I recall what Ken Sanderson said: 'It could be anyone's daughter.' And it is now that it really hits home. It could be anyone's daughter. It could be my own. I speak softly to Ciara before I turn to leave. 'I'm sorry, Ciara. Who did this to you? Who did this?'

The thought occurs to me as I walk back to the car. Would the killer have stalked the girls' gravesites, silently gloating that he had not yet been caught? There is a groundsman near me, and I nod good afternoon. 'Do you know if any security cameras have ever been put on the gravesites of Jane Rimmer or Ciara Glennon?'

He shakes his head. 'Don't know. But there are plenty of places here to hide them.' I tell him I have felt a sense of danger walking around the cemetery, a feeling that someone could be behind me. 'Females aren't allowed to work after hours on their own here anymore,' he tells me. 'Karrakatta is close to Graylands Psychiatric Hospital and there have been some nasty incidents. It's certainly not the place to wander about on your own.'

The elevator in the apartment block in which I am staying is frighteningly small and even worse, hellishly slow. A claustrophobic, I decide on day one to take the stairs instead. All 12 flights of them. With interviews stretching from early in the morning until late at night, by day four my thoughts are cluttered and dark. Different people have put forward names of individuals whom they suspect may be the Claremont serial killer, and it is hard to know who I am dealing with. I can hear my footsteps echoing on the empty concrete stairwell and am spooked by what I may encounter around the blind corners. It is irrational I know, but the fear that has pervaded Perth residents for years is now seeping into my conscious-ness. From this point on, I will constantly look over my shoulder whenever I am working.