Ladykiller (14 page)
A secretary arrived with a cup of tea, and touched Bernie affectionately on the shoulder. Bernie spoke about his heartache and the children, before switching to the police investigation, in particular the taskforce’s focus on the earlier disappearance of an elderly woman, Dottie Davis.
The Davis angle was what Bearup was most interested in and, two hours after he had arrived, Bearup returned to his office and worked with McClymont on the story which would break the news of Burrell’s second possible victim. But their enquiries to the taskforce about the Davis link resulted in a senior police officer going in to the
Herald
for a ‘quiet chat’ in which he warned the paper that publishing the story would seriously imperil the investigation. An FBI criminal profiler was preparing a list of questions for Burrell and the gambit relied on Burrell believing his association to Dottie was a forgotten secret. But the
Herald
went ahead and published the exclusive story on 31 May 1997, much to the taskforce’s frustration.
The police were considering a number of alternative methods to force Bruce Burrell’s hand. The phone call made by the kidnapper to Crown Equipment had been traced to a telephone box outside Goulburn’s Empire Hotel. Dennis Bray was certain the caller had to be the kidnapper because he knew intimate details of the ransom note and had demanded Bernie ‘call off the police and media today’. How many people in the Goulburn area were the subject of a major police operation and had been surrounded by media? Only one. Nevertheless, a cautious Bray knew they needed more for an indictment and the monitoring device placed on Hillydale’s telephone line was proving enlightening.
Bray and Mick Howe discussed the intelligence gleaned from the phone taps. The police had also bugged Bruce’s father Allan Burrell’s home phone and the phone lines of Bruce’s sisters. The recorded conversations later tended to the court in the police brief of evidence confirmed that Bruce had firearms which the police had not found and which he may have used in the murder. Information had been obtained from Bruce’s friends and relatives that he had a .44 revolver and possibly a Luger-style pistol, but numerous searches had failed to find them.
On 25 May, Bruce was discussing guns with his father as police searched outside on his property. Bruce: ‘The cops seized some firearms today.’
Allan Burrell: ‘Did they find the other things too?’
Bruce Burrell: ‘No.’
In another conversation, Allan Burrell spoke with his youngest child, Tonia, who told her father: ‘I said to Bruce, I know what they’re looking for.’
Allan: ‘Yes, so do I.’
Tonia: ‘The guns?’
Allan: ‘Revolvers.’
Tonia: ‘Yeah.’
Bruce’s friend Bob had also phoned, asking him: ‘Did they find your revolver?’
‘I can’t comment or talk about it because of the court proceedings,’ Bruce said. ‘They think I was having an affair with the woman.’ Burrell laughed. ‘Please, keep that bit under your hat.’
Another listening device at Tonia’s home had recorded Tonia and her sister, Debbie, apparently trying to get the story straight on Bruce’s movements around the time he visited Kerry at her home.
Allan: ‘Well, last time Bruce was here at our place was around about the fifteenth of bloody April and he stayed the Monday night and the Tuesday night . . . he left on the Wednesday morning and he was going home via the bloody Whelans at Kurrajong to see if he could pick up some bloody flaming advertising contract from Bernie Whelan. And that’s as far as I know.’
Tonia: ‘That’s when he was over here and I gave him a haircut and he was here for about an hour and a half and then he went to your place.’
Allan: ‘He stayed there the Monday and the Tuesday— no, he went and saw you but he stayed at our place on the Monday night. He came and saw you and got a haircut on the Monday. On the Wednesday morning he’s got himself dressed up and he’s going out. I said, “Well, where are you going?” so he said, “I thought I might go and see Bernie and see if I can pick up some flaming freelance advertising on the way home”, and that’s the last I saw of him and the last I heard of him.’
Tonia: ‘When did she go missing?’
Debbie: ‘Beginning of May.’
Mick Howe and Bray decided to pay Allan Burrell a visit at the North Balgowlah flat he shared with his second wife, Marie. As Marie fussed around with tea cups, Bray studied Allan Burrell. He was not as tall as Bruce and had the brown-spotted head of a man who gardened or golfed, although he sported a small beer gut. It was always interesting to examine the parents of a killer and, in his experience, they were usually ordinary people, banal rather than monstrous, and unaware of their child’s true nature. Bray decided the father was more of a regular citizen than the son and might prove vital to them at this stage of the case. He and Howe had decided they wanted to have a casual chat with Allan about his son’s guns, but more importantly they wanted to put pressure on Bruce. Burrell was feeling isolated. The public was against him; his family was his only ally and if the police managed to stir up trouble in the nest, Burrell might just crack.
Mick Howe began the conversation. ‘Now, mate,’ he said, ‘do you have any knowledge of any pistols or revolvers in Bruce’s possession?’
‘None at all, mate,’ Allan replied. Lying must run in the family, Howe thought.
The interview continued for around half an hour, but Bruce’s father imparted nothing of interest and Howe did not let Allan know that they had heard him discussing firearms with his son.
As Allan and Marie walked the detectives downstairs to the door, Marie turned to Howe: ‘Inspector, do you think that Bruce was involved in the disappearance of that Dorothy Davis woman?’ During the interview, Howe had watched Marie Burrell’s face. Just a lip curl here and there, a frown or two, but he suspected she did not particularly like her stepson.
‘There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever, or the minds of my investigators, that Bruce was in some way directly involved in the disappearance of Dorothy Davis,’ Howe said.
Maree and Allan stopped midway on the stairs.
‘What about Kerry Whelan?’ Marie put her hand to her mouth.
‘There’s also no doubt in our minds that Bruce is directly responsible for the kidnap and murder of Kerry Whelan,’ Howe said.
‘That’s laying everything on the line, isn’t it?’ Allan said.
‘You asked the question, and I think it’s only fair that as Bruce’s parents, you should be aware of our suspicions. There’s no doubt he would have killed Jennette Harvey too,’ Howe said. The detective had uncovered proof that Mrs Harvey, a wealthy widow, was on Burrell’s hit list. Allan just shook his head. He had never heard of Jennette Harvey, and he did not wish to.
Bernie and his three children had moved back home to Willow Park on 1 June. Media crews had been camped outside for weeks, and now photographers with 600-millimetre lenses had their eyes trained on the family home, which was at the end of the 700-metre-long driveway. Each time the children left for school, flashing cameras were pressed up against the car windows. The family hated the intrusion, and was shocked at the media’s obsession with the story.
Bernie, who continued to wear a bulletproof vest, had engaged a Crown security man, Mark Stewart-Woods, to protect him and the children from possible copycats, and the media. It was four weeks since Kerry had vanished and the children were understandably deeply troubled.
At night Marge would often hear Matthew sobbing. She would make him a hot chocolate, give him a cuddle, and they would talk.
Sarah was trying to be the little lady of the house at a time when she was also struggling with a debilitating bowel disease, ulcerative colitis. Her next major operation was a few weeks away, the first without her mother.
James was confused about the media at the gate. ‘Dad, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?’ The ten-year-old concluded that the media were the latter. Commander Mick Howe was engaged in running warfare with one photographer, who only left his post outside the Whelans’ gate to chase the family’s car. Howe reckoned he slept in his vehicle; he certainly smelt like it. When the photographer followed Matthew and Sarah to school and photographed them in the school grounds, Howe lost his cool. ‘Do that again, and I’ll knock your block off,’ Howe yelled at him.
Bernie’s fears escalated when pictures of him and the children trying to go about their daily lives appeared in the paper. He knew that if the media could get to him unobserved, so too could copycats. It wasn’t long before his fears were confirmed. The first attempts were calls made to Crown Equipment, but they were poorly orchestrated. Another happened on 18 June, Bernie’s birthday. Bernie was on his way home for a small celebration when a man phoned with information about Kerry. Bernie rang the police and drove to the meeting place at Balmain Wharf, in Sydney’s inner west. Luckily, police were ready to pounce, and the man was charged with public mischief. By the time Bernie arrived home at 11 p.m., two of his children were asleep at the table next to his uncut birth day cake.
A few weeks later, there was another copycat. A man requested Bernie meet him at a nearby shopping centre with the money. If he did not comply he would post him Kerry’s severed finger with her diamond ring. John Murat Hall, a 24-year-old from Haberfield in Sydney’s inner west, was arrested as Bernie made the approach to him. He was sentenced in Blacktown Court to six months periodic detention for demanding money with menaces.
The most frightening attempt came soon after, and threatened the safety of his children. A man was seen around the Kurrajong shops asking questions about the location of the Whelans’ house and police were notified of his car registration details. The suspect, who had a police record and was dangerous, was on his way to Willow Park. Bernie was terrified and was forced to barricade his children in the bathroom while he sat on the porch with a rifle.
Near Bungonia, the press lingered on even though the search of Hillydale was over. The
Daily Telegraph
and the
Herald
refused to leave, staking out Inverary Road, not far from the surveillance squad officers. At the media camp in Bungonia there were no toilets, no showers, no beds, shops or mobile phone coverage. Eventually, the
Herald
hired a Winnebago to house its photographer, Dean ‘Mad Dog’ Sewell and reporter, Nick Papadopoulos. The
Telegraph
team had to settle for tents, sleeping-bags and stuffed toy sheep from Goulburn’s Big Merino to use as pillows. They rarely left their post because they did not want to miss their mark.
Burrell eventually emerged and they chased him up the road like rally car drivers trying to take pole position until he stopped suddenly, got out and ambled over to
Telegraph
photographer Grant Turner’s window. Behind them, Sewell had his finger on the shutter.
‘Why are you chasing me, mate?’ Burrell said.
‘It’s my job, Bruce,’ Turner said.
Burrell smiled and went back to his car.
On another occasion, Burrell drew up at the camp and asked how much longer they were going to be camped near his property.
‘Until they arrest you,’ reporter Stephen Gibbs told him.
Burrell threw back his head, laughing, and put his foot on the accelerator. Gibbs’ abiding memory was that they were dealing with a very cool customer.
The press gang by now resembled a team of vagabonds. Everyone was dirty, unshaven and tired from living on their wits. They had been in the bush for five weeks, sitting around a campfire, collecting wood, occasionally playing soccer and, less frequently, rushing madly when a car appeared, to chase it up the road. There were occasional interviews with a neighbour, all paid for in the local’s favourite currency: cases of beer. Sewell and his
Telegraph
counterpart, Grant Turner, had started wearing second-hand mechanics’ overalls they had purchased at Marulan’s café, Truck Stop 41. They bought meat from a roadside truck vendor and cooked it on a sharpened stick.
The
Herald
eventually decided to replace its weary team at Bungonia and asked Kate McClymont to drive Greg Bearup down to the site. McClymont remembers catching sight of the Winnebago and a car parked on a dirt road. Smoke curled up from a clearing in front of the vehicles and four males sat staring into a small fire. At the sound of the car, photographer Dean Sewell stood up. He was dressed in filthy overalls and was holding a spear, fashioned from a tree branch, as if he was a native poised for the kill. On the end of the stick was something limp and heavy, like a body part. Bearup and McClymont drew closer, and saw that it was a piece of cooked meat. Sewell grinned at McClymont and she stared back. The scene reminded her of a cross between two movies,
Apocalypse Now
and
Lord of the Flies
. They had arrived not a moment too soon: the boys had gone feral.
The following morning, on 11 June, a convoy of police motored past the Winnebago down Inverary Road; a second search was underway.
The large rusted sign at the gate between Burrell’s property and the Bungonia State Recreation Area bore an ominous warning: ‘This park contains deep holes and shafts with concealed entrances. Please take care.’
