Ladykiller (43 page)

On 13 September the jury sent a note to Justice Kirby, signalling they were struggling to reach a unanimous verdict. But Justice Kirby sent them back to the jury room to make further attempts to overcome their differences and work on their ‘sticking points’. ‘You strike me, if I may say so, and others in court, as being especially conscientious in the way you have gone about your task,’ the judge told the jury. Nonetheless, he said, it was important not to give up without at least exploring possibilities to ultimately obtain a unanimous decision.

The following day, Justice Kirby said he would accept a majority verdict on which eleven jurors agreed, if they could not reach a unanimous decision. He also reminded the jurors they must be true to their own conscience and told them he ultimately had the power to discharge them if he was satisfied there was no prospect of genuine agreement.

But agreement came three days later at 2.15 p.m. on Monday 17 September, when the court was reconvened with a verdict imminent. The courtroom was crowded with a restless hush of people—Tedeschi possessed a calm confidence, journalists bristled with notebooks, Maree Dawes, her chest rising and falling below her mother’s stringed pearls, Lessel Davis squeezing his wife’s hand. Burrell sat frozen in the dock, staring through the glasses down his nose, his lips pursed.

At 2.20 p.m., the jury filed in and presented a white envelope for His Honour. Justice Kirby opened it and paused for two long seconds before asking the foreman for the verdict. As the word ‘guilty’ rang out, Maree Dawes half rose in her seat, tears filled her eyes and she bit on her fist to stop herself from shouting. Bruce Burrell’s head flung back and he looked upwards for a second before shaking his head, just once. As always there was no emotion.

Reporters streamed from the press box in an encore of bows to His Honour and out the door with ears on their mobile phones to news desks around the city.

Justice Kirby thanked the jury, telling them they had been ‘a quite remarkable and exceptional jury’. He then turned to the killer: ‘Bruce Allan Burrell, I convict you of the murder of Dorothy Ellen Davis.’

A uniformed guard clasped a hand on Burrell’s arm to take the prisoner down and Maree stood in victory and mouthed the words at him: ‘You bastard!’

Outside, under scudding clouds, a press corps thrust forward with microphones towards Maree as she emerged, jittery and smiling alongside Lessel and his wife, Tanna. ‘Dottie Davis was a loving mum and a grandma,’ Maree began. ‘She was a loyal sister and a trusted friend. No verdict can ever give us the peace that we so desperately crave. It will only be when we bring her home and bury her with the dignity that she deserves that we will truly be able to be at peace . . .’

Behind the group, Dennis Roberts loitered briefly before turning away and heading down Oxford Street.

Out in the far west of Sydney’s outskirts, Bernie Whelan had been something of a basket case for the twelve days since the jury first retired. Depressed, anxious and angry, he had shaken off the comfort of his wife’s assurances that no matter what the verdict, Burrell was still in jail. For Bernie, a second conviction was essential. While Burrell was guilty of only one murder, some people would still believe the jury had it wrong and that Bernie was involved in Kerry’s murder. Only when Burrell went down for the two crimes, would the suspicion surrounding Bernie hopefully evaporate.

Debra Whelan was out on the tractor that afternoon harrowing the paddocks with manure, when she spotted Bernie walking towards her. He had a phone to his ear and a big grin. Debra knew it was good news, but yelled anyway, over the tractor engine: ‘Is he guilty?’

Bernie held up one hand, nodded his head and broke down. Deb killed the engine, stepped down from the tractor and ran to embrace her husband.

Upstairs at the Judgement Bar in Taylor Square just opposite the Darlinghurst Court, the drinks were on Maree Dawes who was also celebrating the lifting of a suppression order which allowed the media to link Dot’s murder with Kerry Whelan’s.

Lessel Davis and his wife, Tanna, stood by Maree, watching themselves on the evening news as the cameras tracked their exit through the court gate and Maree’s triumphant punch in the air, kicking up a heel in her newfound lightness of being.

A few weeks after the verdict, Dennis Bray and Nigel Warren were formally recognised for their exceptional work on the Burrell investigation. Assistant Commissioner Graeme Morgan awarded them Commissioner’s Commendations. New South Wales was ‘fortunate to have detectives of this calibre’, Graeme Morgan said. ‘The leadership, dogged determination, resilience and perseverance shown by Inspector Bray and Detective Sergeant Warren in particular, often under considerable pressure, deserves the highest commendation.’

The awards acknowledged that murders where no bodies are found were notoriously difficult to solve and that enormous hurdles were overcome to get Burrell before a jury, including the no-billing of the Whelan case in 2002.

Bray paid tribute to the twenty-three detectives of Task-force Bellaire, who were awarded a unit citation. ‘I’m very proud of the young men and women we worked with and what it taught me is what can be achieved in a team environment,’ Bray said.

On the second Friday in December 2007, Maree Dawes and her daughter Kate sat nervously in court five at Darlinghurst as they prepared to read victim impact statements to Justice Kirby. Kate Dawes was fourteen years old when her grandmother vanished and remembered being sad and scared of Burrell. ‘The fear that gripped me was overwhelming. In my head I saw him in our house, I knew this man was a suspect but he was still out there. He knew who we were . . .’

Maree was trembling as she told the judge: ‘How do I begin to describe the impact of the last twelve and a half years . . .’ She explained that when the fear-choked weeks after Dottie went missing turned into months and years, she had the task of keeping her mother’s house clean, the lawns mowed, the car charged, and even filing her tax returns because Dottie’s life was in limbo as she was not officially dead.

Then the nightmares started. They were ‘always the same. I see only her face and me begging her to tell me where she is. Then her face disappears and the “faceless” man appears, a large man with curly hair wearing an overcoat. The face is always blank. Each time I have that nightmare I wake up crying. I wonder how she died, was she frightened, did she suffer physical pain, did she call for us, her family, to help her.’

She said the trauma had ruined her ability to be an effective mother to her own children. In conclusion, Maree turned to her mother’s murderer. ‘I don’t give a damn what happens with Burrell,’ she said, diverting her eyes from him. ‘I just ask you to be very sure that he can never put another family through the hell we have suffered. I ask that he not be allowed any extra privileges and is afforded only the most basic of human rights because he violated the most basic of all human rights, the right to life.’

In the dock, Burrell removed his glasses and sucked on one of the wings. His hair had grown curly at the edges, but otherwise he looked unchanged.

Mark Tedeschi called on the judge to sentence Burrell to a second life term. He said Burrell’s crime was calculated and bore many of the hallmarks of the first—a contract killing, committed purely for his own financial gain.

When Philip Young rose to argue for leniency, Maree and her family drifted out of the court. They could not bear to hear Burrell’s counsel bargain points of law about the length of his meditation before he struck or the breadth of grief felt by a family who could not bury its dead.

On Friday 8 February 2008, familiar faces gathered at Darlinghurst Supreme Court for Burrell’s sentencing. Bruce Burrell looked baggy-eyed and weary in the dock. He had shed a few kilograms and his hair was cut short and he wore new spectacles. His birthday had fallen three weeks earlier and he looked old for fifty-five.

Justice David Kirby began his judgment in a steady fashion, starting with the relationship that developed between the Davis and Bromley family, the loan to Burrell and moving on to Dottie’s murder. While Justice Kirby likened Mrs Davis’s murder to ‘a contract killing’, he accepted that Burrell did not form the idea of murdering Dottie until shortly before she disappeared on 30 May 1995. ‘I cannot be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Burrell formed the intention to kill Mrs Davis before she pressed him for the repayment of the loan,’ he said.

Maree, tense and upset, clung grimly to the court bench as what she had feared most on this day rolled out in the court like a death knell.

‘Without diminishing the awful and brutal nature of this crime, which was certainly committed in cold blood for purely financial gain,’ the judge said, ‘and with no regard for the sanctity of human life, I believe that a determinate sentence is appropriate, rather than a life sentence.

‘Bruce Allan Burrell,’ Justice Kirby continued, ‘I sentence you to imprisonment for twenty-eight years . . . with a non-parole period of twenty-one years.’

Outside the court, Maree said she was disappointed the sentence was not harsher. ‘I don’t understand how . . . two women who were murdered, as far as I’m concerned, with equal intent . . . how the sentencing can be so different,’ she said. ‘I guess what we do take comfort from is that given the previous sentence, he won’t walk the streets again. He won’t do this to another family. He won’t create the hell and the havoc that he’s brought to our lives, so while we are disappointed, this means for us, finally this is over.

‘It gives us the opportunity to move forward and to remember Dottie for who she was and the great contribution that she made to our lives, the joy she brought to our lives, rather than the focus on how she died. That’s been a very difficult journey that has taken much too long.’

Of Burrell, she said: ‘Maybe one day—if not out of respect for us, perhaps out of respect for his own parents—he will make some atonement and he will tell us where they are . . .’

The normally reserved Lessel Davis said he didn’t take much comfort from the sentence, adding: ‘I guess the good news is the bastard will die in jail.’

46 THE
TEN-MILLION-
DOLLAR RIP-OFF

Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate and ruthlessly plough their way through life, leaving a trail of broken hearts and shattered expectations, without the slightest sense of guilt or regret. The world authority on psychopaths, criminal psychologist Dr Robert D. Hare, who has dedicated more than three decades to investigating psychopathic behaviour, says that when the psychopath’s deeds are done and all is left in their wake, ‘their bewildered victims desperately ask: Who are these people?’

The Whelan and Davis families, who once welcomed Burrell into their home and fell for his superficial charm could not at first believe that jovial Bruce was the creature who tore their lives apart.

In the early stages of the investigation, Detective Dennis Bray called on forensic psychiatrist Rod Milton to profile Burrell. Milton diagnosed Burrell with suffering an antisocial personality disorder whose characteristics included persistent lying or stealing, narcissism, being manipulative, deceitful and aggressive, lacking in remorse and possessing an inability to keep jobs or control anger. Such qualities do not simply make a person a persistently antisocial individual, but a psychopath.

Psychopaths are not necessarily murderers: they can be thieves, conmen, the nasty neighbour up your street or the boss who makes life a misery for his staff and is never held to account. But psychopaths who kill are remorseless predators who use charm, intimidation and, if necessary, impulsive and cold-blooded violence to attain their ends.

In assessing Burrell, Dennis Bray and his fellow detectives also consulted the American Psychiatric Association’s
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
which defines the disorder as ‘a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood’. Such individuals, who make up four per cent of the population, drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our self-esteem and our very peace on earth. Dennis Bray believes Burrell fits the testbook criteria . . . a sense of entitlement, apathetic to others, unconscionable, blameful of others, cold, conning, disregardful of social obligations, nonconforming to social norms and irresponsible.

But, as Bray would later note, Bruce Burrell was different from any criminal he had dealt with over his decades as a detective. Bray had arrested confidence tricksters and helped lock up murderers, but in his vast experience he had never found the two types rolled into the one package. He had never encountered a conman as slick as Bruce Burrell, with such a bent for violence.

Even after his incarceration for murder, Bruce Burrell was still ripping off people—this time, Australian taxpayers who have had to fund his legal defence for the past twelve years through the Legal Services Commission and the Public Defenders office. Between 1998 and 2008, Burrell has relied on the Australian public to pay for senior counsel from Legal Aid to defend him. It took a coronial inquest, a committal hearing, and three murder trials to get him behind bars. The cost to taxpayers runs well into the millions.

Behind the scenes, his barrister fought all the way for a stay application for the trials not to go ahead, and following his convictions, Burrell has launched four appeals. Each of the three trials cost the state on average $35 000 a day, amassing to about $2.1 million for the first Whelan trial, $1.75 million for the second and $1.225 million for the Dorothy Davis trial, making a $5 million bill for the murder trials alone. The tab has been running too, for each day his counsel has spent preparing for the trials, for his sentence hearings and for his four appeals against his convictions.

Since the day he was convicted in June 2006 for murdering Kerry Whelan, Burrell has spent forty-seven days on the Legal Aid teat, and opening old wounds again and again for the families of his victims.

Dottie’s daughter, Maree Dawes, estimates that the cost of prosecuting Burrell is about $10 million. ‘When does Legal Aid turn the tap off?’ she said. ‘How many hospital beds or teachers in schools could have been funded instead?