The Devil's Garden (22 page)

If Freemasons are relentless in promoting their brothers into high positions, how do I find out who is a Mason and who isn't? Unless they volunteer the information, it appears I can't. It is a secret society.

I could pose the question outright. 'Are you, or have you ever been, a Freemason?' They are hardly likely to tell me and this tactic will be problematic when so many police officers won't speak to me. And if it's right that Masons permeated the force in days gone by, what about now? I ask a colleague for advice.

'There's a register of names of Freemasons in Western Australia, though it's not public,' he tells me. 'Why do you want it?'

'Because if the inference is that some police may have been improperly protected because of links to Freemasonry, I'd like to know who is on that list. Can you check for me?' He says he'll see what he can do. I give him some names.

Two days later, he calls me back. Not one name I gave him, he says, is on that list.

In February 2002 – 38 years after he was found guilty of murder – WA appeal judges finally quashed John Button's conviction for the 1963 murder of his girlfriend, Rosemary Anderson. On the night of her death – Button's 19th birthday – Anderson had stormed out of his car after a petty tiff. It was an argument that, 40 years later, would continue to haunt those involved. And it would seal the reputation for Western Australia as a state renowned for shocking miscarriages of justice.

John Button came upon Anderson's body lying on the side of the road. On instinct he picked her up, put her in the car and drove to her family doctor, who took her to hospital. Interrogated for hours by police, a terrified Button begged to know of Rosemary's condition. Ignoring his pleas, he was finally answered. 'She's dead,' he was bluntly told. 'She died an hour ago.' Heartbroken and exhausted, in the early hours of the morning he signed the confession that police shoved in front of his face. Charged with wilful murder, what Button wasn't told was that earlier that evening, following an examination of his car, police officer Trevor Condren had given his opinion that Button's vehicle had not collided with a pedestrian. His advice was ignored. The driver, he was told, had confessed.

Convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years with hard labour, Button would have hanged had the jury found him guilty of the original charge of murder. While he was released after five years and later married, his life was overshadowed by the stigma of his conviction. Dogged by depression and suicidal thoughts, over the next three decades Button crusaded for his innocence to be acknowledged and begged for his case to be reopened.

Bret Christian financed American car-crash expert Rusty Haight to test identical vehicles that both Button and serial killer Eric Cooke had driven on the night of Anderson's murder. His consensus – that it was Cooke's car that had hit Anderson, and not Button's – was overwhelming proof that the wrong man had been jailed for her murder. There was also Cooke's confession, that had not been believed. Chief Justice David Malcolm noted: '. . . Button's actions in taking Ms Anderson's still living body immediately to the nearby doctor, his persistent denials when questioned and his confession, only after several hours in police custody, all combine to lead me to the conclusion that the verdict must be regarded as unsafe and unsatisfactory on the grounds that there has been a miscarriage of justice . . .'

I want to meet John Button, to talk to him about his perceptions of the police and the judicial system in Western Australia. Now 63, this gentle, reflective man, who has suffered numerous nervous breakdowns, only found peace when he finally found God. Bitterness and regret have gone; instead, he channels his energies into the Innocence Project he helped establish, which assists those he believes to be victims of miscarriages of justice in WA. It keeps him busy. 'All the people who have been put away for crimes they didn't commit – including me – constantly face the police, the DPP, judges and the silent jury members who will not come forward and admit they got it wrong,' he says. 'It is all so political. The Attorney General Jim McGinty once told me that there wasn't enough money in this state to pay me out what I should have got. What a shocking, shocking indictment on the system.'

In February 2002 Button's son Gregory, a doctor, sought an apology from the West Australian Police Service over the way they had handled his father's case. In June, Commissioner Barry Matthews replied. He had, he said, requested a full examination of the investigation by senior officers within the WAPS. After careful consideration – including a full review of the transcript of the decision by the Court of Criminal Appeal – he was advised there had been no judicial criticism of police investigations or tactics at any stage of the trial, appeal and recent Court of Criminal Appeal proceedings.

'Accordingly,' he concluded, 'whilst it is regrettable that from time to time the best interests of parties associated with the justice system do not appear to be served, it is not appropriate in these particular circumstances that I apologise on behalf of the Police Service. I am conscious that you may not be satisfied with this decision and that over the years your family members have endured a significant amount of distress in this matter; however, I consider that it accords with the decisions of the respective courts.'

John blinks and looks to the ceiling, a nervous habit learned from years in prison. He hands me the letter to read. 'What it means is this: mistakes are made in this state but no one says sorry. So they've charged the wrong person? Bad luck. Jailed the wrong person? Bad luck. And, by extension, today in the Claremont case – if they target the wrong suspect, bad luck. Make mistakes? That's bad luck, too. They are never accountable.' He pauses at the door. 'But it isn't just bad luck, is it? It's tragic. Police say that my case happened years ago and that it could never happen today. But it does happen today. There are people in prison in this state that shouldn't be there, who are living proof of that. How are they going to solve the Claremont case if they continue to ignore the lessons of the past?'

In 1959, with no arrest after 12 months for the murder of chocolate heiress Jillian Brewster, and increasing pressure on the police to charge someone, the net closed on 19-year-old deaf-mute Darryl Beamish who, like Claremont suspect Lance Williams, lived at home with his parents. Profoundly deaf, his disability ensured he was no match for the relentless police questioning. For three days he protested his innocence; exhausted, terrified and sobbing, on the third day he finally confessed.

Convicted and condemned to death with the chilling words '
At a time and place to be fixed by the Governor
,
you be hanged by the neck until you are dead',
and with no interpreters to explain what was going on, Beamish was led down to the cells. Only after he had spent four months on death row was his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. When word filtered through the prison that Eric Cooke had confessed to Brewster's murder on the gallows, prisoners and wardens alike congratulated Beamish on his imminent freedom. Instead, he served 15 years. Even in the face of a government inquiry, born from disquiet at Cooke's last-minute guilty plea, that the Beamish case should perhaps be reviewed, the Supreme Court stood firm. Beamish would do his time. This case would go down in Australian crime annals as one with the longest time lag between sentence and its overturning on appeal. Finally, on 1 April 2005 – after six appeals – Beamish was exonerated. He was now 64 years old.

In his booklet
The Beamish Case
, which would later form part of the successful appeal's case, the late law professor Peter Brett warned that the story had all the hallmarks of a monstrous miscarriage of justice: shoddy police practices; a deaf-mute man who was ill-prepared to defend himself against the power of the state; a flawed prosecution and a system where the original judges were also the appeal judges on the case. Against this judicial tapestry, Beamish had no hope.

Like Button, Beamish was not aware that Eric Cooke had confessed to Brewster's murder and for the murder of seven others, six for which he was charged. Scotching Cooke's confession for Brewster's slaying as that of a man simply seeking notoriety, Beamish languished in prison while the police and judiciary avoided a public flogging for imprisoning the wrong man.

The closing sentence in Peter Brett's booklet leaves the reader in no doubt as to how he felt about this case. 'The judges, Crown law officers and police who participated in the sorry proceedings which I have described can be left to live with their own consciences.'

Following the granting of Beamish's appeal, Detective-Sergeant Owen Leitch – then the chief investigating officer on the case who would later become police commissioner – commented that he was 'deeply disappointed' by the court decision. So, too, Crown Prosecutor Ronald Wilson – later knighted and who would gain fame for penning the 'Stolen Children' report – who commented that he did not believe he was at fault for Beamish being convicted.

Beamish had some powerful supporters, among them his former lawyer. Sir Francis Burt would become Chief Justice and Governor of WA and openly admitted that this case shat-tered his belief that the judicial system would rectify its mistakes. When his conviction was finally quashed, Beamish famously stated that he did not want financial compensation. All he wanted was his good name back but even that, it seemed, was too hard. Despite the exoneration, Beamish remained under a cloud. In early January 1997 Macro task-force officers stood on the front doorstep of his home, flashed their badges and told him they wished to speak to him about the Claremont serial killings. This time, Beamish was able to provide photographic evidence as an alibi, showing pictures of himself at a social function at the time one of the girls disappeared. As the police questions continued, the memory of his 1961 conviction, where he could not hear or understand anything that was said, must have returned to haunt him.

The Macro officers did not take an interpreter.

If policing has changed, John Quigley reflects, then so have the crooks. 'Gone are the old style who copped a fair whack and did their time; now, in the wicked grip of narcotics, the criminal world narks on each other and makes allegations about police officers, whether they are innocent or not. Paul Ferguson was the subject of one of those allegations. I defended him and the jury took about ten minutes to throw it out. It should never have got to court in the first place.'

Six months before Paul Ferguson's trial started in 2002, Commissioner Barry Matthews stood him back up on non-operational duties.

On 18 November 2000,
The West Australian
carried the frontpage story of Ferguson's return to the force under the headline 'Top Cop Back'.

Senior-Sergeant Paul Ferguson walked back into Crime HQ at Curtin House yesterday after two and a half years on suspension on full pay and still facing trial next May for false testimony. Also, a review into Detective-Sergeant Peter Coombes is under way. After three years off the job with no charges having been laid, Commissioner Matthews said some officers would not be considered for reinstatement. Mr Ferguson is very popular. WA Union President Michael Dean said Mr Matthews had inherited a suspension policy from former commissioner Bob Falconer and had agreed to review the policy.

'That essentially meant I was standing in the box, in front of the jury as a serving police officer,' Ferguson says. Acquitted of all charges, he was promoted in 2003 to the rank of inspector. It was a moment he relished. 'It vindicated me, finally. I never blamed the police service for what happened to me, but I did blame the ACC. I was made a political scapegoat.'

Ferguson knew that serial killers don't start off with serial murder. 'All the old coppers knew that,' Quigley says. 'I once asked Jeffrey Noye – who was suspended over the Argyle Diamond investigation and is still fighting those allegations – what he would do if he had headed up Macro. He replied it would be hard work, but he would call every police station surrounding the Claremont area and coastal strip and tell them they had seven days to produce every offence report and any investigation into any act of perversion in their area. Someone who has jumped the back fence and been spotted sniffing a pair of G-strings on the line? He wants him. Someone who has put his hand on a girl's bum? He wants him. Throw the net wide, he said, and start aggressive inter-views with all those people. And if the bloke sitting in front of him who had jumped the back fence wasn't the murderer, he would know someone who knew someone who did know who the killer was. He'd shake the lemon tree as hard as he'd dare, this side of legality.' Instead, Quigley believes, 'One guy moved across the radar screen and they locked onto him at the risk of ignoring everything else. This is the new policing: putting a profile of suspects into a computer program and seeing what it spits out.'

In 1995, Britain led the world in its introduction of the first national DNA database, and the impact on policing was profound. Gone was the plodding, traditional means of cracking a case by relying heavily on the use of informants, or the obtaining of a confession. Now DNA, the 'unseen witness' at every crime scene, could also help investigators. From this point, the crime scene would belong to the scientist and the investigation to the police; both would work together in a symbiotic relationship, a fusion of forensic and intelligence-driven data. Within a short time, Europe and most areas of the United States followed the model set by the UK.

The concept of a National Crime Faculty, a 'one-stop shop' where investigators could access information and receive help or advice, was developed by Peter Ryan – who would later serve a sometimes controversial role as NSW police commissioner – and other police officers in Britain in the 1990s. Designed to target high-profile, low-volume crimes such as a complex murder or sexual offences, the information would be fed into the system and accessed by officers with limited experience in those crimes.

With a background as the national police adviser to the prison service for two years in which he did reviews of more than 40 jails, including the Sexual Offenders Unit, Detective-Superintendent Robin Napper had interviewed scores of serial killers and, he boasted, worked on more than 200 murder cases. Appointed Head of Operations for the National Crime Faculty, he was given the task of turning concept into reality. Over two years from 1996, the experience of police colleagues from all forces in Britain was collated into a database, with emphasis on those experienced in more obscure homicides. These were easily accessible under headings: 'Child Murder', 'Strangulation', 'Poisoning'. With this information at their fingertips, investigators could quickly find colleagues who had experience in specific areas and the forensic people with whom they had worked. The names and contacts of these specialists were recorded. In the event of a crime anywhere in Britain, no time would be wasted finding the appropriate specialist help. This would prove invaluable, particularly in the first, critical 48 hours after the commission of a crime. Regional liaison officers were appointed, working with the senior investigative officer to ensure the operation ran smoothly, and a 24-hour help desk was started to ensure immediate accessibility in the event of a crime.

Napper's faculty became particularly expert at looking at cold-case reviews. 'We were mandated in the UK to keep forensic exhibits – we couldn't get rid of them, even through the duration of a life sentence for a prisoner. So we could go back years after a crime and still have the evidence at hand.' In 1998, Napper was offered a position in Australia by Peter Ryan, then NSW police commissioner. Ryan needed people with forensic investigative skills – limited at that time in Australia – and there was no DNA legislation in place. Napper embarked on presentations about DNA in most Australian states, including information about its cost and impact on policing. In 2001 the University of Western Australia asked him if he would become involved in a forensic program they were offering to students; not a dry academic subject, but one that would be recognised in the wider community as a forensic force to be reckoned with. Napper agreed and was appointed marketing director.

'WA police were very friendly to me when I first arrived,' he recalls. 'I was invited for coffees and lunch. They saw the faculty as complementing what they do.' But that changed, he says, when he was approached by families asking if he would look at other cases, not just those in which the police had an interest. 'Science is neutral, it doesn't belong to anyone. But as soon as our view differed from the police standpoint, down came the shutters. I naïvely believed that Western Australian police would welcome knowledge of new techniques, but I quickly found that I would not be appreciated for introducing outsiders, or different methods of policing.' While the police see it differently – that Napper had his own agenda in getting bums on seats at the university course and his ego was dented by the apparent snub from police – the chasm grew wider.

Then came the Rory Christie case.

Napper made his opinion about the way the case had been handled abundantly clear to police. It was a shambles. Brought in by the defence halfway through the first trial, he came to the conclusion that there was a host of people who could have murdered Susan Christie. The trouble was, in Napper's opinion, one of those people was decidedly
not
her former husband, Rory. After Christie was convicted, Napper met with Commissioner Barry Matthews in December 2003 and aired his views that this was a shocking miscarriage of justice. 'I told him where I thought the police mistakes had been made and my opinion that the jury had been misinformed. The police and prosecution's claim of blood on his tie, for example: it was never proved to be blood, only that it was Susan Christie's DNA. Police said also that when they did the presumptive test for blood, using Luminol, there was blood all over the unit. The problem is, Luminol reacts to other things as well. I don't disagree that Rory should have initially been a suspect, but there were others who were much stronger suspects – and particularly one man who for legal reasons I can't name. But no one else was regarded as a suspect. They just set their sights on Rory and never took them off him.' It is a story that I have heard about this police force, in different versions and different cases many times.

'Why would they do that?' I ask.

Napper shrugs. 'Don't know. Ask them.'

'I want to,' I remind him. 'But they won't talk to me. About anything.'

***

Napper's goal in meeting with Matthews and the assistant commissioner at the Forensic Centre was to suggest an independent investigator be assigned to the case to verify his suspicions about the man Napper believes is responsible for Susan Christie's murder.

'With my own police background, my review of the police investigation in the Christie case and the facts I had gained from interviewing people who had been scared to give evidence, I talked to them about what I regard as the link between other missing people in Western Australia and the person I suspect of Christie's murder. It was a two-hour meeting during which time I produced all my evidence.' Matthews's face, he says, grew longer and longer, and he left deep in thought. 'I asked whether he was prepared to bring in an investigator from out of state and three weeks later I got my reply. The answer was "No". Instead, he asked the Detective-Sergeant who was the office manager on the Christie case to come and see me. What an absolute waste of time that was! I never bothered because I knew nothing would come of it. Had Matthews got independent advice, Rory Christie could have been out of prison much earlier. He was eventually acquitted and released on 30 November 2005 – some two years later.'

Contemptuous of the information being handballed back to the original investigators who, Napper believes, already had tunnel vision, he says that the days that had passed before Major Crime took up the case from Missing Persons flawed the investigation from the beginning. 'Before Major Crime picked up the case, the crime scene was badly contaminated. No less than 14 people went through Susan Christie's flat during that time.
Fourteen
people.' Because of Christie's back-ground as an alcoholic with a reputation for promiscuity, Napper asked to test the blood that was found on the couch and which was known to be hers. 'We reasoned it could have been menstrual blood, not blood from a murder scene. "Sorry, mate," the police told me. They had lost that piece of evidence! But the tragedy is, loss of evidence in the Christie case is not a one-off. It's still happening today in Perth. We've asked to look at a number of cases but when we go for the exhibits, we find they are either lost, destroyed or in one case, sold at public auction!'

The Christie case was a defining point in Napper's relationship with the police. From that moment, he says he was banned from every police station in Western Australia and from lecturing at the police academy. He was also barred from speaking to police officers when they came to the university. Napper shakes his head at the numerous times he has been approached by families to review prisoners' cases. 'I think there are so many wrongly convicted people, not only in Western Australia but right across this country, that governments are terrified that the truth will come out.'

In 2003, Napper was asked to write a paper on cold-case reviews by a family member of one of the Claremont victims. 'It was my understanding that this person then took the paper to the police commissioner and attorney general, and the thrust for the independent review came after that. I can't confirm that this is the case, because I was not there, but I believe this is so. I can't divulge the identity of the person who asked me to write the paper as I was sworn to secrecy and that person is still alive.'