Perfect Victim
Authors: Megan Norris,Elizabeth Southall
Tags: #Nonfiction, #Retail, #True Crime
PERFECT VICTIM
E
LIZABETH
S
OUTHALL
is the pen-name of Elizabeth Barber. She was born in Victoria in 1959, one of four children of Ivan Southall, a distinguished Australian writer of children’s literature. Elizabeth herself is known for her work as a children’s book specialist.
The disappearance and murder of Elizabeth and Michael’s eldest daughter Rachel first made headlines around Australia in the first weeks of March 1999. Elizabeth kept a journal from that time on, including letters she’d written to Rachel.
Perfect Victim
stems from those writings.
Elizabeth lives in Heathmont, Victoria, an outer suburb of Melbourne, with her husband Michael who is a toymaker and designer, and their two other daughters, Ashleigh-Rose and Heather. Elizabeth has a Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing. She is currently studying for a Bachelor of Theology degree.
M
EGAN
N
ORRIS
is a UK-born journalist experienced in the criminal justice system. Her career in journalism began in 1976 as a reporter in the UK covering courts, police rounds and general news. Later, specialising in court coverage, she wrote about the impact of crime on victims and their families. She has covered stories including the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre and some of Australia’s most high-profile serial killers and stalkers.
Her first contact with Elizabeth came when she was preparing a story about the Barber family for Australian Consolidated Press. Elizabeth and Megan became firm friends and a collaboration began. Megan’s following of the Rachel Barber case and her research for
Perfect Victim
occupied her life for several years. She lives in Melbourne, Victoria, with her husband Stephen and their two sons Alex and Peter.
PERFECT
VICTIM
Elizabeth
Southall
and
Megan
Norris
Penguin Books
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Viking by Penguin Books Australia, 2002
This edition published, 2003
Text copyright © Elizabeth Southall and Megan Norris, 2002
The moral right of the authors has been asserted
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The extract from Margaret Mahy’s
A Lion in the Meadow
on
p.51
is reproduced with kind permission from Margaret Mahy and Dent Children’s Books.
Text copyright © Margaret Mahy, 1969, 1986
ISBN: 9780857969132
For Rachel
– E.S. and M.N.
CONTENTS
10. The Poster Campaign Continues
15. ‘Do We Know a Caroline Robertson?’
24. Letters to Rachel – Extracts from the First Year
28. A New Persona – Total Revhead
31. Letters to Rachel – Extracts from the Second Year
34. The Importance of Photographs
A Letter to Rachel, March 2002
Some time in the first week of March 1999, the body of Rachel Elizabeth Barber was unceremoniously dumped in the wardrobe of a second-floor flat in Trinian Street, Prahran, an inner suburb of Melbourne. A black, old-fashioned telecommunications cable was still tight around her neck.
In another room were all sorts of scribblings: hate lists, catalogues, notes about Rachel, her family, her personality, her likes and dislikes – and one note in particular with the ominous words, ‘All things come to pass’.
1
A
N
A
UTUMN
E
VENING
Monday, 1 March
An uneasy thought occurred to me while I gave the two younger children their evening meal. It was only 7.15 but Mike and Rachel should have come, exhausted, through the door about 6.45 p.m.
I have a vivid imagination and this night I had Mike rammed between two other cars, or with a flat tyre, or yes, that’s it, without petrol. We were always running on empty. They probably didn’t have the cost of a phone call between them and, unlike many families, we didn’t use mobile phones.
I looked at the clock again: 7.17. I picked at my food and thought back over the day. An easy day. An ordinary day beginning with an ordinary morning. Rachel had wanted me to drive her to Richmond because Mike was running late, and she hated travelling on trains. She was cross at my lack of understanding for even suggesting the possibility of a train. She hadn’t wanted to miss breakfast with her new classmates at her friend Kylee’s place. But it was my work-free day and Mike wasn’t long ready and so the two of them sailed off. That’s what it had seemed like. She called ‘goodbye’ and ‘love you’ from the door and leapt off the steps in her day-old Bloch dance pants and petite blue top. It was said of Rachel that she often appeared to neither walk nor run. The white sedan reversed up the driveway with Rachel smiling and waving goodbye.
After her fifteenth birthday in September 1998, and at the end of her third term in Year 9, Rachel pleaded to be allowed to leave school. She had the full support of Mike, but this was not an easy decision for me who had completed Year 12 and tertiary education. However, we were confident she would start a Diploma of Dance in late January, so when her English teacher claimed she’d danced down a row of desks, I said, ‘Okay, Rachel, if you can find something constructive to do for the last term. But I’m not going to have you sitting idly at home.’
What followed was a two-week period of diligent experimentation for Rachel applying for part-time jobs: everything from café waitress to sales assistant. Unfortunately she was afraid of handling computer checkouts. Once, she had hidden for long periods of a two-hour try-out in the toilet of a café in Bridge Road, Richmond: scared stiff.
One afternoon when she went for a job as a kitchen hand she came out and sat in the car.
‘I’m in shock,’ she said. ‘Do people really work like this?’
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘And what you have to remember is by leaving school you will be putting all your eggs in one basket. If you do this, Rachel, you must commit yourself one hundred per cent.’
‘I am a dancer. I want to be an entertainer. You
know
that.’
‘Okay, then,’ I said. ‘You know you’ll have our full support.’
There was silence. ‘The money was good though,’ she said, her blonde-tipped ponytail bobbing with agreement.
‘Oh, you don’t get to keep it all. You have to pay about $70 to the government as tax.’