Scattered (28 page)

In 2004, CB and IM were living in Newcastle. IM was living at his mother's house in Windale with his girlfriend and their baby son. He was using ice and heroin most days. CB was drifting from place to place.

IM's dealer was a man named Gavin Atkin, who lived in a flat above a restaurant in Maitland Road, Mayfield. It's a tough part of Newcastle. The back of the block shared a carpark with a tough pub, the Beauford Hotel. Atkin had been selling ice for a couple of years, and he took a shine to CB, inviting him to move into the flat. Atkin dealt mostly from home, though he also did deliveries to some of his clients. To prepare himself when buyers came to his flat, he had a floodlight and surveillance camera set up over his back stairs; he could watch a television monitor inside the flat to see who was coming up.

On the day of 9 August 2004, Atkin went fishing in his aluminium tinny. He arrived home at around 2.15 am, and sat down to watch television for a while.

CB wasn't home. Things hadn't been too good between him and Gavin Atkin. CB was constantly short of cash and buying his ice on tick, and Atkin had started leaning on him to pay up. Atkin had threatened to harm CB, and accused him of smashing the window of his car. They traded abusive text messages, CB calling Atkin a ‘paranoid cunt'.

The night of 9 August, CB was with IM at IM's brother's home in Gateshead. They were injecting ice and obsessing over how to clear the debt to Atkin while still keeping him open as their supplier. IM's brother lent them $100 to pay Atkin, and a further $30 for a taxi, which they booked in a false name and caught to Mayfield at around 3.45 am. They got out at a BP service station within walking distance of Atkin's flat.

CB entered via the back stairs while IM waited outside. They had injected up to three grams of ice in the previous 24 hours, and were raging.

Atkin was lying in front of the television, and blew up when he saw CB. In the heat of the moment, CB decided not to give him the $100 and instead just bash him and steal whatever drugs and money were in the flat. He hit Atkin with a steel bar and a pool cue, which broke as he swung it across the dealer's head. He kept smashing Atkin until the older man fell to the floor, groaning. Atkin would suffer brain bruising and skull fractures, leaving him permanently impaired and unable to remember much about the night.

Hearing the commotion, IM went up into the flat. As Atkin lay there suffering, CB and IM ripped a safe out of the bedroom wardrobe and made to leave. But in a terrible twist of fate, at around 4.30 am a visitor arrived.

Garry Sansom, 33, was living with friends nearby in Dora Street, Mayfield. Sansom had hurt his left arm and shoulder in an accident, and was now surviving on a disability pension. He had a partner and child, but he and his partner had separated. He was an occasional methamphetamine user. His bad luck was that Gavin Atkin was his dealer, and that he really needed some drugs in the early hours of 10 August.

CB and IM were inside the flat, debating whether they would steal any more of Atkin's things. They had Atkin's car keys and would leave in his Ford Telstar. Atkin was lying on the floor, blood streaming from his head, groaning between bouts of unconsciousness.

Then CB glanced at the television monitor and saw someone coming up the back stairs. He raced to the door as it opened.

‘What's going on here?' Garry Sansom said, peering over CB's shoulder at the havoc inside.

‘Nothing, Garry. It's me,' CB said.

Sansom kept trying to see inside the flat.

CB panicked. He grabbed Sansom by the neck and pulled him inside before throwing him down on the tiled floor. Picking up the metal bar with which he'd hit Atkin, he pounded Sansom around the head and face, hitting him five or six times. IM joined in with a Stilson wrench, pummelling Sansom, the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Later, both CB and IM would struggle to articulate why they had gone so far. ‘I just started freaking out,' IM said. ‘I was scattered to the max,' said CB. As we have seen, the influence of ice had the capacity to turn such common brawls murderous, depriving the user of any sense of limits. An act of violence while on crystal meth seems to burst boundaries; the perpetrator keeps on hitting and hitting, not knowing why, just going on beyond any purpose or restraint, repeating the action as mindlessly as playing cards or popping Sudafeds out of blister packs.

Another common feature of these crimes is the activity and sense of intent applied to the cover-up. After beating Sansom, IM and CB injected some of the ice they'd stolen, and left in Atkin's Telstar. Some way down the road in Broadmeadow, they realised they had forgotten the stolen safe, so they drove back to the Mayfield flat. Stepping over Sansom, who by now was unconscious and almost certainly dead, and passing Atkin, who was either passed out or groaning incoherently, CB picked up the safe and left again.

The pair drove to the Charlestown area, where a friend lived in Warners Bay Road. They dropped off the safe and some fishing gear they'd stolen for good measure, and drove the Telstar out into bushland near Crescent Road, where they set it alight.

After walking back to Warners Bay Road, they set to work opening the safe with a grinder and an iron bar. CB said to one of the house's occupants, ‘we did a rort'. The occupant noticed blood on CB's clothes and gave him a wide berth.

After stealing two bracelets out of the safe and leaving the fishing gear in the house, CB and IM left. They separated, IM picking up his girlfriend and son and going down to Sydney, where he would move from place to place in the Mount Druitt area in the next three weeks. CB stayed in Newcastle, and later on 10 August returned to the house on Warners Bay Road. By this time, the police had linked the burnt-out car to that address, and were waiting for him. They arrested him as he arrived.

IM was arrested on 29 August, when he returned to Newcastle. Initially, he and CB would both deny any involvement in the attacks on Atkin and Sansom. CB said he was in his bedroom listening to music when he heard an intruder come in, and he'd run away after finding Atkin and Sansom beaten in the living room. IM maintained different stories in different interviews: he had never been there, he had been outside the flat but had no involvement in the attacks—in fact pulling CB away from his victims—and saying he was with CB when Sansom arrived but had nothing to do with the Atkin attack. He told police: ‘Oh, we, we did go there, not to rob anyone, I'll be honest. I was going there to get gas, all right. I went in there and CB, they started punchin' on, right, and, but the other poor bloke [Sansom], all right, little bit, all right. I, I, I didn't go, I didn't hit him, I swear, eh. But [CB] hit him with, with the chair, mate, I swear, the chair, right. There, there was a bar stool there, he wouldn't leave the cunt alone, mate, wouldn't leave it alone, you know, you know what I mean. I, I'm sorry I lied about fuckin' gettin' in that car, you know what I mean, I was scared, you know what I mean . . .'

In jail, though, IM boasted to other prisoners that he'd killed ‘two rock spiders'. He said that an informant, whose contact with police had led to the arrests, was ‘a dead man. I am going to cave his head in like I did the other two'.

Far from showing remorse, CB and IM were gloating about the attacks—unaware they were being recorded. Police taped a chilling phone conversation between the pair:

IM: . . . that's where Gavin is, eh, down Fletcher [hospital], eh.

CB: Is he?

IM: Yeah, bro.

CB: How come?

IM: He's got, like, a four-year-old, bro. I didn't want to tell you that, eh.

CB: He what?

IM: I didn't want to say that, eh. I was going to keep it in the dark, eh.

CB: What is he?

IM: He's got a mind of a four-year-old, eh.

CB: Good. That's good.

IM: Yeah, OK. Yeah. He's suppose . . . but, you know what I mean, that's where he is, James Fletcher.

CB: Yeah.

IM: Yeah, when me girl told me, you know what I mean?

CB: No, I feel sorry for the cunt, really man.

IM: So do I, bro, I wish the fuck we weren't fuckin' that scattered now, bro.

CB: I was fuckin' off me head, wasn't I?

IM: Yeah, that's it, bro, you know, it took both of us . . . fuck.

CB: But he said, Gav rung us up and threatened us. You know what I mean?

IM: Yeah, yeah, he did, mate.

CB: That's what I mean, mate . . . so what if I smash a drug dealer.

IM: Mm, that's it—

CB: I'm doin' society a favour.

IM: That's it.

CB: Mate, that's what I was saying . . . I should be given a medal for fuckin', for knocking drug dealer scum up.

CB: Yeah, I'm fuckin' deadset fuckin' sorry, it's my fault, man, this fuckin', it all happened, brother, my fault, man, I instigated it, I fuckin' premeditated it, you know.

IM: Don't worry, mate. We're in together, bro.

CB: Yeah.

IM: Yeah. Eh, I deadset . . . I deadset, didn't want it to go down like that, eh, bro.

CB: What?

IM: I deadset didn't want it to happen like that, eh.

CB: No, I didn't want it to happen like that.

IM: That cunt, that was a mistake, that cunt, admit it, didn't deserve to fuckin' die for it.

CB: Just the wrong place at the wrong time.

IM: That's it, man, fuck. Deadset, I fuckin' pay for remorse, eh, I want remorse, mate, that, you know what I mean, that hurts me, brother.

CB: It does, man.

IM: All right. I'm tellin' ya, eh, I don't care if it's recorded or not, you know but fuckin', it hurts, bro. Eh. Takin', takin' a cunt's life with fuckin' two kids and, you know what I mean, bro?

CB: Did he have two kids?

IM: Yeah, he had two kids, eh.

CB: Poor cunt.

IM: Yeah, yeah.

IM (LAUGHING): Oi . . . yeah, eh, did they show you photos?

CB: Nah they don't them . . .

IM: Yeah . . . Muxlow [a police officer] was sayin' to me, that cunt's face was fuckin' deadset fucked up they couldn't even get dental records, bro.

CB: Yeah.

IM: Yeah.

CB: It was more than twenty times, eh.

IM: Whooooo.

CB: It was like this, this is what it sounded like that first man, it sounded like first man (CLAPPING) and then it started going (MAKING SOUND WITH VOICE).

IM (LAUGHING)

CB (LAUGHING): . . . you could hear it breaking at first and then it was just slush man.

IM: That's all right, he shouldn't have rolled over on us.

CB (LAUGHING): He shouldn't have come across two fuckin' lunatics, mate.

IM: That's it. Oi, deadset, oi, he yelled out your name.

CB: He yelled out my name.

IM: Yeah, he yelled and grabbed ya.

CB: Yeah.

IM: He said, ‘CB, it's me.'

CB: Did he?

IM: Yeah.

CB: I don't remember.

IM: That's why I hit him, bro.

CB: Aw, true.

IM: Why do you think I hit the cunt?

The young men were examined for the courts by the forensic psychiatrist Dr Bruce Westmore. He said that CB was suffering a drug-induced psychosis at the time of the attacks, but his ice use had not left him with ‘delusional beliefs or hallucinations about his victims'. In other words, his actions were ‘essentially non-psychotic'. He had gone to the flat to rob Gavin Atkin of his drugs, and his judgment and impulse control in the course of that robbery were affected by the three grams of ice he had shot up with IM that day.

CB had told Dr Westmore that ‘at the time the current offences arose he was also breaking into shops. Later he would continue hearing alarm sounds in his head, the sound of screeching car brakes and breaking windows. He said he would also hear the shower running. He told me he was laughing and crying at the same time'.

Given everything that had happened to CB and IM through their young lives, and given the lethal (to others) mixture of ice, paranoia and violent tendencies in both men, it would have tested the court system severely had they contested the murder charges laid against them. Fortunately, they pleaded guilty both to the murder of Garry Sansom and the assault on Gavin Atkin. They anticipated, for their guilty pleas, discounts off their sentences. But in April 2006 Justice Buddin of the NSW Supreme Court said:

The crimes committed by the offenders were violent and callous. So much is apparent from the photographs which were tendered in evidence. Furthermore, the Stilson wrench which it can be inferred was used in the commission of the offences was also put into evidence. It is a substantial implement. The death of Mr Sansom was unwarranted, needless and entirely without justification. The community expects that the law will protect the sanctity of human life and that those who unlawfully take the life of another will be met with salutary penalties. Appropriate punishment must also be imposed upon persons who inflict vicious injuries of the kind which were sustained by Mr Atkin.

It didn't matter at all to the judge that Atkin was an ice dealer and Sansom was a customer. These were brutal attacks. Justice Buddin sentenced CB to a total of twenty years behind bars, fifteen years without parole. IM, who had obstructed the investigation, received a total sentence of twenty-four years, with eighteen years of it non-parole. Sansom and Atkins were not the only ones whose lives were ruined.

By 2005, as we have seen, a number of sectors of the community affected by ice psychoses were developing strategies to fight back. General practitioners and ambulance officers were protecting themselves, and learning how to sedate people undergoing a psychotic episode triggered by ice. Hospitals were segregating the ‘Incredible Hulks' from other patients. Pharmacists were banding together to dry up the flow of pseudoephedrine.

Yet the biggest counter-amphetamine effort, as always, was being run by law enforcement agencies, from customs officers and federal police intercepting imports to state police busting labs and traffickers. The best way to appreciate the size of the law enforcement effort is through statistics and a few representative examples.