The Devil's Garden

Debi Marshall is a freelance journalist and author based in Tasmania. She started her career in 1986 at a newspaper and now writes extensively for national magazines, specialising in crime. She is also an experienced radio and television reporter. A qualified teacher (BA, Dip Ed), Debi also teaches Media and English at college and university.

Also by Debi Marshall

Her Father's Daughter: The Bonnie Henderson Story

Lang Hancock

Justice in Jeopardy: The Unsolved Murder of
Baby Deidre Kennedy

Killing for Pleasure: The Definitive Story of the Snowtown
Serial Murders

The Claremont Serial Killings

DEBI MARSHALL

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Australian Copyright Act 1968
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The Devil's Garden: The Claremont Serial Killings

ePub ISBN 9781864714425
Kindle ISBN 9781864716825

Original Print Edition

Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au

First published by Random House Australia 2007

Copyright © Debi Marshall 2007

This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

Marshall, Debi.
The Devil's garden: the Claremont serial killings.

ISBN: 9781741664669

1. Serial murders – Western Australia – Claremont. 2. Serial murderers – Western Australia – Claremont. I. Title.

364.1523099411

Cover photo reproduced courtesy
The West Australian
Cover design by Darian Causby/www.highway51.com.au
Typeset in Minion by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed and bound by Griffin Press, South Australia

To my precious daughter, Louise, and lovely mother, Monica

In memory of the girls who didn't come home:
Sarah, Jane and Ciara

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S. Eliot, 'The Waste Land'

February 2006. After five years of research and writing, my two true-crime books,
Killing for Pleasure: The definitive story of the Snowtown serial killings
– the macabre, terrible story of South Australia's 'bodies in the barrels' murders – and
Justice in Jeopardy: The unsolved murder of baby Deidre Kennedy
, were published. I felt drenched in blood, exhausted. But another story was tugging at me, one that had been making the news on and off for a decade. Perth's Claremont serial killings: the longest, most expensive and most secretive unsolved murder investigation in Australian history. Between 1996 and 1997, three girls went missing; only two bodies were ever found. A decade on, and still no one has been charged. But I sensed there was more to this story. Much more. As my research was to prove, I was right.

Just how many victims has this serial killer claimed? Police have admitted that Julie Cutler, who disappeared in 1988, could well have been the first victim. Sarah Spiers went missing in summer. Jane Rimmer in winter. Ciara Glennon in autumn. Coincidence, probably. Or was the killer, in his perverse way, working to nature's pattern? Whatever the truth, this laidback city – and particularly its affluent heart, Claremont – was, as one journalist described it, being 'king-hit by a menace it couldn't see'.

With police refusing to release modus operandi, the public would have to be content with the findings of the final independent review, in 2004. But there is a catch. Beyond gener-alisations, the details of those reviews cannot be released. The public is again kept in the dark and victims' families continue to wait for answers. At least a few innocent men have their reputations in tatters. And the investigation remains secretive, police and killer locked in what one newspaper calls a 'deadly stalemate'.

Not since the Ivan Milat backpacker serial killing investigations, where police had abundant crime-scene evidence, have police been so under the pump to solve a case. But it is not easy. Homicide investigation by its very nature is challenging, complex, sensitive and political. And serial killers – cunning, clever chameleons – are, by
their
very nature, notoriously difficult to apprehend. The length of time the girls were missing ensured deterioration of evidence – if there was any. There were no eyewitnesses to the abductions or murders. No definite abduction point. No known crime scene. No murder weapon. No known motive. No confession. And no victim to verbalise what happened. In this atmosphere, a hothouse of pressure from inside and outside the police force, the investigation becomes a battle of wills and power play.

When I started writing this book, the murders had been unsolved for ten years. Why so long? Has the killer simply stopped for fear of apprehension? Died? Or is he – or they – still operational in another area, another state or another country? As the years slipped by without a resolution Dave Caporn, the former head of the Macro taskforce, formed after Jane Rimmer went missing, admitted that as more time passed, the tougher it would be to secure a conviction. This would prove to be unerringly accurate. This, in Western Australia, a state which averages 34 to 40 murders a year and where police boast a 95 per cent 'solved' rate.

The Claremont serial killings have become a story that has seared itself into the Western Australian psyche; a bleak chapter in Perth's history and one steeped in scuttlebutt and urban myths. It is a case that has damaged some reputations beyond redemption and on which some investigators have staked their careers.

In writing
The Devil's Garden
, I drew on my 20-year experience as a journalist, biographer and true-crime author, in particular the extensive research and writing I have done about murder and serial killers. I also drew on the findings of experts in this field. From the outset, I kept an open mind on known suspects. Frustratingly, for legal reasons some of the information I gathered from both inside the Macro taskforce sources and outside cannot be included.

Despite plainly setting out a list of questions for police and meeting them in Perth for the first time in February 2006, they refused to speak to me for eight months on the grounds that the Claremont killings are an 'ongoing investigation'. Confronted with the so-called 'blue wall of silence' – and not having been made privy to the reasons why – it was impossible for me to check their version of events or to apply the balance they expected to receive. At times – though thankfully by no means always – their attitude to me bordered on outright hostility; at other times I felt patronised by a pervading male culture, the boys club. At all times when they were confronted with questions they did not wish to answer, they could – and frequently did – take refuge in the line that Claremont was an 'ongoing investigation'. There were a few occasions when I had cause to heed the warnings of journalist colleagues from the eastern states that Western Australia was indeed still the 'Wild West'.

Six weeks before the book's deadline, after negotiation with the police commissioner's media adviser, former journalist Neil Poh, the police agreed, with restrictions, to talk. Better to do it now, they reasoned, than to wait until publication and then have to defend themselves, if necessary.

While the breaking of the police silence so close to deadline brought with it the challenge of integrating the interviews into the manuscript, it also brought with it many pluses. Not least of these was that for the first time former high-ranking Macro insiders, fed up with constant media harping about their actions, revealed staggeringly intimate details, born from covert and overt surveillance, of their prime suspect's psyche. For the first time, they explain why they cannot risk eliminating him from the inquiry and why, unless someone else confesses and is proven to be the killer, they never will.

This book is not just about the tragedy of missing and murdered girls; it also explores the particular police culture in Western Australia and the stain that a proportionately large number of miscarriage of justice cases, over several decades, has left on the judicial and social landscape. What is going on in Western Australia that so many cases have been botched? And if that culture has not changed, what does it say about the police handling of the Claremont serial killer case? The two issues seem inextricably linked, and the truth perhaps more frightening than we would care to realise. The question is a stark and simple one: how do we trust they got investigations into this lengthy, unsolved case right when they have got so many others wrong? As the law journal
Justinian
noted of the often spectacular legal bungles in Western Australia: 'The number of miscarriages is reaching endemic proportions.' As a result, the Western Australian police force is often forced to defend itself against a highly critical media. In one of the miscarriage of justice cases, Andrew Mallard, wrongly incarcerated for 12 years for the murder of Pamela Lawrence, a crime he didn't commit, was finally released from jail. The Corruption and Crime (CCC) is reviewing the police investigations into the case and, at the time of completing this manuscript, the CCC findings had not been released. This, police hoped, would give them some room to manoeuvre in interviews for this book and a platform from which to do it. Those manoeuvrings were often transparent. 'I hope you appreciate that your book is scheduled to be published very close to [potentially in the middle of] the Corruption and Crime Commission's public hearings into the conduct of the original Pamela Lawrence investigation,' a police media spokesman wrote to me. 'We can't say anything that might come even close to being in contempt of the CCC (and neither should anyone else I'd suggest!)'

I forwarded further questions to the police. Most were given the okay; some were met with seething indignation. 'Why the focus on miscarriages of justice in a book on the Claremont serial killer?' they demanded. 'Miscarriages of justice happen everywhere.' They do – hence the mushrooming of Innocence Projects around Australia and worldwide. But Western Australia, as shown by comments from many senior legal counsel around the country, seems to have a particular problem. This was often expressed in colourful language. 'Some of these cops couldn't find their own bum with their hands tied behind their back,' one lawyer told me. And why, some police demanded to know, 'talk to disgruntled, bitter ex-coppers?' Because, I responded, it is not my role to play police PR and they, too, have a right to offer opinions. Some of these police officers, disenchanted by the hounding they received from the system in spite of their loyalty, requested anonymity because of the opinions they expressed. Some – but not all – of these people are the 'sources' to whom I refer. Where I have recreated what has been said to people by police, I use the word 'alleged'.

Critics of the Macro taskforce claim that the investigation was and is a catalogue of disasters overlaid with compounded errors, dominated by white male culture and overseen by a 'protected species' – career police officers; a murky collision of lack of evidence and tunnel vision. I wanted to find out if that was correct. Macro supporters claim the investigation – despite the murders being still unsolved – has been brilliantly executed and the investigators nothing short of strategic warriors. Whatever the truth, for many officers on the Macro team, the sense of disappointment that they have so far failed to apprehend the serial killer is acute and a failure they take personally. What is the truth? Is the fact that these dreadful killings are still unsolved due to police incompetence, the sheer brilliance of the killer to escape detection, or just plain bad luck? Is it a combination of all three?

With the stench of the WA Inc scandal still lingering in the Perth air, there have also been rumblings of a sometimes unhealthy relationship between some sections of the media, government, police and judiciary. Given the size of the city, and its accessibility, it is easy to overlap social or sporting activities with work.

And that, says a former police officer, can lead to cronyism. 'You know the old saying, "Fish stink from the head down." That has certainly been evident here at times. Some journalists have taken a middle line with the Claremont story to ensure their sources don't dry up.'

Some family members chose not to talk. The most notable was victim Ciara Glennon's father, Denis. We exchanged several phone calls during which he asked me why I was writing this story. I answered that after a decade, the investigation appeared no closer to reaching a conclusion and I believed it was time to collate the information into one cohesive piece. He did not agree, but did concede that I was at liberty to use any statements made by him and on public record. This I have done. It soon became apparent that beyond Mr Glennon's inconsolable, protracted grief was also biting anger that I might criticise the police operation. Sarah Spiers's father, Don, did speak to me, but he too was angry that the story may be less than flattering toward the police involved. They were, he said, always a great support to himself and his family. Not all victims' parents share his viewpoint, including Jane Rimmer's family.

If this story causes further anguish to already grief-stricken families, that was not the intention. But perhaps this story will pierce a conscience. If not the killer's, perhaps a partner, a parent, a friend?
Someone
knows
something
. The abduction and dumping sites suggest someone who is suave in the city and adept in the bush. But who?

The longer I researched this terrible story and the more people I spoke to, the more alarmed I became. So many men with the inclination and the opportunity. So many sick, sexual deviants. For all the sunshine and carefree lifestyle, Western Australia – and particularly Perth – has not escaped the scourge of all big cities. It is crawling with possible suspects.

A journalist described this case as a 'multimillion-dollar, three-ring circus' – three victims, three people investigated and three detectives heading an investigation that has been reviewed 11 times.
Sunday Times
investigative journalist Colleen Egan, who was instrumental in reopening the Andrew Mallard case, wrote to me in June 2006 in reply to an email I had sent her. The Claremont story, she opined, was both fascinating and complex. Just how complex, I was about to find out.

The Devil's Garden
was a harrowing book to research. It was not just that I was constantly confronted by the anguish of the victims' families who have no answers about their murdered or missing daughters nor, for the first eight months, the bewildering silence of the WA police, but I also had to wade into other areas that are dangerous, defamatory and murky. The hysterical ravings of people anxious to incriminate former partners; allegations not backed up by any hard evidence of tightly organised paedophile rings in the big end of town and the scary, sordid stories of sacrificial occult offerings. Some stories I believe but couldn't, for legal reasons, run. Others I scotched as nothing more than the warped imaginings of sick people. Others still I took with a small grain of truth and have reproduced in this book. These decisions were not purely subjective; on each occasion I sought advice from people well versed in the particular area about how I should treat the material.

This story in no way attempts to pinpoint my own theories as to the identity of the Claremont killer. Rather, it is an overview of the tragic events and other cases in Western Australia.

In a heartbreaking eulogy to his daughter, Ciara Glennon, her father, Denis, told the congregation that 'God has come into our garden and picked the most beautiful rose.' These girls were
all
beautiful roses – young, fresh, in first bud. It became a metaphor for how I thought of the killer: a monster who stalked the innocent yet to blossom and who, when he was finished, tossed away their bodies as nothing more than human compost for the earth. Planting them in the Devil's Garden, around which the death lilies grew.

Mindful of the fact that the Claremont serial killer has not been caught, I was necessarily cautious about whom I met and where. From the outset, I worked by my own rule: when you chase a serial killer, you need to be very careful that the serial killer doesn't start chasing you. And I was never tempted to forget the wisdom of the Malay proverb, 'Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.'