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THINGS AKILLER WOULD
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PAULA DONEMAN
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To my mother Laraine First published in 2006 Copyright text © Paula Doneman 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Doneman, Paula. Things a killer would know: the true story of Leonard Fraser. ISBN 1 74114 231 8. 1. Fraser, Leonard. 2. Serial murderers - Queensland Biography. 3. Murderers - Queensland. I.Title. 364.1523 Cover photos courtesy of Queensland Police Cover and text design by Phil Campbell Typeset by J&M Typesetters Maps by Guy Holt Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS Leonard Fraser’s criminal history Map Introduction
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
A killer’s wrath A classic psychopath Lenny the Loon Monster in the midst The Tropic of Capricorn A wayward teen Runaway train The survivor The missing Room 13 Innocence lost The informant Things only the killer would know Back from the dead The unknown and the aftermath
Endnotes Acknowledgements
vi viii 1 4 8 22 46 62 70 90 108 125 137 149 191 220 261 298 309 315
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Leonard Fraser's criminal record 1966 18 Nov
Penrith NSW Stealing
18 years
1968 19 Dec
Penrith NSW Assault
1969 21 Feb
Penrith NSW Unlicensed use of motor vehicle
20 days
Port Macquarie NSW Unlicenced driving
40 days
Central NSW Offensive behaviour
10 days
Blacktown NSW Unlicenced driving
100 days
1971 9 Feb
Penrith NSW Larceny
12 months hard labour
1971 2 Nov
Brisbane QLD 2 years Bringing stolen goods into Qld probation
1971 9 Nov
Townsville QLD Stealing
14 days
Townsville QLD Unlicensed use of motor vehicle
9 months hard labour
Central NSW Live on earnings of prostitution
$100 or 20 days hard labour
1970 2 Feb 1970 7 Dec 1971 19 Jan
1972 15 Feb
1972 10 Nov
Probation under supervision 18 years
1972 24 Nov
Central NSW Assault & robbery
5 years hard labour, non-parole 18 months
1972 22 Dec
Central NSW Stealing money
5 years hard labour
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1974 24 Sept
Blacktown NSW Assault with intent to rape
21 years, nonparole 7 years
1982 2 Aug
Mackay QLD Aggravated assault on female
2 months
1972 2 Nov
Brisbane QLD Bring stolen goods into Qld
2 years probation
1971 9 Dec
Townsville QLD Stealing
14 days
1972 15 Feb
Townsville QLD Unlicensed use of motor vehicle 9 months
1982 2 Aug
Mackay QLD Aggravated assault on female
2 months
Mackay QLD Rape
12 years
Brisbane QLD Application for leave to appeal
Refused
Brisbane QLD Application for leave to appeal
Refused
Brisbane QLD Application for extn to appeal
Struck out
Rockhampton QLD Threatening/abusive language
$100
1985 9 Oct 1986 6 Mar 1986 2 Jun 1988 1 Feb 1997 28 Nov 1999 7 May
Rockhampton QLD Child stealing Recommended for mention to 7/5/99
2000 7 Sept
Brisbane QLD Murder (Steinhardt)
Indefinite sentence
2003 14 June
Brisbane QLD Two counts of murder (Leggo & Benedetti), and one manslaughter (Turner)
Indefinite sentences
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INTRODUCTION ON APRIL 22, 1999, news broke that a nine-year-old girl had been abducted on her way home from school in Rockhampton in central Queensland. Keyra Steinhardt had been bashed and then thrown into the boot of her attacker’s car. I received a phone call from the late night police rounds reporter, Jennifer Dudley, at Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper telling me what happened. At that time I was the Chief Police Reporter for the paper and I began chasing details for the story. A police contact told me they had a suspect in custody who he described as a ‘real bad bastard’. He was a serial rapist, previously jailed in two states for sex offences. Police held little hope of finding Keyra alive. When I arrived in Rockhampton the next morning with Courier-Mail photographer Adam Ward, the plight of the popular blonde blue-eyed schoolgirl had headlined the news across the country and captured the nation’s heart. One of our first ports of call was the Rockhampton 1
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Magistrates’ Court – Leonard John Fraser had been charged with Keyra’s abduction. Sitting only metres away from Fraser in the courtroom, the first thing that struck me was his sharklike eyes. He had a menacing presence. His solid forearms looked like they could snap a person’s neck without much effort. It hit home that this monster was probably the last thing Keyra saw before she died. For the next fortnight we reported daily on the massive search for Keyra in swamps, bushland, storm drains and dumps. Some had hope she would be found alive even though Fraser refused to admit his involvement, let alone where he had left her.The pain of the Rockhampton community was obvious as it grieved with Keyra’s family. Since my first experience of watching Fraser, the story of how his murder of a nine-year-old schoolgirl exposed him as a serial killer has intrigued me more than any other crime in my fourteen-year career as a crime reporter. Since Keyra’s death in 1999 I have covered every story related to Fraser. But, despite hours of interviews with his associates, friends, cellmates and family, Fraser the man has remained elusive. The large volume of court documents, psychiatric assessments, police interviews, prison records and his jailhouse confessions provide only glimpses into his character. Fraser has refused my requests to interview him, but I doubt he would have been truthful in answering my questions. He has also refused to give permission for the NSW Government to release his records to me through Freedom of Information.Without his permission, privacy legislation protects information such as his prison and parole records. What will become clear, however, is that Fraser has no redeeming qualities. He is a predator and opportunist with no control over his impulses. He has no empathy or remorse for 2
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the carnage and hurt he has inflicted on his victims and their families. All decent things people aspire to in life Fraser seeks to destroy. He is a loner with a snap temper and a propensity for violence that has guaranteed him an isolated existence. Friendships were short-lived; and he lied to the people he did spend time with about his past and who he really was. He played his cards close to his chest, making him something of an enigma. Some of the people Fraser befriended or encountered did not want to talk about him or could not be found because of the time that had elapsed since they knew him. Others just didn’t want it known that they were ever associated with the serial killer. Schools I contacted were reluctant to assist with tracking down his details or photographs of his student life. Women he dated were mostly intellectually disabled and could offer little or no insight into the man’s character. No single police officer has investigated Fraser for the duration of his criminal career, spanning three decades. Fraser has spent two thirds of his life behind bars, making it very difficult for even his family to really know him.They too have been reluctant to talk about Fraser – it has taken me five years to get an interview with one of his relatives, who only spoke to me on the condition that they remain anonymous. There are no constants in Fraser’s life – this book is the only summation of its fragments.
INTRODUCTION
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1 A KILLER’S WRATH ROOM 13 PAINTED a torturous map. Blood peppered the walls and ceiling. Bone and teeth fragments splintered the carpet. It was obvious that a murder had taken place. As she slumped open-eyed and unconscious in an upstairs bedroom, her blood soaked through the carpet and into the underlay. But this was not her final resting place. Streetlights faded into pitch black as a barefoot Leonard John Fraser shuffled through the derelict Queensland Hotel in downtown Rockhampton.Timber boards barricaded the windows and doors: squatters and scavengers were not welcome. There was no power or water, but Fraser had already made it his lair. Night or day he deftly navigated the condemned building. It was just after 7.30 pm on 18 April 1999, a warm Sunday night. Fraser was preparing to bleed his latest kill. Her shattered skull wept on the handrail and stairs as he lugged her to the men’s toilets.The final moments of Fraser’s unsuspecting guest 4
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were brutal.The slight teenager was no match for Fraser’s hulklike frame. A promise of pot and shelter had lured her into the abandoned pub, but Fraser was not a man of his word. His true intentions would soon become clear and Sylvia Marie Benedetti was about to make a fatal mistake: reject her host’s advances. As he leaned down to pash the girl, she – like his other victims – knocked him back. Fraser snapped in rage. It was time to settle the score. First came the king-hit, then the unrelenting piece of timber. It took no more than four swings to kill the troubled teen. But Fraser was not just a murderer, he was a rapist too. A bloodied handprint marked the wall above her head as Fraser steadied himself. It wouldn’t take long to get what he needed and Sylvia was in no position to fight back.With the frenzy satisfied, Fraser started the clean-up. A jailhouse education had taught him the importance of erasing incriminating evidence. Serial killers don’t leave bodies to be found and for Fraser, there was much forensic housekeeping to be done. Suddenly a noise startled him. He checked downstairs to make sure no one had heard Sylvia’s screams. He walked outside on to the street towards the bridge over the Fitzroy River, whose muddy waters would soon swallow the bloodied murder weapon. From on top of the bridge he could survey North and South Rockhampton but Fraser was no sightseer. He had lived in the area for fourteen years.And instead of landmarks, the former railway worker looked for witnesses. Satisfied there were none, he walked back to Room 13. Streetlights filtered through open louvres and Fraser had an obscured view of what needed to be done. He dumped Sylvia in the room next door, and, realising he couldn’t clean the carpet in Room 13, started on the walls. But the blood A KILLER’S WRATH
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spray – which stretched some three metres to the ceiling – was now dry. Ever the resourceful scavenger, Fraser set out for – and found – a damp cloth in the condemned building. The former abattoir cleaner soon realised the wet towel was no match for the bloodbath and his concentration quickly turned to eliminating evidence that placed him at the scene of the crime. Now to get rid of Sylvia. There was a drain next to the men’s toilet downstairs and a surefooted Fraser headed straight for it. Like the meat workers at the Rockhampton abattoir, Fraser dumped his naked carcass on to the plughole. Sylvia’s body was propped against the wall, leaving a bloody outline in the soiled cubicle. The stench of fresh faeces wafted from the toilet bowl. It was undignified and dirty, but Fraser’s thoughts were not for Sylvia. He was concerned only with self-preservation and the need to cover his tracks. Three days later Fraser discovered the Queensland Hotel, once a majestic landmark and popular watering hole, was earmarked for demolition. He began to panic. He had originally planned to savour his kill but the demolition threatened to expose his depravity and Sylvia once again needed to be moved. He grabbed a discarded towel to wrap her bloodmatted long black hair – Fraser didn’t want to get blood in the boot of his Mazda sedan.With no one in sight, he propped the boot open and lowered the body into it. Sylvia’s frailty and vulnerability were intoxicating and Fraser became aroused. In his heightened sexual state he caught her bloodied head on the boot hinge, leaving behind a drop of blood. But it was not the first smear left unchecked; other victims had been thrown in like human cargo, leaving behind blood traces, hair and shoelaces. Fraser’s rough handling of Sylvia would help lead to his undoing. 6
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Aware of his carelessness but unfazed, Fraser headed north-east, over the Fitzroy River Bridge to Sandy Point. Located less than half an hour from the beef capital, the popular surf beach was familiar to Fraser, who had scoured abandoned cars for parts during previous trips.At high speed Fraser left the highway taking an unsealed back road to the beach. There was a maze of sandy tracks but Fraser was familiar with the area. This was where he came to park and perve. The immediate area was deserted, but just over the dunes tourists played golf at the city’s esteemed Capricornia Resort. It was a one-way trip for Sylvia. The car came to an abrupt halt and a barefoot Fraser grabbed his shovel. He was impatient to dispose of the body and was anxious to satisfy deep cravings within. He put the shovel aside and dug a shallow grave in a nearby hollow with his hands, and tossed bushes and branches over her naked skin.With her body barely concealed, Fraser turned his attention towards his next score. It had been three days since the kill. Three days since Fraser raped Sylvia. The afterglow was fading.
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2 A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH FRASER WAS ADDICTED to sex and his attitude was unforgiving and unrelenting. If he couldn’t get sex one way, he simply got it another. Children, animals or women – Fraser wasn’t fussy. Born on 27 June 1951 in the northern Queensland sugarcane town of Ingham, he was the fourth of five children for George Fraser and his wife Agnes (not their real names).There are limited sources of information about his childhood and family life, and conflicting opinions on the little information available. As a child Fraser was prone to throwing tantrums and erupted into mini-rages any time he didn’t get his own way. He lacked the basic self-control to sit still and in school was constantly in trouble for failing to concentrate. As a child he was a loner, believing his parents treated him differently to his siblings. His father was particularly hard on him, belting him ‘black and blue’ when Fraser fell foul of the law or house rules. But despite his own claims that his late father was too harsh, Fraser would later tell a jail psychologist that his crimes were 8
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the result of his parents giving him too much freedom. His family says his claims are untrue – Agnes was the one who disciplined the children. In his family’s eyes Fraser was a compulsive liar and closet homosexual. He often returned home with items such as shoes and balls but could never explain how he obtained them. He was not easily intimidated and as a young boy would deliver a ‘mouthful of lies’ when questioned by his parents over his newfound riches. He lived in a fantasy world and to get the truth they had to catch him out. It was just a matter of time. Fraser’s father was a World War II veteran of Scottish heritage who spent most of his service in Papua New Guinea. As the father of three boys and two girls, George worked as a licensed machinist who travelled to find employment, moving his family six times in one year. He was a man of little emotion but always there for his family if needed. In his absence, most of the disciplining of the children was left to Agnes. When Fraser was twelve months old the family lived near the Atherton Tablelands in North Queensland. George worked for the Forestry Department and was away five days a week digging firebreaks in the Danbulla Forestry plantation. On 25 July 1952, George took two of his sons to work with him to give Agnes a rest. She was unwell and wanted to make the kids outfits for the Atherton Show; the family wasn’t wealthy but they never really wanted for anything. The oldest girl was at school and Fraser stayed at home with his three-month-old sister and their mother. Terance, who had turned three a few weeks earlier, sat to the right of his father as he reversed the grader up the side of a hill.The trio had already cleared a 150-foot pathway on the loose, stony ground when suddenly the grader’s tyres started to spin, lurching and shuddering the machine back and forth. A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH
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George applied the brakes but they were defective, and the grader moved another fifteen feet before finally coming to a halt.The vibrations unseated little Terance, sending him under the back right-hand tyre. By the time George managed to stop the machine Terance was lying unconscious on the uphill side of the rear wheels. George had seen his son fall and made a sign to a coworker to stop his grader as well. His colleague ran over and, seeing Terance unconscious, picked him up and ordered George to get his car, which was parked some four kilometres away in the opposite direction. George drove to the Danbulla sawmill to call an ambulance before returning to collect Terance and his co-worker. But the grader had fractured Terance’s skull and crushed his chest, causing massive internal bleeding. The boy died some four hours after reaching the Atherton Hospital. It was an incident that George never spoke about, and one that Fraser falsely claimed he had witnessed. In fact Fraser would later tell a psychologist that he was five years old at the time Terance died, and that he was actually sitting on the grader himself, in the company of his father and oldest brother. It was just one of the many lies Fraser created and perpetuated in an attempt to explain and defend his behaviour. It was one of the many reasons his own family took him ‘with a grain of salt’. In 1957 they settled in Liverpool, in New South Wales, while George continued to chase work and Fraser started school. Six years later the family moved to Gosford, Tuggerah Lakes and Newcastle. Fraser struggled through school and, unlike his siblings, could not cope with the upheaval that accompanied his father’s numerous job changes. He was aggressive and disruptive in class, and was expelled for it. Fraser later falsely claimed in an 10
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interview with a jail psychologist he had been expelled for ‘punching out’ a teacher. School authorities assessed him as being slightly below average intelligence with limited literacy skills. But Fraser’s parents were not about to let their fourteenyear-old high school dropout troll the streets. Fraser was told his early and incomplete graduation meant he had to find work, that he would have to contribute financially to the household and start building his savings. Briefly following his parents’ wishes, Fraser worked towards getting his machinist’s licence under his father’s tutelage, but the apprenticeship ended early when Fraser told his father to ‘stick his job up his arse’. It wasn’t long before Fraser found himself in trouble with the law. In 1966, when he was fifteen, Fraser and some of his friends stole a gearbox from a car parked in a street near his family’s Sydney home to install in a friend’s car. Fraser was reprimanded by the authorities. From then on it seems that Fraser became a defiant, uncontrollable teenager who fought with his peers, the police and his parents. He was also known for his ‘walkabouts’. He stole a motorbike to go to Perth, in Western Australia, and hitched rides from Sydney to Mackay, in North Queensland, to visit a cousin. While on probation he threatened a local teenage girl with rape. No charges were laid but police suggested Fraser be sent to a boys’ home for two years detention to help control his escalating criminal behaviour. His parents were unsure that the notorious home was the right environment for their troubled son.They feared their son had a split personality and felt like they had been living with two different people – Fraser could be as much uncontrollable as he could be a good Samaritan, offering to help strangers and friends in need. They had unsuccessfully tried to have Fraser psychiatrically assessed when he was fifteen because he had A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH
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already shown early signs of what would be diagnosed eight years later as classic psychopathic behaviour. Faced with no real alternative, they agreed with the police and Fraser was sent to the boys’ home. Officials at the home thought Fraser’s home environment may have been the catalyst for his behaviour. His parents denied that this was the case – they thought he had ‘just turned bad’ but could not explain why. They visited every fortnight, bringing his favourite homemade pea and ham soup and biscuits. But there would be little chance of reform inside the home, where violent, non-consensual sex was the currency. Fraser claims his first sexual experience was a clumsy, drunken, forgettable dalliance with a teenage girlfriend. Most believe his virginity was probably taken inside the home, where rape was a right of passage: older boys raped Fraser, and he in turn raped younger inmates.You did what you had to in order to survive – it was a case of rape or be raped. The institution was strict, regimented and brutal, and some of its undergraduates were merciless and unforgiving. Some residents claimed detention centre employees assaulted them. Inmates would later tell a senate inquiry of harrowing incidents of animal cruelty, including a cat that was boiled alive. In some instances of punishment, boys told of being fed bread and water once a day, or once every three days, and being forced to march everywhere rather than walk. The product of such an environment speaks for itself: alumnae from the home have committed some of the country’s most heinous crimes. Fraser served two stints inside the home and when he graduated in 1968, showed little change in his behaviour other than a voracious appetite for sex. He was released from the home only to find himself in trouble again. In the main, Fraser resorted to law breaking and 12
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great brutality to satisfy his needs. On 19 December 1968 he was found guilty of assault after he beat up a Penrith railway station attendant at age seventeen, for making a remark about his girlfriend. Fraser and his family knew the guard but that did not stop him from attacking the man. He was placed on probation until the age of nineteen. With an incomplete education, Fraser’s career options were limited. After leaving the home he worked at an iron foundry in Sydney for about eight months, and then a construction company for another two. He also worked as a labourer for an earth-moving company and as a plant operator. His criminal acts were an ongoing, annual affair. In 1970 he was again charged and fined for driving while unlicensed. Within eight months, street fighting put him back before the courts where he was fined $20. It was at this time that Fraser claimed to work as a ‘sitter’ and ‘stand-over merchant’ for prostitutes working the notorious Kings Cross strip. It was a period when Fraser was also abusing prescription drugs, illicit street drugs and alcohol. He later claimed he was connected to Sydney’s criminal underworld. Then on 9 February 1971, he was jailed for 12 months for stealing a car but only served half of his sentence – it is unclear why he was released early. Fraser, who was now using the name of John Leonard Fraser, then left New South Wales. He would later tell a prison psychologist he left behind four daughters and five sons, but was unable to give details about the mothers.The claims were nothing more than hollow brags. Court records show that when Fraser did leave New South Wales he tried to take stolen goods into Queensland, and in Townsville that year he was caught stealing $9.04 worth of petrol and soft drink. Fraser, with two friends, had been driving a stolen car, heading to the rainforest paradise of the Daintree in Far North Queensland, for a A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH
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‘fresh start’. The three were sentenced to nine months jail in Townsville’s Stuart Creek Prison.While serving his term, Fraser was disciplined several times for aggressive behaviour, the last being just weeks before he was released in October 1972. Upon his release, Fraser decided to return to Sydney where his parents now lived. He reacquainted himself with the prostitutes of Kings Cross by becoming their sitter.The money was better than the $20 a day he earned working as a casual labourer. He and an associate, Harry Williams, moved into a flat adjacent to the Cross. On the morning of 17 October 1972, Fraser and Williams had an argument and an angry Fraser stormed across to the Botanical Gardens to let off steam.After walking around for an hour or so he noticed a woman in a knee-length yellow dress carrying a street directory near the garden’s Palm Grove. The married woman, a French tourist, approached Fraser for directions but he couldn’t understand what she was saying, instead pointing with his hand towards the path that she was already walking along.As soon as she passed, Fraser grabbed her violently around the throat from behind. As the woman screamed, Fraser covered her mouth, punching her over and over around the face. The beating was so severe the woman’s blood would be found on nearby foliage. As the badly disturbed ground cover would show, she put up the fight of her life but was no match for Fraser, who was strong and well muscled from hours spent labouring in Sydney. He dragged the 37-year-old under a banana tree and, like a tiger feeding on its fresh kill, tore at the woman’s underwear and pantyhose in a frenzy, leaving part of the hosiery around her left foot. Fearing she was going to die, the mother of two fainted. Fraser then raped her and rifled through her purse, stealing 14
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$14. Realising his pants and t-shirt were covered in the woman’s blood, Fraser fled, leaving behind one of his yellow and white thongs and a bloodstained handkerchief. The woman lay semiconscious, battered, bleeding and moaning in pain for half an hour before she was found under the palms. She had an abrasion above her right eye and on the bridge of her nose. Each side of her face was swollen, and there was extensive bruising on the left side of her neck and around her chin. She was also bleeding from her genital area, which was covered in sand and dirt – he had brutalised her so badly she was unable to conceive children. Her dress, petticoat and black raincoat were hitched up past her thighs, her legs astride and bent up. Fraser had fractured her cheekbone, broken her nose and given her two black eyes. When she was examined, fresh sperm was found inside her. Police had no suspects for the rape so Fraser was still on the loose, and on the prowl. He was before the courts the next month on an unrelated crime – he was convicted of living off the earnings of prostitution.Then, only a fortnight later, he was arrested for assault and armed robbery. On 4 December 1972 he was jailed for five years for these two crimes, with a nonparole period of eighteen months. While serving his sentence in Parramatta jail, he learnt to box, ‘you may as well say professionally’. Fraser often bragged about his boxing prowess – even though he surprised most of his victims, including the French woman, from behind – and would claim to have sparred with a string of world titleholders. He also crafted ornate wooden jewellery boxes and tabletops, which he sent home to his family, and considered himself to be a special and remarkable artist. By the end of 1972 he had also mysteriously lost half the index finger on his right hand. When Fraser was released on 19 June 1974 he claimed to A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH
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have accumulated $10 000 worth of electrical goods, and insisted that while on the inside he was ‘looked after’ because of a relationship he had with the daughter of the jail’s governor. In reality, Fraser showed great highs and lows while inside, often unleashing bouts of anger and hostility towards staff and psychologists. His significant personality disorder and absent employment history meant Fraser’s prospects were limited. On the outside, employers discovered his exhaustive criminal record each time he applied for work. Fraser blamed his parole officer. With no money, no social ties and, by his own admission, a heavy appetite for drugs and alcohol, Fraser was once again on the move. Within twenty-two days of being released on parole, Fraser attacked and raped another stranger. He shadowed the woman as she walked along a deserted road in St Mary’s, in Sydney’s west, on the morning of 11 July. Fraser twisted his victim’s arm behind her back, covered her mouth, dragged her up an embankment at the side of the road and raped her. A brazen Fraser then forced the woman to hold his hand and walk with him a short distance before leaving her, violated and battered. He then returned to his parents’ home and acted as though nothing had happened. But it was not enough, and less than a week later, he was at it again. On the night of 17 July 1974 – just one month and one rape since he had made parole – Fraser noticed a woman working alone in a dry-cleaning store at the Great Western Shopping Centre in Mount Druitt. He asked her for his drycleaning and followed her into the back of the store, pushing her arm up behind her back and forcing her to the floor. But his attempted rape was disturbed when customers came into the store, and he fled, having to seek yet another female stranger to satisfy his devious urges. 16
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Three days later the woman was chosen at random as she walked along Mavis Street in Rooty Hill in Sydney’s outer west. Fraser approached her, spoke to her and then punched her in the face.The woman fell down a slope near a small creek and struggled with her attacker as he tried to have sex with her. As he removed part of her clothing, the woman convinced him to take her back to his place for sex. Fraser fell for it, and as they walked towards his boudoir, the woman made her escape, running to a nearby house and raising the alarm. Fraser panicked, leaving his wallet, which contained his birth certificate, at the crime scene. It wasn’t long before police were at his door. During the police interview he confessed to his last three sex attacks and volunteered information about the rape of the French tourist because he needed to ‘get it off his chest’, claiming he always regretted it. In relation to the woman at St Mary’s, he said if she hadn’t complied with his wishes he would have had sex anyway after he ‘gave her a hiding’, and the woman at the drycleaners was ‘coming across’ and – had it not been for the customer interruption – would not have had to be forced into intercourse. Convicted of rape, assault and intent to commit rape, Fraser – who represented himself at the trial – was sentenced to twenty-one years jail and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment. Long Bay jail senior psychiatrist Dr Edward Fischer deemed the then twenty-three year old a classic psychopath:‘He has no superego (conscience) whatsoever. He will use anyone and anything to his advantage without giving a lot [of thought] to the other people’s feelings. He has little or no impulse control. Apart from this there is no real psychiatric disability and unfortunately there is no known treatment for this type of psychopathic state.’ A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH
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Fraser told Fischer he could read a little but his writing was very limited. He had left school when he was fourteen and worked as a labourer. He had been in and out of jail and, while free, had survived on the earnings of prostitutes working Kings Cross. Fischer reported: He states he drinks up to eight hours a day because there is nothing wrong with him because he knows at all times what he is doing. He has also resorted to drugs such as LSD (an hallucinogen) and ‘pot’. His parents are alive but he has no relationship with them whatsoever. He hates his mother as well as his father. He does not get on with his two brothers and sister(s).
Fraser also confessed to homosexual affairs and claimed to belong to a bikie gang. His trial judge, Justice Wootten, noted Fraser’s crimes were committed within a few weeks of being on parole for robbery, and that apart from Fraser expressing some regret over the attacks, there was no remorse or contrition.The psychiatric report unfortunately only confirms what all the other evidence suggests. Justice Wootten said in his findings: ‘That whenever you have the opportunity you revert to criminal conduct of any sort without regard to the rights and feelings of others, and the psychiatric report unfortunately holds out no hope of any cure of your condition.’ Fraser’s sentence was to be served concurrently with the five-year term for armed robbery for which he had previously gained early parole. But even though Fraser was deemed a classic psychopath, seven years – just one-third of the way – into his twenty-one-year sentence the New South Wales parole board released him. Prisoners are granted parole partly because they do not pose a risk to the community.The board’s reasons 18
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and Fraser’s prisoner records remain secret due to privacy legislation.The only way to obtain Fraser’s records – which could provide some insight into his behaviour – is for him to authorise their release, which to date he has refused to do. His NSW parole officer from that time has said he also cannot discuss the circumstances surrounding Fraser’s early parole in 1981 because of those same privacy laws.The time which has lapsed has also made it difficult to find inmates who were jailed with Fraser at that time who might be willing to shed light on what led to this seemingly inexplicable early release. Within twelve months of gaining parole, Fraser had decided to visit his parents, despite his claims that he hated them. They had moved to Abbott’s Point outside of Bowen, a coastal hamlet north of Mackay. In July 1982, shortly after he arrived, he received the devastating news that his grandparents had been in a car accident. His grandmother had been thrown from the car and was killed. He was fond of his grandmother, and as a teenager had hitchhiked from New South Wales to Mackay to see her. Fraser took his anger out on a woman at Baker’s Creek in Mackay. He went to the woman’s residence on the pretext of buying a car he saw in her backyard, and pretended to know the woman’s husband. He grabbed her from behind as she turned to quieten her barking dogs. He put one hand around her waist and the other over her mouth. She struggled and fought back as he dragged her down the hallway, but she – like the others – was no match for Fraser’s strong physique. As the woman fell to the floor Fraser told her: ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just trying to prove a point.’When she asked him to call her husband he obliged: ‘I hope you’re not going to kill me. I just wanted to prove a point that somebody could break in and rape your missus.’ The woman then asked A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH
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Fraser to wait downstairs until her husband arrived but he only stayed for a short time before fleeing to a nearby caravan sales yard where he was arrested. On 2 August he was sentenced to two months jail for aggravated assault. Shortly after his release, on 17 September 1982, Fraser returned to live with his parents, who had relocated to the Moanna caravan park at Hays Point on the central Queensland coast. There he befriended Pearl Rigby, a 26-year-old single mother who lived in a neighbouring caravan. Fraser was immediately attracted to Pearl and his threeyear relationship with her between 1982 and 1985 appears to be one of the few periods of his life where he was settled and hadn’t fallen foul of the law. He was in full-time employment with Queensland Railways as a ganger, where his colleagues named him ‘animal’ because of his penchant for partying. Before he took up with Pearl, his only interaction with women had been brief, drunken affairs, prostitutes, bikie chicks or rape victims.The couple moved into a two-bedroom flat in Mackay and seemed to live an ordinary kind of life. Fraser was stepfather to Pearl’s nine-year-old son, and the couple had a daughter together. Pearl would later tell police Fraser was not a violent man and had only slapped her once during an argument. She described their relationship as ‘normal’ with an equally normal sex life. ‘At no time did Fraser approach me about or attempt to involve me in any strange acts, relationships or doing anything that caused me concern then or now,’ she said in a statement. He never drank much alcohol and had told Pearl he had a metal plate inserted into his head when he was young but Pearl believed her de facto husband was a compulsive liar. He
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had lied to her about many things in their relationship and she suspected he cheated on her with other women. Fraser had managed to conceal his illicit sexual tastes and his past as a serial rapist from Pearl, but all that was about to change.
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3 LENNY THE LOON IT WAS LOW tide when a young woman started her mile-long walk along the beach at Shoal Point, just outside the North Queensland city of Mackay on the morning of 30 July 1985. It was her daily ritual, breakfast at 7.30 am and the beach by 8 am to collect shells and driftwood for hobby craft. Lisa (not her real name) enjoyed the simple pleasures in life – like sauntering along the beach in the sunshine. She didn’t expect anything of the world and didn’t think anyone owed her a living. She was content just to be. As she tightened the jumper around her waist and adjusted her pink bikini pants she followed the curving shoreline towards Reliance Creek. Lisa walked out along the waterline before returning to the high tide mark. She often headed to the isolated beach because of its low, low tide which left acres of exposed driftwood. She strolled for about 45 minutes, stepping around fallen logs dotting the mangroves, and found a green string bag that had been used for bait, tangled in some reeds. Thinking it 22
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would be useful for holding wood or shells, she unravelled it and kept on walking towards an area where there were lots of small pieces of driftwood. She passed a couple of beach houses and a caravan, but it was a typical Monday morning and there was no one in sight. Fraser had been silently shadowing Lisa for days, his army binoculars allowing him to stalk her from a discreet distance. He had left Pearl and the baby at home, telling his de facto wife he was off to work. The serial rapist had originally gone to Shoal Point to buy a car when the intoxicating mix of Lisa and opportunity consumed him. It had been more than eleven years since he had raped – or at least been caught for rape. Lisa found a large, heavy piece of driftwood that was too big to put in the bag so she tied the netting around it and started dragging it back to her place, west of Reliance Creek. As she turned for home she glanced over her shoulder and noticed a man 50 metres behind her, walking in her direction. She felt nervous but kept going, dragging the driftwood with her.A few seconds later she turned again and saw that the man following her was making ground. Turning a third time, she found him just metres away. Reaching a fallen tree, Lisa slowed down to manoeuvre the wood around it. As she looked over her shoulder, he was within touching distance. She said,‘Hello’ and, thinking he was a worker or resident of nearby Hodges Farm, commented about what a nice place it was. He answered, ‘Yes, it is.’ As she struggled with the wood in the mud, he moved towards her. ‘No, I can do it myself,’ Lisa said. Finally she freed the wood and headed home with her back towards him. But Lisa was far from free. Fraser grabbed her from behind, smothering her mouth as he locked his strong arms over hers. Holding a small piece of LENNY THE LOON
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wood, about twelve or fifteen inches long, Lisa jabbed back over her shoulders in an attempt to release Fraser’s grip. Unsuccessful, she dropped the wood and bag and fell to her knees. Using his swarthy frame, hardened by three years of fulltime labouring for the railways, Fraser forced Lisa to her feet and, with his arms against her chest, pushed her in front of him with one hand over her mouth. As they reached the high tide mark Lisa scratched her leg on a log. She was terrified. She begged Fraser and pleaded with him, scrambling for ideas to escape.‘Don’t,’ Lisa said.‘Don’t force me to go into the bushes. Come to my place.’ But Fraser knew better, one of his previous victims – the woman in Rooty Hill – having already used that ruse to flee, he was not about to be fooled again. That time, he’d been caught. He told Lisa to shut up and to ‘get in there’, pushing her into the bush. As they struggled one of her earrings broke, the hook part remaining in her ear while a moon-shaped shell fell onto the sand. Fraser asked how old she was and where she came from, at which point Lisa asked him to let go of her mouth. She promised not to scream, as no one would hear her anyway. Fraser complied and Lisa answered that she was twenty and lived nearby. Once again she took the opportunity to plead for leniency. Fraser forced her under the trees, onto a sandy area covered with leaves and twigs, and pushed her onto her back. Kneeling in front of her he yanked at her red singlet exposing her breasts. He unzipped his fly and pulled out what Lisa thought was a gun or knife. When she questioned him about the weapon, she discovered it was actually a pair of binoculars, which he then tossed aside. He took his uncircumcised, erect penis in his hand. He sat Lisa up with his hand behind her head and indicated he wanted oral sex. He threatened to kill her if 24
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she bit him. Terrified, she promised not to bite and in an attempt to stall asked Fraser to wait as she stroked his genitals. Fraser became impatient and pushed Lisa back onto the sand. He ripped off her bikini bottoms and told her, ‘Don’t worry about that now.’ As he started guiding his penis towards her, Lisa, who had started menstruating a day earlier, feared she would be injured if raped while her tampon was in place. Alerting him to her plight, Fraser gave her a brief moment to ‘get rid of it’, then he raped her. Fraser would later claim he could smell when women were menstruating. Lisa felt little pain as Fraser made his unwelcome advance – he had already ejaculated prematurely and his erection had started to wane. Despite this he persisted on top of Lisa for another minute or so. Lisa lay terrified, too frightened to react, when suddenly it was all over. Rising to his feet Fraser commented on the amount of semen over his victim’s legs, but refused to let her go for a swim to wash it off. Instead she was ordered to stay put while he collected his binoculars and ran off towards a rock wall. Fraser ran back to his car and drove towards Grasstree Beach outside of Sarina. He headed to Charles Peepe who, with his wife and children, lived in a bus at an old goldmine. Fraser often visited them to get car parts and had once brought round a semi-automatic rifle. At around 10 am, just as Peepe and his children were preparing to leave to repair a young boy’s car, a bare-chested Fraser arrived in his gold Holden Statesman. Inviting Fraser inside for a cup of tea, Peepe noticed Fraser seemed nervous, bright and excited all at the same time. Fraser was wearing jeans and running shoes, his face was flushed and the whites of his eyes were red. He appeared nervous and shifty, and kept rising from his easy chair to look out the window every few minutes. Peepe had seen Fraser at least half a dozen LENNY THE LOON
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times over the past two years. During that time Fraser had falsely confessed to Peepe that he raped and murdered resort worker Celia Natasha Douty as she sunbaked nude on Brampton Island on 1 September 1983. Sydney businessman Wayne Edward Butler had already been convicted of that murder. Fraser also claimed to Peepe that he had pushed a handicapped woman to the ground, forcing her to claw her way to freedom, when suddenly her husband had arrived. Fraser fled and claimed he was not charged over that attack (as it was never reported) or the previous murder. But even during those admissions and Fraser’s previous visits – when he turned up with a bag of sugar, a rifle and green army binoculars – Peepe had never before seen Fraser in such a strange state. A concerned Peepe asked Fraser what was wrong and was told that he had gone through a speed trap and, having outrun the police, had to ditch the singlet and t-shirt he had been wearing. Questioned about why he wasn’t at work, Fraser said he’d taken a day off but that Pearl didn’t know, and he’d prefer to keep it that way. Fraser asked Peepe about car parts, and whether he had any hot dog mufflers available – but he didn’t. As the two talked the man’s wife became impatient and asked Fraser how long he intended to stay as the family was expected elsewhere. Animated and fidgety, Fraser drew Peepe outside and removed a brand new numberplate, still in its wrapper, from the front seat of his car. He asked Peepe for a drill, took off the front plate, crumpled it up and threw it down the hill, replacing it with the new one.The rear plate was left as it was – an unmatching pair. Meanwhile, Lisa sat up, put her pants on and left her singlet around her waist. She put her white jumper on, walked out to the beach and looked in the direction Fraser had run. She tried 26
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to act as though nothing had happened and calmly walked to collect her driftwood, picked it up and started dragging it towards her home. Lisa thought if she ran Fraser might turn around and come back for seconds. Instead she tried to carry on with what she had been doing before he attacked her. She was in survival mode and hoped that by keeping up appearances, she reduced the likelihood of drawing more unwanted attention. Lisa dragged the wood all the way to Shoal Point where there was a path, and dropped it on the high tide mark. She went down to the water and waded in up to her waist, washing the semen from her legs. As she walked back to the driftwood she noticed a man watching her from a blue ute and, fearing he would also try and attack her, she walked up O’Brien’s Esplanade to put some distance between her and the car. She checked to make sure it was not the man who had raped her. It was someone else, but Lisa was still too scared to make for home, fearing he would now try and follow her. She hid behind a tree, and when the man finally drove off, she slowly walked home. It was five minutes to nine. As Lisa got safely inside, the phone rang – it was a friend. Lisa’s voice was shaky and she was crying. Her friend realised she was upset and questioned the twenty-year-old over what was wrong. Lisa answered: ‘I have been attacked on the beach.’ Her friend offered to accompany her to the police station, and Lisa agreed. Mackay detectives Craig ‘Chuck’ Dent and Brian Marlin were assigned to investigate Lisa’s rape at Shoal Point.They had investigated many sex crimes and in the majority of those cases, the victim knew their attacker. Random sex attacks on strangers were uncommon. It was not just the indiscriminate nature of the crime that bothered Dent and Marlin, but the attacker’s brazen behaviour: although the beach where Lisa was raped was isolated, it was still a popular tourist spot.They feared LENNY THE LOON
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the rapist might strike again. The detectives interviewed the victim before locating and securing the crime scene where they found a part of Lisa’s earring, her tampon and a shoe print. They doorknocked the area in the immediate vicinity and found a local farmer who had seen a man walking through his property over the past few days.The farmer had approached the man, who claimed to be looking for work. He also asked for permission to cut through the property to head north to a creek to fish, even though he wasn’t carrying any tackle. The man told the farmer his name was Fraser. Marlin and Dent returned to the station and went through their records. A search on the name ‘Fraser’ had turned up a Leonard John who was sentenced to two months jail in 1982 for assaulting a woman in Mackay.The police had escorted Lisa to a nearby medical centre to be examined and to get treatment, and when they returned to pick her up she noticed a mug shot on the front seat of the police car. Police had pulled out Fraser’s file as part of the search on the surname, his picture was the only Fraser they could find in a box full of alphabetically listed mug shots.They had it added to their evergrowing brief. Standard police procedure for the identification of offenders is to place the mugshot on a board with eleven other photos so victims can independently point out the suspect. But in this instance, Lisa saw Fraser’s mugshot poking out of a police file and instantly recognised him.There was no mistaking the rapist’s glare. It was Leonard John Fraser and Lisa was beside herself. With Fraser identified, Marlin and Dent paid him a visit at his Roberts Street flat in Mackay – the one he shared with Pearl and the children.The detectives spotted a Holden Statesman sitting in the driveway. Fraser wasn’t home, but the men had a warrant and seized some of his clothes.The next day, Dent and 28
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Marlin visited Fraser at the local rail yards where he worked. They told him they were investigating a rape at Shoal Point. Fraser was defensive,‘No way! I haven’t done anything like that,’ he said. Agreeing to accompany the detectives back to the Mackay police station, Fraser again protested his innocence, telling police he was to be married the following November. Fraser was silently confident; he had an alibi, Charlie Peepe, whom he had visited from 8.45 to 9.30 am. The pair had enjoyed a chat and a cup of tea. He denied talking to the local farmer but admitted he had walked on the beach to avoid some aggressive geese. Not convinced, and with a positive ID, the detectives took Fraser’s shoes to make a plaster cast in an attempt to match it with the print left at the scene of Lisa’s rape. It was a perfect match, welding marks from his work as a ganger on the railway left his shoes with a very unique pattern. Detectives also matched Fraser’s DNA with the traces of semen found on the rape victim. When they checked his alibi the detectives found a discarded numberplate at the bottom of the hill – it matched the rear plate on Fraser’s gold Statesman.With such overwhelming evidence Fraser was charged in front of his de facto, and for the first time was forced to tell Pearl the truth about his predatory past. Pearl later told police that she believed a knife she found under the seat of Fraser’s car was the same one he threatened Lisa with. Fraser had told Pearl it was for his own protection. Fraser, charged with Lisa’s rape, was once again taken into custody.A few days later Dent and his partner learnt Fraser had committed his latest crime while on parole for a series of sex attacks perpetrated in New South Wales. In fact his parole had been revoked in 1982 after the Mackay assault but at the time it was not policy for the New South Wales parole authorities to seek extradition. Even so, Fraser was a wanted man. LENNY THE LOON
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To Dent, Fraser was a standout offender. With a police career spanning some twenty-five years, Dent was an experienced officer who believed Fraser was particularly cunning, and alarmingly evil.‘You got the impression of real danger,’ said Dent. ‘There was not even a hint of remorse from him right the way through. It was like when it came to trial it was my fault; all of it, going to court, was the fault of police.’ ‘As soon as he raped he went to a friend’s place, changed the licence plate on his car and tried to establish an alibi,’ Dent said.‘During the interview he was very hard to keep on track, very erratic and very hard to get anywhere with. He was a difficult person, like a bucking horse, he just wouldn’t sit still. You’d ask him a question and he skirted around it. It was very difficult to find what he meant and he went on for ages.’ Dent believed it was a deliberate ploy. He also had no doubt Fraser would have killed Lisa had she fought back. Fraser preyed on the weak and innocent, and his attack on the young woman in an isolated area gave him opportunity to kill. At his trial in the Mackay Supreme Court in October 1985 Fraser protested his innocence, despite being confronted with overwhelming forensic evidence linking him to the victim. He would later claim his admission in front of Pearl made him ‘feel about two inches high’. He had moved to Queensland to start a new life, with new people, and the arrest in front of his fiancée was a ‘hit below the belt’. At the time of his sentence, Fraser told the presiding judge, Justice Des Derrington, he had already done his time for offences in New South Wales and was not about to take the rap for raping Lisa. In fact, Fraser claimed he had unfairly ‘paid seven years of his life’ for the New South Wales attacks. Justice Derrington remained unconvinced, telling Fraser he was a dangerous man who caused his victims great agony 30
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and degradation. ‘You say that you felt very small admitting in front of your wife that you were charged with this offence,’ Justice Derrington said during the sentencing.‘I can assure you that is nothing like the feeling that you would have caused these women, including the one for whom I am sentencing you. If you have the remotest idea that any of them enjoyed your doing it then you are totally deceiving yourself. They would regard you – and I do not use any heat in saying this – but they would regard you as being the equivalent of a filthy animal.’ Concerned with the haste and deviancy Fraser showed as he tried to change the registration of his car and fabricate an alibi just minutes after the attack, the judge jailed him for twelve years. Fraser, who was to serve all but the last three weeks of the sentence, asked to be incarcerated in Rockhampton’s jail – then called Etna Creek Jail – possibly to stay close to Pearl and the children. He was registered as prisoner A00524 and his other distinguishing features were listed: 181 centimetres tall, medium build, blue eyes, grey hair and a ruddy complexion. Records list his aliases as Lenny and Loony Lenny, John Leonard Fraser, ‘Homo’ and ‘Tex’.The top of his index finger on his right hand was missing and he had multiple tattoos: a motorcycle on his left arm and ‘Mum’ on his left shoulder; and on his right upper and lower arms a frog sitting under a mushroom, a boxing Tweetie bird, a wizard and on his right shoulder his star sign – a crab – with ‘Merrilyn’ above it.The tattoos extended downwards with a devil’s head on his right thumb, a rose and the word ‘Giselda’ on his left wrist, ‘Tess’ on his right wrist and a birthmark on his right buttock. Fraser’s relationship with Pearl lasted about a year after his sentencing. She broke it off, unable to cope any longer with LENNY THE LOON
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the fact that Fraser had not only lied to her and left her with a baby to raise on her own, but he had raped another woman and she suspected he had cheated on her with other women while she remained devoted to him. Thirty-four-year-old Fraser settled down to life on the inside. Jail was not alien to him given that he had already spent a third of his life in institutions. This was what he knew. This was where he felt comfortable. He had a roof over his head and three meals a day and it was easy. On this occasion prison would offer Fraser a means of getting a trade without him having to part with his own money – which was the way Fraser liked things. Fraser asked prison management for an apprenticeship in the bakery. But Fraser struggled to get on with other prisoners and quickly ran foul of them with his volcanic temper. His short fuse and violent mood swings soon earned him the nickname ‘Lenny the Loon’, and his inability to control his temper cost him any chance of a bakery apprenticeship. A 1986 security classification review described Fraser as a very dangerous person and ‘unpredictable type with poorly controlled anger impulses’. The most minor events reportedly triggered Fraser’s outbursts – once he hurled chairs across the visiting area after he was told the seats were for the education area only. In the same year his prison records repeatedly describe him as a standover merchant, with a prison officer responsible for collecting intelligence also identifying Fraser as active in the prison drug trade in 1989. Psychiatric assessments following Fraser’s incarceration and subsequent parole applications found little hope for change and as a result, parole was repeatedly denied. One psychologist who assessed Fraser said he had a ‘long history of aggressive and violent behaviour which, unfortunately through his own will, 32
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will not change for some considerable time’.The psychologist went on to say Fraser expressed no hesitation for killing people who had set him up in the past, with further assessments describing him as an aggressive man of low intelligence, who was dangerous. He was recognised as antagonistic and unpredictable with poorly controlled anger impulses, a borderline psychotic who had confused thought processes and made incorrect inferences about reality due to alterations of perception, thought and consciousness. Psychologists’ reports detailed Fraser’s continual denial of his criminal past and his need to instantly gratify sexual urges without any thought for the women he assaulted and raped.The confidential reports said there was no reason to believe Fraser would change his anti-social and impulsive behaviour and that he should not be released from prison, describing him as an ‘untreatable’ dangerous man subject to rapid mood changes. He was also sacked from working at the prison farm due to low work output and a bad attitude, and he argued with other inmates and threatened violence. Fraser was an antagonist who often ranted when he couldn’t get his way. He stood over other inmates for things such as books and cigarettes. And despite his reputation for toughness, Fraser was known to feign illnesses and injuries, seeking solace in the sick bay when he clashed with inmates and staff. For Fraser to be productive, he needed to work alone. His increased output when working solo turned his case managers’ tide of criticism to praise, for his work ethic as an external gardener on the prison farm. Staff were happy to work Fraser hard from ‘daylight to dark’ to keep him settled and not let him go ‘hypo’. Prisoners perceived him to be in the ‘screw’s pockets’. Fraser’s behaviour could have pendulous swings from being LENNY THE LOON
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compliant with those in authority to violent outbursts of defiance. In one incident he fought with a prisoner because Fraser didn’t like the garden hose he was using; another clash was started by a prisoner accidentally kicking a ball into Fraser’s well-tended flowerbed.With the few prisoners he did interact with Fraser was prone to bragging, indicating where he would dispose of bodies and lying about the real crimes for which he had been jailed. He told one prisoner he was incarcerated for bashing a man almost to death after he caught him sleeping with his girlfriend, not for raping a stranger. Not surprising for a man who spent his spare time reading horror novels and true crime books during the day and then, at night, dreamed of abducting women from highways once he was released. He was also obsessed with cars - as well as an avid car model maker talking about them nonstop, particularly Holdens. Fraser used his knowledge of cars as conversation starters. Then in 1987, two years into his sentence, prison records show Fraser began to quieten down – he met a woman. Fraser first met Betty when she was visiting her son, who was also an inmate, while he was tending to the garden in the visitors’ area. A prison romance blossomed, with fortnightly visits, letters and phone calls. Fraser wanted to marry Betty and in 1989 applied for parole on the grounds of ‘special circumstances’. Betty, according to Fraser, believed in his innocence and had changed his attitude towards jail. She promised to marry him the day he was released. The pair would move in together, even though Fraser did not want to live with Betty as her 21-yearold son had just been released and was living at her home. In a confidential psychiatric assessment for his parole application, Fraser confided he had never felt ‘like he does towards this woman’. He believed they’d both had a ‘bad trot’ and were willing to ‘give each other a go’. During his assessment, 34
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Fraser continued his denial of raping the woman at Shoal Point, saying he had been walking to a fishing hole which was parallel to the beach where she was attacked. However Fraser did explain his assault of the Mackay woman at Baker’s Creek in 1982 by saying he ‘got into a frenzy.’ When asked to explain his temper, Fraser said he had had a bad temper since he turned eighteen. He also told the treating psychiatrist, Dr Bruce Acutt, that he worked as a bouncer and was a member of a bikie gang which had nicknamed him ‘Homo’. He was also aware that inmates had dubbed him ‘Loony Lenny’ but claimed the emergence of Betty had kept his ‘temper in check’, with fights now a thing of the past. But Dr Acutt was not convinced Fraser had changed. He viewed Fraser’s new-found outlook as an altered reality, but found that he had his own version of reality. Applying the psychological profile – Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) – Dr Acutt found Fraser was a ‘bizarre individual’.The MMPI is a detailed assessment of 565 questions that profiles personality styles and emotional systems. ‘I am still of the opinion that [Fraser] is a borderline psychotic,’ Dr Acutt said.‘During the clinical interview, Mr Fraser often displayed confused thought processes and disjointed sequences of events. Someone who is psychotic makes incorrect inferences about reality based on alterations of perception, thought or consciousness.’ Also of concern to Dr Acutt was Fraser’s history of sex crimes and his belief that Fraser sought instant gratification for sexual urges without any thought for the women he raped.‘Mr Fraser has a history of anti-social and impulsive behaviour and there is no reason to believe that he will change should he be released from prison.’ Dr Acutt recommended against parole and the Queensland Community Corrections Board agreed. LENNY THE LOON
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The parole rejection marked the end of his romance with Betty. She broke off her relationship with Fraser and he told prison authorities he was no longer interested in visits or relationships with women until his release. Release did come briefly in 1990, when Fraser attended his Aunt Elsie’s funeral. It was at this time Fraser falsely claimed he had discovered his Aboriginality. His prison records changed to show he was an urban Aborigine. Fraser had a taste of the outside and wanted more, but in 1991 parole authorities rejected him on the grounds of the seriousness of his crimes, his pattern of reoffending, the risk he posed to the community and his lack of understanding of his criminal behaviour. They knocked him back again two years later. It was around this time that Fraser was deemed unsuitable for the in-house Sex Offenders Treatment Program. He was excluded due to his low intellect, lack of remorse, severe personality disorder and likelihood of re-offending. An integral part of the rehabilitation program for sex offenders was that they had to admit guilt to be able to take part. However Fraser participated in a computer awareness course externally with the Rockhampton TAFE and also studied landscaping through a West Australian TAFE college. A former Rockhampton prison official – who cannot be identified because of confidentiality clauses in his work contract – said Fraser’s emotions were blunted. He said Fraser had an extremely short fuse, which surfaced during frustrating situations.‘It’s one of the reasons the parole board did not consider him to be a good prospect for the outside,’ the former official said. ‘His complexion changed with his emotions, it would come through his skin like red hot flushes. I always predicted he would kill someone, most likely an adult female of
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low intellect, and if she had children he could harm the child in a moment of frustration.’ In 1993, then jail psychologist Elizabeth Davidson did one of the most in-depth interviews and assessments of Fraser to date. Like her peers, she identified an aggressive and volatile man. By the time Davidson assessed Fraser, his breaches for violent outbursts had slowly declined over the previous three years. But she found the decline was borne more out of the staff ’s versatility in learning to manage him without resorting to major sanctions rather than any change in Fraser’s temperament. Fraser shared some of his family’s history with Davidson, but once again much of it was a fabrication – even his age. It was to Davidson he claimed to have witnessed his brother’s ‘gruesome demise’. He also spoke of the multiple moves his family made as his father sought work between Queensland and New South Wales, where his father worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, although there is no record of his father having worked on the hydroelectricity scheme. Davidson believed the moves disrupted Fraser’s normal social and educational development throughout his childhood and early adolescence. He said he had limited contact with his mother, did not speak to his father and had no relationship with his siblings. Fraser also spoke of his Aboriginality and how he learned of his cultural background through the death of his paternal grandmother who was part Aboriginal. However his family maintain that Fraser, like them, is of Scottish heritage and does not have any links to Aboriginality, despite his attempts to secure prison release to attend NAIDOC celebrations. In prison he rejected all efforts by Aboriginal-based groups to include him in activities unless it gave him a pass out of the jail.
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While Fraser was vague and incoherent on the nature of his early family relationships, he did blame his early criminal behaviour on normal adolescent rebellion against society and family ties. Davidson found it difficult to separate Fraser’s personal and criminal history as he had spent so much time behind bars. He told Davidson his first sexual encounter was with a girlfriend named Sonia at around sixteen years of age. ‘But goes (sic) on to say he cannot comment on the quality of the experience as he, but not she, was drunk at the time.’ Fraser then told Davidson he had spent time in the boys’ home in New South Wales and once he was released that he had worked as a ‘sitter’ for prostitutes working in Kings Cross and then how his move to the Daintree in 1971 ended up with him being jailed in Townsville prison. He spoke of his return to New South Wales where he associated with bikie gangs and became ‘re-involved’ with prostitutes. Fraser admitted to the New South Wales rapes he committed but tried to lessen his guilt by saying a number of bikers were involved in the attacks. He still showed no remorse. Davidson believed Fraser understood his criminality as a result of being given too much freedom too often by his parents, but didn’t elaborate. Fraser had told Davidson,‘Boys get their own way and girls get pulled up.’And Fraser was doing his best to make sure of it. Fraser’s relationship with Pearl appeared to be the only stable period in his life. Davidson believed Fraser drew his knowledge of women from his contact with prostitutes, bikie girls and women who visited him in prison. He did not express any warm feelings towards any of the women he claimed to have known, and the only way he expressed emotion was through anger. She believed he had a severe personality disorder and exhibited a number of maladaptive personality traits.These traits caused significant social and vocational impairment. 38
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‘From his criminal and social history it is evident that the impairment commenced in early adolescence and has persisted and worsened in his adult life,’ Davidson said. She found Fraser’s psychological functioning was associated with different personality disorders: These include a pervasive pattern of irresponsible and antisocial behaviour evident since the age of at least 16 years; a pervasive pattern of deficits in interpersonal relatedness and peculiarities of ideation; including grandiosity in fantasy; a restricted range of emotional experience and expression; and a pattern of inappropriate, intense anger and lack of control.
These facets of Fraser’s personality were exacerbated by his low to average intelligence and marked level of institutionalisation. During his interview with Davidson, Fraser showed no insight into his crimes or behaviour, virtually dismissing his past and maintaining ‘grandiose delusions in respect of his position in the criminal world’. Fraser also enjoyed talking about his so-called ‘reputation’ of having a predilection for violence and deadly weapons. Fraser also claimed his prison attacks were aimed at child molesters and his violence was therefore justified. ‘Child molesters were the cause of him going off,’ Davidson wrote in her notes. ‘Len describes himself as a hit man to clean the place up! There is almost nothing in Mr Fraser’s presentation that suggests anything but a gloomy future.’ Fraser’s release plans were vague but included travelling around Aboriginal communities, and landscaping for prison staff who ‘wanted him to do their gardens’. LENNY THE LOON
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Fraser believed he was a remarkable artist and intended to go to the Daintree and paint a ‘special place’, which would make him famous.‘In keeping with his schizoid features of his personality, he is indifferent to the possibilities of forming a new relationship,’ Davidson said.‘He does not aspire to life as a family man.’ While Fraser told Davidson he would not rape again as he wanted to live by himself and did not want to return to jail, the psychologist viewed her patient as a high reoffending risk, with Fraser being as stable as he was going to get, even though that was ultimately untreatable. However Davidson did suggest his newfound Aboriginality could assist him in finding a sense of community and belonging ‘that he has hitherto sought in the fringes of the criminal world’. That Aboriginal heritage was as much a part of Fraser’s fantasy puzzle as the story he told about the nine children he fathered in New South Wales. Police searches of Births, Deaths and Marriages registries showed no records of children to Fraser or marriages between 1969 and 1999. In another psychiatric evaluation by Rockhampton psychiatrist Dr Christopher Alroe in the same year (1993), Fraser again denied the Mackay rape, falsely claiming the victim had actually lived next door to him before she was evicted. He also told Alroe of his brother’s death, said his father was a caretaker, and claimed he had been married three times. Alroe found Fraser had a history of truancy and domestic violence, also noting he left home when he was sixteen and had a record of ‘marked instability in work as well as multiple offences’. Alroe concurred with Davidson’s findings that Fraser was untreatable and at high risk of reoffending. Contrasting with Fraser’s psychiatric assessments were the glowing work references from community groups. Fraser had worked for the groups, performing manual labouring duties 40
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and grounds keeping while inside the prison. During that time his snap temper and inability to work with other prisoners did not surface. In fact, he showed no angry outbursts or eruptions of violence; instead his dedication and work ethic were praised in a letter from the organisers of the large agricultural show, Fieldfest. Fraser had maintained the grounds – mowing, watering and gardening – at the fair, an annual agricultural and machinery show held near the Rockhampton prison. He had unlimited access to departmental vehicles – even though Fraser had never held a driver’s licence. The promotions officer for Fieldfest sent a letter to the Central Queensland Community Corrections Board in June 1993 stating that Fraser’s working relationships with staff over the previous twelve months had been productive and that Fraser worked effectively with other inmates, even during intense periods.The Caves and District Lions Club also offered their support for Fraser.‘Len has been a tremendous asset to the Club and the Community [sic] with his efforts in maintaining and constructing the community Lions Park. … [he] has conducted himself in a good and proper manner and has proved his ability to work in harmony with both community and Club members,’ the club’s secretary wrote in July 1993. Fraser volunteered with community groups, like the Lions Club, Endeavour Foundation and Lifeline and worked at local schools. He put up road signs and completed letterbox drops at nearby housing estates. It was yet another face of Fraser.While Fraser had been an uncontrollable, wilful child prone to bouts of violence and aggression, he was also quick to help others. While walking home from his grocery shopping in Sydney he stopped and removed his shirt to help a complete stranger level a heap of soil in his front garden. It was one of the few reasons Fraser was called a ‘good bloke’, a relative said. LENNY THE LOON
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But Fraser didn’t get his remission or parole and, despite all the other concurring psychiatric reports, he blamed Davidson for his continued incarceration – most likely because she was a woman. A year later his grudge against her turned into death threats. However despite the parole board’s decision against Fraser’s release into the community on five separate occasions, prison authorities had already approved leaves of absence from the jail. Officers escorted Fraser in some instances and associates sponsored others. In October 1996, a few months before his release, he was allowed to fly to Brisbane on his own to attend his father’s funeral. An unchaperoned Fraser then flew back to Rockhampton, returning to the jail. Towards the end of his sentence, Fraser’s security classification was downgraded, a standard practice geared at easing prisoners back into society. But Fraser was institutionalised and comfortable in the prison environment.While on the inside he was almost obsessive about keeping his cell and appearance clean. As a child Fraser had been fanatical with his selfgrooming, showering three times a day. In adulthood he was no different. Fraser was also known for obsessing over the smallest of things and was easily upset. He was also regarded as a coward, and despite tough words and empty boasting concerning his crimes and handiwork, would blow up but then run away when confronted. Prison guards and inmates believed Fraser was never socially comfortable around women, and while he showed a degree of politeness – because he thought that was what was required – he spoke ill of them in the company of men. Fraser detected women could see through him and would not want to find themselves alone with him for fear he would strike. In fact, Fraser would become moody and on edge when women and young girls arrived at Etna Creek Jail for visits. One former 42
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prisoner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, witnessed Fraser’s lust for young girls. He said Fraser would become agitated going ‘real red’ in the face.The whites of his eyes would also turn red and bulge from his skull like they were ready to pop. ‘He would speak in dirty ways,’ the former inmate said. ‘Like, “I’d like to get her and take her behind the bushes and give her a good screw”. He would look a lot at the younger ones when the families came in … they varied from eight to fifteen years old. He seemed to like or want to stand over girls, wanting to get into their pants.’ For his cellmates it was clear: when Fraser was released he would gravitate towards vulnerable women, most likely those with addiction problems. Prison staff drew similar conclusions. Former chief prison officer Dave Robinson, who worked both in Townsville and Rockhampton jails when Fraser was an inmate, knew it would only be a matter of time before he returned to custody. ‘He was a very violent person,’ Robinson said. ‘He had bouts of violence, you never knew when he was going to go off. It was the consensus that if he ever returned to jail it would be for life – for the murder and rape of a woman.’ As the end of Fraser’s sentence drew near, his temper would erupt. A contractor for the prison nursery later told police he often witnessed Fraser go ‘absolutely mad and was rather frightening’ when he got upset. Fraser was still considered untreatable, and so any chance of rehabilitation was remote. But as his outbursts continued, his classification was still downgraded and Fraser was given a level of trust, often being left unsupervised. He was allowed to live on a prison farm where low and open security inmates were housed, and was allowed day leave-of-absences on his own. Fraser’s prison records show that lax security continually allowed him to flout the farm’s invisible, yet very clear borders LENNY THE LOON
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between 1991 and 1997. He went outside the farm’s perimeter, into a no-go zone, and was caught swimming in a dam at the Fieldfest site with a woman, man and their young girls. Another woman, who lived near the jail, also told prison authorities she saw Fraser swimming in the dam while she was walking with her child and dog. In 1994, a couple complained to prison authorities after Fraser had mowed their front yard – without permission and again outside the farm’s limits. Days later Fraser would return to the same house and ask the female resident for a cup of coffee. Recognising him as an inmate, the woman challenged Fraser over his identity and intentions and he fled.The woman and her husband did not take their complaint any further. However, prison authorities disciplined Fraser. A former Rockhampton prison official said he had complained to management several times about Fraser being allowed on the farm. ‘I’ll never understand how Fraser was roaming outside the walls.’ He was a serial rapist in New South Wales and at the time he was serving twelve years for a rape in Mackay. He was allowed to roam about the prison precinct, amongst the houses and main roads where prison staff and their families lived.‘It’s amazing when prisoners who present such a severe risk are knocked back by the parole board but are allowed to roam freely about the prison reserve. It was a recipe for disaster when you had a multiple rapist where women were living and who was allowed near roads where children of staff walked to catch the bus. I knew Fraser well enough to know he couldn’t control his urges.’ But while correctional staff were confident Fraser would kill, they were powerless to stop him from being released into the community. Legislation preventing the release of sex offenders who remained a risk to the community would not 44
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be introduced for several years. New South Wales parole authorities did not issue a warrant for Fraser’s arrest, even though he’d breached his parole for the 1982 assault and 1985 rape. In a letter dated 17 September 1987, NSW parole authorities asked Rockhampton prison to forward details of Fraser’s offence and sentence. The letter confirmed his NSW parole had been revoked on 10 September 1982, and that they were about to consider his case as part of their annual review: ‘Should the Parole Board decide not to rescind the revocation, it is not the practice [in NSW] to seek extradition on the basis of a revoked parole order.’ Technically he had fourteen years left to serve of a 21-year rape sentence. Untreated and unsatisfied, Fraser was released. It was twelve years since he had raped. Gratification was needed quickly.
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4 MONSTER IN THE MIDST FRASER WAS A free man and he was intent on enjoying the sinful liberties that freedom brought. Within six months he would lock a dying woman in a chapel and rape her. It was 7 January 1997 when Fraser left Rockhampton’s Etna Creek Jail with several hundred dollars and few possessions and prospects. He was estranged from his former de facto Pearl and their daughter, and his immediate family wanted nothing to do with him. Ever the opportunist, Fraser zeroed in on a woman who had visited and become his pen pal for two or three years while he was in jail. Fraser had a knack for knowing when women were alone or their husbands were away. Marie Chivers was on her own. Slim, in her mid forties and with long, dark brown hair, she met and wrote to Fraser through a prisoner pen-pal program. She was an ‘arty type’ who thought Fraser was a decent man.The prison system was crucifying him for no good reason and she wanted to marry him. 46
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Chivers lived at Farnborough at the northern tip of the picturesque resort town of Yeppoon – a coastal hamlet surrounded by metallic blue beaches about 40 kilometres northeast of Rockhampton. Fraser had no money and nowhere to go, and despite protests from Marie’s family, managed to manoeuvre his way into her home. Marie had ignored her relations’ warnings against starting a pen-pal relationship with Fraser while he was at Etna Creek, but she was lonely and her correspondent seemed attentive. To Fraser, Marie was vulnerable and needy and, he believed, a woman of means. In fact, Marie had cancer. Fraser showed little sympathy, becoming physically and sexually aggressive almost immediately. Marie’s mother Vera thought Fraser was controlling, and was ill at ease with his constant pacing and his inability to sit still. He also had a bad temper and made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Vera just knew there was something wrong with him, a gut feeling justified when Marie turned up with bruises one day. Marie confided in her mother that Fraser was abusing her and Vera took it upon herself to confront her daughter’s attacker. But when Vera challenged Fraser outside Woolworths at Yeppoon, he issued a chilling warning: if she hadn’t been standing in the street he would have slit her throat. Vera was scared of Fraser and, believing he would carry out his threat, tried her best to stay out of his way. Marie travelled to Brisbane for treatment as her cancer progressed. Shortly after, she was diagnosed as terminally ill and was hospitalised at the Holy Spirit Hospital, on Wickham Terrace in inner city Brisbane. Fraser was furious that Marie would not return to Yeppoon. He hitchhiked to Brisbane and told Marie he had already lost someone to cancer and he was not going to lose her too. Arriving at the hospital, Fraser MONSTER IN THE MIDST
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walked Marie to the hospital chapel to pray but when she refused to leave with him he locked the chapel and raped her. After the attack Marie repeated that she would not leave with him. He then justified his actions as ‘showing her love’. ‘It was not rape,’ he said. Marie’s friends always believed her boyfriend was a murderer, but she had stood by him, and out of the blue once told them that if she went missing, it would be because she ‘went on long walks and would die of natural causes and not because Leonard killed me’. A fortnight after the rape, in June 1997, natural causes did kill Marie. In the days before her death she told a social worker and her mother about the rape. She never told the police or anyone at the hospital. Fraser returned to Yeppoon looking for somewhere to go. On the beach he spotted a familiar face: Christopher Edward Turner from Etna Creek Jail.Turner, 55, had lived in the same cell block as Fraser where he served ‘two or three months’ for drink driving, was released, and then served another couple of months inside the same cell for the same offence. Turner had little to do with Fraser and lost contact with him when he was released once again. Turner asked Fraser what he was doing in Yeppoon, and where he was staying. Fraser said that he had been released in the past 24 hours and was yet to find a spare bed. The pair arranged to meet at the pub at 5 pm when Turner finished work.Turner lived in a small two-bedroom unit and was short a tenant – his previous flatmate had just been jailed – and so he offered Fraser a room. Fraser agreed to pay the $90 weekly rental and moved in that day. At the time, Turner was working casually at a local pineapple farm. He organised some work for Fraser, who was on the dole, but he only lasted a day, saying he couldn’t handle 48
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the work in the hot tropical sun. As Turner continued at the farm, he had no idea what his former jail mate got up to during the day. Fraser’s only mode of transport was a bicycle he owned, and while he occasionally worked on cars he had no permanent employment. Despite his lack of ability, or interest in holding down a job, Fraser was a relatively easy flatmate: he never brought one-night stands or female friends to the flat (as, according to Turner, all his girlfriends were ‘six foot under’), but he did spend a lot of time with a single mother who lived locally. He was a tidy man with few belongings who made minimal noise. He hardly ever cooked and drank only occasionally at the local pub. He was a loner who didn’t have any favourite music or TV shows and was very private, remaining tight-lipped over his crimes and his family, rarely receiving any mail. Fraser did pay his way, in terms of board, but still owes Turner $20 he borrowed at the pub one night. Turner also noticed Fraser was selective about whom he spoke to, and that his ruddy complexion turned beetroot red when he didn’t like what was being talked about. He was quite uptight and easily angered, and if women visited the flat the veins in his neck would bulge and he would become ‘hypo’. Fraser would only talk to the women ‘if he had to’, but in the company of men he was hard to shut up, getting ‘on his soapbox’ and becoming a know-it-all. Local Yeppoon fisherman Andrew Goldfinch, who lived upstairs from Turner and Fraser, told police that Fraser used to walk and fish a lot. Goldfinch said he kept his distance from Fraser because he had heard Fraser killed someone with his bare fists. He felt Fraser had trouble adjusting to life outside jail and was distant and vague. Fraser spent a lot of time down the end of Todd Avenue, a dead end street that turned into tracks through scrub leading to Farnborough Beach, at the back of MONSTER IN THE MIDST
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the Capricorn International Resort at Sandy Point. Local residents reported seeing Fraser walking along the beach at 2 and 3 am, with others telling Turner they often saw Fraser at odd hours. Turner described Fraser as a ‘cat on a hot tin roof ’. He could never keep still and was known to ride his pushbike for hours at a time, to Emu Park and all the way to Rockhampton, some 30 kilometres away. But as always with Fraser, friendships were short-lived and he would wear out his welcome. Turner came home from the pub about nine-thirty one night and found Fraser sleeping on the verandah to escape the summer heat. When Turner switched on the TV and settled down for some light entertainment with his dinner on his lap, he woke an unappreciative Fraser. His flatmate stormed to his feet and yelled, ‘How’s anyone supposed to get any fucking sleep when the TV is blaring?’ Turner recalls the toilet was behind him and thought Fraser was heading for it as he charged through the house like a freight train. But Fraser headed for his bedroom, king-hitting Turner as he went past.‘He lifted me off the bloody chair,’Turner said.‘The chair and all me tucker went everywhere and rah, rah, rah. I told him, pack your fucking ports and get out. I don’t give a shit where you go, piss off.’The punch had knocked both Turner and the chair he was sitting on to the floor. But Turner considered Fraser was ‘bloody loose up top, probably three-quarters of a loaf of bread short of a picnic’, and he knew better than to try and retaliate even though he himself was solidly built. Turner, like Fraser, has piercing blue eyes. He has the letters L-O-V-E emblazoned on the fingers of his right hand, and H-A-T-E on the left. His handshake is constricting and painful, and his stare lacks conscience. Barefoot and unshaven, with a grey and ginger beard hiding a toothless upper jaw, he could easily be mistaken for Fraser – in appearance and build. Despite 50
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his weathered features, Turner has an athletic, well-muscled body. His forearms are almost Popeye-like, steeled from over twenty years of picking pineapples. Like Fraser’s, his fingers are stained nicotine orange, both men sharing a passion for prisonissue White Ox tobacco. Turner understood Fraser was a man with little control and so he left the flat to visit a mate in an upstairs unit rather than start a fight. His friend was cooking tea for his kids when they heard someone knocking.‘Ah, mate, you expecting anyone?’Turner asked as he went to answer the door. As he opened it a fist came flying through the air once more. It was powerful enough to knock Turner over again. ‘That’s for good measure,’ Fraser said. Fraser was now surviving on unemployment benefits and with few friends or allies, moved into Rockhampton’s Oztel Hostel on 7 March 1997. He settled in room 10, block A, and two weeks later recognised another former inmate from Etna Creek Jail. It was Richard Gritt and his de facto wife Beverley Leggo. Fraser took an instant shine to Beverley, causing trouble between the couple and making her feel uncomfortable. Gritt knew Fraser was a rapist and it bothered him to find Fraser talking to Beverley alone in their room when he returned from outings. Gritt ejected Fraser on more than one occasion, but Fraser still managed to take Beverley for walks alone. She was being groomed. The next month Gritt and Leggo pulled up stumps, as did Fraser. He resettled at Mount Morgan, an old mining town 40 kilometres south-west of Rockhampton that once boasted the largest open cut goldmine in the Southern Hemisphere. The pit would become a special interest of Fraser’s. Mount Morgan is a small, rural town with high unemployment. Home to just three thousand residents, its streets are MONSTER IN THE MIDST
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wide and hilly and in a bad state.To find Mount Morgan from Rockhampton motorists must negotiate the razorback mountain range and cross Poison Creek before snaking their way to the top of the Dee Ranges, some 240 metres above sea level. The road is narrow and winding, with sheer drops along one side. The town once boomed, with some 8 million ounces of gold produced by the time the mines closed in 1989, but now tourists are its lifeline. However those visiting the town are often left with the feeling Mount Morgan has well and truly passed its heyday. In summer, it is hot, dry and dusty and there is an air of hopelessness. For some residents there was also an atmosphere of fear. Fraser lied about his reasons for being in Mount Morgan, telling people he was related to a couple who ran the local post office and that his blind mother had lived in the town for many years. He rented a nondescript three-bedroom house on James Street, the main road into the town, from a member of the Rebels Outlaw Motorcycle gang, further feeding his grand fantasies of belonging to the biker culture. He told some people it was a Rebels safe house and flew their club flag in his front yard until the gang told him to take it down. However the Rebels did let Fraser mow their lawns in Rockhampton. For a while Fraser lived with a teenage girl who had an intellectual disability, but she left him when her boyfriend was released from jail. They eventually fled Mount Morgan after Fraser constantly harassed them. The residents joke about the town’s unemployment, its lost hope and about it being a mecca for two-headed hillbillies or ‘inbreds’. For some people, it’s the place to go when you want to hide because the world seems to have left it behind. You don’t have to go far before someone knows Fraser – residents talk of how Fraser, for no reason, king-hit a friend and 52
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knocked him unconscious while they were having a beer together at the local pub. And how a local businessman who woke to tend to his crying baby daughter saw Fraser wandering through the hills behind his home around 3 am.There are many stories of Fraser’s erratic behaviour, but the most disturbing thing is the way many of the residents talk about Fraser – they seem to have no sense of the horror, seemingly accepting it as just the way life is. Ken Waltham first met Fraser in 1997 when he caught him stealing car parts from a wreck on the Mount Morgan property where he lived with his wife June and their nine children. Fraser was loading the parts into a truck with a mutual friend. When Waltham confronted him, Fraser told him he wanted to pay for the parts but didn’t have any money. In lieu of payment,Waltham told Fraser he could keep the parts if he helped build their family home. The Walthams’ children took an instant dislike to Fraser, telling their parents he made them feel uncomfortable. The Walthams knew Fraser had been jailed for rape but Mrs Waltham said she wasn’t worried about that – it was Fraser’s temper that made her and her husband feel uneasy. The hairs would stand up on the back of their necks if Fraser stood behind them. ‘You couldn’t tell what mood he was in, he wasn’t someone you would turn your back on. He had a real bad temper … he’d go from one extreme to another,’ she said. On one occasion when they hadn’t seen him for days, Fraser turned up disheveled and with dirty sore feet after he’d walked the 40 kilometres through the bush from Rockhampton to Mount Morgan. Fraser told the couple how he had moved to Mount Morgan to be closer to his mother, even though his parents had never lived in the town. The Walthams had moved to Mount Morgan for a better MONSTER IN THE MIDST
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life but four years later they regretted that decision and returned to Rockhampton in 1998, Mrs Waltham saying it wasn’t the ‘nice, small country town’ they thought it would be. ‘The normal people keep to themselves but there were a lot of wierdos there,’ she said. Not only the Walthams were alarmed by Fraser. Local police officer in charge Stan Lean also felt uneasy when he laid eyes on the newcomer. Stationed at Mount Morgan for 20 years of his 35-year career, Lean – who was Mayor of Mount Morgan for a term after he retired in 2003 – said his ‘gut instinct’ fired up when he saw Fraser. Early conversations did nothing to allay his fears; Fraser had asked Lean what the women were like ‘in this town’. Lean immediately did a background check on the new face and was disturbed to find Fraser was a serial rapist and a violent offender with a criminal history in two states. But like it or not, Fraser’s past did not give Lean licence to run him out of town. However Mount Morgan police did arrest Fraser at least twice – for obscene language and stealing his ex-girlfriend’s car – though Lean did his best to build a ‘relationship’ with Fraser so the pair could talk, should there be a need. There were many rumours about where Fraser had come from. Some residents, like the Walthams, knew he had spent time in jail for rape. One Mount Morgan resident had actually been incarcerated with him in jail in New South Wales and Queensland. Fraser tried to play the underdog around town, claiming he was a reformed man but that no one was prepared to give a second chance.The problem was, however, that Fraser was not very convincing as a changed man. Old habits would die hard.The Walthams had witnessed Fraser’s bad temper and had watched his blood boil over the most stupid things, like 54
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being asked to do more than one task at a time, or being unable to fix something, or having to work in the heat. In Mount Morgan Fraser appeared to develop a new modus operandi, ditching his trademark king-hit to stun his victims for knives, marijuana, alcohol and the date-rape drug Rohypnol. A former neighbour tells of the numerous rapes Fraser committed while living in Mount Morgan. While he had not witnessed the attacks, many of the victims told him and other locals what Fraser did to them. He said Fraser would strike when the girls were drunk or had their drinks spiked. The former neighbour first met Fraser in Long Bay jail around 1980 and then again in Rockhampton prison where he was serving a seven year sentence for shooting a man who tried to rob him of his drugs. At that time Fraser told the man he was inside for bashing a man for sleeping with his girlfriend – only on this account the man almost died and was a paraplegic. Local police officer in charge, Lean, had heard of the drinkspiking allegations but had not received a complaint. When police were able to talk to victims, many of whom were intellectually disabled, it was usually months later and any evidence of drink spiking had well and truly vanished. Fraser was no longer randomly plucking strangers from the street or beach. He was getting close, building friendships and wooing them. Residents talk of how they knew what time school was let out for the afternoon because Fraser would stand at his front gate like clockwork to chat to passing schoolgirls whom he would coax into his home. His place quickly became known as somewhere you could get alcohol and marijuana, often for free. Local teenagers would often visit Fraser on the weekend after the local skating rink closed, with one regular Friday and Saturday night visitor revealing there was always a ready supply of cans of rum and coke and cigarettes. MONSTER IN THE MIDST
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But while his approach may have shifted, Fraser had always been an opportunist. Shortly after arriving in the town, he befriended a single mother of three. The woman survived on a single mother’s pension, sharing a modest three-bedroom house with her three children. Fraser soon ingratiated himself with the woman, winning her trust to the point where she let him babysit her kids. One night while two of the children were showering, Fraser asked the woman’s ten-year-old daughter if she wanted to walk to his place and then go to the pizza shop for dinner. As they walked through the streets, Fraser lit up a joint and asked the girl whether she wanted to try some pot. The girl puffed on the cigarette, which she found tasted funny. She felt lightheaded, like she was going to faint.When they reached Fraser’s house, they walked down a hallway before Fraser told the girl to follow him into the bedroom to get his money. When the girl walked in Fraser picked her up, threw her onto the bed and, using his weight to pin her down, ripped off her jeans and underwear. The girl lay paralysed with fear as Fraser raped her with his fingers. Two years later she would claim in her police statement that Fraser did not look at her as he violated her.The girl started to struggle and warned Fraser she would tell the police what he had done to her if he didn’t stop. It worked but Fraser threatened to kill her if she did go to the police. Even though Fraser would spend just eleven months in Mount Morgan, Lean believes he raped up to sixteen females. Ranging in age from their mid teens to early twenties, they were some of the town’s most vulnerable, with many possessing intellectual disabilities. Lean said Fraser would often drug them and then attack them, holding a knife to their throat as he raped them.The elderly woman who lived next door to Fraser 56
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considered him a good neighbour – there was hardly any noise – but Lean believes the girls were not game to scream, they weren’t game to do anything. Lean states that most of Fraser’s victims did not tell police, while those who did, informally, were terrified there would be violent retribution – Fraser abused his tenuous connection to the Rebels, instilling fear into his victims that if they went to police, dozens of bikers would descend on their house and attack them. None of the victims formally complained to the police, and without a complaint Fraser could not be charged. Lean considers these women lucky in an odd way, as they survived Fraser, unlike those to follow. Fraser also played a thug’s version of Casanova, building friendships and romantically pursuing his victims before promising to buy them a diamond ring. Some females Fraser tried to lure into his home found him repulsive and rejected his invitations. He tried to court a pregnant sixteen year old living alone in a Mount Morgan caravan park. She saw past his offers of cheap jewellery and chocolates and knocked him back on the basis that he was too old and sleazy. The suspicions of locals would soon be cemented after Fraser became friends with a local pedophile – an association at odds with Fraser’s stance and violence against child sex offenders while incarcerated in Etna Creek Jail. Residents started to dislike him. Some were ill at ease with his midnight wanderings and short temper. Others just didn’t like the amount of time he spent with schoolgirls, or young girls attending the Endeavour Foundation, a statewide non-profit organisation devoted to providing employment, education, life skills training and independence to people with intellectual disabilities.They disapproved of the parties he threw for them and his hanging around the younger set at the local skating MONSTER IN THE MIDST
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rink. He would also often sit on his verandah drinking and attempt to strike up pointless conversations with children walking past. Fraser’s behaviour was becoming increasingly disturbing. Mount Morgan resident David Tyne tells how Fraser haunted Mount Morgan’s historic railway complex after midnight with a torch to spy on young people. He would peer through vacant carriages and pretend to be a security guard if he found anyone. During daylight hours, he would talk to staff from the Golden Mount Rail Preservation Society. Some staff took pity on Fraser, who didn’t seem to have many friends, and gave him work cleaning up and gardening. Mowing lawns, performing odd jobs and fixing cars had always been a way for Fraser to supplement his welfare payments. Staff started to discuss expanding the tours of the complex and Fraser offered to show a teenage volunteer, Corey Rich, the area, taking him on walks along the river and around the creeks. Fraser claimed he had battled with his ex-wife in Darwin over a car, that he had a daughter and was one of the last ‘true bushmen’. He often spoke of killing snakes and reptiles and claimed his blind mother, who lived in Mount Morgan, had thrown ‘something’ at him because he hadn’t visited her in sixteen years. Fraser also visited the boy’s mother, who worked as a volunteer at the same railway yard museum, around the end of 1997. Beverley Rich found Fraser domineering – he often took over when local school groups visited, telling the students to speak only to him and not staff members. With children, Fraser seemed overly friendly and too eager to please. He used terms of endearment, often calling them ‘sweetheart’ in an attempt to gain intimacy. In a statement later provided to police, Beverley said she felt uncomfortable that a stranger – a 58
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46-year-old man no less – would interact with children in such a way. She relayed her concerns to police. Fraser was also overly friendly towards Beverley and would often say he was going to take care of her. He was appreciative that she’d given him a chance despite knowing he had been in jail. But Beverley found him overpowering and secretive. ‘[He] could not look anyone in the eye’, she said in a police statement. ‘I thought he was just a misfit in society. He would fantasise about things like people having sex in the carriage.’ In his talks with Beverley, Fraser claimed he had been forced to care for his two teenage sisters because their stepfather didn’t care for them properly. He cooked for them and let them drink alcohol at his place because ‘better there than on the streets’. Fraser confided the girls had slept in his bed with him. It was clear to Beverley that Fraser fantasised about the girls, however his ‘fatherly love’ act quickly dissolved into complaints that the girls were stealing money and food from him. Beverley also witnessed Fraser’s nomadic, wandering ways. He would walk through the hills behind the railway for hours at a time, showing a great degree of familiarity with the bush. He also spent a lot of time trolling the Mount Morgan rubbish dump for car parts. Beverley found it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction with Fraser. Every day that he turned up he reported an ‘incident’ to her, detailing how he’d chased people away from the carriages or that someone had pulled a knife on him. About a fortnight before Christmas that year, he told Beverley he had disturbed a couple having sex in one of the carriages. Fraser then went into explicit detail about what sexual acts they were engaged in, and what their naked bodies looked like. If Fraser had disturbed them, it was not before he’d perved on them too. MONSTER IN THE MIDST
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When Beverley asked Fraser whether he had reported what he had seen to police, Fraser became angry and aggressive. His outburst frightened Beverley. A few days after their confrontation, Beverley and local police organised a food drop for the needy in Mount Morgan.They had planned the event for the evening but moved it back to 3 pm, with Beverley returning to her Rockhampton home.The following morning, like clockwork, Fraser turned up at the museum’s kitchen and said,‘I better tell you this before anyone else does. I broke into the [complex] to sleep because people were chasing me to beat me up.’ She noticed Fraser’s face was very swollen and immediately realised that she would have been at the complex that night had the food drop not been moved forward to the afternoon. Fraser had not known the food drop had been rescheduled. Beverley reported her concerns to police, who told Fraser not to return to the railway complex. She later heard that Fraser blamed her son for his dismissal and was ‘out to get him’ but nothing came of it. Fraser was not endearing himself to townsfolk and police were frustrated. As word started to spread about Fraser’s odd behaviour and his attacks on women, the ‘beatings’ became a regular occurrence. Even though his victims did not make formal complaints to police, some told their male relatives and boyfriends. Vigilantes started to mete out their own justice, partly because they felt the police had failed to act. However Lean said that with no formal complaints, the police were in the frustrating position of not being able to take action, even though he understood the victims’ reluctance to come forward. Lean said police broke up fights outside Fraser’s house on a regular basis. Knowing Fraser’s history, Lean raided his house several times when teenagers were visiting, mostly to warn them off 60
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going there.While nothing incriminating was found police did receive and trace triple-0 hang-up calls from Fraser’s house. When police responded Fraser and his guests denied making them, but police officer Lean suspected Fraser had stopped his victims reaching out for help.‘It left no doubt in my mind that someone had picked up the phone and Lenny had grabbed them and hung it up,’ Lean said. ‘But they [the victims] still wouldn’t tell you what went on.’ David Tyne helped run Fraser out of town after he spiked a girl’s drink with Rohypnol and then tried to drag her home. Tyne said he was one of several men who intervened and ‘flogged’ Fraser. The men also ransacked his house. The girl, who cannot be identified, had to seek medical treatment. According to Patrick Barnham’s police statement, when Fraser visited him at Etna Creek Jail he had two black eyes, a big bump and skin missing off his forehead. Fraser’s arms were shaking. He told Barnham he was leaving town and asked if Barnham wanted any of his furniture. Barnham, then 38, was not surprised that Fraser was leaving. A girl he’d seen Fraser with on a number of occasions had just told him that ‘Lenny’ had raped her. Lean knew Fraser was going to kill eventually. He was worried that the problems surrounding Fraser’s eleven months at Mount Morgan would never be addressed and he would be free to walk the streets. But at the same time, Lean didn’t want him in the town and so he told Fraser he was no longer welcome. The Rohypnol incident was the last straw for locals. High noon was approaching.
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5 THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN ROCKHAMPTON is a town known for its railway roustabouts and meat workers, a place where people can go unnoticed even though they’re going nowhere.A city where people like Lenny Fraser blend in without drawing any unwanted attention. In fact the central Queensland city – which boasts one of Queensland’s largest rivers, the Fitzroy, whose muddy waters Fraser would later use to conceal his crimes – is the frontier to the state’s western cattle industry, the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef tourist mecca, and home to some 60 000 residents. Rockhampton is sometimes compared to the Mississippi of America’s Deep South. Fraser would even make reference to the movie Mississippi Burning when he spoke of dumping bodies. It is a tough, working class country town which people either love or hate. But it is a town with an amazing community spirit that emerges when the chips are down. Those who visit the beef capital often tell of the city’s underbelly and redneck element. In fact Rockhampton has 62
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been the stage for some of the nation’s worst crimes. It was there that Natalia Perry stabbed her baby son to death in 1997 and killed her three-year-old nephew just hours after she was turned away from a mental health clinic. Police officer Norman Watt was shot dead while responding to a domestic dispute on Rockhampton’s outskirts in July 2000. Nine-yearold Kimberley Griffin was raped before she and her brother Russell, thirteen, were murdered in 2001. Their bodies were dumped in a national park at Mount Archer. As has become the case for many Queensland coastal towns, Rockhampton is also home for a chapter of a major outlaw motorcycle gang. The town sits on the Tropic of Capricorn, 40 kilometres inland from the Pacific Ocean. Stand atop the city’s Berserker Mountain, some six-hundred metres high, at night and you’ll find the street light grid spells out HE-L-L.The council has plans to add an intersection and hence the suffix ‘O’. Mount Morgan police chief Stan Lean recognised that while his town had won its fight with Fraser, the war was far from over. Lean had simply moved the battleground into someone else’s backyard – his neighbour’s – with Fraser choosing Rockhampton as his new home early in 1998. Fraser took no time settling in. He quickly began hanging around the local Endeavour Foundation. Crissie Wraight had been an Endeavour client for twelve months when she formed a relationship with Fraser in June 1998. Fraser’s involvement with Endeavour went back to December 1993 when he had volunteered to work for the organisation while he was a prisoner on supervised leave doing community service. He liked to prey upon the intellectually handicapped because he believed they were easy to control and manipulate. Fraser would later claim he first met nineteen-year-old Wraight THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN
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on a Yeppoon beach where he was fishing and that she approached him and started a conversation. Rockhampton-born Wraight, some 27 years his junior, was easy pickings for the serial rapist. A psychological assessment of Wraight found that she required intermittent support in areas of daily living and social functioning. In addition, she had limited numeracy and literacy skills, did not understand the relative value of money and had poor hygiene practices requiring prompting to wash.With a limited concept of time, Wraight would also prove to be the perfect alibi – she would have no idea when Fraser came or went, what hour of the day he would leave or even what day of the week he would return. If he said he was home then he was, and Wraight knew no differently. However, with immature social skills, Wraight was known to become verbally abusive when things didn’t go her way, and in that sense she often clashed with Fraser. In mid-1998 Wraight and Fraser moved into a unit at North Rockhampton with a friend and client from the Endeavour Foundation. Their stay would last only a few months, though, because while the couple contributed towards the rent, they paid nothing for utilities like power and the phone, which upset their friend. But it was Fraser’s violence towards blue-eyed Wraight and his aggression towards their flat-mate that would eventually see him outlive his welcome once again. The friend later told police he heard the couple argue regularly. By August that year, Fraser had backhanded Wraight over the balcony. He hit her so hard he thought he had killed her. Wraight landed in the bushes, battered, bruised and in a state of shock. The assault triggered an asthma attack and Wraight was taken to Rockhampton Base Hospital where she was also found to have sprained her wrist. But when she was released from hospital Wraight went home with her de 64
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facto. Fraser was charged with several offences including entering a dwelling with intent and assault with intent. In September, an argument over the phone bill erupted. Fraser fought with their flat-mate in the front yard and as a result the couple were evicted.Wraight and Fraser then moved in with a local couple, Brian and Michelle Maloney, for what was meant to be four weeks, although they ended up staying for three months, until November. Michelle worked as a cleaner at the meatworks. Fraser had also worked as a casual cleaner on the midnight to dawn shift for two weeks in June and July that year. Wraight had boarded with the Maloneys before she lived with Fraser, at which time she had also dated one of Michelle’s other boarders. In the beginning, in front of the Maloneys Fraser spoke well and did not use slang, giving them the impression he was well educated. He was always well dressed and clean shaven and had his hair cut regularly. Fraser was constantly concerned about his personal hygiene and would shower twice a day, ordering Wraight to do the same. At first Fraser appeared willing to help anyone, but the cracks soon emerged. Fraser’s violence towards Wraight started to play out, and through the walls of her modest three-bedroom Queenslander Michelle heard that their sex life was just as sadistic.The couple fought daily over sex or money, with Fraser demanding Wraight perform intercourse up to six times a day. Generally the couple started fighting in the lounge room before Fraser dragged Wraight into their bedroom.The police were called to the house at least once on domestic violence issues. But Fraser was not ashamed of how he treated Wraight; in fact he had told his girlfriend and landlady that the male was always the head of the relationship.Women, he said, always did as they were told. If a woman disobeyed her male partner then she deserved to THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN
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be disciplined, which is what he did to Wraight. Fraser’s ‘discipline’ – particularly if she refused to have sex with him – involved a punch to the face and head and, on one occasion, strangulation. Wraight was often left with a black eye and cut lip and Fraser later told a fellow prisoner he once shoved her through a glass window. Michelle noticed Fraser had a short temper and swift mood swings. He became violent quickly. ‘When he cracked you could see the violence and anger in his eyes,’ Michelle later told police. But he also calmed down as quickly as he flew into rages, acting as though nothing had happened, even though the carnage was clear: bruises, cuts and broken furniture. And his violence and hunger for sex were not just restricted to women – Fraser was a cat killer and bestial when it came to dogs. Just before the couple moved in with the Maloneys, Michelle told Fraser he could not bring Wraight’s six-weekold tortoiseshell kitten with them. Fraser’s response was swift: he strangled the kitten with his bare hands right in front of Michelle and Wraight. The kitten’s obvious pain appeared to humour Fraser, who sat and drank beer before dumping the tiny creature at Morse Creek in North Rockhampton. Two weeks after the couple moved in, Wraight brought another kitten home. The Maloneys already had six cats at that time and could not afford to look after another one. They told Wraight she could not keep her beloved cat, named ‘Speedy’ because it ran everywhere, and after Wraight threw a tantrum Fraser relieved her of the kitten and made a beeline for his car. Once inside he killed it, put the body in a plastic bag and dumped it in a creek before heading to the local shops to buy groceries. Shopping for groceries was almost a ritual for Fraser, like his mandatory post-coital cigarette. 66
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In the case of Speedy, the Maloneys were told to tell Wraight that Fraser had given the kitten away. Wraight did manage to keep her budgie and a six-month-old cattle dog cross Zeena, but the Maloneys were often left with the responsibility of feeding and taking care of the animals.Wraight didn’t look after her pets, while Fraser’s pet care efforts were perverse, cruel and illegal. Michelle had a lot of sympathy for Crissie. In November 1998 the couple found a place at Baker Street in North Rockhampton and went home to share the news with Michelle. Fraser asked her to come and meet a couple of lady friends who were downstairs in the car with Wraight. One of the women was named Bev, but Michelle didn’t catch the name of the other female sitting in the back. She would later recognise Bev on a missing persons news bulletin. Michelle was relieved Fraser and Wraight were finally going to move out. A few days after the couple had told her the news, Michelle was going about her normal chores. As she went downstairs to get some washing off the line she saw Fraser behind the shade cloth where Zeena was tied up. Fraser had shown some bizarre behaviour during his stay, often going out at 11 pm after Wraight went to sleep, returning at 4 am and sleeping till 9 am. On one occasion he even brought home a couple of stolen cars which the Maloneys ordered him to remove. But this day really took the cake. As Michelle drew near she saw Fraser’s shorts around his ankles. He was on his knees, bare-buttocked and shirtless, holding his pet dog against him as he penetrated her. Michelle called him a ‘filthy fuck’ and ran upstairs in disgust, telling her husband Brian what had happened. When Brian confronted Fraser and ordered him out of the house, Fraser responded with a swinging punch but missed. The THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN
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Maloneys called police to evict Fraser, who fled, but he returned several days later to collect his things. While he was there, Zeena started bleeding from the mouth and anus.There were green pellets of rat poison in her food bowl, and Fraser – who had poisoned the pooch – refused to take her to the vet, or with him to the new flat. Michelle, who was cash-strapped, could not afford to get Zeena treatment and, fearing animal welfare authorities would blame her, dumped the dying dog outside a block of flats Fraser had been known to frequent. Fraser later took the dog’s body away and buried it in bushland. Wraight stayed with the Maloneys for around a fortnight. Fraser made harassing phone calls to the house in the days following his eviction, but his abusive, vulgar, violent behaviour was not enough to dissuade Wraight from living with him, and on 12 November 1998 the couple moved into their $100-aweek two-bedroom flat in Baker Street, North Rockhampton. Only nine days before they moved in together, Fraser rode the bus with a girl in her early twenties whom he had been relentlessly stalking. He would go into Rockhampton where she worked, ask her out and would wait at her bus stop to meet her when she arrived home. He proclaimed his love for her. The girl, who had an intellectual disability, complained to her father, who turned to Lean for help. The family lodged two complaints of stalking with police. When questioned, Fraser told Lean he was in love with the girl and had bought a ring because he wanted to marry her. Lean couldn’t do much else as the family decided not to press charges. A year later the teenager eventually summoned the courage to tell her family that Fraser had raped her. The family told Lean they did not want to put their daughter through the rigours of a rape trial. Wraight was unaware of her de facto’s activities. In late November, Fraser fronted the Rockhampton 68
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Magistrates’ Court over charges concerning the attack on Wraight in which she’d gone over the balcony. But Wraight failed to show at the hearing and the charges were dropped after no evidence was offered. Increasingly, Wraight found Fraser impossible to satisfy. If she wouldn’t consent to Fraser’s insatiable appetite for sex he would force himself on her. Her intellectual disability was sexually attractive, her vulnerabilities an aphrodisiac for the predator-like Fraser. He was rough, heavy handed and controlling. Wraight was not allowed to go out without telling Fraser. She became a prisoner in her own home and was only allowed to watch television. He would lock her in during the day and at night while he wandered the city’s heart. Some nights Fraser would not come home at all and offered no explanation as to where he had been. He took advantage of her intellectual disability, and even though she was nineteen, her low IQ meant she only had a basic understanding of her situation. Wraight was more a child than an adult. The Baker Street flat became a thoroughfare for women and mostly single mothers with children, many of whom stayed there overnight for days at a time. He would bring many of his future victims to the flat, including Julie Turner, whom Fraser had met at the meatworks. Fraser introduced Julie to Wraight as his ‘retarded sister’ and asked her to move in with him. There was little thought for Wraight – she was his sex slave and unwitting accomplice.
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6 A WAYWARD TEEN NATASHA ANNE RYAN was fourteen, and according to her school counsellor, thought she was pregnant to her sister’s boyfriend and feared her drug use would harm her unborn baby. Life was turbulent for the troubled teen. She had attempted suicide twice, slashing her wrists the first time and overdosing in the office of her school counsellor the next. She clashed with her mother, Jennifer, and even assaulted her. So tenuous was their relationship that it was Natasha’s older sister, Donna, who came to her aid following her drug overdose at school. To many, Natasha was a compulsive liar – falsely claiming the father of her unborn child had brain tumours – and emotionally unstable.Yet she was popular. Her best friends included Ebony Loomans and a boy called Maioha Tokotaua, whom she met in Grades 6 and 7, respectively, at Mount Archer State School. Natasha transferred to the Hall State Primary School in Grade 7, but kept in contact and stayed good friends with Loomans and Tokotaua. The freckle-faced teen would often 70
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talk to Loomans and Tokotaua about how much she liked going to Rockhampton Squash Bowl, where her mother worked. She would often spend her Friday nights competing in the league or would watch others and socialise. Crissie Wraight was another Friday night squash bowl regular, with friends from the Endeavour Foundation.Wraight often brought her older boyfriend along for company. Natasha knew Nugent and would often spend time talking to him and his friends. Sometimes her mum gave him a lift home after work. Natasha’s relationship with fellow Rockhampton North High School student Ben Elkins was ending around March 1998.They had dated for seven months and had slept with each other four or five times. As their romance ended, Natasha secretly started to see her older sister’s on-again-off-again boyfriend Scott Black. Donna, seven years older than Natasha, first met Black when she was attending an open house party in 1993. Black was a senior at North Rockhampton State High School, where Donna was a Year 10 student.The pair often saw each other at parties, becoming boyfriend-girlfriend during Black’s Schoolies Week in 1994. During their relationship, Black often stayed over at the Ryan family home and took flowers to Donna while she was at school. The relationship lasted about six months with Black breaking it off because he felt Donna didn’t trust him.The pair agreed to stay friends. By February 1998, Donna had broken off her engagement with another man and renewed her relationship with Black. It was around this time she noticed Natasha had a crush on Black, who – almost six feet tall with sandy blond hair – encouraged the teenager’s flirtatious behaviour. The sisters weren’t close. Donna felt her sister was bitter towards her A WAYWARD TEEN
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because of her relationship with Black, and Natasha may have been jealous of Donna’s close relationship with their mother. Scott Black was a milkman, eight years Natasha’s senior, and at times she was seen getting into his milk truck in the early hours of the morning. Donna suspected the two were fooling around but continued her relationship nonetheless. So both sisters were seeing Black: he was a family affair. Natasha Heel met Natasha Ryan at a Rockhampton grammar school open day in 1997, the same year a mutual friend introduced Heel to Lenny Fraser. In April the next year, Heel and her little brother Robert, who was about nine or ten at the time, were walking along High Street towards the Northside Plaza, near the corner of Berserker Street, when she noticed two familiar faces. Natasha Ryan and Lenny Fraser were on their way to the Kalka Shades sports ground and bar. ‘I know you,’ Heel said to Fraser.‘Yeah, I know you too,’ he replied. Heel continued talking before Natasha Ryan asked Fraser to go ‘down the road a bit,Tash and I want to talk’. Fraser obliged, walking six or seven metres away and lighting a cigarette. With Fraser gone, Ryan confided in Heel, ‘I think Leonard is trying to hit on me.’ Heel would later tell police that Fraser was known to schoolgirls as a good contact to score pot, but many – including Heel – were also wary of him. Heel could see her friend’s eyes were bloodshot and asked if she’d been smoking marijuana. ‘Lennie has been pressuring,’ Ryan said.‘Well, not pressuring me, but I’d feel silly if I [didn’t] do it.’ As the lights changed Robert ran across Berserker Street. Heel quickly hugged Ryan before running after her brother. As she left she urged Ryan to meet up again soon and her friend agreed. But there would be no reunion; this was the last time Heel would see her friend, or Leonard Fraser. Jenny Ryan was married to Robert Ryan – father of 72
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Donna, Natasha and Christopher – for twelve years before the couple separated in September 1992. Shortly after their separation, Robert moved to Bundaberg and Natasha and Christopher, who was four years younger than her, travelled south to visit their father in the sugarcane town during school vacations and holidays. The next year, in 1993, Jenny met and set up home with Darrin Kerwin and her three children. The arrangement did not go well with Natasha, who friends believe never got over her parents’ separation. Natasha attended Grade 8 and part of Grade 9 at Rockhampton State High School. While there she began to confide in the school chaplain Marty Madsen and counsellor Ngari Bean, saying she was having suicidal thoughts. In August 1997, Natasha tried to cut her wrists with a knife while she was sitting on the bonnet of a car outside her family home. Bean later told police that Natasha’s mother Jenny thought her daughter was just trying to get some attention. Madsen and Bean took Natasha to the Rockhampton Base Hospital for a psychological evaluation at the Adolescent Mental Health Unit. The staff prescribed antidepressants and counselling sessions were set up but Natasha only attended once. She refused to take the medication and her mother didn’t take her to her mental health appointments. Bean later told police she had contacted Jenny in an attempt to get help for Natasha. Bean also told police that while counselling Natasha throughout 1997, the teenager seemed concerned she was not getting enough support at home from her mother and believed her younger brother Chris was getting all the attention. She also told Bean she felt unsafe around one of her mother’s friends. She claimed he was peeping through the bathroom door keyhole while she showered. In May 1998, Natasha took a drug overdose in Bean’s A WAYWARD TEEN
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office. Bean was not there at the time but found her and called an ambulance. She was taken to Rockhampton Hospital. The school suspended her for twenty days and suggested she find a new school for a fresh start. She transferred to North Rockhampton High School soon after. This had come after a string of incidents that highlighted Natasha’s behavioural problems and was only months after she’d tried to slit her wrists. Bean had organised counselling and an evaluation for the troubled teen at the local mental health centre – it seemed there was nothing more the school could do for Natasha. Natasha was often in trouble at school for yelling at teachers, swearing and being disruptive. On one occasion she helped a girlfriend hit a teacher with a sheet of glass while his back was turned. Both girls were put on period report, and Natasha was once again sent to the principal’s office. She was tall for her age and extremely outgoing, and liked to drink rum and coke with not only her family but friends as well. Natasha’s friends thought she had given up and was becoming increasingly depressed. She continued to see Ngari Bean, who worked for several Rockhampton schools, and told the counsellor that she snorted cocaine, smoked marijuana, took amphetamines and dabbled with alcohol. She told Bean most of her drug consumption occurred after lunch, and that she sold speed to other students to help fund her habit. Natasha also claimed her mother had cancer. Bean found it difficult to know when she was being truthful or lying. Adding to Natasha’s woes was her sister Donna, who had broken off an engagement with another local and had started seeing Scott Black again – even after she’d found him in bed with Natasha. It was early June when Donna caught them together. She and Black had cancelled their plans to go nightclubbing and when Donna got home her younger sister was still out 74
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partying – in fact, Natasha had been out all night and at one point was seen getting into a yellow car, much like the one Black’s mother drove. Black had an early fishing trip the next day and had asked Donna to come by in the morning before he left.With her little sister still out, Donna took Black up on his invitation and went around to his parents’ house at North Rockhampton, where he still lived. But Black was yet to get out of bed – and Natasha was lying next to him, fully clothed. Black denied the affair and claimed Natasha had called him the night before because she had drunk too much, was sick, and didn’t want to get into trouble at home. Black convinced Donna nothing was going on, but the girls’ mother was not so easily persuaded and Jenny complained to the police, unhappy that her under-age daughter had spent the night at Black’s house. Detectives spoke with Black the same day he was caught in bed with Natasha, but their visit and Jenny’s anger would not stop him from seeing both sisters – he did not want to end his clandestine affair with Natasha. About a month later, on Saturday 11 July, Jenny caught Natasha with Black driving around in his milk truck. Natasha, who had earlier told her mother she was going to see her friend Ebony Loomans, said Black was going to help her fix the brakes on her bike. Jenny was suspicious immediately because Black had told her and Donna earlier that day that he had wanted to catch up on some sleep until around 4 pm. Jenny told Natasha she could not go to Black’s place and she had to come home. Later that day, it was organised through Loomans’ parents that Natasha stay at their house. The Loomans were going out and thought their daughter could use the company.They assured Jenny the girls would not leave the house. Black and Donna decided to go out to a nightclub. It had become all too much for Natasha, so on Sunday 12 A WAYWARD TEEN
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July she ran away from home. Jenny returned home to find Black asleep on the couch and Donna doing the washing. There was no sign of Natasha, but Jenny thought nothing of it. Black said she was out walking the dog, or riding her bike and so Jenny went about her business. When Natasha failed to return by 5.30 pm Jenny once again asked Black where Natasha was. He said she’d gone for a long ride and had taken the dog with her, but then he remembered Natasha’s bike was actually at his house. Donna dropped Black back at his parents’ place and finally, after a night of frantic calls to friends, reported her missing. Jenny called Natasha’s father Robert who travelled to Rockhampton to help find his daughter. By 11.30 am on Tuesday police mustered their resources and fifteen officers from the Rockhampton Criminal Investigation Bureau, Juvenile Aid Bureau and stock squad began doorknocking Natasha’s friends. In her statement to police, Jenny said as far as she was aware her daughter was happy at North Rockhampton High School and ‘everything was normal at home’. She believed her daughter was infatuated with Black and did not trust him around Natasha.Three hours into the search, Detective Sergeant Frederick Swift approached Black for help. Black refused to help police, but said he had already looked for Natasha since Sunday night. He had unsuccessfully searched for her from 8.30 pm Monday until 2 am that morning. Black’s explanation made Swift instantly suspect he was involved in Natasha’s disappearance. Black denied being Natasha’s boyfriend and, ironically, told Swift she was too young to be ‘with boys’. When Natasha’s father Robert asked Black if he knew anything about Natasha being missing Black assured him he didn’t know: ‘When they [police] discounted him … I thought Natasha must have met with foul play … I feared something was wrong, I went to the police station, 76
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didn’t get any sense there and went to Jenny’s place. I went looking for Natasha everywhere, in swamp lands, on the street asking people … I went back to Bundaberg empty.’ Police used the local media to ask for help in finding the missing teen but with no leads, grave concerns for her safety soon developed.The next morning,Wednesday, three days after she was last seen, staff at Simpsons Motel in George Street, Rockhampton, contacted police after they read about the missing girl in the local newspaper, the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin. Motel staff told police they had met a teenage girl when they took fresh towels to one of the rooms. When they asked her why she was staying inside on such a beautiful day, she replied her brother had told her not to go outside. They believed the schoolgirl was Natasha Ryan, who had been staying in Room 3 since Monday morning.The description of the man who booked her in matched Scott Black; he had even been wearing a shirt advertising a dairy product and had turned up in a white Merlin milk truck. When police arrived at the motel, they found the room vacant except for empty pizza boxes and numerous packets of Horizon cigarettes. The next stop was Black’s work, Demidale Pty Ltd, which delivered dairy products for Paul’s Milk, to arrest and interrogate the missing girl’s lover. No doubt realising that all the evidence was pointing at him, Black decided to tell police where Natasha was hiding; after they had checked out of the motel he had dropped her off at the Rockhampton Music Bowl where he had arranged to pick her up after he finished work. Police found her shortly after wandering in bushland near the Music Bowl. During their investigation police found Natasha had approached Black for help the day after she went missing. He had booked her into a motel as his ‘sister’ who had just flown in A WAYWARD TEEN
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to Rockhampton. The next day, on Tuesday morning, Natasha had told the motel’s cleaning staff her brother did not want her to go outside and that they didn’t want their room cleaned. Black rang the hotel later that day and booked another night. Police charged Black with child abduction and obstructing police. He appeared in the Rockhampton Magistrates’ Court and was released on bail on the condition that he have no contact with Natasha or any member of her family. During Natasha’s absence Black had supported Donna, but he failed to give any indication of where her sister was or why she had run away.After his arrest, Black rang Donna at her work and asked her to return some of his CDs. He claimed the bail conditions only applied to contact with Natasha, not her. Both her parents blamed Natasha’s behaviour on a serious incident when she was twelve years old and on the fact that the man, who was jailed for two years over the incident, was about to be released from jail. The officers noticed Natasha had become quiet and asked her parents to leave the room. She said she had run away because ‘everything had been building up and [she was] not getting on with everyone’ and the final straw was a fight with her sister over a shirt. Natasha claimed she spent the first night in the bush and then sought help from Black who booked into the motel for two nights and that she begged him not to tell her mother so she could have some time to think. She said she was prepared to make more of an effort with her mother. After the interview, Natasha stayed the night with her father as police were concerned she may try to run away from her mother again. Natasha then returned to her mother’s care and in a follow-up visit, welfare staff saw nothing unusual in the ongoing conflict between daughter and mother and acknowledged how supportive Jenny and Robert were of their daughter. They noted that Natasha was very 78
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comfortable with her parents and was not afraid of them, so they decided it was unnecessary to remove the girl from her home. Staff offered the pair counselling options which Natasha was reluctant to consider but Jenny was very positive about. Natasha later told her friend Ebony Loomans, who was now also in Year 9 at North Rockhampton State High, that she had returned home of her own volition after seeing her mother crying on television. Despite Black’s bail conditions, he continued to see Natasha. She skipped school to spend time with him.They went to the movies, drove round, spent weekends together and ventured down to local creeks.At school and to her friends, Natasha referred to Black as ‘Terry’ to disguise who she was really talking about. But Natasha had trouble settling in at home. Jenny had banned her from seeing Black. Natasha poured out her woes to her close friends and Bean. She told Loomans and Bean she had completed a home pregnancy test and it was positive. Natasha also told a girlfriend she was expecting after the friend revealed she hadn’t had a period for two months. Natasha sometimes took friends to see Bean as well. According to Bean’s police statement, on one occasion Loomans and Natasha read Bean explicit extracts from Natasha’s diary. The passages graphically detailed sexual experiences, with the girls joking and giggling as they read aloud. They asked Bean about sex and contraception and were particularly interested in what happened to a baby if the mother took drugs while pregnant. In August 1998 Natasha turned up at the counsellor’s office with her other good friend Tokotaua, only this time she was carrying a positive home pregnancy test which she showed Bean. Bean did not know whether the teenager’s claims about drug use and pregnancy were true or if she was just trying to A WAYWARD TEEN
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provoke a reaction. She advised Natasha to stop dabbling in drugs if she was in fact pregnant and repeatedly encouraged Natasha to speak with her mother and seek medical help. On one occasion Natasha claimed Black was the father of her unborn child but did not want to elaborate further. Still concerned Natasha was using drugs, Bean reminded the teenager of their previous conversation about pregnancy and drugs. Three days after she first spoke to Bean about her pregnancy, a teary Natasha returned in an obvious state of distress, declaring she was six weeks pregnant to Black. Natasha could not look Bean in the eye; she fidgeted as she explained her only option was to run away because she could not tell her mother, Jenny. She said that after she’d given birth, she would return in the hope that everyone would accept her decision. Bean again urged Natasha to speak to her mother and offered to be there when she did. Natasha agreed to this, saying she would go to Family Planning with Black on the weekend.This was the last time Bean would see her, and neither promise would be kept. Natasha was spiralling out of control round this time. Her disruptive behaviour in class led to a week’s suspension in early August. Her mother was thinking of sending Natasha to live with her father in Bundaberg. On August 15, Donna suspected once again that Black and Natasha had spent the night together. Natasha had lied about staying at an ex-boyfriend’s house and Black claimed he spent the night sleeping on a beach. Black then suggested he and Donna go away for a night to Yeppoon but the couple fell out after a drunken Black admitted he had another girlfriend whom he refused to name. On 31 August 1998, Jenny dropped Natasha outside the North Rockhampton State High School at 8.15 am. Natasha was wearing a North Rockhampton State School sports uniform – a grey polo shirt with a maroon collar and the initials 80
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‘NRSH’ printed on the left-hand side of the shirt, and maroon basketball-style shorts. She had on black runners and white anklet socks. Jenny had put $6 lunch money in Natasha’s schoolbag. There was nothing unusual in her daughter’s black Rip Curl shoulder bag to indicate that day would be any different to the one before. Natasha’s hair was tied up in a bun, and she was wearing a pair of gold sleeper earrings and a gold signet ring with two joining hearts, a pink stone in a corner of one of the hearts and her initials ‘N.R.’ within the same heart. She also wore a Rip Curl waterproof watch, a black leather surfie-type choker which had a silver and blue three-leaf clover pendant on it and a silver dolphin ring. Natasha reached over and kissed Jenny goodbye. She said,‘I love you, Mum.’ It would be the last time Jenny would see her daughter. Months later police would show her the choker and dolphin ring as exhibits seized from the home of Fraser’s girlfriend. Wraight had been seen wearing a ring similar to the signet ring. Fraser had been seen watching Natasha from outside her school. He was not fussy about the age of his victim, just their state of mind and their vulnerability. He liked to control, and Natasha was more easy pickings. Loomans and Tokotaua were sitting near some gardens next to the basketball courts, inside the school grounds when they noticed Natasha on the other side of the road. She was hiding behind some bushes, in front of the stairs to a large hall where school dances and bingo were held. Natasha yelled out and they walked over to her. She revealed fresh plans to run away from home and indicated that she wasn’t going to school that day. Loomans and Tokotaua thought running away was a bit of fun but didn’t ask what had prompted the latest trip, or where Natasha was going. What’s more, the pair weren’t game to ask any questions as Natasha was often touchy and easily angered. A WAYWARD TEEN
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What they did want was a cigarette and so Natasha took some tobacco out of her bag and rolled them some smokes. They spoke about nothing much for about fifteen to twenty minutes and then Loomans and Tokotaua went back to school and Natasha put her plan into immediate action. She hung around the local pool for several hours. Meanwhile Black phoned Donna and invited her to the movies the following night. Jenny returned to school an hour late to collect Natasha. When her daughter was nowhere to be seen she went home and called the Loomans, believing they may have given her a ride but they had not seen Natasha either. Jenny checked her daughter’s room but there was nothing missing – all of her clothes, jewellery and toiletries were accounted for. Worry began to set in. She contacted the Rockhampton police station, who sent out two officers.They suggested that Jenny wait a couple of days to see if Natasha came home as she had run away just six weeks earlier. But Jenny couldn’t rest so with her de facto husband and Donna, she started searching Rockhampton and phoning Natasha’s friends. Once again, no one had seen her. Jenny rang Robert again and he returned to Rockhampton to look for his daughter. Two days after she disappeared Natasha contacted Loomans and Tokotaua and asked them to meet her at the local cinema at 7.30 pm. When Natasha turned up for the rendezvous her friends noticed she was wearing male clothes that were several sizes too big for her. She had on a pair of blue jeans that were folded up on the inside and were really baggy. Her button-up long-sleeved shirt was a striped peach or apricot colour with red and blue lines and looked almost identical to one the girls had once seen Black wear at Natasha’s house. Natasha claimed the clothes were her ‘uncle’s’ and in an 82
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attempt to end her friend’s jibes, she pulled out a drawstring sunglasses case which she opened to reveal a large stash of Horizon brand tailor made cigarettes. She also pulled a $50 note from her jeans pocket.The money and clothes had come from her aunty and grandma, with whom she was staying, she said. But Loomans and Tokotaua were not convinced;Tokotaua suspected Natasha was hiding something. Natasha offered to shout her friends games at Funzone across the road.They headed over to the centre’s pool hall and stayed for about ten or fifteen minutes before walking over to a telephone box two or three shops down and then back up to Funzone and the cinemas to hang out. Natasha bought some popcorn before she claimed her grandmother was arriving at 9 or 9.30 pm to collect her. She took off down a laneway beside the cinema, with Loomans and Tokotaua following twenty metres behind. As they approached a small alcove they noticed a man crouching down. They couldn’t make out his face but knew he was smoking because of the glow and smell of the cigarette. They saw Natasha leaning up against a car parked on the opposite side of the laneway to the cinema.Yellow in colour, with four doors and some panel damage, Loomans and Tokotaua assumed it was Black’s car, as he had used it to collect Natasha from the Target shopping complex in South Rockhampton one time. When Loomans and Tokotaua were ten metres away, Natasha became angry and yelled at them to ‘turn around, go back’. She asked whether they believed her story, and as they said they did, the trio started walking down the laneway towards the cinema again. As they neared the end of the laneway Natasha saw a white van and, thinking it was her father, ran back down the laneway towards the yellow car. She hid behind some wheelie bins for ten minutes and, when A WAYWARD TEEN
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the coast was clear, returned to the cinema’s side entrance to use the pay phone. But Loomans and Tokotaua didn’t see her place any money in the phone, and she even appeared to miss several numbers when she dialled. Natasha was pretending to call her grandmother.Tokotaua asked if it was Black in the alleyway, and Natasha became abusive:‘No, it’s fuckin not.’ Natasha maintained her grandmother was on the way and walked back down the laneway. Minutes later, Loomans and Tokotaua heard the sound of screeching tyres.They went to the alley but there was no sign of Natasha, the yellow car or the crouching man. The only sign of life was a smouldering Horizon 12 cigarette butt. It was the brand Black smoked. Fraser liked them too. The night Natasha fled the cinemas, Donna paid Black a visit. Natasha was missing, she said, and Black exploded. He didn’t want to know anything more about Natasha as she had already caused him too much trouble. Donna tried to visit Black the next day, but was told he couldn’t talk to her until everything was sorted with the police. On the morning of 3 September 1998, Jenny Ryan officially reported her daughter missing. She gave a detailed description of what her daughter was wearing when she last saw her and what her school bag contained – a couple of text books and biros, two or three exercise pads, a small black hair brush and a bottle of Impulse cologne.That same day Bean told police that two students, Loomans and Tokotaua, had seen Natasha at the cinema the previous night. They had told her Natasha had gotten into a yellow sedan that looked like the car Black’s mother owned. Police were narrowing in on their first suspect. Months later Fraser would push Black into obscurity and top the investigators’ most wanted list. Just one day after Natasha was last seen alive Fraser would leave Rockhampton in a hurry, and head to Airlie Beach where 84
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his intellectually challenged girlfriend would try to offload a 30-cm long knife. Soon Wraight would be found with Natasha’s jewellery, and Fraser would reveal details about the missing schoolgirl that would never be made public: that she was pregnant, and that she carried a briefcase-style soft black school bag when she disappeared. Natasha was not the first, or last, schoolgirl to go missing in Rockhampton, and in a matter of months, and with the discovery of another tiny body, the focus would shift from milkman to psychopath. Police issued a BOLF – ‘Be On the Lookout For’ – for Black’s milk truck. They began contacting Natasha’s friends and did the mandatory checks with caravan parks, airports, Queensland rail and bus stations. Officers checked with Centrelink to see whether Natasha had applied for any welfare support and monitored her bank account. Her school records were examined, with roll call records confirming she didn’t attend any classes on 31 August. They checked local hotels and motels in the event Black was a creature of habit. And on 3 September Black told police Natasha had left a letter in his milk truck. Dear Scott, Hi, I just dropped over to say Hi but you weren’t home. I really need a friend to talk to at the moment, but I don’t think that I will come back because I don’t want to get you in trouble like last time. I am in too much trouble at home and I can’t stand to stay their [sic] anymore, so I ran away to some place better. Maybe I will see you some day but I just want to say Thank [sic] you so much for being there for me and for being such a good friend. Thank you Natasha Ryan.
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The letter immediately struck police as being suspicious: why would Natasha sign her last name when writing to her lover? And when was the letter placed? Did Black hold on to it before handing it over to police to give Natasha a chance to get away? Police fingerprinted Black’s vehicle the next day, and called him in to Rockhampton police station on 7 September. Black turned up with his lawyer, and while he refused to be interviewed, he denied knowing Natasha’s whereabouts. Donna told police she suspected Black knew where her sister could be found, but if he did, it was not information he was prepared to share. Black pleaded he was ignorant of Natasha’s disappearance, but did confess to having spent two nights with Donna at a Yeppoon hotel, on 22 and 23 August – one week before Natasha’s disappearance. His confession was quickly rewarded with two counts of breaching his bail conditions – a court having already ordered Black to stay away from all Ryan family members.The police hunt continued. Police spoke to Natasha’s friends and fellow students and called in the local and statewide media. Newspaper and television coverage generated calls to both police and Crime Stoppers, with locals claiming they had seen the missing teenager at shopping centres, houses and in the city, and had smoked drugs with her at the Kershaw Gardens. But none of the sightings could be confirmed. A Rockhampton resident told police Natasha had called her younger daughter but a subsequent phone trace showed the call had come from Loomans’ house.Another tip-off gave police cause for a search warrant to raid Black’s family home – he had needles under his bed and was believed to inject amphetamines – but police found nothing else. In fact, Black had left his parents’ house three weeks earlier, with his parents unsure of his new address – they told detectives they only visited him at work. 86
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Police had no trouble finding Black’s new abode in Jones Street, Wandal, in Rockhampton’s western suburbs. Another raid was carried out and, while they failed to find Natasha or any signs of a ‘female living in that house’, investigators again found needles. Black claimed the needles were legal and were used with medication to assist in penile stimulation. Police returned the next day and again Black claimed he had not seen Natasha since his July court appearance. But Jenny was not convinced. Black had looked her in the eye and told her he had no idea where Natasha was when she ran away in July, even though he had put her up in a motel room. Jenny also told police she didn’t believe her youngest daughter was pregnant as Natasha had had a period two weeks before she disappeared. Police again checked Natasha’s bank accounts but the $10 balance remained untouched. Her former boyfriends were contacted and police began to focus on Black’s daily movements. His hours were obtained from his employer. Black’s employer had also given police permission to fix a tracking device on his vehicle when Black replaced his work truck. His home was under surveillance and his neighbours had been asked by police to note odd activity in the home or signs of a female. ‘House locked up, washing hanging on clothes line at rear of house but no female clothing … No sign of missing female,’ the 3 October 1998 police running sheet said. ‘Neighbours stated that they have not seen any young girls go into Black’s house although they did state they have heard female voices coming from within the house.They further stated that when Black [is home] he has his stereo turned up loud. This could also account for the female voices.’ Jenny started to receive anonymous phone calls relating to her daughter’s whereabouts but they all proved to be false leads. Jenny had also been told Natasha had been at Loomans’ A WAYWARD TEEN
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house the weekend after she’d disappeared but Loomans told police she did not know where her friend was, though she did reveal that Natasha was pregnant and said she believed Black knew her whereabouts. On 11 October at the Rockhampton Police Station, detectives showed Loomans a photo board of several men but she was unable to identify Black from the picture line-up.The interview was short: Natasha had not been at her house on 9 September. Police turned off the interview tape recorder and Loomans, who was prone to tantrums to avoid answering questions, immediately identified Black from the same picture line-up she had been shown earlier. She had not been forthcoming as she said she didn’t want to get him in trouble. Police subpoenaed her to Black’s court hearing for his abduction of Natasha in July and breach of bail conditions from August. By mid-October 1998 – six weeks after Natasha disappeared – Black’s parents contacted police and told them to speak to an employee of the bowling centre where Jenny worked. Police interviewed the employee but it didn’t lead anywhere. Police suspected Black’s parents were providing them with false leads to take the pressure off their son. The next day, 14 October, Black appeared in the Rockhampton Magistrates’ Court for breaching his bail conditions. He pleaded guilty in relation to the breach of bail charge concerning Donna. However, Black was committed to stand trial on the abduction charges and wilful obstruction of a police officer, relating to Natasha’s disappearance in July. Police investigations continued but were made difficult by the town rumour mill and untruthful friends. It was becoming increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction in the runaway’s personal life. Black also refused to cooperate with police, making matters even harder. Police continued to watch 88
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him and his financial records for any clues that might lead to the missing teen. On 17 October Rockhampton detectives interviewed Loomans at length.The pair had been friends since they were six years old and had spent a lot of time together outside of school. While many of Natasha’s friends claimed the teen was depressed, Loomans told a different story. She described a girl who didn’t have great problems at home and who had a good relationship with her mother. Sure, Natasha had occasionally complained about her stepfather Darrin ‘getting up her’, but she had no serious issues with him, or her family. Three months had passed since Natasha disappeared and Jenny called police again, having heard that a female had moved in with Black some weeks before. However, Black was still under surveillance and there were no signs of Natasha. Meanwhile the rumour mill in the central Queensland city went into overdrive. Bean contacted police and said students were distressed that Natasha had drowned herself in the murky Fitzroy River because she was depressed and pregnant. There were also claims that Natasha’s body had turned up in Brisbane after she had gassed herself in a car. Loomans, under the influence of drugs, would even brag to have fatally stabbed Natasha herself. Four days before Natasha went missing a friend saw her talking to Fraser in the city mall. However the abduction, rape and murder of another Rockhampton schoolgirl, Keyra Steinhardt, would soon take the heat off Scott Black. Police investigating Keyra’s abduction would show Jenny a new photo line-up in which Black was nowhere to be seen. There was, however, a familiar face from the squash bowl. It was Loony Lenny.
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7 RUNAWAY TRAIN JULIE STARTED TO cry and headed to the bar for a drink. She asked the DJ to play ‘Runaway Train’ but was disappointed the club only had a cover version by Elton John instead of Soul Asylum’s original track. ‘No, I’m after the song about runaways,’ Julie told the manager. ‘About people going missing.’ Her request would become a foreboding prediction as, hours later, Julie would become one of the missing, only this 39-yearold was no runaway. Julie Dawn Turner (nee Elder), born 31 July 1959 in the North Queensland army town of Townsville, was introduced to heartache at an early age. Her wheelchair-bound mother, Dulcie Joyce Jensen, abandoned Julie when she was just two years old, leaving her in the care of her father John Elder. But Julie’s father needed to work so Julie was placed with her second cousin’s grandmother. Julie had a good childhood, admitting to a close family member that her lot in life was a result of bad choices she had 90
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made rather than being the fault of others: ‘I had the best of everything … I’m the one who blew it.’ Julie was given a private school education but her passion in life was to become a singer. She used to put on concerts at her grandmother’s house using the steps of the Queenslander as her stage, while as an adult her platform came in the form of karaoke bars. But despite a loving home, Julie could never come to understand or accept the desertion by her mother. It was one of the reasons she never liked to be on her own. She was pregnant with her daughter Kylie when she met timber salesman Ron Turner in Townsville in the late 1970s. Both had just come out of other relationships and Ron was drawn to Julie, a pretty woman who was fun to be with. Ron said he would be father to the baby girl she was expecting. The couple married on 7 June 1980 in Townsville and built a house at Kelso, with Ron holding down two jobs to help make ends meet. Julie was houseproud, rarely drank and focused on being a good mother to her daughter Kylie, whom she adored. During their marriage Julie’s mother attempted to make contact with the daughter she had abandoned but Julie wanted nothing to do with her. By 1984, Ron’s long working hours and excessive drinking led to their marriage breaking down.The couple sold the house and went their separate ways with Julie deciding to sever ties between Kylie and Ron – a decision he felt was a wise one in the long run. After the divorce, Julie lived with Kylie in Townsville, working as a cleaner and doing odd jobs. She eventually formed a relationship with Steve, a local labourer whom she had met through mutual friends.The couple moved to Sydney in 1988 where Julie was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a lump removed. After living there for a year, Julie discovered Steve was stealing cars and left him, taking Kylie back to RUNAWAY TRAIN
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Townsville. She gave the relationship another go in 1991 in Sydney but it was shortlived. Julie and Kylie returned to Townsville, and the following year Steve was killed in a police chase while driving a stolen car. His death devastated Julie as Steve had told her he was no longer stealing cars. She was on her own for a while before drifting into several unhealthy relationships and started drinking to numb herself. In 1994 Julie met Michael McConochie, a 30-year-old meatworker and father of three. His sister introduced him to Julie who had just lost her job as a cleaner at a Townsville restaurant. At the time McConochie was feeling dejected over the breakdown of his second marriage. Julie started to visit McConochie at home on a daily basis for coffee and was soon doing his washing and cooking. A month into his separation from his wife, McConochie and Julie started living together. One night after fishing, as McConochie sat with his parents, his father had a heart attack in front of him and died two days later. McConochie would tell police that his estranged wife wanted to claim some of the money he had inherited from his father. He went and saw her at his house and when she refused to talk to him, he smashed the door. In December 1994, he received a $460 fine and suspended sentence for several charges including wilful damage. The story made the local newspaper and Julie cut it out for her scrapbook of people she knew who made the news. McConochie wanted to get away from Townsville for a while and decided to holiday with Julie at his sister’s house in Rockhampton. After a couple of weeks, they decided to stay on. By early 1995 McConochie was hired as a boner at the AMH Meatworks on Lake Creek Road and got Julie a job as a packer. Christmas 1998 had been hell. Julie had a love-hate relationship with her de facto husband’s family and his children. 92
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She and her partner of four years had spent the holiday separately having fought once again. They had a volatile relationship and often clashed. On this occasion Julie was worried about her pending drink driving charge as well as the arrival of McConochie’s thirteen-year-old son, who gave her trouble. Julie also suspected McConochie was having an affair. Julie feared McConochie and would often call friends reverse charges so that he wouldn’t know she’d used the phone. They both had drinking problems, and often missed work because of it. While Julie was not a lazy person, her drinking also affected her ability to work. In fact her absenteeism had caused her to be sacked after working for the abattoir for almost two years. McConochie had finished up the week before Christmas, and with Julie now also unemployed receiving Job Search Allowance, finances were stretched. Julie didn’t like to go without money and the couple’s monetary woes were causing even more problems at home. Julie was seeing a counsellor in relation to domestic violence matters. She wanted out but was too frightened to leave for fear of what McConochie would do should he find her. McConochie had a terrible temper, with a short fuse. When Julie was down she drank spirits and, according to her friends, became argumentative and even more depressed. She was battling an alcohol addiction and while performing community service for drink driving had been caught over the limit behind the wheel again. She had four drink driving offences and was scared of going to jail. McConochie, who later testified he had never beaten Julie, said his de facto wife didn’t know when to stop drinking, and when intoxicated would turn nasty. But staff from nightclubs where Julie was a regular said that when she was drunk, she would become very friendly and talk to anyone and RUNAWAY TRAIN
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everyone. She would mumble a lot and have difficulty walking but she was not violent or abusive. However, Julie was known to ask strangers for money and drinks when her funds ran dry and she would stay out until closing time, between 4 and 5 am. Despite her drinking problems, Julie was a dedicated mother to daughter Kylie Elder, and devoted to her grandson Jessie. Kylie had fought with her mother growing up. She had wanted to do her own thing but after having Jessie, the first of Kylie’s three children, the two grew close. Julie would go to her daughter’s house when it all became too much and she often received drunken phone calls from Julie in the early hours of the morning. Her only regret was being unable to persuade Julie to stay with her in Townsville and not go back to McConochie. But when Julie had her mind set, no one could change it. Julie also loved music and dancing, and as a child had studied ballet. ‘I know when she was at the Karaoke Bar in Townsville she used to sing “That’s what friends are for”,’ Kylie said. ‘Mum would put on a show for everyone but when she was on her own she was sad and wanted people around.’ Julie didn’t usually go for older men, but this one was a ‘better man’ than McConochie. She had met him at the meatworks, where he was also employed, and although she didn’t say she was going to leave her de facto for this man, her friend of 23 years, Julie Mulhall, believed she would.The man’s name was Lenny Fraser, and he lived with his sister, who was a ‘bit silly in the head’. Mulhall presumed that meant his sister was mentally disabled. A month before she disappeared, Julie had rung Mulhall and spoke of plans to travel to Townsville. She sounded sober and said she was sick of McConochie and that Fraser was a much nicer man. Mulhall warned her to be careful of 94
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McConochie finding out. Mulhall never liked Julie’s de facto husband and also questioned Julie’s choice in men and feared her friend’s trust would once again be abused. It was Sunday night, 27 December 1998, and Julie needed people around. She called ahead to her favourite haunt – the Airport Liberties nightclub in downtown Rockhampton. It was around 9 or 10 pm and Julie wanted to know how many people were there and what time it would close. Manager Wayne Hallett answered the phone and, sensing the female caller was looking for a party, explained there were fifty or so people in the club, which was licensed to stay open until 5 am. Julie was a regular at the Liberties and a big fan of karaoke. She usually avoided the weekend crowds, preferring Wednesday nights instead. Julie had been drinking most of the day at the home of McConochie’s sister and was a little short of cash. She borrowed $20 from her sister-in-law when she gave her a lift home. As she got out of the car Julie told her sister-in-law, ‘You wouldn’t know what it is like, being lonely.’ Once home, Julie soaked herself with the garden hose before going upstairs to change her outfit and grab a cab. She put on a pair of blue jeans, a dark green, long-sleeved poloneck shirt and a pair of strappy brown leather sandals. Taking $15 from Michael, Julie caught a taxi from their North Rockhampton home to the club on Bolsover Street. It was 10 pm and Julie wanted to numb her troubles. As she climbed the club’s stairs Julie noticed bouncer Jamie McKean. McKean, who had worked as the club’s security officer for the past eleven months, had never really had any problems with Julie. When bar staff had to occasionally warn her about her behaviour she always took their cautions ‘the right way’. That night Julie, who already appeared drunk, told McKean she was having a quiet one because her ‘old man’ had RUNAWAY TRAIN
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taken all the money – $2000 – and had left her with only a couple of ‘bucks’. Julie said she’d taken what was left in the house and had walked out on McConochie. As the pair talked McKean noticed Julie’s sandals.The nightclub had a policy that said covered shoes had to be worn, but as it was quiet she could go inside providing she sat in the corner and wasn’t seen with her sandals on. At 11.54 pm Fraser made a balance inquiry at the Bolsover ATM, just 50 metres from the nightclub. A minute later he made a withdrawal of $50, leaving his Rockhampton Building Society account with a balance of $350.81. Twentyfive minutes later he took out another $40 from the Caltex Roadhouse on Yaamba Road, North Rockhampton. Fraser was on the move. A tearful Julie was disappointed the Horn Bar, where her beloved karaoke was played, didn’t have ‘Runaway Train’. She returned to her table and, reading the song list, requested and belted out, at least half a dozen times, the 1980s hit ‘Flashdance’ and Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’. Julie was singing very badly so the barman crooned a couple of songs with her. She confided in numerous club patrons that she was unhappy in her relationship at home and, while encouraging them to sing karaoke, left many with the belief she was depressed.When Julie ran out of money for spirits some four hours later, she left. As she passed McKean she told him she’d see him again next week, and once again took the opportunity to complain about her de facto. McKean asked her if she was right to get home.‘I’m not going home,’ Julie said. ‘Why not? Is it because of what happened before?’ McKean asked. ‘I don’t want to go home, I’m sick of being a good stepmother, I can’t do anything [right]. If I go home now they will only get stuck into me as I took the rest of the money.’ Julie started to cry again. McKean asked whether 96
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she wanted a taxi but Julie said she had no money. ‘I’ve only got five bucks in change – here, have this,’ McKean said, producing $5 in coins. He asked her to stay put while he called a cab and when he returned he again asked her if she was going home. No she wasn’t, but she would see him next week. McKean took the stairs to the second level and watched Julie walk down to Bolsover Street. He stayed there a short time before walking back to the foyer when he was satisfied she would be all right. But Julie would not make it into a cab, or back to the club the next week. In fact, very soon Julie would be far from all right. McConochie was starting to worry – it had been almost four days since Julie left for the nightclub. She had taken off before, particularly when they had been fighting, but this time no one seemed to know her whereabouts. Her friends knew nothing. He thought she might have been depressed and gone to stay with her daughter but Kylie had not heard from her either. It was time to report her missing. McConochie walked into Rockhampton police station around 8.15 am on New Year’s Eve to officially report his ‘missus’ missing. He explained to the officer on duty that he hadn’t seen Julie since Sunday night when she left her handbag at home.The bag had contained her purse, credit cards and personal belongings. Constable Neil Hansen handed McConochie a missing persons report to fill out. Hansen then contacted Julie’s daughter Kylie, who said she had last heard from her mother on Boxing Day. Hansen checked Julie’s Westpac bank accounts to see whether there had been any transactions. The last withdrawal had been on Boxing Day, one day before she went clubbing. McConochie was unable to offer any insight into his de facto wife’s disappearance. Rockhampton police launched a missing persons investigation and two weeks later, RUNAWAY TRAIN
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on 13 January 1999, Homicide detectives were asked to assist. Their joint investigation was called Operation Bega. Their first priority was to search Julie’s home, which she had kept fastidiously clean, and interview McConochie. The Yeppoon water police were also alerted to assist in searches as rivers, creeks and waterways had to be dragged. Surrounding police stations were contacted to organise available staff to doorknock the areas where Julie lived and had last been seen. They traced Julie’s last movements and contacted her family and friends to see when they had last heard from her.They also wanted to know what she had told them about her life, what her state of mind was and if she’d told anyone of her plans. Transactions from ATM machines at the time and along the route police believed Julie most likely headed for home were also requested. Police were looking for someone who was in the area at the time but Fraser’s ATM transaction was in the opposite direction. Police also performed a background check on Julie and found she was seeing a Community Corrections officer for her drink driving offences.The corrections officer told police Julie had failed to show for her 4 January appointment even though she reliably attended scheduled meetings and would ring if she was running late. Her employment history also had to be looked at and her former co-workers interviewed. Ronald Turner, her first husband, was quickly discounted, but her de facto was soon drawn in as police performed standard background checks on McConochie. Standing some 177 centimetres tall with a solid build, McConochie had been arrested for breaching a domestic violence order; a search on the couple’s address also detailed a history of domestic violence calls and orders. Police knew the Turner–McConochie household well; they had been called there monthly. In 1996 they responded 98
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to a call for help from Julie who claimed McConochie had hit her and tried to shove soap down her throat and had cut her lip. The incident had occurred after an argument about McConochie’s children, with McConochie claiming his action was an attempt to protect his son. Julie had taken a domestic violence order out against her partner but eventually returned to live with him.The pair often fought over his boy, who had followed him from Townsville and moved in with the couple full time. It wasn’t long before McConochie became the prime suspect in his de facto’s disappearance. When police initially interviewed McConochie on 6 January he told them he and Julie had argued over money and her wanting out of the relationship. He said he’d decided not to follow her to the nightclub that night because his children were due to arrive the next day and he was short of cash. He added that it was not unusual for Julie to stay out until closing time when she hit the nightclubs, and he handed police the handbag and purse she had left behind. Detectives from Operation Bega contacted local media outlets to run a missing person story on Julie as a way to generate leads. Checks were made with different telephone companies to see whether McConochie or Julie owned mobile phones but neither did. The Missing Persons Unit monitored her bank accounts and reported Julie’s unemployment payment had gone in on 7 January but was untouched. Police traced the taxi driver who answered the bouncer’s call and conducted further interviews with Airport Liberties nightclub staff and patrons. They wanted to retrace Julie’s movements from the moment she stepped out of the nightclub and onto the footpath of Bolsover Street. Different detectives were delegated various duties including checking passenger movements with bus companies, railways and airports. The RUNAWAY TRAIN
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presence of domestic violence meant women’s shelters needed to be checked. Secondhand dealers were canvassed as to whether anyone had approached them with Julie’s jewellery. Recent prisoner releases and new criminal cases – including break and enters and car theft – needed to be studied for possible links to Julie’s disappearance. By the end of January, police had interviewed all taxi drivers rostered on the night of Julie’s disappearance to find out if they’d seen her, given her a lift somewhere or noticed anything suspicious in the area. Police also constructed a time line of Julie’s movements and checked her will. Running sheets from Operation Bega detailing police activity show McConochie as the most likely suspect: ‘Interview of de facto and door knock identified as primary concerns due to long history of domestic violence between MP [Missing Person] and de facto. Arrangements to be made for land and river search for MP over believed route taken by MP on her return to her home from nightclub.’ Police arrived at Julie’s Thozet Road address on 14 January to find McConochie drunk and unable to be interviewed. They decided to return the next day to search the house and interview McConochie when he had sobered up. In the meantime they organised a ‘pretext call’ – a taped phone call from Kylie to McConochie but the strategy took them nowhere. McConochie didn’t tell her anything different to what he’d told police. Police took McConochie back to the police station to make a statement that they would later forward to the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence’s Violent Crime Analysis Unit to examine. McConochie was grilled about his relationship with Julie, during which he denied any involvement in her disappearance. He had stayed at home that Sunday night and voluntarily provided DNA samples of his hair, blood 100
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and saliva.The doorknock of the couple’s neighbours revealed that Julie and McConochie had violent arguments on a regular basis and they had seen bruises on Julie’s arms. One neighbour said they saw ‘bikie’ types visiting the house, which was also known to host the occasional party. Police investigated the bikie involvement due to the close proximity of the nightclub to the clubhouse belonging to the Rockhampton chapter of the Rebels bike gang. A close friend and colleague of Julie’s had also told police McConochie had been assaulted by some Odin’s Warriors, another bike gang based in Mackay, north of Rockhampton. Police records showed that McConochie was severely assaulted by five members of the gang at a Rockhampton hotel and was hospitalised. One of the men was arrested over the incident. Police had also received information that on Boxing Day Julie was seen in the company of ‘two bikie types’ at Nankin Creek, a popular swimming hole northeast of Rockhampton. However subsequent searches of the area found no trace of Julie and no indication as to the identities of the so-called bikies. Police kept monitoring Julie’s bank accounts and still there was no activity. People she rang religiously had not heard from her – even her daughter, whom Julie called every Sunday for updates on her beloved grandson Jessie. On the second day of the police search at Julie’s home, scientific officers sprayed the chemical luminol on the carpet and found traces of blood near the light switch and in the downstairs area. The knife set McConochie used to debone animal carcasses at the meatworks was also forensically examined. Police interviewed McConochie’s son but he said he never saw his father hit Julie. Kylie believed McConochie bashed her mother. She had helped Julie pack up and move to Townsville to get away from the violence only to have McConochie persuade her to move RUNAWAY TRAIN
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back. She told police about the drunken calls from her mother in the early hours of the morning: ‘She would say, “He’s done it again” … then after a few days when we’d speak everything would be fine … Michael used to get on the phone and play Mr Cool saying that everything was fine and it was all in Mum’s imagination. I know Mum used to get angry at that.’ McConochie was nice to Kylie’s face, but she believed he was trouble, and fell well short of helping Julie achieve her dream of owning a big property with animals and a vegetable garden. ‘Some parts of her life were happy, the other part she was more lonely, trying to find someone with the same interests and to have a good time without the worries of bills,’ Kylie said. Her relationships would always start well, but would inevitably lead to abuse:‘I know she would have liked a bigger family and I know I stressed her out a bit … She loved having grandkids … she didn’t get to meet them all.’ Kylie contacted police on 15 January and told them she heard that McConochie had beaten up his brother-in-law after he’d told Julie her de facto husband was having an affair. The brother-in-law claimed McConochie was waiting for her to buy a four-wheel drive so he could take it off her and ‘clear out’. Her call triggered a land and river search but police and State Emergency Services volunteers still found nothing. Police handed out flyers with Julie’s picture at local pubs and along the route she may have walked home. Members of the public rang intermittently with information about hitchhikers, vagrants and possible sightings, but still there was nothing concrete. One man wrote in and claimed Julie had taken on a new identity to escape her past and was living in Brisbane but that proved to be a hoax. A local clairvoyant also offered her services but investigators declined. Police continued to take statements and conduct further land, water and aerial searches but in the weeks following 102
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Julie’s disappearance, all roads seemed to lead to McConochie. Two pictures of Julie appeared on Australia’s Most Wanted, which ran nationally on Channel Seven. Police ran two pictures as Julie had lightened her brown hair and had lost a lot of weight before her disappearance. She had feared the weight loss was due to the recurrence of breast cancer. In 1998, Julie had attended the Rockhampton Hospital for tests due to crippling pain in her stomach but she never followed up the test results as she was too scared of what the findings might be. By 9 February, the police investigation slowed as information dried up. Homicide detective Roger Marek, at the time a senior constable, was sent to Rockhampton with Detective Mark Stewart to assist in the investigation, organising searches with the local CIB. ‘She had been reported missing but these were suspicions mainly because of her violent relationship with McConochie,’ Marek said.‘Initially, everyone thought she took off to escape her violent relationship.’ Police knew there were reasons Julie wanted to hide – to escape McConochie and his children and avoid going to jail for another set of drink driving charges. There was also the possibility she had met someone while intoxicated. Julie thought all men were nice, and if they bought her a drink and said they liked her, by the end of the night she would believe they were in love with her. Marek’s investigations had uncovered a very happy-golucky person who was friendly and outgoing. She was social and liked to have people over and would do anything for anybody no matter what it cost or what she had to do. But Julie was also easily led, particularly when affected by alcohol. He found that Julie was depressed – she had conflict with her stepson and McConochie’s other kids were coming down for Christmas, while her main support, her daughter, was miles RUNAWAY TRAIN
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away in Townsville. In the days before her disappearance Julie had again turned to alcohol. Marek said police initially suspected that McConochie, who towered some 24 centimetres over Julie’s small frame, may have hit her too hard during an argument and had killed her.The suspicions of her friends and family also focused on McConochie. No one thought to mention a man called Len who had wanted to protect Julie. Julie left the Airport Liberties nightclub at 2 am on 27 December. It had been a hot day, reaching some 36° C and she decided to walk home in the warm night air.There was a black Velcro wallet in her back pocket, which she sometimes substituted for her purse. Fraser kept his distance and stayed on the opposite side of the road as Julie stumbled north over two city blocks to walk on to the Fitzroy Bridge. Fraser watched intently, waiting for a lull in traffic to cross the road.This was a private party. Fraser liked Julie. He had met the blue-eyed brunette at the meatworks in June that year and they had gone out a couple of times. She told him of her woes with her abusive de facto husband, instantly becoming more attractive to Fraser, who liked vulnerable women in need. Fraser had promised to protect Julie from McConochie and take her away from it all. In the weeks before her diappearance she had told her daughter how ‘Lenny’ had asked her to live with him. Fraser had come to her rescue on at least one occasion when Julie was picked up for drink driving and had been too scared to ring McConochie. She had also visited his flat where he lived with his ‘retarded sister’. But her protector was about to turn predator. The city lights faded as Julie took a ramp down to the railway line behind the Police and Citizens Youth Club. In her drunken state she didn’t notice how dark and isolated her route home had become. She stopped to roll a cigarette and fell 104
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against the guardrail. Confident no one was around, Fraser ran at Julie while her back was turned. He was shoeless, a footprint having placed him at the scene of an earlier rape, and he wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. Julie never finished rolling her cigarette. There was great force behind Fraser’s punch: if his modus operandi had expanded, his king-hit was still his trademark. With no one else around he ‘flogged into her’ and broke her neck. He later bragged that he heard her ‘bones crunching’ and presumed it was her neck snapping in two.With no one in sight, Fraser began to feed. He laid her limp body on the long grass and ripped at her jeans and shirt. He took off her white bra, which was partly stained green from the dye in her sweat-soaked shirt, and strangled any life left in her blue eyes. He removed her sandals and threw them into the long grass next to the railway line beside the youth club. Police would later find her sandals, and a white size 14B Hestia bra in the same area.With Julie dead, naked and helpless, Fraser moved in for the rape. There would be no struggle or rejection. With his urge satisfied, Fraser later confessed he dragged Julie in to the bushes and headed back towards his Baker Street flat a couple of kilometres away. Fraser had decided to cut through the schoolyard of the Berserker State Primary School and took off his blood-stained shirt. It is not known how he disposed of it. Julie’s body needed to be moved. He dumped her jeans and shirt in a wheelie bin outside a nearby house and panicked he’d been seen when his bare chest was lit up by a passing taxi. By the time he reached Baker Street it was 4 am and his retarded girlfriend – not his sister – was asleep. Fraser bathed, washing all traces of Julie and her blood, as well as his own semen, from his body. When Crissie Wraight woke just after RUNAWAY TRAIN
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6 am Fraser told her he couldn’t sleep and invited her to go for a drive to Yeppoon to see their friend Rosie.Wraight declined, and Fraser was happy: he had a free pass to dump the body. Fraser drove his metallic green Holden Camira sedan back to near the murder site and threw Julie’s body into the boot. As he drove out of the car park of the Police and Citizens Youth Club he spotted a police car parked across the road; police were looking at a shop which had had its plate glass window smashed. Fraser headed east to a familiar stomping ground – a graveyard of abandoned cars at Emu Park, bordered by a nudist beach, nunnery and refuse tip, along the picturesque Capricorn Coast. Fraser used to go there for car parts, fishing and perving on unsuspecting nude sunbakers. He also used to scavenge at the nearby rubbish dump, and would go parking there with Wraight. The air was thickening with tropical heat and the threat of a storm lingered as Fraser turned left off the Scenic Highway into Ritamada Road at Kinka Beach. He pulled up to the last telegraph pole before the road turned to sand and took his victim out of the boot. Fraser, still shoeless, carried Julie about 100 metres along a dirt track in dense bushland infested with mosquitoes and snakes.The bush parted into a small circle of pandanus palms where he laid Julie on her back. Her left shoulder, scarred from a tattoo removal procedure, pressed onto the sand. Fraser didn’t dig a grave but instead covered Julie’s body with dead branches in an unsophisticated form of camouflage. The burial was basic but surprisingly effective.This was where Julie would lie unnoticed for almost two years. But while she’d lie undetected she wouldn’t lie undisturbed. As Fraser headed back to Rockhampton to complete his grocery shopping he thought about when he’d visit Julie again; there was something else he wanted to take from her. Julie Turner had baked under the sun for days, perhaps 106
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weeks, or even months, when Fraser returned to remove her head. Fraser was a sex addict, and police suspect Julie’s decomposed body was a turn on that he couldn’t resist. When he was finished, Fraser removed her head and placed it in a garbage bag. Police do not know exactly when he revisited her grave but it had been long enough since the murder for decomposition to have done all the hard work – breaking down sinewy tissues and strong jaw muscles – which made decapitation easy.With his hands he removed most of her head but left behind part of her lower jawbone, believing that even if Julie’s body was found she would not be identifiable. Fraser would later tell a fellow inmate that he believed the head – not the jaw – was the most identifying feature. Leaving nothing to chance, he drove to Kemp Beach at Yeppoon and dug a hole by hand underneath some bushes. He wrapped the garbage bag tight and dropped Julie’s head into the shallow pit. It was a chance to relive his kill and it was intoxicating. Fraser was drunk on rape and murder.
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8 THE SURVIVOR A COUPLE OF days before she vanished on 1 March 1999, a serial killer played host to Beverley Leggo.The 36-year-old was his guest. She showered at his flat, drank his coffee, ate his food and even borrowed his de facto wife’s clothes. For Fraser it was a chance to groom his next victim – learn her routine, isolate her vulnerabilities, steal her underwear and smell her shampoo. It was the perfect opportunity to get close to the woman who had rejected his advances for the past two years; Beverley’s kind nature and compassion gave her borrowed time. She listened to his rants and raves. Fraser didn’t take rejection lightly, and those who had previously knocked back his affections had ended up in a bloody pulp – beaten, raped and violated. For now Bev would remain one of the lucky ones, but then she had always been a survivor. Beverley Doreen Treloar was full of promise, despite an unhappy upbringing in her first four years. Shortly after her birth in Sydney on 21 March 1963, her parents Keith and Joyce 108
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separated. Her father took Beverley’s two older sisters to live with him, while her mother moved back home to her parents’ place.The marriage breakdown consumed Keith and Joyce and there was little emotion left over for Beverley. Joyce went out a lot and her aged parents found it difficult to keep up with their grandchild. But Beverley’s luck changed when her aunt Doris, and her husband, Arthur Leggo, turned up to show off their new baby daughter, Heather. Beverley’s grandparents asked the couple if they would take Beverley. ‘I thought, poor little thing,’ Mrs Leggo said. ‘She looked so miserable down there and I thought well, you can have two children as well as one.’They agreed to take Beverley on the condition that they be allowed to adopt her.And so Beverley moved to the Leggos’ farm at Amamoor – north of Gympie in Queensland – where the family grew pineapples, pecan nuts and mangoes. Beverley quickly settled in with Doris and Arthur, who were dedicated to both little girls. Beverley also bonded quickly with Heather – the youngest of the Leggos’ three children – who in turn adored her new big sister. She helped out with chores and also got along with the Leggos’ two older children. Beverley was happy and thrived in her new surroundings. She excelled at school and won numerous trophies and ribbons for sports while attending primary school at Amamoor. She particularly enjoyed hockey and athletics – especially running, swimming, high jump and long jump – and her determined nature meant that she did well at whatever she applied herself to. By Year 10, Beverley decided she wanted to work and took on a job as a domestic at Winston House, a nursing home in Gympie. Her parents bought her a car to get to work, a Honda for which she eventually paid them back. Beverley moved off the farm into a rented flat and that’s when her life started to change. Arthur and Doris noticed she started to mix THE SURVIVOR
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with the wrong crowd – the ‘town garbage’. Life became increasingly unsettled when Beverley left the nursing home and moved to Rockhampton. After that didn’t work out, she returned to the farm. She studied a number of courses, but after they failed to lead to job offers she turned to a bar course and started to work at several hotels in southwest Queensland. Beverley’s work took her to Blackwater, a coalmining town in central Queensland, where she met construction worker Steve Wornham. Beverley told Wornham she was travelling around Australia on a working holiday, and as their relationship grew they spent most weekends together before he moved into Beverley’s caravan. After they had been together for six happy months,Wornham proposed and Beverley accepted.They celebrated their pending marriage with a six-week vacation in New Zealand. On 24 March 1984, the couple wed at Gympie and embarked on a three-month working holiday and honeymoon in Europe. Beverley’s family was happy she had found someone nice. The couple returned to Brisbane where Wornham was offered a construction job which involved a six-week stint in Alice Springs.There was a slump in the construction industry and Wornham was keen to seize the opportunity. However, Beverley struggled in her husband’s absence, and although he rang her every night she was clearly unhappy. When he returned the couple moved into a flat at West End in Brisbane’s inner city and Beverley, who was unemployed at the time, completed the course she had started several years earlier and qualified as a pharmacy assistant. However Wornham’s work took him to Warwick, 150 kilometres west of Brisbane, and the couple were apart from Monday to Friday. Wornham wanted Beverley to move 110
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with him to Warwick, but she refused. In the eight weeks he was away, Beverley started work as a bar attendant in Brisbane city and the couple began saving for a house and a return trip to Europe. They moved into a rental unit at Kangaroo Point, and for the next five months Wornham spent two weeks of each month at Warwick. Beverley asked Wornham to change jobs because she wanted him home more, but his employers said he would not have to go away once the current project was finished. It was welcome – but inaccurate – news for Beverley, because in July 1985, work took Wornham back to Warwick once again. The separation did not bode well and Beverley became increasingly frustrated, upset and lonely. Wornham kept calling her every night but the relationship quickly soured. By the second week, Beverley wasn’t answering the phone. After being unable to contact her for some time, Wornham drove back to Brisbane and filed a missing persons report. When he found her, she was living with another man in a caravan park in north Brisbane. Beverley didn’t want to see Wornham any more. However she changed her mind not long after and tried to reconcile, but Wornham suspected she was still seeing someone else. Their eighteen-month marriage was over. It marked a turning point in Beverley’s good fortunes – she was in her early twenties. She drifted between relationships and stumbled into the drug scene. Constantly searching for work, she answered a modelling ad and finally achieved success – she was about to hit the international catwalk. Beverley was excited and phoned her parents, extolling the virtues of her new employers and sending them studio photos they had taken of her. Within six weeks she was off to Singapore – it was so quick she didn’t have time to say farewell in person. When Christmas and family birthdays passed with no THE SURVIVOR
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word from Beverley for several months, the Leggos became increasingly worried. Then out of the blue came a phone call from the Department of Foreign Affairs: Beverley was in a Changi jail. She had been found walking in a drug-induced haze at a local airport and had tried to board a plane illegally. The Leggos sent $1000 to pay for their daughter’s return but when she arrived in Brisbane, she was almost unrecognisable. She was taken off the plane in a wheelchair. Her head lolled on her chest and she was painfully thin. Doris had to pick up Beverley’s head to get her daughter to look at her, but her expression was vacant and blank. Wearing a short black dress and stockings and a long-sleeved black knitted jumper, Beverley was all doped up. Her father thought she looked like a zombie – the image of which still reduces him to tears. Beverley would never be the same. The so-called Singapore modelling job was actually a front for white slavery. Beverley was fed a cocktail of addictive narcotics and was turned into an addict, prostitute, sex slave and was used to smuggle heroin around Asia. She escaped but when she tried to board a plane without a ticket or passport was arrested and placed in Changi jail. She was rescued and returned to Australia, shortly after her arrest. Beverley later told her little sister Heather that she escaped by not taking the pills her captors gave her; instead she acted as if she had taken them. She kept up the masquerade until she was well enough to escape, but it wasn’t safe to tell Heather any more. Beverley believed microchips had been placed inside her body and that ‘they’ could tell whom she was talking to and what she said. The police took Beverley to the Royal Brisbane Hospital in the belief that she was carrying drugs internally, but an internal search by a female police officer and medical staff found nothing.When the police released her, the hospital told 112
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the Leggos that Beverley was going to be admitted to the psychiatric ward. Beverley mumbled she was getting married to a prince on Wednesday. She spent some time in the hospital, and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. It was a difficult time for Beverley and her family. The Leggos were confronted with a shadow of their beloved daughter. Their sport-loving teen, who fell in with the wrong crowd as a youth but managed to pull herself back on track as a young woman, had now sunk into an uncharted cave of illness and despair. In hindsight, the diagnosis of Beverley’s schizophrenia made sense – she would often wake up moody, and her family learned not to speak to her in the morning until she spoke first. Beverley was on a downward slide and Fraser was waiting at the end – only he had no intention of saving her. She eventually moved from her parents’ farm – it was too isolated for her. Beverley wanted to live in the city and needed to be with people. She moved around quite a bit and would always call her parents to tell them where she was when she settled. She returned to Brisbane where she met Richard Gritt, a trawlerman. Gritt first saw Beverley in a Brisbane hotel and thought she looked lonely and lost. They moved in together four days later, initially setting up house in Brisbane. The couple also tried running a bait shop in Brisbane’s northern bayside area but that fell through quickly. Beverley was always asking her parents for money. The Leggos were suspicious of Gritt from the first time they met him. He had bandaged his arm, claiming a work injury, even though he easily lifted a chair with his ‘injured’ arm. They believed he was hiding needle marks. Beverley also warned her parents to be careful around Gritt as he had a temper. The Leggos felt Gritt pushed their daughter to the THE SURVIVOR
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wrong side of the law, and it wasn’t long before he wasn’t welcome in their home. Beverley and Gritt were dependent on each other. She taught him to read and write and he provided her with company. She wanted him to look after her, but to the Leggos, Gritt was bad news – they knew he was beating their daughter. Beverley’s schizophrenia caused her to undertake several stints in psychiatric units, often having admitted herself. She turned up at a church looking for support and also ended up at airports when she ‘lost it’ and needed to escape into her own world. Beverley and Gritt had worked at Brisbane Airport as cleaners in 1995. It was difficult for the Leggos to watch their daughter’s decline.‘Because you knew what she was capable of and what she was doing, but you couldn’t get her out it,’Arthur said. ‘I don’t know how many times I tried to get her away from him [Gritt] … she’d say, “I love him”.’ As a young woman Beverley had always been petite and attractive. She had large brown eyes and wavy brown hair, but drugs and persistent beatings had eaten away at her good looks. Her hair was now stringy and clung to her face, and several of her teeth were missing. Life had worn her down. Gritt controlled Beverley’s income and seized her disability pension as soon as she received it. Beverley often rang her parents for money but they always suspected it was to support Gritt’s habits. Her parents pleaded with her to leave him, and she did on several occasions, but he always managed to track her down and she always drifted back to him.Whatever happened, Beverley still claimed she loved him.The Leggos believed Gritt was behind a lot of their daughter’s breakdowns. For a while Beverley received three-monthly injections for her schizophrenia and the couple moved back to Rockhampton to find work. Between 1995 and 1998, Gritt 114
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was in and out of jail. During that same time, Beverley was also briefly jailed on break and enter charges and drug offences. But when Beverley was on the outside and Gritt on the inside, she had nowhere to go. Mount Morgan resident William Schunemann offered her a room to rent for $100 a week. It was just after New Year in 1999, and Beverley rang her parents telling her what a nice man Schunemann was. Coincidentally the house was where Natasha Ryan had lived with her family as a child. Beverley was childlike and naïve, she considered everyone she met to be a friend, and thought the best of people until proven otherwise. But her lack of judgment often put her in harm’s way and ultimately into the hands of a serial killer. Always eager to forgive, Beverley took Gritt back in when he was released from jail several weeks later. However it wasn’t long before the couple argued – this time over the rent, which Gritt thought was too high, and so he moved south to Gladstone by himself. While Beverley’s relationship soured, Fraser’s wasn’t faring much better.The violence and arguments had increased and on 10 January, when Wraight tried to go out, Fraser punched her on the right side of her face with a clenched fist. Fraser didn’t like Wraight going anywhere, particularly without him, and after he hit her, she was too sore to leave the flat. She was bruised, had a swollen top lip and pain under her eye. Late that night, Fraser took Wraight to St Johns Hospital for treatment. When the doctor asked how her injuries had occurred, Fraser said that she was hurt ‘mucking around doing karate’.Wraight was too scared to tell the truth in case he hit her again. Just days later, on 15 January, police were called to a North Rockhampton house Fraser and Wraight were visiting when they started to argue and fight. Less than ten days later they were at it again – Fraser argued with Wraight over the position THE SURVIVOR
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of her drinking glass while she was watching television in the lounge room. Wraight had had enough of Fraser picking on her so she moved into the bedroom to get away, but that didn’t work – he followed her, picked up a pillow from the bed and shoved it into Wraight’s face before leaving the bedroom. Another fight erupted when Fraser refused to let Wraight go to the hospital without him. As their domestic disputes escalated she sought refuge in a Rockhampton women’s shelter on 26 January.Wraight complained to police that she was tired of Fraser hitting her. Wraight’s brother-in-law Patrick Nadin first met Fraser when he dropped Wraight off at the home he shared with her sister Julie on Christmas Day in 1998. Wraight would often visit the couple following blow-ups with Fraser. Nadin could not understand why the two were together and described their relationship as strange. ‘I got the impression from Cristine that she really didn’t want to be in a relationship with Len,’ Nadin said in his police statement. ‘The number of fights and arguments that they had was unbelievable.The typical scene would be that Cristine would suddenly turn up on our doorstep anytime day or night crying her eyes out. Julie would take her in and try and settle her down.’ During January and February 1999, Nadin and Julie lost count of the number of times Wraight told the couple she wanted out of her relationship with Fraser. Nadin and his wife made arrangements for Wraight to move in with them but each time she returned to Fraser. This was the case on 3 February 1999. It was about 3 pm, and after a huge fight between Wraight and Fraser, Fraser agreed to drive Wraight to the Rockhampton Shopping Fair where her sister and brother-in-law were shopping. Fraser drove up to where the couple had agreed to wait, got out of the car and pulled some clothes off the back seat. He told 116
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Nadin that Wraight was now their problem, and that they could have her. He got back into the car and took off, gunning the motor and yelling, ‘Stay out of my life, don’t come anywhere near me or I’ll kill yous [sic] …’ He then sped away. The next day the couple prepared to take Wraight out of Rockhampton to her mother’s Sunshine Coast home and organised police to remove her belongings from the couple’s Baker Street flat. Fraser phoned Nadin and called him a ‘dog’ for helping Wraight. They went to the flat to collect her gear in the presence of police and as they left, Fraser warned Nadin he would be ‘black flagged’ and unable to get work in Rockhampton. Fraser’s threat was an example of his grandiose view of himself, his importance and his ‘connections’. Within a week of her leaving, Wraight returned to Rockhampton and Fraser.Three days later, on 24 February, the Rockhampton Magistrates’ Court granted Wraight a protection order against Fraser, limiting contact with his de facto wife to the telephone. The order was to remain in place until February 2001, but Wraight would move back in within days of the court ruling. Wraight’s father, Warren, believed that although his daughter ignored the domestic violence order, it gave her protection against Fraser’s murderous rage. It was her court-ordered life insurance policy. Three days after the restraining order was placed on him, Fraser trawled Rockhampton’s Quay Street. Home to historic sandstone buildings, prized parklands and popular drinking haunts, the street also marks the spot where Rockhampton’s city heart meets the Fitzroy River. Fraser, an opportunist and creature of habit, was reeling from the protection order. He loathed losing control and hated his life being under scrutiny. Fraser knew what was needed to reinstate order, and he was confident he could find it. THE SURVIVOR
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It was a warm Saturday night, about 11 pm, when a young woman – looking for peace and quiet from the weekend crowd – left the popular landmark Criterion Hotel for parkland along the river. She crossed Quay Street and sat down. As she took in the view Fraser dropped beside her on the right. He grabbed her around the shoulders, turned her towards him, and with his hands either side of her face, pulled her head forwards. The woman was taken aback. She felt scared and repulsed and attempted to resist Fraser, but he was too strong. As Fraser tried to kiss her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, he pushed her from her sitting position on to her left-hand side. She continued to struggle and fight, thrashing around as hard as she could, but Fraser forced her onto her back and climbed on top. With his face next to hers, he issued a gruff forecast with bad breath, ‘I’m going to fuck you.’ He sounded rough and angry, the fury in his eyes forever burned into her memory. The comment angered her, strengthening her resolve to escape. But as she pushed up, Fraser pressed her back down. She could feel through his clothing that he was well toned and had a lot of upper body strength, like he worked in some type of manual labour. He also had an erection. As the two struggled, somehow she managed to get back onto her side from her back and squeezed out from underneath him. She pushed both her feet into his groin, her hands digging into his chest as she randomly yelled out a woman’s name. Fraser tried to smother her mouth with his hands, and instinctively the woman pulled her head back even further allowing her to open her mouth and yell again. As she continued to resist, Fraser gave her just enough room to get to her feet. But Fraser wasn’t about to give up so easily and held tight around her left wrist. Now standing tall, the woman kicked 118
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him hard in the groin with her right foot and ran back through the park over Quay Street to the Criterion. Wounded and unsatisfied, Fraser called her a bitch and scurried along the riverbank parallel with Quay Street before disappearing into the darkness. But he needn’t have hurried, as no one would go looking.The woman didn’t want anyone to know – she would not speak of the attack until a year later, when she finally reported it to the police. For Fraser, order still needed to be restored, and within two days he’d have his form of ‘justice’. Fraser always surrounded himself with women, particularly single mothers. He drove their children to school and took an active interest in their lives, particularly if their children were girls. In exchange the women – many of whom were pensioners – would give him ‘smoke’ or petrol money. He craved the company and touch of young girls. He liked sitting them on his knee and often put his hands up their dresses. On one occasion he even bought a ten-year-old girl a see-through black G-string. The girl’s parents had welcomed Fraser into their home the Christmas before, and with the lacy lingerie came attempts to kiss her and put her on his lap. When she told her parents of his affections, they withdrew the welcome mat. Meanwhile, Gritt left Beverley for good in early 1999. Beverley rang her parents and told them their stormy ten-year relationship was over. His daughter had turned eighteen and he didn’t need Beverley to help him pay maintenance any more. She was happy, back on her medication and was going to get her teeth fixed. On 25 February 1999, Beverley’s landlord William Schunemann dropped her off at a newsagency in Williams Street in the Rockhampton CBD. Beverley had told him she had $7000 in her bank and was in line for a $100 000 compensation payout for injuries sustained in a car accident. THE SURVIVOR
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Beverley often talked about the phantom payout, even verifying the amounts, when she was off her medication and needed to borrow money. As Beverley wandered through the city mall she bumped into Fraser, who was at Centrelink. She told him her boyfriend was in jail and Fraser invited her over to his Baker Street flat and offered her a cup of coffee and a place to stay. Beverley first met Fraser at a hostel two years earlier, in 1997. He had given her the creeps back then. He always made unwanted sexual advances and once outside a Mount Morgan newsagency she had moved away from him when he whispered something offensive in her ear. While they were both staying at Rockhampton’s Oztel Hostel in March 1997, and later when they both lived in Mount Morgan, Beverley and Fraser would often go for walks together down to the shops. They knew each other through Gritt – he and Fraser had met in jail – and Beverley’s kind nature made her a good listener, a handy complement to Fraser’s rambling. She had an almost childlike faith in people and really empathised with them. Beverley was determined and loving and didn’t bear grudges or malice – a trait her parents believed allowed people to use her. She always wanted to help others. At Fraser’s flat Beverley freshened up, showering and changing into some of Wraight’s clothes. She got a lift back into the CBD with a still unlicensed Fraser in his 1978 blue Honda Civic Hatch. He had bought the car for $100 a fortnight earlier, after dumping his last Camira when his sister-inlaw complained about an awful odour. The stench was from Wraight’s beloved cattle dog cross Zeena – the one he fucked, poisoned and dumped – and possibly body fluids from Julie Turner too, but he dismissed the lingering smell as a fish in the boot; he couldn’t tell her it was the stench of death. 120
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Beverley had decided not to return to Mount Morgan for a few days and floated around Rockhampton using Fraser’s flat as a base. She was worried about drug dealers in Mount Morgan who were after Gritt, which would make it difficult for her to score speed. She decided her chances were better in Rockhampton. On Saturday night, 27 February, she approached a Criterion Hotel resident for some money she believed he owed her. The man told her he had no idea what she was talking about.The next day she wandered through the inner city and dropped in to visit her friend Susan, in Kent Street, to see if she could borrow a pair of shoes – the sole of Beverley’s right brown boot had worn through and was peeling off. But when Susan said she couldn’t help, Beverley pulled out what she claimed was a cheque for $3500. Her friend couldn’t read the piece of paper but told her to put it back in her handbag and keep it safe. On Monday 1 March, Susan saw Beverley again as she drove through the intersection of Bolsover and Fitzroy Streets around 9.30 am. Beverley waved and walked towards the Bank of Queensland in the City Centre Plaza. She had run out of money and went looking for an advance on her pension. Beverley often ran short, particularly when she needed to score some speed. Beverley asked to see the bank manager but was told he wasn’t available and to come back in an hour. Fraser withdrew $100 from his bank account at a newsagency at the Northside Plaza, across the Fitzroy River. He was supposed to be attending a course aimed at helping the unemployed find work but the only business he had on his mind was Beverley. He finished his grocery shopping and headed to the CBD. Beverley stayed near the City Centre Plaza while she waited for the manager to return. She was walking past an ATM THE SURVIVOR
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machine on the outside of the plaza when Fraser saw her. He had parked at the rear of the centre, in a remote section near the truck bays, and emptied the shopping into his boot. Fraser followed Beverley back inside the shopping centre where she stopped outside a jeweller. He sidled up next to her and asked if she’d like to accompany him to Yeppoon as Wraight needed to be collected. Fraser said he had to take his shopping back to the flat first, telling her the boot was already full, and that they could head back out after that. Beverley agreed. Fraser drove towards Yeppoon when an argument broke out between them. Ever the opportunist, Fraser had seized the moment to put his hand on his passenger’s leg but she swatted at him, like the nuisance he was. Fraser was tired of waiting for Beverley to return his advances. He was going to take what he wanted without further delay. Once again Beverley was captive. Fraser lashed out and punched her in the head. Beverley slumped, bleeding, against the passenger door. She made gargling noises and her body started to convulse. He slowed the car to assess the damage and stopped when she began to choke. As the fits continued Fraser’s thoughts quickly turned to getting rid of her. He headed towards Yeppoon and, remembering a local swimming hole at Nankin Creek, near Sleipner, about 20 kilometres outside of Rockhampton, took the Emu Park Road. It was still daytime and the waterhole was just a tenminute drive away, in a secluded area surrounded by long grass. As he approached Sleipner, he saw the fruit stall to his right and 400 metres later he crossed the Nankin Creek Bridge. He turned the Honda left on to Sleipner Road, and left the bitumen for the dirt. Fraser drove another 180 metres before taking a sharp left onto another dirt track that led back towards the Rockhampton–Emu Park Road, parallel to Nankin Creek. About 150 metres on his right he noticed a rope swing 122
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dangling from a tree over the swimming hole. He drove for another 60 metres and turned right into a short track, parking under a clump of mango trees. As he came to a stop, Beverley’s body was now almost certainly bereft of life – but Fraser wanted to make sure. She slumped forward, her hands dangling limply as Fraser’s arms circled her waist. He carried her 50 metres through thick bushland, thorny lantana and itchy spear grass. Finally he found the perfect hiding place – a bare patch of dirt under a canopy of lantana almost two metres high surrounded by even taller bushes. He threw her down and tore off her clothes. He removed her black sports briefs and her bra, using them to make a tourniquet around her neck. He pulled the ligature tightly in opposite directions. Finally Fraser had the control he had been seeking and the sex that he craved. Fraser stood back and admired his work. He’d tied the ligature nice and tight, tangling Beverley’s long brown hair in the knots. Had she survived the king hit, asphyxiation guaranteed she was dead. The lariat was so taut an autopsy following her discovery eighteen months later would find bone fragments and part of her larynx separated in the noose. There was no room to budge, no opportunity to breathe. Her body had left drag marks in the long grass and Fraser went to great pains to cover his tracks as he righted every trampled blade.The long grass hid her well. Even though Beverley had been left face down with her bottom raised, hands crossed beneath her torso, there were no signs of her to those passing by on their way to the swimming hole. Fraser was smug and high on adrenalin as he turned towards the car, now he just had to dump her handbag. Beverley had loved her brown leather handbag, and was rarely seen without it. It contained some paperwork, pills and THE SURVIVOR
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a Lorus ladies watch, as well as a handful of loose change, an ATM receipt and her Bank of Queensland keycard. She had it with her when she ignored her gut instinct and reluctantly accepted a lift from Fraser. But her killer was not one to overlook trophies of his victims, even though he knew all evidence of his preys’ trappings needed to be destroyed. Fraser drove along the Rockhampton–Emu Park Road and turned towards the Nerimbera boat ramp, 12 kilometres east of Rockhampton. He knew the area well – it was behind the meatworks and cattle yards where he had once worked as a cleaner. Under cover of darkness, Fraser got out of his Honda, walked down the ramp and grabbed three rocks to put inside the handbag to weigh it down. As he foraged, he found a piece of white cotton to bind it together and hurled the bag as far as he could, breaking the strap in his hands as he attempted to cast it deep into the river. Fraser thought he had erased all traces of Beverley – which reminded him; he still had some unfinished business with Julie.
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9 THE MISSING AT 6.30 AM ON 2 March,Anne-Maree Hempsall was helping her friend load his tinny into the Fitzroy River so he could check on his crab pots when she noticed a brown leather handbag on the muddy riverbank to her right. Unbeknown to Fraser, it had been high tide when he hurled Beverley’s bag into the river. It had gone a mere ten metres and as the water receded there was no hiding Fraser’s sins. Hempsall knew the bag would soon be under water as the tide turned once again, and, assuming local kids had stolen the bag and dumped it in the creek, took it to her car to look for signs of ownership. She found herself untangling cloth and removing rocks from a muddied handbag. Inside she discovered a drivers licence belonging to Beverley Doreen Leggo. By 8.45 am, Hempsall had handed the bag into the Rockhampton police station, but investigators suspected more than just juvenile delinquency – Beverley’s landlord had filed a missing person report the day before, on 1 March, when she failed to return home. 125
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William Schunemann, 75, told Mount Morgan police officer-in-charge Sergeant Stan Lean he was worried because Beverley had told him she was expecting a compensation payout that day for injuries sustained in a car accident several years ago. When he had dropped her off at a Rockhampton newsagency on Thursday 25 February, Beverley said she was going to check her first payment of $7000 had arrived. A further $100 000 was to follow, she’d told him. Lean searched Beverley’s room, checking for missing clothing as evidence she had taken a trip, as well as signs of possible foul play. He found paperwork indicating she had registered with and attended the Rockhampton Mental Health Unit, and had had some dealings with the Salvation Army. Schunemann denied having a relationship with Beverley, who was 39 years his junior, saying she was only a tenant. Police searched her room again and found nothing of significance. At the same time as Hempsall handed the bag in to police, Fraser set about creating an alibi for his whereabouts, wanting to prove that he was not in Rockhampton or near Yeppoon at the time of Beverley’s disappearance. He’d previously been unsuccessful in covering his tracks after he raped the young woman combing the beach for driftwood, and hoped that this time he’d get his story right. Back then he’d showed up at a friend’s house, appeared agitated and without a shirt and had changed the front number plate of his car after he’d allegedly been caught speeding. But after his lie was revealed, Fraser was charged and sent to jail and he was not about to make the same mistake. He knew that alibis needed to be credible – this time he used his employment agency, CHR. So on Tuesday 2 March, Fraser turned up six hours early for a scheduled afternoon appointment. He told CHR staff he’d been away in Emerald, west of Rockhampton, looking for 126
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work. He had also gone to the meatworks looking for a job but they had referred him to another business. Fraser was helpful and conscientious, organising to update staff of his prospects, scheduling another appointment in three weeks. With the appearance of Beverley’s handbag, the disappearance of its owner, and the concerns of her Mount Morgan landlord, Rockhampton detectives started running checks, including searches on her account at the Bank of Queensland. Beverley had asked for a balance at 8.44 am on 26 February, and had attended the branch at City Centre Plaza between 10.30 and 11 am on 1 March asking for the manager. The staff knew Beverley well because she habitually asked for an advance on her pension, which was due on 4 March. However, there had been no financial activity on her account since 19 February, even after her pension arrived almost two weeks later. Police visited a Dennison Lane address in Rockhampton, where Beverley had once lived, but the occupants would only reveal they saw her walk past the week before.They contacted people whose names were written down on torn pieces of paper in Beverley’s handbag, but again no one had seen her. On 11 March, Schunemann spoke with police again and when his story remain unchanged and no new leads emerged, Rockhampton police asked their Mount Morgan counterparts to lodge Beverley’s missing person’s report with the statewide database, making her disappearance official. Police once again checked Beverley’s bank account – it was still inactive and her $413.70 pension remained untouched. Detectives also spoke with the Public Trustee’s Office, which oversaw Beverley’s financial affairs when she was being treated for schizophrenia. However, they had had no dealings with Beverley for almost two years, since they had THE MISSING
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reassessed her as competent to handle her own finances on 8 April 1997. Queensland’s Missing Persons Bureau, who oversee all missing person cases statewide, contacted the Leggo family on 14 March to gain insight into Beverley.The bureau wanted to know whether she had experienced any upheaval, if she was on medication, who her closest friends were and whether her lack of contact was out of character.They also needed a recent photograph of their daughter. Arthur and Doreen Leggo were helpful and obliging, saying that when she phoned them in mid-February she sounded very happy. Beverley had given them a Mount Morgan address where she was boarding with Schunemann. She had broken up with her long time de facto because he no longer needed to pay maintenance for his daughter and she was off the illicit drugs but back on her medication.Their daughter was not one to keep in constant contact and was known to wander off. The Leggos further confirmed Beverley had made a $2000 insurance claim many years ago in relation to a whiplash injury she sustained during a traffic accident, but hadn’t paid her solicitors.Arthur believed the matter had since been dropped. Police took the information but didn’t mention Beverley’s handbag had been found, bound and weighed down in a local estuary. Police again checked Beverley’s bank accounts – which still remained inactive – fuelling further suspicion about her disappearance as she was highly dependent on her pension. Detectives also visited Rockhampton mental health authorities who told them they last saw their patient on 5 February, when she was admitted, given a meal and medication and then discharged the same day. On 19 March, Rockhampton police issued another BOLF, only this time it was for Beverley. Checks were made for 128
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outstanding compensation claims at courthouses and registries, but once again there was nothing. Members of the public called in with Beverley sightings or dealings but most predated her disappearance. A bus driver told police a woman of similar appearance had caught the bus from Mount Morgan to Rockhampton, while others reported her trips to markets and hotels in February and March. With no confirmed sightings, local police tried to find Gritt while their Brisbane counterparts chased his parents.The central Queensland police region and State Crime Operations Command agreed two Homicide detectives – Graham Clark and Darrin Padget – would be sent to Rockhampton on 21 March to help local police find Beverley.A major incident room was established and the investigation into her disappearance was codenamed Operation Bever. In a progress report to his Brisbane-based superiors, Clark wrote there had been an obvious attempt to conceal the missing woman’s handbag, with inquiries focusing on Gritt – where there was a history of a volatile relationship – and Schunemann, who they believed was her lover. Police set about corroborating statements the two men provided relating to their movements around the time of Beverley’s disappearance. In a statement on 24 March to Gladstone police, Gritt claimed he had not heard from Beverley since he left her in Mount Morgan four or five weeks earlier. Gritt further claimed his exgirlfriend was schizophrenic, a condition which was exacerbated after she smoked marijuana and injected speed. Gritt, who claimed he had been in Gladstone since he arrived there in January, said Beverley was heavily addicted to drugs and wouldn’t take her medication because it made her sick. By the end of March, Clark phoned Arthur and Doris to reveal that the investigation into their daughter’s disappearance THE MISSING
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had stepped up to a suspected murder inquiry.The couple was told of the deliberate attempt to conceal Beverley’s handbag, the lack of activity in her bank account, and her failure to report her keycard stolen. There had also been no confirmed sightings of her since 1 March. Arthur and Doris instantly knew their daughter was dead – they were familiar with their daughter’s habits and knew she never went anywhere without her handbag – and they believed if anyone was responsible for Beverley’s demise it was Gritt. As Operation Bever continued, detectives ran out hundreds of leads. Nightshift cleaners and boners at the meatworks were interviewed to see whether they had witnessed anything suspicious, while the abattoir’s personnel manager revealed a 14-foot crocodile had ‘hung around’ the Nerimbera boat ramp for years. Investigators also checked with the Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of Transport’s Maritime Section Tidal Predictions to determine rainfall and tidal patterns in the catchment area.The findings indicated that, because the Fitzroy River had peaked on 8 March, with the high tide reaching 6.33 metres, any body placed in the river would have been washed downstream regardless of tidal movements. The location of her handbag, which was found above the low water mark, also meant that it had to have been discarded at high tide, which was 10.36 pm on 1 March – the day of her murder. Both sides of the river were searched in an attempt to find Beverley’s body, her clothing and various other clues, but none were found. Clark also requested Beverley’s dental records in case they needed to identify a body. Police did a walk-through with Hempsall to reconstruct how she found the bag. The investigation was exhaustive with police doorknocking residents near the boat ramp, and distributing media releases calling for public assistance. Still nothing concrete was received. 130
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Investigators from the Missing Persons Bureau, Homicide Squad and Rockhampton Police widened their inquiries and started looking at possible links between the disappearances of Natasha Ryan, Julie Turner and Beverley Leggo. Julie and Beverley had both disappeared from the Rockhampton CBD within 200 metres and a couple of months of each other.These two women were of similar description and age – Julie, 39, a slim brunette, was 157 cm tall and Beverley, 36, a petite brunette, stood 167 cm – and both had unstable lives.They also battled addictions, Julie with alcohol and Beverley with drugs, and were inherently lonely women who craved the company, acceptance and attention of others. And although the two did not know each other, they were united in their vulnerability and the suspicious circumstances of their disappearances. Beverley did however have something in common with the other missing local, Natasha – she boarded with William Schunemann, in a house the runaway teen had lived in as a child. In addition, all three women had vanished within six months of each other: Natasha on 2 September 1998, Julie on 28 December 1998 and Beverley on 1 March 1999. Local resources were strained as detectives from the Juvenile Aid Bureau and Criminal Investigation Bureau and uniform police responded to the missing person investigations as well as doing general policing duties. Homicide and Rockhampton detectives united three previously separate operations – Bever (Beverley), Bega (Julie) and Hybrid the search for Natasha – which they renamed Hybrid. Additional detectives from Brisbane were sent to help ease the heavy workload, which would increase yet again when another local, a nine-year-old schoolgirl, disappeared. Operation Bega had exhausted all leads by the end of January. Julie’s de facto husband Michael McConochie, who THE MISSING
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had been the focus of police inquiries, agreed to take a lie detector test and the results offered no more clues to finding her. And tests on traces of blood found at Julie’s house and on McConochie’s boning knives showed that they were of animal, not human, origin. Operation Hybrid had also failed to find Natasha with all focus and surveillance on her boyfriend Scott Black. In a memo to the Rockhampton district officer, Juvenile Aid Bureau detective Joe Whyte, who reviewed the investigation, doubted the veracity of Natasha sightings between Rockhampton and Toowoomba in the months following her disappearance in September 1998. Police received countless Natasha sightings from all over Queensland, with a team of investigators sent to confirm or eliminate each claim. National and state media also broadcast stories about her disappearance while Natasha’s mother made public pleas for her return. Sightings prompted statewide searches of rail and bus ticket purchases and airport passenger lists. Detective Whyte believed the last positive identification of Natasha was when school friends Ebony Loomans and Maioha Jamie Tokotaua saw her at the cinema. Checks with financial institutions, welfare agencies and youth groups showed the troubled teen had not received any help, financial or otherwise. Police also consulted with hospitals in Mackay, Rockhampton and Gladstone following claims Natasha was pregnant and may have runaway to give birth. Deed polls, which listed people legally changing their names, also came up empty while searches of public and private transport companies proved negative. In the meantime Black pleaded guilty to breaching his bail conditions on 14 January 1999, in relation to his unlawful contact with Donna Ryan. Whyte listed Natasha’s friends as possible suspects in the teen’s disappearance: Loomans had told several friends and 132
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school mates that she and her father were responsible for Natasha’s death. Loomans had claimed to have stabbed Natasha three times in the back, saying her father Adrian would be charged with murder if the Year 9 student was found. Her father became a suspect because of his daughter’s false claims and the pair both left the police station mid-interviews and were generally uncooperative. Natasha’s other close friend Tokotaua was nominated as a suspect after police found him untruthful in his statements – he had denied being in a car with the fourteen-year-old on the night she disappeared, despite a witness claiming otherwise. Scott Black had always been a suspect, with police assuming the car Natasha was last seen in was his yellow Gemini sedan. Black also repeatedly refused to be interviewed and remained under police surveillance. Investigators were determined not to be outsmarted; aware that he travelled to Gladstone frequently in January 1999 – four months after the teen vanished – police checked with local pizza outlets in the town to see where Black’s orders had been delivered to find out where he was staying.They found nothing suspicious. On 17 March, plans to install a listening device in Black’s milk truck were put on hold when police learned Black had been injured in a motorcycle accident and would be off work for around six months. Operation Hybrid investigators also interviewed Marty Madsen, the school chaplain at North Rockhampton State High School. He had daily contact with Natasha while she was a student and his information corroborated that of school counsellor, Ngari Bean. Police records show Madsen told detectives Natasha had issues with her mother, drugs and boys. At times she was suicidal, attention seeking and disruptive. As an example of her THE MISSING
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attention-seeking behaviour, Madsen related how Natasha had told him she wanted to kill herself so she could be with her mother who was very ill and going to die. In fact Jenny Ryan was not ill at all – Natasha had made it up. Natasha, said Madsen, was emotionally unstable with a turbulent home life. Madsen also told police that Natasha believed the man who had been jailed for a short period of time over a serious incident was threatening to harm her when he was released. He thought that if Natasha had run away, she would be ‘more than capable’ of looking after herself and could survive through selling drugs or prostitution. After several months of counselling between 1997 and 1998, Madsen believed Natasha was prone to a very ‘prominent’ suicide attempt as she was an attention seeker who would want to make a statement so people would know about it. Madsen also relayed that the general talk among the students had moved from her likely suicide to claims that she had given birth and could still be in the local area. Natasha had told Madsen she had four sexual partners in the week she fell pregnant even though Black had taken responsibility as the father. Madsen knew Natasha was manipulative and had often visited his office just to ‘wag’ classes. ‘I never really believed that I was making progress with her.There were no up or down periods, she was steadily going down. It was my belief that Natasha would be lost,’ Madsen told police. The disappearance of Beverley once again pushed the Rockhampton rumour mill into overdrive – just as it had done when Natasha went missing. Locals believed Gritt was certainly a suspect. Some local drug users further muddied the waters when they tried to avoid arrest and provided police with false information. While everyone was searching for Beverley, Fraser decided to pay his victim a visit. On Saturday 10 April, Fraser took a 134
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woman and her 11-year-old daughter swimming at Nankin Creek. The woman had met Fraser through people at her daughter’s school, the Berserker State Primary School in North Rockhampton. She was one of a number of women Fraser fooled.As more people arrived to swim, Fraser walked into the bush, emerging about thirty minutes later. Police believe he visited Beverley’s grave. He casually returned to his new friends and after driving them home, invited them to have dinner with him and Wraight. The mother and her under-age daughter, who cannot be identified under Queensland laws, moved in with Fraser later on that day, after the woman had a falling out with her flatmate. The following morning, Fraser took them back to the swimming hole. On the Monday morning the woman was in her bedroom when her daughter came in crying alleging Fraser had touched her. The girl said she had woken to find Fraser with his hand on her chest and his other hand between her legs. The woman and Fraser fought before Fraser took everyone, including Wraight, for a drive to calm down.The woman and her daughter moved to NSW two days later.The woman later complained about Fraser to police. On 16 April, Rockhampton police received confidential information that a local drug dealer – who was overheard talking about ‘doing Leggo’ – was seen burning his clothing the day after she disappeared. The information took police nowhere.The next day an anonymous call to Crime Stoppers claimed Beverley was alive and well and living in Richardson Street, Rockhampton, but it too was a false lead. A 500-metre radius circling the Nerimbera boat ramp was searched again, but nothing was found. With Gritt, Black, Loomans,Tokotaua, and McConochie, on the police radar, Fraser seemed safe, except for an anonymous call to Crime Stoppers on 31 March.. The caller said she THE MISSING
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had observed a ‘Lenny Fraser, 47 y.o. (sic) hassling and annoying Beverley Leggo in early 1999 sometime … Fraser did not touch Leggo at all.’ The information didn’t take police anywhere. Crime Stoppers conducted computer checks but could not find a matching incident or complaint on their records. The file was forwarded on to Rockhampton, adding to the hundreds of leads flooding in to the major incident room. It would be followed up almost four weeks later. Fraser, meanwhile, had already picked his next victim.
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10 ROOM 13 WITH EACH FRENZIED blow Fraser painted a bloody portrait. The canvas was an abandoned hotel room in Rockhampton’s condemned Queensland Hotel, and his palette was the porcelain-like skull of Sylvia Benedetti. In life, thirteen had always been Sylvia’s lucky number, but in death it marked the address for her murder. This was where Lenny the Loon bled Sylvia like an animal. It was a lonely, violent death in a damp and derelict room – a room filled with the pungent cologne of mouldy, cheap carpet, terror, rape and death. A deafening symphony of skullcrunching, jaw-shattering punches breached the night silence as Fraser fed his ravenous appetite for sex. Lying bloodied and motionless on the floor, an unresponsive wide-eyed Sylvia stared up at her attacker. Dark circles framed her vacant brown eyes. The pair had met through a mutual friend at Centrelink four months earlier as they lodged unemployment forms. Back 137
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then he was affable and social. But inside Room 13 he stood barefoot and without conscience; his breath was hot and possessed.The transformation had been sudden. Just minutes earlier the 19-year-old had shadowed an amiable Lenny through the hotel’s car park and back door, into the kitchen. He had planned the night well, having dropped Wraight off at a friend’s house as ‘he had a job to do’ at ‘half past seven’ that night. Wraight remained with Fraser despite the domestic violence order the courts had granted her. It was Sunday night 18 April 1999. At 7.30 pm Sylvia thought nothing of following Lenny inside as he broke the Queensland Hotel’s rear latch to gain entry. Sylvia had run into Fraser at the Coles shopping centre, several weeks before her disappearance. She had been carrying heavy groceries when he offered to help her to a taxi. Sylvia had spoken to Fraser several times in the mall since he helped her, and she claimed to have used him to walk her through the mall as protection when someone was harassing her. Timber boarded the once-grand hotel’s windows and doors, which in the five years since it closed had become a sometimes squat for the homeless and derelict. It was so dark Sylvia couldn’t see her own hands or the timber-alloy window weight Lenny would soon wield against her head. He was sure-footed and confident inside the condemned building. Lenny had been there before looking for items of value: TV sets, car parts and cigarette butts. In fact, this was where he had sourced the late 1970s TV he’d sold to Beverley Leggo and her de facto husband Richard Gritt while they were all staying at the same Oztel Hostel in 1997. Tonight, though, he was not a scavenger, he was a predator. Using an ounce and a half of marijuana as bait, he lured Sylvia up the stairs on to the second storey; they turned right 138
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down the corridor and into the last room along the hallway. Fraser told her this was where he stored his drugs. It was a dead end. Up here streetlights radiated through louvre windows and cream paint could be seen curling from the walls. Up here Sylvia could see Lenny’s hate-filled eyes as he made his move. A hand basin stood against one fibro wall, and a bloodied towel would soon be stuffed into a hole. Slimly built, Sylvia stood just 160 centimetres tall. Born in Melbourne on January 3, 1980, she was the second child and only daughter of Betty Marie Hadfield and Sergio Enrico Benedetti. Sylvia had been a warm, lovable, mischievous little girl whose dark features highlighted a natural beauty. But it was a beauty that was not unnoticed by her father. In 1988, at age eight, Sylvia became the target of Sergio’s sexual desire. He started touching her at first and then unsuccessfully attempted rape. Sylvia told her mother and Betty left her husband and moved with the children to Mildura in country Victoria. Sergio was charged with molesting his daughter about a year later and pleaded guilty. He was given a twelve-month suspended sentence and did not speak with his daughter again. However his sexual cravings had plunged Sylvia into a lifetime of pain and depression, eventually delivering her into the murderous reach of Lenny the Loon. As Sylvia struggled to cope with the abuse she had suffered as a child, she became anti-social, restless and unable to sustain relationships; violence became her mode of communication. She hit those who disagreed with her, kicked the shins of teachers she didn’t like and was suspended from school multiple times. She developed a talent for art, often drawing gruesome blood-splattered pictures and telling her mother that that was how she was going to end up. She believed she would not reach the age of twenty-one, and would die a horrible, violent ROOM 13
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death. Sylvia also had a deep love for animals. But art and pets were not enough and young Sylvia became an accomplished arsonist prone to mood swings and temper tantrums.At fifteen, after repeatedly clashing with her mother, Sylvia ran away from home seeking solace at Broken Hill, eventually moving in with Deidre Moore who became her foster mother. The shame of sexual abuse continued to stalk her and just two days after arriving in the NSW goldmining town at Easter in 1996, she set fire to her neighbours’ flat. Sylvia’s mother – a victim of child abuse herself – said she had a close but troubled relationship with her daughter. Sylvia had last spoken to her mother eighteen months before she was bludgeoned to death, the pair arguing over her brother giving Betty a sewing machine and money. Betty believed in time her daughter would sort herself out, but in reality Sylvia was a profoundly lonely girl who constantly craved the love of her mother. As the countdown to her murder continued Sylvia plunged deeper into despair. She hid her slim figure behind long, dark hair, baggy clothes and long-sleeved poloneck shirts and referred to herself as an ugly, fat, disgusting slut. Even before she smoked pot or used amphetamines, she was very moody – upbeat one minute, depressed and angry the next – and was often sex-obsessed. She was not very social, yet could be inappropriately friendly, often talking to strangers and telling new friends about the different sexual positions she had tried. Sylvia claimed to be bisexual and that she had even taken girls home for threesomes with her boyfriend, Joseph Dougherty. Dougherty would later tell police he never wanted threesomes because he didn’t want to jeopardise their relationship. He blamed Sylvia’s mood swings on her being sexually abused by her father. Dougherty told police Sylvia had confided she had been raped by four men when she was sixteen 140
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but she never reported the attacks. A shy loner, Sylvia pushed the boundaries of those close to her. She never cried, and hated those who did, biting her lip and retreating inwards instead. The more people who turned against Sylvia, the safer she felt because it was what she was used to. But as Lenny turned, Sylvia felt anything but safe. In a jailhouse confession, Fraser would tell how he tried to ‘pash’ Sylvia in an upstairs hotel room and she swung at him instinctively in defence. She was like a wildcat when cornered and struck back with everything she had.The long-time drug user was interested in Lenny for one reason only: to score pot, not sex.The rejection once again enraged Fraser who instantly retaliated. He smashed her in the mouth and grabbed the piece of timber he’d rested against the wall. The splintered wood contained alloy elements and had been used as a window weight. Forensic examinations would reveal the timber was heavy and unforgiving, slicing through Sylvia’s flesh, cracking her skull in a mosaic pattern 3.2 centimetres across her right temple. Fraser, who was some 20 centimetres taller than Sylvia, used severe force as he whacked her over and over and over. A terrified Sylvia screamed as she slumped to the ground with Fraser striking inwards and upwards with unfaltering accuracy from her left side. Rockhampton’s Police Headquarters was just 800 metres away, fronting the same Bolsover Street as the Queensland Hotel, but no one could hear her screams. Blood pumped from her head and sprayed the walls and ceiling some 3 metres high as Fraser swung his wooden club back and forth. Her almost luminous skin took on a scarlet hue as the left side of her head caved in, unable to withstand Fraser’s hurricane of blows. Blood pooled and congealed forming rattails in her hair. Forensic examinations would later show the splatter and ROOM 13
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pooling patterns indicated that Fraser bashed Sylvia while she was on the ground, with the upper part of her body and head just slightly up the wall. A pathologist’s report would reveal multiple blows to the left side, causing fracturing around the forehead and facial areas, as well as at least one severe blow to the right. Fraser later confessed,‘She was screaming so I hit her, at least four times. I smashed the left side of her skull in four times with the weapon, blood pumped out all over the place.’ When the halls of the Queensland Hotel were once again quiet Fraser could begin his next assault. In an animalistic frenzy he tore at her leather plait belt snapping it in two. He snatched at the two blood-soaked bras Sylvia wore to support her ample breasts, ripped off her jeans, her odd black socks and Adidas sneakers. He tossed her heavily soiled underpants onto the hotel’s awning. Sylvia’s eyes remained open yet unresponsive as he climbed on top and raped her. Fraser thrust against Sylvia, taking time to feed his addiction – there was no rush. Barry Richardson was the only person who had seen Sylvia was with Fraser and he wasn’t out looking for her. ‘Richo’ had first met Fraser at Etna Creek Jail in 1989 and flogged him soon after he learned Fraser was a rapist. Even criminals have their standards and there is an old code among prisoners: offences against women and children are particularly abhorrent and attract ritual beatings.These beatings can be fatal. Fraser was a sex offender who had broken the code and Richardson lined up to serve a little jailhouse justice. Richardson had been jailed for driving while disqualified, using a false name, obstructing and assaulting police and stealing and receiving stolen goods. It was not his first stay at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Even though Richo had bashed Fraser during their initial introduction, Fraser saw him as a potential ally. Some rapists need protectors in prison if they are to 142
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survive and despite his violent past, Fraser still remained a coward. Fraser offered to run errands and help out whenever he could; he was Richo’s ‘go-for’. They frequently exchanged conversation as Fraser toiled the gardens and Richo worked in the administrative office. Fraser was a big talker. Sylvia had a crush on Richo. Despite an eight year age gap between them, they shared a mutual affection and attraction to each other. They first met in February 1999, when Sylvia’s boyfriend, Dougherty, a mechanic, was flatting with a man who had Richo’s bike.When Richo went to collect his property he met Dougherty and Sylvia. He became close friends with the couple, even though a jealous Dougherty sensed a longing between the two. Quietly spoken Sylvia often followed Richo around, asking if she could get things for him. She told him about her unhappy relationship and that she had fallen out of love with Dougherty. Sylvia, who was desperate to have children, had been with Dougherty since she was sixteen, but just one month after the couple moved to Rockhampton from Broken Hill – around Christmas 1998 – the fighting began and noises could be heard by the neighbours.There was constant yelling and arguing and Sylvia would often emerge with thick pancake make-up. She left Dougherty after a heated fight over money, returning only to feed her pets and collect her mail. During her absence Dougherty became frantic and left notes begging her to come back.After six weeks Sylvia returned but suffered blackouts and episodes of memory loss from her heavy drug use. She also had a miscarriage. The bickering soon started up again and Sylvia turned to Richo for solace.They spent the morning of the day before her murder talking at her and Dougherty’s house. As two visitors arrived Sylvia disappeared upstairs. She emerged, pissed off, ROOM 13
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about twenty minutes later and headed down to the back shed, and then marched down Dennison Street, towards the main part of town. Dougherty also appeared at the shed some fifteen minutes later, asking Richo in which direction Sylvia had headed. He grabbed his bike and went off in pursuit. When Richo and Dougherty met up later that day, Dougherty revealed that Sylvia was in the mall thinking things over and would return in one hour. But Sylvia would never make it home.The countdown to her murder had already begun. By the evening, Dougherty was in a panicked state. He and Richo had both ridden their bikes searching for Sylvia for the best part of the night. Richo had seen Dougherty six times when he was riding around looking for Sylvia, the last time at about 1 am in the mall before he went home. But as daylight broke on Sunday 18 April, Sylvia was still missing. That morning, Richo went over to Dougherty’s place to meet his mate, Mick O’Shea. Just after midday, O’Shea and Richo were riding back to Richo’s caravan at North Rockhampton, when they saw Sylvia walking on the old bridge across the Fitzroy River back to the city’s south side. She claimed she had spent the night under the north side of the bridge and did not know what she was doing. She had slept in what she was wearing – black jeans with a rip in the left knee, a black printed t-shirt, and white sneakers. In her right back pocket she carried an old pocketknife. Offering her a hot shower and something to eat, Richo doubled Sylvia on his bike back to his place. As she slowly ate Richo’s steak and eggs, Sylvia started talking about a man who had followed her the previous night. When she sat so did he, mirroring her moves as she stood and walked on. But Sylvia failed to name the man or state whether she knew him. Reaching for the brown-handled knife from her 144
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pocket she said she was not worried and became evasive as Richo continued to quiz her about the hickey-like bruise on the right side of her neck.A man she met that Saturday would later testify he had left a love bite while he and Sylvia had sex after a party that night. Sylvia placed the knife back in her pocket and without saying where she was going, made known where she wouldn’t be – at Dougherty’s. Sylvia didn’t love him any more. Richo left shortly after Sylvia, and rode through the mall towards Allenstown hoping he might see her. But he didn’t. After visiting a friend he rode back through the mall just before dark. As he turned the corner near the newsagency at the top end of the mall, he saw Sylvia sitting on a bus seat and she was not alone. It was around 6.30 pm. Richo remembered Fraser from jail and had seen him around the mall on many occasions. Fraser scoured the mall every day, looking for cigarette butts and lonely women. Fraser, who was looking nervous, also recognised Richo. Richo asked Sylvia what she was going to do but Sylvia didn’t respond in any way. He used her nicknames, ‘Spinner’ and ‘Tripper’ – earned because she often appeared in her own world, drifting or dreaming about something. He asked her again what she was doing but she still remained silent, looking vague and confused.As Richo turned to leave he offered Sylvia a place to stay so she didn’t have to sleep under the bridge again. Neither Fraser nor Sylvia replied and Richo left. A couple of hours later he ran into Dougherty on the Fitzroy River Bridge. Dougherty was still riding around looking for Sylvia. ‘Have you seen Sylvia?’ Dougherty asked. ‘No, I haven’t,’ Richo lied. Richo didn’t mention he had given her breakfast that morning and had seen her sitting next to Loony Lenny in the mall earlier that evening. Unbeknown to the two men in Sylvia’s life, she had been ROOM 13
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brutally murdered and Fraser was already busy covering his tracks. He wrapped a towel around Sylvia’s head and moved her next door, into Room 12, as he attempted to clean up the results of his fury. He later confessed to an inmate: While I was on the floor blood got on my hand, when I stood up I accidentally touched the wall, I didn’t want my hand print on the wall so I wiped it off, it became worse because there was so much blood on the towel. I used a towel, another towel to try and wipe the blood off the wall. After I cleaned up I placed the towel in a hole in the fibro wall above the stairs.
Tiny drops of blood appeared like polka dots on the topside of the carpet, as demonstration of Fraser’s strength. Blood cascaded down the room’s eastern wall on to its skirting board, as well as on the northern wall and on the outside of the door. Fraser carried Sylvia down the stairs.With each step Sylvia left a trail of blood as momentum moved her head up and down, back and forth. Drip, drip, drip.There was blood everywhere – on the handrail, the concrete floor, in the gent’s toilet area to the right of the internal stairwell, on the wall and doorframe of the toilet door beside the urinal, near the gent’s sign, and on the cistern and bathroom walls. There was so much matted hair – on the toilet door and walls – broken teeth and clotted blood, that later, those demolishing the hotel would have to flush it with industrial cleaner in an attempt to clean the drain. Blood would also be left on the Kelvinator freezer where her shirt and its pocket contents – a green cigarette lighter, matches and nail clippers – would be found along with her black socks, Adidas sneakers, white and black bras, two lengths of brown belt, a cloth necklace, black jeans and a hair 146
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band. The freezer was full of water, which Fraser thought would wash away any evidence of him. Her underpants would be found on the William Street awning of the hotel, outside the first floor fire exit. A knife was also found on the beams underneath the stairwell landing. A naked, dead and bloodied Sylvia sat propped against a downstairs toilet. The next morning was business as usual for Fraser. Shoeless and dressed in holey jeans, Fraser took Wraight to the unemployment office to inquire about work on the East Street Mall upgrade. He told his case manager he was ‘shooting through to Longreach’ on Thursday to help a mate move out there and would be in touch. Two days later at 10 am on Wednesday 21 April, Fraser visited the Capricorn Model House. Gordon Davey, the owner, had met Fraser through a prison officer from Etna Creek Jail; while he was inside Fraser would order parts for his model cars and the association continued when he got out. Model cars were an obsession for Fraser, a passion he often put on display under the shop’s front counter.While the cars were not for sale, Fraser would often guide associates into the store to observe and admire his handiwork. He liked to boast and get credit for his creations. Fraser would also often borrow money from Davey, usually the day before his welfare payment was due. He was after a loan that day too. Davey mentioned that the Queensland Hotel was to be demolished and Fraser became agitated, anger turning his face and eyes red.‘They can’t do that,’ he said, storming out with his $10 loan. Fraser returned to the Queensland Hotel. He placed Sylvia’s naked body at the back door, and checked that the coast was clear before dumping her into the boot of the red Mazda he had bought in April after selling the Honda to the ROOM 13
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local wrecker. Her head caught on the boot, leaving a smudge of blood on the hinge, with other samples found on the rear passenger seat behind the driver, on the door trim near the handle, and above the right armrest. Her DNA was also found on Fraser’s Tallyho papers in the glove box, suggesting he enjoyed a post-murder cigarette before the blood had even dried. Fraser hadn’t planned on having to move Sylvia’s body, and so the drive to Sandy Point near Yeppoon was fast and frantic. Her decomposed remains would not be found until eighteen months after her death, but the thrill of her murder would not even last a week. His sexual urges were heightened and he was manic. Fraser hated losing control, and once again turned his mind to restoring a sense of equilibrium.An opportunist, indiscriminate in victim selection, age was no issue for Fraser – nine-year-old Keyra Steinhardt was fresh prey as she skipped home.
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11 INNOCENCE LOST FRASER’S FISTS WERE his best weapon. His broad, stubby hands had choked, clubbed, violated and suffocated, while his right hook had split skulls, snapped necks and delivered instant loss of consciousness. Fraser had mastered the blitz attack and he would spare no ferocity for nine-year-old Keyra Steinhardt. Fraser had only one intention for Keyra, to rape her. It had been just ten days since Keyra had been allowed to walk home alone from school, ever since she turned nine. She had wanted to ride her pushbike but her stepfather Blair Crewther said no because Keyra had trouble concentrating on the road, and a local boy had just been killed on his bicycle. Her parents wanted her to do a year of walking home, crossing at the traffic lights and not speaking to or taking anything from strangers, before being allowed to ride her bike. But Keyra would never get the chance to ride her bike again – let alone prove herself – and her parents would never get to keep their promise. Keyra was in a good mood as she left school and started 149
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her 30-minute journey home, walking along the tops of fences and jumping over fence posts before passing the Sunset Shop, on the corner of Livingstone and Berserker Streets. She walked with a school friend to the newsagents on the corner of Elphinstone and Berserker streets, and went inside while her friend continued walking home alone. Keyra was now also alone – or so she thought – as she cut through an overgrown vacant allotment, over a kilometre from the primary school and adjacent to the North Rockhampton State High School. The allotment, over an acre in size, was a shortcut between Robinson and Dean Streets and was bordered by houses, the high school and a leisure centre. Fraser had followed Keyra the day before, not long after he’d dumped Sylvia’s body at Sandy Point, when Keyra had taken her normal route home – up Berserker Street and right into Robinson. He’d trailed at a distance of about ten metres before standing next to her at the lights she needed to cross to get to Dean Street. He watched her make it home safely, knowing it was for the last time. The next day, Thursday 22 April, Fraser parked his car at the northern end of Dean Street and walked around the block along Berserker Street, parallel to Dean. Students would tell police he had a hand-rolled cigarette in his left hand, unkempt hair, a ‘feral look on his face’ and eyes that bulged in anger as he turned the corner into Robinson, shadowing Keyra into the allotment. No one knows what made Keyra walk through the allotment that day – some police have speculated she may have seen other students doing it or that Fraser might have approached her beforehand and she was trying to get away from him. Her reasons will never be known. Keyra skipped and hummed as she headed for the track 150
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DIPLO
N
GAIR S
AV E ST DEAN
SIMPS
ON ST
HIGH
EN CH IE
AV E
FR E MILLS AV
SIMPS ON ST
DIPLO CK ST
DU TH
Kiernans’ house
Keyra’s house
ST HIGH
TON S
T
STONE
ST
LIVING
ST
MOSTY N ST
ELPHIN
MOSTY
N ST
ST
BERS ERKE
R ST
T
STONE
Berserker Street State School
DEAN S
EDING
Keyra’s walk 0
SU TH ER S
AV E
BERS
ROBIN SON S T
North Rockhampton Special School
PH ILP
ERKER
ST
T
500 m
AV E
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through the long grass – she wanted to be a singer when she grew up, and was not averse to practising. She loved pop music, and in particular the movie Grease, and would dress up and stand in front of the mirror singing and talking into her tape recorder before handing her debut tapes to her mum. She loved helping other people and was sociable and polite. Had Fraser said hello to Keyra, she would almost certainly have answered him back. Despite her mother instilling a sense of ‘stranger danger’ into her daughter, Keyra had gone through a phase of greeting strangers on the street, and would confront those who ignored her with,‘I said hi to you.’ Keyra loved being the centre of attention, and Fraser was an attentive audience. Fraser clenched his right fist and quickened his steps, five metres behind, three metres behind, then striking distance. With one powerful backhand Fraser struck with the same trademark brutality he’d used to subdue earlier victims; Keyra’s tiny frame buckled as he knocked her off the well-worn track and into the long grass. Her head splintered from the left ear to the left eye, leaving a 40 mm slightly curved, horizontal fracture. The silver headband her mother had given her for her birthday fell out of her fine blonde hair.The animalistic attack that followed would crush and twist the headband’s metal teeth, while Keyra herself would lose two teeth. The impact almost certainly would have caused concussion, possibly even brain damage. Keyra bled onto the grass, leaving a pool of blood about 15 cm in diameter, as a barefoot Fraser bent down on one knee, submerging himself into the waist-high grass. He lifted the skirt of her green uniform, tore off her underpants and raped her. Local residents Lynette and Kerrod Kiernan watched the attack from their high-set timber house across the road on Dean Street, opposite the allotment. 152
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Every day at 3.15 pm the Kiernans sat on their small upstairs verandah savouring a cup of coffee while they waited for their teenage son to arrive back from high school. When their son got home he sat on the verandah facing his mother and father, who both looked out towards Dean Street. Some trees partially obscured their view into the allotment, which had a diagonal north-south dirt track connecting Robinson to Dean Street. Lynette knew teachers, dog walkers and up to fifty students a day used the path opposite her house as a shortcut. She had also seen ‘tiny thin little’ Keyra on numerous occasions, singing and talking to herself as she walked past their house in the afternoons, but this was the first time Keyra had cut through the allotment which would bring her out onto Dean Street. At 3.35 pm Lynette saw a man walking three metres behind Keyra. She had seen the same man following her the day before. She had watched the girl, dressed in the school uniform for Berserker Street State School – a green pleated skirt and a yellow t-shirt with an emblem on the front and a bottlegreen coloured collar – cross the traffic lights at the intersection of Dean and Robinson Streets. As the girl crossed, the shoeless man followed her, although he was a little further down from the lights and crossed on an angle, jogging to get to the other side in front of her. Lynette wondered at that moment whether the man was the girl’s father, but thought nothing more of it when she lost sight of them.And now here he was again, in the same clothes.‘I said to my husband,“There is that fellow following that young girl in the allotment,”’ Lynette later testified. Unperturbed, Kerrod got up and went inside to make another cup of coffee. Keyra walked to within 70 metres of the Robinson Street boundary when the man lashed out, punching her in the head. INNOCENCE LOST
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Lynette looked at her watch; it was 3.40 pm and ‘the little girl fell to the ground and I couldn’t see her for the long grass’. She turned to her husband, who was still inside, and said, ‘That fellow has just walloped that little girl.’ Kerrod, an invalid pensioner, opened the front door and looked into the paddock but after failing to see anything, went back to his coffee. From the verandah, Lynette saw Fraser bend down on one knee and move ‘up and down’. And while she couldn’t be sure what he was doing, Lynette thought he ‘might be trying to rape her or something’.Their son turned and saw what he also described as a ‘white shirt moving around and bobbing up and down’.The little girl could not be seen; her attacker blocked her from view. Fraser then ripped off his white t-shirt, stood up and threw Keyra’s dark blue backpack into nearby bushes, towards the Kiernan family home. One of her black suede-like sneakers was thrown in another direction. ‘He went back and bent down and appeared to be cradling whatever he picked up,’ Lynette said. Fraser walked a short distance to the other side of the track and placed Keyra out of view, in longer grass, behind some trees off the dirt pathway. Lynette called out to her husband after the man took off, running towards Robinson Street, leaving an unconscious yet more than likely still alive Keyra alone in the bushland. Hearing the man had run away, Kerrod went back outside and, with his son, ‘ran down the front stairs and out onto the front path to see where he was going’. He watched a barefoot, bare-chested Fraser take flight and returned inside to his coffee. About two minutes later Fraser returned in a medium size red car – his 1986 Mazda 626 sedan – from the Robinson Street entrance. The couple’s son watched Fraser drive along the path, veering left towards the clump of trees where they had last seen Keyra, before executing a U-turn, facing his car 154
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back towards Robinson Street. Fraser was risking even more attention driving onto the walking track but he had to collect his victim. Lynette called out to her husband again:‘There’s a red car in the paddock.’ Fraser got out of his car, unlocked the boot – which had to be held open with a length of red-coloured steel stored in the trunk – and wrapped Keyra in his shirt. ‘You’d better come out, it’s the same bloke and he’s opened the boot,’ Lynette said. Mother and son then watched Fraser walk a ‘short distance’, bend over and ‘pick up a body’. Lynette again updated her husband: ‘He’s just put her in the boot.’ Fraser gave it a good slam – the catch was a bit tricky – and drove back onto Robinson Street, screeching his tyres as he took off. The Kiernans told police Keyra’s body was limp and she appeared unconscious as Fraser dropped her into the boot of his car. Investigators and family members pray she stayed that way for the hours that followed – that she didn’t call out for her mummy, cry and scream to go home or fearfully plead with her rapist. They console themselves that the last thing Keyra saw was the serene bush view in front and not the frenzied, bulbous eyes of a psychopath. A short time later Lynette saw three kids stop around the spot where Keyra was attacked. The youths looked at something and walked on. One child later told police that between 4 and 4.15 pm he saw blood on the grass and rode around looking for its cause before continuing home to tell his parents about what he had seen. The Kiernans sat on their verandah for a while ‘talking about what we should do’. Twenty minutes after the attack started, Lynette phoned a girlfriend to ask for advice, but when the phone wasn’t answered she made an anonymous 000 call to INNOCENCE LOST
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police. She ‘really didn’t want to get involved’ because she was ‘crippled with Ross River Fever’ and believed her 15-year-old son was too young to help, while her husband was disabled and was ‘flat out walking let alone running’. Police traced the call and, with journalists conducting their own investigations, within a couple of days the media exposed both the Kiernans’ identity and their behaviour.The family’s lack of action when a young life was at stake outraged the Rockhampton community: had they intervened, even screamed out from across the road, Keyra may have lived. Had they called the police after two minutes instead of twenty,Treasa Steinhardt would have been spared a nauseating fourteen-day wait to find her only daughter. The Kiernans’ neighbours were so disgusted they couldn’t stand to live next door any more and put their homes on the market almost immediately. Hate mail, graffiti and abuse from others would force the Kiernans to sell up and relocate to another part of the city, but Lynette failed to understand the public outcry, and has claimed she would think twice before ever helping the police again. Rockhampton police station received the anonymous phone call at 4.13 pm. The female caller said she had seen a man bash and abduct a child from a vacant allotment across the road, and place her in the boot of a small red-coloured sedan. He was wearing yellow shorts and, at one time, a white shirt. Police immediately responded – three carloads of uniformed officers and detectives raced to the abduction scene, arriving three minutes after the phone call, which they had traced. At first they could not locate the murder site but the Kiernans pointed it out. Police found a left shoe – minus its shoelace – and a navy backpack with the name ‘Keyra Crewther’ (her stepfather’s surname) written on it in a child’s handwriting. Her phone number and address were written on the inside. 156
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There was also a small arc of fresh red blood on the western side of the block as well as tracks of flattened grass caused by a vehicle doing a U-turn off the path and towards Robinson Road. Dirt tyre tracks marked the change in terrain, where Fraser drove off the dirt on to the sealed Robinson Road.There were strands of hair and five bare foot impressions in the dirt, between 10 and 40 metres from where Keyra’s blood was found, towards Dean Street. Her black shoe was found at the base of a small clump of trees, on the western side of the track, 10 metres from the main pool of blood. There was blood on a twig and on a eucalyptus leaf, with tiny droplets on the path nearby. The small amount of blood gave detectives some hope that Keyra might still be alive. The area was declared a crime scene and officers collected blood samples for forensic testing as well as casts of the footprints and tyre tracks found at the scene.Tests on two left footprints at the scene would show an abnormality similar to that of a print taken from Fraser after his arrest – the little toe on his left foot didn’t touch the ground as he walked. But, despite the Kiernans’ reports that Keyra was raped, investigators could not find traces of semen. Blue-eyed Keyra Wynetta Steinhardt was born on 12 April 1990, to Treasa Lee-Ann Steinhardt and Des Sutton, in the central western Queensland town of Emerald. Treasa met Sutton, who lived in Cairns, while she was working as a bar attendant. The couple had lived in different towns but maintained a long distance casual relationship that produced Keyra. Treasa named her baby girl Keyra because she was the key to her heart. She had two names picked out for her first child – Toscana and Shatell – but two weeks before she gave birth chose a name that showed what an important part of her this daughter was. Keyra would provide the key to the missing INNOCENCE LOST
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persons’ investigations of three other women, but in finishing that puzzle, Treasa’s heart would break. She had lost her only daughter, her best friend. As Treasa and Des drifted apart, the single mother moved into a housing commission unit in Emerald, with vivacious Keyra staying with her father during holidays. Keyra was smart, intelligent and curious, wanting to explore her surroundings all the time. She loved Sesame Street and Play School, and idolised her godmother, who was very pretty, wore make-up and was flashy. Treasa encouraged Keyra’s adulation, hoping she would not become a tomboy like herself. Keyra liked jewellery and pretty things, expensive dolls and fluffy toys. She was the daughter who, if sent to her room to learn her manners, knew exactly how to worm her way back into her mother’s affections. Her bedroom walls were painted pink – one of her favourite colours – while the family home was adorned with the craft Keyra loved to make.Treasa also kept a diary, starting when her daughter was born – she would write a letter each year explaining the mysteries of life. It would be a keepsake for her daughter when Treasa died. While on holidays with a girlfriend in Rockhampton in 1993,Treasa met Blair Crewther in a nightclub. She started seeing Crewther, a forklift driver for Queensland Railways, and relocated from Emerald to Rockhampton six months later. A year later Treasa and Blair bought a house together in Philp Avenue, North Rockhampton, and Keyra began preschool.Treasa started part-time work as a Woolworths checkout operator while Crewther continued at the railways. In 1997,Treasa gave birth to redheaded Connor, whom his older sister just adored. Keyra played ‘mother hen’ to Connor, who was seven years younger than her. On the morning of her murder, she watched cartoons with him. Keyra was a good sister and a reliable oldest child. 158
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That morning Treasa had been sitting in the lounge room sipping her coffee, when Keyra burst in without her school jumper. Keyra loved running and gymnastics, and her black sneakers had left tread marks deep in the carpet as she tried to run out the door early to play with her friends before school. She’d gone to her first Blue Light Disco six weeks earlier, and had just started to notice boys. Keyra had chosen a pink top instead of the standard yellow school shirt – she loved the colours pink and purple – and put a black ‘Bad Girls’ cap on her head. It was before 8 am and cold outside and so Treasa told Keyra to put something warm on over the top. She sat in the front seat of her mother’s brown Commodore sedan as Treasa drove down Dean Street to Berserker and onto Bedford, which runs adjacent to the primary school.Treasa stopped the car, kissed Keyra on her cheek and told her she loved her. Keyra answered,‘I love you too.’ As Keyra leaned over to kiss Connor, Treasa reminded her she owed her $5 for doing all her chores – bringing the clothes off the line, putting them away, making up her brother’s cot, doing her homework, putting the dishes away and tidying her room. Keyra was in good spirits as she walked to the school gate. She was looking forward to spending her lunchtime working in the gardening club she had set up with three of her girlfriends – they would plant flowers around the school. She was an average student, competent in most areas of study, with her fourth grade teacher John Wall describing her as ‘feisty’. Keyra was strong willed and determined, and – given the chance – always stood up for her rights. Thursday 22 April started normally for Fraser too. Rape, sodomy and murder were like making a cup of coffee – easy, natural and addictive. In fact, feeding his addiction never disrupted his usual routine – scavenging car wrecking yards, INNOCENCE LOST
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hanging out in the mall, pretending to look for work and grocery shopping. Fraser would simply keep his appointment with his next victim and then go about his usual business, unflustered and unfazed. So on this day Fraser would simply visit friends, try to pawn a guitar and then off-load his girlfriend to free up some time for his murderous plans.As part of his preparation he went to a store in the mall to buy a vacuum hose – he would need it later for cleaning.While there he ran into Ken Waltham, his friend from Mount Morgan. Waltham noticed Fraser was agitated and didn’t want to speak with him so he walked away. Fraser then dropped in at Catheryn Perry’s place about 10 am. He’d met Perry two years earlier when he was interested in buying a white panel van that was sitting behind her neighbour’s house. He often dropped in to see her, offering to do odd jobs for free at her South Rockhampton residence, including mowing the lawn. He never took money but occasionally helped himself to lunch, and would go through stages of appearing almost daily and then disappear for weeks. In fact, several months had passed since Perry had last seen Fraser. With her other children at school, Perry, then 36, sat down with her three-year-old daughter to watch the children’s television show High Five. Perry was sitting on the couch wearing just a t-shirt when Fraser arrived, and feeling uncomfortable because she was wearing so little, went to change her clothes before starting her housework. She popped back and forth to check on Fraser, who had already started talking to her little girl, as she didn’t trust leaving him alone with her; something wasn’t quite right about her guest. Her visitor stayed for 90 minutes before asking Perry for a lift back into the city, as he was on his way to see an old friend from Mount Morgan. Fraser always parked under the northern end of the bridge because his car was unregistered. 160
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He went home to his Baker Street flat, but headed back out with Wraight and drove back to the bridge after half an hour. They went into the Rockhampton mall. He took a few minutes to chat to an associate Brett Duggan at the Grand Hotel, and they agreed to meet later that afternoon around 5 pm for Fraser to see about a guitar. At 2 pm Wraight went to Rockhampton Magistrates’ Court registry and withdrew the domestic violence charge and order against Fraser. Police would later seize security camera footage from the court which showed Fraser waiting for his de facto in the foyer.The couple left the city and Fraser dropped Wraight off at the house of their friend, Katrina Fry, at about 2.30 pm. In her police statement, Fry said Fraser declared he was in a hurry to see a ‘bloke’ at ten past three and indicated he was going to Dean Street. Fraser was mindful Keyra might already be on her way home. As the Kiernans could later attest, he had soon made up for lost time. Fraser fled the allotment with Keyra in the boot, driving erratically through North Rockhampton’s surrounding streets around 4.30 pm. He went home, changed his shorts and threw his soiled clothes into the washing machine before he got back in the car and collected his girlfriend from Fry’s house to go for a drive in the country.Wraight later told police she noticed he’d changed out of the white t-shirt and yellow shorts he’d been wearing an hour earlier – and which he’d been wearing for the past couple of days. When questioned by Wraight, Fraser claimed he’d spilt some pie on his clothes. He drove towards the sun, past the Rockhampton soccer fields, near the Callaghan racecourse, along a bumpy road eventually leading onto a dirt track. He gave the finger to a jockey training a horse, and at the end of the road stopped the car, ordered Wraight to look straight ahead and got out. Wraight tried to INNOCENCE LOST
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do as she was told, but with the sun in her eyes, turned her head and opened the car door. She saw Fraser remove something resembling a ‘big doll’, in a green skirt or shorts from the boot of his car.When he saw Wraight looking, Fraser dropped the doll and struck Wraight with a closed fist on her right leg. He pushed his knuckles hard into her mid thigh, promising it was an example of what was to come if she didn’t obey him. It was a painful reminder of the relationship’s power structure – no sooner had Wraight withdrawn the domestic violence charges than her boyfriend was at it again. Wraight was terrified, and as she turned to look back into the sun noticed the ‘doll’ was now on the ground. She saw blonde hair, forehead and ‘a little bit of nose’.Wraight had no idea it was a nine-yearold girl. She heard the grass rustle as Fraser walked into the bush. She saw him kneel down and ‘four or five songs’ played out on the car’s radio before she heard him moving through the grass again. When he returned he was empty-handed. Fraser closed the boot, and with Wraight still looking straight ahead, drove off. The couple again parked under the ‘old bridge’ that crosses the Fitzroy River, and walked to Duggan’s house in Alms Street a short distance away. They stayed for about ten minutes, some time between 5 and 5.30 pm, before driving back to their flat after 6 pm. Fraser asked his landlord Fred Abt if he could park in front of his downstairs flat.Abt commented on how muddy the car was, as Fraser always had a clean vehicle. It looked as though he’d gone bush. Still smarting from Fraser’s punch, Wraight went straight upstairs and cooked stir-fry and noodles around 7.30 pm, with Fraser still washing the car. She ate dinner alone. It was dark outside, but Fraser wanted to be thorough washing off the mud and cleaning the carpets. 162
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Once the car was clean, Fraser went on to the verandah to eat his meal. The manual labour had bolstered his appetite. Around 8 pm Wraight and Fraser returned to Fry’s place for music and a chat and then Fraser dropped in on Duggan, for the third time that day, to talk about selling his guitar. The couple returned to their flat around 9 pm and Wraight fell asleep with Fraser sitting next to her. It was part of the couple’s nightly routine, after which Fraser would deadlock Wraight into the flat and then disappear for hours.Tonight was no different; Fraser wanted to disturb Keyra again. He drove about fifteen minutes northeast of Rockhampton towards Yeppoon, along the Yeppoon Road – it was an area he knew well and one that he had already used as a dumping ground for previous victims. He finally returned home just before 10 pm. While Fraser was dumping Keyra’s body that afternoon, Rockhampton detectives Steve Crouch and Col Harvey went to the schoolgirl’s home and spoke with her stepfather Blair Crewther, who had last seen her asleep when he went to work that morning at five. It was now 5.15 pm and Blair had thought she might be at her babysitters. The detectives then headed to Woolworths to speak with Keyra’s mother who said she had dropped her daughter off at school at 8 am and had arranged for her to walk home. She provided them with a description of the clothes Keyra was wearing when she last saw her. Police contacted Keyra’s principal in an attempt to track down the lollipop lady working the crossings that day and a command post was set up in Robinson Street, complete with temporary floodlighting. Roadblocks were established, closing Berserker and Dean streets as police scoured the area for clues. News of the abduction was released through local radio INNOCENCE LOST
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and television stations which led to a break-through. Rockhampton prison officer Ben Robson had been watching the evening news before he started his shift and recognised the clothing the suspect had been wearing was similar to what he had seen Fraser in that afternoon. He went to the crime scene and told police that, while he was at the North Rockhampton State Primary School collecting his kids, he had seen former inmate and serial rapist Lennie Fraser walking behind a blonde-haired schoolgirl near a vacant allotment along Robinson Street. Robson had noticed Fraser wearing a whitish shirt and there was a red car parked nearby. Police checked motor vehicle registrations as they chased their new lead, but nothing came up – Fraser was still unlicensed and no car was registered in his name. Keyra’s mother and stepfather were interviewed again, while detectives Darren Lees and Carl Burgoyne also went to the house that had reported the attack on Keyra.The Kiernans’ house was on Dean Street, about 100 metres from the spot where Keyra was attacked.The detectives listened as the couple relayed what they had seen that afternoon – how they had sat on their verandah and watched Fraser as he clubbed, possibly raped, abandoned and then abducted Keyra from the allotment. Police were so horrified with the Kiernans’ attitude of not wanting to get involved that they discussed amongst themselves whether bystanders who failed to help could be charged. However, with nothing in the State’s Criminal Code to support such a move, the Kiernans escaped prosecution. However the family’s inaction was not without some fallout; journalists who doorknocked the family the day after Keyra’s abduction found the couple’s son still in shock, vomiting on the verandah. But for Lees, the Kiernans were important eyewitnesses to 164
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Fraser’s involvement in Keyra’s abduction, regardless of their attitude: If they hadn’t made the phone call, we may never have known about the red car, the description of Fraser and what he was wearing. It was that information that we aired on television later that night which resulted in the prison officer ringing us and telling us he saw Fraser wearing the clothes similar to that of the offender. If they had called earlier, we don’t know whether Keyra would still be alive, we don’t know, the pathologist doesn’t know … there’s nothing we can do to change that.
Treasa always maintained hope and optimism. She reasoned that Keyra would be battered and bruised – emotionally, physically and perhaps mentally – but would still be breathing. Before police had arrived at her work, her husband had called with the news that Keyra was not home, and she felt sick in the stomach. For the past two weeks, since she had been walking home from school, Keyra would always beat her stepfather through the door. While she waited, Keyra would do her homework and watch TV. Blair had told Treasa he was calling from the police station.Treasa then rang home, clinging to the hope that Keyra was there, and also contacted Blair’s mother and Connor’s day care mum.When she rang the station back, officers asked her to come down. When Treasa left work she had no idea about what the Kiernans had seen. She thought Keyra would be fine and that all the attention was unnecessary. ‘I thought, what was the big deal?’ Treasa said. As she drove home from the police station with Blair, they passed the allotment – she had no idea that the floodlit area was the scene of Keyra’s abduction. INNOCENCE LOST
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As the hunt continued into the night, police contacted local hospitals and chemists in the event an injured Keyra had been admitted. A BOLF had been issued for a red car as soon as the Kiernans gave police their description.Around 7 pm the command post recorded a 58-second media release for local radio and television stations, and as updates of the attack and abduction were broadcast in the media, members of the public called in numerous sightings of red cars – some of which were speeding and driving erratically. By 9.30 that night, police had run checks on Fraser’s name, which registered on the domestic violence index at flat 3, number 178 Baker Street, North Rockhampton. Information started to disseminate about a serial rapist with convictions in two states. Also, Mount Morgan police contacted their Rockhampton counterparts to pass on information relating to their former resident. For many Rockhampton police, that night was the first time they had heard of Leonard John Fraser. Just after 10 pm, police drove past the Baker Street flat. The lights were on and a small red vehicle, registration 039BVC, was parked in the garage. They saw suspicious movements coming from a large screen door and curtain inside the flat, and the lights were turned off straight after the drive-by. Fraser had been getting up and down out of bed, checking on movements outside the flat when he thought he noticed ‘coppers’ outside. Detectives Don Trenaman and Steve Crouch met Fraser as he walked down the stairs carrying a torch. Detectives Lees and Burgoyne were also called to the flat. Fraser greeted Lees and Burgoyne as they arrived at 10.25 pm, telling them he had only moved there just before Christmas. Lees dismissed the small talk and told Fraser they were investigating the alleged abduction and disappearance of nine-year-old schoolgirl Keyra Steinhardt. 166
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‘Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. No way,’ Fraser interrupted Lees, ‘Because I’m no child molester.’ Fraser talked fast, with limited vocabulary, and was obviously a man of little intelligence. Despite his pleas of innocence, Fraser was asked to accompany the detectives to the police station, with Fraser obliging providing he could take Wraight with him – he didn’t want police talking to her alone. Detectives noticed Fraser had fresh wounds on his hands. Lees repeatedly reminded Fraser of his right to remain silent, adding that he was not obliged to answer any questions and was not under arrest. Fraser said he was happy for police to come into his house and asked for his lawyer Doug Winning, but then erupted into a tirade when Lees asked him about his car. Fraser told him that anyone in prison could tell the police he ‘flattened every fuckin’ pedophile’ in prison and that he had his own kids in Brisbane.‘I am not bullshitting, but I am getting sick of this,’ Fraser said. Lees tried to calm him down, promising he would organise Wraight to follow to the police station. But Fraser was on the defensive, he was seeing things from a crim’s point of view and was not about to go down for kiddie fiddling. Lees again reminded him of his rights as Fraser began to explain his movements that day – he had left Wraight at Katrina Fry’s house and had gone to the local wreckers at Kawana on his own. After he picked her up later that day, he drove her down to the beach, near a boat ramp, and then went to see a fellow by the name of Brett Duggan. Fraser and Wraight then drove home to have dinner and returned to Fry’s house to pick up some order forms for lingerie. Fraser admitted his car was unregistered and that he had fitted it with licence plates from his old Honda. Because the car matched the description of one seen leaving the scene of the crime the INNOCENCE LOST
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detectives had grounds for a search warrant. While Fraser was happy to answer their questions, asking that they keep their voices down so his neighbours wouldn’t overhear, his car and flat were declared crime scenes. Fraser was taken to Rockhampton police station;Wraight was also taken but in a separate car. By 11 pm scenes-of-crime officers and detectives had descended on Fraser’s tidy flat.Their search took several days, uncovering children’s books, and a bag containing three human ponytails – one infested with dormant head lice – on top of a bedroom cupboard.The books included What’s Happening to My Body?, from the Kingston State High Library, as well as books on lesbianism, torture, drugs, sex and murder.There were also lockable diaries, address books, dictionaries, primary school workbooks and textbooks, joke books and fairy tales belonging to some of the girls Fraser had already tried to molest. Police also uncovered birthday cards and Christmas invitations between schoolgirls as well as their compasses, plastic pencil cases, calculators, puzzles and Bibles. Jewellery – including some items that would later be identified as belonging to Natasha Ryan – bags of women’s shoes of various sizes and female underwear, which didn’t belong to Wraight, were also recovered, as were the clothes Fraser had on that afternoon.The couple’s red vacuum cleaner, which contained a large quantity of dried grass and dirt in its collection bag, was seized, as well as documentation, including a brown wallet containing a Cash Converters photo ID card, video cards and a Centrelink pensioner’s concession card in the name of Maryanne Young, of Gladstone.The card had expired in December 1998. While they were en route to the police station just after 11 pm Keyra’s mother rang Lees, unaware her daughter’s attacker was already in custody. But Lees couldn’t talk and promised to call her back as soon as he could. Fraser was 168
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nervous as he walked into the Rockhampton Police Station. He commented that he hadn’t been there for a while. The three men then sat down in a small windowless interview room, putting on paper Fraser’s version of events. Fraser’s cigarette was almost finished, but he saved the butt to roll another later on, as he was running low on smokes. He was nervous and eager to talk; in fact, he said he had already told Wraight his car was going to land him in trouble. Fraser didn’t know anything about the missing schoolgirl. He had gone into town that morning, about 9.30 am, and walked over to Port Curtis following the old railway line to his friend Catheryn Perry. From there, he claimed he walked back to his car, which he’d parked at the northern end of the old bridge, the Fitzroy Bridge. Fraser explained he always parked it near the boat ramps because the car was unregistered and if he parked in the city he might get booked. Fraser wasn’t sure what time he reached his car because his diver’s watch needed new batteries, but he had returned home around 1.30 pm and had to be back in the city by 2 pm to meet Brett Duggan.When he returned home with Wraight for dinner, the six o’clock news was on Channel 9’s regional WIN television station. The couple had flicked stations midway through to watch Judge Judy. ‘We started watching WIN and Crissie said “No, we have got to go back around to a girlfriend’s place (to pick up the lingerie orders),”’ Fraser said. They returned to Fry’s house and stayed until 8.30 pm. When they returned to Baker Street, Fraser rolled Wraight a cigarette from his left-over butts, and settled down to watch an Italian movie at 9.30 pm.‘The thing is, we went in, we were laying down for a while, like covered up, we started having sex and I said to Crissie, I said,“I am getting up, I am going to go to the toilet” because my bladder felt INNOCENCE LOST
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full …,’ Fraser said. Wraight then told Fraser she was going to bed: ‘Crissie wanted to have sex again, and I just said, “No, I don’t feel like it. Let’s cover up and keep warm.”’ Fraser then went off on another tangent about how he wished the dogs that alerted him to a police presence that night had done the same when he and Wraight were robbed of a $4000 sewing machine. When Lees directed Fraser back to that afternoon he said he had picked Wraight up from Fry’s and returned to Baker Street.The finer details of Fraser’s version of events changed as Lees repeatedly asked him about his movements. The interview was terminated at 12.53 am and Fraser showed no signs of sympathy for the missing child or her family. Lees knew there was no way Fraser was going to surrender any information about the schoolgirl, no matter what approach police took:‘With the random abduction of children by strangers, when you’re past the 24-hour to 48-hour point you are really pushing shit up a hill.’ Eight hours later at 9 am, Rockhampton’s sandstone courthouse was packed with journalists and police, a steelyeyed Fraser sat motionless as the magistrate formally charged him with one count of child stealing. Fraser was remanded in custody while police released a photograph of strawberryblonde Keyra, bravely laughing as she held a python coiled around her neck and shoulders. The picture of the innocent, bubbly nine-year-old – taken at a PCYC camp two weeks before she disappeared – flashed around the country resonating in the hearts of the community.The blanket national coverage was picked up by overseas media as well. Treasa rang Keyra’s dad, Des, who agreed to come down from Cairns to support the family. ‘I didn’t think anyone had hurt her and had not seen the news updates,’ Treasa said. ‘The next day Darren Lees and Carl Burgoyne informed me 170
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that Keyra had been hurt and that they were trying to find her and that they had arrested a man over her abduction.’ The officers told Treasa that they were searching near the racecourse. ‘I told them she wasn’t there,’ Treasa said. ‘I still had hope she was alive, all along I believed she was alive and would be found.’ A massive search was launched – air, sea and land – with full support of the community and emergency services. In the first week, the search for Keyra was largely concentrated around the Callaghan racecourse and sporting fields in North Rockhampton.The area backed onto the banks of the Fitzroy River. Many witnesses contacted police saying they saw Fraser driving near there just after Keyra’s abduction. Marker tape sign-posted areas where 120 SES workers had walked shoulder to shoulder, searching on a grid basis. Men on horseback scoured hectares of largely vacant scrub and sparsely timbered couch grassland next to the Fitzroy River at the foot of the Berserker Range. Police divers waded through deep water, battled unfavourable tides, crocodile-infested waters and boggy mud.They did line searches through every type of waterhole – swamps, creeks and ponds. Phone calls from the public had confirmed sightings of Fraser driving erratically through the area near the Callaghan Racing Park in North Rockhampton, and on tracks reserved for training. The callers had also seen the boot of the car up, with a male person holding a rod of some sort from out of the car. Neville Peterson, a horse trainer and trotting driver, told police he saw a red car driving along one of the training tracks behind the racecourse around 4 pm, near the soccer fields. It was almost as if Fraser had been deliberately drawing attention to himself or had complete disregard for whether he was seen. When police searched near the track they found a black shoe beside the road – but it didn’t belong to Keyra. INNOCENCE LOST
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Jockey James Morris was working a horse named Chase Hanover on the training track about 5 pm, and was heading down behind the touch football grounds when he noticed a red car behind him.The track was solely used for training trotting horses and so Morris slowed down to keep an eye on the car, which also slowed but kept on coming. Morris turned the horse around and started to walk towards the car when it backed down the road away from him. Morris then turned the horse around again, to continue training, when he saw Fraser come back down the track again before squeezing the car through a gap in the logs. Once through, Fraser continued on to the bitumen, slowed down, passed through the car park, and put his right arm out the window giving Morris the finger. ‘I then heard him say “You’ll find it later,”’ Morris said. He noticed the man’s arm had tattoos. The publicity for the investigation into Keyra’s disappearance, dubbed Operation Care, also prompted a series of complaints of child stalking and assaults by the public against Fraser. This included a six-year-old girl who alleged Fraser gave her a large wad of cash. On another occasion the girl’s father had walked in on Fraser to find him kissing his daughter and biting her ear. A grandmother also claimed Fraser followed her and her four-year-old granddaughter – who was very similar in appearance to Keyra – around the mall the week before Easter. They found the school books of the 11-year-old girl he had tried to molest while her mother was in the next room, in his Baker Street flat. Through inquiries at the school, police learned that the girl and her mother had moved to NSW.The girl told NSW police she didn’t like staying with Fraser because he was ‘strange’ and scared her at times. Every morning police would gather in the major incident room to discuss the information received overnight and plan 172
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As a child growing up in northern Queensland and New South Wales, Lennie Fraser was a loner. (Private collection)
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Crissie Wraight, Fraser’s de facto at the time of his arrest.(Queensland Police)
Fraser’s mug shot, taken after his arrest for the murder of schoolgirl Keyra Steinhardt. (Queensland Police)
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Fraser liked blue-eyed Julie when he met her at the meatworks – he preferred vulnerable women in need. (Private collection)
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On 27 December 1998 at Kinka Beach, 100 metres down a dirt track, Fraser covered Julie’s body with dead branches. She lay unnoticed for almost two years. (Queensland Police)
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Beverley Leggo married Steve Wornham in 1984.The marriage lasted eighteen months. (Private collection)
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On 1 March 1999, Fraser found the perfect hiding place for Beverley’s body in a secluded area at Nankin Creek, 20 kilometres outside Rockhampton. She would not be found for eighteen months. (Queensland Police)
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Sylvia Benedetti, a slight 19-year-old, was no match for Fraser’s strong frame. (Private collection)
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On 18 April 1999, Fraser put Sylvia’s clothes, sneakers and the contents of her pockets in a freezer at the derelict Queensland Hotel. He believed that the water in the freezer would wash away all evidence of his involvement in her murder. (Queensland Police)
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The commonly used bushland track where Keyra Steinhardt was abducted and murdered. (Newspix / Cameron Laird)
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The view from the Kiernans’ verandah, opposite the track. (Queensland Police)
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Nine-year-old schoolgirl Keyra Steinhardt was abducted by Fraser on 22 April 1999. (Private collection)
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Treasa at the scene of her daughter’s abduction. (Newspix / Nathan Richter)
Treasa Steinhardt cries with Blair Crewther (Keyra’s stepfather) and Des Sutton (Keyra’s natural father) at the funeral on 10 May 1999. (Newspix / Nathan Richter)
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Senior Constable Owen Law struggles out of the mud in the Fitzroy River during the police search for Keyra’s body. She had been missing for three days. (Newspix / Adam Ward)
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Detectives Darren Lees (left) and Darrel How at the committal hearing of Leonard Fraser at Rockhampton Court on 23 November 1999. (Newspix / Adam Ward)
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Taskforce Alex detectives Back, left to right: John O’Keeffe, Darrin Padget, Brendan Rook and Roger Marek Front, left to right: Peter Ziser, David Hickey, Graham Rynders,Tony Lohmann Absent: Graham Clark (Queensland Police / Nathan Richter)
Image rights unavailable Witness prisoner Allan John Quinn being transported from court on 12 April 2002, where Fraser was on trial for murder. (The Courier-Mail)
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Leonard John Fraser being led to the watch-house by detectives on 10 Aug 2001. (Newspix / Bob Fenney)
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Relatives of Fraser’s victims Left to right: Marie Hadfield, Robert Ryan and Heather, Doris and Arthur Leggo and Kylie Elder (at front in white) outside the court during Fraser’s 2002 murder trial. (Newspix / Jamie Hanson)
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Image rights unavailable Natasha Ryan, aged 18, heading to court on 30 Apr 2003 as a witness in the murder trial of Leonard John Fraser. Fraser had previously been charged with Ryan’s murder. (Newspix / Nathan Richter)
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On 9 Sept 2004 Natasha Ryan’s boyfriend Scott Black leaves their house in North Rockhampton.This is where Ryan was found on 10 April 2003, having been missing for more than four years: (Newspix / Steve Pohlner)
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9 May 2003: Natasha Ryan celebrates her nineteenth birthday with a ‘5 in one’ cake with her mother Jenny. (Newspix / Nathan Richter)
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for the day ahead. It was a grim task – either they would find Keyra alive and violated, or her body discarded in a manner befitting the man who took her life. Lees said: There is a difference when a crime has been committed against a child, speak to any police officer, it touches everybody’s hearts. Police will always work hard to solve a crime, but with children the adrenalin really kicks in – you go from zero to superhuman.You go days without sleep, you don’t eat and you keep functioning until you get a result. You have to remember the majority of police involved were parents with young children.
More than 180 SES volunteers joined police to plan the day’s search. People were on horseback, on foot shoulder-toshoulder and using tracker dogs.Aerial and water searches were also done. The grounds of the prison farm, which was low security, and surrounding areas where Fraser had spent time as an inmate also had to be searched in the event that he had dumped Keyra there. Investigators were convinced Keyra was somewhere within the Rockhampton area. Soldiers were in their army greens, police in blue and the SES dressed in their carrot-orange overalls. Prisoners wanted to join the search. At least two prisoners broke the code of not ‘dogging’ by telling police Fraser had confided to them he if had to dump a body, he would dispose of it in a gold mine at Mount Morgan. Prison officers joined the search after they finished 12hour shifts at the local jail. Some police sacrificed their places on courses that would eventually be crucial for promotional opportunities, to help with the investigation. Local businesses provided food, horses and staff for the searchers; the INNOCENCE LOST
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Rockhampton community did everything it could to help find Keyra. Helicopters constantly buzzed overhead. SES Controller Lyall Dobbs oversaw the massive air, land and sea search. He ended each day with his catchphrase of ‘hurry up and wait’ and started the searches by telling his charges they had to be patient. Searchers showed no outward signs of giving in to despair after days of looking; there was no outward hint of the graphic scene of Fraser abducting Keyra, which repeatedly played in the back of their minds.The command posts at the search sites made sure spirits were buoyed and a positive attitude was maintained. After a week the dragnet widened to dumps, a disused wrecking yard, parklands, swamps, mangroves and mudflats. Four days after he abducted Keyra, Fraser called for the detectives and his lawyer to come to the watch-house. He told them he wanted to take them to an area where they might find Keyra. Once police obtained a court order to remove him from the watchhouse, Fraser directed them to drive towards the meatworks, then behind the cattleyards and towards the riverbank, near the racetrack. Fraser said he frequented the area because it was where he had kept crab pots. He told police the river area behind the AMH Meatworks would be a good place to dispose of a body as waste from the abattoir attracted crocodiles; it was another wild goose chase. Police then took Fraser to the search site behind the racing track where he had been seen driving erratically on the afternoon of Keyra’s abduction by trainers and jockeys. He told detectives there was no way he’d had a body in the boot, particularly if Wraight was in the car,‘And secondly if a body was in the back of my car … it would have bounced’ and then Wraight would have heard it. Fraser also said that when disposing of a body, you would leave it undressed so the elements 174
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would destroy all the evidence – he had seen it on a television crime show. Wraight also changed her story. When she was interviewed initially on 22 and 23 April Wraight said Fraser had told her to say he was with her all day. She detailed their dwindling sex life and how it had dropped from ‘vaginal’ intercourse six times a night to once a month.Wraight also listed a number of children Fraser drove to Berserker Street Primary School in exchange for petrol money in the last few months of 1998. But while her testimony was interesting, the interview was arduous – it had taken them four hours on the night of Keyra’s abduction to get the most basic detail from her about the couple’s movements that afternoon.Things were not helped by Wraight being unable to read or write; she could only tell the time via television show schedules. But in an addendum to her statement on 26 April she claimed that Fraser dropped her off near the Fitzroy River Bridge on the day of the murder, and that she walked from the riverbank to the Police Citizens Youth Club. Wraight saw Fraser parked on the roadside near the railway crossing which crosses the roadway leading to the cricket grounds and nursery. Wraight saw Fraser walking around near the long grass beside the road, and she watched as he got into his car and did a Uturn, travelling back towards the riverbank area. Afraid Fraser was checking up on her,Wraight ran back to the area near the bridge via the side of the bridge. She then waited between 10 and 30 minutes before Fraser turned up – she was unclear exactly how long he was missing. She also admitted that before Fraser went into the long grass, and returned without the body, she saw blonde hair, part of a face and a green skirt or shorts. In the presence of her father, Wraight added to her statement, revealing that Fraser had in fact left their Baker INNOCENCE LOST
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Street flat after the couple returned home the afternoon of Keyra’s abduction. Wraight also gave police a breakthrough in the Sylvia Benedetti missing person investigation.While she didn’t know Sylvia’s name, she identified her from a photograph and knew that the missing woman was a friend of Fraser. She had seen them talking at Centrelink. And while Wraight would deny Sylvia had been to their Baker Street flat, another witness remained adamant she had been. It had been almost a week since the little girl was assaulted when criminal Brett Bignell contacted police. Bignell had known Fraser for about eight years and at one stage was an inmate at the same prison. He had also been his neighbour in Rockhampton. Bignell volunteered to share a cell with Fraser under the guise of being held over unpaid fines. He wanted to help find Keyra. Police installed a listening device and secretly taped conversations for the 29 hours the pair spent together. During that time Fraser asked Bignell, who had just been granted bail, to retrieve a pocketknife which he had hidden in the peg box of his flat. It was similar to a Swiss Army knife with pliers and tools attached. Fraser feared that police would use it to link him with Keyra’s murder. An autopsy would later suggest that Keyra’s throat had been cut. He told Bignell the knife was connected to a robbery.‘I’ll tell you what you’ve gotta do,’ Fraser said. ‘[I] just hope the [expletive] cops haven’t found it. I just want it to disappear.There’s nothing wrong, mate. I just want it away from there. If I get caught with it you know I’m gone.’ Police searched the peg box, which was used by all the tenants at the Baker Street flat, but didn’t find the pocketknife. They got it from Fraser’s landlord after he told police he had removed it from the box and put it in his car, thinking it was only pliers that might be useful, not realising that a pocketknife 176
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was attached. Fraser had cleaned the pocketknife but not thoroughly; forensic examination of the knife would later find traces of Keyra’s blood on both sides of the blade as well as in its fingernail groove. Police now held little hope Keyra was still alive. The search for Keyra moved with whatever information came in from the public. The community itself was in mourning for innocence lost and its sense of safety was shattered. People asked themselves how something so brutal could happen in their country town – the community’s pain was obvious. But despite this, the community’s spirit stayed strong and the police investigation remained in overdrive. Some were inspired by a tiny hope that Keyra was alive; others were motivated to bring Keyra and her family some peace by finding her body. Her school was inundated with cards and well-wishers. The vacant allotment, which had set a sinister scene for Keyra’s abduction, was overtaken by bursts of colour, and turned into a shrine of flowers. It became a place for a procession of families and local residents to grieve from sunrise to sunset. One of the cards on the flowers read: ‘Nothing will ever replace your precious daughter but I hope a town’s love and support will help to fill our painful void. Love to you from a mother.’ At the same time Keyra’s mother appealed to the community to look in their backyards, as she maintained hope her little girl was alive. ‘You don’t realise how precious your children are until something like this happens,’ Treasa said. She appealed to the community: We feel she is still alive and have not given up hope yet, but it is hard. Everyone who knows Keyra loves her very much, she enjoys going to the Police Youth Club INNOCENCE LOST
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and her school. We still can’t believe someone could bear malicious thoughts towards her. To all mothers everywhere, love your children and take care of them. If I hadn’t been forced to work to earn money, this would not have happened. If anyone thinks they know something, no matter how minor, please come forward.
In the meantime scenes-of-crime officers found blood in the trunk of Fraser’s car, on a rear door and on cigarette papers in the glove box. A red pot scourer and a number of pieces of green and dried grass were also in plain view. Fraser had not been thorough in covering up the evidence. There was blood on the steering wheel and handbrake, on the passenger tail light cover inside the boot, on the boot floor mat, the gear knob, the indicator arm, headlight arm, ashtray and the driver’s seatbelt. There was a black shoelace, five strands of hair and a set of fingerprints belonging to another schoolgirl inside the boot.These would later prove to be those of the girl who had stayed at Fraser’s Baker Street flat with her mother. In all, over 340 forensic samples were taken for testing with every cubic inch of the crime scene and Fraser’s flat and car searched. The washing machine where he cleaned his clothes was also tested, using the chemical luminol to detect blood. Nothing was found. Strands of hair found on a tile in his bathroom, and the Big M pink towel he used to dry himself after washing traces of Keyra away, were seized. Fraser’s two pillowcases tested positive for blood but the towel didn’t. Fraser’s explanation about Keyra’s disappearance continued to evolve. He claimed he was nowhere near Keyra’s school, didn’t have a body in the boot of his car – and never had – and if he knew anything he would certainly help the police. He admitted he had failed to check the boot of his car 178
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for blood when he had bought it. Fraser then claimed he loaned the car to a guy named ‘Squeaky’, who wanted to go to the dump and score marijuana the afternoon Keyra was abducted. Despite his ramblings, Fraser was co-operative to an extent, answering basic questions about his movements. But he became noticeably edgy about police taking casts of his feet – his footprints having been a crucial piece of evidence in convicting him of the 1985 Mackay rape. He exploded at Detective Darrel How and punched the concrete wall of his cell, causing part of the watchhouse to reverberate. Fraser also spoke in the third person about where people might hide bodies, and talked rubbish – about dumping bodies in piggeries near the Etna Creek Jail and near a boat ramp. He was mostly evasive, and was trying to drag out the recovery of Keyra’s body for as long as possible to make sure there would be no DNA evidence left on her corpse. He wanted decomposition to be at a stage where the cause of death – and whether sexual assault had taken place – would be too difficult to determine. He had learned something from his time in prison. Detective Lees observed: I got the impression he thought it was a game. In hindsight, looking at what he has done, Fraser is the epitome of a psychopathic serial killer. He believed if he spoke enough shit and sent police on wild goose chases he could make the coppers forget. In his mind, he had already gotten away with committing murders and the police hadn’t found them and there was a chance we wouldn’t find Keyra and she would go into the missing persons closet with the others.
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As the days passed Treasa struggled to maintain her sanity. She couldn’t sleep, and three doses of sedatives Treasa’s godmother gave her for insomnia didn’t help either. In the sixteen days between her daughter’s abduction and her discovery, Treasa managed just one night’s sleep. She heard Fraser had previously been jailed but didn’t know of his violent past, and so Treasa kept a vigil; her little Keyra would be okay. But as Fraser continually refused to admit any involvement, Treasa became angry and frustrated. ‘I told the cops to go and bash him to get it out of him.’Young Connor kept going into his big sister’s room to play with her. He didn’t understand where she was and continually waited for her to come home from school. Eight days after Keyra’s abduction, Fraser continued the denials. ‘I would like to be out there right now trying to find her and the bastard that took her,’ Fraser said to Detective How, from one father to another. He said if someone murdered his daughter they would be ‘crab potted’ and dropped in the ocean. Fraser claimed he had been trying to think about where you would hide a body.‘It’s like my mind is blank,’ Fraser said. ‘I have blackouts. When I was in prison I grabbed this other guy around the throat and I started to strangle him and everything went blank. I just couldn’t remember anything that happened after that.’ Fraser was already working on his plea of being mentally insane. During his raves, Fraser threw the police numerous red herrings, including suggesting that Keyra’s body was near the boat ramp just past the local prison, lying in grass and not in the water. He said that the body was up against a tree and covered with grass. Fraser then got sidetracked and talked about a particular waste pit and how it was a good place to hide a body and that he believed that there was at least one body in the pit. 180
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He did not know whose body but had heard about it at the prison. He teased officers that a positive DNA match for the blood in his boot might freshen his memory. If the body was found, Fraser wanted to know if he could go down for manslaughter. He wanted to make a deal. Believing that in the warm autumn conditions nature should have taken its course, Fraser had a sudden change of heart regarding his knowledge of Keyra’s whereabouts. Fraser was worried about the ‘big one’ – a murder conviction – because with his background he was not ‘gonna get out’. He also lied and claimed Wraight was pregnant and toyed with investigators that he would not have dumped the body in the river as changing tides or waves may have exposed her – just like Beverley’s handbag. He also confidently reminded police that his DNA would not be found on Keyra’s body. Fraser then provided further tormenting insight into where she might be: If I’m going to hide a body, I’m going to conceal it so no one can find it. I’ve got a suspicion that this kid’s just lying out there in plain sight. I would have had the suspicion she’s somewhere where you’d say it would take a good tank of juice, tank of petrol.
He had rambled on to Detective How, raving about how he’d hit his head on the side of the cell and was having flashbacks after watching an episode of the television cop show, Blue Heelers. Fraser knew the search for Keyra had been called off two days before, on 3 May, because police had exhausted all leads after thirteen days. He indicated to How that there may be something down Yeppoon Road and that a guy called Squeaky might have punched the girl and left her unconscious INNOCENCE LOST
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somewhere before returning Fraser’s car to him. He confided in How that he had wasted his life and how on the night he was arrested for Keyra he had been in bed with Wraight and they had sex: ‘Like, if a bloke has just committed murder, he is not going to jump into his bed with a sheila … See, I put it this way, violence has been my way, but it’s not always been my way. For me, well, violence with me, has made me, is how I used to make money …’ Fraser told more about his flashbacks saying he didn’t believe Keyra’s body was in the water because he had seen what happened to bodies in the water and he wasn’t that callous. Fraser had told Detective How that he trusted him because he felt he had treated him decently – he had gotten him his glasses and some sweets.This was a strategy that would give How a few sleepless nights: ‘I felt a bit disgusted with myself the way I had to speak to him, I guess. It’s like playing over and over in your head … I did it to it find the little girl’s body.’ Fraser told How he wanted nothing to do with Lees and Burgoyne because they had treated him like an idiot playing ‘good cop, bad cop’. How, who had also been given the tasks of overseeing Operation Care and logging of exhibits, believed Fraser was the sort of criminal who would not respond to heavy handed tactics and liked to talk. How continued to feed back information to the major incident room from his recorded conversations with Fraser.Around 5.40 pm on 5 May, How returned to the watchhouse to tell Fraser the forensic results from Brisbane’s John Tonge Centre (the government science centre undertaking forensic testing for police investigations) found two types of blood traces in his car, on the boot hinge, in the boot, on a rear trim and the glove box. One matched Keyra and the other belonged to an unidentified female. Strands of 182
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hair found in the boot were identified as Keyra’s. How had remembered Fraser’s comment that if Keyra’s blood was found in the car, it might jog his memory. Fraser agreed to take police to her – he gave police verbal directions that night as they drove out towards Yeppoon but they turned back because it was too dark to find anything. The next morning on 6 May, they left the Rockhampton watch house at 6.14 am. Fraser claimed responsibility for killing Keyra but denied any memory of his actions and agreed to take police to her body, leading them northeast along the Rockhampton-Yeppoon Road highway. Fraser enjoyed the trip and pointed out personal landmarks to the detectives including places he had lived or garages where Wraight had picked up truck drivers. Finally they reached an access road marked ‘8’, along the highway – opposite where he claimed to have lived shortly after he was released from jail in 1997. He also claimed he used to walk through the bushland with his dogs hunting wild pigs and knew young kids went there to have sex and smoke marijuana. Three carloads of detectives pulled up at 6.44 am and Fraser led them down a bush track. He told them they’d find a body if they walked for 50 metres, and detectives How and Col Harvey kept him back to avoid him contaminating the crime scene. Speaking in the third person, Fraser acted out how someone might have dumped Keyra’s body, how they might have looked through the bush first before taking the victim out of the boot and cradled her. What he didn’t act out was how someone might have slit her throat.Asked by one of the detectives if they would find Keyra’s body Fraser said,‘… all we can do is have a look and hope’. Detective Inspector Russell Janke, the Central Queensland Regional Crime Coordinator, kept walking. He INNOCENCE LOST
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followed an old dry creek bed, lined with limestone rocks, along Middle Creek, about 200 metres from the road. As he walked up the guts of the creek, about 50 or 60 metres, he smelt death. Detective Janke said: I walked back towards the roadway on the eastern side of the bank and in the bushes there seemed to be a lot of grass – Panic grass or Guinea grass – at the base of the bush. It appeared as though the grass had been pulled from somewhere else and laid over something. I saw the bottom half of Keyra’s legs, which were exposed. Her body was so callously discarded. Keyra was naked except for grass, twigs and a green jumper draped across her neck and upper body. Decomposition was at the stage where it was impossible to tell whether Fraser raped her and slit her throat, though there were indications of wounds to her upper body.
As Fraser walked back to the car with the two detectives, he described how Inspector Janke and other officers would find the body: When I hide a body, I place it around a tree or a clump of trees. I then cover the body with long grass. I then walk up onto some high ground and see if I can see it. If it doesn’t look right I go back and put some more grass around the body. I keep doing that until it’s right, you know, natural-looking.
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Treasa down and told her police were on their way to get Keyra. When Lees took a call saying police were taking Keyra’s body to hospital, Treasa still believed her daughter was alive. I wanted to go and see her that split second, but he [Lees] suggested that I didn’t, that they were going to check dental records. He put it gently to me that my daughter was dead. I think I blanked out and went into shock. I still can’t remember how I handled it. I tried every day to see her, I just wanted to touch her, but they wouldn’t let me. As he had done for all of the families of his victims, Fraser had truly robbed Treasa of Keyra, even denying her the chance to hold her young daughter’s body one last time. Decomposition was so advanced it would be up to forensic scientists – and not her family – to identify the body.When police found Keyra, her tiny knee could be seen poking from beneath the grass as if Fraser had posed her. Keyra had in fact been baking under the hot autumn sun, with the grass and twigs placed over her naked body helping to ferment decomposition. With just her green size-10 school jumper draped over her neck and upper torso, the skin over her stomach, legs and arms was mummified, dried and discoloured with extensive blistering. Police suspected Fraser raped Keyra and slit her throat, but decomposition hindered every aspect of the examination. Due to the level of decay there were no identifiable injuries in the neck, with insect larvae also heavily infesting her neck, upper torso and left shoulder. However forensic pathologists did find a horizontal reddish mark on the back of her left wrist INNOCENCE LOST
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measuring about 50 mm by 4 mm, and blue marks on her legs similar to bruising, yet more indicative of decomposition. Her rapid state of breakdown also prevented investigators from being able to confidently determine whether Fraser had raped Keyra; the post mortem failed to find pubic hairs, bruising, lacerations or bleeding in her genital region. As a result, Keyra’s cause of death would be ‘unascertainable owing to decomposition’. And even though Fraser had punched Keyra in the head, slightly depressing her skull, it was too hard to tell whether the hit caused significant, or even fatal, injuries to the brain, neck or adjoining areas. However, the severe decomposition around Keyra’s throat was consistent with her throat being cut, confirming police suspicions that Fraser had slit her throat. Keyra’s dental records and a plaster cast of her teeth were summonsed to the morgue for identification purposes, so it soon became clear that there would be no open casket, no fine blonde hair to caress, and no last kiss goodbye. A black shoe returned to Treasa on May 7, the day after they found Keyra, was cold comfort. Police asked Treasa and Des to give blood and saliva samples to help match Keyra’s DNA. Now they had to plan Keyra’s funeral. Hundreds turned up to pay their respects to Keyra at St Luke’s Anglican Church. Keyra’s classmates released balloons as they said goodbye to their friend. Father Bill Ray said Keyra’s death had had a profound impact on the closely knit community and had shattered the widely held belief that Rockhampton was sheltered from heinous crimes such as child murder. I think because of it [Keyra’s death], people have been repulsed at the enormity of the tragedy – especially 186
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when it involves such a young girl. I also think it has brought back an occasion to grieve within the community … and also because it is so close to Mother’s Day, it has brought back the unity of families. Fraser blamed the murder on an associate called Squeaky he had met in the Rockhampton prison. Detectives ran checks on nicknames of people called Squeaky – they found one: Shane Uren, who knew Fraser but was living in Townsville. Back at the station Fraser denied any knowledge of how Keyra came to lie near an old creek bed. He simply claimed he had a ‘feeling the body was there’, and did not know whether it was Keyra or not until forensic tests were completed. When pressed over who killed Keyra, Fraser said he had no reason to kill her and could not remember the incident because of a blackout. ‘Maybe there’s a pressure point that’s stopping me from remembering it or maybe I just don’t want to remember it,’ he said. During other parts of the interview, Fraser told police he had a ‘vague’ recollection of the attack: If I did hit her, I would have done it with a fair wallop. I’m saying if I did I probably broke her neck or windpipe or whatever, whatever I’ve done when I hit her. If the girl wasn’t breathing I would have panicked. I would have got me car, picked her up and put her in the boot or inside my car. I must’ve panicked. I’ve never done anything like this before, trying to conceal a crime that’s what this is. I’m still trying to come to terms of I did it, ’cause I never harmed a child before in my life.
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During a five hour interview on 6 May, How and Harvey asked Fraser why Keyra’s underpants were missing from the body and whether that meant he raped her. Fraser started yelling, denying he had sexually interfered with her and claimed Keyra was fully clothed when she was dumped. ‘I would have concealed the body but I wouldn’t have undressed it,’ Fraser said. ‘There would have been no reason for me to undress her at all if I was panicking and I would have been panicking.’ Lees believes it’s possible Fraser raped Keyra a second time before cutting her throat when he dumped her body at Yeppoon: ‘There is every likelihood he raped her a second time because we found her naked.’ Fraser’s story then changed again. He had gone to Katrina Fry’s place at 3–3.15 pm where he left Wraight, with the intention of going to Kawana Wreckers, when he decided to stop at the North Rockhampton High School to see a teenage girl, the daughter of an ex-girlfriend. Fraser had parked his car in front of the swimming pool and was waiting for the girl to appear when he saw her mother’s boyfriend was there to give her a lift. Fraser then walked from the pool, through bushland to the Kenrick Tucker Velodrome, and on to Dean Street. He browsed around a Salvation Army store and spoke with two youths he knew from Mount Morgan. After speaking to the boys he walked along Dean Street and into Robinson. He admitted assaulting Keyra but would not provide any details of the attack. He said that he ran back to his car via the same route he came by and when he went to drive out of the car park, he remembered a woman taking out or putting a mountain bike into her car. He waved to the woman and she waved back to him, before he collected Keyra’s body and drove out to Yeppoon Road, disposing of her in bushland. He denied removing any clothing or sexually assaulting the girl. 188
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Fraser continued to lie to detectives about his movements. He claimed he had gone to the Callaghan racetrack to see horse trainer Neville Peterson about getting some work. But Peterson, who knew Fraser from prison, told police it wasn’t true. He said he’d seen a red car driving along one of the training tracks behind the racecourse around 4 pm near the soccer fields. Detectives were able to confirm Fraser had visited Duggan and Fry before and after Keyra’s abduction. Both agreed the visits took place. Fraser did in fact repeatedly go to Fry’s house that day.When Coralie Bartlett visited her neighbour, Katrina Fry, at 2.30 pm, Fraser and Crissie were already there. At 2.50 or 2.55 pm Fraser jumped up and said he had to leave, but would be back shortly. Crissie told police she was annoyed with Fraser for leaving her there. In the afternoon, when the couple supposedly returned together, they in fact arrived separately. Joelene Scherwin of North Rockhampton arrived at Fry’s place about 4.45 pm. Crissie was already there but Fraser arrived some time around 4.55–5.05 pm and was in a hurry. He was anxious and agitated, and kept asking Crissie if she was ready to go as he had ‘things to do’.When she told him to wait a minute he kicked her in the leg and said,‘We’re going. I’m in a hurry … I’ve got lots to do.’ In collecting evidence against Fraser, police tried to build a detailed picture of Keyra’s rape and murder but could not shed any more light on exactly where Fraser was on 22 April and what happened. It was much later when Fraser confessed to a prison informant that he choked and suffocated Keyra before cutting her throat. Towards the end of the five-hour interview, Fraser turned his thoughts to Wraight, telling police he wanted to see her again, to let her know he didn’t hold any bad will towards her INNOCENCE LOST
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even though he knew she was scared of him. Fraser also admitted he ‘went off at her’ because she didn’t do what she was told, and he was worried that without him,Wraight would run off with a truckie. But Fraser wouldn’t get a chance to go off at Wraight again. At 8.50 am on May 7, detectives How, Lees and Burgoyne charged Fraser with Keyra’s murder, child stealing and interfering with her remains. In a rare show of emotion, Fraser told police he’d like to apologise to Keyra’s parents, and asked for his wallet and Visa credit card so that he could send them flowers. I’d like to say sorry to her mother and father and that I know a lot of people won’t believe me, but if you check my background it’s not my go to harm a child. I’m just sorry this is happening and I don’t know what made me do it; at least I can try to ... I’m going to try and get help after I get sentenced and all, so that’s a good step.
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12 THE INFORMANT POLICE SUSPECTED FRASER was a serial killer. There was the blood of an unidentified female found in the boot of his car, three missing females and the recent disappearance of nineteen-year-old Sylvia Benedetti. Their concerns were heightened with the grisly discovery of a bloody crime scene in Room 13 of the condemned Queensland Hotel. The bloodbath at the hotel was found on 23 April, the day after Fraser abducted Keyra. Local farmer and tip truck/backhoe operator Ross Geihe and demolitionist Barry Allen had gone to the building to cost the demolition.The finished canvas of Fraser’s handiwork took unsuspecting Ross Geihe’s breath away. Droplets of blood peppered the wall and ceiling. Crimson dots could be seen high above the door while the grey carpet and exposed parts of its green underlay were stained a deep burgundy. There was a large red smear near the skirting board in the shape of a capital D. It looked as though red paint had been flicked feverishly from a brush and streaked in various circular, 191
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horizontal and vertical directions. Later, forensic examination of the distribution and concentration of paint on the white wall in the form of three bloodied smudged finger marks would show that this artist was right handed. However, the bloodbath was not restricted to just the walls, or even one room.There was an extensive trail of human pain and torment. A tooth, fragments of a jaw and an empty condom wrapper furnished the empty room. As Geihe stood in the doorway of Room 13 he commented to Allen that it looked as though someone had killed somebody. He had gone to the Queensland Hotel to cost a job but his next stop would be the police station rather than the site office. By April 25 the police investigation, run by Detective Graham Clark, had widened its net to include all the missing women. Investigators had to check whether Fraser was the common denominator in the disappearances of Sylvia (Operation Benny), Natasha Ryan (Operation Hybrid), Beverley Leggo (Operation Bever) and Julie Turner (Operation Bega). The possibility Fraser was involved was even on the minds of some of their families – a few days after Keyra was murdered,Arthur Leggo rang detectives to see whether Keyra’s murder was linked to his daughter’s disappearance. At first there were no confirmed links between Fraser and Julie but soon her friends and daughter would tell police of a man called Lenny who was going to take Julie away from her troubles. A profile of Fraser assembled by a police officer from Queensland Police’s Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (BCI) showed he had worked at the abattoir at the same time as Julie. A friend reported Julie telling her she had visited Fraser’s flat and met Fraser’s ‘retarded sister’. Turner’s friend Julie Mulhall told police she had spoken to Julie about meeting a nice, good man by the name of Len Fraser who had worked with her at 192
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the meatworks. Julie described him as an older man who was really kind. Julie had also told her that she and Fraser would have to leave Rockhampton to be together because of her de facto husband, Michael McConochie. Detectives visited McConochie and asked him whether he knew Fraser but he didn’t and was not aware he had been employed at the meatworks. The police also showed McConochie a teardrop-shaped gold earring found in a jewellery box in Fraser’s flat but he did not recognise it as belonging to Julie. Members of McConochie’s family were also interviewed about Fraser but they did not know him either. Detective Senior Constable Peter Ziser had only been transferred to the Central Queensland Police region for a week when the regional crime coordinator allocated him to the team working on a missing person case – that of Julie Dawn Turner. He had spent time interviewing her family and the patrons from the Airport Liberty nightclub. By February 1999 he had joined the missing persons investigation into the disappearance of Natasha Ryan. People were telling us they saw her [Natasha] here and there and they were found to be untrue, they were making it up.Then come March, Beverley Leggo went missing and I hooked up with [detective] Col Harvey and we worked on Turner and Leggo. We did the missing person inquiries while everyone did CIB duties … Natasha Ryan was still on the periphery and then Keyra was abducted … At the time it didn’t appear these women were missing – if you looked at cases individually and the circumstances of their home situations. It often came up there was a serial killer just because there were so many [disappearances] and you don’t THE INFORMANT
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expect it to happen in a quiet town like Rocky. There were casual links to Lennie … I remember the day Col and I were [investigating] Keyra … as we come in we saw this druggie guy on the seat and he talked about a girl going missing. He said his girlfriend had gone missing but I was told it was a domestic situation … The next day again I’m going through the corridor and as I’m going through he pulls me aside and says ‘I heard the last person she was seen with was Lennie’.
The ‘druggie guy’ was Joe Dougherty, Sylvia’s boyfriend, who had heard the rumour third hand through the Rockhampton grapevine. Dougherty had actually first approached Detective Darrel How on Sunday 18 April when he ran into him in the car park of a local shopping centre. Dougherty told him he feared his girlfriend had gone missing. The last time he saw her was at a nearby bus stop, when she said she was thinking things over and would be home in twenty minutes. How, who was off duty, told Dougherty to go to the police station and report the information. Dougherty didn’t go. In the meantime, How followed up the information with uniform police who told him Sylvia’s friends and family said she was not missing, she just didn’t want anything more to do with Dougherty. Ziser also helped out with the Benedetti investigation, Operation Benny, with fellow Rockhampton and Homicide detectives. He believed Dougherty genuinely cared for Sylvia and had gone to great lengths to find her. Ziser tracked down the source of the information about Fraser and Sylvia – it was Barry Richardson, who knew both Fraser and Benedetti. Richardson was not exactly ‘police friendly’ having been on the wrong side of the law. ‘Barry had had a conversation with 194
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them both but we needed corroboration. At the same time there was a million stories around, the rumour mill was in overdrive,’ Ziser said. ‘While tracking down Barry, everyone told us Sylvia was leaving Joe.’ Fraser denied knowing Benedetti during Keyra’s murder investigation and Dougherty remained a suspect. ‘Around that time I was heavily involved with Keyra’s investigation, Julie Turner and Beverly Leggo,’ Ziser said. He logged some exhibits, including the blood samples from the car used by Fraser in Keyra’s abduction. Police were quickly able to eliminate the blood as belonging to Keyra or Wraight as they already had samples. ‘We had excluded Keyra’s blood so we sent down samples from all of our missing persons – Julie Turner’s hairbrush, Beverley Leggo’s hair and blood samples from her parents, blood from Benedetti’s mother and we used her [Sylvia’s] heavily soiled underwear and underwear which had menstrual blood. We sent it down and had no idea who would come back.’ Dougherty went back to Rockhampton CIB and gave Detective Carl Burgoyne a photo of him and Sylvia. The detective noticed the photo was in poor condition and had been damaged in the area around Dougherty’s face. Burgoyne showed the photo to Wraight who told him she had seen Fraser with Sylvia on a couple of occasions at the Centrelink office. However she denied Sylvia had ever been to the couple’s Baker Street flat. Four days after Dougherty reported her missing, Burgoyne found Sylvia had not accessed her social security cheque which had been deposited in her Commonwealth Bank account. The police Missing Persons Bureau also conducted checks and found no signs of activity. On 30 April, police checked with local welfare agencies to see whether Sylvia had sought their services – their last contact THE INFORMANT
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with her was when she had obtained a $30 food voucher on 29 March. She had said she had a boyfriend but did not live with him. Police also contacted youth workers for any information about Sylvia and the other missing women. Friends of Sylvia told police she had suffered a miscarriage the year before and her relationship with Dougherty was rocky. On the same day, police issued a media release about Sylvia being a missing person. The faces of Sylvia, Keyra and the other missing women were splashed across newspapers and the evening news fuelling suspicions there was a serial killer committing murders in Rockhampton. A former Rockhampton prison officer who knew Fraser came forward and said he had seen him holding hands with a girl fitting Sylvia’s description the week before – he told police it definitely wasn’t Wraight because he knew Crissie. On 3 May, Detective Harvey spoke with Leanore Bartlett of the Mount Morgan newsagency – she had contacted Crime Stoppers anonymously on March 31 after she witnessed Fraser harassing Beverley outside her store. Bartlett said Fraser kept trying to talk to Beverley who tried to ignore him.The next day Harvey called Jenny Ryan and asked her to come to the station to look at a photo board – a board containing twelve anonymous photos police use to see whether witnesses can independently identify offenders. Even though Keyra’s face was flashed around Australia at the time of her murder, Fraser’s had not been released into the public arena – police wanted witnesses to identify the killer independently and without influence. Jenny picked number four – Fraser’s mugshot – telling Harvey she did not know the man’s name or where she had met him, but she had seen him at the squash bowl where she worked and Natasha used to bowl. On the same day, police interviewed Kelli Slade. Her name and phone number had 196
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been found on a piece of paper in Fraser’s Baker Street flat.The twenty-year-old didn’t know why Fraser had her details but she did know Natasha Ryan from the bowling alley where they both practised. Slade said she thought Natasha had been depressed prior to her disappearance. Sightings of Natasha were being reported as far north as Cairns and as far south as Maitland in New South Wales where she was supposed to be living in a caravan park. One of her former schoolmates told police he met with Natasha every week to smoke marijuana at Kershaw Gardens in North Rockhampton. Police organised surveillance of the area after the teenager gave them the time he was meeting her. The youth and Ryan were a no-show. Police heard from street kids five days later that the youth had said he knew where Natasha was living in Rockhampton and that she was six weeks pregnant. The youth told police again he would organise another meeting but nothing eventuated.The youth wasted police time and resources for nine days. While organising the operation, Detective Inspector Russell Janke received an interesting lead from a woman who had stopped off at Kershaw Gardens on her way back from a psychic conference in Mackay. She told police she had a feeling a body was buried in the park. Janke said police searched the area because there were times when psychics had been right: ‘The woman had come into the station and we searched and searched. Twelve months later we found the skeleton of John Baker, a local fellow who had gone missing in 1983, and it was in Kershaw Gardens, 100 metres from where the car park was situated.’ At the same time, an associate of Sylvia’s told a welfare agency he was flatting with Natasha in order to scam food vouchers. Rumours circulated among street kids by late May THE INFORMANT
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that Natasha was dead in a pigpen with her head shaved. None of the information led police to Natasha. Police also thought it was possible Natasha may have met Fraser in the Rockhampton city mall – it was a place both Fraser and Ryan frequented in the early hours of the morning. Fraser would often trawl the area for cigarette butts and used it as a place to pick up females. Sightings of Sylvia were reported to police state wide but there was nothing concrete. Detectives continued to visit the Rockhampton homes and associates of Barry Richardson but could not find him – if the rumour was true, then Richardson was an eyewitness who had seen Sylvia with Fraser at the time of her disappearance. On 6 May, the day Keyra’s body had been found, Fraser was interviewed in relation to his knowledge of all the missing women and Keyra. He denied knowing Sylvia but when he was shown a photograph of her he said she looked like a ‘junkie and a scheming bitch’. He admitted knowing Beverley when they both lived at the Oztel Hostel in Rockhampton in 1997 and said he had sold her and her boyfriend a television for $40 but was never paid for it. He said he had seen Beverley outside the unemployment agency, and at one stage when she was homeless, he allowed her to shower at his flat and gave her a cup of coffee.Wraight had lent her a dress to wear. Fraser said he didn’t take much notice of Beverley because he thought she was bad news and wanted her out of the house. The last time he had seen her was three weeks before he was arrested for Keyra’s murder, hitchhiking in a northerly direction from Rockhampton and looking nervous. He denied knowing or speaking to her in Mount Morgan. During the interview, Fraser also concocted the story that Beverley was living in fear of a couple of men who were well-known local drug dealers. 198
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Police tracked down one of the men in North Queensland. The man told police he knew nothing about Beverley’s disappearance but she may have been given a ‘hot shot’ as there had been some around. Subsequent police checks of the hostel records confirmed Fraser was there at the same time as Beverley and her de facto husband Richard Gritt. On 8 May, police again interviewed Fraser, who told them Beverley had visited his flat several times in January and she and Wraight had argued over a piece of torn clothing. Back in the major incident room on 6 May, police asked Dougherty for a list of Sylvia’s associates for investigators to doorknock and interview. On 11 May, police found Richardson living in a local caravan park. Richardson wanted Sylvia to be found – he loved her so he co-operated fully with investigators, allowing them to search his van and volunteered the pieces of his clothing that Sylvia had worn when he cooked her breakfast on the weekend of her disappearance. Police seized sex toys, bedding and several items of clothing. Richardson took police to several other addresses relevant to Sylvia and confirmed that he had seen Fraser and Sylvia at the mall sitting at a bus stop on Sunday night, 18 April. Richardson was taken to the police station and while there, told police about an Aboriginal man sitting at the bus stop when he saw Fraser and Sylvia together. Police took a statement from Betty Hadfield, Sylvia’s mother, in a bid to gain some insight into her background. Hadfield also supplied a blood specimen for any DNA comparisons. Police also examined the Births, Deaths and Marriages register and found that, since January 1999, seven women had changed their name by deed poll in the Rockhampton Supreme Court. None of them were the missing women. In the interim, police received a steady stream THE INFORMANT
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of complaints from Rockhampton families that Fraser had molested or tried to sexually abuse their daughters, Fraser’s name having been made public after he was charged with Keyra’s murder.The media had speculated that he was possibly linked to the other disappearances but police refused to comment, to avoid prejudicing court proceedings for the Keyra case. One woman and her husband went to the Rockhampton police station and told detectives that Fraser, a long-time friend, had sexually abused their daughter over the previous year. Another woman, who had an intellectual disability, told police Fraser had driven her to a riverbank surrounded by long grass near Quay Street and then raped her. She did not wish to pursue the matter. Detectives Graham Clark and Col Harvey returned to the Rockhampton watch-house on 17 May to question Fraser as to whether he knew Sylvia or Dougherty. Fraser tried to intimidate Clark – staring him down and refusing to sit, slamming his hand on the desk. Clark thought Fraser was evil and knew he had experience in police interviews: ‘He was a wake up to the body language, looking us straight in the eye instead of looking away or down. He wanted to tell people who were going to listen to that tape that he was looking me straight in the eye as he was telling me these lies.’ Fraser’s bluster was wasted on Clark who continued calmly asking him questions about the missing women. Fraser admitted seeing Richardson in the mall a few days before he was arrested for Keyra’s murder but claimed he was with Wraight at the time. Fraser said Richardson may have been with a female who looked a bit like Sylvia. He denied killing Sylvia or any of the other missing women. Again he admitted knowing Beverley. While conducting interviews about the women, police 200
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had to ask the interviewees questions about all of the missing women – they needed to find out what their friends knew about them, what they knew about Fraser, and whether the missing women knew each other. Police also wanted to identify any known associates of the missing women, any ‘rumours of immoral activity’ associated with the women or Fraser.They wanted those who knew the missing women to tell investigators what they thought had happened to them, even if it was innuendo or opinion. Police searched for details of locations where Fraser dumped rubbish, dead animals or stolen property, trying to establish whether he had any knowledge of mines, waterholes, wells or fishing spots. They wanted to know whether Fraser had borrowed tools, shovels or cars. Leads were also generated from public tip offs about anything suspicious. Dougherty told police he was leaving Rockhampton for two weeks while he visited his grandparents in Broken Hill in New South Wales. Meanwhile an anonymous caller to Crime Stoppers said she had attended a party with Sylvia on 17 April and saw her leave with a guy called Michael Weldon with whom she spent the night. Staff from the local unemployment agency were interviewed and told police they had last interviewed Sylvia in November 1998. Police supplied them with posters of all the missing Rockhampton women. Investigators also traced phone numbers found in Sylvia’s belongings but this line of investigation took police nowhere. The discovery of the bloodbath in the Queensland Hotel the day after Keyra was murdered at first had police wondering whether it was the handiwork of Fraser and if it was where he had killed Keyra. However, the timeline of Fraser’s movements, which police had created from witnesses, placed him around the North Rockhampton area, making it impossible for him to have killed Keyra at the Queensland Hotel. THE INFORMANT
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Uniform police had attended the scene after Geihe and Allen reported blood-spattered walls in an upstairs room. Scenes-of-crime officers examined and photographed the scene. Panels of the wall covered in blood spatters and wipe marks were removed.The crime scene seemed to be too recent to have involved the death of Beverley Leggo and wasn’t initially considered to be linked to any of the missing women. Sylvia had been reported missing the day after the gruesome discovery on 24 April but she was believed to be avoiding her boyfriend, missing rather than dead. The Keyra investigation was priority and all available police were involved. Detectives and scenes-of-crime officers returned to the hotel for further examination on 1 May. Even during the day, it was so dark inside the hotel that police had to use torches, providing them with very limited vision. A small freezer was found on the ground floor filled with murky dirty water, but police were unable to see any items in the bottom of it – initially it was not examined further as it was on a different level to the crime scene. Old washing machines and fridges were strewn throughout the abandoned building. Blood samples were taken from rooms 12 and 13 and sent for testing at Brisbane’s John Tonge Centre. On 24 May, the John Tonge Centre rang Rockhampton’s Detective Geoff Barton and told him that blood located on the rear door trim of Fraser’s red Mazda had been positively matched to a sample taken from soiled underwear belonging to Sylvia.The blood trace was also matched to a sample provided by Sylvia’s mother. Sylvia’s blood was also found in the glove box. Fraser had definitely had her body in the car.A week later, blood taken from the Queensland Hotel also proved to belong to Sylvia. Police now had the primary crime scene and knew where Sylvia had been killed, they just didn’t know where Fraser had 202
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disposed of her body. As a result of the news, detectives from Homicide and Rockhampton with scenes-of-crime officers searched the hotel again and found women’s clothing and jogging shoes covered in murky, bloody water in the old freezer on the ground level. Blood was also found in the downstairs toilet. Ziser, who had taken over the investigation after Detective Darrin Padget was called back to Brisbane, said an intensive examination of the crime scene at the hotel found no physical evidence that put Fraser in room 13. ‘When he killed Keyra, we suspected he may have killed before, particularly when police reviewed his criminal history,’ Ziser said, adding he believed Fraser would have left some trace of himself in the Queensland Hotel. ‘But because there was so much blood of hers, his blood may have been under her. There were partial (DNA) profiles. If it had been a squeaky clean room it would be different …’ Ziser said while he remained objective in his role investigating Sylvia’s death, he said it was hard not to sympathise with her plight: You are removed … one day I was walking near where Joe lived and where Sylvia went walking and I realised she was only 19 and regardless of how bad people made her out to be, she had her whole life to turn around … It’s a bit hard to put yourself in Sylvia’s shoes and as bad as Joe was with the drugs, he did genuinely care and love her. Someone said he punched her but he denied that … He [Dougherty] would often be in tears in the police station and went to great lengths to find her and I believed he did love her in his own way.
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By June, police also sought to interview the tenants of the Crown Hotel across the road because of their view of the Queensland Hotel. Gardener Eric Long who worked near the mall told police he often saw Fraser checking out cars in the vicinity of the Queensland Hotel. Long said he had seen Fraser walking from the car park of the hotel the day before Keyra was abducted. Detectives also tracked down the party that Sylvia had attended on 17 April and interviewed Weldon who told them he had had sex with her after a night of drinking. Weldon said he and Sylvia got up on Sunday around 7 am and she left a short time later telling him she was off to a cleaning job. It was the last time he saw her. With all leads exhausted in relation to the disappearances of Beverley, Julie and Natasha, Detective Clark closed the major incident room in Rockhampton and returned to Brisbane. On 25 June, in an advisory note to the Queensland police executive and police minister about the disappearances, Detective Superintendent Ray Platz said the women had all disappeared under suspicious circumstances. All these women were associating with elements of the community who are linked to illicit drugs, crime and alcoholism. These investigations are being frustrated by the witnesses’ reserve in supplying specific information. None of the women have been located to date. Investigations are targeting the associates and background of the missing persons. These investigations are being cross-referenced with the movements of Leonard Fraser who has been charged with the murder of Keyra Steinhardt. Information suggests that Natasha Ryan is avoiding police and family contact.
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After being charged with the abduction and murder of Keyra Steinhardt and interfering with her body, Fraser was transferred to the Arthur Gorrie Remand and Reception Centre at Wacol in Brisbane’s outer west on 20 May 1999. It was standard prison procedure for all inmates to be held there until sentence management assessed where they would be placed. In the case of Fraser – a serial rapist and accused child sex murderer – he was at great risk. In the scheme of the prison pecking order, he was ranked among the most despised inmates – those who committed sex offences against children and, worse, killed them. This made him a target and anyone who bashed or killed him would certainly earn kudos. He had to be isolated and placed in protective custody. The next day, Brisbane’s Moreton B Correctional Centre was Fraser’s new home. Moreton jail was divided into two sections in the late 1980s due to the closure of Brisbane’s notorious Boggo Road Jail. Moreton A originally housed mainstream prisoners and Moreton B was for sex offenders and protection prisoners such as crown witnesses. Eventually this dank archaic structure became known as Moreton B Jail. Once placed at Moreton (which has since been closed) in cell 13 in A-wing, the other inmates gave Fraser a hard time. He found little comfort and had difficulty finding anyone who wasn’t repulsed by his crimes, even other sex offenders. Fraser was able to handle himself – he was still reasonably fit – but there was only so much he could do on his own. For all his bravado about his hatred of pedophiles, Fraser now found himself sharing a confined space with them. He hated being known as a child killer and denied he was the culprit who killed Keyra. Some inmates tried to befriend him but they were fishing for information from Fraser over the THE INFORMANT
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disappearances of the other Rockhampton women, in particular teenager Natasha Ryan. Fraser knew he had become a meal ticket on possible concessions for fellow inmates for parole, transfers and favour with management.Then on 2 July a prisoner walked into the yard – Fraser recognised him as an inmate he had met at Parramatta jail in the 1970s when he was serving time for rape and armed robbery. Allan John Quinn, 47, had started unpacking his few belongings and cleaning his cell, number 18, when Fraser walked in and introduced himself. He reminded Quinn of their first meeting at the Parramatta jail – it was in 1977 when Quinn was serving his fifth year of a 10-year sentence for armed robbery. Quinn was now a convicted fraudster who had been placed at the jail because he was also a crown witness for Queensland Police. He had been conning people since he was six years old and deceived his mother about why his hand was in the biscuit jar. He was from a poor background, the middle child of seven boys, and did life tough in the town of Lithgow, near the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. At age eleven, he was deemed an uncontrollable child and spent the majority of his childhood incarcerated in boys’ homes – two traits he shared with the misogynist serial killer. Life in the boys’ homes only taught him that crime was a lifestyle and set him on a path of offending. In his adult life, after being released from jail for armed robbery in the early 1970s, Quinn developed a gambling addiction while managing strip shows in pubs and clubs.That became the catalyst for years of conning the elderly and catapulted him to the list of Australia’s most wanted criminals. He defrauded his victims of thousands of dollars and had been jailed in four states for his crimes. Quinn always felt the real victims were the banks as his targets were reimbursed – his 206
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victims believed otherwise. He was used to masquerading and role-playing as a means to this end. One of his cons involved ringing a local church or care group searching for support or companionship for his great grandfather who had been recently widowed and who was new to the area.This in turn provided him with a list of potential victims. Quinn would visit the homes of the elderly and vulnerable often posing as a bank employee. He would tell them there was a problem with their passbook accounts or key cards, asking his unsuspecting victims if he could have a drink of water. While they were getting him a drink he would switch their bank books or cards with his own stolen collection. He would then ask his victims if they could sign his notebook to confirm for the bank that he had visited them to make them aware of the problem. If he didn’t get their signature, he obtained it using a black light in his car, the same as that used by banks to scan the invisible signature found on the back page of bank books. This security measure is used by banks to verify account holders’ signatures during over-the-counter transactions. Quinn would leave, then not long after would phone his victims posing as a Telstra employee doing repairs in the area. He would ask them to take their phone off the hook for the next two or three hours so some work could be done on the line. Quinn would go to the bank and withdraw their money, often using his ill-gotten gains to fly first class to interstate casinos, staying in luxury hotels while he fed his gambling addiction. By 1999 Quinn was wanted in three states – Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales for defrauding the elderly of several hundred thousand dollars. He had skipped bail while facing fraud charges in Sydney and fled to Queensland. On 19 April, while pulling another scam, Quinn was queuing at the Suncorp Metway at Redcliffe, north of Brisbane when the THE INFORMANT
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law finally caught up with him.Alert bank staff had recognised Quinn from his mugshot – police had circulated the photo amongst the major banks they knew the prolific conman was targeting. As for Quinn, he was tired of being on the run and always having to look over his shoulder. Detective Senior Constable John O’Keeffe was on holidays when he received a call from his counterparts at Redcliffe to say they had arrested Quinn. O’Keeffe who was attached to the Hendra Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) in Brisbane’s suburban north was investigating Quinn for almost 50 fraud offences. O’Keeffe’s first impression of Quinn was of someone who was calm and calculating. Once back at Redcliffe Police Station, Quinn made it clear he didn’t want to talk to O’Keeffe and the detective was happy to let him stew but kept his covert tape recorder running. On their way to the watch-house, where he would be formally charged, the conman started to point out the homes of residents who he had ripped off. ‘At that stage that was about the only admissions that he’d made. There was a bit of a rapport which we built up, talking about the Balmain football team,’ O’Keeffe said. In the following days, Quinn was charged with 48 offences of fraud worth over $350 000, stolen from his elderly prey. Quinn later pleaded guilty to forgery, stealing and fraud. He was sentenced to six years jail on 17 November 2000 and taken to Woodford Correctional Centre. Quinn had been transferred from Woodford to Moreton for protection after he assisted New South Wales and Queensland police with two murder investigations. Now Quinn was a crown witness in two murder cases as well as doing time for his fraud offences. Almost immediately after Fraser had introduced himself, he volunteered to Quinn that he was the one charged with the 208
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murder of the nine-year-old schoolgirl at Rockhampton. Fraser then went on to say that the police were ‘trying to put on him’ the blame for the death of four other girls and women. Fraser was vaguely familiar to Quinn but a much stronger memory made his stomach turn – that of Treasa Steinhardt, the grieving mother of the murdered schoolgirl. He had seen her on a television show along with the family members of the women missing from Rockhampton. He sympathised with their plight and felt strongly that their families should be able to bury their loved ones. Quinn was also coping with the fact that for the first time in his criminal life, he was incarcerated with sex offenders and protected witnesses. He had only ever been in the mainstream population. As Quinn put it, he and Fraser were ‘old-school’ crims and had lengthy histories in the days when crims were crims,‘not junkies in for drugs’. He wanted to ‘belt the shit’ out of Fraser for the murder of Keyra but prison authorities had warned the well-built Quinn if he stepped out of line, he would be removed from the jail. He knew he had to suppress his anger towards the sex offenders and just do his time. In the days following Quinn’s arrival, he and Fraser repeatedly walked the 50 metre length of the prison yard – a habit borne out of the old prison era when programs and industries did not exist – and talked. Fraser started to drop tidbits about Keyra and the missing women. For Fraser, Quinn was someone to whom he could give his side of the story – he wasn’t a child killer. Quinn with his bulky frame also was capable of protecting Fraser from other inmates wanting to attack him. Quinn claimed that for him, Fraser was an opportunity to pay back some of the debt he owed for his crimes – he could pass the information on to police and bring some comfort to the families of the missing women. THE INFORMANT
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On 15 July, Quinn, who credits himself with an excellent memory, decided he would record the conversations that took place with Fraser during the day. He decided to write them out at night when he was alone in his cell after the jail was locked down – it wasn’t safe to do it out in the open. On the same day, Quinn used the prison phone to ring a friend and told him to contact O’Keeffe. Quinn liked the way O’Keeffe had treated him in a civil and ‘cool’ manner and thought he was a very switched on cop. The following excerpts are from Quinn’s diary of his conversations with Fraser between July and November 1999. 15 July 1999 Lenny spoke to me about how he was worried about being interviewed at Rockhampton again as he was worried about more charges. He spoke to me on this day on three different occasions about serial killings. He stated words to the effect ‘Does a serial killer leave bodies to be found?’ When he said this he appeared excited about it. He also said ‘If a girl does the wrong thing by me I will punch her in the head, that doesn’t worry me.’ He also spoke about how Police took him to a child’s body and someone had used his car.
O’Keeffe visited Quinn on 16 July and they met in the prison surgery for safety and confidentiality. Quinn told him Fraser wanted to speak about the serial killings and told him of the conversation he had had the previous day. Police were already working on linking the missing women to Fraser. At that stage, from O’Keeffe’s perspective there wasn’t enough information to take the matter further but he made it clear for Quinn to keep him informed. He believed Quinn and as a professional courtesy, O’Keeffe contacted Detective Graham 210
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Clark at the Homicide Squad and Rockhampton detectives to let them know what Quinn had shown him and the conversations he had had with Fraser. O’Keeffe then started a running sheet and started inquiries with the Missing Persons Bureau. Quinn went back to work. Fraser would confide his fears of being charged with the murders of the missing Rockhampton women and that if he could not escape being convicted for Keyra’s murder, he would try to be transferred to Brisbane’s John Oxley Memorial Hospital – a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. Fraser started to lay claim to being mentally ill telling Quinn something ‘definitely had gone wrong’ with his head as a result of a car accident. Quinn would learn Fraser was worried about how he was portrayed in the media and was preoccupied with what people thought of him and his crimes. The discussions between the two men would be the basis of one of the longest friendships Fraser had kept and one of the most difficult things Quinn had ever done. Saturday 17 July 1999 Lenny spoke to me about a female person named Beverley LEGGO. He told me she was 42 years of age, a brunette, and that she was wearing a white shirt and blue jeans. He spoke about a Caltex truck stop and how he picked her up while she was hitchhiking … Lenny began talking more openly and spoke about how he was worried if more bodies would be found. He also spoke about how he was worried about DNA.
Monday 19 July 1999 Lenny spoke about a girl that was raped at Emerald. I said to him,‘Do many girls hitchhike?’ He said ‘yes, you can go out and pick one up any time’. Lenny spoke THE INFORMANT
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about how he had been charged with one body but that there could be five or six more bodies to come … Wednesday 21 July 1999 Lenny says he used to be clean-shaven on the outside but is growing a beard to confuse witnesses’ identification; at one stage he had a moustache. He told me how he used to hang around the high school and he gave a lift to a missing girl named Natasha. He told me that this girl was 15 years of age and at one stage he told me he gave her a lift to his place and later to her place. He also stated this missing girl Natasha was his niece … Thursday 22 July 1999 Lenny told me that a handbag belonging to a missing woman had credit cards in it and that it was found on the bank of the Fitzroy River. Lenny said that someone must have found it and that perhaps a fisherman had hooked it and tossed it onto the bank. He stated ‘It was weighted down in the centre of the river which had a bottom of mud and silt’ … Lenny also talked about rape charges and young women and how these mothers blamed him for having raped them. He did not admit to raping any women or girls. Wednesday 28 July 1999 I said to him:‘If you had a body where would you hide it?’ He said: ‘Definitely not in the river, the body will float to the top … you have to bury it.’
Tuesday 3 August … [Lenny] said he had had a dead dog in car which 212
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made car smell. On murder day was seen washing his car in early evening … Spoke about blood on his mat in Mazda, caused by head wound of girl. I asked what was used to kill the young girl? I said also was it a blunt instrument? He replied by a hit to the side of the head actually a punch that was hard … I said to him it would be very hard for someone just to kill someone? He replied, ‘No it’s not. I could kill someone very easily it wouldn’t worry me.’ He also spoke about the young girl’s body was found at the creek site in the foetal position, like in all of the old movies … I said it would be a bit easier for you if the Police were to locate the other girls’ bodies so as their families can know what has happened and give them a decent burial, it must be terrible for those people living, not knowing. He replied (after a short silence), ‘I know.’ Tuesday 10 August Spoke about that he may have murder charge dropped to manslaughter, because it could have been an accident referring to hitting girl too hard.
Saturday 14 August This guy has a fixation to murder movies etc. Spoke about his murder victim was killed and disposed of exactly the same as in the movie Mississippi Burning. I told him about Charles Manson’s web site which was on TV a few days ago, said you could have your own site one day, seems to gather excitement from this … He has told me again, if there is no way he can get out of this current charge, he will give me the full story on everything for a book.Then he will try to go to John Oxley Centre. THE INFORMANT
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Wednesday 18 August … The last few days have been I believe very fruitful, I have spoken to him again about the victims’ families’ suspense, the pain and suffering they are enduring, not knowing, not being able to bury their relative decently. He is not denying any of this, and is seeming to relent to the fact that he has a problem. I again have stated I want the whole story for a book, and he has replied that I will get it. He is very close to coming clean on everything, I know this, at this time he is showing full confidence in me, it is only a matter of time to he opens up. Thursday 19 August … He said that the 19 yr old was murdered in a room in a disused hotel in Rockhampton. He stated that she had been punched in the head up against the wall in one of the rooms and her body dumped somewhere else (exact words) … He went on to describe the old hotel as a place where squatters reside, and also winos live there as well. He spoke as if he knew the number of people, and the set up of that hotel. He also stated that girl’s clothes were in the room … Friday 20 August … He told me that he has memory problems sometimes. That he has had a car accident at sometime and something has definitely gone wrong in his head. He said that he has problems with a pressure point inside his head and gets headaches. He referred to the fact that he didn’t think that it affects his memory much but he said it could make him forget sometimes. He then spoke about John Oxley again, a conversation that he might 214
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go there for treatment. These head problems that he is having could of caused him to do what he has been doing he said referring to his crimes. Tuesday 24 August Came to my cell about 3 pm after going to the library. He spoke about gathering books on serial killers. He said that a place in Rockhampton or surroundings for a serial killer to get rid of bodies would be the Mt Morgan gold mine. He said he has been there many times and there is a large hole full of sulphates of metals in water and it would be a good place to dispose of a body … Today he also spoke about Beverley the 42 year old again.This is the first time he has used her name … He also said to me today that serial killers can’t stop what they are doing once they get their fourth victim. He seems to take pride from serial killing. He has been trying to tell me something for the past week.
Quinn again contacted O’Keeffe to come out to the jail on 23 September. Quinn had pages of handwritten notes of the conversations he had recorded with Fraser. He told O’Keeffe he believed most of what Fraser confided in him was the truth but there were times when he ‘faked it’. Fraser always volunteered the information. O’Keeffe asked Quinn why he thought Fraser wanted to talk – Quinn believed it was because of Fraser’s moods where he would get agitated and just wanted to talk as they walked around the yard. ‘And another reason is too coz [sic] he’s asked me to write a book,’ Quinn told O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe wanted to know if Fraser had mentioned any names of women or girls. Quinn said he had mentioned Beverley Leggo by name for the first THE INFORMANT
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time and had repeatedly spoken about Natasha. Quinn then hinted to O’Keeffe that when he got his word processor approved by jail management, police might want to ‘put something in it’. O’Keeffe asked Quinn whether he was prepared to wear a ‘body wire’ or recording device and Quinn agreed. Privacy laws allow police to do this providing that one person is aware that the conversation is being recorded.When queried as to his motives for helping police, Quinn said he believed Fraser was responsible for the disappearances of the Rockhampton women and while he had ripped off the elderly, Fraser had murdered children and women. Quinn again agreed to alert O’Keeffe to any other information Fraser may pass on. By October Fraser had become ‘very edgy’ and questioned Quinn about DNA. He also claimed Beverley Leggo had made a telephone call since he had been arrested for Keyra Steinhardt and that Leggo’s brother-in-law was in the same prison yard collecting information on Fraser. His paranoia was getting the better of him. 16 October 1999 Lenny asked me a question in words to the effect of ‘if a person had sex with someone and killed that person and buried the body how long it would take for the sexual conduct or evidence of such to vanish?’ Lennie then continued on to say words to the effect of ‘I think it’s about two weeks’. I then said:‘I think you are right, Len.’
Three weeks later Fraser told Quinn he had to appear in the Magistrates’ Court but didn’t know why – he was worried police were going to charge him with more murders. Fraser said the police also may want to speak to him about the murder 216
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of street prostitute Elizabeth Henry and the attempted murder of another street prostitute, Karen Redmile, in Brisbane’s red light district in early 1998, as he was in the area at the time of the attacks. During a particularly long walk around the prison yard, Fraser confided he was going to do ‘everything in his power’ to get to Brisbane’s John Oxley Memorial Hospital as he preferred being a ‘patient rather than a prisoner’. Fraser said it was obvious to him that whoever murdered Keyra was also responsible for all the missing girls in Rockhampton but there would not be ‘two serial killers living in Rockhampton’. Detectives Col Harvey and Peter Ziser flew to Brisbane on 10 November 1999 to arrest Fraser for the murder of Sylvia Benedetti.When Ziser saw Fraser in the cell he saw no sign of the child murderer who had lost his temper in Rockhampton. ‘I remember seeing him go off in Rockhampton during an interview about Keyra, he snapped and I could see the killer come out in him. He went red in the face and clenched his fists. His eyes had a death stare,’ Ziser said. Fraser was like a trapped animal, running to the corner of the cell – he held out his hands as he told the detectives he had been examined by the Government Medical Officer and ‘every cut and bruise’ on his body had been recorded, ‘If you touch me they’ll know about it.’ Fraser appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates’ Court and remained in custody. He arrived back at Moreton at 6.05 pm when staff began to lock down the jail for the night. There was no sign of the cowardice Fraser showed Ziser as he excitedly boasted to fellow prisoners in his yard he had been charged with the murder of the ‘Italian junkie girl in the hotel’. The following morning, Fraser was back in Quinn’s cell talking about Sylvia; he said she was a prostitute and spoke of the blood being splattered all over the wall. He began boasting THE INFORMANT
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that police would not find the murder weapon this time. Quinn’s notes detail how Fraser said Sylvia’s head had been crushed and some of her teeth had been knocked out. He had gained access to the building where Sylvia was killed through a rear door and if police found his fingerprints there it was because he had lived there for a while. Fraser also mentioned that he worked at the same abattoir as Julie Turner although they worked different shifts and she had disappeared from a nightclub around Christmas time. Quinn later said: At about 6.00 pm on the same day … he began to talk again about DNA and blood groups and he was cursing the latest innovation in crime fighting. He said to me that they must have found traces of the Italian girl’s blood on his clothes and on his steering wheel of his car. He became angry and he [Fraser] said:‘No-one will miss any of the victims, Beverley and Julie were drug dealers and the Italian girl was a junkie.’ He had no compassion for them. Fraser then wondered whether police had checked the Rockhampton dump for bodies.
Over the coming days, Fraser shared his love of horror novels with Quinn, particularly the ones about serial killers – one of the books contained a chapter about how a woman was raped, bashed and murdered. 16 November 1999 Lenny seemed more upset about a guy called Barry Richardson … [who] was giving evidence against him. Lenny said:‘The cops think I’m a piece of shit but they 218
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don’t realise what I have gone through in my life.What I have gone through has caused me to kill these people … all of the hate over the years came to the fore and ended with the murder of these people.’
Fraser started to shut down from Quinn after that, rarely speaking about any of his crimes. Fraser was nervous about his pending committal hearing for the murder of Keyra. He was flown to Rockhampton on 19 November for the hearing and was committed to stand trial for her murder on 12 January.The committal hearing had attracted a lot of media attention so Fraser was back in the public spotlight as an accused child killer.The coverage allowed some of the facts to emerge about the acts he had inflicted upon Keyra. Back in Moreton B Jail the other prisoners gave him a hard time so, to take the heat off himself, he decided he would attack Quinn, calling him a ‘dog’ (informant) which in prison culture is even lower than a child killer. Fraser told other inmates Quinn was collecting information on him for police. ‘Some of the crims told me what was going on and then I went and fronted him and he said it was shit,’ Quinn said. ‘It was summertime and Moreton was always full of flies and I went to swat a fly away and Fraser grabbed my arm. I threw him up against the wall and held him with my arm across his neck and my other fist pulled back ready to strike.’ Fraser was terrified and Quinn let him go. After that, the men barely spoke and Fraser wouldn’t confide anything in Quinn for eleven months.
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13 THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW IN NOVEMBER 2000, Queensland Homicide Detective David Hickey was working on the execution-style murder of a Brisbane receptionist when he received a call that would change the face of four missing persons investigations. Hickey’s colleague, Detective John O’Keeffe, revealed he had been speaking with Allan Quinn. Quinn had told O’Keeffe new, credible information relating to the murder of Sylvia Benedetti.After eleven months of silence, Fraser had started to confide in him again. Fraser had dropped his guard and was opening up like never before – he desperately needed an ally now he was a convicted child killer facing an indefinite life sentence. Quinn described to police a bloodied hand print Fraser had left on a wall in a hotel room, as well as the smudge left when a dirty old towel was used as an impromptu eraser. Quinn told police Sylvia had been 220
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murdered in the rear of the hotel, how Fraser had heard a noise and panicked, dumping her clothes in a downstairs freezer. He also described how Fraser had bled her like an animal. This information had never been released, let alone made public. The details indicated first hand knowledge of the crime scene, containing the sexually charged, bloodied tidbits only the killer would know. Until now, Hickey had been sceptical about jail informants – prisoners almost always wanted something in return for information: reduced sentences, early parole or immediate prison transfers and security downgrades. Since Fraser’s incarceration in May 1999, between six and ten inmates had approached police with information about the serial rapist. Most of that information either had no credibility or came from off-the-cuff comments Fraser had made in the prison yard. The prisoners often pandered to Fraser’s ego, flattering him with how he got away with the murders, in unsubtle and transparent attempts to secure a confession. Fraser was not a bright man, but as a career criminal he knew better than to trust other cons. Hickey also gave Fraser a degree of credit, in that he was aware of his tendency to toy with fellow inmates.A product of institutions, Fraser often gave away false information to test whether other prisoners were police informants. He also used them as a means of playing out his fantasies, and as an outlet for his habitual lies. But Quinn was different to the others. He was patient, prepared for the long haul and didn’t want anything in return. Quinn’s criminal experience as a conman and fraudster also gave him the ability to convince Fraser he could be trusted, as well as the means to extract information. Quinn had passed on details of Sylvia’s gruesome death to Detective O’Keeffe during a jail visit on 31 October 2000, five THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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days after Fraser had started to confess. On 23 November 2000 O’Keeffe met with Hickey at police headquarters and passed on Quinn’s information about several murders in and around Rockhampton. The victims were Beverley Leggo, Natasha Ryan, Julie Turner and Sylvia Benedetti. Fraser also indicated he may have knowledge about the torture and murder of pregnant street prostitute Elizabeth Henry and the attempted murder of fellow worker Karen Redmile in Brisbane’s red light district in early 1998. Quinn had Hickey’s attention. Hickey took the information to his boss, then Detective Inspector of Homicide, Graham Rynders. Rynders wanted Hickey to corroborate the information. The next day Rynders met with Deputy Police Commissioner Ron McGibbon and Assistant Commissioner Graham Williams of Queensland Police State Crime Operations, to discuss the developments. The information breathed muchneeded life into the investigations of the missing women.As the cases had become cold, and were heading to the coroner for inquests, police feared they could remain unsolved. As a result of Quinn’s information, Taskforce Alex (All Executed) was formed on 24 November 2000, with Hickey leading the charge and Rynders overseeing the investigation. Alex utilised the talents of detectives Roger Marek, Brendan Rook, Tony Lohmann and Darrin Padget, who were already working under Hickey, as well as Peter Ziser, the arresting officer for Sylvia Benedetti. O’Keeffe also joined Taskforce Alex but told his colleagues he did not want to be involved with anything or anyone outside of Quinn – to help protect the integrity of information with his informant. He didn’t want the risk or to be put into a situation where he could be accused of imparting or ‘feeding’ information back to Quinn. Taskforce Alex was moved to a secured area on the third floor of police headquarters in the Brisbane CBD. 222
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The taskforce’s brief was to investigate eight suspected murders and suspicious disappearances of women and girls from the time of Fraser’s release from prison in January 1997. In a memo from Taskforce Alex to senior police, the intentions were outlined: ‘Each disappearance had a similar modus operandi and the principal suspect was a known sex offender and convicted murderer, Leonard John Fraser.’The team was to liaise with detectives from the relevant regions who had originally been investigating the cases. Checks on Fraser’s movements, including the time he spent in prison and his telephone and bank records, quickly eliminated his involvement in five of the cases. Over-thecounter bank transactions cleared him of involvement with Redmile and Henry. His involvement was also ruled out in the murder of teenager Rebecca Richardson, who had disappeared near Bundaberg in November 1998. Mobile phone and bank records eliminated him as a suspect in the case of 47-year-old former Kings Cross prostitute Christine Fenner, last seen alive on 12 February 1999 at Booyal outside of Childers. Fraser’s prison records excluded him from the murder of Kira Renee Guise, who disappeared from Roma in southwest Queensland in July 1999.The Guise and Richardson cases were assigned to fellow taskforce member and Homicide detective Kerry Johnson who launched Operations Fig and Rich respectively. These investigations – while not involving Fraser – proved fruitful, with Rodney Cherry, Guise’s stepfather, later convicted of her murder and the murder of her mother Annette Cherry, in November 2002. In the Richardson case, Jodie Martin Stephen Van Der Veght, an acquaintance of the teenager, was charged with her murder and interfering with a corpse, in April 2001. He was later convicted of being an accessory after the fact when the Director of Public Prosecutions THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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accepted Van Der Veght’s version of events that a member of the Melbourne mafia executed Richardson in front of him to keep him quiet. He was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to eight years jail. Fraser was found guilty of murdering Keyra Steinhardt on 7 September 2000. After four weeks of harrowing evidence, Fraser’s Supreme Court jury had taken just four-and-a-half hours to send him back to jail. The brutality of his crime and the innocence of his victim had shocked even the most stoic juror. And as if Fraser’s crime against Keyra was not enough, Prosecutor Paul Rutledge had also read to the court a litany of Fraser’s sex crimes across Queensland and New South Wales. Rutledge had told the court Fraser was a danger to the community and that he should be jailed indefinitely. His attack on Keyra was ‘obviously’ premeditated and sexually motivated, and Justice Ken Mackenzie agreed. Justice Mackenzie also commented that Fraser had committed ‘a parent’s worst nightmare’ by killing a young girl as she walked home from school. But calls for Fraser’s indefinite incarceration were not just restricted to the prosecutor or the presiding judge. Prison officers who worked at Rockhampton jail told the Courier–Mail that when Fraser was released from the jail in 1997, there were widespread fears and predictions he would kill. Fraser’s case partly contributed to the Queensland Government introducing laws to prevent criminals considered likely to re-offend from being released simply because they had served their time. Fraser’s case was politicised and widely publicised, with the nation’s newspapers branding him a sex beast and a monster. He was facing an indefinite sentence, and he was also before the courts for Sylvia’s murder. He was short on supporters on the inside, as well as on the outside. Until now, he had been a serial rapist, but this latest verdict confirmed he was 224
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a sexual deviant who preyed on children. His long-practised ravings and protests that he wasn’t a ‘kiddy fucker or molester’ fell on deaf ears. Even in a jail full of sex offenders, child killers were shown little sympathy. Fraser was assaulted several times over Keyra. Fraser had stopped speaking to Quinn in November 1999 after he accused him of being a ‘dog’ – prison speak for an informant.Then about one month after his indefinite sentence for Keyra was handed down, on 26 October 2000, Fraser accidentally bumped into Quinn in the jail’s kitchen. Fraser had been carrying honey at the time, spilling some on the floor. As he bent over to clean it up, he apologised to Quinn who in turn told Fraser not to worry, as he had enough to worry about. Quinn didn’t really want to talk to Fraser, but for Fraser the incident was an ice-breaker. Fraser needed an outlet and an ally and Quinn’s attentions were a welcome release for the man who had the weight of the world on his shoulders. For the first time in a long time, Fraser found someone who did not judge him. His crimes did not appear to disgust or even to matter to Quinn. Once again, his confidant provided protection against attacks from other prisoners – Quinn was a very fit and strong man who worked out daily. His sheer size alone was enough to intimidate would-be attackers and Fraser’s physical fitness was on the slide. Fraser felt comfortable with Quinn – they had history – and he felt he could trust him because he had already divulged details of his crimes before their argument in late 1999 and there had been no repercussions. He started talking to Quinn who in turn invited him into his cell for coffee. Quinn also bought Fraser cigarettes when his court attendance meant he didn’t get his ‘buy-up’ of products. It was a rare act of kindness for a man accustomed to hatred THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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and violence. Fraser, ever the opportunist, also saw Quinn as a ticket towards freedom. Because Fraser wanted to be a ‘patient not a prisoner’ and needed assistance in getting declared criminally insane, he turned to Quinn for help, saying he wanted to ‘get everything out of the way’ in relation to the Rockhampton murders. Fraser had repeatedly undergone psychiatric assessments which all concluded he had several personality disorders but was not mentally ill. An indefinite life sentence for murder technically means no release, whereas an offender who commits the same crime but is found criminally insane may eventually be released back into the community under the care of mental health authorities. In his own warped mind, Fraser ultimately wanted the information to reach police – he wanted them to know the details of his handiwork believing he would then have a better chance of being declared criminally insane. He preferred this title over being known as a child murderer. Fraser had no one to talk to apart from his lawyer so Quinn was his conduit to the outside world. Quinn told him he had a friend who could pass the information on to the media.This also suited Fraser because the other prisoners would not see him directly co-operating with police. Police themselves suspect that Fraser, over time, came to know that Quinn was passing information to them. On 20 November 2000 the jail dining room was deserted as Fraser declared his friendship with Natasha Ryan to Quinn. He knew her from the bowling alley and had sat outside the North Rockhampton State High School where she was a student, watching her. He had also met her in a small lane near the cinema and offered to give her a lift to a Yeppoon beach in his Camira. The slight teen had accepted his offer, but had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder en route. He told Quinn: 226
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Do you know how to knock someone out? I put my hand down near the gear stick, like I’m about to change gears … but I don’t change gears … I bring my hand up very fast and smash them across the face real hard … it always works.
Fraser bragged that he had hit a sleeping Natasha, before driving her to the showgrounds where he murdered her. He later returned to retrieve her body, wrapped it in a blanket and dumped it near the airport. He drew Quinn a mud map indicating the body was near the pink lily ponds. Quinn felt Fraser knew Natasha well. But that confession was just an appetiser – over the following days he served up cold confessions of killing Beverley and Julie. Fraser drew Quinn the location of another body at Kinka Beach. He indicated the woman had been left among palm trees since December 1998:‘Here is another body they can find quickly … someone may have taken the head off the body but the remainder will be there.’ Fraser was excited as he relived his murderous rage, frequently changing his version of events – the way he encountered the victims, where he disposed of their bodies and the physical nature of the attacks. On one occasion he told Quinn he killed Beverley in the car while they were driving out to Yeppoon, after hitting her in the throat, and then later he claimed he strangled her with a rope swing at Nankin Creek and dangled her body over the water until she stopped kicking. He claimed he had slit Natasha’s throat and would then say that the stab wounds he inflicted on her stomach would not show on her skeleton. On 1 December, the television news aired a story that skeletal remains had been found by two surfers at Sandy Point a couple of days before. The remains had been noticed by certain locals for some weeks but had not been reported to THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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Fraser’s mud map showing where Beverley Leggo’s body would be found.
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police. In fact, the nearby track had become known locally as ‘skeleton track’. DNA tests and an autopsy were conducted. Speculation was rife that it was Sylvia and the resulting publicity prompted prisoners to taunt Fraser as they knew he was charged with her murder. The abuse got too much for Fraser who attempted suicide so he could escape the other inmates and be placed in isolation in the detention unit. He placed a tourniquet around his arm and threatened to cut his arm off. The next day Fraser called for Quinn to come to the detention unit offering more details about the murders of Beverley and Julie – that he’d hit Julie across the throat and covered her body with leaves and branches. In a panic over being harassed further by prisoners, Fraser asked an officer for six sheets of paper and pencils – he drew two crude maps for each victim, marking their initials in the corner. A day later, Fraser drew more maps, admitting to Quinn some of the others he had done previously were inaccurate. Detective O’Keeffe returned to Moreton jail on 7 December 2000 and met with Quinn who passed on five maps drawn by Fraser and his handwritten notes of their conversations. Quinn also drew maps interpreting where he thought Fraser had dumped the bodies of his victims. O’Keeffe photographed the maps and Quinn’s notes before taking them for fingerprinting and to a handwriting expert to verify they were produced by Fraser. Quinn said Fraser had not told him whether he had sexually interfered with his victims and appeared to be terrified of anyone finding out about his predatory behaviour. Fraser didn’t want to be known as a ‘kid fucker’ and was particularly scared about discussing schoolgirls like Natasha, especially after the abuse he received over Keyra. Quinn again volunteered to O’Keeffe he would allow police to install a listening device in his cell and signed a form giving THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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them authority. Quinn was aware that his consent to the conversations being recorded meant police did not have to apply for a Supreme Court order to install the device. Police took advantage of Fraser being in the detention unit and with the assistance of Queensland Corrective Services, covertly installed the device in Quinn’s cell on 12 December. Taskforce Alex began secretly recording months of incriminating evidence against Fraser. For Detective Hickey, the listening device would independently corroborate Quinn’s versions of the conversations he had with Fraser. Quinn’s notes alone would not hold up in court without such corroboration – his credibility could be easily dismissed as another jailyard confession. In the meantime, prison management approved Fraser being ‘buddied up’ with Quinn, which allowed him to sleep in the same cell when he wanted to, after the jail was locked down at night. Quinn whet Fraser’s appetite and bolstered his ego saying he would write a book about the murders. Things became heated between the two, though, when Quinn started to push Fraser on Natasha Ryan. Fraser maintained the teenager was his niece and he didn’t want to talk about it because he didn’t want people thinking he had killed his niece. Quinn started to challenge Fraser on previous claims he had made but Fraser back-pedalled saying his versions of what happened to her were only speculation. Fraser also stressed he never took jewellery from his victims because if he pawned it, it would lead police back to him. Detectives Hickey and Marek secretly met with Quinn at the jail after there were some initial technical glitches with the listening device. Hickey also wanted to make sure Quinn was not confusing Fraser’s admissions about Natasha Ryan with another girl called Natasha Hall whom Fraser knew.They gave him strict instructions that he was to remain in the passenger seat and Fraser had to be driving the conversations. Quinn was 230
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a police informant, not a police agent, Hickey said. ‘That was the line we had to walk, we had to debrief him and not brief him.’ Both Hickey and Quinn believed Fraser used Quinn as a conduit to the police because he didn’t want to be seen by other prisoners as co-operating with police. The listening device recorded Fraser admitting he killed Beverly, Julie and Sylvia. He said he had met Beverley up at an ATM at the Northside Plaza shopping centre and had followed her inside. She had accepted his invitation to drive to Yeppoon to pick up Crissie and on the way they had a heated argument and he had smashed her: I slowed the car down to see if she was ok and ah she was cut, gargling and ah I sort of and that and um, so I pulled over to see if she, if she was really to see if there was anything wrong with her and ah before I knew it she was just, just like you know, convulsions.
Fraser said he panicked and dumped her body near a swimming hole. With Julie, she had staggered up to him and some friends and asked for a cigarette. She asked him for a lift home and on the way in the car, he put his hand on her leg and Julie took a swing at him. I just slammed her face and I just flogged into her … And ah I realised what, what happened because I heard, heard her neck break … Oh I heard something break, bone crunching … I thought oh well gotta get rid of the body …
Fraser then described how he drove to Sandy Point with Sylvia’s body in the boot and dug her grave by hand. He then THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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covered her body with a fallen tree and eight logs. In the following days, he provided more details about the locations of their bodies. He described how Sylvia lay with blood all over her after he hit her, ‘She was just staring and ah not making a sound … what I hit her with could been a huge lump, bit of timber there.’ Fraser revealed he knew police had the maps as he told Quinn all police would have to do was look between the mango trees for Beverley’s body and ‘they’ll find the fucken [sic] thing’. However, Fraser did not know a listening device was recording his conversations with Quinn. Quinn decided he was going to push Fraser, who still feared vigilantes would attack him over Keyra if he returned to Rockhampton, and convinced him to take police to the graves of his victims in Rockhampton. Fraser was already frustrated that police could not find the bodies based on the information he had passed to Quinn. Quinn slipped back into his conman persona, telling Fraser he had had enough of his bullshit and that the information he had been giving Quinn was ‘bodgy’ and that’s why the bodies could not be found.‘I said he would never get to John Oxley if the police don’t find the bodies and told him to get stuffed and I didn’t want anything more to do with him.’ Quinn walked over to the phone, pretending to call his friend and telling him to destroy the maps. The con worked, Fraser saw his lifeline slipping and agreed to go with police back to Rockhampton as long as no media were present and Quinn accompanied him. Four days later on 21 December, armed with a court order to remove Fraser from the jail two hours before the 7 am morning muster, Detective Hickey came face to face with the suspected serial killer in the jail’s surgery. He had hardly introduced himself when Fraser pulled a power play telling the detective ‘to shut up and do as you’re told … I know more 232
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about this than what you do’. Hickey, who was also mindful of Quinn’s advice to not bring up Fraser’s sex offences, was immediately sceptical of Fraser’s so-called co-operation. ‘He had clenched fists, a red face and a puffed chest.’ However as soon as Fraser was outside prison walls his bravado disappeared and he treated the police like long-lost friends.Taskforce Alex took Fraser and Quinn, who had been granted a leave of absence, to the State Government jet at the Brisbane airport to fly to Rockhampton. Fraser had told police he would not go without Quinn. Fraser was repeatedly warned he did not have to speak to police and refused their offer of having a legal representative present. Once in Rockhampton, a convoy of police cars and armed special emergency response officers began to make its way to Fraser’s killing fields – and their suspect enjoyed every minute of it. He shared his intrinsic knowledge of the area between Rockhampton and Yeppoon, and the people who lived there. He also told of his hard life and how, as a child, he witnessed his brother killed in a grading accident. During the trip he did his best to convince Hickey that he was a popular, well-liked man who had been wrongfully imprisoned for Keyra’s murder because Rockhampton police were out to get him. He told of how he had to leave Mount Morgan because it was full of pedophiles. Fraser took police first to a waterhole adjacent to Nankin Creek, 18 kilometres west of Emu Park near the Emu Park–Rockhampton Road. Fraser was pumped as he was finally able to show off his handiwork – oblivious to the fact he was being secretly filmed through a keyhole lens worn by Detective Mark Hickey. He told Hickey he believed there might be a body out there but his mind was a ‘bit scrambled’. Handcuffed, Fraser trudged through six-foot-high grass like an able footed goat negotiating familiar territory, skipping THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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potholes and warning police the area was infested with deadly taipan snakes. He was excited by the fact he knew something the police did not. Fraser happily suggested a holiday shack outside of Mount Morgan that Hickey could use if he was interested. Fraser then crouched down and pointed to an area overgrown with lantana – underneath, scattered on top of the ground and sheltered by almost two metres of grass, were human bones. Hickey asked Fraser if there was anything he wanted to tell them, but he declined. Police suspected, based on Fraser’s conversations with Quinn and his drawn map marked ‘BL’, it was the bush grave of Beverley Leggo. Fraser told detectives there was a body but had no idea of the identity or sex. Detective Rook guarded the scene as the convoy left for the next body. Investigators were then taken to Ritamada Road at Kinka Beach, near a refuse dump between Emu Park and Yeppoon which had been marked ‘Sister of Mercy, beach, palm trees, dump’ on the map provided by Fraser. En route Fraser told Hickey he knew the area well from taking Crissie there to strip cars and how the beach was an area for homosexuals and nudists. Fraser spoke of a teenage girl he used to babysit and how she sat on his lap when he taught her to drive but he was the only man who was not aroused by that. He joked how Crissie was jealous of the girl – a girl who later told police he had tried to rape her while he was babysitting her at Mount Morgan. Fraser told Hickey he had seen a boy running out of the bush at Kinka Beach carrying a skull and warned them the body may not be ‘complete’. They pulled up onto Ritamada Road, which turns into a dirt track and walked through 300 metres of dense bushland to a cluster of palm trees. There the detectives found the headless remains of ‘JT’ within 10 metres of where Fraser had marked her grave with an ‘X’ on the map. 234
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Again Hickey asked Fraser whether there was anything he could tell police about the remains. Again, Fraser said no. The area was declared a crime scene and Fraser told police there was another location near the Capricornia Resort he wanted to take them to, near Yeppoon. He told them he had seen on television that a body had been found there and that’s why he had tried to kill himself in prison. Under Hickey’s questioning, Fraser agreed no police had given him directions and he was taking the detectives there of his own free will. He took them to Sandy Point, and police found more skeletal remains of a woman they knew to be Sylvia. The day after, forensic examinations of the tooth fragments found at the scene confirmed it was the raven-haired teenager. Again Fraser said he couldn’t help police with the identity of the body. He told police he was able to show them the exact location because he saw it on television but detectives knew no media reports had released those specific details. Fraser explained he knew the area well because it was somewhere he used to go camping and have sex with Crissie. Police then asked Fraser to take them somewhere suitable for lunch where they could eat away from the public eye and he took them to the Jim Crow National Park. While there, Fraser paced up and down with Quinn, worrying about whether he was going to tell the police where Natasha was buried and decided not to. However he did eventually tell Hickey he might have seen the ‘other missing girl’ with an older man at Nankin Creek. The girl had gone swimming in the creek in her underwear and top while he watched from the bank. The statement alarmed Hickey, obviously Fraser frequently visited the location and he was talking about another missing girl. After lunch the convoy headed back towards the dump at Yeppoon and then Rockhampton. Fraser pointed out THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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a property which he said he stayed at and where he would later claim he killed Natasha. He then directed police to North Rockhampton. Fraser wanted to show them where he buried his pet dog Zeena. He took them to a tree where they removed a clump of logs covering a natural hollow and part of a grey flannel blanket. He had carefully wrapped Zeena’s body in the blanket because she was a ‘part of him’ and he did not want to treat her like other people treated their dogs. He told of how he ‘bawled’ when she died but left out the fact he baited her with rat poison after he sexually violated her. And then Fraser shed tears – for his dog, not his victims.The detectives hid their disgust. Hickey asked Fraser to take to them to the pink lily ponds near the Rockhampton airport. Hickey thought once they were there, Fraser might reveal where he dumped Natasha’s body but when pushed, he became too hostile. Fraser slept on the plane on the return trip that afternoon and he and Quinn were returned to Moreton jail. The following day in the December heat – laden with humidity, mosquitoes and sandflies – Taskforce Alex began preparations to covertly clear and search the dense bushland around the crime scenes to prepare for removal of the remains. A line search of the area around Nankin Creek located Beverley’s tibia bone resting on top of a bush about 20 metres away from her remains. Despite the morbid working conditions, there was a sense of elation among the detectives that they could finally bring the victims home to their families. Once the remains were retrieved they were sent to Brisbane’s John Tonge Centre to be re-assembled by a Queensland Health anthropologist, who specialised in human remains and skeletons and bones, in preparation for the pathologists. Dental records and DNA swabs taken from family members were also used to positively 236
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identify the victims. Julie was the only victim where the cause of death could not be determined as her head was missing. Quinn returned to his daily routine with Fraser. On the nights Fraser didn’t stay, he would transcribe their conversations and wrap his notes, sometimes with maps, in plastic, place them under his shirt and then pass the information to a prison intelligence officer who waited in the garden outside his cell block. He had a lot to contend with when it came to Fraser – bad breath, severe mood swings and a callous disregard for his victims who he sometimes referred to as those ‘fucken things’. Fraser would casually explain killing in the simplest of terms like how easy it was putting bodies in the car boots - by folding the victims’ legs behind their backs and putting them in the foetal position – because death allowed flexibility. It was a challenge keeping him on an even keel.When he asked Fraser why he killed these women, Fraser blamed it on his temper, saying he had to take his frustrations out on something. Fraser believed he was doing the ‘right thing’ as he was not doing it for the ‘thrill’. Fraser did not talk openly about his sex offending but did tell Quinn he raped girls when he was young and how he had been in a boys’ home. Each day the pair would be released from the cells at 6.30 am, have breakfast about 15 minutes later, then did laps around the yard until lunchtime – the walking also ensured the pair was out of the earshot of other prisoners. Fraser’s confessions took their toll on Quinn emotionally but he was determined to help ease the suffering of the victims’ families. He later reflected on that time: It really disturbed me you know his talking about cutting his victim’s jugular veins and coming back to a woman’s body to cut her head off. How he spoke about hanging Beverley, how callous it was. I lived it when he THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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spoke about them, I felt I was right there in the hotel room (with Sylvia) and then he’d tell you about how he went back to the bodies, seeing their bones protrude. He had to go back to one body and use a screwdriver to puncture the esophagus to release gas out of the stomach. Fraser told me he returned to the burial sites of the women he murdered to see how the decomposing process was going … He doesn’t care about life, he got out of jail and just preyed upon people. He’s searched around caravan parks of a night and he’s driven along highways looking for victims. He’s gone to beaches looking for backpackers, he’s looking out for where he can take victims. It’s like Natasha, he knew too much about her, he may have stalked her … that’s Fraser.
While keeping his role as police informant a secret, Quinn also had to watch out for other prisoners getting in Fraser’s ear. Other prisoners even asked Quinn to allow them to give Fraser a hiding because of Keyra but he declined even though there were many times when Quinn himself felt like smacking Fraser.‘My mind was working everywhere, on every side of the yard. My mind was like an octopus with tentacles …’ Quinn also took a risk wearing a body wire to make it easier to record Fraser when they were outside of Quinn’s cell. Prisoners at Moreton jail wanted Natasha found as well and, after a meeting, gave the green light to any prisoner who could get Fraser to tell where her body could be found. Hickey believed Fraser wanted to confess to the murders until the negative publicity that followed the discovery of the Rockhampton victims’ remains. Hickey visited Fraser at the jail on 1 January 2001 and warned him that the media were about 238
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to run stories of bodies being found in Rockhampton. Fraser seized this opportunity to implicate his alter ego, ‘Squeaky’, saying he dumped the bodies of the victims for ‘somebody else’ but couldn’t say who it was. To Fraser, Hickey was someone who kept an open mind and would believe his Squeaky story. Hickey knew how to play the game too. ‘My interviews took the role basically of “Lennie I believe you, tell me more of what I need to investigate”.’ In their initial taped interviews at the jail, Fraser began to reveal details of the cars he used to dump the bodies, saying he had disposed of three ‘as a favour’. In another interview, Fraser was adamant he had nothing to do with Natasha’s disappearance and she was ‘somewhere alive and she’s in hiding’. He claimed he had ‘his people’ out looking for her and she was now a street kid who was being passed between bikie gangs. Fraser denied knowing the teenager but said she could be hiding in a house close to a police station so she was right under their nose. He did admit he had been at the same bowling alley as Natasha when he took Crissie there with some of her friends from the Endeavour Foundation. Fraser became angry, telling Hickey he was sick of police and other prisoners asking him about Natasha. What Fraser didn’t know was police had already recorded him telling Quinn that searches of the pink lily ponds and airport areas he had pinpointed on the maps would fail to find Natasha as ‘bones tend to move deeper into the earth in time …’. Fraser was also convinced that Robert Ryan was speaking directly to him when he made a public plea on television for information on his daughter’s body. Fraser again confided to Hickey that after dumping a body at Ritamada Road (where Julie Turner’s body was found), he returned to the site with Crissie to strip a car of its parts and, while there, saw a little boy running out of the bush with a THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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skull in his hand. He told Hickey all the bodies had to be flexible so they would fit into the small boot of a car and with the bodies he had dumped, rigor mortis had not set in as the arms and legs could be moved. Fraser had dumped the bodies to earn money, and said he had every right to earn money any way he could.Then Fraser finally claimed that he was ‘working’ for a criminal nicknamed Squeaky.When Hickey asked him if police should investigate Squeaky, Fraser agreed. Fraser said he had met Squeaky in the Rockhampton jail and he had stayed with Fraser at his Mount Morgan house while he was on the run from police. Fraser said had the Rockhampton police done their job they would have arrested Squeaky who was the real killer. Days earlier Fraser had told Quinn part of his plan was to tell police he had to clear some debts and had paid them by unknowingly dumping the bodies. Fraser continued to perpetuate and build the Squeaky myth saying his first name was Greg and his surname started with a T and he was about a year younger than Fraser. According to Hickey: [Fraser] would ask me to do checks … and I would come back with results. I let him know I didn’t fob him off and made inquiries on information I knew was rubbish from the start. He would say Squeaky’s mother lives here and I would go and doorknock. He told me his car had broken down at Proserpine which meant he couldn’t have taken Natasha but unfortunately for him it checked out that it happened after she disappeared.
Hickey’s checks made it hard for Fraser to catch the detective out in a lie and also eliminated any chance of Squeaky being a suspect. Hickey’s inquiries with local mechanics revealed
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Fraser was in the area at the time of Natasha’s disappearance; further inquiries showed he had tried to pass on a knife to Jamie Abell, an ex-boyfriend of Crissie’s, while the couple were at Airlie Beach – just days after Fraser claimed he had stabbed Natasha. Until his arrest Fraser remained unaware that a listening device was recording everything he said and Quinn was helping police do that. On 12 January 2001 Quinn suggested that Fraser give him all the details of the missing women in Rockhampton and he would devise a plan to blame someone else for them. He would write it in his book. Fraser, who was in damage control, agreed, saying: ‘We have to blame a man known as Squeaky … The police already know of Squeaky, and we will fuck them up … we must give the police some information that they don’t know.’ Quinn said he smuggled the information out to a friend to pass on to the media. Fraser was excited; the heat was off him for the murders. Fraser called Hickey to the jail, anxious that Squeaky had turned up at his daughter’s Brisbane home and threatened her. Fraser continued the charade saying he had warned his daughter her father needed to ‘keep his mouth shut and back off ’ or otherwise ‘things will start happening’.The man looked similar to Fraser and was driving a Ford Falcon with NSW licence plates. Fraser had done time with Squeaky in the boys’ home and claimed he was a standover merchant who had once threatened Fraser with a gun. Squeaky always had a bloke with him, either in their twenties or older, who had served time in the army. Days later, Fraser ‘issued his press release’ saying ‘you will be looking for about thirty-odd crimes committed, reported or not’. The document never reached the media; it was intercepted by police:
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Excerpt from Fraser’s press release, as his alter ego, Squeaky.
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Statement from Thursday 18th Jan 2001. Squeaky. I want you to air this to the world by the tabloids and by electronic media. I want you to understand that I am responsible for all of the murders in the Rockhampton area.You will never know my real name, you can refer to me as Squeaky. Now I will give you information on these murders that only the real culprit would know. This information has never been published by media sources.
Fraser’s bid to distance himself from the murders backfired when the press release contained information only the killer would know. Beverley Leggo had been strangled with her black sports briefs, something that was not apparent until medical staff went to great lengths to unravel the ligature which was under a thick mesh of dirt. They found her black sports briefs and a light coloured bra wound so tightly around her neck a surgical scalpel had to be used to remove them. His press release also included that Beverley’s handbag had been weighted down with rocks and the strap was broken – another thing not previously publicly revealed. For Julie Turner, ‘Squeaky’ had killed her near Rockhampton’s Police Citizens Youth Club near the railway crossing: ‘If you look along the railway line on the police boys’ club side of the line on the bank just up from the electrical box you should find a pair of sandals belonging to Turner. She was strangled by her bra.’ ‘Squeaky’ then detailed how he lured Sylvia to her death by enticing her into the Queensland Hotel with the promise of marijuana, ‘smoko’, and shelter. He had tried to ‘pash’ her and she hit back. Enraged, he hit her in the mouth and then hit her with a piece of timber at least four times on the left side of her head. He reported throwing the weapon into the river THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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and then described the bloodied cleanup, detailing how he removed her clothing and put it in a downstairs freezer. Keyra was not spared either and, for the first time, Fraser, masquerading as Squeaky, revealed what he did, ‘I killed the little girl, she was unconscious. I hit her on the left side of the head with a clenched backhand, she went down, I moved her body from the walkway. I wrapped her jumper across her face and suffocated her.’ He had met Natasha at a milk bar at the Northside Plaza shopping centre four months before she disappeared. They started seeing each other after school on her way home, meeting near the Salvation Army shop. He claimed they went for a drive and parked near a speedboat ramp along the Fitzroy River where she told him she was pregnant to him and loved him regardless. She had not told her parents. Fraser suggested they go swimming and told her he didn’t want to be tied permanently to one person: ‘I kept putting her head under the water and I ended up holding her head under the water …’ He said he drowned her, wrapped her body in a fish net and weighed it down with rocks before throwing her into the Fitzroy River. Fraser’s press release didn’t stop with his Rockhampton victims – his alter ego claimed to have raped a drunken Asian woman around mid-1997 whom he attacked as he escorted her back to her motel. He punched her in the throat and carried her to a vacant lot between the motel and a video shop. Before he could finish raping her, a passer-by disturbed him and he fled to a nearby truck stop where he watched an ambulance and police car go to the woman’s aid. He provided details of his victim’s clothing and appearance. He claimed that, in 1980, Squeaky sodomised a ‘new Australian woman, fat girl, 38 year old …’ on a stairwell at the docks in Woolloomooloo. 244
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After he raped her, the woman tried to walk up to a laneway but collapsed. Squeaky fled. A year later, after having a few drinks, while taking a shortcut through Sydney University, Squeaky noticed a woman having car trouble. Instead of helping her, he grabbed her around the throat and dragged into nearby bushes where he raped her. The woman repeatedly told him she was four months pregnant but he only stopped his attack when he heard security guards yelling at him. Fraser then claimed Squeaky murdered Sandy Lawrence, a Victorian hitchhiker he picked up in 1982 as he drove from Mackay to Bowen in North Queensland where he lived with his parents. He had noticed the young woman trying to get a lift but then saw a police car drive past. He waited until it was clear and offered a lift to the woman who was heading north. A police car followed them for a short distance but turned off. ‘When we got up to Holme [sic] Hill I remembered an old zoo on the left hand side of the highway. I had a few things going through my mind about Sandy, I thought that it might be the right place to put someone to get rid of them.’ Fraser reported how Squeaky pulled up in a rest area and Sandy told him she was always frightened of being raped and murdered,‘I don’t have to tell you what happened. I will let you guess.’ Fraser claimed Squeaky forced her into the zoo and murdered her in one of the old crocodile ponds at the back. The claims continued.The following year Squeaky raped seven backpackers throughout the Proserpine and Airlie Beach areas including one woman who had fallen asleep in his car. He took a detour into a sugar cane field and raped her. His reign of terror then continued down the coast to Brisbane as he cruised for women to rape – many of whom were too scared to go to police. THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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The taskforce knew the secretly taped admissions were not enough to convict Fraser. The disclosure of the crime scenes and of the bodies did not directly link Fraser to the murder so the detectives concentrated their efforts behind the scenes gathering confessional evidence, which pinpointed Fraser as the killer, not as someone who assisted the killer. Just as important was disproving Fraser’s information so Taskforce Alex covertly set about confirming or eliminating crimes Fraser claimed Squeaky had committed. Detectives needed to remove any ambiguity surrounding Fraser’s confessions. Detectives Rook and Padget located the privately owned zoo near Ayr in North Queensland and then spent days clearing metre-high grass and bushland before digging through thick, cemented mud. They ran a metal detector over it but failed to find anything of significance.Taskforce Alex searched the area behind the youth club and found Julie’s shoe and bra. They showed the bra to her daughter Kylie who identified it as one she had seen her mother wear. Detectives also contacted the manufacturer of the bra and found an expert who would later testify the bra and cup size were similar to those worn by Julie. Missing persons records were checked for Sandy Lawrence but none had been filed under that name.The closest detectives came was a Victorian woman called Susan Lawrence who disappeared from a dance hall in 1988.To complicate matters, all missing persons records in Queensland prior to 1985 had been destroyed. Police tried to verify the rapes in Sydney – Fraser was in jail for rape when he supposedly committed the one in Kings Cross in 1980 – but they could not find any complaints or unsolved rape cases. At one stage Fraser drew a map of where he claimed he had killed a transsexual prostitute in Woolloomooloo in Sydney whose body had been dumped in an industrial bin – it 246
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was what Fraser referred to as a ‘gig trap’, false leads for police to follow. Inquiries with NSW Police showed the prostitute had bite marks on her leg but the saliva traces did not match Fraser. After reading a newspaper article on three unsolved hitchhiker murders in northern NSW, Fraser made an off-thecuff comment to Quinn that the police were trying to blame him for it. Taskforce Alex found that two of the hitchhiker murders occurred while Fraser was incarcerated so he was eliminated as a suspect because NSW police believed the same person was responsible for all three murders. Fraser had a habit of claiming crimes and stories as his own, inspired by television or reading a horror novel or speaking with the real offenders who were incarcerated with him. Fraser continued to give Quinn details of the murders, at times contradicting himself or providing different versions. Still trying to blame Squeaky for his killings, Fraser coldly told Quinn again how he wrapped a rope swing around Beverley’s neck and threw her off the riverbank and then strangled her with her black underpants. Police tested the rope swing for traces of Beverley but found nothing. Fraser told of how before he moved Keyra, he tied her hands and legs together with her shoelaces,‘With my knife I cut Keyra Steinhardt’s right jugular vein to make sure she was dead.’ Taskforce Alex’s investigation also retraced the steps of the original investigations. Each investigation fell into the ambit of a cold case, and traditionally Homicide detectives work with the original investigators, but because security had to be maintained about Quinn’s involvement, this was not possible. Key witnesses were interviewed again; phone and bank records belonging to the victims were recalled. Exhibits had to be reexamined and searched. Families were shown the jewellery found in Crissie’s possession to see if any belonged to the THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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victims. Police were looking for fresh information or new witnesses that for whatever reason had been missed or unavailable in the original investigations. In one case, a friend of Natasha told detectives she had seen the troubled teen with Fraser around May 1998 at Northside shopping centre. Natasha had told the friend, Natasha Heel, Fraser had supplied her marijuana but would put ‘the weights on her’ every time she spoke to him. Fraser had told Quinn he originally met Natasha at a milk bar stand at the same shopping centre. Detectives also obtained a statement from Scott Black in which he said he had not seen Natasha since 1998 and had no knowledge of her whereabouts. Jenny Ryan provided another statement on her daughter for Taskforce Alex on 17 January. She described her daughter as a popular student who was very close to Ebony Loomans and Maioha Tokotaua. The trio spent all their spare time together, splitting their time between the Ryans’ home and Ebony’s house. Detective Lohmann asked whether her daughter was pregnant, but Jenny did not believe so as Natasha had had her period two weeks before she disappeared. Jenny had previously identified a photograph of Fraser as a man she knew from the bowling alley where she had worked and Natasha bowled. She did not know him by name but knew he was Crissie’s boyfriend. She told Lohmann she knew Crissie and occasionally on a Friday gave her and other clients of the Endeavour Foundation a lift home. Detectives Lohmann and Marek then interviewed the clients, who all knew Fraser and had been at the bowling alley with him and Crissie on Friday nights. Two of the clients confirmed Natasha occasionally sat and talked with their group. Fraser continued to provide different versions of where he had buried Natasha and at one stage told Quinn that he had disposed of her in the same way as his other victims with their 248
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jewellery and clothing ‘burnt and buried’. However he had kept some trinkets which belonged to Natasha. Then on 30 January, Fraser was recorded confessing to murdering Natasha and their unborn child: What else could I do. I could see my future right before my eyes and I knew I would go back to jail for getting an underage girl pregnant. Forget about it. I am not going to give up her body because it will lead to me. With all of these cases against me … they cannot say that I interfered sexually with any of them, including the little schoolgirl Keyra Steinhardt … I am not taking the chance on them finding my DNA in the body of a pregnant schoolgirl … we can’t blame Squeaky if they find my DNA … That day I picked her up at the picture theatre is the right story …
Lohmann returned to Rockhampton a month later and asked Jenny to go to the police station to identify several pieces of jewellery that the detectives had found in the possession of Wraight. He showed her a twisted gold chain bracelet similar to the one Jenny had given Natasha with a matching necklace. The necklace was the only piece left in Natasha’s jewellery box after she went missing. Lohmann then pulled out a black leather choker with a silver and blue three-leaf clover pendant on it – Jenny broke down and cried, it was the pendant she had bought for her beloved daughter only six weeks before she went missing, while they were out shopping together on a Thursday night. Jenny cried again when Lohmann showed her a silver dolphin ring, which was similar to a ring Natasha used to wear. Detective Padget later showed the ring to Natasha’s sister Donna who said the ring was identical to the one she had THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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owned and Natasha liked to wear, however she later found the ring at home. Detectives had the pendant tested for Natasha’s DNA but no DNA could be found. Fraser called Detective Hickey back to the jail, again ignoring his own legal advice not to speak with police without his lawyer. He wanted to stress he had not dumped the bodies. He knew where the bodies were but Squeaky had threatened him with a gun. Fraser returned to his cell telling Quinn Hickey fell for the Squeaky story and they needed to push hard to lay the blame on his alter ego to stop police charging Fraser with the murders. He called for Hickey again saying Squeaky was similar in appearance to Fraser and he was a ‘potential suspect’ for the murders who could ‘come forward and tell you the truth of it’. Fraser had become comfortable with Hickey, admitting he was a serial rapist who would not offend if he was surrounded by people and avoided going to beaches or out at night by himself. He had learnt to rape in the boys’ home and would ‘take sex’ when he wanted it. Hickey saw Fraser as a volatile and complicated character too difficult to pigeonhole, they could be shaking hands one minute and the next his eyes would glaze over and his face redden. He also told Hickey he had committed a lot of petty crime, like stealing from car yards, for which he had not been caught. Detective Marek, also present at the meeting, asked Fraser to give police more information about Squeaky to show he existed and Fraser told him he associated a lot with bikie gangs. Fraser stressed he was not a killer and the only time he had seen a dead body was when he was a child living in NSW. He had found the body and kept it for a week and got in trouble from his father for not reporting it to police. Fraser explained to the detectives if he had to defend himself he would take his opponent out by strangling them: ‘I got hitting power but not to kill a person. 250
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The only hitting power I’ve got is to knock a person out …’ Fraser bragged he had proven many times that he could knock someone unconscious with one punch to the temple or on the side of the face. The following day, Fraser gave Quinn another map showing where he had buried Natasha and warned him about not leaving any DNA or fingerprints on the maps. He boasted to Quinn that the maps he had drawn for her burial sites would never be traced back to him because he had leant on other pieces of paper while he was drawing so as not to leave any DNA or fingerprints. Unfortunately for Fraser, Quinn had been smart enough to collect all the papers for police. Fraser became worried about making it too easy for police, giving them too much information. He then confided to Quinn it had been over two years since he buried Natasha and it may be difficult to find the body. He had buried a body along the tree line of a property police had already been to – a property halfway between Rockhampton and Yeppoon owned by the Fehlaber family. Fraser had originally pointed it out to Taskforce Alex when he led them to his other victims’ burial sites. At the end of February, Fraser invited Hickey for a visit and told him he had been drinking with Squeaky at the time of the women’s disappearances, and Squeaky wanted to prove he had committed murder. Squeaky then took Fraser at gunpoint and showed him where he had disposed of the bodies of Julie, Beverley and Sylvia. Squeaky had threatened Fraser with the gun to keep him quiet. Taskforce Alex continued to use covert strategies at all times – Fraser wasn’t aware of the listening device or the extent of Quinn’s involvement with police. He was still at risk from other prisoners and some of the evidence that generated searches was gained from the listening device only. Police were THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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Fraser’s mud map showing where Natasha Ryan’s body would be found.
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also concerned Fraser may shut down completely if too much of the investigation ended up in the media and generated negative publicity. A select team transcribed several hundred hours of tape from the listening device. They could not do public searches and request the usual level of assistance involved in a multiple murder investigation.When evidence was located, the team of detectives could not follow standard procedure and cordon off areas with crime tape.Another obstacle confronting the team was Fraser’s high turnover of cars, which in effect generated extra potential crime scenes.The cars, however, were never registered and mostly carried false licence plates so standard checks were useless. It left Taskforce Alex in the position of having to rely on the memories of those who knew Fraser and what cars he drove, even interviewing associates who worked on the cars with him.Three of his cars still kept in the Rockhampton police holding yard were again forensically examined, including the car seat covers. Detectives also took people who had spent time with Fraser out for drives to see whether they could shed light on new dumping grounds for Fraser’s victims or evidence of his offending. His former landlord Michelle Maloney took them to some of the fishing spots and swimming holes Fraser liked to frequent, including Nankin Creek, and told detectives how he had made the comment of how easy it was to fit a teenager’s body into a log. Crissie Wraight also went out with detectives but became distressed whenever they went near long grass. The taskforce tracked down dozens of people who associated with Fraser between 1997 and 1999. There were attempts to speak with members of the Fraser family and his first wife but all said they had not been in contact with him for several years. The members of the taskforce also forged close relationships with the families of the victims – often in homicide THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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investigations, a liaison officer acts as a go-between with investigators and family but because of the magnitude of the investigation, detectives wanted to deal with them directly, never underestimating the impact Fraser had had on their lives. In fact, the families humanised the victims who had been reduced to bones in shallow graves.‘The families’ loss of a sister, mother or daughter brought back the human aspect and it was not until we dealt with the families that we realised how Fraser had impacted on so many lives,’ Hickey said. Detectives also had to persist with winning the confidence of the de facto husbands of Beverley and Julie who had initially been treated as suspects in the earlier stages of the original investigations. All of the families had already resigned themselves to the fact their loved ones were dead – except Jenny Ryan; she always hoped her daughter was still alive. Robert Ryan felt the opposite – he later held a memorial service in Bundaberg on 9 May 2001 to mark his daughter’s seventeenth birthday. Police had the bodies and Fraser’s admissions but they still needed to corroborate the confessional evidence, especially as Fraser had no credibility and kept changing his story on how he disposed of the bodies and murder weapons. Their investigation had to further the evidence already collected in the original investigations of Operations Bega, Bever, Hybrid and Benny. In building the case for Julie they wanted to shore up the connections between Julie and Fraser. One of her friends, Julie Mulhall, elaborated on her original police statement, recalling Julie saying Fraser had picked her up from the Rockhampton Police watch-house when she was arrested for drink driving. Detectives checked whether there were records of phone calls made by Julie on the night of her arrest but there was nothing on her charge sheet or from the public telephone prisoners 254
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were allowed to use at the watch-house. Fraser’s picture was also shown to Julie’s de facto husband and friends but no one recognised him. Catheryn Perry, a former friend of Fraser, recalled him telling her a woman called Julie ‘went missing last night’ days before it became public that she had disappeared. Fraser in the meantime told Quinn that when he returned to collect Julie’s body from behind the youth club in a ute, he saw a police car attending to a broken shop window nearby. Detectives found only one police report relating to a smashed shop window at a store near the mall, which happened the night before Julie disappeared. Detective Marek also checked the area surrounding the Police Citizens Youth Club and found there was no store in the vicinity. The listening device had captured another version of Fraser confessing to Julie’s murder in which he inadvertently gave away details about her not widely known. He said he followed her from the nightclub on foot, over the bridge into North Rockhampton and attacked her near the youth club when she stopped to roll a cigarette. Fraser mentioned Julie had a black Velcro wallet sticking out of her back jeans pocket. To the taskforce, this seemed the most likely account of what had happened to Julie – partly because it was the most likely route she would have walked home. Her daughter Kylie Elder confirmed to detectives her mother smoked ‘rollies’ as they were a cheaper option and used a ‘surfie’ type wallet instead of her purse.A search of Julie’s house at the time of her disappearance led police to believe she did not have her purse with her. Fraser also knew her green shirt had stained her bra – Julie’s de facto husband Michael McConochie told police Julie had left wearing a dark green, long sleeve poloneck shirt. Detective Marek asked a Queensland Health textile expert to test the dye stain from Julie’s bra but it was not possible as her shirt was THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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missing. The bra expert they had contacted in Melbourne found that Julie’s bra was from the Hestia lace underwire bra range which was sold in thirteen colours through Kmart stores. The type and size of the bra were similar to the style Kylie saw her mother wear. Adding weight to their case was the fact Fraser knew Julie’s skull was missing and that she had not been buried. Her remains were found within 10 metres of where Fraser had marked her grave with an ‘X’ on one of the maps he had drawn. The case against Fraser for murdering Beverley had grown stronger since the original investigation into her suspicious disappearance. Fraser had provided accurate maps for the location of Beverley’s body and where he threw her handbag into the Fitzroy River.The information was consistent with where the bag was discovered and Fraser had known the handbag strap was broken – a detail that was never made public. He also led police directly to her remains, secreted as they were by a thick umbrella of lantana. Fraser had confessed to killing Beverley at Nankin Creek by wrapping the swing rope around her neck first and then strangling her with her own black underpants. Although police had the rope forensically examined and found no traces of Beverley, her underwear was found tightly around her neck.The way he described king-hitting her from the left was also supported by the autopsy. Fraser’s account of taking Beverley from the shopping centre was also consistent with the last sightings of her. Fraser had already been charged for Sylvia’s murder and since he had been committed to stand trial over her death, the taskforce had recorded Fraser’s gory account of how he murdered her and the weapon he used. His detailed information was supported by both the crime scene and the post mortem. He said he hit her with a piece of timber and caved in the left 256
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side of her skull.An examination of her remains by an oral and maxillofacial surgeon found Sylvia’s injuries were consistent with her having been struck with a heavy instrument several times to the front and left side of her skull. His motive for killing Sylvia was because she could identify him. Prior to her remains being found, Fraser accurately described how her body was buried in the sand and bushes and branches had been placed over her. Police also recorded Fraser saying Barry Richardson ‘hasn’t got a clue’ about when he had seen him with Sylvia in the mall at the time of her disappearance:‘… we both know that he couldn’t have seen me, because she was already dead.’ All such information only strengthened the case against Fraser. Police believed Fraser’s killing spree was motivated by a sexually frustrated rage. From listening to his confessions and the insight gained through autopsies, it appeared Fraser had mastered the ‘blitz attack’ – where he would attack the victim with stealth and use a great deal of physical force either through one heavy blow or a series of them until he was satisfied they were unconscious or dead. It made his victims ‘compliant’. All three women had been found without their clothes, their bodies left above ground in bushland and had all been located within 50 metres of vehicle access. Beverley and Sylvia had both suffered head injuries. For Taskforce Alex there was no turning point or threshold of the investigation. Hickey observed: We had a brief of evidence that was certainly evolving because amongst the factual confessional evidence we had a sprinkling of untruths and we needed to run out of every part, search every corner of his confessions and reasons … the reason why we maintained the investigation until 10 August 2001 was because we lived in hope THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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of finding Natasha … Fraser did agree that he would eventually divulge her whereabouts …
In their numerous searches for Natasha, Taskforce Alex zeroed in on the Fehlaber property. Fraser had told Quinn he had stabbed Natasha to death and cut her throat at the property after she told him she was pregnant, and that he had allowed her to squat there after she disappeared as the owner was in hospital. He had used a trench digger on the property to bury her near some trees. Quinn asked Fraser how he knew Natasha had been murdered. Fraser said he had picked her up from a party where she had been drinking and using drugs and had gotten angry with him, threatening to tell police he had got her pregnant. Natasha had repeatedly threatened him,‘I hit her, and hit her, and hit her … then I cut her throat’ near a mango tree. He then disposed of the knife by throwing it out the window while driving along Yeppoon Road. He explained that he buried Natasha deeper than any of his other victims because she was the first one to be killed in the Rockhampton area. Fraser later drew another map showing her body was ‘four feet’ under the ground and buried near a forked tree. Subsequent checks of hospital records confirmed the Fehlaber property’s owner was a patient at the time and that he had hired a trench digger to lay pipes in a creek. Fraser had also admitted he stole tools and a television from the property; detectives found the owner had filed a report with police around the time of Natasha’s disappearance that someone had stolen those exact items. Taskforce Alex had interviewed a teenage friend of Natasha’s who told them he witnessed Fraser assaulting her after they had been drinking at a party in Rockhampton around the time of her disappearance.The boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and Natasha had 258
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crossed the bridge and were walking towards the boy’s home in Glenmore Road when Fraser flashed his car headlights at them. He was driving a gold or brown Ford Fairlane. Fraser yelled out for Natasha and when she walked over, he punched her in the head, knocking her to the ground. He then put her in the car and fled. Police checks revealed Fraser frequented a residence across the road from where the boy lived. Detectives Lohmann and Marek tracked down the Alma Lane address of the party in Rockhampton and so-called partygoers but could not find any evidence that the party took place. They also could not confirm Fraser had ever owned a Fairlane. Police used a cadaver dog – a dog trained to detect human remains – to search the Fehlaber property again as well as the burial sites of the other victims, but failed to find anything. Fraser was becoming frustrated at police saying his map was easy to follow. Fraser’s versions of events continued for months; by April he told Quinn his friends could give him an alibi for the night he killed Natasha with a knife. Fraser was concerned if he showed police the body then they would know he had committed all the murders ‘from day one’. He then asked Quinn to go to Mt Chalmers near Rockhampton when he was released from jail and to paint ‘Squeaky was here in 1998’ in black across the back of a toilet block. In the following months, Fraser provided maps to Quinn, some containing ‘gig traps’ – misleading information. One contained the directions as to where to find Julie’s head at Kinka Beach and the locations of the bodies of four Rockhampton females including Natasha at the Fehlaber property. The maps also detailed where he had dumped each murder weapon. Searches failed to locate anything. Detectives checked the local family planning clinic to see if they held any records of Natasha attending the clinic since her disappearance THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW
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but there were none.Two things stood out for the taskforce in relation to Fraser – he knew Natasha believed she was pregnant and she used a soft black Rip Curl briefcase-style school bag. Neither piece of information had ever been released to the public. Detective Lohmann even searched the media coverage of Natasha’s disappearance since 1998 to verify that information about her being pregnant had never been published. Detectives discovered Fraser’s predilection for young pregnant girls when they found he had stayed at a Rockhampton motel with a dark haired pregnant teenager around 1997.The motel was also close to a phone box where Natasha had made telephone calls to her friend Ebony Loomans when she disappeared in September 1998. Police finally decided to wind down the investigation when it appeared that Fraser was not going to provide any further information on where he had buried Natasha. Assisted by the listening device, police felt they had gathered evidence for a strong case against Fraser, accepting his version of murdering Natasha at the Fehlaber property after she told him about the pregnancy.Taskforce Alex withdrew the listening device on 13 July 2001 and Quinn was transferred to a protection unit in a NSW jail for safety and to face further fraud charges.The taskforce planned to arrest Fraser for the murders of Natasha, Julie, and Beverley, to be joined with his trial for Sylvia’s murder, which had been set for 2002 to allow time for all the information to be collated. Quinn asked Fraser to assure him that no one had seen him kill Natasha. ‘No-one. Nah. No-one will ever prove it either, see that’s what I’m saying …’
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14 BACK FROM THE DEAD IN MAY 2002 Fraser was committed to stand trial for the murders of Natasha, Julie and Beverley. In 2000 he had already been committed to a 2002 trial for Sylvia. The scheduling of the combined trial now took additional planning as it was expected to run for around five weeks and counsel for both sides, as well as witnesses, had to be available.The date was set for 31 March 2003. It was the first time a person had been tried as a serial killer in Queensland. Every day during his trial at the Supreme Court, Fraser swapped his prison issue brown attire for the same white trousers and white shirt. His wiry, grey hair – stained yellow from his tobacco – was pulled back in a ponytail. He remained relatively composed during proceedings, rarely looking to the right of the court where the victims’ families, the jury and the media sat.The only thing that caught his attention was the presence of school students who sat in the public gallery on some days, observing the court as part of a legal studies subject. 261
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Fraser’s court behaviour had come a long way from the days of the committal hearings for the murders of Keyra and Sylvia, held separately in 1999 and 2000 respectively. While details were revealed about the way Keyra had been killed, he had constantly fidgeted, stamping his feet when he needed to go to the toilet. As forensic evidence was given about the horrific way Sylvia had been murdered, he had picked at his feet, peeling away dead skin. On Thursday 10 April 2003, eleven days into the murder trial of Leonard John Fraser, prosecutor Paul Rutledge rose to his feet in Brisbane Supreme Court 3 and dropped a bombshell. He asked Justice Brian Ambrose for the return of the four count indictment which charged Fraser with the murders of Natasha Ryan, 14, Julie Dawn Turner, 39, Beverley Doreen Leggo, 37, and Sylvia Marie Benedetti, 19, at Rockhampton between August 1998 and April 1999. Rutledge, the Queensland Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, then made written alterations and handed it back to Justice Ambrose and in a loud, clear voice said: ‘Your Honour, I am pleased to inform the court Leonard John Fraser is not guilty of the murder of Natasha Anne Ryan. Natasha Ryan is alive. She was discovered this morning in Rockhampton.’The packed courtroom was stunned. Courier-Mail journalist,Tony Keim, who covered the trial, said that when Rutledge made his announcement Fraser collapsed into the dock, shaking his head in total disbelief. ‘It was as if he was actually saying,“Well, if it wasn’t Natasha, then who was it I killed?” I have never seen anything like it in my fourteen years of covering courts.’ Two days before, on 8 April, Rockhampton detective Senior Sergeant Graham Richards had received an anonymous, handwritten letter stating Natasha was alive. 262
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FOR ATTENTION C. Q. POLICE COMMISSIONER RE: NATASHA RYAN SHE’S NOW CONTACTING THE OUTSIDE WORLD SHE’S CONFIRMED HERSELF BY TELLING THE CONTACTED THINGS THAT ONLY THESE TWO KNEW. SHE’S FRIGHTENED FOR THOSE WHO HAVE FELT COMPELLED BY NATASHA’S WHIMS OF SORRY AND NOW NATASHA DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO FRONT THE LAW AND HER PARENTS & IS (SEEMS TO BE) HIDING EVEN MORE. YOUR RESPECT, EVEN THOUGH SHE HASN’T, COULD BE A START FOR HER TO LEARN. PLEASE TREAT LOVINGLY. SHE’S BEEN CONTACTED RECENTLY WHERE SHE RESIDES 49260349. MAY THE POWER OF PEACE LOVE & JOY OF THE ALMIGHTY GOD BRINGS ALL WISDOM.
The letter arrived just two days before Scott Black was due to appear at the Fraser trial to repeat his testimony from a police statement he gave to Taskforce Alex in 2001 that he did not know of Natasha’s whereabouts and had not seen her since 1998. Rockhampton detectives traced the phone number provided in the letter and found it was a silent number belonging to Scott Black. Rockhampton police phoned Taskforce Alex head Detective David Hickey who told them to send an officer to Black’s house on the pretext of having Black sign a statement and, while there, to ask for permission to consensually search the house to verify or discount the contents of the BACK FROM THE DEAD
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letter. Unfortunately there was a miscommunication and police rang Black and invited him to the Rockhampton police station to sign the statement so no police officer actually attended the house that first night. The next day, Hickey rang Rockhampton detective Darrel How who was now running the Juvenile Aid Bureau and arranged for him and another detective to visit the Black residence. Hickey wanted to be satisfied either way whether there was any truth to the letter. Obviously I strongly suspected in my own mind it was fiction but given it provided a silent number of Scott Black and I was in the process of detailing evidence to the Supreme Court of the extent we had gone to, to try and establish her well being or otherwise, I certainly felt it was incumbent on ourselves to run this out.
Detectives How and Carl Judge drove to Black’s house at Mills Avenue, Berserker Heights in North Rockhampton the following morning. Detective How noticed the upstairs windows of the cream coloured high set house were fully covered with heavy drapes and the gates to the backyard where two dogs were kept were padlocked. He looked underneath and noticed a motorbike parked in the garage. Judge spoke with neighbours while How knocked on the front door several times but there was no response. Neighbours told Judge they had not seen or heard a female at the house.The pair returned to the station and rang Hickey before returning to Black’s house around 12.45 pm. Detective How again knocked loudly but there was no response. Judge noticed through a crack in the carport there was now a car parked there. How knocked again and Black answered the door. How said he wanted to speak to 264
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Black about Fraser’s murder trial and Natasha and asked if he could come through the screen door. Black didn’t want to let the detectives in but How persisted. Black relented, unlocking the security door. Detective How noticed partially eaten fish and chips between two chairs in the lounge room and Black remarked he was ‘just having lunch’. How explained police had received an anonymous letter saying Natasha was alive and she could be contacted at Black’s phone number. Black replied: ‘Is that right?’ How wanted to search the house to finalise the matter but a nervous Black refused saying they couldn’t do it without a warrant. How challenged him why police would need a warrant if Black had nothing to hide and asked him if Natasha was in the house. Black said she wasn’t and How assured him they would not pull the house apart in their search. Black led the detectives down a hallway where there were five rooms with all the doors shut. Black became agitated when How searched bathroom cupboards, arguing How had said they would only look in the rooms. Judge walked to the end of the hallway into the main bedroom and called to How that he had better come and have a look. Detective How walked to the left hand side of the room, to a large cupboard Judge had opened. ‘Is that you, Natasha ?’ How asked. She nodded and How fell back onto the bed in shock. He told her there were some people who would be glad to see her. Natasha, trembling and very pale from lack of sunlight for four-and-a-half years, told the detectives she was relieved it was over and the first thing she wanted to do was ring her mother.The detectives took Black and Ryan back to the station. Detective How rang Hickey during the court’s lunchtime adjournment saying he had located Natasha Ryan. Hickey thought it was a joke and hung up on him but How rang back BACK FROM THE DEAD
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and assured him the detectives had Natasha at the police station. Hickey contacted prosecutor Paul Rutledge and Taskforce Alex gathered in the courthouse. Conscious of the fact that Robert Ryan was downstairs with the other victims’ families and the news would hit him like a tidal wave Rutledge called for Robert to meet him and the detectives from Taskforce Alex on the third floor. Rutledge, who also initially believed the letter was a prank, asked Robert to sit down with him in an area outside Court 3. Rutledge later recounted: ‘I’ve had some difficult times but this was one of the most emotional events in my prosecuting history and I certainly don’t know of any other prosecutors who have done what I was about to do.’ Robert thought he was being summonsed for the practical jokes he had been playing on the families of the victims to help keep their spirits up: Paul Rutledge was looking pale … I asked what’s going on and Paul said, ‘We found Natasha.’ My heart sunk because I thought they had found her body, his next words were she was alive. My words were ‘Don’t bloody carry on this crap with me, I don’t need this crap.’ Paul put his hand on my shoulder and said,‘Robert we have a lady we believe is Natasha who is now in custody and there will be a phone call coming through and we wish for you to make a voice identification,’ and Paul said to ask a question that only she would know the answer to. They handed me the phone and I heard a voice at the other end crying. I said, ‘If you are my daughter Natasha, I have given you a nickname that only you and I know … she said, ‘Dad this is your grasshopper.’
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died brutally at the hands of a serial killer. Rutledge, himself a father of three girls, cried too. Robert’s head swirled – only the day before in a private meeting with Quinn at the court complex he believed he had finally learned the fate of his missing daughter after five years of agony. Quinn told Robert how Fraser confessed to stabbing Natasha in an abandoned house on a property outside of Rockhampton, cutting up her body and using a trench-digger to bury her under a nearby clump of mango trees. The court resumed over an hour later and in response to the news, Fraser’s defence barrister Adrian Gundelach asked the court for the matter to be adjourned to the following Monday. Justice Ambrose told the jury that because of the rather unusual turn the trial had taken, they were not to allow themselves to be influenced by comments from others. Robert Ryan was reeling: I wanted to go home, I wanted my family and I knew I had to drive to Rocky and I was physically ill that afternoon and I was not allowed to drive home. That night Tony Lohmann and a couple of the detectives turned up with pizza and beer … I felt sorry for them, for all their work and what they went through.Tony’s words to me were ‘we’re so happy she is alive’.
Rutledge said he was very pleased that Natasha had been found and that he could tell her parents their daughter was alive: ‘It was amazing … just great – it did present some difficulties for my case but what more could you ask for …’ The saddest aspect of the case for Rutledge is that one of Natasha’s grandmothers died believing she was dead. ‘I feel sorry for Natasha Ryan because she obviously had difficult issues in her BACK FROM THE DEAD
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life … and I think what she did was very cruel to her parents, almost certainly unintentionally cruel, but cruel.’ Outside court, Fraser’s solicitor Peter Shields said the news about Natasha had been an incredible surprise for the defence team.‘It is a huge shock and of course everyone is delighted for the family of Natasha Ryan,’ he said at the time. News of the girl being found in the cupboard flashed around the world – no one could recall a case where a murder victim was found alive during the trial of her supposed killer. Her discovery knocked the war in Iraq off front pages. It was all anyone could talk about – there were so many questions about how a teenage girl stayed hidden for almost five years in the very town from where she disappeared – living only 3.5 kilometres from her mother’s house. She became the teenager who was back from the dead. The case prompted civil libertarians and the legal fraternity to caution police and prosecutors against bundling multiple murder trials together and relying on prisoner confessions. Criminal law experts predicted the case would make it harder for prosecutors to secure murder convictions without a body. Others argued that lawyers for alleged killers in cases where there was no body could point to the Ryan discovery and mount a strong argument that ‘some people simply want to drop out of society and have not met with foul play’. Some police privately criticised Taskforce Alex for charging Fraser with Natasha’s murder saying they never had enough evidence. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said the Rockhampton community should share some of the blame for police listing Natasha as a murder victim rather than as a teenager in hiding. Beattie said while he expected police to review their investigation, he believed they were constrained by the amount of information they received from the community. 268
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Media descended on Rockhampton and within a matter of hours a bidding war had erupted between media outlets for an interview with Natasha. Journalists hunted for photographs and anyone who may have known Black or Natasha. Neighbours of the couple all said they had never seen or heard any female at the Mills Avenue house since Black moved into the street eight months before. Back at Rockhampton police station, Detective How organised for Jenny Ryan to be picked up from work and for Natasha to speak with her father. After she was reunited with her mother, How started to record an interview with Natasha, starting with the basics of her age, how old she was when she disappeared and where she was living at the time. She told How she had been with Black the whole time and they were ‘close friends’. Natasha had difficulty remembering where she and Black had lived but they had moved house four times. Her answers also indicated the couple had never left Rockhampton. Asked why she was hiding in the cupboard, Natasha told How she didn’t want to be ‘found like that’. She was aware police were investigating her death and she had read in the paper that a man had been charged with her murder but couldn’t explain why she didn’t come forward. Natasha wouldn’t say why she ran away in the first place and was scared there would be criminal charges against her and Black if she had contacted police.While hiding, Natasha relied on Black to look after her, to do the shopping, pay the bills and buy her clothes to ‘his ability’.The only time she left the house was at night to go to the beach – she never went out in daylight. When pressed to clarify the nature of her relationship with Black, she called Black her boyfriend. She admitted to having a physical relationship with him but said it had not been happening long. Asked if she had ever contacted police, Natasha BACK FROM THE DEAD
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said she picked up the phone but never went through with the call. Detective How terminated the interview. Detective Darren Lees attempted to interview Black in the presence of his barrister Ross Lo Monaco but Black refused to answer any questions about Natasha. How returned Natasha to her mother’s house and took a mouth swab from her for a DNA test. Queensland Police ordered an internal review of both the original investigations into Natasha’s disappearance. A team of detectives attached to State Crime Operations Command was sent to Rockhampton to question Natasha over her disappearance – senior police did not want officers associated with any aspect of her case or the Fraser investigation to be involved. Detective Adam Magill explained later that it was ‘for transparency reasons. Anything we were going to glean in the course of the investigation had to be conducted in a way which wasn’t previously dictated to by other investigations … our input was very impartial.’ Operation Bravo System was launched, headed by Armed Hold-up Squad Detective Ian Tuffield. Detective Magill, also from the Armed Robbery Squad, Paul McIlveen from Organised Crime Investigation Group and Greg Bishop from the State Flying Squad were also assigned to the investigation. Tuffield spoke to Hickey for a precis of the case including the first investigation into the teenager’s disappearance. Tuffield and Magill arrived in Rockhampton on Friday 11 April and established a major incident room in the police station.The mood at the police station was tense at the arrival of the detectives but relaxed when it became clear they were there to investigate Natasha’s re-emergence, not the officers themselves. During Operation Bravo System the detectives found nothing wrong with the two previous investigations. Magill observed: ‘It’s easy to sit here in retrospect and say this should 270
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have been done but given the circumstances and the amount of information they had to work with, they did a really good job.’ The detectives’ first port of call was to visit Natasha and her mother. They went straight to Jenny’s house only to be greeted by a horde of media. On the way to the station, Jenny asked the detectives to ring their legal representative Ross Lo Monaco before the interview could start. Lo Monaco turned up at the station an hour later and said he could no longer represent the Ryans because of a conflict of interest as he was, at that stage, representing Black. The detectives knew they were walking into a minefield without legal precedent which was under the world microscope. They were mindful Natasha was only fourteen when she disappeared and that her only link to the outside world was Black.Their aim was to quickly gain the confidence of Natasha and her mother, with a 45-minute window to win them over before their legal representatives arrived.They couldn’t afford for Natasha to shut down. Magill asked Natasha a lot of trivial questions, her likes and dislikes – he discovered her favourite food was Thai. While he warmed Natasha up, Jenny’s primary concern was whether her daughter was going to be charged.The situation was very touch and go, particularly if Natasha chose not to talk. While they were waiting for Natasha’s solicitor, Ross Lo Monaco returned to the police station and spoke with Jenny for about an hour. Tuffield suspected there was another interested party about to enter the frame. Worried, Tuffield turned to Jenny and asked how close she had gotten to the Homicide detectives investigating her daughter’s disappearance: ‘I said, “You better not be selling us out for money, Jenny,” and she said, “I’ll never do that.”’ The detectives also organised a mobile phone for the Ryan family, who were already inundated by calls from the BACK FROM THE DEAD
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media, so they could directly contact them. About three hours later, local solicitor Elias Jeha turned up to represent Natasha and directed police to steer clear of questioning Natasha about her relationship with Black. Magill advised Natasha she had the right to remain silent but she agreed to go ahead with the interview. Tuffield’s instincts told him Natasha took an instant dislike to him but she seemed to click with Magill – possibly because he was the younger of the two.The detectives decided Magill would take the lead role in the interview. Natasha told Magill she had left home for ‘a lot of little reasons … family reasons, schooling and stuff like that’. She remembered her mother dropping her off at school and kissing her goodbye in August 1998 but had only stayed at school half the day, after getting in trouble. She told Magill she had hung around the school before heading over to Black’s home he shared with his family. She had asked him if she could stay with him a while and Black told her it wasn’t a good idea before he relented, letting her stay the night. On the night she was last seen near the cinemas, she claimed it was Black who had picked her up and taken her back to his house. It was her decision not to go home and it had nothing to with Black. Natasha said she was ‘shocked, scared and rattled’ when she found via the news a missing persons report on her had been filed.When asked why she didn’t contact anyone, Natasha replied: I was frightened of Mum.The police and my parents. I was scared to go back to my mum to see her. I was also scared of the police because I’d ran away previous to that, before they said that if anything like this happened again that there’d be serious consequences and I wasn’t really thinking of that at the time that I left but I did.
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During the years of her self-imposed exile, whenever she saw the story of her disappearance in the media, she cried for her family. Black tried to convince her to go home because her family was worried about her but she told him not to contact them. During the interview she was very protective of Black, including being mindful to tell investigators she didn’t have a sexual relationship with him until after she had turned sixteen – the legal age of consent in Queensland. Tuffield and Magill believed Natasha saw Black as her knight in shining armour and the whole reason she hadn’t come forward was to keep Black from getting into trouble. For the past five years Black had been her protector, paid for her food, bills, rent and clothing – although she did make some clothes herself. When her missing persons case had escalated into a murder investigation, Natasha became more fearful and felt it even harder to go home as time wore on. The couple moved between four rented hideouts in Yeppoon, North and South Rockhampton only at night, travelling through secluded streets. The houses always had to have curtains or blinds to shut out prying eyes. Natasha’s name was always absent from the lease. She always stayed inside the house for fear of someone seeing her. Including the times she moved house, Natasha claimed she had only six excursions in the outside world, only ever at night – two to a Yeppoon beach under the cover of darkness so she could dip her toes in the ocean. If family or friends dropped in to visit Black, Natasha hid in the bedroom, the cupboards, or behind curtains. She never answered the door. While Black did his daily milk run between 4 am and midday, Natasha kept herself busy with reading, cooking, cleaning and looking after the couple’s pets. She would only ever hang the washing out underneath the house to avoid being seen. BACK FROM THE DEAD
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Natasha was watching television one night and saw a story that a man called Leonard John Fraser – a man she maintains she never met – had been charged with her murder. She initially thought it was a ‘set-up’ to get her to go home. She discussed with Black whether she should return home and decided to be ‘even quieter’ around the house. She had also read her death notice in the local newspaper. Tuffield asked her what she thought of Fraser being charged with her murder and she replied, ‘I don’t really think he was an innocent person. He’s innocent of my murder, yes but I don’t think – umm – I felt bad, I felt guilty that he was being charged with my murder.’ When Tuffield challenged her to explain why people had said she knew him, Natasha said it was possible because she and Fraser attended the same bowling alley. She and Black were too scared to call the police and tell them she was alive – the lie had gotten too big. The couple was worried if Natasha went home it would create doubt as to whether Fraser had killed the other women. She picked up the phone to call her mother several times but fear overwhelmed her. Natasha was part of the national audience who watched Jenny and Robert Ryan make desperate public pleas for information on their daughter. Media televised her memorial service in Bundaberg, organised by Robert on her seventeenth birthday, but she stayed in the dark. Natasha also denied she was ever pregnant or had made such claims and had never sought medical treatment for a pregnancy or termination. Natasha said she only became aware of the anonymous letter that led to her discovery after being told by police and didn’t know the identity of the author. She stressed Black had not held her against her will and she was eventually going to give herself up – that’s why she had called Kids Helpline. Police confirmed she had called the counselling service on 10 March 274
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– three weeks before Fraser was due to stand trial for her murder – specifically asking for her details to be passed on to police. She told the counsellor her name was Sally, she had been in hiding with her boyfriend for four years and a man had been charged with her murder. Natasha provided some details of her disappearance including the approximate last known sighting, the fact there was a murder trial and that she was living with the boyfriend she had been with when she disappeared. She also said she had hidden in the manhole when police came to her boyfriend’s house and if there was a knock at the door she would hide in the cupboard. The teenager wanted to go to her mother. Natasha also claimed a 23-yearold woman did the shopping a couple of times a week for the couple.When the counsellor asked Natasha what was stopping her from coming forward, the caller told her she felt her boyfriend would be in ‘big trouble’ and she feared he would be charged with kidnapping. The counsellor gave the girl her name and said she could call back if she wished. The counsellor discussed the matter with her supervisor and felt because there were not enough identifying details and the girl did not appear to be in immediate danger, the call would not be reported. However, on 31 March while watching the evening news, the counsellor saw a story on the Fraser trial and reported the call to police on 2 April. But the police officer who took the call at the Brisbane Police Communications Centre failed to pass the information on to the Missing Persons Bureau or Homicide detectives who were preparing for the Fraser trial. The sergeant did not have the call traced and left the information unchecked and she was later disciplined by the police service. When pressed about her family life before her disappearance, Natasha explained to police she had had a good BACK FROM THE DEAD
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upbringing and was close to her family but found it difficult to communicate to them the problems she was having. Tuffield and Magill’s first major interview lasted 75 minutes. They returned Natasha and her mother home, knowing the task ahead was proving or disproving the teenager’s version of events.They drew up eight pages of questions to ask her for the follow-up interview they had arranged for the next day. Tuffield suspected that the couple had not stayed in Rockhampton the whole time as the hours between dusk and daylight would have allowed them to travel some distance. His suspicions were particularly fuelled by reported sightings of Natasha around the state during the time she was missing – all of which proved to be false. Warrants were issued for police to forensically examine every house the couple had rented – every nook was dusted for fingerprints, looking for evidence of Natasha. Her medical records were pulled to see whether she had sought help for a pregnancy, birth or abortion. Natasha had denied it but detectives believe it is possible she could have been pregnant, had a miscarriage or an abortion under a false name. Hospital records from surrounding regions were collected but revealed nothing. Phone records of outgoing and incoming calls to Black’s home and mobile were ordered. The guest register from Yeppoon’s Bayview Tower Hotel where Black had stayed previously were also ordered. Credit card activity was checked as were financial records. Detectives also requested Natasha’s family service records. The next morning, a Saturday, Magill and Tuffield returned to Jenny Ryan’s house and noticed she and Natasha were distant.They took them back to the police station where Robert was finally reunited with his daughter – as he walked in he heard Natasha cry, ‘Daddy!’With his emotions swinging 276
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between anger and joy, Robert couldn’t stop cuddling her, ‘It was like I saw a ghost … she was alive and that meant more to me than anything.’Tuffield and Magill wanted a second interview. Jenny asked police for Sydney-based celebrity agent Max Markson to be present.Tuffield then contacted Natasha’s sister Donna Ryan to come into the station and provide a statement. She was more than happy to help the detectives and arrived around 1 pm. Tuffield said when he went to show Donna through to be interviewed, she had been told not to say anything until she had spoken to a solicitor. Natasha was fingerprinted and addendum statements to the first interview were taken from her and Jenny. After they left the police station, the Ryans ceased to co-operate with Operation Bravo System and were no longer answering the mobile phone provided by police. They had rescheduled an interview for the following Tuesday but it never eventuated. Police started to search through the hundreds of items seized at the Mills Avenue house as they began to unravel the mystery of Natasha’s vanishing act – every aspect of her life with Black was now under the microscope. Their computer had to be forensically examined, the hard drive downloaded to check emails and whether Natasha was communicating with anyone on the internet. This revealed Natasha Ryan’s web searches for herself, files of Rockhampton High School newsletters and missing persons pages. Photographs of Ryan with her pets were found and some emails from Black to a female friend from school. Police also seized a scrapbook of media clippings the teenager had kept about her disappearance and the Fraser trial, the milestones of her friends and family including a photo of her mother remarrying that she had cut out from the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin. It was her only link to her family. Natasha also appeared to be a big fan of BACK FROM THE DEAD
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actress Angelina Jolie, collecting multiple stories and images of the Hollywood star. A missing poster for the couple’s partSiamese cat was also found. Natasha’s school material dating back to the time of her disappearance had scribblings of ‘I want to die’ and ‘I want to go home’. A note was made a week after Black injured his ankle in a motorcycle accident and was hospitalised for three days before he returned to Natasha: Natasha Anne Ryan was heya [sic] alone and bored scared and hurt, hungry and tired within no help on the 14 of March, 1999. I miss my family, I miss my bestist friend in the whole world my dog Keira I love you all – especially you know who.
It wasn’t the first time Natasha was left on her own – at one stage Black spent a week with his sister in Brisbane. Police also found an eighteenth birthday card Black gave to his ‘Angel’ in May 2002 in which he declared Natasha as the love of his life: ‘When I met you, I had no idea how much my life was about to be changed … a love like ours happens once in a lifetime.’ Some insight was gained through Natasha’s diaries, which bore the slogan of ‘Have you been to the land of the happy where everyone’s happy all day’. Her daily life was mundane and activities were always restricted to the inside of the house – Nintendo, watching television, drinking beer with Black, surfing the internet and housework. A list of things to do for Black’s birthday included finding a recipe, making a card using downloaded images and sewing some boxer shorts for him. Some of the entries predated her disappearance and contained affirmations and feelings of loneliness. In her diary, Natasha wrote of how alone, homesick, embarrassed and hurt she felt
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after fighting with Black. The pressure of keeping their secret seemed to take its toll on the couple, with Natasha contemplating slashing her wrists one night after a violent argument. Today it started out OK at 6.30 the rain fell and I awoke with a fright, releaved [sic] to his face. He hugged me and said its ok we went and had breakfast and then he left. I cleaned up as usual then played Nintendo until he came home. I greeted him with a smile as I always do, then we sat had lunch and watched tv just like every other day. (TV always comes first to him). But that was about to change. I offered him a beer he said ‘If you do’ so I did. 3,4 beers later we got into some argument regarding some stupid tv show, he yelled at me then called me an ignorant bitch. He hurt me so bad so I began to cry he didn’t see at the time I went into the bathroom to cry harder, when I returned he asked me what was wrong. I told him,‘You’ he replied with what. I then let loose – Why do you have to call me names – he said ‘if the shoe fits’ I can’t believe he said that, that bastard’s always trying to hurt me, I kept telling him how I felt … I can’t believe I gave my life up for you everything I had I gave up to be here with you … He said he had also given up his life. I said that he could still see his family and go outside. He said not to treat him like this and then he threatened me … I went into the bathroom in a mad frenzy, something inside of me finally snapped I picked up the closest thing to me and threw it into the toilet. He ran in grabbed me by the throat and yelled what did you do … My throat was hurting so bad he let go …
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As police stripped the layers of Natasha’s secret life, Tuffield issued a public plea for the author of the letter that led them to Natasha to come forward. A caller rang Crime Stoppers and told police her employer, a local masseur by the name of Len Bauer, had written the letter. The woman did a pretext call for police with Bauer who was secretly recorded. Bauer told the woman that Ben Elkins, a former boyfriend of Natasha and his former employee, had come to him for help. Detectives then went to see Bauer who admitted he was the author of the letter. He said Elkins approached him around October 2002 saying he wanted to talk. Elkins confided he was ‘out of sorts’ because Natasha had phoned him and he knew it was her because she told him things that had happened between them. Natasha had contacted Elkins because she wanted to come out in the open and see her mother. Elkins asked Bauer if he could borrow his car to pick up Natasha from Yeppoon and take her to her mother’s place. Bauer was prompted to call prominent Queensland civil libertarian and criminal lawyer Terry O’Gorman for advice. He alleges he told O’Gorman there was a girl, whom he eventually identified as Natasha Ryan, who had been a missing person who wanted to come forward. He claimed O’Gorman advised him to see a local solicitor and that Natasha had nothing to worry about in coming out in the open. O’Gorman later told the Courier-Mail newspaper on 21 August 2003 that, at the time he received the phone call ‘from a person contacting me in the third hand position’, he had no appreciation of the significance of the matter: ‘At the time of this general miscellaneous query I was not aware of the significance of the Fraser trial, nor did I appreciate the significance of the information that was imparted to me.’ Bauer relayed O’Gorman’s advice to Elkins who told him Natasha had changed her mind. Nothing more was said until 280
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Bauer saw Fraser on trial for the teenager’s murder and thought something should be done. Bauer, who knew Fraser from when he came into his shop with a girlfriend, a young street kid, contacted Elkins and asked how he would feel if Bauer contacted police about Natasha. Elkins agreed it would be good. Tuffield asked Bauer to write the letter three times to help verify he was the author of the letter and for his fingerprints. The letter was then examined by a handwriting expert who confirmed it was Bauer’s. When the court resumed for Fraser’s trial on Monday 14 April, Justice Ambrose expressed concern over the media publishing legal opinions on the reliability of prisoners’ evidence following Natasha’s discovery. The judge directed the jury to keep in mind that the question of reliability must be determined against the background of the whole of the evidence and not what theories were published in the media. Meanwhile, on the same day Markson announced to the media that Natasha would speak exclusively with Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd, which included Channel 9’s 60 Minutes. Markson denied either Natasha or Black would receive any money from the deal but speculated the cash may go to a close family member, stating the agreement had been made with the teenager’s approval. It is unknown whether Jenny was the beneficiary. Queensland law prevents anyone profiting from a deal at the request of anyone involved in an illegal act, so anyone except Black or Natasha could legally receive the money. Contracts of the interview seized by police show that Channel 9 and ACP paid a substantial sum for interviews. Fifty per cent of all overseas television sales of Natasha’s story were payable on a monthly basis. The money was payable to Markson’s company, Markson Sparks. Robert Ryan never became involved with the media bidding BACK FROM THE DEAD
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war for his daughter’s story and has never accepted any cash for comment. He has repeatedly and publicly admonished his daughter and his ex-wife for selling their stories. On the same day as Markson’s announcement the charge of murdering Natasha was withdrawn. Nine days later Magill again approached Natasha’s lawyer Elias Jeha for an interview with Natasha, however he advised the detective that Natasha had conducted several extensive interviews over the past fortnight and she did not wish to do another one. Jeha expressed his concern about his client’s ability to handle the continuing pressures of the situation. After another discussion with Jeha, it was agreed the police would submit written questions for Natasha to answer, and her responses were then drafted into a statement. Then, in an unprecedented turn in Australian legal history, an accused serial killer called his ‘murder victim’ as his only defence witness. Nineteen days into the trial, on 18 April, when the defence opened their case for Fraser, barrister Adrian Gundelach told the jury his client chose not to give evidence but proposed to call Natasha. Her testimony would be that she had never met Fraser and had first heard of him after he was arrested for the murder of Keyra Steinhardt. Gundelach told the jury that in each case, the Crown had relied on Fraser’s admissions by word or deed to identify him as the murderer. Critical to each case was knowledge only the killer and police knew: ‘There are three possibilities in relation to three of the counts as to Fraser’s source: the murderer, the police or thirdly personal knowledge.’ In the case of Natasha Ryan you see, there was no murder, so there are only two possibilities: the police or his own personal knowledge. Natasha Ryan will tell you 282
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that some information supplied to police concerning her was completely false … You see, where that false information accepted by the police re-appears in Fraser’s admission, there is a very strong inference available that Fraser was supplied that information, and the defence say that sources of that was the police (through Quinn).
Natasha took the stand and denied knowing Fraser. She also denied owning the choker police had taken from Fraser’s de facto wife and could not remember her mother buying it. Under cross-examination by Rutledge, Natasha recounted the events on the day she disappeared. She had not set out to run away that day but after getting in trouble at school with a teacher, she felt it was the ‘final straw’ and walked to Black’s house. Natasha refused to answer any further questions about her reasons for running away on the grounds they would incriminate her.When Rutledge questioned Natasha about her telling close friends and school counsellor Ngari Bean she was pregnant and Black was the father, the teenager denied ever saying such things. She distanced herself from Ebony Loomans and Maioha Tokotaua, saying they were never close enough for her to confide in them – an odd comment given she kept newspaper clippings of Tokotaua – Natasha was a lone voice against the other witnesses’ corroborating testimony.At first she refused to answer how she got into Black’s house when she left school on the grounds she could incriminate herself then went on to say she and Black snuck her into the house through the back door and past his parents, staying the night. She remembered meeting her friends at the cinema the next night, and afterwards met Black in a nearby laneway when he drove her back to his parents’ house. On the second day of her evidence, BACK FROM THE DEAD
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Natasha couldn’t again remember how she got back into Black’s parents’ house when she went into hiding. Natasha then told Rutledge she was not going to answer any further questions about where she and Black stayed after the night at the cinema. Rutledge further questioned Natasha about whether she remembered Fraser from the bowling alley they both frequented, she didn’t. He showed her a photograph of Wraight, who looked familiar to Natasha, and she did remember talking to people from the Endeavour Foundation. She couldn’t recall telling Bean she was taking marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines because she said she had never taken the drugs. She also refused to confirm whether she had written the note left in Black’s truck when she ran away in September 1998. Police who investigated Natasha’s missing years asked a handwriting expert to look at the letter – he confirmed she had written it. Rutledge, a veteran prosecutor of more than twenty years, never thought that Natasha being found alive would jeopardise the case: With the re-emergence of Natasha it was patently clear that you could not rely on the admissions of Fraser, you had to rely on evidence that could be corroborated, because we had acres of admissions by him, that he had killed Natasha Ryan and describing in detail how he had done it. So how could you ask the jury to rely on anything that had come out of his mouth? Well, you could only do that if you could demonstrate by what he had said that he had to be the killer, and you did that by showing that he revealed knowledge that only the killer could know and that’s where it tied back to conversations I had with police months before in preparing for 284
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trial, where I asked them to isolate from the hundreds if not thousands of hours of taped material, information that only the killer could know. So we were actually perfectly positioned to handle it and that’s exactly the way the defence decided the best tactic for them was to proceed with the trial, but unfortunately for them we were prepared for the scenario, albeit unintentionally …
Rutledge believes police were right to have charged Fraser with Natasha’s murder as the case they had was built on three grounds, outside of his confessions to Quinn. Fraser had an intimate knowledge of the Fehlaber property where he claimed he killed her; he knew it was vacant at the time and a trench-digger had been hired.A black leather choker identified by Jenny Ryan as the necklace she had bought her daughter six weeks before her disappearance had been found in the possession of Crissie Wraight. And Fraser knew Natasha believed she was pregnant. Rutledge also said the car seen in the alleyway behind the Rockhampton cinema was similar to the one driven by Fraser. Rutledge does not know whether Natasha knew Fraser but they had opportunity to meet at the bowling club they both frequented. As to whether Natasha was ever pregnant, Rutledge said he accepted the testimony of Ngari Bean, the school counsellor Natasha confided in that she was pregnant: ‘I don’t know how he [Fraser] knew about the pregnancy, it’s either an instance of his creation of a false story by pure chance he has just dropped it in and it coincides with the reality or he heard it from someone close to Natasha’s circle who had this knowledge.’ Dozens of witnesses gave evidence during the five-week trial. Families and friends testified as to their last contact with victims and gave some insight into their characters. Some like Julie’s daughter Kylie Elder gave evidence about the clothes BACK FROM THE DEAD
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Julie wore to help corroborate that the items found behind the youth club belonged to her mother. Julie’s de facto husband Michael McConochie spoke of how he only argued with her when she was drinking. He denied ever beating her. People who had contact with the victims in the days leading to their disappearance – taxi drivers, bouncers, and local business people – gave evidence. The shopkeeper who regularly sold Fraser cigarettes testified that his favourite brands were Longbeach and Horizon. Bank staff were called to recount the transactions of Fraser and his victims. People who bought cars or sold them to Fraser testified to establish his ownership of the vehicles, all of which he never registered. Even though Fraser had already been convicted of the murder of Keyra Steinhardt, the case formed part of the prosecution as it was entwined with Sylvia’s murder – both victims’ blood had been found in Fraser’s car. Witnesses and evidence from the schoolgirl’s case was led and the jury were informed of Fraser’s conviction for Keyra – this would become one of the grounds for appeal. Fraser remained very subdued and sometimes stony-faced for most of the trial, except when someone from the public gallery called him a ‘dog fucker’. He got very angry and his face reddened. A short time later court was adjourned for the afternoon after Fraser complained of chest pains. He was taken to hospital but his complaint turned out to be an anxiety attack. A handwriting expert was called to verify that the maps of the victims’ burial sites had been drawn by Fraser. A prison officer from Moreton B Jail gave evidence she provided Fraser with the paper and pens to draw the maps on request. Scenesof-crime officers and forensic experts also testified. Quinn gave evidence over several days providing details 286
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about the maps and his conversations with Fraser.Although his background as a convicted fraudster was aired to the court, under cross-examination Quinn denied suggestions from Gundelach that he was a conduit for police and had fed Fraser information that only the killer would know. Gundelach argued that police manufactured their case around a ‘foolish 14-year-old girl’, Natasha Ryan, and that Fraser knew intimate details of the crime because he had dumped the bodies of the victims, not killed them. The taped conversations between Fraser and Quinn were played to the court while the corresponding transcripts were projected onto a screen. Jurors were provided with a laptop and books of the conversations to help with their deliberations. Hearing the cruel and sickening way Fraser spoke about his victims was hard for their families, with some members occasionally leaving the courtroom too upset to hear any more.The families formed a tight bond with one another and supported each other with the help of the Homicide Victims Support Group, Taskforce Alex and Rutledge, who talked to them about the case and made himself available for any questions they had.The families were all determined to see the trial through – it was important for the families to see justice done for themselves and their loved ones. Robert Ryan was among them, fulfilling his promise to the other families that he would see the trial through with them to the end – he didn’t want them to go through it alone. On 9 May the Supreme Court jury deliberated for a day before delivering its verdict. They found Fraser guilty of manslaughter for Julie’s death and guilty of murdering Beverley and Sylvia. Fraser stood silent and red faced as each of the verdicts was read out and slumped back into his seat with his hands behind his head as the jury was led out of court. Friends BACK FROM THE DEAD
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and families of the victims wept and looked stunned, as were some members of Taskforce Alex, as the manslaughter verdict meant the jury did not believe Fraser had intended to kill Julie. The court adjourned sentencing pending a psychiatric assessment of Fraser. Outside the court, Sylvia’s mother Betty Hadfield called for the death penalty to be introduced to exterminate the likes of Fraser. ‘It should be brought back for animals like him,’ she said. Arthur Leggo agreed that prison was too good for Fraser and wished he could be given time alone in a room with him. ‘I would not hesitate to kill him,’ he said. Queensland’s first convicted serial killer was taken back to Wolston Correctional Centre and placed on suicide watch as is standard procedure. But there was no need to worry – Fraser’s biggest concern was not being able to watch the stock-car races on television. He showed no remorse and didn’t acknowledge he was facing another three indefinite life sentences for the brutal acts he had committed. On the day of his conviction, Natasha celebrated her nineteenth birthday with her family in Rockhampton, the first time she had done so in five years. Jenny Ryan told the media she and Natasha were rebuilding their relationship and trust. On 14 June 2003 Fraser was given three indefinite jail terms with Justice Ambrose describing him as an untreatable psychopath with a brutal desire for ‘middle-aged women down to children’. The court-ordered psychiatric assessment by Dr William Kingswell found him to be an untreatable sexual sadist whose desires included children, who had poor insight into his own severe personality disorder, which had destroyed his life and the lives of those around him. He refused to discuss his sexuality and denied having rape fantasies or deriving pleasure from his sex attacks. Of the sex attacks he admitted to committing, Fraser blamed ‘rebellion’ but refused to elaborate. 288
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Kingswell summed up Fraser as someone who was deceitful, impulsive, remorseless, irritable and aggressive and best kept in custody to protect the community. In his sentencing remarks, Ambrose said Fraser was motivated to kill because of his ‘unusual sexual desire’. During his sentencing, Fraser often appeared bored, looking at his watch like he had somewhere else to go. He rolled his eyes in defiance and pulled faces as Justice Ambrose read through his lengthy criminal history. Fraser was declared a serious violent offender for the murders of Beverley and Sylvia and became the first Queensland criminal to receive an indefinite sentence for manslaughter. Rutledge had told the court Fraser should never see the ‘outside of a prison wall again’. Justice Ambrose also said Fraser had some ‘homosexual experience’ and hoped prison authorities would ensure other inmates were protected from his predatory sexual urges. Operation Bravo System continued in Rockhampton but detectives were becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of evidence and co-operation from Jenny and Natasha Ryan as well as people around them. The pair were talking to media outlets but not police. It had emerged through police statements that friends and family had visited and stayed at Black’s homes during the five years but had never seen Natasha. The burning question remained as to who else knew she was alive. In a statement to police,Yvonne Freisacher, a longtime friend of Black’s, told police how he had given her a tour of his house at Wandal and that during her visits to each of the houses he rented, Black always had the television on. Freisacher had tried to set her long-time friend up with a couple of her friends on a date. Black told her he had three girlfriends he had met on his milk run. Over Christmas 1998, Freisacher stayed at Black’s house and remembered he locked his bedroom door BACK FROM THE DEAD
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and he had stayed at her house after they had been nightclubbing together. She never saw any sign of Natasha. Several people interviewed by police noted Black did not have an active social life or girlfriends. His boss Stephen Clifford told detectives Black never spoke of relationships or girls he knew and always turned up alone each year at the office Christmas party. Black was a ‘pleasant bloke’ who was a good and efficient worker.The only time a female called for him was around the time of Natasha’s disappearance and a message was left on the company answering machine in which the caller said: ‘You didn’t come around tonight, Scott.’ The call was traced to a phone at the A1 Motel in South Rockhampton which was not a client of the company. On the night of Natasha’s discovery, Black told Clifford he had done nothing wrong and was going to resign because he would cop it from his customers. Black stayed, with the support of Clifford. Robert Ryan remained co-operative with police and agreed to their request to have listening devices installed in his Bundaberg home a fortnight after his daughter had been found alive. Natasha was due to visit on the last weekend of April for his fiftieth birthday. He wanted to get to the truth as much as they did. For Robert it would be better than winning the lottery particularly after sitting through his daughter’s murder trial and hearing how bad her life had become from witnesses, some he had never met, who took the stand giving intimate details about Natasha of which he had no idea. As a father, he was heartbroken that he had let his daughter down so badly and had not picked up on her pain or why she was so troubled. The police approached me, they weren’t getting anywhere … a lot of people are against what I did … at the time I was getting the house bugged I knew there 290
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would be ramifications but I also wanted to get the truth about what happened, about what all the people in court had said about my daughter.
Unfortunately, Natasha revealed little during her threeday stay – even when her father told her of the torturous five years he had believing she was dead. She skirted around the issue of where the money went for the cash-for-comment interviews she and Jenny had given but did say 60 Minutes had bought her clothes. She boasted that she told the program what they wanted to hear and never revealed the reasons why she ran away. She told her father that Black’s parents had no idea she was alive or living with their son. Natasha spoke of the possible charges the couple were facing and how Black was more scared for her than himself and the possibility of losing everything. She did reveal some of the hardships of her self-imposed exile, telling her stepmother Debra Ryan she had to use towels and sheets in lieu of female sanitary products when she was menstruating – like in the ‘olden days’. Natasha also asked her stepmother whether clotting during menstruation meant she could have miscarried and said she and Black were going to go to a gynecologist to do a test to prove she was never pregnant. After exhausting all avenues with the key witnesses connected to Natasha and Black and given their lack of co-operation, detectives decided to summons family and friends of the couple to coercive hearings before the Queensland Crime Commission (QCC).The couple refused to be interviewed by police.The hearings, conducted behind closed doors, were held in Rockhampton between 1 and 16 July 2003 before QCC Assistant Commissioner John Callanan to find out whether Black knew of Natasha’s whereabouts when he gave a statement to police and if he should be charged with perjury. Each BACK FROM THE DEAD
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witness was cautioned they could not discuss hearings with any one because of secrecy provisions and that they did not have the right to silence. Black’s lawyer was even called over his giving a statement to Taskforce Alex – lawyer-client privilege was not exempt from the commission’s coercive powers. The nature of the questioning during the hearings demanded the minutiae of actions, reactions, conversations and observations between the couple and those close to them. The hearings established Black had a case to answer for perjury and both he and Natasha were charged with starting a false police investigation. Police conservatively costed their investigation at around $170 000 and are seeking restitution. Police had argued charges should be levelled against the couple because their actions may have impacted on future investigations into the disappearance of missing persons, and prosecutions of crimes such as unlawful killing where no body had been found would be made more difficult. Police also submitted other criminal charges to the Director of Public Prosecutions including child stealing, attempting to pervert the course of justice (for both Natasha and Black) and torture.The torture charge related to Black holding Natasha against her will causing her suffering – she was a child under sixteen at the time and therefore could not consent. However the prosecutions office decided to proceed on charging Black with perjury and the couple with starting a false police investigation. On 18 July 2003 Black and Natasha were served court summonses. Black was later charged with one count of perjury. On 12 August 2005, he was jailed for three years to be suspended after twelve months. He pleaded guilty in the Rockhampton District Court. Judge Grant Britton, who presided over Black’s court appearance over Natasha’s running away in July 1998, said it needed to be evident to the public at large that perjury 292
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was an offence that ‘strikes at the heart of justice’. Judge Britton said while he could see Natasha Ryan was a ‘mixed-up person’ there was a deliberate decision by Black to keep her hidden. He had kept up the lie until the very end, telling police the day before they raided his house in April 2003 that he had not seen Natasha since 1998. The court heard Black was driving Natasha back home when she tried to jump out of the car not long after she ran away. He decided to turn back and feared she would take her life. In his psychiatric assessment, Black said he and Natasha feared their deception had gone too far. Black also claimed when police raided his house in 2003, he and Natasha had made it ‘easy’ for detectives to find her because she climbed into a cupboard. Previously she climbed through a manhole and had hidden in the ceiling to avoid police. In May 2006, Natasha’s case was yet to be heard before the court after repeated adjournments. Queensland Police have defended their decision to charge Fraser with Natasha’s murder. When Natasha was found alive, there was mounting criticism of the murder charge and questions were raised as to why she was not located during her missing years in Rockhampton – particularly when it was revealed that Natasha was hiding in the ceiling during a police raid. Detective Senior Sergeant David Hickey stands firmly by Taskforce Alex’s decision saying there was a substantial body of evidence over and above Fraser’s confession.This included the fact that they both mixed with similar people, frequented the same bowling alley, and his de facto wife was found with the teenager’s jewellery. Fraser knew she was pregnant which wasn’t public knowledge. Two witnesses had seen Fraser and Natasha together prior to her disappearance in September 1998, one of whom confronted the troubled teen about her BACK FROM THE DEAD
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association with ‘Loony Lenny’. Hickey believes the pair knew each other and it was possible that Fraser, and not Black, may have helped hide Natasha in the days following her disappearance in September 1998. Adding to his theory that Natasha hid elsewhere – with or without Fraser’s help – was the point that it was highly unlikely that Black would risk being seen with Natasha or harbouring her in the early part of her disappearance given he was facing charges of child abduction over her running away in July 1998. ‘A motivating factor [for Ryan running away] was to terminate the criminal charges against Scott Black … I have doubts whether they would be associating together in the initial period.’ Hickey believes Natasha was elsewhere, which was supported by the contents of the note she left in Black’s truck about running away: ‘I, in my own mind, believe whether she was given aid by another person or not, she was elsewhere than the Black family home and that’s possibly when Fraser has been associated with her and provided her with some assistance.That would explain the sightings, that would explain the clothes … and Fraser’s knowledge of the pregnancy.’ Hickey believes Fraser could have hidden Natasha at the Fehlaber property, as described in his confession, because it was a good place for a runaway to squat.There were other possibilities too: On the night before Natasha met Ebony Loomans at the cinema, a call made from Natasha to Ebony was traced to a telephone box very near to a hotel with cheap accommodation and we had some suspicion she had been staying in the units. However their records were destroyed but some staff did have a recollection of a girl fitting Natasha’s description checking in. The 294
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phone box was nowhere near Black’s house and Lenny was known to frequent that hotel.
Hickey also believes the night Natasha turned up at the cinema in baggy clothing lent further weight to another person hiding the missing teen – there was too much disparity between her and Black’s 130 kilogram frame for the clothes to belong to Black. ‘I doubt the truthfulness of that,’ Hickey said. Natasha had also failed to explain how she got in and out of the Black house without being detected, particularly on the night she was at the cinema. ‘She refused to answer on the grounds of incrimination and while she is entitled to that silence, it stirred suspicion in my mind.’ Hickey was also suspicious of Natasha having a $50 note on her, it not making sense that Black would have given her that amount of money or risked her going out where she could have been seen, because ‘it endangered their whole scenario’. As to questions of whether Ebony Loomans and Maioha Tokotaua had changed their original stories about the man they saw Natasha with in the alley that night in the cinemas, Hickey said neither of them had given direct evidence that the man crouching in an alcove was Black or Fraser. Loomans had assumed it was Black because they found a lit cigarette which they had seen him smoking and it was the Horizon brand which Black favoured. It was a brand smoked by both Black and Fraser. (Natasha Ryan’s former lawyer Elias Jeha said that Loomans and Tokotaua did not want to comment on this matter.) Hickey said both witnesses had drawn assumptions originally that the man in the alley that night was Black because the car was yellow but he to this day is not sure whether it was a correct assumption. Both witnesses had identified a nondescript man crouching down smoking a cigarette BACK FROM THE DEAD
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and Tokotaua described the male as being of slim build. Hickey believes with Black’s large build, he would have expected the witnesses to indicate as such.Tokotaua’s statement had pointed to Black but, at the time of Natasha’s disappearance, the teenager told the court people didn’t understand the terrible pressure he and Loomans were under. Of interest to Taskforce Alex was that both witnesses had told police they had identified some damage on the door of the car parked in the alley that night. Subsequent tests on the car driven by Black at the time showed there had never been any damage. However the Camira Fraser was driving at the time had had some panel repair on that particular door. Hickey commented: I’ve always thought that evidence is something you do see rather than you don’t see so if they did see the damage to that door I have concerns over the fact if it was Scott Black there on that particular night. Natasha Ryan gave evidence that it was Scott Black but when questioned as to how she got back into the Black household on the same night she claimed privilege. Now we have been unable to determine the veracity of that evidence.
Natasha’s actions have so far had few ramifications on the state’s legal system in murder trials where the victim’s body has not been found. But while Rutledge has no doubt some defence counsel will present it as an issue in the future, he believes it has shown the need for caution even in the strongest of cases. He observed: The [Taskforce Alex] police investigation was magnificent, it was very detailed and it was a difficult 296
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investigation in very difficult circumstances and they left no stone unturned. I really think they deserved great praise for what they did. A very good case can be flawed. Ultimately I don’t think it will have impact because the circumstances are so bizarre that realistically, and I think everyone recognises this, we are talking about a girl who hid herself from the world for years … As for long term impact, historically it will be a very interesting case but it’s just so bizarre, it will stay in the realm of bizarre.
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15 THE UNKNOWN AND THE AFTERMATH LEONARD JOHN FRASER’S future is bleak – he will die behind bars. His four indefinite life sentences mean he will never be released. His two appeals against his convictions to the Queensland Criminal Court of Appeal in 2004 and then the High Court of Australia in 2005 both failed, exhausting all legal avenues for freedom or leniency. Both appeals were made on similar grounds. Fraser’s defence argued there were concerns that his trial jury was prejudiced after being told of his earlier conviction for the murder of Keyra Steinhardt. They also argued that Quinn’s evidence should have been excluded as police had obtained it with ‘reckless disregard’ for Fraser’s right to silence and alleged that Quinn was a police agent. Police had been advised by Fraser’s solicitor that they were not to talk to him without legal representation. Fraser, however, had repeatedly invited detectives from Taskforce Alex to the 298
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jail, ignoring their offers of legal representation. Fraser is currently housed in cell 15 of unit S4 at the Wolston Correctional Centre at Wacol in Brisbane’s outer west, a jail which houses sex offenders and prisoners in protective custody. His cell, 4 metres by 2.5 metres has four bland beige concrete walls decorated with the Aboriginal art that Fraser draws, while locked away in the afternoons at his desk. His pencils, paper and art utensils sit on the craftwood shelves next to his desk. Fraser, who now has a moustache and a goatee beard, is fastidious about keeping his cell clean, including his built-in shower and toilet. His bed is made in the old school way, just as he did at the boys’ home, sheets and blanket tucked so tight you could bounce a coin off them. His days are spent steeped in routine – he wakes every morning around 6.30 and an hour later has breakfast when all the cells across the prison are unlocked. He dresses in prison-issue brown trousers and tshirt and wears thongs, never shoes. Fraser seems most boisterous in the mornings and his voice can be heard as he walks around the 50 single-cell unit. He spends time with murderers, pedophiles, rapists and protection prisoners. Fraser is very institutionalised and comfortable within the confines of prison. He never has visitors and never receives mail. He was writing to a female Townsville prisoner, a convicted murderer, claiming he was an old friend, but she never wrote back. His family, most of whom remain in Queensland and New South Wales, have nothing to do with him and do everything they can to distance themselves from Fraser and his crimes. He mixes with other prisoners and enjoys his reputation as a serial killer – as long as no one mentions he murdered a nine-year-old girl and was ultimately exposed because he trusted a police informant. His physical size and snap temper keep some prisoners wary and at a distance. Fraser is mostly THE UNKNOWN AND THE AFTERMATH
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polite to staff who in turn are aware of the warning signs that he could erupt or is getting stressed – he bites his lip, frowns and walks fast. Female staff are prohibited from interacting with Fraser without male officers present. Fraser continues not to do any rehabilitation programs or work at the jail, receiving $9 a week for amenities – $2 of which goes to renting a television to watch anything car related, especially stock-car racing, crime shows and wildlife programs. He has never participated in the Sex Offenders Treatment Program and most likely never will. Leonard Fraser goes about the business of serving his life sentences, without remorse, oblivious to the lives he has wrecked, while his victims’ families serve their own indefinite sentences of grief. Julie Turner’s daughter Kylie Elder has struggled since her mother’s killer was jailed and started drinking heavily to cope with her grief. Her marriage broke down and she sent her three children to live with their fathers as she got her life back on track. Kylie is slowly rebuilding the relationships with her children. Craving anonymity, she left her hometown of Townsville in northern Queensland, and moved to Brisbane and has her children during school holidays. ‘I really want to help care for them. Before I didn’t feel like I could be there for them and now I am …’ Kylie finds her mother is always on her mind and finds it particularly difficult when her children ask questions about their Nanna. She is studying Justice Administration, which has helped her understand the legal system. Kylie, like the families of the other victims, found it difficult sitting in the same room as Fraser but said the detectives from Taskforce Alex and prosecutor Paul Rutledge helped them get through. Kylie is now an assistant manager at a Brisbane retail chain and hopes to be employed full-time as a victim liaison officer for the 300
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Queensland courts. Outside of work, she does court support training so she can work as a volunteer. The Leggo family say they must live in the present to keep moving forward and cope with the loss of Beverley. Her father Arthur Leggo said the family was ‘going okay’: We have settled down to it now, you have to accept things as they are, if you dwell you go nuts.We think of Beverley a lot and we do discuss her now and again … Things are happening all the time and that’s where you have to be. We have enough things on our plate and largely we cope. We still have the support of the Homicide Victims Support Group.
Betty Marie Hadfield moved from Broken Hill in May 2004 because of too many bad memories relating to Sylvia. She has relocated to central Victoria and opened up a secondhand store. ‘Only a few people here know what happened to Sylvia …’ Her two sons remain in Broken Hill. Betty’s biggest regret was that she argued with Sylvia the last time she saw her. We always made up but I never had the chance to talk it out with her. I thought about how I went to Rockhampton looking for Sylvia but I always knew what had happened before it happened because it was in my dreams. I knew in time she would sort herself out, I knew what she was going through but she didn’t get a chance to – she wanted to come home but was killed.
Betty says she has now come to terms with her daughter’s death and believes Sylvia would not want her to ‘sit around and THE UNKNOWN AND THE AFTERMATH
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mope’. She only started to relax just before Fraser’s trial as she knew ‘he would get what was coming’.‘Sylvia liked to have fun and liked to live. I keep a photograph of her in the lounge room with roses beside it. I can look at it now and not cry.’ Time has done little to heal Treasa Steinhardt’s pain, or the unacceptable reality that she will never again review or critique Keyra’s talent shows, praise her latest efforts in home craft, or hear her little girl’s laugh. Treasa is heartbreakingly aware that her blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel will never experience life’s big milestones, like getting married or having children of her own. Keyra’s family has been robbed, and her brother Connor still misses his doting big sister. For Treasa, Connor and Keyra, family life ended on the hard, compact ground of a vacant bush allotment. Life was, and still is, unbearable for Treasa.‘I thought I had the perfect life,’Treasa said. ‘A husband with two kids ... and then it was shattered.’ There have been many dark moments since Keyra’s death, but the pivotal moment in Treasa’s grief came when she planned to kill herself, four years after the murder. She drove to the site where Keyra’s body was found with the intent to gas herself in her car. ‘I walked to the location where she laid and just wanted to take my life and be with her,’ she said.‘But part of me couldn’t do it because Connor would think I didn’t love him.’ Instead, Treasa drove home, packed her clothes and left behind her family, putting as much distance as possible between herself and Rockhampton. She felt terrible leaving Connor but felt it was in his best interests – she didn’t feel she could do the best thing by him. She now calls Melbourne home, but maintains a close relationship with her son. Treasa still struggles with grief.The pain of losing her daughter overwhelms her at times, making it difficult to get out of bed. She 302
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also struggles with hatred for Lynette and Kerrod Kiernan – the couple who witnessed her daughter’s rape and abduction:‘They went to the footpath to see him when he hit Keyra, why couldn’t they have gone and tended to my daughter? If they had checked her, Fraser wouldn’t have driven back and I could’ve had my daughter there and then. I feel sorry for their son.’ Treasa has visited Rockhampton several times since Keyra’s murder and in 2005, for the first time, felt she finally had some closure. She intends to sprinkle Keyra’s ashes over the once vacant allotment where Fraser abducted her daughter – a police station has been built on the site. Treasa believes she draws strength from the fact that Keyra was the hero who brought Fraser to justice. Because of Keyra’s sacrifice, peace was brought to the families of Beverley, Sylvia and Julie. Treasa believes Natasha Ryan deserves a ‘good slap’, and that she should donate any money she has earned from her disappearance to State Emergency Services, police and victims of crime.Treasa hopes to get a job transfer as a checkout operator for Woolworths back to northern Queensland to be closer to her son. Natasha Ryan and Scott Black now have a son, Corey, who was born in 2004. She is now raising her son alone after Black was jailed on 12 August 2005 for perjury.The couple is facing charges of starting a false police investigation. Robert Ryan remains estranged from the daughter he thought was dead and has said he will never reconcile with her until she tells him why she hid. He learns about her life, such as the arrival of his grandson, through the media and has only seen Corey in magazine pictures or from afar at football games while watching his son Chris play. Robert believes his allowing police to install a listening device in his house during one of Natasha’s stays is what ultimately soured his relationship with THE UNKNOWN AND THE AFTERMATH
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his daughter as well as the fact that he showed his disappointment in her actions since she was found. His 13-year marriage broke down and he has difficulty trusting people. Robert bears no grudges to Queensland Police in relation to his daughter and said in his darkest times, when he thought of taking his own life, it was the detectives and his family – his parents and siblings – who pulled him through. A lot of people asked if I blamed police for what I have been through, making me think my daughter was murdered. My attitude is once you been alongside these people and you see how hard they worked, seen their compassion and their kindness for the victims and their families, I know without a shadow of a doubt there would not have been one police officer that didn’t believe Natasha was murdered. Detective Hickey had picked the right team and I believe his compassion has been reflected on his team, I hold them all in high esteem.
Detective Hickey is keeping an open mind as to murders Fraser has claimed to have committed or had knowledge about – given that Fraser is a predator and opportunist who lacks impulse control, anything is possible. Hickey believes Fraser is not necessarily the type of offender whose criminal acts escalate from minor to serious offending before they commit murder. He doesn’t believe the serial killer murdered to facilitate rape, but rather that Fraser killed to escape detection from committing a sexual offence. If the victim was compliant and there was no risk of identification, Fraser’s victims could survive. ‘He [Fraser] had been previously incarcerated from rape victims who survived. It may 304
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have been progression out of necessity to kill the living witness more than he got more evil.’ There is still the mystery of the large amount of stolen female underwear found in Fraser’s Baker Street flat. The clothing did not belong to Crissie Wraight and at least one woman came forward to police after Keyra’s abduction complaining Fraser had stolen her underwear from her house in Yeppoon. Three ponytails, the hair of three different women, were also found in Fraser’s flat. Police say they do not belong to any of his murder victims or missing persons in Australia. Hickey suspects Fraser has kept them as trophies: Whether they are an indication of murders he has committed or a previous girlfriend has donated [the ponytails] to him, the mere fact he has retained these three [ponytails] in itself is an indication they were some form of trophy – but from what we couldn’t determine.
The ponytails had been cut with a bladed instrument. During the Taskforce Alex investigation Hickey sent the ponytails to the FBI in the United States for mitochondrial examinations, along with samples of blood from Fraser, his victims and/or their families. The tests confirmed it was human hair but could not determine the sex.When questioned, Fraser told Hickey he bought them as hairpieces from a store and had given them to Wraight as a gift: ‘The whole scenario was farcical because to see the ponytails they could not have been sold commercially – one was quite small. His explanation just didn’t hold water. We positively excluded the three known victims and also Fraser.This led us to believe they were obviously from three unknown individuals.’ THE UNKNOWN AND THE AFTERMATH
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Hickey suspects that Fraser did have a hand in the murder of Rockhampton woman Michelle Coral Lewis.The 21-yearold disappeared on the night of 14 January 1989. She was last seen leaving the home of her friends in North Rockhampton at 10.30 pm – several kilometres from Rockhampton’s Etna Creek Jail where Fraser was serving his twelve-year sentence for the Mackay rape. She was riding her white and maroon mountain bike. Neither she nor the bike have been seen since and her killer has never been found. Fraser had told Quinn about a young female on a bike who went missing near the Botanic Gardens in Rockhampton. He claimed that he helped her with a flat tyre, offered her a lift and then punched her repeatedly. He didn’t reveal what he did with her. Taskforce Alex found Fraser was in secure custody at the time but are ‘keeping an open mind’ as to whether the prison records accurately reflect his whereabouts. Fraser’s prison records clearly show there were incidents where security had been lax. A month after her disappearance Fraser was granted work release. Hickey said while there was no concrete evidence to link Fraser to Lewis, ‘I and other colleagues keep an open mind [about Fraser] … it is a healthy suspicion.’ The Rockhampton community has moved on since Fraser’s crimes and does not want to be defined by the existence of a serial killer. The community, while hurt by Fraser’s actions, know that he has nothing to do with the city’s identity. Mayor Margaret Strelow, who has been the city’s leader for over five-and-a-half years, believes it was Rockhampton’s extreme misfortune that Fraser chose it as the place he wanted to live – and kill. ‘In some ways the city’s psyche has been scarred. However, we have 150 very proud years of history and we have moved on,’ she said. Late in 2005, Strelow doesn’t
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underestimate the impact Fraser has had on Rockhampton, his victims and their families: No one wants their town identified by serial murders and Lenny Fraser is definitely not Rockhampton. He hurt us, absolutely. [Now] everyone sleeps easier knowing that the animal responsible for the killings is behind bars … may he stay there.
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ENDNOTES 1 A KILLER’S WRATH Information taken from Operation Benny, the police investigation into the murder of Sylvia Benedetti. Interviews with investigating police officers. 2 A CLASSIC PSYCHOPATH Interviews with Fraser’s family who spoke on condition of anonymity. Interview with boys’ home inmates and information from submissions to the New South Wales Senate Committee Inquiry into Children in State Care. Fraser’s prison records, unemployment records, psychiatric and psychological assessments. The 1952 coronial inquest of Terrance Fraser from Queensland State Archives. New South Wales Supreme Court records, including court transcripts, Fraser’s NSW criminal records, psychiatric assessment and police interviews with Fraser. Interview with Allan Quinn. Interview with Queensland railway employees.
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3 LENNY THE LOON Interviews with retired Queensland prison officer, Dave Robinson. Interviews with four former inmates incarcerated with Fraser in Rockhampton’s Etna Creek Jail. Interviews with Rockhampton prison officers, program staff and a former parole board commissioner. All these interviews were granted on the condition of anonymity. Interview with Michael Grayson, former prison nursery contractor and trade instructor at Rockhampton jail. Information regarding Mackay rape from Queensland Supreme Court transcripts of 1985 court case. Interview with arresting detective Craig ‘Chuck’ Dent.Victim declined to comment. 4 MONSTER IN THE MIDST Interview with Michael Grayson, former prison nursery contractor and trade instructor at Rockhampton jail. Interview with Vera Chivers, mother of Marie Chivers. Interview with Fraser’s former flatmate and fellow inmate, Chris Turner. Interview with Mountt Morgan police officer and mayor, Stan Lean. Interview with local residents and Mount Morgan business owners who wished to remain anonymous. Interviews with Ken and June Waltham, former Mount Morgan residents. Interviews with Warren Wraight (father of Crissie Wraight), Michelle Maloney (Fraser’s former landlord), Fred Abt (Fraser’s former landlord) and former female friends of Fraser who cannot be identified for legal reasons. 5 TROPIC OF CAPRICORN Information provided by Rockhampton City Council. Interviews with Warren Wraight (father of Crissie Wraight), and Michelle Maloney (Fraser’s former landlord), Fred Abt (Fraser’s former landlord). Psychiatric report on Crissie Wraight and running sheets from Operation Care, police investigation into the murder of Keyra Steinhardt.
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6 A WAYWARD TEEN Police statements and running sheets from Operation Hybrid (investigation into Natasha’s disappearance). Interview with Robert Ryan. Transcripts from Fraser’s murder trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court 2003. Police brief of evidence, notes from Rockhampton school counselor, Ngari Bean, and school chaplain, Marty Madsen. Interview with Michelle Maloney. 7 RUNAWAY TRAIN Interview with Roger Marek, Kylie Elves, Ron Turner, and Julie Mulhall. Police statements and running sheets from Operation Bega and Taskforce Alex. Interview with Allan Quinn. Police interview with Michael McConochie. 8 THE SURVIVOR Interview with Arthur, Doris and Heather Leggo and Beverley’s exhusband Steve Wornham. Interviews with detectives Graham Clark, Darren Padget, Peter Ziser and Brendan Rook. Letter written by Beverley Leggo to her solicitor for compensation claim. Information from Brisbane Supreme Court transcripts of the Fraser’s 2003 murder trial. Interview with a former female friend of Fraser who cannot be named for legal reasons. Opening address of Queensland Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Paul Rutledge, in trial transcripts. Running and statements taken from Operation Bever. Information from Quinn’s notes. 9 THE MISSING Interviews with detectives Graham Clark, Peter Ziser, Russell Janke, Darren Lees. Interview with the Leggo family. Information taken from Operations Hybrid, Bever and Bega and Missing Person reports. 10 ROOM 13 Interview with Marie Hadfield, Detective Peter Ziser, and Sylvia’s foster mother, Diedre Moore. Information taken from Operation
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Benny including police statements, running sheets, and forensic report. Information taken from transcripts of Fraser’s 2003 Brisbane Supreme Court trial. Author’s notes taken during Benedetti committal proceedings for the Courier-Mail newspaper. 11 INNOCENCE LOST Interview with Treasa Steinhardt, Lynette Kiernan (April 1999 interview by author for the Courier-Mail). Interview with Lyall Dobbs (SES controller). Interviews with detectives Darren Lees, Darrell How, Russell Janke and police diver Owen Law. Transcripts of Fraser’s Supreme Court trial in relation to Lynette Kiernan. Justice Ken Mackenzie’s remarks, page 1, Courier-Mail, 8 September 2000 by Mark Oberhardt and the author. Courier-Mail, page 2, 10 May 1999 by Sara Bradford, ‘Shattered City Sheds Its Tears for Keyra’. Notes taken by author for the Courier-Mail, during coverage of Keyra’s abduction. 12 THE INFORMANT Interviews with Allan Quinn (2003 and 2005). Interview with Detective John O’Keeffe. Information taken from Quinn’s notes and diary of conversations with Fraser, 1999. Interview with detectives Graham Clark and Peter Ziser. Interview with inmates and officers at Moreton B Correctional Centre which were given on the condition of anonymity. 13 THINGS ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW Interview with detectives David Hickey, Roger Marek, Tony Lohmann, Brendan Rook, Peter Ziser, Graham Rynders, John O’Keeffe and Kerry Johnson. Information taken from Taskforce Alex transcripts of listening device of conversations between Allan Quinn and Fraser. Information from Taskforce Alex investigation and running sheets. Information also taken from Quinn’s notes, body wire and diary. Information from transcripts of Fraser’s Brisbane Supreme Court murder trial. Interview with Queensland Deputy Director of Public
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Prosecutions, Paul Rutledge. Interview with Fraser’s defence solicitor, Peter Shields. 14 BACK FROM THE DEAD Courier-Mail reports, as follows: 15 April 2003, page 1, ‘Phone call by “murdered” girl ignored’, by the author and Tanya Moore; 15 April 2003, page 1, ‘Natasha strikes media deal’, by David Murray and Chris Griffith; 22 August 2003, page 1,‘Lawyer told that Natasha was alive’ by the author and David Murray; press release issued by Terry O’Gorman to the Courier-Mail on 21 August 2003; 11 April 2003, page 3 article by the author,Tony Keim and Glenis Green; 12 April 2003, page 6, ‘Beattie critical of the community’s role’ by Sean Parnell; 12 April 2003, page 4, artlicle by the author, Catriona Matthewson and David Murray; 10 May 2003, page 1, ‘Serial Killer Convicted, Natasha enjoys new slice of life’ article by Tony Keim and David Murray; ‘Killer-rapist jailed until he turns 81’ by Tony Keim and the author. From court transcripts: comments by Justice Ambrose in Brisbane Supreme Court murder trial of Fraser, May 2003, pages 543 and 545; opening address of defence barrister, Adrian Gundelach, pages 963–4; Natasha Ryan’s evidence, pages 965–999. Psychiatric report on Fraser by Dr William Kingswell (2 June 2003). 15 THE UNKNOWN AND THE AFTERMATH Courier-Mail article on the sentencing of Scott Black, by Tanya Chilcott-Moore;‘A year’s jail for runaway’s hider’ by Kevin Meade of the Australian, both published 13 August 2004. Interview with the families of Fraser’s victims. Interview with Detective David Hickey. Interview with prison officers (confidential).
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all I wish to express my eternal gratitude to the families of the victims who opened their homes and themselves to share with me the memories of the daughters, sisters, friends and mothers they loved and lost – and, in the Ryans’ case, stories about the daughter who came back from the dead. I am honoured by their generosity and spirit. I would never have been able to write this book without the amazing talent and dedication of my journalist colleague and great friend, Tanya Targett, who spent many days editing, trouble-shooting and being my conscience. She also made our research trips one hell of an adventure. My gratitude also to her husband Andy for his understanding and patience. A very special thanks to detectives David Hickey, Darren Lees, Darrel How, Brendan Rook (thank you for the book title), Peter Ziser, Tony Lohmann, Roger Marek, Graham Rynders, John O’Keeffe, Ian Tuffield, Graham Clark, Adam McGill, Russell Janke, Craig Dent and Owen Law. I am forever 315
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grateful for the hours of your time and your invaluable insight. I would also like to thank Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson and State Crime Operations Assistant Commissioner Peter Swindells for allowing me full access to the police investigation into Leonard John Fraser. My appreciation also goes to Steve Longford for his great advice. To defence lawyer Peter Shields and Queensland Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Paul Rutledge, thank you for your assistance and time. To the many police, prison officials, prisoners, emergency services staff, lawyers, court staff, associates and family of Fraser who contributed – many of whom I cannot name for confidentiality reasons – thank you. My love and thanks to my husband Simon for his unconditional support, cups of tea and encouragement.To my wonderful and exceptionally talented family, thank you for setting a great example of how to live. To my brother Shane, your memory inspires me every day. I would also like to express my gratitude to my current editor at the Courier-Mail, David Fagan, and my previous editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, for supporting my endeavour. To Lyn Wilcock who transcribed hours of taped interviews, thank you for your perseverance and patience. Many thanks to my publisher Sue Hines for her patience and understanding. Finally, thanks to Chris and Ollie for looking after Harry and me during our stays at Gretel Cottage, the best setting in which to write a crime book.
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