The Devil's Garden Read online

  By Easter 1997, the city's cabbies – around 2500 drivers – are asked to voluntarily provide mouth swab samples so their DNA can be obtained. Carried out at the taxis' licensing centres, most drivers are happy to oblige, to exonerate them-selves from the investigation. Some grumble that they are under suspicion simply because of the job they do, and a handful refuse to provide samples. The highly public and voluntary testing of DNA did not stop police pulling over taxi drivers who had passengers in their cabs. It caused an uproar, with female passengers rigid with fear in the back seat while police searched taxis and took the taxi drivers' samples.

  The genesis for the mass testing came from within the taxi industry itself, which established an organisation called Cabbies Against Crime. Liaising closely with the police in setting up the testing, there were agreements made before they started. The DNA extracted from the mouth swabs would be used only for the Claremont investigation, and if a suspect was found from the pool of drivers who had volunteered their DNA, the remainder of the samples would immediately be destroyed. They are still waiting for that to happen.

  It worked both ways, a former officer comments. 'If they refused to cooperate, then they were immediately under suspicion for not doing so. By virtue of their occupation they need to have police checks and clearances, but it wouldn't have looked too good against their name if there was a small note, "didn't provide DNA sample in Claremont investigation".' While police do not divulge whether any DNA was found on either Jane Rimmer's or Ciara Glennon's body, how do the taxi drivers know what they have to test against – if there is anything? Dave Caporn will neither confirm nor deny the existence of DNA evidence, so it is left to forensic scientists to deduce the possibilities.

  Heavy rain had fallen at both Wellard and Eglinton before the discoveries of the two bodies. Almost eight weeks of hard rain over Jane Rimmer's body, almost three weeks over Ciara Glennon's; both too long in the elements for Macro forensic investigators to lift fresh, uncontaminated crime scene samples. Retired Tasmanian forensic pathologist John Presser worked on hundreds of cases in his long career, peering down a microscope to find the slightest trace of tell-tale evidence from a dead body, clothing or hair. Any blood traces the killer left behind on either girl's body would have been washed away, he believes. 'DNA is very fragile. Blood only lasts about a day if it is exposed to the elements, either rain or sun. The only way to stop rapid deterioration is if the DNA samples are frozen or dried. Semen will deteriorate quickly as well if it is on the body, but in the vagina – the body's natural cavity – it will last longer. The UV rays in sunlight destroy DNA, as do bacteria, so the chances of the girls having anything left on their bodies when they have been exposed to both heat and water is fairly remote.'

  Civil libertarian Terry O'Gorman calls the mass taking of DNA from the Perth taxi drivers nothing more than an exercise in hype. 'On the information that's been publicly revealed, there's a very strong suspicion that there is no scene DNA; that is, there's no DNA left at the scene of the crime against which samples that are collected from the target, or from various cabbies, can be tested. Now if that's the case, then the whole DNA-gathering exercise has no criminal investigation value and is simply an exercise in hype whose end result again causes significant difficulties, either for the particular target who has been the subject of extraordinary police dubious practices or for some other person who's eventually charged.'

  Using the dark humour for which journalists are well known, reporters knee-deep in the Claremont story let off steam in the sanctity of their newsrooms. 'After the cabbies gave DNA, we wanted to run a tongue-in-cheek piece,' Rex Haw remembers. 'We would have started it, in ponderous, dramatic tone like they start current affairs programs: "But first tonight – a public apology to all those hard-working, decent taxi drivers out there who keep being spat at, kicked and generally abused just for doing their job . . .'"

  On another occasion, at a tense press conference, unbe-known to a senior officer, a bird flying overhead left a dropping on his coat shoulder, near his other pips. Haw kept a straight face. 'I understand you've been decorated today, Sir?' he quipped.

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  The use of DNA testing of taxi drivers is not the only means that Macro employs to try to track the killer. But if DNA was regarded as potentially of no value in the investigation because science most probably had nothing to compare the victims with the killer, the decision to use a polygraph (lie-detector) test for the first time in an Australian criminal case was seen by many as completely unorthodox and outrageous.

  The polygraph test examiner police use – twice – is Ron Homer from Polygraph and Investigation Service, California. Flown to Australia for the first time in late August 1997, using money provided by the Secure Community Foundation, Homer tests 50 people. Six pass. Six fail. The rest give uncertain results. Four refuse outright to undertake the test.

  Ron Homer does not respond to an email I send him to answer some questions about the test. I want to ask him if it was true, as told to me by various sources, that he told Macro officers it was his opinion that of the men who failed, one or more of those six was definitely responsible for the Claremont killings?

  The methodology if a person passes or fails the test in Australia is vastly different from that in the United States. There, if a suspect fails the test, pressure is applied in the hope a confession is forthcoming. In Australia, once someone is tested, the result is handed to the police. 'In Australia,' a polygrapher said, 'it's like doing bits of the job with your hands tied behind your back.'

  The average test takes about three hours to conduct and questions are divided into three main categories. First, the irrelevant questions with obvious answers: Is today Monday? Do you live in Victoria? The second set of questions are relevant – the questions which get to the crux of the issue. Did you shoot John? Did you take that money? These questions have to be succinct, unambiguous and carefully phrased. The examiner cannot ask, did you murder John? Because the person being tested will then think the tester has already made up his mind as to his innocence or guilt which can, in turn, affect the test result. The third type of question is the comparison, the one which gives the examiner a baseline to work from. Gavin Wilson, examiner for Australian Polygraph Services, says they don't give examples of what sort of questions these are. 'I imagine the type of questions that Ron Homer would have asked the suspects would be something like, ''Did you have any involvement in the disappearance of . . . ?'' or ''Did you cause the death of . . . ?'' He wouldn't have asked them if he had murdered the girls or if he knew where their bodies were. There are reasons for that: If he had an accomplice, that person may have disposed of the bodies in a place unknown to the suspect.'

  Examining blood pressure, perspiration and respiration, critics claim that it is all too easy for people who should fail the test to pass it instead. Highly confident individuals, unmitigated liars and those with a psychopathic bent are particularly adept at beating the test; devoid of any feelings of guilt, psychopaths can fool the machine. Low responses to anxiety coupled with a lack of moral normalcy can ensure their physical responses are not an accurate representation of their guilt or innocence. And of much more importance, unlike many states in the US, polygraph evidence is not admissible in any Australian court of law.

  Homer made his opinion public. It is a myth, he says, that psychopaths can't be tested. If someone cares about lying, they will get caught. Regardless of how adept they are in concealing their lies, the machine, based on the fear of telling a lie, will detect it.

  In August 1998 Homer returns to Australia for one specific purpose: to test Lance Williams, who volunteers to take the polygraph. He fails the test, resoundingly. Somehow, the results are leaked to the press.

  On Friday 31 August 1998, the ABC carries a story that police have a suspect in the Claremont killings under surveillance – and that he has failed a lie-detector test. Suddenly, the unwritten rules for the press to tread carefully are discarded. All bets in the media are o
ff.

  There is a not-so-subtle shift in Williams's rating following the results of the polygraph test becoming public knowledge. With media interest at fever pitch, journalists are summoned to a media conference at the police headquarters conference room. Dave Caporn is clearly not happy, peering through his glasses at reporters and berating them for the loose and irresponsible manner in which they are reporting Macro operations. A journalist queries whether Williams had failed the polygraph. Caporn glowers, responding he does not intend to release that information. But what he does give them is dynamite. For the first time since the inception of the Macro taskforce, he elevates Williams's status from a 'person of interest' to a 'suspect' – a shift that is immediately pounced on by the voracious press. Schooled by Macro over the years to use the term 'person of interest' instead of 'suspect', the change is startling. Deliberate or intentional? Caporn will not say.

  Williams stumbles into a sea of reporters as he leaves work, squinting as the cameras' flashlights go off in his face. Network Ten's news manager, Chris Hunt, putting his five o'clock news bulletin to air, takes a call about which he needs to make split-second decisions. The prime suspect for the Claremont serial killing is in a media throng and talking. Hunt pounces on his lawyers, who advise him what to do. Identify him, they say. He hasn't been charged, so it's not sub judice, no one has warned that he is about to be charged and he is innocent until proven guilty. Identify him.

  Leading the charge is Channel 9 reporter Judy Allen, who barks out the questions. 'Are you the serial killer?'

  'No.'

  'Are you innocent?'

  'Yes.'

  'How has this surveillance affected you?'

  'It's been very distressing to me and my family.'

  Williams avoids making eye contact with the reporters, casting an occasional sideways glance when the questions are persistent.

  Hammering out the questions. How does this attention make you feel? How long have you been aware that you've been followed? And the question of the lie-detector test. 'Lance, it appears now that you've failed the polygraph test, can you tell us why?'

  He is surrounded by reporters, can't avoid answering. His voice is low. 'Well, that was a very disturbing thing to me, because I'm the one that suggested I take that test initially, because I'd heard that other people they were investigating had taken it last year, and you know, I had no reason not to take it.'

  They won't let up. 'Lance, I'll ask you again, because it's what everyone will want to know: are you the serial killer?'

  'No, I'm not. No. I mean I went in voluntarily to do a test at the police station. I mean I was under no obligation to. I just wanted to, because the police were parked over across from my parents' house on weekends and, you know, sort of waiting for me at work and that, I just thought, "Well I'll just go in there, do the test", because I had nothing to hide, you know.'

  The story leads all the news bulletins in Perth that night. All but Channel Ten – with more than 200,000 viewers – choose to hide his face with pixellation and to not specifically identify him. It is a decision that Chris Hunt long remembers. Lawyers scream that Williams has been hung by both police and press; callers bombard the Channel Ten switchboard with messages of outrage that he should be identified and his possible guilt prejudged. Hunt stands his ground. It is the other media outlets, he says, who have presumed his guilt by hiding his face. 'Look, the man voluntarily approached the cameras,' he told the Bulletin. 'We didn't pursue him down an alleyway, point the cameras and say "He's your man." That would have been scurrilous . . . It was put to him several times that he'd be identified, and it was not an issue. If he had asked for his identity to be suppressed, we would have done it.'

  Lance Williams has failed a lie-detector test and Dave Caporn has promoted him from a 'person of interest' to prime suspect. And now all Perth knows it.

  40

  Police point out to me that since Williams has been under surveillance, there has not been another victim taken by the serial killer. 'This supports an undeniable inference,' Tony Potts says. 'Because he knows there has been such a high level of police scrutiny, his sense of self-preservation may have overridden any other desire or urge. The bottom line is that the circumstantial evidence gathered against him is so compelling that it would be virtually impossible for police to turn away and disregard him.'

  Asked by Gerald Tooth on the ABC's Background Briefing about how the results found their way into the media's hands, Dave Caporn is defensive, vehemently denying the police had deliberately leaked the results. 'It was certainly not in our interests, either for tactic or judicially sound, or ethically sound, for us to do that, and there was no win in it for us,' he said. 'I mean I think when you put the facts on the table, no one could legitimately make a case as to why we would do that . . .' To other media, Caporn was equally as adamant. Police have never released this person's name, he said. It is the media that have broadcast it and Williams who has played to them. It appears, one officer remarks, to be a case of the 'four Ps'. Police Playing Pontius Pilate. Washing their hands of any dirt.

  So the question remains: How, if police did not leak the information, did it find its way into the public domain? Why that one particular piece of information, when so much else has been kept secret? And why hasn't the leak been investigated?

  Gerald Tooth was told by the program's researcher, Sue Short, that police sources from outside the Macro task-force had led her to the lie-detector test scoop. 'When she approached Macro to confirm the details, she was not discouraged from broadcasting them,' he said. 'The story was engendering its own head of steam.' Tooth recalls that Caporn was supremely confident when he went in to do the interview for the story. 'He perceived that it would be beneficial for the police. But when the interview tack changed, when it was perhaps obvious that it wasn't all positive, so did his attitude. He became very defensive.'

  Luke Morfesse at The West Australian next picked up the story about Lance Williams failing the polygraph test. His source? The WA police. 'It may have suited the taskforce, or some people in it, that ABCTV had broadcast that the suspect had failed a lie-detector test,' he recalls. 'But I know we were contacted and told about the story, alerted that it could be in our interest to pursue it. We are the local newspaper with a big audience.'

  Tooth heard that Sue Short was unhappy with the story, but that no one understood why. I call her to ask about that and to confirm with her the details about how she came to the story in the first place. She is brisk in her response. 'I don't want to discuss it with you.'

  'Oh?' Her brusqueness has caught me off guard. 'Is there a reason for that, Sue?'

  'Yes, there is,' she replies. 'But I don't want to discuss that with you, either. Goodbye.' She hangs up immediately and I stare at the phone in my hand, speechless. Are Perth journalists, operating in a small city, too scared to speak out unless their police sources dry up? What is it about this Claremont story? Tooth, based in the ABC's Queensland office, is preparing to leave the broadcaster for a stint at another job when I call him again. Can he shed some light on why Sue Short may have been so, well . . . short?

  'Journalists too, now, eh?' Tooth says. 'It doesn't really surprise me. A lot of people are on edge about this whole case. Take the police. If you're even slightly challenging of anything police have done, you're on the outer. The trouble is, a lot of money has been spent and a lot of people have made a lot of proclamations, but there have been no results. And that's not good for business.'

  Williams is unequivocal about why he failed the test. 'I was asked a direct question, about whether I'd ever deliberately hurt someone, and I thought about my answer, about the fights I had with my brother when I was younger,' he tells me later when I contact him by phone. 'That went against me.'

  I think of another story, in which a prime murder suspect in another Australian murder case dismally failed a polygraph test. I wanted to run the results on a documentary television program and checked with the investigator at Major Cri
me. 'You can do what you like,' he advised me. 'But I would ask that you don't. If we get this case to trial, we don't need it falling over because the program has tainted the jurors' minds. The defence would have a field day with that.' I chose not to use it.

  But what about the Claremont case? With Williams's name in the public arena, what sort of fair trial would he receive in Perth if he was ever to be charged? According to civil libertarians and lawyers, not much of a one. 'Good luck finding a juror who was living in Perth during this time to forget all the publicity against this suspect,' Terry O'Gorman snorts. 'The whole thing is an outrage. Despite what you see on television, lie-detector tests are not infallible. It should be an offence for any media outlet anywhere to publicly identify someone unless and until they are charged. It's a cynical exercise in police planting information with compliant reporters who run their story.'

  Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock says he can't imagine a situation in which the results of a test – not admissible in court proceedings – could ever be justified. Stung by the criticism, Caporn sticks to his guns. Police have never released that result, he repeats. And police never would release that result. If the media put two and two together, he adds, they can't do anything about that. So the question remains inadequately answered. If police didn't release the test results, who did?

  Tony Potts insists that it was Williams, playing to the press, who brought the publicity on himself. 'Make no mistake,' he tells me. 'If we had found one piece of physical evidence linking him to the murders – a hair, the girls' jewellery, anything – he'd have been charged.' He is defiant. 'You may think the Claremont case is unsolved. In my opinion – and the opinion of many other people on that taskforce – it's not. We are simply lacking that one piece of evidence that would allow a charge to stack up in court. That one precious piece of evidence.'