The Devil's Garden Read online

  Rainstorms are deluging Perth, rivers of rain that drench the city and the bush. Ciara Glennon has now been missing for 36 hours. Jenny and Trevor Rimmer try not to articulate what they are thinking as the rain pounds on their roof, demanding attention. Across the river, Don Spiers stands bleakly at his kitchen window watching crystals of water slide down the pane as the night closes in. This rain. It is an omen. A terrible, desolate omen.

  Neil Fearis is questioned by police for seven hours immediately following Ciara's disappearance. He had organised the drinks at the hotel, he was one of the last people to see Ciara, he had caught up with her months earlier in London. Fearis understands. They are just doing their job. A young detective-constable quizzes him in detail about his movements from early Friday evening to Saturday lunchtime, when concern was first raised about Ciara's whereabouts. They also speak to his wife, Jasmin, to corroborate details: what time he got home from the hotel, what time he got up the next morning. The minutiae of policing. Fearis remembers the small moments in that ghastly time. The detective-constable is highly amused that Fearis corrects his spelling and grammar on the transcript of interview provided to him for checking. Obviously, he muses later, he has never interviewed a lawyer before.

  Police are courteous, solicitous in their dealings with him, thank him for coming to the station as they walk him to the door.

  Neil Fearis is under fire in the weeks following Ciara's disappearance. Perth's talkback radio airways are jammed with scuttlebutt about the nature of his relationship with Ciara. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion. The relationship must have been improper. Fearis shakes his head. He knows it wasn't, and this can only serve to upset Ciara's family further. The calls continue. He was a senior partner and she was a young woman. He should have seen that she got home safely. What can he say? He knows this is true. He should have seen that she got home safely. But what they don't know is that, as it transpires, Ciara had left the hotel five minutes before he did. But it is what he calls the 'extreme lunatic fringe' who upset him most. The rabid, strident rednecks with their rabid, strident opinions. If that girl has been murdered, I reckon he did it. He must have. Thank God, Fearis thinks, that the Glennons don't subscribe to that view.

  The city has descended into the twilight world of outright panic and bedlam. The shockwaves are felt throughout Perth, permeating the press, taxi service, politicians and police. Dave Caporn, charged with the unenviable task of keeping Macro staff on track and placating the powers that be, is in the office as dawn rises over the city and leaves after 10 each night. Stricken with grief, Denis Glennon demands that his family not be given a junior liaison officer to work with them. Caporn, too, gets that role.

  The West Australian prints 5000 Help Find Ciara posters as a grim Paul Ferguson plays his hand. 'This is an appeal to the mothers and fathers of the young people who might have been in the area at the time. We don't want to see any other person or family go through the heartache that these families have gone through.' The appeal works, perhaps too well. Within weeks of Ciara's disappearance, 35,000 people phone police with information. Most of it is useless and none leads to an arrest. Ten teams comprising six investigators are on the floor, each with its own persons of interest. In the first weeks following Ciara's disappearance, there are up to 50 Persons of Interest that they can't eliminate. They need a breakthrough.

  While women avoid partying in Claremont, they are only too aware that this killer could be anywhere. Throughout the city, in pubs and clubs, signs warning young women to be careful are placed in toilets and bars. 'Don't walk alone to your car. Don't trust strangers. Don't take risks.' Perth has reverted to the horrific, dark days when serial killer Eric Cooke indiscriminately ran amok in suburbs near Claremont, killing its beautiful young women. And as with Eric Cooke, they don't know when this one will turn up again.

  20

  When scrawny, two-bit criminal Eric Edgar Cooke started his murderous rampage in Perth's wealthy inner-western suburbs on Australia Day weekend, 1963 – ironically, the same weekend Sarah Spiers disappeared – he targeted complete strangers. Cooke's killing spree changed the heartbeat of the city: once coddled in innocence and with a low crime rate, its carefree air changed virtually overnight to one of unimaginable terror. Cooke's modus operandi changed at whim, his eight victims variously stabbed, shot, strangled, or run over – changes that police later asked the public to believe had attributed to the ill-informed judgements they made about the identity of the killer.

  Finally caught, Cooke – who had a cleft palate and was bullied as a child – confessed to all the crimes he had committed: 8 murders and 14 attempted murders. All but two of the 22 confessions were accepted.

  As Western Australians prepared for Christmas in 1959, beautiful 21-year-old Jillian Brewster, socialite and grand-daughter of millionaire chocolate manufacturer Sir MacPherson Robertson, was slaughtered in her bed. Brewster was butchered with an axe and scissors, sustaining shocking wounds to her upper body, breasts and genital area. The scene of her murder – her Cottesloe flat near Claremont on the Stirling Highway – would resonate years later as the same vicinity from where the Claremont women went missing. As the city's residents recoiled from the details of the senseless death, the cry went out for someone to be charged. Despite his confession to Brewster's murder, that someone was not Eric Cooke. Neither did authorities accept his confession for the hit-and-run murder of 17-year-old Rosemary Anderson. Cooke, they said, was an inveterate liar seeking glory for a crime he didn't commit. Cooke's confession, clothed in stark language, was ignored. 'I, Eric Edgar Cooke, now of Fremantle Prison, say on 10 February 1963, between 9:00 pm and 10.00 pm, I stole a Holden sedan car...I drove the car straight at her [Anderson]. At the time I struck her, I was doing about 40 miles per hour... She was scooped up onto the hood for a couple of seconds and then thrown over the bonnet.' As authorities did not believe Cooke's confession for these two murders, someone would have to take the fall.

  True to form for serial killers, Cooke had also led up to his murderous spree with hundreds of smaller offences, including peeping through women's windows at night, burglary and theft. Seven women who lived in similar areas were attacked in identical ways; five survived, two did not. After breaking into their flats and stealing the door key, Cooke later returned, watched them while they slept and then made his move. In the Brewster and Anderson murders alone, Cooke's modus operandi was identical to 14 other crimes he had committed. He was finally caught when police found the gun he used for his last murder. They waited until he returned for it and arrested him.

  Faced with the police not accepting his first confession, Cooke retracted it, but stood steadfastly by his second. As Peter Ryan, former editor of Melbourne University Press who published The Beamish Case, wrote of Cooke's hanging, 'His second confession was made at the very step onto the gallows, and was sworn on the Bible in the presence of a clergyman. No matter; he was turned off, and carried his confession with him into the drop.' Cooke, the last man hanged in Western Australia, was buried at the Fremantle prison cemetery on top of child killer Martha Rendell. But if Cooke had gone, his legacy lingered. It would return to haunt authorities years later in ways they could never imagine.

  21

  The Macro taskforce officers do a quick mental check. Sarah abducted in summer, Jane in winter, Ciara in autumn. Is there some pattern in this? All disappeared on long weekend holidays. Sarah on Australia Day; Jane, the Queen's birthday (not celebrated in WA) and Ciara, Canberra Day in the ACT. There is five months between Sarah and Jane. Nine months between Jane and Ciara. Nine between Jane and Ciara.Why has the killer's cooling-off period become longer, instead of shorter as is their usual pattern? Has the police heat kept him lying low? Or has he, God forbid, acted somewhere else in the meantime, moving back to Claremont out of a desperate, uncontrollable urge to return?

  The Commissioner, too, is highly visible. A hush descends on the normally rowdy crowd at a night football game at Subiaco Oval, near Claremont, when
Bob Falconer makes an unscheduled, emotional address for them to help police solve the Claremont mystery. He also makes a plea through the press. Alarmed at the 'panic, paranoia, fear and mistrust' that have gripped the city, he urges the community 'not to self-destruct'.

  The taskforce implements a location register to identify persons who were present in the Claremont area on the night Ciara went missing. Through extensive media coverage, potential witnesses are asked to register if they had been in Claremont, the time they were there, their movements within the area, their observations and a description of themselves with the clothing they had worn on the night. While it allows the taskforce to build a picture of Claremont on that night, it also eliminates suspects from witness accounts by referencing the register. 'If, for example, a witness had contacted the taskforce and advised they were at a particular location at a set time and were wearing a red dress,' Tony Potts says, 'and another witness had already mentioned they had seen a woman in a red dress, we could then cross-reference that information to identify and eliminate persons from the inquiry.'

  Within days of Ciara's disappearance, a new fundraising arm takes shape: the Secure Community Foundation (SCF). Denis Glennon has clout – serious clout. If he rings the police commissioner, Falconer takes Glennon's call. And if he wants to start a fundraiser, the heavyweights will come on board. They need no persuasion. Terry O'Connor QC, Chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission and a close personal friend of Denis Glennon. Julie Bishop, who will later become a Federal MP. Michael Chaney, Wesfarmers boss. Top number-cruncher Peter Middleton and Neil Fearis. 'The Secure Community Foundation,' Fearis admits, 'was unashamedly pitched at the big end of town. This was no rattling of tins on street corners.' But it cauterised opinion as nothing else to date had done.

  Denis Glennon's company, Environmental Solutions International, chipped in $50,000; law firm Blake Dawson Waldron, where Ciara worked, another $100,000. Big names in the Perth business community provided the rest. 'We went straight to those people with power, connections and money,' Fearis says. 'It was a corporate fundraiser, targeting captains of industry and all those who sport Armani suits in St George's Terrace. Our plea was simple. "Get on the phone to 20 of your wealthy mates and send us a cheque." But despite that, total strangers also walked in off the street, offering money to help. It was very humbling.'

  It was also urgent. Behind the phone calls was the raw desperation that if they hurry and bolster police resources they might, just might, get to Ciara, alive. And every day, Fearis wades through the flowers and cards from well-wishers left in the foyer of his law firm. Ciara Glennon's disappearance has galvanised the city, linking the rich with the poor.

  Police media liaison has the task of convincing the media that the foundation has not been set up to supplement a lack of police funds. The structure of the foundation is clear. From the start, police fund any required outlays and the money is then reimbursed. The structure is designed for transparency, to sidestep any possible allegation from the public that the powerful private figures on the board have any undue or improper influence on the police investigation. But for all their intentions, the transparency does not work.

  Within a few weeks the initial fundraiser has secured $600,000 – money that pours out as quickly as it pours in. Not one of the eight proposals put before the SCF committee was rejected. An upmarket media campaign, including commercials with the theme, 'You may have a suspicion. Act on it now,' appeals for information from the public. Ten thousand responses flow in. Perth's Forensic Laboratory, the Path-Centre, which handles DNA profiling, was equipped with a quarter of a million dollars worth of genetic analysing equipment. Now used at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, the state government – the taxpayer – also put in a substantial amount toward the machine. This would become a bone of contention in scientific circles: a decade on, the centre has still not used the equipment for the Macro investigation.

  The SCF and Macro officers also looked overseas for innovative, sophisticated means to investigate the case. The use of lie detectors – not admissible in any Australian court – was one avenue. The foundation would fund several trips to Perth for international experts, including polygraph operator, Ron Homer – twice – and criminal psychiatrists. The tactics used didn't always appear credible. The average punter on the street looked at the international maestros waving their credentials at Perth airport and the whiz-bang technology and asked: all well and good, but where are the results?

  Within weeks, the foundation funds a haunting re-enactment of Ciara's last movements as she breezes around the Conti-nental catching up with friends before moving outside. Her friends, including Neil Fearis, agree to play their own roles in the re-enactment. An eerie silence hangs over the actors in between takes, but some revellers at the pub, fuelled by booze and bad manners, start heckling. They stop abruptly when a furious and distraught Fearis warns them to shut up.

  Critics of the foundation start baying early. Civil libertarian and defence lawyer Terry O'Gorman slams the use of private money as funding 'Mickey Mouse' techniques, such as the lie detector, that would never stand up to serious legal scrutiny. Worse, he says, it blurs the lines between what is kept secret in the investigation and what is told to those who are injecting the money. The premise of a fair trial must balance on police investigations independent of private funding.

  Paul Ferguson is also initially critical. 'Ciara's murder changed the axis of the investigation,' he recalls. 'Prior to this it had been community based. But Denis Glennon – himself a victim – had barbecues at Premier Richard Court's house and the political connection was undeniable. Suddenly, there was another arm of the investigation that we had to deal with, like a hungry octopus. I raised objections but it achieved nothing. Falconer left us to do our job, but the reality was, it was his way or no way when it came to dealing with people in power. And Falconer was incredibly media savvy.'

  But Dave Caporn doesn't flinch through the onslaught. The use of private funds, he says, is welcomed. Whatever it takes. Denis Glennon is unsurprisingly defensive of the money being used to help bolster Macro's coffers. He doesn't agree that any of the techniques are controversial. It is, he says, a cooperative approach to tackling the investigation, a means of involving the community in the fight. It is his daughter out there, missing.

  Whatever it takes.

  22

  Nine days after Ciara vanishes, an editorial in The West Australian encapsulates the public fears.

  ...It is the predatory nature of the disappearance that shakes the foundations of the community. The thought that there is someone out there who is biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike. Someone who possibly is not what he appears...three women have disappeared but police do not appear soon to be any closer to solving the mystery. Everyone has a theory – but theories are not hard to find in Perth at the moment. The only certainty is that we are uncertain, the only established fact is that we don't know – or to be more precise, most of us don't know. The nightmare can't continue.

  The clairvoyants circle again with wild, fanciful ideas. Denis Glennon – tough, grief-stricken – does not suffer fools, but they come at him from all angles, sorrow attracting them like moths to a flame. He dispatches them, curtly and quickly. Unless they have real information, they are of no value to him.

  They are not all clairvoyants and soothsayers. Neil Fearis receives a visit from Perth GP Dr Andrew Dunn. He has information to pass on, he says, that has been given to him by a female patient whom he does not name. He has gone to the police with the information, he tells Fearis, but they have not taken him seriously. This patient has told him that Ciara is being held captive in a house where black magic rituals will take place to appease the gods at the autumnal equinox. Come the Easter long weekend, she will be offered up as a human sacrifice, like the sacrificial lamb. Fearis, too, passes the information to the Macro taskforce. 'We were all so desperate to get Ciara back,' he recalls. 'But they didn't take the information at all seriousl
y, so unbeknown to Denis Glennon, whom we knew did not need this extra stress, we hired private detective Mick Buckley to keep watch on the house in the hills for three days.'

  After leaving the police force, Buckley became a private investigator in 1983. 'I got a phone call around 6 pm on Easter Thursday,' he recalls, 'asking me to start surveillance on this female patient. The information was that Ciara Glennon's murder would take place at The Spot in Yanchep. I rotated with two private investigators, tailing the woman when she came out of her house.' Keeping around-the-clock surveillance, Buckley reports back. There is no sign of anything odd, he says. Nothing at all.

  'Who knows why this information was passed on in the first place?' Fearis shrugs, weariness showing in his voice. 'Maybe the woman was simply a crackpot, maybe someone wanted to insert themselves into the investigation for their own reasons. Who knows?'

  Another female caller rings to advise that her husband has information about the Claremont offender that he wants to pass on. Fearis requests that the man call him when he has finished work. 'Oh, he doesn't work,' the woman says. 'He hasn't worked in years.'

  'Well, in that case,' Fearis adds politely, 'could you ask him to call me now, please?'

  'He can't do that, neither. He's at Casuarina.' Accustomed to moving in select social circles, Fearis doesn't understand what she means. 'Casuarina,' she repeats in an exasperated tone. 'Casuarina Prison.'