Katherine was a great storyteller. Every time we had to write a description of something, she would write too and share hers with the class. As a teacher, I found this kind of modelling wonderful and tried to do this with my students.
My daughter was nearly five years old when the book came out. At some point during my writing of the Phillip Island book, she had grown old enough to pick up on things without me realising. One day, someone asked her what her mummy was writing about. To my horror she said something like: ‘Well, Vivienne killed Beth and jumped off a bridge.’
If there were hashtags back then, mine would have been #parentingfail. Note to self: stop talking about your book in front of your kid; she’s listening!
Another clash of worlds happened when the famous Aussie actor Norman Yemm came to school to talk to the kids. He mentioned being on the Bert Newton show and my kids – Grade 3s from memory – excitedly said, ‘Mrs Petraitis was on Bert Newton too!
Norman Yemm turned to me and said in his wonderfully expressive voice: ‘Fellow thespian?’
The kids gasped, thinking he’d just asked if their teacher was a lesbian.
As I grew more confident with my writing, I looked for a new project. Almost every cop I spoke to while researching the Phillip Island book, said the same thing: once this book is done, come back; we have plenty of stories.
I decided to do a compilation of short cases about the experiences of police officers. I contacted various departments of the Victoria Police and asked officers for their best story. It was a good tactic because their bar is pretty high. Stories that stood out to cops often had unusual elements that touched their hearts. And if it touched them, it would touch the reader.
I wrote a couple of stories and sent them to a publishing house called Victoria Press. They rang me the next day and said they were interested in the book – which eventually became Victims, Crimes and Investigators – so I kept writing.
And my eyes were opened to the world.
I learnt that some people didn’t play by the rules. I learnt that cars can be deadly weapons, and I learnt that a lot happens after most of us are safely tucked in our beds at night. Each new story taught me something about life and something about the craft of writing.
One thing led to another, just as stories linked in unexpected ways. The observant reader of my books might have noticed some of these connections. CIB detective Jack McFayden, who searched the Phillip Island bridge after Vivienne went missing, gave me a story for the second book. So did crime scene examiner Sergeant Brian Gamble, who worked the crime scene at Phillip Island.
Gamble had a case he worked on where a body was found in a shallow grave on the Rye back beach, cut into pieces and wrapped in neat packages. Unlike CSI on TV, crime scene examiners don’t do the investigation. So when he told me about the gruesome crime scene he encountered that cold day on the beach, I asked him for more details.
He shrugged. ‘You’ll have to talk to the detectives,’ he said.
And so I did.
4. The Rye Crossbow Murder
Walking his dogs along Rye’s back beach on a brisk afternoon on Tuesday 18 July 1989, a local man, John Miller, noticed a large package partly buried in a shallow hole near the beach car park. His dogs began sniffing and digging around the edges of the soft hole but Miller became concerned when he got close enough to smell the odour emanating from the bulky parcel. It smelt putrid, like something rotting.
Miller pulled his dogs away and returned home. But the more he thought about the package, its size and its smell, the more he wondered if it contained something sinister. He grew concerned enough to telephone the local police, offering to meet them in the car park and guide them to the find.
Rosebud police station logged Miller’s call at 5.35pm, and two police officers were dispatched to investigate the package. Miller stood waiting in the Rye back beach car park as the police officers arrived.
As soon as the first cop looked down into the shallow hole and saw the protruding tarpaulin, he smelt the odour of decomposition.
Within an hour, two Frankston CIB detectives, Senior Detective Colin Clarke and Detective Sergeant Ray Air arrived on the scene to be assaulted by the smell of the partly buried object. Clarke gently dug some of the sand away and revealed the entire top surface of a large bundle wrapped in a tarpaulin and secured with masking tape. The smell was becoming unbearable. Gently prising the bundle open, Clarke saw the remains of a decomposing human torso.
The CIB detectives set the investigating machine in motion. Homicide, forensics, photographics and coronial services were all notified and duly converged on the car park to perform their respective tasks.
Unwilling to let darkness hamper their work, police called upon the State Emergency Service to provide lighting for what had now become a crime scene.
Melbourne homicide detectives, Senior Constable Mark Newlan, Senior Sergeant Sal Perna and Senior Constable Nigel Howard, made their way to the Rye back beach, half an hour ahead of crime scene examiner Sergeant Brian Gamble.
Gamble worked at the Victoria Police State Forensic Laboratory, in the aptly named Forensic Drive in the outer Melbourne suburb of Macleod. Having worked a day shift, Gamble was on call at home when the job came through.
Gamble’s job was to collect any physical evidence that might help detectives solve their cases. He was required to make sketches of the crime scene, take detailed notes, prepare a written report, and examine the physical evidence – either personally, or by passing it on to the many experts who were employed or at the disposal of the Forensic Science Laboratory.
Gamble and his fellow officers – senior constables Gary Wheelan and Steve Batten, from the audio-visual section, and Chris Paulett from the photographic section – arrived at the crime scene around 10.30pm to begin a long night of work.
Paulett took photographs of the shallow grave site and the surrounding sand dunes while Wheelan and Batten videoed the scene before any further digging was attempted.
A little after midnight, the torso in its wrappings was transported by state-employed funeral directors to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Pathology mortuary.
Here, a post-mortem examination was performed by forensic pathologist Dr Shelley Robinson who had personally supervised the torso’s removal from its sandy grave.
At the mortuary Dr Robinson made meticulous notes concerning the appearance of the package and noted the presence of maggots within the inner plastic wrapping.
The torso – clearly male from the genitalia – was then laid on the metal slab and visually examined by Dr Robinson while the investigators looked on and Senior Constable Chris Paulet took photographs.
The missing head, arms and legs had been cleanly severed, and despite the dirt and dried blood, a puncture mark was visible in the chest.
When Paulett had finished photographing and Dr Robinson had completed her visual inspection, the torso was washed and prepared for the internal examination.
Robinson cut around the small puncture wound in the chest and pulled open the flesh which devoid of dirt and smeared blood, was a ghostly white colour.
Inside the wound, the doctor found a broken arrow.
The