Gamble and Peters were told that a local woman, Vivienne Cameron had attacked her husband at their farmhouse in Ventnor over an affair with the dead woman, and had then vanished. This meant two things – there could be a possible offender to link to the scene, and also, there was a second scene they would have to examine – the Camerons’ farmhouse where the wine glass attack had taken place.
Crime scene examination was painstaking work and while it was being carried out, the body had to remain in situ – exactly where it was found. No matter who she was in life, in death, Beth Barnard had essentially become a piece of evidence to be photographed, examined, and swabbed.
Beth’s body was the starting point. She was photographed from different angles while Gamble made sketches of her bedroom and noted the position of the beds and furniture in relation to her body. Once that was done, the doona was removed and bagged as evidence. Next to the body, lay a bloodied wooden-handled knife which could be the murder weapon.
Beth was clothed in a pink nightie which was pulled up to expose her chest and the hideous letter A. There were only a few patches of the pink nightie that hadn’t turned dark-red with blood. Interestingly, one of the parts of the nightie that wasn’t stained was directly underneath the right side of the letter A. This suggested that the carving may have been a post-mortem addition, made after her heart was no longer pumping blood.
Beth still had her underpants on which suggested the attack did not include rape.
Gamble was interested in the circular smears of dried blood on Beth’s legs. Did the killer rub their hands over the body as she bled? Another interesting fact was the damage to Beth’s face. She had been stabbed in the chin, and her upper lip. One of her front teeth had been knocked out in the attack; Gamble found it on the carpet next to the body. While this kind of damage might have been part of a frenzied attack, there was a possibility it could have been a deliberate effort to disfigure the pretty young victim.
Gamble collected anything he considered evidence to be bagged and tagged and logged for examination at the Forensic Science Laboratory. After many hours of meticulous examination, he would collect over 70 items.
To those who are trained to see it, every crime scene tells the story of what happened. Even though Beth’s body was found on the floor, it appeared that the initial assault had taken place in her bed. Blood stained the sheets, and there was a bloodied handprint on the wall next to the bed. It looked like Beth either got out of bed or was dragged out, and the attack continued on the floor. Gamble could tell that it wasn’t a prolonged or particularly physical struggle because small ornaments on the nearby chest of drawers were still standing, and little else in the bedroom had been disturbed. Even the small lamp next to Beth’s bed was still upright.
Beth died defending herself. Her body bore perhaps the most heart-breaking of injuries. Stab wounds to her elbows and forearms showed she had held her arms in front of her in a futile attempt to ward off the knife, and a particularly nasty slice in the webbing of her right thumb suggested she had tried to grab the knife to stop it.
After he’d finished processing the bedroom, Gamble continued his work in the rest of the house. It looked like the doona that covered the body had been taken from another bedroom, not Beth’s. Little else was disturbed, but the bathroom showed evidence that the killer had washed up in the basin, leaving traces of blood around the taps. There were also cigarette butts in an ashtray. Did they belong to the killer?
There was no sign that the killer had been anywhere else in the house. All the doors except the back door were locked, and dust around the secured windows eliminated them as possible points of entry. It seemed that the killer had entered through the back door and gone straight into Beth’s bedroom. Unless the killer had already been inside the house. And perhaps in Beth’s bedroom. Most homicide victims are killed by people they know. Had she been entertaining someone in her bedroom? All of these questions would need to be considered later by the Homicide detectives.
Outside the back door, a concrete path led from the house to the yard. There were two tiny drops of blood on the concrete. Brian Gamble took scrapings of these and labelled them for analysis.
Meanwhile the fingerprint expert dusted the crime scene, as well as the knife found near the body. They found no distinguishable prints. The team would work well into the night. An eerie quiet settled over the scene as darkness fell on the lonely farmhouse.
While Gamble and Peters examined the crime scene, the Homicide detectives began canvassing the neighbours. Beth’s closest neighbour remembered seeing a car drive up McFees Road the previous evening at 7.50pm which turned into Beth’s driveway and had sat for several minutes with its headlights on. Another woman further up the road, recalled hearing a car come up past her place at 3.30am. She said that the car had sounded like her son’s Toyota tray truck.
Detectives O’Connor and Hunter considered that piece of information. If Vivienne Cameron had called a babysitter in the middle of the night, could it have been her Toyota Land Cruiser that the neighbour heard?
At the Cowes police station, Detective Jack McFayden took a statement from Donald Cameron. He wrote while Don spoke.
‘At approximately 7.45 this morning, I received a phone call from Mrs Robyn Dixon, who is a close family friend. She was concerned because she hadn’t heard from Fergus and Viv, and she couldn’t get them on the phone. She said she had the children with her. As she had to go to work, she said she’d put the school-aged child on the bus with her two boys, and I told her not to worry, I would come to pick up the other child.’
He collected the younger boy, Hugh, then drove past Fergus’ house and noticed Vivienne’s Holden sedan was still in the driveway. ‘I got home and my wife Pam rang my sister Marnie, and Fergus answered the phone. He seemed really distressed and didn’t want to talk to us, so he handed the phone to Marnie’s husband, Ian. Ian diplomatically told Pam that something had happened and he would talk to us later. Pam insisted that we know what had happened because we had their child with us.
‘Fergus then got back on the phone and told Pam that there had been a row the night before and he had been injured and had to be treated at the hospital. We gathered that the row had been of a domestic nature and it had involved Beth Barnard. But other than that, Fergus was pretty uncommunicative.’
Don explained that Ian had telephoned a short time later and told him that Fergus’ Land Cruiser was missing. Fergus had asked Ian and Don to drive to Beth’s house to tell her what had happened. Don said that he had driven to Ian’s house to pick up his brother-in-law. The two had then driven to Fergus’ house, walked around it and called out to Vivienne but she was nowhere to be found.
Then they drove to Beth’s house.
Don described what happened next. ‘We drove up the driveway and saw Beth’s farm ute and her own car parked in their usual spots. I walked to the back door and knocked but there was no answer. The porch light was on and I saw that the door was open about six inches. I called out but there was no answer.
‘I took a step inside and saw the door to my left. Just beyond the door, I saw Beth lying there on the floor covered with a quilt. Her face was almost covered but I recognised her and she appeared to be dead.
‘I yelled out to Ian: “Come here quick, the worst has happened.” We immediately left to report what we’d found at the Cowes police station. That’s really all I can tell you.’
Don Cameron signed his statement at 12.50pm.
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