Читать книгу The Frankston Murders - Vikki Petraitis - Страница 6

In late February 1993, a young man called Paul began working at a Seaford boat-building firm, Pro Marine, doing general clean up duties as part of a government employment scheme. Being a big man, over six feet tall and around sixteen stone, Paul quickly earned the nickname ‘John Candy’ after the overweight Canadian actor.

Paul had worked at Pro Marine for only a couple of weeks before his co-worker, Jason, noticed something odd about him. One morning, he walked into the store room and saw Paul standing in the corner near the paint shelves. His back was towards Jason, but the young man could see that Paul was fiddling with something. When he turned around, Jason quickly went to another shelf and pretended to look for something. Without a word, Paul abruptly walked out of the store room.

Wondering what he’d been doing, Jason went over to where Paul had been standing. Pushing aside a couple of large tins, he found a dagger-shaped piece of metal around twenty centimetres long and half a centimetre wide. It looked like it had been cut out of scrap aluminium with one of the band saws. He took the knife out into the factory and showed it to another workmate, Peter.

‘Look what I’ve found that John Candy has been trying to hide in the store,’ he said, not quite knowing what to make of the knife.

Between them, they decided it would be best to cut the aluminium into smaller pieces and throw it out.

A few weeks later, Peter also saw something peculiar. Paul borrowed a heat gun from one of the electricians and disappeared with it into the store room. Minutes later Peter entered and saw Paul bending over with his foot up on a cable roll, torching the end of his running shoe. As Peter was trying to figure out what on earth Paul was doing, the manager walked in and asked what was going on. Paul explained that his runners were too small and he was trying to stretch them. The manager told him to do it in his own time.

After a couple of months at Pro Marine, it was clear that Paul could not be relied upon to carry out even the simplest task and his boss decided not to continue his employment past the three-month trial period.

While Paul was unpopular with other workers, and he certainly did some strange things, nobody thought to connect him with the holes cut in the cyclone wire fence bordering Pro Marine, nor was his name mentioned in connection with the slaughter one night of two goats in a nearby paddock.