Читать книгу Inside the Law - Vikki Petraitis - Страница 11

My second book Victims, Crimes and Investigators came out in early 1994. I wanted to call the book Cops because essentially it was about policing and the personal experience of cops. The publisher, however, wanted a title to match a picture they’d found for the cover. It was a woman walking nervously down a dark alleyway.

Even though I didn’t like the cover or the title, I wasn’t about to argue with my new publishing house. My first publisher had told me what was on the inside of the book was mine and what was on the outside – cover image, title, tagline – was marketing.

I had my first ever author photograph taken for the back cover. I also met Shirley Hardy-Rix who was to be my publicist for the book. I visited Shirley at her home. In the room where we chatted, she had a bookshelf that contained multiple copies of her own books. She said it was important to keep a handful of copies for yourself because books went out of print and disappeared. My own library had hundreds of true crime books from overseas and on Shirley’s advice, I added mine to the collection.

Shirley was a great publicist and got me a cover story on The Australasian Post.

A Post photographer and journalist came to my house. While the photographer was taking what would amount to nine rolls of film, my husband chatted away to the journalist. From my posing position, leaning at weird angles, I couldn’t signal to him that he wasn’t just ‘having a chat’ he was being interviewed. Sure enough, he was quoted in the article.

When the magazine came out, it was in every supermarket in multiple racks at the end of each checkout counter. Shopping with my seven-year-old daughter was embarrassing.

‘There you are, Mummy!’ she’d say loudly every time she saw a copy of The Post. ‘There you are again! It’s Mummy!’

Being on the cover of a magazine so widely available seemed to drive home to people close to me that writing wasn’t just a quirky hobby that I worked around my real job. It was something important, something worthy of recognition. Something people around the country were interested in.

This realisation was a little jarring for me too. I hadn’t been writing for fame. I had become a writer because there were stories I wanted to tell; worthy stories, important stories.

Such public exposure meant it was a little harder to keep my writing and teaching life separate. In the days before true-crime stories were popular in Australia, I could understand that a parent might not necessarily want their child taught by someone who spent their leisure hours writing true crime stories. I worked at a primary school – a land far, far away from the writing I did.

The world of public opinion was also something I had to learn to navigate. I had to learn to cope with comments about my books, or their subject matter, not all positive, from people I knew. One person made a point of saying to me, ‘Oh I would never read that kind of book.’ Never lost for words, I replied, ‘Lucky for me and my book sales, thousands of people do read that kind of book.’

In an episode of Dr Phil, he performs an intervention on a woman and she calls him a quack. Dr Phil replies with words to the effect: ‘Aren’t I lucky that no part of my self-esteem is dependent on your opinion of me.’ I loved this – he was saying exactly how I felt. A writer’s self-worth has to come from within, not from how others see you or review your work.

Writers have to be self-motivated and self-driven and if lots of people love our books, we pretty much have to ignore those who don’t. You can’t please everyone. I’m reminded of this every time I go to Book Club. We are all reading the same book, yet reactions can run from ‘best book ever’ to ‘I hated it’. The book didn’t change; it is what it is. The variable is the heart and mind of each reader. And that is something the writer can’t control.

In the autumn of 1993, while I was working on my second book, and doing ride-alongs with the Frankston police to get some life-on-the-beat cop stories, a serial killer began murdering young women in the area.

In my neighbourhood.

Newspaper headlines screamed Corridor of Death! and Serial Killer! and put the fear of God into everyone.

It’s one thing to have an abiding interest in real crime, but quite another to have a serial killer operating in your own local streets.

For seven weeks from the first murder to the last, like other women in the area, I was very aware of the danger he posed. I had read every true crime book I could lay my hands on and, for a while, I thought the knowledge I’d gleaned gave me an advantage. There were reports of the wide-spread buying of guard dogs and security doors, but I’d read enough to suspect the so-called Frankston serial killer would not break into people’s homes, because his victims had been snatched off the street. I figured that if I moved through my suburb only in well-lit spaces and didn’t walk alone at night, I should be fine.

It turned out I was wrong on all counts because this killer had broken into someone’s home, and he did attack in broad daylight. But I didn’t know that then.

Living in Seaford during the seven-week killing spree, made me look at the world through a new lens – one of suspicion. I bet I wasn’t the only woman waiting for my order in the fish and chip shop, casting suspicious glances at any man waiting near me. And I bet I wasn’t alone in checking out strangers in the video shop, or the newsagent, or the supermarket, wondering: Could it be him? Or him? Is it you?

In the middle of this seven-week killing spree I spent a shift with a police officer called Wendy O’Shea who worked in the Frankston Community Policing Squad. It was the evening after the second victim, Debbie Fream, went missing. Her disappearance was the talk of the squad but no connection had yet been made between this missing woman and the murder of Elizabeth Stevens in Langwarrin a month earlier. There was no reason to think the cases were linked.

In fact, when Debbie vanished after leaving her newborn baby with a friend to pop up to the shops to get milk, the only answer that made sense to the police I spoke to was that she must have been suffering from post-natal depression and decided to leave for a couple of days.

What else could it be?

Even so, that evening after she disappeared, when I arrived at the community policing squad for my ride-along. it was clear some officers were worried. Debbie’s car had been found not far from where she was last seen, with the driver’s seat pushed all the way back. Debbie was short, so the obvious conclusion was that someone else had driven the car.

I listened as the police officers around me discussed more sinister possibilities about what could have happened to the young mother.

When Debbie was found murdered four days later, the discussion at the community policing squad was fresh in my mind. The world seemed a much nicer place when Debbie might have just left to have a few days by herself.

But that night with Wendy O’Shea, after discussing Debbie’s disappearance for a while, we moved on to a case of child sexual abuse that she had investigated. Wendy’s case was about a girl called Gemma who was abused by her stepfather. The abuse began on Gemma’s fifth birthday. I didn’t know it then but writing about child sexual abuse for the first time with Wendy would point me in a direction I follow to this day. Wendy’s Gemma has also played a role in fiction I’ve created which means her story got under my skin too.

There was one part of Wendy’s story I’ll never forget. When Gemma was asked in court if she still loved her stepfather after years of abuse, the girl held up her thumb and pointer finger and created a small space between them.

‘This much,’ she said. ‘I still love him this much.’

This comment illustrated profoundly the complexities of child sexual abuse.

By coincidence, I did another ride-along, with a uniform sergeant called Mick – who was also my next-door neighbour – on the night the third of the serial killer’s victims was found.

Despite an intense police presence patrolling the bayside suburbs, Year 12 student Natalie Russell had disappeared that day on the way home from school.

By the time I arrived with Mick to observe his night shift, there was a pall of disbelief over the Frankston police station.

One of the cops standing outside having a smoke, said what they were all thinking: ‘Right under our noses.’ There was a huge police presence and the killer had sailed through the net and taken a school girl. They had all done everything they could, but it wasn’t enough.

Mick and I went inside just as a cop came downstairs and said, ‘They’ve found her and she’s dead.’

I was struck by the lack of emotion in his voice. But I felt it too; it was like all the air had been sucked out of the place.

Mick and his partner were sent to the scene. Since I had permission to do the ride-along, he bustled me into the back of the police car and told me to keep in the shadows. The ride there was eerie. No lights and sirens. And a radio silence of sorts. All messages were cryptic. They didn’t want to alert the media who used police scanners.

So there I was on a cold winter’s night, sitting in the back of a police car in the carpark of the Monterey Secondary College looking at the track along which Natalie Russell had met her death. Mick and his partner left me there while they went off to join the other cops guarding the scene and keeping everyone away.

I didn’t know anything about Natalie in that moment except her name.

But I would come to learn so much about her.

Alone with my thoughts for a couple of hours, I was filled with a deep sadness for the teenager who lay beyond the trees; and for her family who had lost her.

Until that night, the police stories I’d written had always been from a distance. The cases, the investigations were always done and dusted by the time I got to them.

But this one was unfolding right in front of me. Just metres away. I was flooded with a nervous energy that sat alongside the disbelief that I was actually there, at the scene.

There were police everywhere: silent and searching and patrolling. The police helicopter hovered in the sky, shining its powerful Nitesun down on the horror below. Rain fell gently through its beam.

When Mick finally returned to the car, he told me to throw away my notes. Nothing could be written about this until after they caught the serial killer.

Of course, I wouldn’t throw my notes away, because I wasn’t a journalist. If I did write about it, it would not be for the media. I’d wait until it was all over and then write the story properly.

But a book about a serial killer would challenge me in ways I had not yet experienced. This was not a story that could be written from a distance, or just through the eyes of the police. I would have to approach the families and intrude on their grief. I felt sick at the thought, but I could already feel this case calling to me. I would have to talk to everyone I could find: the family of the killer when he was caught, police, SES, forensics, witnesses. The list was long.

I’d interviewed cops and people in law enforcement before, but was I up to the challenge? And if I could approach all these people, would they want to talk to me? Was my writing up to scratch? Could I do the story justice?

The long solitary wait in the dark that night, convinced me there was no one better to do it than me. I was already a true crime writer. I was local, I was on the spot, I cared about the community, and the fear of this murderer had touched me too.

The police had acknowledged they were now hunting a serial killer. It’s easy to fall for The Silence of the Lambs version of the serial killer – the genius psychopath taunting the police with his clues and signatures; a vicious killer who can disappear into the dark and escape detection. And that’s what it felt like sitting in that police car, thinking about the unknown murderer – that silent figure, still out there, moving through Frankston, dodging police and killing women.

I wondered just how clever he was. I worried he’d never be caught.

It turned out he wouldn’t be unknown for long.

Paul Charles Denyer was caught the very next day.

And he was no criminal mastermind.

I began writing the book properly after Denyer had been found guilty. In the meantime, I had collected newspaper articles and attended community meetings. At one of these, I saw Carmel and Brian Russell from a distance and felt anxious in the pit of my stomach. I knew I would have to approach them and ask for their story.

In the days before the internet swamped the world, I chose writing a letter as a way to contact all the families. The phone book provided addresses. I sent letters to everyone connected to the victims and to Denyer’s family.

I got responses from everyone. Some chose to talk; others chose not to.

All up, I interviewed over 50 people for the book. They were relatives, cops, forensic people, witnesses, and people affected by what had occurred in Frankston in 1993.

This kind of work is not something you can let go of easily at the close of the day. Friendships form despite the circumstances. In hindsight, I had no professional distance at all. I had no training in writing or interviewing or keeping a distance. I was highly empathetic and wrote from the heart. Also in hindsight, that meant I constructed no protective barriers around myself. It didn’t seem to matter at the time.

Natalie Russell’s aunt, Bernadette Naughton, became the public spokesperson for the Russell family. She and I also became close friends. Melissa Denyer, Paul’s sister-in-law, and I spent a lot of time together. And when Melissa wanted to meet Bernadette so she could apologise to the Russell family, on behalf of her family for what Paul had done, I was able to make that happen.

The two met around the time the film Dead Man Walking came out. We decided to go and see it together. I will never forget sitting in between Bernadette and Mel, one weeping in scenes where the victims’ families were featured, and the other weeping when scenes showed the killer’s family suffering.

It was all unchartered waters for me. I mean how many people do you know who have been to a film about capital punishment with the sister-in-law of a serial killer and the aunt of his victim? Nonetheless, these kinds of things felt like the right thing to do.

While I had been reluctant to intrude on the grief of those left behind, I came to understand that the simple act of giving them a place to tell their stories brings comfort. Airing sadness or anger or regret to someone prepared to listen can be cathartic. It helps relatives, friends and survivors process what has happened. The empathetic writer is not an intrusion at all.

One thing I’ve always done is show the story to the person I interviewed – before it went into the book. This gives them the opportunity to see that their story has been accurately told, and they can add or take away anything they want. This means no surprises in the end. People are always very grateful for that.

In the telling of these stories, it allayed my fear that in the years to come, the victims would become mere additions after the mention of their killer. We see it all the time: Serial killer Paul Denyer murdered Elizabeth Stevens, 18, Debbie Fream, 22, and Natalie Russell, 17.

I wanted my book to show who they were, so that for the reader, Natalie, 17, became a girl who wanted to be a journalist and who loved making funny videos with her friends. And Elizabeth, 18, became the beloved niece who used to throw a ball down her home’s long hallway and send the family dog skidding after it. And of course, Debbie, 22, was baby Jake’s mum, lost when he was 12 days old. The girls had to come alive again in the pages of my book so that the focus was on their lives not just the hours of their death.

I felt honoured to hear these stories of grief and life. I’ll never forget what Natalie’s mum Carmel said to me.

‘It sounds silly,’ she said, ‘but one of the hardest things was to remember to only set three places at the dinner table instead of four.’

‘It doesn’t sound silly at all,’ I said in a quiet voice. ‘Not at all.’ And I realised this was what grief was: a big loss that fills the world, a daughter’s empty bedroom, and only three places at the table.

If I could do this right, I thought, the reader would truly know what Denyer took.