Читать книгу Inside the Law - Vikki Petraitis - Страница 6

Beth Barnard, holidaying in the Maldives in 1985, a year before her murder.

There are a number of accounts of what happened on Phillip Island on the night of Monday 22 September 1986 – some were later believed by detectives, some were not. But suffice to say, by the Tuesday morning, when a woman’s mutilated body was discovered in a farmhouse on the Island, events were set in motion that would shatter several local families forever, and send ripples through the peaceful community.

Sergeant Cliff Ashe had just returned from leave and was working a morning shift at the Cowes police station on Tuesday 23 September. Two well-known locals, brothers-in-law Ian Cairns and Donald Cameron opened the creaking wire door and came over to the counter. Don Cameron had been on the shire council for some years. His family were respected in the small community. Ashe was busy with paperwork, and listened as the two men spoke of some family difficulties.

‘There’s been a domestic argument,’ said Don Cameron, before beginning a long rambling explanation. Ashe reckoned it took Don about 10 minutes talking about family fights and family conferences before the police officer interrupted him.

‘Donald, exactly what are you trying to tell me?’

‘Um, it’s Beth,’ Don said, leaning over the counter and looking at Ashe. ‘I think she’s not well.’

It was a strange way of putting it.

Beth’s lifeless body lay on the floor of her bedroom in her family’s house in McFees Road, Rhyll. Don finally said as much to the police officer. ‘We were just at her place and she was lying on the floor with blood everywhere.’

Galvanised into action, Sergeant Ashe called detectives at the Wonthaggi Criminal Investigation Branch and told them to meet him at the McFees Road house. Ashe and one of his juniors from the station, Senior Constable Peter McHenry, drove behind Don Cameron and Ian Cairns to the house down the lonely country road where homes were secluded and set apart from each other.

A crime scene needed to be preserved. Ashe and McHenry were responsible for securing the scene and limiting entry. Even so, given the vague descriptions from Cairns and Cameron, Ashe thought it best to enter the house to make sure that the young woman inside was actually dead.

The sergeant walked carefully up the side driveway until he got to the back of the house – retracing the route that Don and Ian said they took earlier. He saw that both the screen door and the back door were slightly ajar. He opened them carefully and went inside; the house was dark and silent. It took only a couple of steps along the hallway to get to the first bedroom door.

Beth Barnard’s body, as it was found on Tuesday 23 September 1986.

Beth Barnard lay on the floor of the bedroom. Even though a quilt covered her from the nose down, Ashe could see her blue eyes, vacant and staring. A large pool of congealed blood on the carpet around her head made it obvious to the police officer that Beth was dead even though he could see no injuries.

Ashe carefully lifted a corner of the quilt and pulled it up and saw something that he would remember forever; the young woman’s throat had been sliced to the bone, nearly beheading her. In what was clearly a savage attack, a knife blow to her upper lip had smashed out one of her top front teeth. Ashe gently placed the quilt in its original position, and backed out of the room, shocked.

While Ashe was in the house, young Senior Constable Peter McHenry stood outside with Don and Ian. Not having seen the carnage inside, nor heard anything but a second-hand account on the drive from the police station, McHenry listened as Don and Ian laughed and chatted as they waited for Ashe to re-emerge.

McHenry didn’t think much of it at the time.

Ashe radioed detectives from the Homicide Squad; it would take them over an hour to get to the Island. Minutes later, three local CIB detectives arrived from Wonthaggi – Sergeant Ron Cooper, Senior Constable Alan (Jack) McFayden and Senior Detective Alan Lowe.

The house had officially become a crime scene.

Detective Jack McFayden was a no-nonsense country copper and when he wasn’t involved in the business of fighting crime, he loved nothing better than to hang a Gone Fishing sign on his door and disappear to his favourite fishing hole. He’d seen a lot of bodies in his long career, and it never got any easier.

As McFayden entered the house, he was conscious of the intrusion of a homicide investigation. He knew that the dead woman’s secrets would be poured over by the detectives, and her dignity and privacy would fall victim to the urgency of catching whoever killed her.

While the body on the floor gave a chilling aspect to the bedroom, the rest of it was achingly normal. Two single beds flanked opposite walls, piles of discarded clothes lay around, and stuffed animals fought for space on top of the chest-of-drawers with photos and bottles of perfume. Next to the clutter were some cold and flu tablets and a bottle of cough medicine. There was also a glass of water and some pain-killers. One of the beds was unmade, while the other was ruffled and blood-stained.

McFayden took in the bedroom and its contents and made a cursory search of the rest of the house – just in case there were further victims. But everything else seemed in order and there was no sign that the struggle had continued anywhere else, although there was some blood around the bathroom taps. Perhaps the killer had washed afterwards.

Back into the bright September day, McFayden noticed a couple of drops of blood on the concrete path outside the back door. Did that mean that the killer was injured as well? At this early stage, everything was mere conjecture.

First things first. Jack McFayden went with Ian Cairns and Donald Cameron to the police station where he would take their statements. He wanted to know how the two farmers came to discover the young woman’s body. From their initial conversations, it seemed Beth was a friend of their family. It also seemed that she had been having an affair with Don Cameron’s brother, Fergus.

While local cops stood outside guarding the crime scene, Beth’s body lay undisturbed inside. She would not be moved until the crime scene had been fully examined and processed.

Having made the drive from Melbourne, Homicide detectives Rory O’Connor and Garry Hunter arrived on Phillip Island. In their wake, came crime scene examiners Sergeant Hughie Peters and Senior Constable Brian Gamble along with a police photographer and fingerprint expert to examine the house to try and make sense of what had occurred.

O’Connor and Hunter got the gist of the story from Don and Ian.

The previous evening, Fergus had apparently admitted to his wife Vivienne that he was having an affair with Beth. Vivienne and Fergus fought, and Vivienne had stabbed her husband with a broken wine glass, then taken him to the hospital to get stitched up. Ian Cairns, who was married to Fergus’ sister, Marnie, said that Fergus had spent the rest of the night at their farm just up the road from his. Don Cameron said that Vivienne had called friends in the middle of the night, after she’d dropped Fergus at Marnie and Ian’s, and asked them to come and collect her two young boys.

According to Don and Ian, the family hadn’t known about this until the babysitter rang them earlier that morning to ask what she should do with the children since she had to go to work. It was then that they realised that both Vivienne and the family’s Toyota Land Cruiser were missing.

And so, right from the get-go, the suggestion was that Vivienne rang the babysitter in the middle of the night, then drove out to Beth’s place and killed her. And there was something the Homicide detectives were about to discover that would add weight to that theory.

In the bedroom of the dead woman, Cliff Ashe and Jack McFayden had lifted the doona just enough to see the vicious wounds to Beth’s throat. It wasn’t until Rory O’Connor, and Garry Hunter lifted the doona off completely that they saw something they could hardly fathom.

Carved deeply and clearly into Beth’s chest and abdomen, was a giant letter ‘A’.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, written in 1850, told the story of a woman called Hester Prynne who was censured by her Puritan community for having a child out of wedlock. Her punishment was to wear a scarlet letter – A for adulteress – on all her clothing.

Did the A carved into Beth’s chest brand her an adulteress?

And if that was the case, who would have more reason to do so than Vivienne Cameron?

It was the job of crime scene examiners Sergeant Hughie Peters and Senior Constable Brian Gamble to examine the house for evidence. While Homicide detectives look for motives and listen to people’s stories, crime scene examiners look for physical evidence that will create a connection between the victim and the offender.

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 Barnard’s house in Rhyll, Phillip Island.

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?

Crime scene examiner Senior Constable Brian Gamble

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.

Detective Jack McFayden

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.

Like Senior Constable Peter McHenry earlier, Jack McFayden was struck by Don Cameron’s demeanour. He would later say, ‘I’ve never seen a bunch of people so cool, calm and collected. You’d think these blokes discovered bodies every day of their lives.’

Jack McFayden wanted to speak to the woman who had collected the Cameron children in the middle of the night. Was she the last person to speak to Vivienne Cameron? Was there a link between Vivienne organising for the children to be picked up at 3am, and the neighbours hearing a car driving in Beth’s street at 3.30am? Hoping she could shed some light on matters, the detective tracked Robyn Dixon down at work.

According to Robyn, it was her husband, John, who had answered the phone in the middle of the night. Vivienne said she was calling from the hospital, and asked John to go and get her children and take them home for the night. Robyn explained that she and her husband had driven to the Cameron’s house where they woke the children and took them home.

Robyn noticed that Vivienne’s Holden sedan was in the garage, and wondered if perhaps Fergus and Viv had gone to the hospital in an ambulance. Inside the house, the Dixons saw Vivienne’s handbag and thought she must have left in a hurry.

That morning, when Robyn had to go to work, she had tried to call Viv and got no answer. When she tried to ring Don Cameron, it took her 15 minutes to get through because their line was engaged. When she finally did, Don said he knew nothing about what had gone on the night before. He agreed to collect Hugh so that Robyn could go to work. The older child was sent to school.

McFayden wondered who Donald Cameron or his wife, Pam, had been speaking to for the 15 minutes that morning when Robyn Dixon was trying to call them.

For most of Tuesday 23 September, both Vivienne Cameron and the family’s Land Cruiser were missing. In the afternoon, Don Cameron’s wife, Pam, discovered the Land Cruiser on her way home from work.

She had heard that Beth had been murdered and that Viv and the Land Cruiser was missing, and when she drove home across the Phillip Island bridge, she saw the vehicle parked on a wide nature strip adjoining a playground on the Phillip Island end of the bridge.

Detectives, McFayden, O’Connor and Hunter headed to Forrest Avenue, Newhaven, to find the vehicle parked and locked. Later Pam would tell them that she had found it unlocked and she had taken the keys out of the ignition and gathered Vivienne’s purse from the seat, then locked it.

If the car had been parked there all day, that meant that despite knowing it was missing, all of the detectives, local and city, had driven past it on their way to the Island.

Vivienne Cameron

Vivienne Cameron’s vehicle, as found.

There was one piece of evidence that McFayden noted. Robyn Dixon said she saw Vivienne’s handbag at the house when she picked up the children, meaning that Viv didn’t take it with her when she left the house in the middle of the night. If it was found in the Land Cruiser, did that mean that Vivienne drove to kill Beth, then returned home for her handbag only to dump the car with her handbag in it?

While the detectives checked the Land Cruiser, they wondered about the fate of Vivienne Cameron. The car was parked several hundred metres from the start of the bridge.

McFayden immediately searched the bridge for any signs that Vivienne could have jumped off it. He walked slowly along both sides looking for any break in the salty film on the guard rail. He found nothing to suggest that Viv might have jumped the 10 metres into the icy water below.

And, while the car was parked within a short walk to the bridge, it was also only metres from a bus stop. Had Vivienne caught a bus off the Island?

Later, a local baker would give a statement that he had seen a vehicle parked on the nature strip at 5am. Even though the baker wrote in his statement: I cannot say what type of car it was or colour, all I can say is that there was a car parked there.

This vague declaration would form the basis of a very specific Coronial finding. But that would come later.

The detectives spoke to a friend of Beth’s, called Maree, who had spent several hours with Beth on the day she died. They had met at Maree’s house and Beth was still feeling the effects of the flu and had antibiotics in her handbag. Part of their conversation that afternoon was about Beth’s relationship with Fergus. He was coming over that evening and Beth said she planned to give Fergus an ultimatum; she was tired of having a relationship with a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife. Beth had been deeply in love with Fergus and had always believed the Cameron marriage was over in all but name before her affair with Fergus had begun.

According to Maree, Beth had every intention of telling Fergus that he would have to resolve his marital difficulties – one way or another. Beth saw no future in their relationship continuing with the way things were.

Maree knew how hard the situation had been for Beth. She could remember how upset her friend had been after Vivienne had caught Fergus hugging her in the shearing shed. Maree also knew that Beth would never intentionally break-up a marriage.

Beth told Maree that her brother had intended to make the drive from Melbourne to Phillip Island where he would spend the night with her at the house in McFees Road. However, Beth’s brother had broken his arm in an accident and had cancelled the trip. Maree said that Beth had assured her mother by phone that because her brother was not coming, she would bring the dogs inside as usual for extra protection.

Maree stated that Beth left her house early in the afternoon to return to McFees Road, so that she could prepare dinner for Fergus.

It was the last time Maree would see her best friend.

The job of performing the post-mortem examination of Elizabeth Katherine Barnard was given to Dr G R Anderson, a medical practitioner from Warragul, by order of the Coroner. The post-mortem examination was carried out in the mortuary of the Korumburra District Hospital, in the early afternoon of Wednesday 24 September 1986.

Beth’s body had been brought to the mortuary cool-room after it had been photographed, videoed and examined.

At 3pm, detectives Rory O’Connor, Alan McFayden, Brian Gamble, and photographer Peter Gates attended the post-mortem to view Dr Andersen’s examination. Throughout the examination, Gates took nine graphic photographs.

The doctor placed a measuring tape gently around the woman’s neck.

‘The throat wound is 11cm wide and 6.5cm deep in the fold between the chin and the upper part of the neck.’ The doctor walked over to the bench near the sink and took a notebook and a pen from his pocket and rested it there. He wrote down the measurements with his hand clad in its surgical glove. Traces of blood were left on the page. He walked back to the body and probed within the folds of the jagged neck wound.

‘The pharynx has been completely severed just above the larynx, as has the right carotid artery, but not the left. Mmm, that’s interesting,’ the doctor murmured.

‘Why?’ asked O’Connor bending closer to take a look.

‘Well,’ replied Dr Anderson, ‘one carotid artery is situated on each side of the neck.’ He indicated to the detectives their approximate location. ‘And when one is severed and the other one isn’t, that suggests that her head has been turned or held to the side when her throat was cut.’

‘Would the killer need much strength to do that?’

‘Depends if the woman was struggling or not I suppose.’

The doctor continued probing while the detectives took notes. ‘See this line along the lower border of the neck wound?’ The detectives again leaned forward for a closer look. ‘It’s intermittently jagged. That suggests multiple cuts rather than a single slash. Cutting a throat isn’t as easy as you might imagine.’

McFayden shuddered inwardly.

The doctor turned his attention to the wounds on the dead woman’s face, as his gloved hands manipulated the tape measure. ‘The upper lip shows a thick slash wound which is 3cm long, extending from the mouth towards, but not reaching, the right nostril. The left corner of the mouth also has a 3cm slash wound running towards the angle of the jaw and there’s a further slash wound under the point of the chin. It is 2.5cm long. The left front tooth has been completely knocked out.’

‘By the knife blow?’

‘Looks like it.’

McFayden and O’Connor exchanged glances. Seeing this kind of damage inflicted on a young woman was awful.

Dr Anderson turned his attention to the chest. ‘The upper chest showed a gaping stab wound 4.5cm long in the midclavicular line, and there is a smaller gaping wound 2cm x 1.5cm, near the third rib.’

The detectives readied their pens as the doctor went on to measure and describe the A.

‘The right side of the A shape consists of a deep slash that measures 25cm long. Two shorter and much more shallow slashes, which have not completely penetrated the skin, run parallel to the deep slash. The left side of the A consists of a slash that measures 29cm long which has penetrated into subcutaneous fat. As you can see here, it’s quite deep.’ The doctor indicated the exposed fat and then continued once the detectives had taken a closer look.

‘Three shorter, much more shallow slashes run parallel and adjacent to it. The centre bar of the A consists of an 18cm horizontal slash. I’ve never seen anything like this.’

McFayden reflected darkly to himself that the likelihood of Dr Anderson, a country hospital pathologist seeing other bodies with huge letters of the alphabet carved into them was minimal.

Dr Anderson turned his attention to the defence wounds.

‘Looks like your victim put up a bit of a fight,’ he observed. Beth’s body had plenty of these wounds. The doctor held up her left arm and measured the deep knife gash in her elbow. The police photographer snapped a photograph of the uplifted arm and captured on film the trickles of bloodied water running down the white surface of her skin. Also captured on film were the hands – the left hand had deep gash wounds in all the fingers and another deep wound in the web between the thumb and the index finger and the right hand had similar wounds.

Further examination revealed a small slash on Beth’s left ankle. ‘There’s enough of these cuts,’ muttered the doctor, who paused after each measurement to make a record in his note book. ‘Let’s hope this is the last one.’

Once Dr Anderson had described the external wounds, and they had been extensively photographed by police photographer Peter Gates, it was time to open the body to see the internal effects of these external assaults.

Using his scalpel, he opened the body from the neck down over the stomach. With a rib knife he removed the ribs and measured the length to which the knife had penetrated into vital internal organs and arteries.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the right lung, the pericardium – that’s the sack around the heart,’ he explained for the benefit of the detectives, ‘and the vena cava, have all been pierced with the long knife blade, which has entered in downwards thrusts. Your victim has bled large volumes of blood into her chest cavity. The right pleural cavity here, is completely filled with blood.’

The detectives could see for themselves without the benefit of a degree in medicine.

‘Death by internal bleeding would have occurred some minutes after the upper chest wound was inflicted.’

McFayden murmured to O’Connor, ‘From what we could tell from the crime scene, I reckon that the chest wounds would have been inflicted first. Looked like she’d been attacked while she was asleep. Murderer probably got the first strike in pretty cleanly.’

‘Thank God,’ said O’Connor.

Dr Anderson examined other major organs which he found were all normal and free of disease.

‘There’s no sign of pregnancy, if that’s an issue,’ offered the doctor.

Dr Anderson then took specimens: finger nail scrapings, a lock of hair, vaginal and anal swabs, a piece of thigh muscle and 10mls of blood. He carefully labelled the specimens and handed them to the detectives. Other samples including the stomach contents and additional blood were also given to Brian Gamble, to be taken for analysis at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Melbourne.

O’Connor fingerprinted the body so they had a set of prints to compare with any found at the crime scene.

McFayden walked over to the doctor who was removing his bloodied gown. ‘What’s the verdict, doctor?’ he asked.

‘I think she was alive when the chest wounds occurred because there is evidence of extensive internal bleeding around these wounds.’

‘How long would it have taken her to die?’

‘It could have taken five minutes or so, but she probably would have been unconscious earlier than that.’

‘How about the “A”?

‘I can’t say for certain whether she was alive then, but I think not.’

‘Anything else you can add?’

‘Only that prior to the attack she was a healthy young woman with every chance of living till she was 80.’

With the possibility that Vivienne had suicided off the Phillip Island bridge, members from the Search and Rescue Squad searched Western Port Bay. If she had jumped, there was a good possibility police divers would find her.

After an initial drifting period where air is expired from a body, it becomes a dead weight and sinks. But, as the body decomposes, it fills with gases and floats again. It was believed, in the early days, that if Vivienne had jumped, she should be located relatively close to the bridge. Or at least her glasses or shoes might be there.

Divers searching the sea bed in sweeping arcs designed to cover the area under the bridge thoroughly, failed to find any trace of Vivienne.

Even though Search and Rescue were optimistic that if she had jumped, they would find her, there had been cases of people drowning in Westernport Bay who had never been recovered. Since their search turned up nothing, it left them with two possible scenarios: either she jumped and drifted away, or she didn’t jump at all.

At 10am the morning after Beth Barnard was murdered, a local woman called Glenda Frost received a phone call that would haunt her for years to come, although, at the time, she didn’t think anything of it.

Her friend Pam arrived to stay at Glenda’s house in the afternoon of Monday 22 September, after working an early shift as a nurse at a Melbourne hospital. Glenda had been at work all day too, and the two friends spent the evening chatting.

It was 10 o’clock on Tuesday morning when the phone rang in the kitchen. Pam, who was elbow-deep in soapy water washing the breakfast dishes, called to Glenda, who was getting dressed, to answer the phone.

‘Pam, I’m so busy today – I haven’t got time to chat to anyone. Can you answer it?’

‘It won’t be for me – answer it yourself!’ laughed Pam.

Glenda hurried out from her bedroom and reluctantly picked up the phone: ‘Hello?’

‘It’s Viv Cameron here, Glenda.’

‘Hi Viv, you’re lucky to catch me, I’m normally at work by now but I’m hand-sewing at home today for the fashion parade,’ Glenda said.

‘Have you found out where to buy the patchwork house gift for Isobel?’

Glenda remembered meeting Vivienne outside the post office the previous week and Vivienne had asked her where she could buy the patchwork house.

‘Call Dianne. Her sister makes the patchwork houses. Do you want her number? I have it right here,’ said Glenda. ‘Have you got a pencil?’

When Vivienne went silent, Glenda assumed she was writing the number down. Vivienne’s side of the conversation was interrupted by voices – voices that Glenda assumed were Vivienne’s two young boys talking in the background. Vivienne asked Glenda to ‘hold on a sec’, before she left the phone. As the background noise stopped, Glenda covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Pam that it was Vivienne on the line.

‘I won’t be long.’ She turned her attention back to the phone as Vivienne returned.

‘Boys playing up?’ Glenda joked.

‘It’s okay now,’ said Vivienne.

From her experience with dozens of phone conversations over the years, Glenda knew that Vivienne was a bit awkward on the telephone. Glenda always felt it her role to make the conversation. But today she didn’t have time.

‘Is there anything else you want, Viv?’

‘Why no... I don’t think so.’

Just before hanging up, Glenda remembered the list of materials they both needed for patterns they were working on. She asked if Vivienne wanted her to read it out.

‘Oh, don’t bother now. Bring the list with you to patchwork lessons next week and I’ll get it then,’ Vivienne said.

There was another awkward silence.

‘Well I’d better get back to my sewing now, Viv. See you next week at class.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Vivienne Cameron.

As news of the murder swept the small Island community, people were shocked by Beth Barnard’s murder. Glenda and Pam went for a coffee at one of the local cafes in Cowes. It was there they learnt the terrible news. Neither of them knew Beth, but like most residents of the small community, they knew of her. It made Glenda think of her own safety – a woman living alone.

Glenda and Pam made no connection between Beth’s murder and Vivienne Cameron. That wasn’t until the 6 o’clock news when Glenda turned on the television to see if the crime had made the news. It was one of the leading items.

The reporter said that police were searching for a missing Phillip Island woman, Mrs Vivienne Cameron, in connection with the savage murder of a 23-year-old farm worker, Elizabeth Katherine Barnard. Vivienne Cameron’s car had been found on the Phillip Island side of the San Remo bridge, according to the news, and it was believed Vivienne had jumped from the same bridge to her death.

The reporter said the car had first been seen at 5am on Tuesday although it wasn’t positively identified by police until about 4pm the same day. It was Vivienne’s sister-in-law, Pamela Cameron, who identified the car for detectives.

Glenda froze in horror when she realised she had spoken to Vivienne some five hours after the car was first seen parked near the bridge. She was staring at the news report when the phone rang.

‘Glenda? It’s Pam. Have you seen the news?’

Glenda could hardly speak: ‘Yes...’

‘Wasn’t it Vivienne Cameron who you spoke to this morning on the phone? How could she be jumping off the bridge at 5 o’clock in the morning when you spoke to her at 10? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘No. What am I going to do?’ Finding herself suddenly caught up in a murder investigation, Glenda was scared.

‘You’ve got to ring the police,’ Pam told her firmly.

‘No. I can’t.’ Her voice trembled.

‘Glenda, this is vital to the police. You have to tell them now. They think Vivienne has got something to do with Beth’s murder, but she can’t have – not if she was talking to you on the phone about... what was it?’

‘Patchwork patterns,’ said Glenda, lost in thought.

‘Let’s face it,’ said Pam, ‘nobody’s going to discuss patchwork if they’ve just killed somebody. Are they?’

‘Oh my God, Pam! I can’t believe this.’

Once off the phone to Pam, Glenda called the police immediately. She gave a statement to Jack McFayden, and then later to the Homicide detectives who arrived to double-check her story. Glenda assured the police officers that it was Vivienne on the phone, but she felt their doubt. They tried to suggest that it might have been Monday when she called, not Tuesday. But Glenda was certain. And Pam was a witness. Pam wasn’t even there on the Monday morning.

Glenda’s information was explosive. Was Vivienne alive at 10am? Was she still alive now? And, more importantly, if there were voices in the background, who else knew where she was? While Glenda assumed it was Vivienne’s children in the background, it couldn’t have been her older child as he had been taken to school. The younger one was picked up by Don Cameron on Tuesday morning.

Detective O’Connor had spoken briefly to Fergus Cameron before giving time to regain his composure. It was also his decision that Jack McFayden should conduct the formal interview on Thursday – two days after Beth’s murder and Vivienne’s disappearance.

When Jack McFayden visited him to take his statement, he found Fergus propped up in bed in his pyjamas, saying that he was feeling the after-effects of his injuries. He had been staying with his sister, Marnie, and her husband, Ian, since Monday night.

Despite losing both his wife and his girlfriend, Fergus was calm and able to give his account of what happened.

He and Vivienne had been married 10 years, he explained, and had two children. They had been having marital difficulties, compounded by Fergus’ affair with Beth Barnard. He had met Beth when they both worked at the Penguin Parade and he had then employed her as a farmhand. It wasn’t long before the two began having an affair that had lasted until her death.

Fergus described his strained relationship with his wife. He said Vivienne had noticed he gave Beth favoured treatment. He told the detective that several times in their relationship, he and Beth had decided to stop seeing each other, but their resolutions had never lasted.

In December of 1985, Vivienne had caught Fergus in the shearing shed with his arm around Beth. That, according to Fergus, was the first time his wife had accused him of having an affair. He told her that he and Beth were just good mates. Nonetheless, Beth had been shaken by the confrontation, and quit working at the Cameron farm.

A short while after that, Fergus explained that he’d come home in the early hours of the morning from a Christmas party at Beth’s. He said that Vivienne had attacked him, punching him in the face and back.

Despite Beth’s resolve to leave the Penguin Parade job and the job at the Cameron farm, Fergus said that the pull of their relationship was stronger and she was soon back working at both jobs. He said that Vivienne had questioned the wisdom of having Beth working on the farm.

The tension between Vivienne and Fergus culminated in a fight around shearing time.

‘We had all been drinking, including myself, and when we’d gone up to the house, Vivienne became violent with me over Beth. She said that Beth was a scheming little bitch and in general criticising her to the point of hatred. She was very disparaging as to my admiration for Beth, but did not to my knowledge accuse me of having an affair with her but I think she assumed I was.

‘During this argument, she punched me half a dozen to a dozen times around the face, arms and chest and at that time I was sitting on a stool in the back porch. I feel that she had every right to do what she was doing, not because of my association with Beth but because she deserved some answers and I wasn’t giving her any.

Although Vivienne was drinking on this occasion, she wasn’t drunk but probably had enough to drink to say what she had wanted to say for a long while.’

McFayden reflected that this was the second time in several hours that Fergus had spoken about his wife’s allegedly violent nature. He wondered too, how Fergus could have sat on that stool without falling off or protecting himself, while his wife beat him about the head.

23-year-old Beth Barnard

From about May 1986, Fergus told McFayden he had become less concerned about protecting his family. Vivienne and Fergus had discussed their marriage and its problems and Vivienne had asked him to see a marriage counsellor. Fergus had told her that he didn’t see what good it would do.

Around this time, Fergus explained, Vivienne had received a $5000 inheritance and asked Fergus to quit his job at the Penguin Parade and spend more time with her and the children. Fergus said that he was ‘totally opposed’ to quitting his part-time job, knowing it would mean that he’d see less of Beth.

At this point Fergus interrupted himself and said, ‘I forgot to include earlier, I first told her [Beth] I loved her in December 1985 and she was immediately reciprocal.’ McFayden duly recorded this fact.

According to Fergus, Beth was willing to wait until the end of the year to see what happened with his marriage. However, Fergus was anticipating that he would be leaving Vivienne and the children to live on another part of the Island. He wouldn’t contemplate living with Beth because, he said, it would not be fair on her family.

‘It had got to the point that if I had any sexual relations with Vivienne it would have been an enormous feeling of guilt towards Beth. Although Vivienne didn’t say anything, I could tell that she felt rejected and I tried to compensate by doing all the things a loving husband should do, such as making her comfortable and making her wanted and needed in other ways and I used to confer with her in everything but our own personal relationship.’

About seven weeks before Beth’s murder, on a Monday morning, Fergus recalled, he was late picking up his younger son to take him to kindergarten. Fergus said Vivienne was furious and had abused him for spending his time with Beth. ‘She said she had had enough.’

He recalled that Vivienne had, once again, asked him to get help to save the marriage, to which he had replied: ‘Don’t be stupid’. Driving her own car, Vivienne had then followed Fergus to the Phillip Island Race Track where they had another heated discussion.

Asked by McFayden what it was about, Fergus said, ‘I have no idea’.

McFayden thought it odd that, while Fergus could remember the time and date of the argument, he couldn’t remember what was said.

Now that he had the background, McFayden needed Fergus’ account of the night Beth died. Fergus said Beth had been sick with the flu and feeling down, but on Monday night, she seemed more cheerful. She had met him at the back door after he’d finished his shift at 8pm at the Penguin Parade. Fergus commented on the fact that the security door wasn’t locked when he got there. ‘I told her to be more security conscious and keep the door locked.’

Fergus said that he and Beth had discussed their relationship optimistically. He said that he left around 9.05pm and said that while they had ‘kissed and cuddled’ each other, they hadn’t made love. He admitted having sex with her on the Sunday night, but not the Monday night.

Fergus left Beth promising to visit again the next morning. When he got home, he found Vivienne sitting at their kitchen table with his sister, Marnie. He described Marnie as being ‘very agitated’ and Vivienne was ‘visibly trembling’. Apparently, the two women had rung the Penguin Parade looking for him at 8pm only to be told that he’d left for the evening.

Marnie left a short time later and Fergus said that Vivienne had launched into him as soon as his sister was gone, screaming at him, ‘Where have you been?’

‘I just said, “I’ve been talking to Beth.” She then raced at me with the glass of wine and screamed, “I knew you were with the little bitch.” I think she hit me with the wine glass which broke on the left side of my head and cut my left ear. I turned my back away from her and she hit me two or three times with the broken glass.’

Fergus said he had been standing in the doorway between his dining room and the hall. He then turned and walked to a bedroom at the top of the house, where he sat on the bed. Blood was later found on and around the bed. However, forensic tests later showed it wasn’t his.

He told McFayden that Vivienne had followed him to the bedroom. ‘She was screaming out things including, “I knew what was going on. I’ve been watching the number of hours you’ve been working. I suppose everyone out there knew what was going on.” She said a lot of other things but I can’t remember what they were.’

Fergus said Vivienne’s rage had quickly changed to concern, ‘as there was blood everywhere and she wanted to take me to hospital immediately.’ Forensic tests would later show that Fergus’ blood was only found on the shirt he had been wearing, on a pink tissue in his bathroom and on a blue pullover belonging to Vivienne – but McFayden didn’t know that yet.

Fergus Cameron after his hospital visit.

Fergus said he agreed to go to the hospital and they rang Marnie and asked her to come back and mind the children. They left before she got there.

He said Vivienne was calm as she pulled up at the hospital, but, ‘As she was turning off the ignition she turned to me and said, “I’m just going to get the little bitch”.’

Fergus claimed he hadn’t taken the threat against Beth seriously.

When they got back home, Marnie left them, and Fergus said Vivienne suggested: ‘that we separate immediately, that she resign from her job and move to Melbourne [and] that I have custody of our children. I agreed to this and she said that I was an excellent father. She wasn’t a very good mother and I disagreed and she gave me two warnings, one was not to be too stern with the children, and not to take it for granted that Beth was going to make an excellent mother.’

Fergus said that he and Vivienne had parted amicably when she drove him up to stay at Marnie’s house. He said that was the last time he’d seen her.

The next morning, he got a phone call from Pam Cameron who said that Vivienne had called a friend to come and get the children in the middle of the night.

‘My anxiety was further increased when I was told that Vivienne had taken the Land Cruiser, which was parked in the shearing shed. On hearing the Land Cruiser, Beth would automatically think it was me and open the door. The two people who drove the Land Cruiser were either Beth or myself.’

The crime scene examiners did a search of Vivienne and Fergus’ house. Brian Gamble sketched a floorplan, then examined every room. According to Fergus’ statement, he and Vivienne had argued in the kitchen where she had attacked him with the wine glass.

Gamble found bloodstains in the hallway and spare bedroom, the bathroom and located the pink bloodstained tissue that Fergus said he had used to stem the flow of blood from his cut ear.

There was blood on the floor in the bathroom, and bloodstained clothing in the laundry. The front passenger seat of the Cameron’s Holden Kingswood was also bloodstained.

Gamble also noted the blood splatters when he walked through the doorway of the spare bedroom.

His notes record: ‘I then entered the front spare bedroom… scattered over the bed were a number of papers. I observed a number of blood stains in the room. On the floor between the western side of the bed and the western wall, were a number of blood droplets. On the bed spread and papers on the bed were a number of blood droplets. On the front of the chest of drawers was a blood smear’.

Gamble recorded no trace of the broken wine glass.

A backlog of cases meant that it was a month after the murder before Dr Bentley Atchison, a scientific officer with the Victoria Police State Forensic Science Laboratory, analysed material collected from the Barnard and Cameron homes.

At the crime scene and the Cameron home, the blood trail matched the stories. Beth had been attacked in bed and had bled in her room. The killer had washed up in the bathroom leaving blood around the taps. This blood would probably belong to Beth, but the drips on the path outside the backdoor might mean that the killer had bled at the scene.

At the Cameron home, Fergus said that he had been attacked by Vivienne and had walked into the spare room and then cleaned up in the bathroom. Accordingly, the blood found in these areas would be expected to be his.

In the analysis of the forensic evidence in pre-DNA days, scientist Dr Atchison used ABO blood groupings. There are four ABO blood groups – groups A, B, O and AB. Through analysing polymorphic enzymes present in blood, further sub-groups of the four main blood types can be identified. These further sub-groups of the four blood types are known as the PGM (Phosphoglucomutase) types.

Dr Atchison found, by analysing the containers of blood that he had received, that Beth’s blood group was Type O, PGM 1 and Fergus’ was Type O, PGM 2-1. He had no sample of Vivienne’s blood to analyse, but according to hospital records from when Vivienne gave birth to her two sons, her blood group was Type A. Dr Atchison was unaware of her PGM sub-group.

But since the three people in this domestic tragedy had different blood types, it would be easy for Dr Atchison to determine who had bled where.

While the blood trail matched the stories, the analysis did not. Fergus’ blood was found on his shirt and on a tissue in the bathroom. The blood in the spare room was Type A – Vivienne’s type, and blood on the papers in the spare room was Type O, PGM 1 – Beth’s blood type.

Blood examined to be Type A, which could have been Vivienne’s blood, was found on a maroon towel from Beth’s bathroom, the path outside Beth’s house, a cigarette packet and the match box found in the Cameron’s Land Cruiser and a face washer also found in the Land Cruiser.

Dr Atchison also found Type A blood in the scrapings taken from the spare bedroom at the Cameron’s house and from their laundry. If the Type A blood belonged to Vivienne, it meant that she had bled enough to leave a trail through her house.

Dr Atchison made a sketch of the pink nightshirt that Beth had been wearing when she was killed. He coloured in the areas of blood-staining with a red pen, and indicated on his sketch where the knife had gone through the shirt when Beth had been stabbed. The sketch indicated seven cuts in the material of the shirt – six in the front and one in the back.

Dr Atchison later mused: ‘I thought some of the cuts [on the front of the shirt] were unusual. There were two holes [close together], a longer one and then a shorter one, with a small gap in between. I asked the experts. They didn’t really know. They thought it was a fishing knife. You had the double hole which you can start thinking of all sorts of knives... it penetrates making two holes. But other people who are much more experienced than I am said that you can get a hit with a knife and another sort of jab. It really didn’t go anywhere. As far as I recall, I had problems saying that knife found near the body caused that sort of double hole.’

Homicide and local detectives interviewed as many people as they could find who might have information into Beth’s murder and Vivienne’s disappearance. Their enquiries turned up a couple of interesting facts. Beth had a young admirer who sent her flowers and apparently drove past her house a lot. In the days before stalking was a recognised phenomenon, the man was merely a nuisance that Beth had laughed about with friends. She even described his behaviour in a taped conversation she sent to an overseas pal.

‘I’ve got this problem how he keeps mowing my lawns, and I don’t want him to, coz I feel as if I owe him something when he does it. And, he mowed them again on Monday and I get home and yelled at him and he got really pissed off and, so anyway he just took off and comes back Monday night and I thought: oh beauty, I’ve got rid of him now. And he came back Monday night and got mad at me and, fair dinkum, I just feel like telling him where to go now, and then he came to work at the Camerons’ house on Tuesday coz we were lamb marking, and all day I was in a real shit and I kept trying to find other jobs to do and he just comes and takes over my jobs and tells me what to do. Fergus thought I was being really good trying to do all these other things and I was just trying to get away and so I’m just sick of him. I wish they’d do something to stop him coming around. We gave him all these hints not to come around tonight, so if he comes, I think I’ll just knock him out!’

At no time did his antics seem to do anything but annoy Beth. She never indicated that she was scared of him, but he was worth detectives talking to anyway. Although his statement never appeared in any formal briefs of evidence, detectives said that they spoke to him and he had an alibi for the night of Beth’s murder.

It was one thing to look for people who might have had a grudge against Beth, but the solution to the murder and disappearance meant that both crimes were most likely connected. It would be too much of a coincidence to believe that Beth was killed in a random murder, and Vivienne disappeared on the same night in unrelated circumstances.

No, the detectives reasoned, as the story went, it looked very much like Vivienne had fought with Fergus who confirmed the affair. She dropped him off at his sister, Marnie’s house – a fact that Marnie confirmed – and then organised to get the children looked after, and then drove out to kill Beth. She took the Land Cruiser on purpose so that Beth would think Fergus was visiting and open the door to him.

But a couple of things didn’t add up. According to her friends, Beth was very security conscious and was attacked in her bed – that meant that she didn’t open the door to anyone – or if she did, she then ended up back in bed for the attack to occur there. This was hardly something she’d do if Vivienne visited her in the middle of the night to confront her.

And then there was the phone call that Vivienne’s friend Glenda got the morning after the murder. Glenda never wavered from her story – Vivienne sounded absolutely normal and there were voices in the background during their conversation.

And what of Vivienne? Was she the type of woman to give up everything in order to get revenge against a rival? Her friends say she wasn’t. One friend claimed that in the days before she disappeared, Vivienne had spoken to her about leaving Fergus and taking her two sons to Melbourne. Friends also described her dedication to her children. They maintain that she never would have left them.

Vivienne had also said that if it hadn’t been Beth, it would have been someone else. Would a woman direct murderous rage against the ‘other woman’ rather than a husband? If so, it was the only case on record in Victorian criminal history where this had happened.

When the investigation failed to turn up any concrete evidence or witnesses, the Homicide detectives were satisfied that Vivienne murdered Beth then took her own life.

An inquest for Vivienne Cameron was held less than two years after her disappearance. On 21 July 1988, Coroner Mr Maher, the same coroner who had conducted Beth Barnard’s inquest 11 months earlier, made a very specific finding:

I, Mr B J Maher, Coroner, having investigated the death of Vivienne Janice Cameron, find that the identity of the deceased was Vivienne Janice Cameron and that the death occurred on 23 September, 1986 near the bridge which separates Phillip Island from the mainland in the following circumstances. During the night of the 22 and 23 day of September, 1986 Elizabeth Barnard died from knife wounds in her chest and that Vivienne Janice Cameron has not been seen since 1.00am on the 23 day of September, 1986. On the night in question, it is believed that Vivienne Janice Cameron was driving [a] Toyota Land Cruiser… This vehicle was found abandoned near the said bridge on the Phillip Island side of the bridge. Despite an intensive Police search, no trace has been found of the said Vivienne Janice Cameron with whom they wished to speak concerning the death of Elizabeth Barnard. Although her body has not been found, I am satisfied that she is dead and that she leapt from the bridge into the water. And I further find that the deceased contributed to the cause of death.

Interestingly, years later, a close relative of Vivienne Cameron spoke of briefing a Queen’s Counsel to appear at Vivienne’s Inquest to represent her interests. The relative said that the QC and several family members made the long drive from Melbourne and arrived at the Korumburra Court House before the scheduled Inquest time of 10am – only to find that the Inquest was already over. If the relative’s story is accurate, one can only wonder how the Coroner had time to consider the vast amount of evidence and come to such a specific conclusion.

Another puzzle in this mysterious case was the lack of evidence to suggest Vivienne’s guilt. Indeed, one wonders that if she surfaced, alive and well today, whether she would be found guilty of Beth’s murder in a court of law.

Every devoted CSI viewer knows that every contact leaves a trace. The problem with this was that the items with Vivienne’s A-type blood – except for the drops on the path – are all transportable. There was a hand-towel in Beth’s bathroom and a face-washer found in the Land Cruiser.

Interestingly, when Marnie Cairns gave her statement to the police, she mentions a towel and a face-washer – she saw them at the Cameron’s house when she went to mind the children after Fergus and Vivienne went to the hospital.

She said, ‘I went into the toilet and noticed a pile of blood soaked clothing consisting of a singlet, T shirt, a pale blue shirt from the Penguin Parade, a face washer and a towel. There were also some tissues in the basin which had blood on them.

‘Ian arrived shortly after and I showed him the clothing. He suggested that we leave it where it was and not touch it.’

One would assume Marnie mentioned the towel and face-washer along with other blood-stained items because they too had blood on them, but only the pink tissue and the blue shirt tested positive for Fergus’ blood. The singlet is not mentioned in the list of items taken by police for examination. Nor is there a towel or a face washer mentioned as being taken from the Cameron house.

Another place where one would expect trace evidence is in the Land Cruiser. If Vivienne Cameron murdered Beth Barnard, she would have been covered in blood. She was last seen wearing a mohair jumper. When Beth’s body was examined, it was found that the throat wound was probably caused by someone standing behind her holding her head to one side – one carotid artery was severed while the other wasn’t – and cutting her throat with the other. This would mean the perpetrator’s sleeve, at the very least, would be soaked in blood. And yet there is not a trace of Beth’s blood in the Land Cruiser. Not even a single mohair fibre with blood on it. And not only that, there were no traces of mohair on the victim.

If every contact leaves a trace, why wasn’t there more evidence to link Vivienne with the crime scene, and the crime scene with the Land Cruiser?

And as for the Land Cruiser – if Vivienne drove from Beth’s to the bridge, how did her handbag get in the car?

And so the mystery endures. People still talk about it, behind closed doors. When no one is brought to justice, people look suspiciously at each other and rumours abound, so many in fact that three decades later, it is difficult to separate the fact from the fiction.

In 2005, an episode of the Australian television documentary Sensing Murder went to air. Three psychics were asked to look at the murder of Beth Barnard and try and make sense of it. If one believes in this type of investigation – and many don’t – they would have been interested in the fact that none of the three psychics had any sense that Vivienne was the perpetrator.

One psychic, Scott Russell Hill, even claimed to have seen Vivienne’s own murder.

More than 500 people emailed the producer of Sensing Murder after the episode went to air. Most of them called for the police to take another look at the case.

Homicide detectives in Victoria are willing to look at any solid evidence that comes to light, however, they don’t put any stock in the word of psychics.

In 2018 the case, and my book, found a whole new audience of armchair detectives with the advent of the true crime podcast. But that’s a story for later in this book.