Ladykiller (15 page)

Locals knew part of the area as Depression Village where, in the 1850s, and later in the 1930s, poor itinerants had carved out mineshafts—by hand—in the hope of striking it rich. They were resilient and literally dirt poor. From Goulburn they walked 22 kilometres, often through snow, on unsealed roads. Some would set up camp armed with a few pieces of equipment and a steely determination to find their fortune. It was tedious work, digging for gold. First they heated the hard quartz surface to soften it in preparation for the laborious task of excavating their way in with a pick. The risk of suffocation or cave-ins was high, and the below-zero temperatures in winter culled the weakest of them.

This was hard country. Lives were cut short by the backbreaking work of digging the steep, narrow shafts and perhaps by the heartbreak of finding little of worth. By the end of the 1930s, the shafts numbered some three hundred. As the gold dwindled, so did the population and all that remained in 1997 were reminders of a once-thriving village: a crumbled chimney, a fireplace with utensils, plates and bottles, and rusted slews and other mining equipment scattered down on the dry creek bed.

As Detective Inspector Bruce Couch surveyed the area, he knew it presented a considerable danger and challenge— but also an excellent hiding spot for a body. Burrell’s property, Hillydale, backed onto the Bungonia State Recreation Area, which measured about 3893 hectares, and was part of the 162 000-hectare Morton National Park. Heavily wooded in parts, with giant ironbarks and other gums, the area was not open to the general public, unless an application was approved by the ranger. Burrell held the key, which enabled him to have the vast expanse completely to himself—undisturbed. Rangers regularly saw Burrell walking through the area. Was it Burrell’s burial ground? After the search of Hillydale had turned up no clues, Howe directed that it be expanded to include the Bungonia State Recreation Area.

‘Now, team, the new search area is much bigger than the last,’ Couch told the assembled officers. ‘If you haven’t already read it in the press,’ he quipped, ‘we’re now searching for two bodies. Kerry Whelan and Dorothy Davis. Don’t be surprised if we find the two together. History has shown that where there’s one, there’ll be another.’

The selected search area was a seven-kilometre-long section north of Hillydale. The vast tracts of wooded bush seemed endless, the craggy escarpments high, and the caverns deep. Couch knew that if Burrell was the murderer, he had dumped the bodies somewhere with vehicular access. Burrell was not the fittest of blokes and Couch reckoned that maybe he had used the stolen quad bike to transport a body along one of the fire trails to the cliffs over the Shoalhaven River.

Burrell was still in residence at Hillydale, and on the morning of 11 June, when the search resumed, he drove an old grey Falcon to Mick and Joe’s Discount Tyres, opposite Goulburn police station. The brakes needed fixing. He left the car there for an hour while a friend drove him to visit an aunt. Later, he bought a carton of beer, refuelled at the Woolworths Plus petrol station and headed for home, followed by two unmarked police vehicles and the media.

As Burrell stopped briefly at his front gate to check the mail, a reporter managed to get a few words out: ‘You must be under intense pressure, Mr Burrell?’

‘You could say that. Yes.’ He slammed his car door.

As had happened during the first search, frost, rain and poor visibility bedevilled the search team. One day they’d be searching among steep, thickly wooded red gums and scribbly gum; the next, the terrain was a moonscape of heavily eroded rock, the glare of its white ground further slowing their efforts. The mineshafts, 60 metres deep, were a lethal trap for the unwary.

This time, Brian Richardson, a senior ranger at Bungonia, was on hand to help. He was joined by a part-time ranger and avid bushwalker, John Walshaw, who had mapped and surveyed the area, and knew Balcham’s Gully, Nuggety Ridge and Spring Ridge.

‘If you don’t keep yer eyes open, ya can disappear pretty quick because the country is so steep,’ Walshaw warned the searchers.

Gary Duncan dubbed him ‘Mick Dundee’. He would rock up each morning in shorts and a pullover; his bare-legged indifference to the temperature impressed the officers. ‘The day you turn up in trousers, we’re out of here,’ Duncan joked.

The rescue officers were covered from head to boots with breathing apparatus and ropes. They had to lower a gas detector into chasms to determine the oxygen level and the presence of toxic gases before abseiling perhaps 90 metres down. Some holes were too narrow, even for the smallest of the officers, so they reasoned that neither Burrell, nor a body, could get down there.

The divers had been recalled to search Jacqua Dam, a 1.5- kilometre-long body of water infested on one side with clumps of reeds. They brought in a $70 000 sonar scan. It looked like the kind of small missile used by the US navy. The sonar was towed behind a police raft and sent a three-dimensional image via an electronic cable to a computer monitor aboard the rubber raft on the surface. Nothing of significance was found.

Midway through the search, a newspaper reported that at an earlier date—in fact, during the first police search— Burrell had dropped by the house of a long-term Bungonia resident, Lorraine Brooks. At the time, the
Daily Telegraph
’s Jess Angelo wrote, Mrs Brooks had been holding her weekly prayer meeting with eleven local women and later gave an account of her conversation with Burrell.

Mrs Brooks: ‘Bruce you look worn out. Would you like a cuppa? I can put the kettle on. You don’t look well.’

Bruce: ‘No, Lorraine, can’t stop. Say a prayer for me. I’d really like that.’

Lorraine and the others joined hands and prayed. Burrell started crying. Then he turned and was gone. Angelo wrote: ‘Whether he wept because he is an innocent man unjustly investigated, or because his heart is heavy with sin, only God, Kerry Whelan and Bruce Burrell know for sure.’

On 13 June, Police Commissioner Peter Ryan made an unscheduled visit to the site. Cancelling his morning appointments, he directed the
Polair
helicopter to Bungonia. Some later speculated that he was simply seeking refuge from the hammering he was getting over the royal commission into corrupt officers. Ryan was genuinely surprised at the breadth of the task. Nothing could have prepared him for the vast and treacherous search area before him.

‘It’s tedious but you can’t do it any other way,’ Couch told his boss. ‘It’s different to the Belanglo State Forest, Commissioner. It’s probably tougher because there are a lot more hidden traps.’

Afterwards, Ryan sat around the campfire with some of the boys for a cup of billy tea—a true Australian experience for the British import.

‘Would you like some damper, Commissioner?’ Duncan asked.

‘Has it got any kangaroo tail in it?’ Ryan joked.

Ryan complained about the intrusion of the media around the search site. ‘Piss them off,’ he advised, although within hours, Ryan’s minders had faxed a media release trumpeting the commissioner’s so-called ‘spontaneous’ visit.

That afternoon in Sydney, Bernie Whelan, in a last desperate bid to find his wife alive, announced a $500 000 reward for information leading to his wife’s safe return. ‘Even if you are involved in this crime, I believe the police will negotiate with anyone other than the main perpetrator. Someone out there must know something and my family and I beg you to contact us,’ he said. Bernie still hoped his wife would be returned safely. ‘I have to,’ he said. ‘I have three children and we have to hope we get Mum home.’

Bray saw Bernie’s pleas on the evening news at home. He looked up at his wife and children, and tried to fathom how the Whelans were managing to cope.

The taskforce was under pressure. Five weeks and still no concrete evidence with which to charge Burrell. Bray phoned Detective Sergeant Peter Walsh. ‘Mate, it’s time we paid Burrell another visit.’

Taskforce Bellaire, now based at Penrith police station, was conducting a search of a different kind. In the basement of the station, Bellaire had stored the items retrieved from Burrell’s house. Among them were twenty-two garbage bags of paperwork, collected after Mick Howe ordered the detectives to gather ‘every document, every notebook, every scrap of paper there is . . . You can leave the bloody toilet paper, boys, but bring everything else,’ Howe told officers.

Bray and others had been through the bags over and over, but found nothing significant. However, just the idea of all that paperwork kept niggling at the meticulous Allan Duncan. Every spare minute he had he spent in the basement going through notebooks, bank statements and scraps of paper. He had a bit of a reputation for fishing through bins. It had paid off a year earlier when he was called to a report of a baby kidnapped at South Windsor in Sydney’s north-west. When Duncan arrived the distraught mother showed him a note the kidnapper had allegedly left . After speaking to the woman at length, Duncan looked around outside, and found a garbage bin containing torn-up pieces of draft ransom letters. The parents confessed to selling their child.

On 18 June, Duncan and another detective, Bryan Molloy, returned to the basement. It was their umpteenth go, but Duncan was convinced there was a diamond in the load of papers. With his gloved hands Molloy took a foolscap pad from bag number 6 and flicked through the pages. It was blank, except for the very last page. No one had noticed it before. He began to read. It was a strange, cryptic note. Molloy thrust the notebook at Duncan, a crazy smile on his lips: ‘What about this?’ The note read:

1. HAS BEEN K

2. NO P

3. LETTER WITHIN 2 DAYS

4. NOTHING UNTIL RECEIVED

5. STRESS 2

The pair raced upstairs and placed the page carefully in front of Bray. He pulled out a copy of the ransom note, and ran his finger down the list of demands. Bray knew it off by heart, almost. It seemed to fit—the coded letters matching the plan.

Bray read out the note and added his interpretations: ‘Has been K—meaning kidnapped. No P—no police. Letter within 2 days—giving further instructions. Nothing until received—an instruction to do nothing until the second letter. Stress 2—no police involvement.’ Bray could not believe it. The note was a major breakthrough.

Later that night, Molloy found a smaller notepad in bag 132 number 13. It bore the title of the business Derek Keane and Company, where Dallas Burrell had worked. Written on a page towards the back, again all in capital letters, was:

1. COLLECTION

2. ADVISEMENT

3. WAITING

4. HOW TO PROCEED

5. PICK UP

6. COVER ALL

Again, Bray was struck by how it coincided with the kidnapper’s plan and the overall format of the ransom note. He ran through the list with Duncan: ‘Collection—pick up Kerry. Advisement—that must mean the newspaper advertisement. Waiting—an instruction to Mr Whelan to await further instructions. How to proceed—how to deliver the ransom. Pick up—a reference to collecting the ransom money. Cover all—referring to covering up the crime.’

The two notes were the first concrete evidence of a draft kidnap and ransom plan by Burrell. They would come to be known as the ‘dot point notes’. Bruce Burrell had to be the author. Kevin Best, an expert on copywriting, had analysed the dot point notes and the ransom note for the police and he had concluded they were the work of an experienced copywriter with a vivid imagination. He said it was the style and accepted practice of those in the advertising business to use upper case letters.

The UBD street directory, found in Burrell’s Jaguar, was further evidence. On page 52 was a map of the Parramatta CBD. Someone had marked it in pink highlighter along Phillip Street all the way to Smithfield, the location of Bernie Whelan’s company. At the bottom of the page was written in pink highlighter ‘A30 Phillip A’. The Parkroyal Hotel was located at 30 Phillip Street.

Over the ensuing days, taskforce officers found other notes. These were more obscure, but left detectives wondering. There was a handwritten list of how to clean a vehicle. In a painstakingly precise schedule, Burrell gave himself more than two hours. The list read:

VACUUM PASSENGER SIDE ½ HR

WIPE DOWN INTERIOR BACK ½ HR

WASH/CHAMOIS 45 MINS

CHECK FUEL

MUFFLER PUTTY 20 MINS

125 MINS

2 HRS 5 MIN

On another piece of paper there was a list of items and hiding places.

FLAT WHITE SHOES—WARDROBE—BACK ROOM

SAPPHIRE BRACELET—LEFTSIDE OF HIDEY HOLE

toiletries bag—into pig skin bag

bb’s book

The reference to a ‘hidey hole’ aroused further suspicion. Bray remembered Burrell’s comments to Bernie years earlier during a shooting trip of a ‘hiding place that nobody would ever find’.

Also recovered from Burrell’s house was a
Business Review
Weekly
magazine which listed the ‘100 richest’ people in Australia. In it, Mick Howe found the names of five of these families had been circled. Police contacted all five. Among them was a wealthy widow from Perth, and a rich businessman in Sydney. The man was left terrified and subsequently hired security guards for his children. However, none knew Burrell.

Meanwhile, Bernie Whelan hoped a dinner party at Marge’s house would provide some much-needed answers. Karl Bonnette would be there and Bernie wanted his help. Bonnette’s criminal career might have been over a very long time ago, as Marge insisted, but Bonnette had once been known as a fixer of all kinds of problems. In books on Australia’s recent crime history, Bonnette was said ‘in underworld parlance’ to be ‘a man to respect’, and had earned the title ‘The Godfather’. Former NSW Premier Neville Wran had described Bonnette in state parliament as ‘a leading member of the Sydney underworld’, and he was named as having heavy connections in the United States.

Bonnette and Marge’s friendship had been forged through their mutual interest in horses and in the American singer Guy Mitchell. Marge had been into horses from a very early age. Karl Bonnette owned quarter horses. He loved Guy Mitchell’s music. Marge loved Guy Mitchell, who was still visiting Australia, mostly touring the RSL Clubs and belting out country love songs like his international hit ‘Singing the Blues’, until his death in 1999. Marge was sixteen years old when Mitchell decided that on that tour he wanted to arrive on a palamino at his concert before a crowd of 50 000 in Melbourne. Marge was given the job of finding the horse, which she did at Bonnette’s and also fell in love with Mitchell and his music after meeting the dashing young singer.