Ladykiller (4 page)
TO ENSURE HER SAFE RETURN YOU MUST AT NO TIME BRING IN THE POLICE THE PRESS ANY AUTHORITIES OR OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE. WE WILL KNOW IF YOU DO SO.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF BREACHING TIS [
SIC
] RULE WILL BE DIRE FOR YOUR WIFE. YOU ARE NOT OUR FIRST AUSTRALIAN TARGET THERE HAVE BEEN OTHERS. YOU HAVE NOT HEARD OF THIS IN THE PAST BECAUSE THEY HAVE IMPLICITLY FOLLOWED ALL INSTRUCTIONS AND BEEN REUNITED WITH THERE [
SIC
] LOVED ONES.
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE OUR CAPABILITIES.
WE WILL KNOW IF YOU BREACH ANY CONDITIONS AT ANY TIME AND YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WILL NOT SEE HER AGAIN.
James had run to his father’s side and was clawing at his sleeve. But Bernie couldn’t read the thing out, not before he had gone through it all. How could he tell his children this?
THIS IS OUR ONLY GUARANTEE.
THE RANSOM FOR HER RETURN IS ONE MILLION U.S. DOLLARS. THE RATE OF EXCHANGE MEANS YOU WILL PAY ONE MILLION TWO HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND AUSTRALIAN DOLLARS TO BE PAID IN ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR AUSTRALIAN NOTES.
The rest of the letter gave instructions relating to the kidnappers’ demands and their preferred means of delivery. Only ‘new plastic notes’ were to be used. No ‘remote transmitting devices’, no ‘radioactive dust’, dyes or any means of tracing the money. It was to be delivered in a ‘heavy duty green plastic garbage bag’.
DO NOT BE TEMPTED FOR IF ANYTHING IS USED TO TRACE THE MONEY IT WILL NOT BE COLLECTED AND YOUR WIFE WILL DIE.
The word ‘die’ shook Bernie. He could barely take in the rest of the directions, which were very specific.
YOU HAVE SEVEN DAYS. WHEN THE MONEY IS READY YOU ARE TO PUT AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THE PUBLIC NOTICE SECTION OF THE SYDNEY DAILY TELEGRAPH NEWSPAPER SAYING:
‘ANYONE WHO WITNESSED A WHITE VOLKS WAGON [
SIC
] BEETLE PARKED BESIDE THE EASTERN GATES OF THE SYDNEY OLYMPIC SITE AT 10.30PM ON TUESDAY 8.4.97’.
He was to put his home telephone number at the end of the advertisement and the note insisted he carry out the whole operation on his own.
DO NOT SUBSTITUTE YOURSELF FOR THE DELIVERY. YOU MUST BE ALONE. HAVE NO WIRES ON YOURSELF OR IN THE CAR YOU USE. WE WILL KNOW IF YOU TRY TO USE THEM. DO NOT USE THE CAR RADIO.
The letter seemed to go on and on. It ended with two more warnings.
ANY SIGN OF OUTSIDE INVOLVEMENT OR INTERFERENCE AND YOUR WIFE WILL DIE [. . .] TAKE CARE THIS IS YOUR ONLY MEANS OF EVER SEEING HER ALIVE AGAIN.
Bernie felt suffocated. Someone had just smashed apart his world and the pieces were collapsing in on him. He managed to utter a few of the details to the stunned group around him. They cast their eyes over the pages, careful not to touch them. The children were becoming hysterical. Matthew and Sarah understood the situation. Only the previous week they had watched a video of the Mel Gibson film
Ransom
. Marjorie Minton-Taylor took the children into the kitchen while Shane and Brett Ryan sat with Bernie, reading it through and trying to think rationally in an unreal situation.
‘Now, Dad, we have to ring the police,’ Shane said matter-of-factly.
‘But it says not to. What if they’re watching the house? What if the phones are bugged?’ Bernie’s voice was high and strained. But he knew it was too late to keep the police out of it. Detective Duncan was due to arrive shortly to take a statement.
Bernie now felt a terrible urgency. Kerry might be tied up, gagged or in pain. He could not imagine his wife as a hostage. Using his mobile phone, he dialled Parramatta detectives.
Allan Duncan had just finished typing the situation report when he answered the phone and heard a man’s voice speak, taut and tripping over his words: ‘Detective, it’s Bernard Whelan. I’ve, I’ve just received a letter. They’ve got her. They’ve got her!’
‘Slow down, mate,’ Duncan said. ‘What’s happened exactly? You’ve received a letter, have you?’
‘I’ve just opened a letter. A ransom note,’ Bernie said lowering his voice.
Duncan could hear the distraught children in the background. ‘Oh God, why is this happening to our family?’ a girl’s voice cried. ‘Why us?’
Duncan asked Bernie to read the note to him slowly. As the detective took down the words, Duncan could not help but notice how long it was. Highly unusual for a ransom note.
Bernie was now trembling uncontrollably. He pleaded for police to get there immediately. The kidnappers might be outside his property. ‘I don’t know if they’re watching the house,’ Bernie said. ‘I’ve got my guns from the cabinet. I’m armed and ready.’ It was bravado, but there was real fear in his voice.
‘Whoa, whoa,’ Duncan said, trying to calm him. ‘Mate, I know how you’re feeling and we’re going to get police out as soon as possible. Be aware the detectives will be in plain clothes. I’d appreciate it if you’d put the guns aside. Guns are not going to achieve anything.’
Duncan lived in a rural setting similar to Kurrajong. He knew about physical isolation and could well understand Bernie’s predicament, but he repeated that firearms would exacerbate the problem. After hanging up, Duncan ordered a police car to head to the Whelan house. It was protocol in a major incident to telephone the police duty officer, who would immediately page one of the most senior officers in the force, Chief Superintendent Rod Harvey.
Back at Willow Park, the Whelans waited. The last twenty-four hours had seemed like a week. They could barely stand another minute. Tony Garnett, Bernie’s best mate, had only just left the house before the discovery of the ransom note. Shane Whelan called him: ‘Uncle Tony, it’s Shane. You’ve forgotten your house keys. Could you please come back immediately?’
Garnett hesitated, feeling the house keys in his trouser pocket.
Shane repeated to him in a loud voice, through clenched teeth, ‘You’ve left your house keys here. You need to return to the house.’
Garnett realised something was amiss. ‘Righto,’ he said, ‘be right there.’
Garnett sped back to the Whelans, arriving around 8 p.m. Bernie rushed out to meet him. ‘Someone’s got her, mate, there’s a note.’
‘Oh please God, surely not,’ Garnett said.
‘It came in the mail and could have been here for hours because I’ve only just opened the mail.’
Bernie ushered him inside and insisted that everyone stay in the house. He ordered Shane to make sure all the doors and windows were locked, saying: ‘The house could be bugged so we’ve gotta be careful where we talk.’ Garnett directed him into the bathroom to discuss what to do. Meanwhile they waited for the police.
In the kitchen, Shane mulled over who might be responsible. He thought about his older brother, Trevor. Bernie and his first wife Helen had adopted both boys before Helen conceived Marita. Trevor, thirty-seven, bore a tremendous animosity and resentment towards his father and Kerry, who he called a ‘money grubber’. He blamed her for the marriage break-up between Bernie and his mother, Helen, and was convinced that had fuelled her alcoholism and caused her subsequent death. So upset was Trevor that his father had taken up with a woman who was roughly Trevor’s age that a violent confrontation occurred in which he threatened Bernie with a knife. As a result, Bernie had excluded him from his will.
‘One day I’ll get even with him,’ Trevor told a friend at his mother’s funeral. ‘He’s cut me out of the will and he’ll pay for it . . . I never got anything off my old man and some day I’ll get money off him.’
These thoughts came flooding into Shane’s mind, and when Garnett emerged from the bathroom, Shane pulled him aside. ‘Mate, we need to find Trevor. He’s capable of anything. He’s very disturbed and violent. I just hope he’s got nothing to do with this.’
Rod Harvey was used to sudden changes of plan. The head of the State Major Incident Group was with his wife at their son’s graduation in North Sydney when his pager beeped. Rod Harvey listened, drained his beer and then he and his wife left the function.
Rod Harvey was a stalwart of some of the old squads of the NSW Police, the Breakers and the Armed Hold-Ups, whose solid reputation had seen him rise up through promotions to the Joint Drug Taskforce and the group investigating Sydney’s underworld killing spree in the 1980s. Another of Harvey’s skills was hostage negotiation. He had undergone one of the first negotiator training courses in the state. He listened to the duty officer with particular interest, his mind forming responses on two different fronts: to the kidnap situation on the ground and, as an overview, how police would keep the case out of the news.
Harvey had a principal role in the NSW Police which was currently undergoing a restructure. He would be one of the most senior officers in the new investigative body, called Crime Agencies, which an ambitious younger detective called Clive Small was amassing as the investigative arm of Australia’s largest police force. Crime Agencies was just three months old, but had yet to be gazetted. Harvey’s initial reaction to the news was that the abduction of a rich man’s wife and a ransom demand in US dollars had an international flavour. And that was very unusual, in Harvey’s experience.
The official numbers for abductions in New South Wales— 273 kidnappings the previous year—were misleading. Many occurred in Sydney’s Asian community and lasted for less than a day. Harvey phoned Detective Mick Howe, catching him as he was almost home.
‘I need you at Parramatta immediately. That missing persons case at Parramatta. It’s just turned into a kidnap. The husband’s received a ransom letter. An international group could be behind it,’ Harvey said.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Howe said and turned his car around for Parramatta, where he would be joined by Detective Sergeant Dennis Bray. The pair took immediate charge of what was to become a mammoth logistical exercise, calling in specialist units—surveillance teams, hostage negotiators, the State Protection Group and the dog squad, radio technicians and the police helicopter,
Polair
.
Police Commissioner Peter Ryan granted permission for the establishment of Taskforce Bellaire, which would comprise twenty-three detectives. Howe was appointed the commander and, because he was similar in age to Bernie Whelan, was also assigned to the role of victim care. Whatever happened, he was to stay close to the husband.
Howe had come to the north-west region from Internal Affairs, the ‘toe cutters’ as they were known, where he had helped to uncover some of the worst police corruption in New South Wales’ history. Many officers resented him for it, and some regarded him as a spy.
Detective Dennis Bray was appointed the chief investigator. He did not know it then, but the Whelan case would come to consume his life for most of the next decade. The good-looking cop had a reputation for his dogged determination, refusing to let go of a case until it was thoroughly investigated.
Police were treating the ransom note as genuine. The demands suggested an international connection, with a number of participants. Its talk of radioactive dust and listening devices was designed to invoke fear, and it was successful in that. The Whelan household was in a state of panic laced with grief. Everyone was terrified.
Just before nine o’clock, Detective Sergeant Allan Duncan gathered the family together. His instructions were strict, he said, because Kerry’s life depended on it: ‘I know this is an absolutely devastating situation for you all, but we’re going to do all we can to get your wife and your mum back,’ he said. ‘But you’re not to talk to anyone outside this room about the ransom note, nor anything to do with the case. That means that you can’t even mention that your mum is missing.’ Duncan’s voice was stern: ‘
To anyone
.’
The children nodded. James started to cry.
Duncan told Bernie they needed to interview him. Was there a quiet area somewhere? Bernie led them out to the cottage, a sort of upmarket granny flat at the back of the family home where Amanda Minton-Taylor stayed a few nights a week, often with her boyfriend, Damon. For the next four hours, two detectives dissected every detail of Bernie’s life with Kerry.
Bernie assured them his marriage was a good one. Loving, stable and honest.
‘Are you having an affair, Mr Whelan?’ Duncan was blunt.
‘Absolutely not. I adore my wife.’
‘What about your nanny, Amanda Minton-Taylor?’
‘That’s a ridiculous suggestion. Amanda is like a daughter to Kerry and I.’
‘But, Mr Whelan,’ Duncan said, ‘you travel a lot. Could your wife have been having an affair then? Often us men don’t see the signs.’
Bernie swiftly held up a hand in protest. ‘Absolutely not. Look, my wife’s not like that, but even if there is someone else, she would never have left Sarah at this time.’ Sarah had a life-threatening bowel condition and her second major operation was just weeks away.
‘Her children are her life, Detective,’ Bernie said, gasping a bit for breath. ‘She would never leave them.’ Also, his wife had plans: a boating trip for Mother’s Day, an overseas holiday in July.
Duncan needed to know whether Bernie had any enemies. Had threats ever been made against him?
‘I’ve employed thousands of people going back twenty to thirty years sir, and you can’t help upsetting some people,’ Bernie said. ‘I’ve been threatened by unions, an opposition company, and that was scary. But, no, nothing recently.’
The interview was incredibly draining. Bernie had not slept for almost forty-eight hours, and his head felt like it would explode from the pressure of trying to remember dates, times and events in order to answer the detectives’ questions. At midnight, Duncan put his pen down. ‘Bernie, how about we call it a night?’ Bernie’s eyes had a faraway look. They could finish off his statement later, after they had interviewed the nanny and her mother Marge.
Sarah’s bedroom was large and had a proper work desk, suitable for transformation into a mini operations HQ ahead of the arrival of the senior detectives. She cleared away her artwork and textbooks to make way for three police computers. She watched through the door as the technical support officers took over her room. It made her feel good, as if she was really contributing something to getting her mum back.
Chief investigator Bray knew the task ahead was formidable. The state’s police force had never encountered a kidnap and ransom demand of this magnitude before. The closest they had come was thirty-five years earlier when the eight-year-old son of a lottery winner was snatched on his way home from school. His name was Graeme Thorne, the son of a middle-class Australian family who had won a £100 000 lottery held to finance the building of the Sydney Opera House. A month after the win, on 7 July 1960, the dark-haired boy was snatched and bundled into the boot of a car a few metres from his Bondi home. His parents received a ransom demand for £25 000 and, five weeks later, Graeme’s body was discovered on a vacant block in bushland near Seaforth, wrapped in a car rug. Hungarian-Australian Stephen Bradley was jailed for life.
