Mad Dog Moxley (12 page)

McKean treated George Lawrence with more respect than he had the previous witness, but Lawrence's evidence was not helpful to the defence. He said that Moxley's attacks lasted a fairly short time and that he would be back working, chopping or sawing wood within half an hour. Though ‘dreamy' and ‘slowified', he performed these tasks as though he knew what he was doing. Lawrence found Moxley's kindness towards his horse and refusal to use a whip ‘peculiar' but McKean made nothing of that. When McKean asked questions about what names Moxley (whom he knew as Hudson) and Linda Fletcher used for each other, Hungerford objected and McKean did not press the point.

Hungerford called a paramedic, who had taken Moxley to hospital after he had fallen and broken his collar bone and shoulder blade, and another wood hauler. Their evidence virtually cancelled each other out: the paramedic finding Moxley normal in his reactions and the other witness describing argumentative, excitable behaviour accompanied by extravagant arm gestures and head movements. Moxley, he said, was known as ‘Dopey' at the sawmill and his behaviour could be described as ‘childish'. McKean's questioning of these witnesses was perfunctory.

Hungerford said a witness he intended to call was ill and asked for an adjournment. This was granted. At the next day's proceedings Hungerford called for Moxley's sister, but she did not appear. Two matters were dealt with before the last witness was called: the jury asked for their fees to be increased and for precise information as to the height and weight of both victims. The judge said he did not have the power to increase the fees but would recommend it, and would see that the other information was supplied.

Dr Edward Spencer Holloway, visiting medical officer for Long Bay Gaol, testified that he had examined Moxley and seen him on several occasions. He had not observed him to have fits of any kind, although he complained of headaches. Hungerford questioned the doctor about the effects of syphilis on behaviour and on the brain. Holloway conceded that syphilis could induce epileptic fits and cause intermittent periods of insanity, leaving the inflicted person sane at other times. He hedged his bets, however; questioned as to whether hard work in the bush could induce fits in a person susceptible to them – but the condition be ameliorated after a period of rest and care in prison – the doctor answered, ‘Yes, I think that is a possibility. I would not state it very strongly, though.'

Then Hungerford tried, not very eloquently, to score an important point for the defence:

Q: Supposing a person's brain is affected by syphilis and is deteriorated, would you say that the excitement of a fight or hard struggle would be likely to affect the person who was suffering – I mean to affect the brain – to put him off his balance, say?

The doctor was less than forthright:

A: I suppose it would, it might do so, at all events.

McKean merely asked whether Holloway had observed Moxley exhibit abnormal traits. The doctor said he had not. The judge asked whether there was anything to indicate deterioration of the brain. The doctor said there was not.

Evidence was then given about the physical characteristics of the two victims as described earlier and arrangements were made for the jury to see Frank Wilkinson's car.

In his final statement, Hungerford told the jury that the evidence was purely circumstantial. No one had witnessed the crime. He spoke at length about the ‘horrible and revolting' violence involved: ‘I ask you on that ground whether it is possible that a person in his right senses could perpetrate such a terrible deed.' He drew the jury's attention to the evidence about Moxley's syphilis and his head wound. He pointed out the strangeness of Moxley's description of the fictitious Mumby, closely parallelling his own characteristics and suggested that Moxley was suffering from, without using the modern terms, a split or duel personality. He concluded, ‘…at the time Moxley took the lives of these young people, he was in the grip of demon madness and he was not guilty on the ground of insanity.'

McKean began with what was evidently one of his characteristically unconventional ploys. He alluded to a case in Western Australia where a murderer had dismembered his victim's bodies, but ‘the jury were not deterred from doing their duty'. Hungerford's objection to this parallel was upheld but McKean had made his point. He traversed the evidence on Moxley's behaviour and asserted that ‘no reasonable man could come to the conclusion that on this particular night he did not know what he was doing'. In a dramatic flourish, McKean pointed to Moxley and said:

Mumby sits there without a shadow of a doubt.

Percival Halse Rogers's summing up was long and detailed. He carefully outlined the intricacies of the law as it related to the crime of murder and stressed that a reasonable doubt could lead to a verdict of not guilty. He made it clear that, if the jury determined the accused had killed the two people, the only question they then had to ask related to his sanity. He then defined insanity as a condition of a person not knowing what they were doing or not knowing that what they were doing was wrong. This was known as the McNaughton rule, stemming from a 19th-century case and applied in most English-speaking countries until well into the 20th century.

Although judiciously put with an appearance of fairness, the judge's comments went a long way towards contradicting the defence case. He stated that people operated on the basis of circumstantial evidence in the normal course of their lives; he implied that the relationship between Linda Fletcher and Moxley was perhaps not as she stated and that could have a bearing on her evidence; he pointed out that no medical evidence had been produced to show that Moxley was insane and that connections between syphilis and insanity remained ‘theoretical'. This was objected to by Hungerford, and the judge modified the remark.

The Crown was not obliged to prove a motive, the judge said. Perhaps most damaging to the defence were his comments on the matter of memory. He drew the jury's attention to statements and actions by Moxley that cast doubt on his claim to have had a memory failure after the second fight with Frank Wilkinson. He quoted MacKay's evidence that Moxley had said ‘I' sorry I let you down' and suggested this could be seen as revealing a clear knowledge of what he had done.

The jury retired at 12.05 pm and returned at 3.45 with a verdict of guilty. Even given the dispatch with which criminal trials were conducted at the time, this was a very short deliberation. When asked if he had anything to say, Moxley replied, ‘Nothing.' A newspaper report said he appeared to sway slightly on hearing the verdict.

The judge said the verdict was one with which he agreed. Addressing Moxley, he said that his counsel had done everything possible in his defence, that the jury had listened to the evidence with the closest attention and that Moxley had committed ‘one of the most foul crimes ever known in this state'. He then pronounced the archaic formula.

The sentence of the court is that you, Cyril William Moxley, be taken from hence to the place from whence you came, and that on a day hereafter to be named by His Excellency the Governor and the Executive Council you be taken to the place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until you be dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

^*
A certificate from the Director General of Public Health on the results of these tests carried out on Moxley was admitted into evidence.

AFTERMATH

Underworld ‘Got' wilkinson
SMITHS WEEKLY, 30 JULY 1932

Two thousand people gathered outside the funeral parlour in City Road to witness the departure of Dorothy Denzel's coffin to Rook-wood Cemetery. Many would have been merely curious, but ‘Dorrie' Denzel had been a very popular young woman in the Hawkes-bury district and many would have remembered her winning the ‘Hawkesbury Queen' beauty contest two years earlier. At Rookwood she was buried beside Frank Wilkinson in the Independent section of the cemetery.

Hundreds of people had attended Wilkinson's funeral the day before at Rookwood. The clergyman said that the discovery of the bodies had given a measure of relief to the families, but the site was ‘a place of horror'. Wilkinson's mother and sisters had been unable to attend due to their grief but many of his workmates were present. A newspaper reported that there had been ‘pathetic scenes' at the graveside. But Wilkinson's name was to make headlines in the weeks following Moxley's committal and trial.

THE GRAVES OF FRANK WILKINSON (LEFT) AND DOROTHY DENZEL (RIGHT) AT ROOKWOOD CEMETERY

On 30 July, under the confident headline ‘GANG SENTENCE OF DEATH: UNDERWORLD “GOT” WILKINSON',
Smith's weekly
published an article alleging that Frank Wilkinson had been a criminal, a police informer, and had been executed by Moxley in revenge for his ‘snitching'. The article claimed that its truth could be vouched for in every particular: ‘It is a complete unravelling of the mystery of the dreadful Moxley murders.'

In the lurid prose characteristic of the scandal sheet, the article asserted that Wilkinson was a gangster, a member of a ‘foul breed' of criminals. His ‘gangland execution' was traced back a feud between Sydney criminals towards the end of the ‘razor gang' era when, among others, Norman Bruhn and Barney Dalton were shot and killed in separate gangland fights. According to
Smith's
Wilkinson was in the company of Dalton when he was killed and Moxley was in the company of Frank Green. Wilkinson was targeted for his attempt to blackmail associates of Green, who had been acquitted of the murder of Dalton. The paper alleged that Moxley, and other associates of Green, faced a threat of Wilkinson informing on them to the police about a number of crimes.

‘With the valour of ignorance', Wilkinson hunted for Moxley in order to extort money from him. Moxley was, in underworld parlance, ‘in smoke' but Wilkinson was permitted to locate him and demand ‘a substantial sum' of money by Tuesday 5 April. Moxley, according to this elaborate narrative, arranged to meet Wilkinson at his wood-cutting camp near the Holsworthy Army Reserve at Moorebank.

The article then went on to reconstruct the murders in detail on the basis of a confession made by Moxley after his trial. Wilkinson drove to the camp, left Dorothy Denzel in the car and accosted Moxley, who said he couldn't raise the money. Wilkinson issued his threat and Moxley shot him twice. The noise of the shots brought a scream from Dorothy Denzel, who ran to the camp and attacked Moxley; he knocked her unconscious, stripped and raped her - ‘a ghastly interlude', as the journalist euphemistically put it, ‘on which medical evidence was given'.

Following this, Moxley heaved Wilkinson into the car and tied Dorothy to a tree, using strips torn from a rug he found in Wilkinson's car. He drove the corpse to a spot he had selected beforehand, dug a shallow grave and dumped it. The reconstruction continues with Moxley forcing Dorothy to accompany him when he steals petrol, ‘thus weaving the hempen rope around his neck'. Dorothy attacks him again and he kills her and buries her in the bush. He returns to the city and reports to the gangsters whose instructions he was carrying out, but they are unable or unwilling to help him and he is forced to hide in the bush.

Some speculation followed. ‘Did Wilkinson suspect that a trap was laid for him by Moxley' and take Dorothy along as a form of protection from violence? Continuing to quote from a statement allegedly made by Moxley, in which he would have postponed the killing for another day had he known Wilkinson was not alone, the article endorses this speculation. Further, Moxley is quoted as saying that the disposal of the woman was necessary to ensure his own safety. Aware of someone escaping punishment by the use of a ‘mental alibi', Moxley believed that by killing Dorothy he could ‘make a good alibi that would clear me'. The article concluded:

Her faith in Wilkinson, loyalty to a friend, the blind wrath of outraged womanhood, that all but incredible courage on that appalling night in the bush, these brought Dorothy Denzel to her dreadful grave. But her spirit still fights in a dauntless duel with the murderer until the bell shall toll finis to the final chapter.

In a somewhat contradictory sidebar to the main story, the unsigned
smith's Weekly
article alleged that Frank Wilkinson was involved in the Mudgee mail robbery in 1930. Masked and armed men held up a train at the foot of the Blue Mountains and escaped with £8000 in cash. ‘In gangland it is asserted that Frank Wilkinson drove the car which conveyed the robbers to Penrith.' The item goes on to claim that it was informing on this case that caused the death sentence to be carried out on Wilkinson.

The article raised a storm of protest from the police, from Frank Wilkinson's father and others. Sydney's
Daily Telegraph
, the
sydney morning Herald
and the
Labour Daily
poured scorn on the article. It was reported that Alexander Wilkinson, Frank's father, had interviewed the Minister for Justice to protest about the slandering of his son. Ike Harvey and Joseph Dudley Prendergast, mentioned in the original article as criminals, took out writs against
Smith's
for £1000 and £2000 respectively.

Smith's
editorialised in an issue the following week that the story was based on an affidavit sworn by Harold Roach, a former police officer, who claimed to have used Wilkinson as an informant and to have sources within Sydney's criminal fraternity. It was ‘unthinkable', the paper asserted, that such a solemnly sworn testimony could be false and Roach was prepared to be examined on it in the most minute detail.
Smith's
called, as it had done many times before, for a full enquiry into Sydney's notorious underworld. The paper had received offers of corroboration from people asking for money and from underworld figures but, striking a high moral tone, it had chosen not to use information tainted in this way.

Roach's sworn statement began with the claim that he had met Wilkinson three years before in Romano's café at a supper dance in the company of Barney Dalton, a known criminal. Dalton had introduced Wilkinson as a friend and on a subsequent occasion Wilkinson said he had information that could be useful and Roach had taken him up on the offer.

Astonishingly, this follow-up article stated that it did not intend to blacken the character of the murdered man. It is almost as though the writer of the second article had not read the first. It also took a new tack, asserting that its object was to provide a motive to explain what was apparently a motiveless, horrible crime.

On 6 August
Smith's
recanted, the headline reading
SMITH'S
CLEARS WILKINSON…PROSECUTION FOR FALSE SWEARING TO BE LAUNCHED'. In an extraordinary climb-down, the article began: ‘Frank Barnby Wilkinson was an honest, law-abiding citizen…' Following information supplied by the Chief Secretary, and although the initial claim was that his credentials had been ‘thoroughly examined', Roach was now discredited as a person who had been dismissed from the police force; Roach had apparently improperly disposed of items of evidence.
Smith's
resolved to prosecute Roach vigorously for having sworn a false statement.

Roach's story was such an obvious fabrication that it is difficult to understand why he conceived it or why
Smith's
published it. Independent witnesses testified to the presence of Frank Wilkinson's car in Strathfield on the night of the murder. Wilkinson was shot once, not twice, and there was no evidence that Dorothy Denzel had been tied to a tree.

William Cyril Moxley was a small-time thief and his association with more serious criminals was some years in the past. Roach made a glaring mistake in naming Joseph Dudley Prendergast as a criminal who had been shot and killed by notorious brothel-owner Kate Leigh. That had happened in 1930 but the dead man was ‘Snowy' Prendergast, quite a different person. It is scarcely surprising that Joseph Dudley took out a substantial writ. Further, neither Moxley nor Wilkinson was present when Dalton was shot in 1929, as any check with the police would have revealed.

It is also difficult to understand why
Smith's
accepted Roach's account as factual and why it printed the article using such expressions as ‘an unequivocal answer' to describe the narrative and ‘double-dealer' to describe Wilkinson.
Smith's
was not known for its strict adherence to fact. The hectic prose it employed always leaned towards exaggeration and embroidery, but in this case its judgment was seriously flawed and caused the paper harm. Such was the public revulsion at Moxley's crime that any slur on the character of the victims was bound to be badly received. In the years that followed,
Smith's
reporters often found difficulty in getting interviews and the paper increasingly struggled to get cooperation from its chief sources: the police, sporting figures and those on the criminal fringe. Its credibility, never high, suffered and its readership steadily declined until the paper died in 1950.