Mothers Who Murder (12 page)

By September Pfitzner’s own psychological health was obviously suffering. Rachel openly expressed that she did not see Dean as her son. This feeling was manifest into action in late September 2007, and on the 24th Pfitzner contacted her solicitors and told them she would comply with any recovery order made by the court. Rachel later told police that she did this after hearing that Paul Shillingsworth had threatened her life. This was a message Paul allegedly passed to Rachel via a family member, stating that if he found Pfitzner he was going to kill her. This could have led to her call to her solicitors, though we can’t forget her deteriorating feelings towards Dean in the weeks and months leading up to this.

According to her caseworker, who talked to Rachel on 25 September, she said she wanted to give Dean back to his paternal grandmother (Coffey) because she was not coping. She repeated this request on 3 October, asking when the police could pick Dean up. At this time, she said she could not stand Dean because he reminded her of his father, Paul Shillingsworth, and that she wanted him gone as soon as possible. If Pfitzner was telling the truth, and not being paranoid, then perhaps Paul Shillingsworth’s threat was part of this. If she had returned to court on a specific day, for a case involving his mother, she would not have been hard to find. Did fear drive this act? And was that fear ever real?

On 28 September, the Family Court opened its hearing in regards to Dean’s custody. However, Coffey’s solicitor requested an adjournment as Ann required urgent medical treatment. The application for recovery of Dean was postponed. However, it was recognised that Dean was in an unstable environment, so the court agreed to accelerate the next hearing, and adjourned until 11 October 2007. Pfitzner did try to get Dean taken away as she called the Federal Magistrates Court a number of times, saying she didn’t want to go back to court and asking when someone could collect Dean. Was this a sign that she knew she could hurt him?

In late September, Pfitzner’s parole officer visited and was concerned by Dean’s apparent poor health. Pfitzner told the officer that, because of threats made by Paul Shillingsworth, Dean was going back to live with Coffey and that she had withdrawn from the custody proceedings.

On 28 September, Pfitzner’s caseworker visited the family and recorded that the mother was stressed, having rung the court to find out when someone would be collecting Dean. Pfitzner said she just wanted someone to come and take Dean back to Coffey. Rachel’s caseworker recognised the danger now. She noted in her report that she was not happy with the way Dean was being treated and added to her notes that Dean’s recovery should take place as soon as possible, stating that Pfitzner ‘just can’t stand him’. The caseworker suggested Rachel contact Coffey’s solicitor to arrange a handover. In a file note made after Dean’s death, the caseworker had asked if Pfitzner thought she might harm Dean, to which Pfitzner replied no. The family caseworker rang Pfitzner the following day to ask if she planned to attend a picnic arranged for the following week. No other topics
were noted as having been discussed and no further contact occurred between the caseworker and Pfitzner during the next week as the caseworker was attending a training program. Although it’s not possible to know, I wonder whether Rachel had been successfully hiding her abuse of Dean at the beginning, which to me would indicate that she knew it was wrong. At this stage, perhaps it was just too obvious to hide, the bruises too clear or too numerous.

We are now in the critical final days of Dean’s short life. Pfitzner failed to keep her counselling appointment, arranged for early October. She told the person who had organised it that this was because she had decided to return Dean to his grandmother due to the fact that Paul Shillingsworth had been released from prison. Around this time Rachel spoke to her mother, who offered to take the child. Rachel did not take her up on this offer. She claimed – and most of her actions supported this – that she wanted Dean taken away, yet she did not take the offer when it was made. Was control an issue here?

A recovery order was made by the Family Court when the custody case was recalled on 11 October 2007, without the parties being present, authorising the police and/or child recovery officers to recover Dean and return him to his grandmother. It was too late. That morning, Rachel Pfitzner walked to Ms Daley’s house with Dean and his brother B. Dean had been warned not to eat anything while they were there. While on this visit, Rachel tried to call the court to find out what had happened, to see if a recovery order had been made. Rachel didn’t get an answer, as it was against court policy to give information over the phone, but she must have presumed that the order had been sanctioned as she wasn’t fighting it.

Rachel, Dean and B weren’t the only visitors at Ms Daley’s house; Ms Daley’s brother and her partner, who had brought some food from McDonald’s, were also there. When one of the men noticed Dean seemed hungry he kindly gave him a burger. Dean accepted, and when Rachel saw him eating she flew into a rage. She took the food off him and took the children home. Ms Daley remembers that on this day, Dean was already showing signs of physical abuse – his face and arms were bruised and scratched. Ms Daley and her guests were the last people to see Dean alive. Rachel murdered Dean soon after they arrived home.

On 15 October the caseworker met with her supervisor and raised concerns she had noted during her contact with Pfitzner almost two weeks earlier. The supervisor ordered that the caseworker visit Pfitzner immediately and told her to take Dean to DoCS. The caseworker followed part of these instructions in that she called Pfitzner, who said that she had decided to wait for court arrangements to recover Dean. The caseworker recorded that Pfitzner said that Dean had been good and she wasn’t as stressed as she had been, that she was managing. The worker delayed the visit, arranging to attend Pfitzner’s home on 22 October. The visit never happened; Pfitzner was charged with Dean’s murder on 20 October 2007. After all of this, DoCS lodged an application for an emergency care and protection order with the Children’s Court for Dean’s siblings, both of whom were taken into care until they turn eighteen.

THE INVESTIGATION

It is very difficult to know what that final straw was, but in all probability it was the imminent removal of Dean that
tipped Rachel over the edge. The final moments of Dean’s life have to be pieced together from Rachel’s comments, including those made during the formal police interview she gave. It appears that when they got home Pfitzner needed some space from Dean, as she was having ‘bad memories coming into her head’. According to a statement Rachel later made to Dr Olav Nielssen, a psychiatrist engaged by the defence, she kept telling Dean to go outside and play, but he wouldn’t go. That’s when she ‘lost it’ with him. She claimed during the interview not to remember strangling or suffocating Dean.

At around 12 pm Pfitzner went back to Ms Daley’s house, this time with T and B, but without Dean. She was visibly upset and was crying. To explain her emotion, she told Ms Daley that she had felt compelled to take Dean to the Department of Community Services in Campbelltown and had left him there. She said she’d attached a note. Rachel was still crying when Mr Connors got home at 4 pm; he was given the same story to explain why Dean was not with them, as were a number of other people in the days that followed. But when Rachel spoke to her caseworker on 15 October, four days after she had strangled Dean, she told a different lie, saying that she had kept Dean with her and that everything was going well, adding that Dean had been good and that she wasn’t stressed and was managing.

On 17 October a group of children found the suitcase containing Dean’s decomposing body floating in a public pond. By the time his body was found, Dean had been dead for six days. The combination of the warm weather in Sydney in October and the water meant that Dean’s body would have been fairly decomposed before it was
analysed. As a result, in the early days of the investigation into the body in the suitcase, the police had difficulty identifying the remains, as initially it was thought that they belonged to a boy aged between four and seven years. The police would have initiated a review of the missing persons’ register, to look for potential candidates fitting the profile of the body. Of course, Dean’s name would not have come up against the details given, as he was much younger than the biological profile suggested, at just two years and eight months.

Simultaneously, a police investigation was also taking place into Dean’s whereabouts. On 18 October, a week after the recovery order was granted, the police went to Rachel’s home three times to execute the order. On every occasion, Rachel maintained her story that she had dropped Dean off at the Department of Community Services in Campbelltown. Although the police searched the house, no sign of Dean was found. The police followed up on Rachel’s story and found that it was untrue – that Dean was not in care – and they urgently set about trying to locate him.

In the early hours of the 19 October, the police interviewed Mr Connors. He confirmed what Rachel had told her caseworker about the time Dean had spent with them – that things were okay to start with, but after a while Pfitzner began mistreating Dean. According to Connors, Rachel treated Dean’s two siblings well, but he stated that Dean was terrified of his mother. But Connors was unable to help find Dean, as Pfitzner had told him the same story as the police, so as far as he knew Dean was with social services.

By this stage it had been determined that the unidentified body found in the duck pond was Dean. Officers arrested
Rachel Pfitzner for Dean’s murder on 20 October 2007. When interviewed, she claimed that his death had been an accident. In a quote taken from the court documents, Pfitzner claimed that she picked Dean up by his jumper and shook him, that she lost control. She demonstrated how it happened to the officers, using a one-handed grip in front of the throat. She said she tried but couldn’t stop herself – even walking away only to return and resume shaking him. The whole incident lasted somewhere between two and five minutes; she couldn’t be sure how long or how much force she’d used. Pfitzner told the interviewing officers how Dean had made a strange gurgling sound and was gasping for breath. After the second episode of shaking, she either pushed or threw Dean to the ground. Pfitzner said he fell on the back of his head and again made more gurgling sounds. It was at this stage that she realised he was seriously injured, so she commenced CPR, trying to resuscitate him. After about ten minutes, Pfitzner stopped administering CPR and felt his heart, stating that initially it was going very fast, but then it stopped, and that Dean had froth coming out of his mouth. Pfitzner knew at this time that Dean was dead. She also told the officers that he had wet himself.

After it was all over she took Dean’s lifeless body upstairs, where she undressed him before placing him in a plastic bag and then in the suitcase. To move Dean’s body, she put the suitcase in a pram and took him to the duck pond where she threw the suitcase into the water. She waited for the suitcase to disappear from view and then went home. Pfitzner was charged with Dean’s murder and remanded in custody.

Rachel and her mother spoke the next day (21 October), while Rachel was held in custody; she was then moved
to Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre, Sydney. Pfitzner told her mother that she had strangled Dean – a different version of events from the one reported to the police – and when her mother asked why she had told the police that she had shaken Dean to death, there was no answer. The police decided to secretly monitor Rachel’s communications, and eleven days later recorded another conversation between Rachel and her mother. During this taped exchange, she confirmed what she had told the police during interview – that she picked Dean up by his jumper and that she pushed him to the ground, whereupon he started frothing at the mouth and his heart stopped. When Pfitzner’s mother asked if she was ‘in a rage’ when it happened, Rachel responded that she felt intimidated. She also told her mother that she had begged the Federal Magistrates Court to process the recovery order to take Dean away. Although she lied to numerous people and told them she had surrendered Dean to social services, she told her mum that she had decided against this as she was concerned that if she had they would have taken her other children too.

RACHEL’S PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE AT THE TIME OF DEAN’S DEATH

In my opinion, Rachel could be argued to have an addictive personality – although the very existence of this as a personality type is still hotly debated – which many scientists believe can be characterised by the disproportionate, recurring use of pleasurable activities to cope with internal conflict, pressure or stress. There are two main forms of addiction: one is substance-based, the other behaviour-based. The causes of addictive personality are
varied, and one of the trigger factors is thought to be the psychological stress resultant from someone feeling socially isolated. This can be compounded by a lack of coping skills, as seen in Rachel’s earlier life, and cognitive distortions when people feel inferior and unworthy; they are often vulnerable to depression and emotional insecurity. People with this type of addictive personality disorder often act on impulse and struggle to control their stress levels. Again, these are traits seen in Rachel’s early behaviour as a child and teenager, as well as in her adult life.

In none of the psychiatrists’ or psychologists’ comments I’ve seen, nor anywhere in the court documents, does anyone mention the possibility that Pfitzner suffered from an addictive personality disorder. However, even though no one has yet succeeded in substantiating the existence of a true ‘addictive personality’, if we are going to consider all of the potential ‘why’s, it cannot be ignored as potentially having an influence over Rachel’s actions. Experts think that the tendency to dependence is more accurately a combination of biological, psychological and environmental factors. Therefore, I have to wonder – did all of these come together in Rachel Pfitzner to create an addictive personality? If Rachel is or was suffering from an addictive personality, at its most basic level addiction is the desire – the need – to take control and fulfil a sense of emptiness and unhappiness. And did that personality become addicted to the idea of hating and fearing Paul Shillingsworth? Did that progress to the point where she could no longer see her son as Dean, a separate person, a little boy who needed protection, and instead, by torturing Dean, she gained a means to control that hatred and fear?