Debi Marshall is a freelance journalist and author based in Tasmania. She writes extensively for national magazines, specialising in crime, and is an experienced radio and television reporter. A qualified teacher (BA, Dip Ed), Debi also teaches Media and English at college and university.
Also by Debi Marshall
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Justice in Jeopardy
ePub ISBN 9781742745558
Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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First published by Random House Australia 2005
Copyright © Debi Marshall 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Marshall, Debi.
Justice in Jeopardy.
ISBN 1 74051 338 X.
ISBN 9781742745558
1. Carroll, Raymond John. 2. Kennedy, Deidre. 3. Murder - Australia - Case studies. 4. Victims of crime - Australia. 5. Children - Crimes against - Australia. I. Title.
364.1523
Cover design by Darian Causby/Highway 51
For two very special women:
my daughter, Louise, and mother, Monica
In memory of Deidre
‘Delay of justice is injustice.’
Walter Landor 1775-1864
Contents
Cover
Title Page
About the Author
Also by Debi Marshall
Copyright Page
Imprint Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Part One
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Two
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part Three
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part Four
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Part Five
Chapter 45
Part Six
Chapter 46
Part Seven
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Picture Section
Preface
I first read the story of Deidre Kennedy in the Australian newspaper, in early 2003. Overwhelmingly moved by it, I contacted Deidre’s mother, Faye Kennedy, with a view to writing a feature article. Tired and emotional, Faye politely declined and I agreed to wait 12 months before I contacted her again.
In February 2004, Faye agreed to an interview with me for a national magazine. On a sweltering 44-degree day in Ipswich, the Queensland city where her daughter had been murdered 31 years before, we met for the first time. Despite the intense heat, she was dignified and poised but also still raw with grief, shaken by events and determined that her daughter’s death would not be in vain.
It was during this interview that Faye agreed to cooperate with me and tell her family’s side of the story in a book. In doing so, she knew she would have to re-open all the wounds and re-visit a tragedy that was so traumatic it was a miracle she ever recovered.
Sometimes words fail you. Sometimes there is nothing that can be said to help cross the divide of a mother’s agony. And so it was this day, and in the interviews that followed.
Hounded by the press for more than two decades and heeding legal advice to say nothing, neither Raymond John Carroll – the man accused of Deidre’s murder but acquitted of all charges he has faced in relation to the Kennedy case – nor any member of his family would talk to the media. Here, for the first time, is their side of the story. The story of Raymond Carroll. His third wife, Marilyn. His sister Sandra and her former husband, Roger. His widowed mother, Ilma. Each has kept their silence for more than 20 years until now.
All recollections or thoughts from Raymond Carroll or a family member not written in quotations have been taken directly from the taped, face-to-face interview I had with them or from phone interviews.
All narrative is taken directly from taped interviews, court transcripts or press reports. The only exceptions to this are when I have recreated scenes using information gained from interviews with police, lawyers and/or journalists who covered the court cases and dealt with the Kennedy or Carroll families. These recreations are a faithful word portrait of what was told to me and include a recreation of the killer’s movements before and after Deidre’s abduction. They also include events, emotions and atmosphere during the trials and appeals. All psychological profiling and sections including sexual fetishism and psychopathic make-up are the results of interviews with both a forensic psychiatrist and criminologist. Some interviews, of necessity, have been edited for length or repetition, but all use the vernacular of the person speaking.
Given the harrowing subject matter, this was a sad, difficult and sometimes bewildering book to write. For reasons that still remain a mystery, some senior bureaucrats and other agencies did not cooperate with my search for material.
This story seemed relatively straightforward, at first. But beneath the tragedy of a baby’s murder, the trials and the acquittals, lurked a murky swamp that I had not anticipated. Human nature, bastardry, ego and ambition often collided with my search for truth. I should have been prepared for this. But I was not.
As a journalist for the past 20 years, covering countless crime stories, including the ‘bodies in the barrel’ serial murders in South Australia, the Port Arthur massacre and interviews with parents of scores of missing children around Australia, I thought I was prepared for what I would encounter. Again, I was not. Professionally, I kept building a brick wall as a for
tress against the terrible details, but on a personal level – as a mother – I found it impossible to keep an emotional distance. This story strikes at the heart of every parent’s fear – an innocent child the victim of a depraved paedophile, abducted, sexually abused and murdered. Every time I looked at photographs of a smiling Deidre taken before her murder, or of the savagery inflicted on her after her abduction, I cried. This was a story that seeped into my soul, and, by its conclusion, I could understand the obsession of the Kennedy family, police, lawyers, forensic experts and politicians to find out who killed baby Deidre. It had become an obsession for me, too.
I was often asked what compelled me to write such a gruesome story. How I could immerse myself, for months, in researching the intimate details of such a terrible crime. My answer was that I believe this is a story that must be told. Time will not erase the facts – that a child was murdered and that her killer has not been brought to justice. Someone knows who is responsible for Deidre’s death. Perhaps the story will trigger a memory, stir a conscience, even a death-bed confession. Perhaps the laws of double jeopardy, so long under legal scrutiny, will change in line with modern technology. And perhaps, one day, the question ‘Who killed Deidre Kennedy?’ will finally, definitively, be answered.
PART ONE
Abduction and Murder: 1973–1984
‘Closure is bullshit … the ramifications of murder go on and on and on.’
James Ellroy, ‘Feast of Death’
Prologue
‘Did you kill Deidre Kennedy?’
‘I did not.’
1
‘Right. Now it’s my turn to ask you a question.’ Raymond John Carroll has moved closer toward me. Close enough so that I can smell his cigarette breath and notice the tendrils of grey hairs that snake through the moustache covering his lips and teeth. Those teeth: Exhibit A in two Supreme Court trials, two appeals and a High Court hearing. He has fixed me with a penetrating stare. ‘Well? Now do you think I did it?’
The question has caught me off-guard and a sudden, awkward silence follows.
‘Answer me, please.’ Raymond Carroll’s voice has taken on a steely edge, more a demand than a request. He crunches the word under his tongue. Please. ‘First impressions.’
This interview has been conducted in secret, and no one but Carroll and his family know where I am. It is warm on this October 2004 late afternoon, but a sudden chill has entered the room. For the first time all day, I feel slightly uneasy. Carroll’s sister, Sandra, and his wife, Marilyn, are watching, alert as desert dingoes for my reply. I find my voice and peer up at Carroll, who is significantly taller than myself. ‘I’m not here to make a judgment.’
‘I’m not asking you to make a judgment.’
‘Yes, you are.’ My voice sounds wavery, thin as broth, and my laugh, designed to diffuse the tension, is tinny.
He will not give up. ‘I’m asking you for your impression, please. Do you think I did it?’
I shuffle self-consciously. ‘Raymond, the basis of you agreeing to talk to me was that you could terminate this interview at any time if you felt I was putting you on trial again. That was our agreement. It would be wrong of me to voice an opinion, so please don’t ask me for one. I’m not here to make a judgment.’
It is time to take my leave.
2
Overnight showers drape the city in a damp overcoat and a light squall torments autumn leaves, bullying them into sodden pockets. A McCafferty’s bus rumbles along Ipswich’s wide streets on this April 1973 morning. Past the famous limestone hills of Queensland’s oldest provincial city, poised at the crossroads to the Darling Downs and Upper Brisbane Valley; past Limestone Park and along the banks of the Bremer River. Soon, dawn will humour the sky into betraying its first crimson blush and the tired whoosh of air brakes will herald the Ipswich bus station for the passengers aboard.
Faye Kennedy rubs her eyes and rouses her two sleeping daughters, gently tousling their hair. ‘Wake up, girls. We’re here.’ After waving goodbye to Grandma on Thursday morning, five-year-old Stephanie, always a sound sleeper, had happily snuggled down for most of the 17-hour bus trip from Longreach, in the state’s parched west. But her chubby 17-month-old sister, Deidre, had been restless, climbing onto her mother’s lap, wriggling and squirming throughout the long night. She had shyly buried her face in the crook of her elbow and burrowed her mop of blonde hair into her mother’s chest when strangers had tried to amuse her in the night by playing peek-a-boo through their fingers. It had taken Faye hours to get her to sleep. Always superstitious, Faye’s mother, Freda, had warned her daughter to be off the highway and back home in Ipswich by Friday the 13th. Faye is grateful they have finally made it home.
She gathers her belongings and peers out the window to see if her husband, Barry, is waiting for them. It’s an ungodly hour of the morning to haul him out of bed – 5.30 – and there is a definite nip in the air. He has been in and out of hospital for knee surgery and is now on crutches, but he’s there as promised. At 26, he is two years older than his wife, and has the quiet affability of a bloke raised in the bush. Tall, with a hint of strawberry in his fair hair and Queensland-bronzed, he and Faye have been separated for six weeks, far too long for childhood sweethearts married six years who hate being apart. Faye taps on the window to get his attention, nudges the girls, Look, there’s Daddy. They press their faces to the glass and Barry grins back, waving.
It’s good to be home.
3
The shadows hide him. Crouching beneath the windowsill, his back ramrod straight and breath shallow. Breathing through his nose: in, out, in, out, and barely a rise in his heartbeat. No sounds in this suburban neighbourhood on the southern fringe of Ipswich city, save for canned laugher resonating from a television inside the house and an occasional car crawling along nearby kerbs. Young lovers cruising to find a place to park. Married men trawling for a quick liaison with a gay stranger.
He had passed no one as he noiselessly prowled the area, glancing up at windows shuttered against the chill of this Friday night. Friday the 13th. It had warmed to 21 degrees during the day, but the soles of his shoes are wet from the intermittent afternoon showers and his face flushed from walking – up around the empty park, cutting through backyards, dawdling the perimeters of vacant blocks. Police would later estimate the late-night excursion as somewhere between 10 and midnight. Prowling aimlessly, wandering around for hours. And now he has ended up here, loitering outside this old Queenslander with ladies’ underwear hanging on the wide veranda.
Inside the house, in his bedroom off the veranda, Cecil – known for years by his nickname ‘Nugget’– shifts his frame around the bed and grunts. His fever has broken but he still feels crook, the aftermath of a throat infection that has lasted a week. He hawks into a grubby hanky and feels the rattle of a nasty cough deep in his chest. He has been on a Totally and Permanently Incapacitated pension since 1956 and the doctor has told him to give up the fags but, at 73, he figures it’s not worth it. ‘They’ll kill you, Nugget,’ the doctor had warned. ‘That’s if the grog doesn’t get you first.’ Nugget’s teeth are the colour of mustard and dirty water and his receding hairline erupts into a shock of white hair that crowns a craggy face. He’ll be dead within a year.
Nugget hauls himself up on one elbow and feels around the bedcover for his smokes. Pushes himself up to the side of his bed, sitting in the dark, rolling a twirly. He can hear Arthur Borchert’s missus, Kathleen, and kids in the next room. It’s always noisy: if it’s not two-month-old Archie, the youngest of the brood of six, bawling for his bottle, it’s the TV blaring through his bedroom wall. Bloody thing is never turned off: ‘Hey Hey it’s Saturday’ to kick off the weekend, American soapies on weekdays and some wacky comedy at night – Graham Kennedy or Paul Hogan clowning around with his sidekick, Strop. Nugget has been boarding with the family at 14 Short Street for months. Sometimes he joins them to watch their favourite crime series, ‘Homicide’, but he mostly stays in his
room, away from the racket. The family never turns on a light in the lounge: only the flickering of the television illuminates the room.
Arthur would now be in the kitchen with his mate, drinking and playing records. Forty years old, short and plump, his beatnik hairstyle straggles to his shoulders. Nugget would normally join Arthur for a drink, but he feels too crook tonight. He had heard them come in around 7.30, crossing the front veranda that extended along both sides of the dilapidated Queenslander, clanking through the front door with their dozen takeaways of Fourex beer after a session at their local watering hole, the City View Hotel – a euphemistic name; the only view from the front bar was a greasy window discoloured with cigarette smoke.
It can get a bit noisy at this end of the house; Nugget has more than once thrown up the sash window and snarled at the kids to piss off when they played outside his bedroom, darting in and out of the washing strung up on a makeshift line on the veranda. Nappies. Shirts. Nylon stockings. Ladies’ brassieres and underwear in varying sizes, flapping in the breeze, colourful as a Chinese laundry. The house would once have been magnificent, with high ceilings, an impressively wide hallway and ornate features, but years of neglect from grungy tenants in this grungy side of town has bowed the old girl in defeat. The weatherboard needs painting and broken windowpanes fixing; cracks in the wall scream for plaster and the backyard is hidden by debris. Such a mess and a noisy household, with the TV and the kids and a constant stream of visitors, that tenants in the block of four units next door at 12 Short Street, a low-level grey cement block owned by the RAAF, sometimes complain. But nothing is ever done about it. The servicemen and women who work at Amberley RAAF base just out of Ipswich either post out to other bases or quickly move into more permanent housing. Only the bushes and overgrown shrubs that divide the boundary between the Queenslander and the units offer some semblance of privacy.