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  According to Jacqui’s mother, Hennie Mertens, Ramchen beat her daughter. Eight months before she disappeared, Jacqui drove to her parents’ Phillip Island home. ‘She was all bruised and her hair was all over the place, she had scratches on the face and bruises on her arms.’

  Jacqui’s father, Josephus Mertens, had not liked Ramchen from their first meeting. His feelings grew to hatred and he refused to visit the Domain Road mansion.

  He said he had suspected his daughter was the victim of violence for at least three years but Jacqui continued to claim she had ‘walked into a door or things like that’.

  He said she came to their home with bruises on her back, legs and scratches on her face and a ‘big bald patch on her head where her hair had been pulled out’. She then finally told her father she had been beaten by her husband.

  ‘We tried to get Jacqui to leave Victor and to come and live at home but she would not leave,’ Josephus said.

  Ramchen would later admit to police that eight months before she disappeared, ‘I grabbed her by the hair … yes, there could have had some scratches.’

  She complained to her doctor that her husband had beaten her but, as a magistrate’s court would later hear, there was no independent evidence that Ramchen routinely beat his wife, although there was no argument that she often suffered from bruises and scratches.

  For months, Ramchen believed his wife was having affairs; it would appear that at times she had baited the older man – first suggesting, then denying that she had a string of mystery lovers.

  His fears and anger increased when she had breast enlargement surgery. ‘I mean, who are you doing this for? … Who you gonna show your bloody boobs to?’ he reportedly asked her.

  He would tell police his suspicions grew when ‘she started buying lacy lingerie … I could not believe she was buying it for my benefit’.

  He would later declare, ‘She had the morals of an alley cat.’

  Ramchen’s concerns over his wife’s fidelity were justified. She did have a fling with the father of another child at school a man she admitted to friends she actively pursued and seduced.

  GARY Forrester, a barrister from St Kilda, had separated from his wife and would arrive at school around 3pm to pick up his children. He was one of the only males in the yard.

  ‘Jacqui approached me and asked if I wanted to have a coffee at the school.’ He agreed to coffee. The former model was used to getting what she wanted.

  ‘Jacqui then asked if I was living by myself and asked if I wanted her to visit me sometimes.’

  They had a brief affair but it was never going to last.

  According to Forrester, he started to get threatening phone calls in August, 1991. ‘I remember on one occasion he stated to me, “You’ve heard the expression ‘dead meat’ – well, that’s what you’re going to be”.’

  In one call, Victor suggested they meet and talk about it ‘man to man’ but the barrister declined the offer.

  Forrester continued to deny the affair. In one call he said the man he believed was Ramchen said, ‘You’re lying to me, you mongrel. I’m going to fix you. You’re dead meat. You had better get back to America and stay there, you’re finished here. I’ll kill you.’

  Ramchen drove to Forrester’s St Kilda house and took his nine-year-old son Lev with him. The boy was being dragged into the black hole of his parents’ mutual hatred.

  According to Forrester, the angry husband said in front of Lev, ‘What am I going to tell this kid? You’ve been out f his mother.’

  Forrester broke off all contact with Jacqui.

  At a chance meeting when he saw Ramchen in the school yard he tried to engage him in a neutral conversation but Victor responded, ‘You’ll pay for this.’ Even after Jacqui disappeared the cold war continued. Forrester said that in late July Ramchen said, ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ At another chance meeting he called the barrister ‘scum’.

  He contacted Forrester’s estranged wife, who said later: ‘Vic was saying that he had friends in the Mafia and he had plenty of money but he wouldn’t do anything yet and his friends said they could have Gary and Jacqui put in the bottom of the sea.’

  What made it even stranger was that the ex-wife was a Melbourne magistrate – not the type of person usually taken into confidence over murder plans.

  Late in 1991, Ramchen saw the magistrate again. ‘He said that he had forgiven Gary but he had not forgiven Jacqui … I felt that Victor was a vindictive person.’

  Her concerns grew when in February, 1992, she saw Ramchen at the school. ‘I noticed that Victor was hiding behind a fence … I saw Jacqui nearby and felt that Victor was watching her.’

  Forrester was not the only man to receive threats. Jacqui’s dentist, Dr Larry Benge, said he received three phone calls at his Knox surgery accusing him of having an affair with his patient.

  He then received four phone calls at home before changing his number to a silent line.

  But the tragedy was broader than a betrayed husband and a missing wife. According to Forrester, three months after Jacqui went missing he was confronted by Lev in the school. The boy ‘came up to me and said “Just you wait until I get bigger and I’ll fix you up”.’

  IT was a wet night on April 8, 1992, and only half the women in the adult education class at Prahran TAFE turned up for the three-hour millinery course. It was that night that Jacqui decided to ‘hold court’. About six woman crowded around in a semi-circle while Ramchen sat in the middle, legs crossed. ‘She basically announced that she was going to tell us her life story,’ one recalled.

  The story was one of showbusiness, fame, glamour, sex, violence, betrayal, adultery, greed and intrigue. They were enthralled.

  One of the students, Debra Elliott, told police, ‘We all suggested to her that if her husband was that bad she should leave him, but she said no because if she did that she would never see her kids again.

  ‘Jacqui said that she had an affair with one of the fathers from the school where her kids went to … she took a fancy to him.’

  Another student, Jane Stevens, said Ramchen told the group her husband beat her and trapped her in the house. ‘She wanted to have an affair and she told us that she had one with a lawyer. She admitted that she had instigated it. She told us that she had eyed off this guy whilst collecting the children. She went to bed with him a couple of times but the affair didn’t last long.’

  Julie Costello recalls being shocked by the rambling monologue. ‘She said, “I don’t care what happens to me now … I don’t care if he kills me”.’

  Two days later she disappeared.

  At 8.30am on April 10, 1992, Jacqui Ramchen drove her children to school in Punt Road, South Yarra, in her blue BMW. The school insists a parent or carer sign the attendance book and sign again when picking up children.

  Jacqui signed the book when she dropped them off and was designated to pick them up. Yet it was Vic who collected them at 2.50pm that day – 10 minutes early. There was no sign of Jacqui.

  The school had not been notified of the change of arrangements as was required. But it was a minor breach of the rules and no one worried – at the time.

  Jacqui’s tiny circle of friends revolved around the school. She had become the subject of real concern and idle gossip among many of the mothers in the school yard.

  But it was the last day of term one and it would be two weeks before anyone at school would notice she was gone – and it would be five weeks before she was reported missing.

  Hennie Mertens, who knew the relationship between her daughter and son-in-law was destructive, said she received a phone call at her Phillip Island home on April 5 and could hear Vic in the background being typically abusive.

  Jacqui said she would ring back on her mother’s birthday on April 12 and would come down to the island with the children on the second week of the holidays.

  She was not to hear from her daughter again.

  She repeatedly tried to ring Jacqui but the phone was alw
ays engaged. She knew that Vic often took the phone off the hook when he didn’t want to be disturbed. So concerned was she about her daughter’s state of mind, she started to ring psychiatric hospitals to see if she had been admitted.

  Mothers at the school started to talk when Vic brought the children to school. One said she was frightened to approach the man with the notorious temper.

  Finally, two weeks into the second term, one asked about Jacqui and Ramchen responded: ‘She’s gone and I don’t care if I never see her again.’

  One mother, Anne Dutton, still remembers her response: ‘My words were, “Oh my God, I hope he hasn’t done away with her”.’

  On May 11 or 12 Hennie Mertens rang Vic’s mother, Anna Ramchen, who told her to go to Vic’s house. When she went to Fairbairn, Ramchen said, ‘Well, she left me.’ Mrs Mertens spoke to Sister Kennan, the nun who reported Jacqui missing to the Prahran police.

  When the investigation began, the mother of three had been missing 38 days and the trail was already cold.

  On May 18, 1992, Sergeant Elizabeth Batten and Constable Wayne Treloar went to the mansion to make inquiries about Jacqui Ramchen’s disappearance.

  They found the front gates were chained and padlocked. They had to scale the two-metre fence. They told Ramchen his wife had been reported missing. He responded she had left him and ‘was really just a slut’.

  When he was asked why he hadn’t bothered to report her disappearance he said, ‘I wasn’t too concerned because I believe that she has run off with whoever, like some little tramp, and I did not even consider that there was any need to be worried about her safety.’

  Police took a statement from nine-year-old son Lev Ramchen. It is an extraordinary and tragic document from a gifted boy who lost his childhood due to his parents’ obsessions.

  ‘Jacqui is my natural mother. I do not love my mother because I cannot love someone who was destroying the family … According to her, she started the affair in September, 1991. We believe the affair started earlier. When I say we, I mean my father and I. My father said he would not forget what Gary Forrester had done to the family.

  ‘When we realised she was gone, my father was not really upset. He did not really care. He had started not to care whether she stayed or left about two weeks before she left.’

  Ten years later, Lev, one of the top VCE students in the state and enrolled in law at Melbourne University, was called by the defence at his father’s murder committal. ‘It’s not entirely clear, then or now, where she is or what happened to her,’ he told the court.

  JUST before Jacqui Ramchen went missing Ramchen’s property empire was crumbling. He was pouring money into his home, which, like his marriage, was just a shell.

  When police searched the house in 1992 they found the front entrance area could have been a cover shot from Vogue, furnished with exquisite antiques and period pieces. The rest of the ground floor was functional but upstairs was ‘very poor’ with empty rooms and mattresses strewn on the floor.

  His Woodend property, Macedon Grange, with its expensive bluestone homestead, was put on the market in 1988 but no one would pay the asking price of $1.4 million.

  The property crash, coupled with high interest rates, left Ramchen dangerously exposed. According to a police financial profile, his gross rental income was around $382,000 from shops in Northcote and Gisborne but his interest bill from the Commonwealth Bank was $416,000.

  He bought the Domain Road house in late 1988 at the height of the property peak at around $2.8 million but within four years values in South Yarra and Toorak had been slashed.

  According to a police analysis, the value of the house had dropped by at least $1 million by 1992. But interest rates were still crippling.

  Five weeks before Jacqui disappeared, the Commonwealth Bank had sent Ramchen a letter demanding the repayment of a $3.1 million loan. If his wife had divorced him and demanded $1.5 million he may have been forced to sell all his property at the bottom of the cycle.

  A family law court lawyer said if the Ramchens had become involved in a bitter divorce, legal fees could have been up to $300,000.

  Two months before she disappeared, Jacqui told her mother she had started divorce proceedings and would be free in eight months. She had moved into the back of the mansion and, though they lived under the one roof, they were technically separated.

  She told friends that Vic would use ‘every cent’ to fight a custody battle over the children.

  Ramchen would later tell police his wife said, ‘I want a divorce,’ and he responded ‘It’s not that bloody simple. We’ve got three kids, you know. We’ve got a bad economy, you know, there’s properties.’

  Vic didn’t trust his wife and yet when she disappeared he made no efforts to find her. Jacqui married for money, a house and for children, yet she walked out on all three.

  According to police, she had access to five family and business accounts and up to $350,000, yet there is no record of her trying to withdraw any money or of her husband bothering to inquire if any of the money was missing.

  He either knew she wouldn’t move on the cash or he was beyond caring.

  Vic Ramchen’s finances slowly recovered. By 2002, Fairbairn was estimated to be worth around $4 million. Real estate experts say the Macedon homestead’s market value was around $1 million after four small lots from the property had been sold for about $320,000.

  The day Jacqui went missing Vic left his children with his mother and went with a friend to Macedon Grange. The next day he returned and took his children out for a Chinese meal, showing little concern that his wife was gone, even though her BMW was still parked in the drive.

  Within a few weeks the mysteries surrounding the Ramchens spread to their country property with reports of two unexplained burglaries.

  The first break-in was alleged to have occurred between April 24 and May 1, 1992 – but police found little sense in the crime.

  The thieves gained access to the house by jemmying a wooden side door. It was strange because the point of entry was visible from the road, even though there were obvious access points away from public view.

  The burglars showed uncharacteristic consideration, choosing the point of entry that caused the least damage to the property.

  The thieves also appeared to know what they wanted. There was no ransacking of the house, and no apparent search for valuables. They stole a large woollen rug, three smaller rugs and a small colour television.

  The large rug was under a solid coffee table which would have taken two strong people to move, yet the value of the rug was not substantial.

  Police at the scene wondered why the thieves would ignore valuables to take the rug. They have concluded the rug must have been important to someone.

  In mid-July, thieves broke into the property again. This time they used bolt cutters to cut a padlock before breaking into a machinery shed.

  They took some of Jacqui’s perfumes and an antique table that was one of her favourites. Vic said he believed one of Jacqui’s lovers was behind the theft but police say if she had wanted her gear she had a key. Nothing else was taken. The thieves had to walk past valuables to get the smaller items.

  POLICE spent years trying to find out what happened to Jacqui Ramchen. They searched Fairbairn, the Woodend property and a bird-watching area near Werribee frequented by the family and found nothing. They even used radar to check under a concrete floor at Fairbairn.

  Few people, no matter how desperate or cunning, can disappear without leaving electronic footprints through interlinked computers.

  Police checked credit cards, Medicare, immigration, change of name records, taxation, social security, births, deaths and marriages, and road traffic authorities. They found Jacqui Ramchen’s licence had lapsed and she had not tried to get money from any of the family bank accounts.

  The woman who claimed to love her children and money apparently walked out on both.

  Police had motive and opportunity. What they lacked was
a body. They would have to prove not only who did it but that it was done at all.

  Homicide squad detectives prepared a brief of evidence and lawyers from the Office of Public Prosecutions agreed there was sufficient evidence to justify charging Victor Ramchen with murder.

  The OPP’s established standard is that the evidence to be presented before a jury would support a ‘reasonable prospect of conviction’. But it was always going to a high-risk prosecution. Without a body, murder is notoriously difficult to prove.

  On July 27, 2001, Detective Senior Sergeant Bezzina finally arrested Ramchen. The suspect didn’t see it coming. ‘I’m shocked. I mean I can’t see the basis for these charges,’ he protested.

  Asked if he wanted to say anything he responded, ‘Not at this stage, there will be plenty said later, obviously.’

  And there was.

  The committal hearing took eight expensive days. Ramchen had a top legal team expertly led by Robert Richter, QC, the silk department silk who includes controversial businessman John Elliott and ATSIC leader Geoff Clark among his high-profile clients.

  Witnesses swore that Jacqui would never leave her children and always contacted her family on birthdays, anniversaries and special events. They said they were convinced she was dead.

  But others said she discussed ‘vanishing without trace’ into Asia.

  One witness, Dr Elizabeth Farrell, said, ‘She told me that she was leaving. When she told me that I had the feeling that she was leaving without the children.’ Another said Jacqui told her: ‘If I had to disappear, I could.’

  Richter argued that the Crown could not prove that the o missing woman had not deliberately disappeared – or had fled and met her death at the hands of someone other than her husband.

  On March 14, 2002, Magistrate Kim Parkinson found there was insufficient evidence to present Ramchen before a Supreme Court jury on the charge of murder. He was released.

  Police had to pay his legal costs of almost $180,000. But, after the hearing, Ramchen, 61, was a much less imposing figure. Soon after he was acquitted, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.