Underbelly 4 Read online

  Dupas was released again in September, 1996, and eventually moved into a house in Coanne Street, Pascoe Vale – near a shopping strip in Cumberland Road.

  Margaret Maher, a local prostitute, regularly went shopping in Cumberland Road. That is, until she was abducted and murdered in October, 1997.

  About a month later Mersina Halvagis was stabbed to death in the Fawkner Cemetery while she was visiting her grandmother’s grave. Dupas’s grandfather is buried at Fawkner in the same area.

  EVERYBODY liked Nicole Patterson. She was a psychotherapist who devoted much of her time trying to help with young people with drug problems. Those who knew her described a vibrant and compassionate young woman. Her sister, Kylie, said, ‘She was the most beautiful person I’ve known and she had a lot of special gifts that not many people have.’

  In early 1999, Ms Patterson, then twenty eight, decided to broaden her client base and converted the front bedroom of her house in Harper Street, Westgarth, into a consulting room.

  She began to advertise in local newspapers. On 3 March a man calling himself ‘Malcolm’ telephoned. Over the next five weeks he was to ring her fifteen times before he made an appointment for 19 April.

  Malcolm said he wanted to be treated for depression. He didn’t say he was a violent sex offender. Ms Patterson wrote the name ‘Malcolm’ and his mobile telephone number in her diary and circled the time of 9am on 19 April.

  Police believe Dupas knocked on the door at 9am and was ushered into the consulting room. Ms Patterson made plunger coffee and entered the room with cups, sugar and milk. Then, without warning, he attacked, stabbing her repeatedly.

  She managed to scratch his face and yell before she was overwhelmed.

  What followed was almost beyond belief in its savagery. But, despite his frenzy, Dupas’s cold-blooded instinct for self-preservation asserted itself. After the murder he searched the house for any evidence that he had been there. He missed her diary, which was under clothing on the couch in the living room.

  It would lead police to him.

  When police raided his home three days later they found the newspaper advertisement for Ms Patterson’s psychotherapy sessions with her name handwritten by Dupas on the border.

  They also found a blood-splattered jacket. DNA tests established the blood was 6.53 billion times more likely to have come from Ms Patterson ‘than from an individual female chosen at random from the Victorian Caucasian population.’ They also found a black balaclava and a front page of the Herald Sun report on the murder. The picture of Nicole Patterson had been slashed with a knife.

  The head of the investigation, Detective Senior Sergeant Jeff Maher, is used to dealing with killers, but he found Dupas unsettling. ‘He was pure evil. He was not physically intimidating but he really sent shivers up your spine.’

  Maher said Dupas refused to talk of the crime or co-operate with the investigation in any way. ‘Nothing he did was on impulse. Everything was planned in the most calculating manner.’

  FBI expert John Douglas says each serial killer has a ‘signature’ that links his murder victims. Nicole Patterson and Margaret Maher were killed in almost identical ways.

  There is also evidence to suggest a connection with the way Mersina Halvagis was killed in the Fawkner Cemetery in 1997.

  Nicole Patterson wore a silver choker-style necklace. When police found it next to her body it had been broken and repaired with sticky tape. Friends who saw Nicole the night before the murder said the necklace was then intact. Detectives believe the killer may have ripped it from her and worn it himself while he was in the house.

  Police said many of his attacks were concentrated on the breast area of his victims.

  The doctor who examined Dupas when he was arrested said he was ‘an anxious, timid-looking man wearing bifocals. I noted that he had prominent deposits over the pectors muscles which had the appearance of female breasts.’

  BILL Patterson and George Halvagis were old mates. They watched their children grow up together when they lived in Warracknabeal, in country Victoria, in the 1970s.

  But, like many families that move to big cities, they lost touch over the years. Now they are linked by a shared grief.

  Both men have had to deal with the death of a daughter. In both cases they were murdered and now, in a bizarre coincidence, it appears both women were killed by the same man.

  In August, 2000, Bill Patterson and George Halvagis sat in the public gallery of Court Four in the Supreme Court and watched as Dupas, forty seven, was convicted of killing Nicole Patterson.

  George and his wife Christina sat in the back of the court and watched most of the seven-day trial. Police were concerned the grieving couple were there to take justice into their own hands. On the last day of the trial police checked them for weapons before they were allowed into the court.

  I do not know why they would do that. We were here to support Bill and his family, not to do anything to the man who was charged,’ Mr Halvagis said later.

  ‘We were old friends and now it may be that the same animal killed our daughters.’

  If the accused man knew who was behind him he didn’t show any concern. He sat in the dock looking straight ahead. Dressed in a blue suit and a 1970s style tie, he looked composed, his hands resting on his lap.

  Only the occasional fidget with his thumbs betrayed any sign of nerves. He looked harmless enough, the sort who might be given the role of the librarian in an amateur play. But his looks belied his criminal history.

  When the jury began to file in to hear the judge’s final summary Dupas was on his feet, even before the court was asked to rise. Dupas didn’t need to be told – he knew the rules because he had been in the criminal dock many times before.

  The Patterson family sat through the whole trial. They listened to evidence about how Nicole died, about her last moments. They learned facts that grieving relatives should never have to hear.

  George Halvagis is driven man, but not a vindictive one. He says he is not looking for revenge, only justice. He too, sat through the entire trial and, like the Pattersons, he wept after the jury found Dupas guilty. The Pattersons cried because they finally knew what happened to their daughter, the Halvagises because they still don’t know for certain what happened to theirs.

  George Halvagis has one dream left. He wants the man who killed his daughter to be put in the dock in the Supreme Court and stand trial. I don’t want anyone to harm him (Dupas) in prison. I want him to live so we can find out what happened to Mersina.’

  THE police also have unfinished business and unanswered questions. They want to talk to Dupas about the murders of Mersina Halvagis and Margaret Maher.

  Homicide detectives got the court’s permission to speak to Dupas over the Halvagis murder while he was in custody but he still refused to co-operate.

  In any case, Dupas’s arrest record would indicate he is unlikely to talk. The days of heavy-handed police interviews are long gone and an investigation based on the need to gain a confession is usually flawed. Police need evidence that cannot be later recanted.

  The former head of the homicide squad, Carl Mengler, who retired as a Deputy Commissioner, believes juries should know when a suspect refuses to answer questions.

  ‘In a murder case the formal interview is video taped. Why not play it to the jury? If the suspect declines to answer questions then let the jury see it. If the police are unfair in the interview then the jury would know from watching the tape. If juries are to make decisions based on the facts then let them have all the facts, in fairness to both the defence and the prosecution.

  ‘A suspect does not have to answer questions but a jury should be aware of what they have and haven’t said.’

  WHAT makes a man evil? Peter Dupas was not beaten as a child. He did not come from a broken home. His only complaint was that he was spoiled by his elderly parents.

  Some men are driven to greatness, others can never overcome their compulsions.

  Another se
x offender, Ian Melrose Patterson, cut a nipple off one of his victims and slashed her more than 250 times. In his cell he collected pictures of Princess Di and Jana Wendt and in each picture he would cut off the nipples. He drew elaborate pictures of naked women tied up while in jail and yet he was released after serving his bare minimum sentence.

  When freed in 1992 he was found to have inoperable cancer. He had tumours in his liver, kidneys, lungs, bones and chest wall. When he was released from hospital he went straight out and bought eight bondage books and a boning knife. He told associates he intended to commit more sex crimes before he died. ‘What has been done can be done again. I have thought about it. They will have to take me out with a bullet this time,’ he said.

  He sexually assaulted a woman with a knife two weeks after he was diagnosed as terminally ill.

  When he returned to hospital he was so sick that he needed constant oxygen. Even then he wouldn’t stop, removing his mask to sexually harass the nursing staff. Eventually only male nurses would treat him. Only when he lapsed into a coma was he no longer a risk to women.

  It would be convenient to blame someone for Dupas’s life and, by extension, Nicole Patterson’s death. But no judge gave him an unrealistically light sentence and no jury ignored compelling evidence. Every time he was charged with a serious sexual offence he was convicted. The problem was, while many in authority believed he would one day kill, they appeared powerless to stop him.

  Nicole Patterson’s sister, Kylie Nicholas, said that while the family was relieved when Dupas was found guilty they still felt betrayed by a criminal justice system that freed Dupas when it was almost certain he would attack again.

  ‘Why did they let him out? I just don’t understand the system. I only hope that people listen so this never happens again.’

  AFTER being found guilty of the murder of Nicole Patterson, Peter Norris Dupas was sentenced to life in jail.

  Justice Frank Vincent told him, ‘You must, as a consequence of the commission of this terrible crime which has brought you before this court, be removed permanently from the society upon whose female members you have preyed for over thirty years.

  ‘The sentence of this court is that you be imprisoned for the rest of your natural life and without the opportunity for release on parole.’

  Justice Vincent was a criminal barrister who specialised in murder cases, he is an experienced Supreme Court Judge and chairman of the Parole Board. He has probably seen more killers than anyone in Australia.

  During his closing remarks he captured the mood of the wider public in one sentence.

  ‘At a fundamental level, as human beings, you present for us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question: How did you come to be as you are?’

  The first police report into Bennett’s murder, completed within five hours of the hit. More than twenty years later the courtroom killing remains unsolved.

  CHAPTER 2

  Well Executed

  ‘I’ve been shot in the heart.’

  THE man in the dock knows there’s a bullet out there somewhere with his name on it. But he doesn’t know it’s already in the hitman’s revolver, and there’s an itchy finger on the trigger, counting down the minutes.

  His name is Raymond Patrick Bennett, also known as Ray Chuck, and he has just stepped into the old Melbourne Magistrates Court from the holding cells.

  If he’s worried, it doesn’t show on his boxer’s face, almost handsome despite its broken nose sprinkled with freckles and the dark eyes set in a hard gaze. It’s a face that doesn’t quite match the bold check jacket with the leather elbow patches, which looks like something a jackaroo might buy in a reckless moment on a city holiday.

  At thirty one, Bennett might be the most dashing Australian crook of his generation, but a reputation like that wins enemies, and he has plenty. So many that, for seven weeks before this day, he has pointedly avoided bail, preferring the predictable discomforts of the Pentridge remand yards to his chances on the outside. He’s always been game, but not foolhardy.

  Still, he ought to feel safe here, in court, surrounded by dozens of people – including lawyers and policemen – and just across the road from Russell Street police headquarters. But he doesn’t.

  He has told his lawyer, who waits above, that he wants his wife kept away from the public areas of the court. He has taken out a huge life insurance policy, asking if the company will pay if he’s ‘shot walking down the street’. Months earlier, he sent his young son overseas to keep him out of danger. In one of the court cells reached through the door behind him is a message freshly written on the wall: RAY CHUCK, YOU WILL GET YOUR’S IN DUE COURSE YOU FUCKEN DOG.

  Everybody knows he is a target. Except, it seems, the police whose job it is to know.

  Bennett is in court for committal on armed robbery charges over a $69,000 payroll heist in Yarraville. A magistrate has to weigh the evidence to judge if he should be tried in a higher court.

  Like all prisoners in custody who have to front a magistrate, he has been brought in through the Court One dock. Committals are automatically adjourned to one of the two courts upstairs, in a double-storey extension behind the main court.

  Depending on who’s telling the story, three – or perhaps two – detectives escort Bennett past the crowded bench seats and people standing at the back of the room, and into the open courtyard for the short walk to the stairs leading to courts ten and eleven.

  By coincidence, there is a union demonstration at Trades Hall a block away and 167 officers have been called out, leaving Russell Street short of the uniformed police who usually escort prisoners. Which is why, it is later explained, two consorting squad detectives called Glare and Strang are asked to help an armed robbery detective, John Mugavin, to escort Bennett.

  As Bennett and his escort walk past, a young constable waiting to give evidence mistakes the well-dressed robber for another detective. It’s easy to see why. The dashing crook is a cut above the crowd in the court yard.

  The nineteenth century court is Dickensian, and Hogarth could draw those waiting their turn in the dock. There are pimps, prostitutes, thieves, vagrants, drunks, louts and lost souls from the seedy side of a big city – the bad, the sad and the slightly mad, all chain smoking in the court yard. Bit players in this depressing daily drama, they watch surreptitiously as Bennett the underworld star is led past, through the doors and upstairs to his fate …

  A minute later, three shots crash through the buzz of muttered conversations. There is a clatter of footsteps in the sudden silence. Someone upstairs yells: ‘It’s a .38. Get a gun!’ Then the screaming starts.

  A young Age reporter in the main court looks at his watch and scrawls down the time. It is 10.17am on that Monday morning, six days after the 1979 Melbourne Cup.

  WHEN he heard the shots Constable Chris Carnie jumped up from his bench in the courtyard. So did Constable Alan Hill, who’d been waiting nervously to give evidence in the first case of his new career.

  The two uniformed officers ran to the door leading to the stairs. Later, they gave slightly different accounts of where Bennett was standing, but it was probably on the landing between the first and second flight of steps. What neither ever forgets is that he had his arms crossed over his chest, and was bleeding from wounds in both hands. He said: I’ve been shot in the heart.’

  Carnie caught Bennett as his legs buckled. He and Hill carried him through the courtyard and into the tiled vestibule outside the clerk’s office near the Russell Street doorway. Hill, a former Navy medic, tried mouth to mouth and heart massage. He knew it was no use. A bullet had burst the pulmonary artery; Bennett was drowning in his own blood.

  Bennett’s lawyer, Joe Gullaci, rushed downstairs with the dying man’s wife, Gail. He pushed the stricken woman (he describes her years later as ‘incredibly brave’) into the clerk’s office so she couldn’t see the wounds. An ambulance came, but police stopped the pair getting in it to go to St Vincent’s hospital. They jumped in a police c
ar, but the driver took them in exactly the wrong direction – towards Elizabeth Street.

  It was symbolic, perhaps, of the way the whole affair was handled. Except by the gunman, whose timing and preparation seemed almost too good to be true.

  A court reporter for The Sun newspaper, Julie Herd, had sat briefly on a bench beside the man before going into court ten to wait for the case to begin. She assumed he was a lawyer. He had gold-rimmed glasses, a full head of hair and a beard. He appeared calm and was dressed, she thought, in a dark blue suit.

  One of the two consorting squad detectives with Bennett, Phil Glare, also took the man to be a solicitor. Glare said the man walked towards Bennett, looked at him and said, ‘Cop this, you mother-fucker’ as he drew a snub-nosed revolver from inside his coat and fired three shots.

  Bennett turned and ran down the stairs. Glare yelled, ‘He’s off, Grab him!’ Mugavin chased Bennett, assuming the shots were blanks and that it was an escape attempt, he later said.

  Glare moved towards the gunman, who pointed the pistol at him and warned: ‘Don’t make me do it.’ According to later coronial evidence, Glare’s colleague Paul Strang was inside the courtroom, where he helped Detective Sergeant Noel Anderson remove a pistol – allegedly used in Bennett’s armed robbery – from an exhibit bag.

  Meanwhile, the gunman had threatened a civilian witness, Raymond Aarons, (‘Move and I’ll blow your fucking head off’) then waited to see if anyone was going to follow him and slipped through a side door leading down a maze of back stairs and passages to a tin shed behind the police garage. An inspector, Bill Horman, held the door shut, fearing the gunman was trapped and would try to come out. When Anderson produced the exhibit pistol, Horman opened the door and Anderson rushed through.

  But, by then, the gunman was long gone – through a hole already carefully prepared in the corrugated iron shed wall. The hole opened into a carpark at the neighbouring Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. It was the perfect escape route – and it reeked of an inside job. Whoever did it had an expert knowledge of the court and the police carpark, or easy access to people who did have such knowledge.