The Frankston Murders. Vikki Petraitis

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СКАЧАТЬ dinner was cooking, the two friends went out onto the front veranda for a smoke. When they went back inside Debbie realised that she needed some milk. She told Russell she’d just pop down to the local shop and would only be a couple of minutes. It took her a few moments to find her keys, then she grabbed her purse out of her handbag and headed out the door. She had assured Russell that Jake was asleep and would be fine until she got home.

      Russell, settled comfortably in front of the television, heard the Pulsar pull out of the driveway as he switched the channel to watch Home and Away. Engrossed in his favourite television program, Russell barely noticed the time pass and suddenly it occurred to him that Debbie had been gone a lot longer than a couple of minutes. He wandered into the kitchen and turned off the vegetables that she had left boiling on the stove.

      After half an hour he began to wonder what was taking Debbie so long. He even wandered outside, and walked to the end of the driveway to see if he could see her car coming.

      After a while Russell really began to worry. He didn’t know Seaford very well and didn’t know which shop Debbie would have gone to, so he couldn’t go and look for her. Besides, he certainly couldn’t leave the tiny baby asleep in the bedroom.

      An hour after Debbie had left, Russell rang the Frankston police station to ask if any accidents had been reported in the area. A policewoman he spoke to suggested telephoning the Frankston hospital because, she explained, there was often a delay between an accident and the police receiving the report. Russell rang the hospital and they told him that no one by the name of Debbie Fream had been admitted and that they had no unidentified accident victims. Russell then tried calling a girlfriend of Debbie’s who lived in Seaford. If this woman could come and mind Jake, he could go out and look for Debbie. The friend didn’t answer.

      Finally, Russell telephoned Garry Blair at work. Garry told Russell not to worry; that Debbie had probably just run out of petrol. This didn’t put his mind to rest. Surely Debbie would have telephoned him if that were the case. Garry suggested Russell ring another friend, Jeanette, who lived locally. She agreed to come around immediately and told Russell she would look out for Debbie on the way over.

      Ten minutes later, Garry rang back to say he had organised to leave work early and was on his way home. Jeanette arrived a few minutes later; she had seen no trace of Debbie or her car. She told Russell she would drive up to the Seaford Safeway and look around there but she was back ten minutes later. There was no sign of Debbie.

      When Garry Blair arrived home just before 9pm, Debbie had been gone nearly two hours. The worried young man asked Russell to drive around to the Food Plus store on the Frankston-Dandenong Road, which he did. Debbie’s grey Pulsar wasn’t there and Russell searched surrounding streets before returning to the house in Kananook Avenue.

      Leaving Jeanette to babysit, Russell and Garry drove to the Frankston police station to report Debbie missing. The police wanted a photo of her so the two men returned home, found a recent photo and drove back to the police station. By the time they finally returned home, it was nearly midnight and Debbie still hadn’t come back. Russell stayed for a while before reluctantly leaving. He had to work the next day but he gave Garry his telephone number and made him promise to call as soon as Debbie came home.

      Garry telephoned Debbie’s brother Troy, with whom he been working that afternoon. He had told Troy that Debbie was missing as soon as Russell Hayes had called. Troy had finished work around 10.30pm and telephoned Garry asking him to ring him if Debbie wasn’t back by midnight. When Garry finally called, Troy was so worried about his sister, he came around immediately. Garry asked him to drive to the ATM in Seaford to check the balance of his account to see if Debbie had withdrawn any money. Troy drove to the Westpac ATM in Frankston and got a print-out of Garry’s balance.

      Back at the Kananook Avenue house, Garry figured that there was around fifty dollars less in the account than there should have been but that Debbie had probably withdrawn the money for shopping. There was still over two hundred dollars left in the account.

      Garry, Troy and Jeanette spent an anxious all-night vigil waiting for Debbie to come home. She never did.

      Russell Hayes was woken early the next morning when an officer from the Frankston police station telephoned to ask him if he had heard from Debbie. He hadn’t.

      Milk bar proprietors in the area also received early morning visits by detectives. The closest shop to Debbie Fream’s home was on the corner of her street and McCulloch Avenue. The proprietor, however, said he couldn’t remember whether he had served her or not.

      10

      THE FOUR DAY WAIT

      Garry Blair couldn’t understand where Debbie had gone. The previous day he had slept in because he was working an afternoon shift. Debbie had given Jake his four-hourly feeds and Garry had noticed that she seemed a bit weary, but she hadn’t complained. In fact she had chatted about visiting her friend Jeanette and about how they had planned to go shopping. Debbie also spoke about Russell coming for dinner that evening.

      Jeanette and her two children had called in around 11.30am for a half-hour visit, promising to return in the early afternoon for the shopping trip.

      Debbie, cradling Jake in her arms, had kissed Garry goodbye as he left for work just after one in the afternoon. She seemed cheerful, standing there on the front porch, and she told him she would see him after work.

      Now she was gone; and no one knew where.

      Early Friday morning, Senior Detective Michael Glowaski drove to the house on Kananook Avenue to talk to Garry. The distraught young father repeated the information about Debbie going to buy milk around 7pm the previous evening and that no one had heard from her since.

      Glowaski took down Debbie’s description and Garry described the black skirt and white windcheater she had been wearing the day before. He also gave the detective a description of Debbie’s grey Pulsar and the registration number. Glowaski returned to his office at the Frankston police station and began to make inquiries.

      In light of the young mother’s disappearance, the attack on Roszsa Toth the night before was seen in a more sinister light.

      Senior Detective Andy King had begun work at 6.30am on Friday morning in preparation for an early-morning drug raid. When he arrived back at the CIB offices, he checked the crime reports in-tray and read the report about Debbie Fream’s disappearance and Roszsa Toth’s attempted abduction.

      Thinking that there could be a connection, King, together with an officer from the Frankston community policing squad called around to interview Roszsa Toth again. The morning after the attack, the woman looked ragged. She told King that she walked along Railway Parade every night and nothing like this had ever happened before. Mrs Toth repeated details of her ordeal and accompanied the two officers to the toilet block at the Seaford Reserve to reconstruct the events of the night before. She showed them where the man had been standing when she had first seen him and where he had grabbed her.

      Mrs Toth was then driven to the Victoria Police complex on St Kilda Road where she described her attacker to a photo-fit expert. Her injuries were also photographed for police records and she was examined by a police doctor.

      Andy King felt there was a strong likelihood of a connection between Roszsa Toth’s attack close to the Seaford railway station around 6pm and Debbie’s disappearance from near the Kananook railway station an hour later. And of course, there wasn’t a cop worth his salt who could ignore the connection to the disappearance of Sarah MacDiarmid from the Kananook railway station in 1990.

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