The Frankston Murders. Vikki Petraitis

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СКАЧАТЬ sergeant asked to see Liz’s room on the off chance that it could contain clues to her whereabouts, perhaps a diary or an address book. The Websters showed the officers into a neat bedroom with a double bed which made the room look smaller. Next to the bed was a free-standing wardrobe and chest of drawers. The room was sparse and confirmed the Websters’ description of their niece. It seemed to be the bedroom of a neat, conscientious young adult. Lewis had a quick look around but he couldn’t find a diary or address book or anything else that might suggest what had become of the missing teenager.

      Lewis obtained a full description of the young woman and filled out a missing persons report form. Neither Paul nor Rita knew what Liz had been wearing when she left that morning; in fact neither had seen her since the night before when she had gone to bed after watching a movie. They guessed that she would be carrying her school books in her navy and white sports bag.

      Rita checked Liz’s wardrobe and found her white runners were missing as well as a new grey top that Liz had recently bought. She also guessed that Liz could have been wearing her favourite grey tracksuit pants. The Websters found her passport and showed the officers her photo.

      As they left, Lewis gave the Websters his card, telling them to call the police station immediately if Elizabeth turned up. Offering a parting gesture of reassurance, he told the couple that she may have met up with a friend they didn’t know and simply forgotten to telephone. There were many possibilities – not all of them bad. Despite his unvoiced concerns in this case, Steve Lewis had never taken a missing persons report where the person hadn’t eventually turned up again.

      Paul Webster asked if it was okay for him to drive around Frankston again to see if he could find his niece and, when Steve Lewis encouraged it, the worried man headed straight for his car. He gave the officers a parting look which did little to quell their own concerns.

      Driving away from the home in Langwarrin, Lewis hoped that Elizabeth Stevens had done something totally out of character and gone to visit a friend, or gone down the pub – anything as long as she came home.

      Back at Cranbourne, the police officers treated the matter seriously. People went missing all the time but this was different. Lewis’s gut feeling grew stronger. He telephoned through a description of Elizabeth Stevens to be broadcast via D-24 for all units in the Cranbourne and Frankston areas to keep a lookout for her. He then telephoned the shift supervisor to inform him of the missing teenager and faxed a copy of the report to the Hallam community policing squad.

      Out on patrol again at 3.30am, Sergeant Lewis and his partner duplicated the route taken earlier by Paul Webster, checking the TAFE college and the railway station. He also kept an eye out for her school bag in case she had dropped it in a struggle or left it somewhere. The most frustrating aspect for the two officers was the early hour of the morning. There was no one they could call; the library was shut and so was the bus company. There was little else to do besides cruise around and hope to find the missing young woman. Two of the more remote possibilities were that she had been robbed and assaulted or that she had been abducted.

      While Steve Lewis was aware that the Websters had only contacted police in desperation as the evening had worn on, valuable hours had elapsed before the report, and Elizabeth had now been missing for eight hours. But he also knew that it was a catch-22 situation – if the Websters had reported their niece missing when she was only an hour late home, the police would have just told them to wait – after all, she was eighteen years old. Lewis just hoped for the phone call that would tell him that Elizabeth had arrived home safely.

      But the call didn’t come.

      At 7am when his shift ended, Lewis passed on the report to the officers arriving to work the day shift.

      On Saturday morning, Paul and Rita Webster played the waiting game. Elizabeth still hadn’t returned and they frantically rang relatives to see if she had gone to visit one of them. When Rita Webster telephoned her boss and his wife to cancel a dinner date that evening, she explained they couldn’t make it because their niece was missing. As she spoke to the boss’s wife, her voice suddenly broke as a strong feeling came over her that she would never see Liz again.

      Constable Sally Davis came on duty at 2.30pm as watch-house keeper at the Cranbourne police station. She checked the missing persons notice board and made herself familiar with the events surrounding the missing eighteen-year-old.

      At 3.30pm she telephoned the Websters and learnt that Elizabeth still hadn’t come home. Paul Webster told her that he had found another photo of Liz, and the policewoman asked if he could bring it to the station. Paul arrived half an hour later with the photo.

      Constable Davis tried to contact the TAFE library but received an answering machine reply. She arranged for police to visit Elizabeth’s younger sister in Brunswick.

      Less than an hour later, Sally Davis answered a telephone call from a Frankston-area local who was at the Langwarrin football oval.

      ‘There’s been a body found,’ he told the young constable breathlessly.

      ‘Where?’ she asked grabbing a pen to take down the details.

      ‘In the track off the Langwarrin Sports Club off the Cranbourne-Frankston Road.’

      Constable Davis wrote down the address and told him she would send the police, then she set the investigative wheels in motion by informing a divisional van crew and the duty sergeant of the possible body find. The sports club and football ovals were part of Lloyd Park – the Webster’s house on Paterson Avenue backed on to the huge reserve.

      Barely 10 minutes after the news of the body find, Paul Webster rang the Cranbourne police station to tell officers that he had received a phone call from Liz’s younger sister who had spoken to Liz around five o’clock the previous afternoon to organise a shopping trip. While he was talking to one of the officers, Paul Webster overheard the discussion in the background about a body being found and then he heard one officer say, ‘I bet it is that girl.’

      Paul Webster put his hand over the mouthpiece, turned to Rita and told her what he had heard. ‘I think they may have just found Liz’s body.’

      There was nothing for the aunt and uncle to do but wait and pray that Paul was wrong; and the body was not that of their niece.

      5

      LLOYD PARK

      On Saturday 12 June a Langwarrin father, Rod, had gone bowling with his children and then picked up some timber from Mitre 10 on the way home. In the afternoon his wife Cheryl, who was having a dinner party that evening, sent him out to do some shopping. When he returned, Cheryl had one more job for him. As the party theme was a mid-year Christmas party, she asked him to get a small pine branch from Lloyd Park to decorate like a Christmas tree.

      Rod drove around to the football oval near their house, reversed his car near the netball courts and got out to look for a suitable tree. He knew the layout of Lloyd Park because he took his children there for Vic Kick sessions most Sunday mornings. Heavy rain and hail had turned much of the surface of the oval into a quagmire and Rod tried to avoid the larger puddles as he wandered about. He spotted a pine tree a few metres into the scrub adjacent to the football field and while he was figuring out how to cut one of its branches, he glanced further into the bushes and saw what looked like a body.

      He took a couple of tentative steps forward and saw a woman lying in a shallow depression with water around her lower body. He could make out that she was wearing runners and grey tracksuit pants. Although a branch covered the woman’s top half, Rod could see part of her face СКАЧАТЬ