The Frankston Murders. Vikki Petraitis

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СКАЧАТЬ slant on the death. If the killing had been an attempted rape gone wrong, it would have been easy for the attacker to hit her to keep her quiet. But it took a different type of person altogether to cut a woman’s throat.

      To West, it suggested the killer was some kind of maniac. But their theories were all academic because they knew that the homicide squad would be the ones to investigate this murder.

      West and Mansell contacted homicide and made arrangements for a command post to be set up in Lloyd Park. It was Sergeant Fred Barton’s job to direct the human traffic through the scene and help maintain the log of all members coming and going.

      Through the rain, Barton saw a huge red Country Fire Authority bus pull into the park’s driveway. He walked over and asked the driver what it was doing there. The driver explained that a police officer from Chelsea, who was also a volunteer CFA member, had heard about the body find via the police radio and organised for the vehicle to be sent to Lloyd Park.

      To Barton, this was like a gift from the gods – the rain hadn’t let up and there was no shelter in the immediate area. He directed the driver to park the bus near the chain link fence; it became the command post. The CFA bus was equipped with telephones, fax machines and – of immediate importance to the half-frozen officers – a coffee machine. A huge awning was also lifted from one side of the bus to provide shelter.

      As darkness fell, State Emergency Service workers arrived and erected huge, bright scene lights that illuminated the whole area. The body couldn’t be moved until crime scene photographs and video of the scene had been taken.

      Sergeant Paul Dacey from the Hastings crime scene section arrived at Lloyd Park at 7.30pm. By then it was freezing cold, raining heavily and hailing intermittently. Dacey knew that the weather conditions in this case favoured the killer because valuable forensic evidence such as blood, hair and shoe impressions would be washed away. In fact, it was the worst weather Dacey had ever struck at a crime scene; he had to balance an umbrella on his shoulder as he made his written notes.

      A crime scene photographer took pictures of the surrounding area, including the gravel road, the chain link fence and the nearby scrub, carefully noting the photograph number and each location.

      After the dead woman had been photographed, Dacey measured and described the culvert in which she lay.

      Once photos were taken, the branch could finally be removed from the body. Detectives West and Mansell watched as further injuries became obvious. The savage throat wound could be seen properly and the detectives counted at least six knife wounds to the woman’s chest, four deep cuts running from her breast to her navel and four running at right angles – forming the criss-cross pattern that they had seen earlier through the branch. There were cuts and abrasions to her face and the bridge of her nose was swollen enough to suggest it was broken. Her bra was caught up around her neck. Dacey photographed the body and collected the branch for evidence.

      Six-and-a-half metres from the body was a tree with similar foliage to the branch and Dacey noted that the tree had a broken limb. He arranged photographs of the damage to the tree.

      Homicide detectives arrived at 8pm and were briefed by Detective Mansell. They made their way over to view the body and speak to the other officers.

      A couple of hours after he arrived, homicide detective Rob Hardie went around to Paterson Avenue to speak to the Websters. He told the couple that he couldn’t confirm it yet but to prepare themselves for the worst; on the strength of the evidence, it was probably Elizabeth they had found.

      Angry at the frightening uncertainty they were enduring, Paul Webster asked why they couldn’t confirm it was Liz. Hardie gently explained that the identification couldn’t be made until the family identified the body. The distraught uncle fell silent. He had a fair idea that it was Liz. He had watched over his back fence which backed on to Lloyd Park and had seen the police cars, the SES lights and the police helicopter flying around. Neither he nor Rita had sat still for a minute since they had reported Liz missing. They had both been prowling like restless animals, unable to sleep, eat or rest.

      They just didn’t want to believe it.

      Another homicide detective, Sergeant Charlie Bezzina, cleared the crime scene at 11.35pm. In the appalling weather, crime scene examination was limited – visibility was poor and the area to be searched was best left to daylight hours. Police began packing away their equipment and a number of officers were given the duty of guarding the scene until the following morning.

      Once the area was officially cleared, the body could be removed. The body itself was an important piece of evidence, and to maintain the continuity of evidence, Charlie Bezzina had the task of escorting it, in a Tobin Brothers van, to the car park of the Mornington Peninsula Hospital en route to the city mortuary.

      Dr Helen Hewitt came outside to the van, unzipped the body bag and examined the young woman. She noted that her pupils were fixed and dilated, there were no heart sounds present, there was no evidence of respiration, and the body showed obvious early signs of rigor mortis.

      Life was pronounced extinct fourteen minutes before midnight.

      When Sergeant Steve Lewis came in at 11pm to work the night shift, he had slept most of the day and hadn’t seen the news. The watch house keeper gave him the update.

      ‘They found your girl. She’s dead.’

      Lewis felt like he’d been hit. He immediately thought of the Websters and their grief and, not knowing the circumstances of Elizabeth’s death, he wondered if he could have done something to prevent it. Lewis knew that they hadn’t even checked Lloyd Park the night before; they had concentrated on the route between the TAFE college and the Webster’s home.

      The inevitable ‘what if...’ question came to mind. What if he had driven around to Lloyd Park the night before, could he have somehow prevented the young woman’s death?

      It would be weeks before he would learn that Elizabeth Stevens was dead hours before he took the report that she was missing.

      At around 3am, Steve Lewis took one of the marked police cars and drove to Lloyd Park to relieve the police guarding the scene. They spoke briefly about the murder and Lewis heard that the victim’s throat had been cut.

      By this time, the scene was almost clear of the earlier investigations and the command post bus had returned to the CFA station. He parked near the football oval and watched as the rain ran in intermit sheets down the windscreen. Lewis could see the fences of the houses bordering the park and he reflected that most of the families living there wouldn’t be touched by the death of a friendless eighteen-year-old girl.

      Keeping his solitary vigil until daybreak, Lewis had hours to ponder the tragedy of the situation. He wondered who could have killed Elizabeth Stevens and why. The thought suddenly struck him that life plods along and then something like this happens that totally destroys one family’s security and happiness forever. Its rippling effect would spread and affect everyone who knew the young woman. They would have to come to terms with her death and the fact that some bastard had taken her life. He remembered how Rita Webster had told him that Elizabeth had swapped History for Australian Studies. Now she would never finish her course. She would never do anything again.

      Her life had ended.

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      POST MORTEM

      At around 1am, homicide detective Charlie Bezzina lodged the body at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, where it was placed in the secure СКАЧАТЬ