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I’d interviewed cops and people in law enforcement before, but was I up to the challenge? And if I could approach all these people, would they want to talk to me? Was my writing up to scratch? Could I do the story justice?
The long solitary wait in the dark that night, convinced me there was no one better to do it than me. I was already a true crime writer. I was local, I was on the spot, I cared about the community, and the fear of this murderer had touched me too.
The police had acknowledged they were now hunting a serial killer. It’s easy to fall for The Silence of the Lambs version of the serial killer – the genius psychopath taunting the police with his clues and signatures; a vicious killer who can disappear into the dark and escape detection. And that’s what it felt like sitting in that police car, thinking about the unknown murderer – that silent figure, still out there, moving through Frankston, dodging police and killing women.
I wondered just how clever he was. I worried he’d never be caught.
It turned out he wouldn’t be unknown for long.
Paul Charles Denyer was caught the very next day.
And he was no criminal mastermind.
I began writing the book properly after Denyer had been found guilty. In the meantime, I had collected newspaper articles and attended community meetings. At one of these, I saw Carmel and Brian Russell from a distance and felt anxious in the pit of my stomach. I knew I would have to approach them and ask for their story.
In the days before the internet swamped the world, I chose writing a letter as a way to contact all the families. The phone book provided addresses. I sent letters to everyone connected to the victims and to Denyer’s family.
I got responses from everyone. Some chose to talk; others chose not to.
All up, I interviewed over 50 people for the book. They were relatives, cops, forensic people, witnesses, and people affected by what had occurred in Frankston in 1993.
This kind of work is not something you can let go of easily at the close of the day. Friendships form despite the circumstances. In hindsight, I had no professional distance at all. I had no training in writing or interviewing or keeping a distance. I was highly empathetic and wrote from the heart. Also in hindsight, that meant I constructed no protective barriers around myself. It didn’t seem to matter at the time.
Natalie Russell’s aunt, Bernadette Naughton, became the public spokesperson for the Russell family. She and I also became close friends. Melissa Denyer, Paul’s sister-in-law, and I spent a lot of time together. And when Melissa wanted to meet Bernadette so she could apologise to the Russell family, on behalf of her family for what Paul had done, I was able to make that happen.
The two met around the time the film Dead Man Walking came out. We decided to go and see it together. I will never forget sitting in between Bernadette and Mel, one weeping in scenes where the victims’ families were featured, and the other weeping when scenes showed the killer’s family suffering.
It was all unchartered waters for me. I mean how many people do you know who have been to a film about capital punishment with the sister-in-law of a serial killer and the aunt of his victim? Nonetheless, these kinds of things felt like the right thing to do.
While I had been reluctant to intrude on the grief of those left behind, I came to understand that the simple act of giving them a place to tell their stories brings comfort. Airing sadness or anger or regret to someone prepared to listen can be cathartic. It helps relatives, friends and survivors process what has happened. The empathetic writer is not an intrusion at all.
One thing I’ve always done is show the story to the person I interviewed – before it went into the book. This gives them the opportunity to see that their story has been accurately told, and they can add or take away anything they want. This means no surprises in the end. People are always very grateful for that.
In the telling of these stories, it allayed my fear that in the years to come, the victims would become mere additions after the mention of their killer. We see it all the time: Serial killer Paul Denyer murdered Elizabeth Stevens, 18, Debbie Fream, 22, and Natalie Russell, 17.
I wanted my book to show who they were, so that for the reader, Natalie, 17, became a girl who wanted to be a journalist and who loved making funny videos with her friends. And Elizabeth, 18, became the beloved niece who used to throw a ball down her home’s long hallway and send the family dog skidding after it. And of course, Debbie, 22, was baby Jake’s mum, lost when he was 12 days old. The girls had to come alive again in the pages of my book so that the focus was on their lives not just the hours of their death.
I felt honoured to hear these stories of grief and life. I’ll never forget what Natalie’s mum Carmel said to me.
‘It sounds silly,’ she said, ‘but one of the hardest things was to remember to only set three places at the dinner table instead of four.’
‘It doesn’t sound silly at all,’ I said in a quiet voice. ‘Not at all.’ And I realised this was what grief was: a big loss that fills the world, a daughter’s empty bedroom, and only three places at the table.
If I could do this right, I thought, the reader would truly know what Denyer took.
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