The Frankston Murders - Vikki Petraitis

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phone or a public phone in Frankston. Catherine told the detectives that Liz was happy living with the Websters.

      On her last visit to Brunswick, Liz had said that she intended taking karate lessons again and as Catherine looked through her sister’s purse, she saw a card for a karate club. Catherine used to look through her sister’s purse all the time and check her address book. She knew all the names listed and she also knew that Liz hadn’t added any new ones since she had been in Melbourne.

      Catherine said she spoke to her sister on the afternoon she died. Catherine had been watching The Flying Nun on television when Liz called, and mentioned she was in Frankston and had to go to the library because she had lots of homework to do. After a few minutes chatting, Liz said she had to go because someone else was waiting to use the phone.

      The detectives asked Catherine if Liz had ever mentioned being scared of anyone or if she had ever been followed. Catherine said that Liz had never mentioned anything like that.

      The difficulty with any investigation was the amount of information that came flooding in. The detectives had to take into account the dead woman’s personality and habits in order to deduce which information was likely to be true and which was not. It was unlikely that it was Elizabeth Stevens at the Time Zone because she didn’t usually frequent pinball parlours.

      It was also unlikely that it was Elizabeth who ran to the door of the TAFE library because that meant that she would have missed the last bus.

      Another young man reported that he had seen the Websters with Elizabeth at the Berwick pub the night before she died. When detectives questioned Paul Webster he told them that he didn’t even know where the Berwick pub was.

      One of the more bizarre leads that Charlie Bezzina and his crew looked into was an occult connection. A TAFE student told detectives that Liz had once taken out a book on the occult. Considering the strange criss-cross markings on her body, it was worth looking into. But the lead went nowhere. Cults and covens don’t advertise their presence and Bezzina failed to find any operating in the area.

      The hours were long and the leads dwindled, but Charlie Bezzina and a number of his crew continued to travel daily from the western suburbs to continue their investigation. They would leave at five in the morning, make the hour-and-a-half drive and return home rarely before ten at night. They did this seven days a week for nearly seven weeks in an attempt to find the killer of Elizabeth Stevens.

      8

      A LUCKY ESCAPE

      On Thursday 8 July 1993, 41-year-old Roszsa Toth caught the 5.25pm train from Cheltenham to Seaford station. She had worked from 8.30am until 5pm at a Cheltenham bank and was on her way home to her family. Originally from Hungary, Mrs Toth had lived in Australia for six years. Her voice still carried strong traces of a Hungarian accent.

      At 5.50pm, the train pulled slowly into the Seaford railway station and Roszsa Toth stepped down onto the platform, bracing herself against the July chill. She walked down the ramp towards Railway Parade, heading for her home.

      Passing the sports reserve on Railway Parade, Mrs Toth saw a man about twenty metres away on her right hand side, near the toilet block. She took little notice of him and kept walking. However, as she passed him, he moved away from the toilet block and began following her. Still, she took little notice. It was dark and the station was poorly lit, but there were others getting off the train and Railway Parade was reasonably busy with cars.

      The man quickly covered the distance between himself and Mrs Toth and suddenly grabbed her around the chest. Shocked, she turned to face him and he grabbed her by the hair and tried to force her off the footpath towards the toilet block in the reserve. Pushing her roughly, they both fell to the ground. Mrs Toth landed on her knees. Another violent shove sent her rolling onto her side and one of the many thoughts racing through her mind was of her expensive ring that felt loose on her finger. In a panic, she offered the man the ring if only he would let her go.

      The man didn’t say a word; he just grabbed her and pushed her onto her back, struggling to get on top of her. Roszsa Toth lay on the damp grass of the reserve near the busy road and couldn’t believe what was happening to her.

      A 12-year-old boy, riding his bike to soccer training at the field next to the reserve, saw a man dragging a woman in the distance. He heard her screaming and saw her struggling violently to get away. The area was dark but as the two struggled under an overhead light, he could see pretty clearly what was going on. As the woman continued to scream, he saw the man drag her away from the light and behind some bushes. He figured, with the logic of a 12-year-old, that they were probably a boyfriend and girlfriend having a fight and continued riding past.

      ‘I don’t know what I’ll do if you keep screaming,’ the man yelled at Roszsa Toth, putting his large hand over her mouth to stop her from crying out. She couldn’t breathe because his huge hand covered both her nose and mouth. Slowly suffocating, she bit his fingers hard and gasped for air as he quickly pulled his hand away and yelled at her not to scream because he had a pistol. In the confusion, Mrs Toth heard him pronounce the word pistol as pistole with some kind of accent.

      The man then placed something hard at her temple. Mrs Toth thought that the object felt more like wood than the metal of a gun; it didn’t feel cold enough to be metal. Although terrified and in fear of her life, she had the presence of mind to think the young man was bluffing about the gun.

      Lying on the grass, Mrs Toth caught sight of oncoming lights which she thought might be a bike or a car. She managed to push the man away and got up off the ground and ran towards the road. She had barely taken three steps before the man grabbed her by the hair, pulling out a handful in the process, and dragged her down on the ground again. Struggling on her back, Mrs Toth continued to scream and bit him once more on the fingers. He again told her that he had a pistol. A train went by with a thundering roar drowning her cries for help, but it heralded the arrival of more traffic on Railway Parade as people drove out of the car park and others were picked up by waiting cars.

      Mrs Toth summoned all her energy and pushed the man off her. She grabbed her handbag and one of her shoes which had fallen off in the struggle. This time, she managed to scramble to the road, running in front of some oncoming cars waving her hands desperately for them to stop. As she ran onto the road, her attacker disappeared into the reserve.

      One of the cars pulled over and a young woman called Michaela got out and ran towards Mrs Toth.

      ‘What happened?’ she cried, alarmed when she noticed Roszsa Toth’s torn stockings and trousers.

      ‘A man attacked me,’ sobbed the terrified woman. ‘Can you please take me home?’

      Roszsa Toth jumped into the back of the car and then said suddenly, ‘I’ve got to get my shoe.’ She pointed to where her other shoe lay near the driveway to the Seaford reserve. When Michaela saw her reluctance to leave the safety of the car, she offered to get the shoe for Mrs Toth but the distressed woman urged her to remain in the car. She would get it herself.

      As Mrs Toth raced to pick up her shoe, she begged Michaela, ‘Please wait for me. Don’t leave me.’

      When she returned with the shoe, Michaela asked what had happened.

      ‘The man grabbed me. I don’t know what he wanted to do with me – perhaps rape me? He told me he had a gun but I didn’t believe him. He tried to drag me into the building.’

      Michaela thought Mrs Toth meant the toilet block, which was the closest building to where she had run from.

      Further up the road, the 12-year-old boy on his bike was nonetheless scared by what he had seen even though he had thought it was a boyfriend girlfriend argument. He had stopped his bike a little way off and saw Mrs Toth run from the man. He heard her cry out in a language he didn’t understand and then saw a white car stop and heard a woman asking if she was okay. The boy felt relieved and continued on to soccer practice. He told a couple of his mates, but they all agreed that it was probably a boyfriend and a girlfriend arguing so they didn’t do anything about it.

      Michaela

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