LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

each of the many cuts, bruises and abrasions covering the entire length of both.

      After the external examination was complete, Professor Cordner opened the body to explore the internal damage caused by the stab wounds. Internal organs were removed and the professor sliced a tiny section of each and placed it in a microscope slide to be examined and stored as evidence. Samples of blood and urine were also taken to be sent to a toxicologist to be tested for the presence of drugs and poisons. The organs were each examined and weighed, and then placed back inside the body which was sewn up.

      In his summary of the cause of death, Professor Cordner wrote:

      ...this woman has sustained a substantial compression of the neck. A fractured cricoid cartilage usually implies more force than can be applied by hands or a ligature alone and suggests things such as blows with a fist or foot...

      A number of bruises and abrasions to the arms and hands suggest that these may have been used in attempts at self defence...

      The absence of incised or stabbed defence wounds means that at the time the knife was used, the deceased was not able to defend herself for whatever reason. In this case, it is quite possible this was because of the effect of the other injuries to the head and neck... The professor found no indication that the dead woman had been sexually assaulted.

      In his report, Cordner wrote: ‘In my opinion, the cause of death was: aspiration of blood and haemorrhage from stab wounds to the neck in a woman whose neck has been compressed.’

      Detective Charlie Bezzina watched the entire proceeding with detached professional interest. Forensic pathology could tell him a lot about the type of crime that had been committed, whether the girl had suffered and most importantly whether injuries were made before or after death occurred. Details like this could help lead to her killer.

      Once the examination was complete, Charlie Bezzina took his evidence bags from the South Melbourne mortuary and made his way to the Hastings police station. There he lodged the items with the Hastings crime scene section and prepared for one of the more difficult aspects that a detective has to deal with – talking to the relatives. Bezzina drove to the home of Paul and Rita Webster.

      When they had watched the Channel 10 news the previous evening, Rita and Paul Webster had heard sketchy details of the woman’s body found in Lloyd Park. They were still hoping against hope that somehow the body was not that of their niece, despite their conversation with the detectives who had tried to prepare them for the worst.

      Those faint hopes were dashed when Detective Charlie Bezzina arrived and showed them two sleeper earrings and a watch with a black band. Rita identified the items as belonging to her niece, and tried to comprehend that the innocuous pieces of jewellery meant that her niece was dead.

      Bezzina gently questioned the couple to try and establish Elizabeth’s last movements. At his request, Rita checked the pantry to see if Elizabeth had eaten anything before leaving home on Friday. She told him that a tin of baked beans was missing.

      Bezzina nodded, although he didn’t mention the fact to the Websters, this was consistent with the contents that Professor Cordner had found in Elizabeth’s stomach.

      After giving their written statements to police, Bezzina asked Paul and Rita Webster if they could accompany him to the mortuary to formally identify the body of their niece.

      On the long drive from Langwarrin to the city mortuary, Rita still prayed it would not be Liz. She realised that it was hopeless, but until she saw her niece, there was always a chance that there had been some kind of terrible mistake.

      At the mortuary, the Websters were led into a small glassed-in viewing room. A silent mortuary assistant added to the surreal atmosphere by pressing an unseen button so that a curtain slowly drew back to reveal a body on a trolley covered by a sheet. Another assistant on the other side of the window delicately pinched a corner of the sheet and drew it back to reveal a face. Paul and Rita Webster stood frozen in their places.

      Rita Webster suddenly understood with profound clarity why there was a glass window separating the bereaved from the dead. Her first instinct was to run forward and grab her niece to shake the life back into her.

      Paul Webster simply stared sadly at the scratches on her face. He heard his wife say quietly, ‘Poor little girl.’

      Mortuary assistants had cleaned the facial wounds, and the sheet covering the body hid the rest of the wounds.

      The formal identification was brief. Paul Webster looked down upon the face of his dead niece and gave a short statement to the coroner’s clerk: ‘On the thirteenth day of June, 1993, at the Coroner’s Court, I identified the body of Elizabeth Ann-Marie Stevens who formerly resided at Langwarrin and was aged eighteen years. She was by occupation a student. The deceased was my niece. I have known the deceased for eighteen years.’

      The wait was over. Uncle Paul’s Lizzie had now officially become ‘the deceased.’

      7

      THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

      Just before 8am on Sunday morning, Senior Constable Andrew Herdman along with five other officers from the search and rescue squad were briefed at the Frankston police station by members of the homicide squad. Experienced in conducting line searches, the officers had been called in to make a thorough examination of the crime scene at Lloyd Park and its surrounding areas. The officers consulted maps of the area and planned the course of their search before heading to the muddy grounds of Lloyd Park. Search and rescue officers briefed forty SES volunteers to assist with the line search.

      Half an hour after the search began, Herdman found a small silver-coloured knife blade in long grass adjacent to a footpath on the Cranbourne-Frankston Road. The blade looked like it had broken off from a pocket knife. Continuing the search in the long grass and bushes bordering the road, searchers failed to find either the handle or anything else of note.

      Back at Lloyd Park, Sergeant Paul Dacey joined other crime scene examiners searching the area. Twenty-two metres northeast of the culvert where the body was found, Dacey discovered a blue and white striped sports bag at the base of a sand hill.

      Opening it, he found textbooks and stationery items labelled ‘Elizabeth Stevens’. Further away in a pool of muddy water, he found a blue, hooded windcheater top with a blood-soaked grey T-shirt inside it. He had them photographed, then collected them as evidence.

      At the Hastings crime scene section later in the afternoon, Dacey was back by the time Charlie Bezzina arrived after attending the post-mortem examination. Bezzina passed on the items that Cordner had removed from the body of Elizabeth Stevens.

      The media were quick to jump on the story of yet another young woman murdered in the Frankston area. They immediately linked the death of Elizabeth Stevens to those of Sarah MacDiarmid and Michelle Brown.

      Sarah MacDiarmid disappeared from the Kananook railway station on 11 July 1990. Her body had never been found although a pool of blood near her car led detectives to believe she had been murdered.

      On 1 March 1992, Michelle Brown had telephoned her mother from the Food Plus store on the Frankston-Dandenong Road asking to be picked up from the Frankston railway station at 8pm. When her mother arrived, Michelle was nowhere to be seen. Her naked body was found two weeks later in a shed behind a gun shop in Playne Street, Frankston. Due to decomposition, a cause of death couldn’t be established.

      The moment that Paul and Rita arrived home from the mortuary, a young reporter ran over to them in the driveway and asked awkwardly whether they knew the dead girl.

      ‘She was my niece and we’ve just come back from the morgue,’ growled Paul, marvelling at the utter lack of respect.

      Once inside the house, the couple discussed the inevitability of media interest and, after some consideration, they saw the wisdom of getting the media to focus on Liz’s murder so that the police could catch her killer. They decided to go back outside and invite the reporter in for an interview. The reporter and her crew made their way into the lounge room and the cameraman immediately bumped his head on a low-hanging

Скачать книгу