LITMIR.BIZ

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      By the time I arrived with Mick to observe his night shift, there was a pall of disbelief over the Frankston police station.

      One of the cops standing outside having a smoke, said what they were all thinking: ‘Right under our noses.’ There was a huge police presence and the killer had sailed through the net and taken a school girl. They had all done everything they could, but it wasn’t enough.

      Mick and I went inside just as a cop came downstairs and said, ‘They’ve found her and she’s dead.’

      I was struck by the lack of emotion in his voice. But I felt it too; it was like all the air had been sucked out of the place.

      Mick and his partner were sent to the scene. Since I had permission to do the ride-along, he bustled me into the back of the police car and told me to keep in the shadows. The ride there was eerie. No lights and sirens. And a radio silence of sorts. All messages were cryptic. They didn’t want to alert the media who used police scanners.

      So there I was on a cold winter’s night, sitting in the back of a police car in the carpark of the Monterey Secondary College looking at the track along which Natalie Russell had met her death. Mick and his partner left me there while they went off to join the other cops guarding the scene and keeping everyone away.

      I didn’t know anything about Natalie in that moment except her name.

      But I would come to learn so much about her.

      Alone with my thoughts for a couple of hours, I was filled with a deep sadness for the teenager who lay beyond the trees; and for her family who had lost her.

      Until that night, the police stories I’d written had always been from a distance. The cases, the investigations were always done and dusted by the time I got to them.

      But this one was unfolding right in front of me. Just metres away. I was flooded with a nervous energy that sat alongside the disbelief that I was actually there, at the scene.

      There were police everywhere: silent and searching and patrolling. The police helicopter hovered in the sky, shining its powerful Nitesun down on the horror below. Rain fell gently through its beam.

      When Mick finally returned to the car, he told me to throw away my notes. Nothing could be written about this until after they caught the serial killer.

      Of course, I wouldn’t throw my notes away, because I wasn’t a journalist. If I did write about it, it would not be for the media. I’d wait until it was all over and then write the story properly.

      But a book about a serial killer would challenge me in ways I had not yet experienced. This was not a story that could be written from a distance, or just through the eyes of the police. I would have to approach the families and intrude on their grief. I felt sick at the thought, but I could already feel this case calling to me. I would have to talk to everyone I could find: the family of the killer when he was caught, police, SES, forensics, witnesses. The list was long.

      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:

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