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running towards the angle of the jaw and there’s a further slash wound under the point of the chin. It is 2.5cm long. The left front tooth has been completely knocked out.’

      ‘By the knife blow?’

      ‘Looks like it.’

      McFayden and O’Connor exchanged glances. Seeing this kind of damage inflicted on a young woman was awful.

      Dr Anderson turned his attention to the chest. ‘The upper chest showed a gaping stab wound 4.5cm long in the midclavicular line, and there is a smaller gaping wound 2cm x 1.5cm, near the third rib.’

      The detectives readied their pens as the doctor went on to measure and describe the A.

      ‘The right side of the A shape consists of a deep slash that measures 25cm long. Two shorter and much more shallow slashes, which have not completely penetrated the skin, run parallel to the deep slash. The left side of the A consists of a slash that measures 29cm long which has penetrated into subcutaneous fat. As you can see here, it’s quite deep.’ The doctor indicated the exposed fat and then continued once the detectives had taken a closer look.

      ‘Three shorter, much more shallow slashes run parallel and adjacent to it. The centre bar of the A consists of an 18cm horizontal slash. I’ve never seen anything like this.’

      McFayden reflected darkly to himself that the likelihood of Dr Anderson, a country hospital pathologist seeing other bodies with huge letters of the alphabet carved into them was minimal.

      Dr Anderson turned his attention to the defence wounds.

      ‘Looks like your victim put up a bit of a fight,’ he observed. Beth’s body had plenty of these wounds. The doctor held up her left arm and measured the deep knife gash in her elbow. The police photographer snapped a photograph of the uplifted arm and captured on film the trickles of bloodied water running down the white surface of her skin. Also captured on film were the hands – the left hand had deep gash wounds in all the fingers and another deep wound in the web between the thumb and the index finger and the right hand had similar wounds.

      Further examination revealed a small slash on Beth’s left ankle. ‘There’s enough of these cuts,’ muttered the doctor, who paused after each measurement to make a record in his note book. ‘Let’s hope this is the last one.’

      Once Dr Anderson had described the external wounds, and they had been extensively photographed by police photographer Peter Gates, it was time to open the body to see the internal effects of these external assaults.

      Using his scalpel, he opened the body from the neck down over the stomach. With a rib knife he removed the ribs and measured the length to which the knife had penetrated into vital internal organs and arteries.

      ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the right lung, the pericardium – that’s the sack around the heart,’ he explained for the benefit of the detectives, ‘and the vena cava, have all been pierced with the long knife blade, which has entered in downwards thrusts. Your victim has bled large volumes of blood into her chest cavity. The right pleural cavity here, is completely filled with blood.’

      The detectives could see for themselves without the benefit of a degree in medicine.

      ‘Death by internal bleeding would have occurred some minutes after the upper chest wound was inflicted.’

      McFayden murmured to O’Connor, ‘From what we could tell from the crime scene, I reckon that the chest wounds would have been inflicted first. Looked like she’d been attacked while she was asleep. Murderer probably got the first strike in pretty cleanly.’

      ‘Thank God,’ said O’Connor.

      Dr Anderson examined other major organs which he found were all normal and free of disease.

      ‘There’s no sign of pregnancy, if that’s an issue,’ offered the doctor.

      Dr Anderson then took specimens: finger nail scrapings, a lock of hair, vaginal and anal swabs, a piece of thigh muscle and 10mls of blood. He carefully labelled the specimens and handed them to the detectives. Other samples including the stomach contents and additional blood were also given to Brian Gamble, to be taken for analysis at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Melbourne.

      O’Connor fingerprinted the body so they had a set of prints to compare with any found at the crime scene.

      McFayden walked over to the doctor who was removing his bloodied gown. ‘What’s the verdict, doctor?’ he asked.

      ‘I think she was alive when the chest wounds occurred because there is evidence of extensive internal bleeding around these wounds.’

      ‘How long would it have taken her to die?’

      ‘It could have taken five minutes or so, but she probably would have been unconscious earlier than that.’

      ‘How about the “A”?

      ‘I can’t say for certain whether she was alive then, but I think not.’

      ‘Anything else you can add?’

      ‘Only that prior to the attack she was a healthy young woman with every chance of living till she was 80.’

      With the possibility that Vivienne had suicided off the Phillip Island bridge, members from the Search and Rescue Squad searched Western Port Bay. If she had jumped, there was a good possibility police divers would find her.

      After an initial drifting period where air is expired from a body, it becomes a dead weight and sinks. But, as the body decomposes, it fills with gases and floats again. It was believed, in the early days, that if Vivienne had jumped, she should be located relatively close to the bridge. Or at least her glasses or shoes might be there.

      Divers searching the sea bed in sweeping arcs designed to cover the area under the bridge thoroughly, failed to find any trace of Vivienne.

      Even though Search and Rescue were optimistic that if she had jumped, they would find her, there had been cases of people drowning in Westernport Bay who had never been recovered. Since their search turned up nothing, it left them with two possible scenarios: either she jumped and drifted away, or she didn’t jump at all.

      At 10am the morning after Beth Barnard was murdered, a local woman called Glenda Frost received a phone call that would haunt her for years to come, although, at the time, she didn’t think anything of it.

      Her friend Pam arrived to stay at Glenda’s house in the afternoon of Monday 22 September, after working an early shift as a nurse at a Melbourne hospital. Glenda had been at work all day too, and the two friends spent the evening chatting.

      It was 10 o’clock on Tuesday morning when the phone rang in the kitchen. Pam, who was elbow-deep in soapy water washing the breakfast dishes, called to Glenda, who was getting dressed, to answer the phone.

      ‘Pam, I’m so busy today – I haven’t got time to chat to anyone. Can you answer it?’

      ‘It won’t be for me – answer it yourself!’ laughed Pam.

      Glenda hurried out from her bedroom and reluctantly picked up the phone: ‘Hello?’

      ‘It’s Viv Cameron here, Glenda.’

      ‘Hi Viv, you’re lucky to catch me, I’m normally at work by now but I’m hand-sewing at home today for the fashion parade,’ Glenda said.

      ‘Have you found out where to buy the patchwork house gift for Isobel?’

      Glenda remembered meeting Vivienne outside the post office the previous week and Vivienne had asked her where she could buy the patchwork house.

      ‘Call Dianne. Her sister makes the patchwork houses. Do you want her number? I have it right here,’ said Glenda. ‘Have you got a pencil?’

      When Vivienne went silent, Glenda assumed she was writing the number down. Vivienne’s side of the conversation was interrupted by voices – voices that Glenda assumed were Vivienne’s two young boys talking in the background.

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