Killing Time Read online

  Time dragged on in jail and in due course Dupas was charged with the murder of Margaret Maher. Later he was served with a hand-up brief. A hand-up brief contains all the evidence that the Crown intends to rely on against an accused in their committal proceedings. Committal proceedings are a preliminary hearing where a magistrate decides whether there is sufficient evidence for a person to stand trial.

  Dupas approached me with the hand-up brief and asked me to read it. I have been criticised roundly in some quarters for reading the brief and giving him my views on its contents. You must remember that I was in jail, in a small unit full of extremely dangerous people and dealing with probably the most dangerous one in that group of dangerous people. Dupas clearly considered me a friend and probably felt that what he said to me, as a former solicitor – and I stress the word former – would be privileged. There is no professional privilege attaching to me in these circumstances as I was no longer a lawyer, having been struck off. And further, like it or not, I was now involved to some degree and I thought that I may as well try and find out precisely where this bloke fitted in to all of these offences. Reading the brief ultimately took on far greater significance than I thought it would at the time.

  When I read the brief the first thing I noticed was the similarities between the type of attack on Margaret Maher and that on Nicole Patterson – namely, a frenzied knife attack, removal of at least one breast and a slash to the thigh. At law this category of evidence is known as “similar fact evidence” and is very potent evidence indeed. I also noted, from what little I knew about Halvagis, that the same modus operandi seemed to apply to her murder, with the exception of the breast removal. It was then that Dupas confirmed to me, far more startlingly than in any of his other admissions, that not even the deceased would have seen him at Fawkner on the day of the murder. Given that Halvagis died after she was attacked from behind while kneeling over her grandmother’s grave, this was another frank and surprising admission.

  Dupas kept denying and denying that he had anything to do with the Margaret Maher murder. He didn’t seem to be able to comprehend, or want to comprehend, the fact that the DNA evidence alone was probably sufficient to convict him. He was displaying real ostrich traits: stick your head in the sand, deny everything and hope it will go away. Like a lot of serial killers he was not going to help anyone catch him out.

  I was moved to mainstream on 12 June 2003 and had nothing further to do with Dupas for some time. Meanwhile he was committed to stand trial and was later tried in the Supreme Court of Victoria for the murder of Margaret Maher, where he pleaded Not Guilty. His plea of Not Guilty was another indication of his ability to block the obvious from his mind and maintain a futile denial. He was convicted on 17 August 2004 and was again sentenced to life imprisonment without a minimum period being set.

  I suppose it is in Dupas’s interest to plead not guilty. He gets to leave the prison for each trial, get a new suit from the Salvos to wear, a change of diet and a change of scene. Is he getting more justice than most? You would have to say yes.

  When I went into mainstream I made application to again become a prison listener. As a lawyer you spend most of your life counselling people anyway, so this was something I enjoyed. Some time between my move into mainstream and my move to Fulham in 2005, my application was accepted and I was designated one of the prison listeners for protection. A lot of the listeners refused to go into the protection units because of the types of prisoners they would have to talk to and associate with. Having been in protection, it didn’t really worry me, so I was happy to be one of the designated listeners for protection. One afternoon I was called to Sirius East to talk to a prisoner. You are never told who the prisoner is until you arrive there. I walked into the unit and there was Peter Dupas.

  After the conviction for the Margaret Maher murder, Dupas had been moved to Barwon for a change of scenery but he was now back at Port Phillip for some court-related matter. By this time he was already serving two life sentences without any minimum. But once again, the Homicide Squad had leaked to the media that there was great speculation that Dupas was going to be charged with the murder of Mersina Halvagis. This murder had taken place on 1 November 1997 and by now it was some time in 2004. Halvagis’s parents had never given up hope that Dupas would be charged with the offence. He was extremely agitated again, talking about the media, but reaffirmed to me that nobody had seen him and that he’d left no DNA or other forensic evidence. This was the first time that he actually stated as a positive that he knew there were no eye witnesses to the crime. Only one person would know that, and that person was the killer.

  I asked Dupas about Maher, as his appeal was pending. He didn’t seem in the least bit upset and just said, “Ah well, it’s happened.” I asked him about Margaret Maher and his subsequent conviction and receipt of another life sentence without a minimum. He merely shrugged his shoulders and again said, “Oh well.” This once more demonstrated to me that Dupas was, and probably still is, able to block these matters out of his mind and push on with living in his own little world within the prison system.

  That was the last time I saw Peter Dupas until I climbed into the witness box in the Supreme Court of Victoria in August 2007.

  Chapter 8

  Mersina Halvagis: Evil Knows

  No Bounds

  You present the awful, threatening and unanswerable question: how did you come to be as you are?

  – HIS HONOUR MR JUSTICE FRANK VINCENT ON SENTENCING DUPAS FOR THE MURDER OF NICOLE PATTERSON

  Things were heating up for Dupas, particularly in relation to Margaret Maher. But also hanging over him was the ever-present question of the murder of Mersina Halvagis. It was clear that the police and the prosecuting authorities had one suspect for this murder and one suspect only. It was a matter of constant speculation in the media but the police were careful not to release all aspects of their investigation because they clearly wanted to keep back some matters that only the killer would have known.

  The Halvagis murder was an old case but certainly not a cold case. In an attempt to try and flush additional evidence out of the woodwork, on 17 December 2004 the then police minister for the state of Victoria, Andre Hairmeyer, announced a reward of one million dollars payable to anybody who gave evidence that led to the conviction of the murderer of Mersina Halvagis. The offering of this reward did nothing to reveal any fresh evidence.

  I hate writing about this period of my life because it takes me back into the depths of despair that was life at Port Phillip Prison. I was in jail with a murdering sex monster who wanted to tell me about his crimes and who wanted to use me as essentially free, in-house counsel. I was stuck, there was nothing I could do: damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

  I have already mentioned that you can’t write anything down in jail, but you also can’t talk confidentially to anybody from outside and more importantly you can’t privately ring anybody. Therefore, the old adage “Loose lips sink ships” applies. If I had been on the phone and spoken to the coppers about this matter, the fact of that conversation would have almost certainly found its way back to Dupas and I would have been a dead duck, literally. In jail, if you lag, then the twisted morals that apply come into play: as a lagger you will most likely be killed. It never seems to occur to anybody to assess who the lagging has been done about or why. You are grouped into the most despicable and despised of categories: that of police informer. I was not prepared to place myself in that position but I was certainly caught in a dilemma because now, through no fault of my own, I had become involved to some degree with Peter Dupas. I now knew things that I didn’t want to know and I had a feeling of dread that this would come back to haunt me at some stage in the future. However, I was not prepared to place my life on the line and say anything while I was still in custody.

  On the day that Dupas first raised the Halvagis matter with me in his cell and told me how he had left no forensics at Fawkner, I noticed his body language change. He was sittin
g bolt upright. I noticed what I have detailed before: he started to sweat and shake, his hands clasped in front of him. Then, the more we discussed Halvagis, the more agitated he became. His clasped hands were placed between his knees and forced together. He then started to rock backwards and forwards. Dupas was sitting on his bed near his pillow. He was on my right. On his right was a panic button on the wall. It is a jail myth that this is also used by the police as a listening device in investigating matters but even if the cells were bugged it was of no concern to me.

  While Dupas had already made oral admissions to me that he had left no DNA, what followed next surprised and shocked me just about more than anything in my life. Dupas, rocking backwards and forwards, suddenly stopped, looked at me, his eyes staring madly. He pointed at the panic button on the wall, which has a little microphone behind a stainless steel plate. He put his right forefinger to his mouth in a motion indicating that he didn’t want to say anything and he didn’t want me to say anything. Then he suddenly leapt off his bed, turned and faced me. He opened his arms in an expansive movement to indicate another person. He knelt down, despite his crook knees, on one knee, indicating that one person was on their knees or kneeling down or bending over. Then, without warning, he stood up and brought his two hands in to his chest, indicating himself. He then commenced flailing uncontrollably in a downward stabbing motion, clearly indicating to me that he was stabbing someone who was kneeling down. I was terrified. From what I knew, I was convinced I had just witnessed a re-enactment of a cold-blooded, frenzied murder and I didn’t want to have anything to do with this. Dupas stopped, looked at me, then sat back down on his bed in a relaxed state. The blinds had come down yet again and there was nothing else to say. Conversation over.

  I knew from that point on that, at some stage in the future, I would have to get involved in a prosecution of Dupas. This man, who has denied and denied every offence that he has ever committed, had now provided me with proof positive that he was the murderer. Why do I say that? The one thing that the police had been very careful not to release to the media was that Mersina had been kneeling down when she was attacked. They also hadn’t released the fact that she was attacked from behind. Only one person could have known those two ingredients of the crime. And that was the killer.

  I can remember almost staggering with shock back to my cell, closing my door and snibbing it for the remainder of the night because I felt sick – sick to my stomach that I had witnessed this appalling act. I must say I also felt some self pity in finding myself in circumstances where I had to interact with such people. But not just interact, actually live with them and spend every moment that my cell was unlocked having to deal with these people and frankly living in fear of what might become of me.

  The pantomime in the cell had come out of the blue but it left me in no doubt as to Dupas’s actions and the fact that he was the real killer. The final crunch came for me not long after the pantomime when we were in the garden together. As prison gardener you find all sorts of contraband hidden in the garden – usually drugs, often shivs and even on one occasion the precursor of an incendiary device. On this particular day I didn’t find any drugs but I can remember I was facing the wall of Sirius West, which looks down over the vegie garden. Along that wall is a garden bed with some large shrubs growing in it. It is here that often you find the contraband. Most of it has been thrown out the window during searches; the screws are too stupid to have somebody outside watching what comes out of the windows while the searches are on.

  I could see that some soil had been disturbed right hard up against the wall and then some mulch had been flicked over the disturbed soil. I scratched around and I located a large shiv. It would have been about ten inches long and looked like it had been made from a steel brace from a table tennis table which the prisoners in Sirius West constructed in the work area of the jail. It was long and had been sharpened along one side to a very long point. It was extremely sharp and had a little bit of towelling wrapped around the non sharpened end as a handle. I looked at this weapon. It was easily the most lethal weapon I had seen in jail. I was standing there looking at it with my back facing into the garden and to this day I don’t know what made me do it but I said to Dupas, “Hey Pete, come and have a look at what I found.”

  I was still standing up against the wall and obscured by the bushes. Dupas walked over and I can still see the scene as clearly as if it was yesterday. I had the knife in my left hand and he came up to me on my left. I handed the weapon to him and he didn’t say anything but I could read all the signs from his body language. Dupas started to shake, he became sweaty and he looked rather excited in a psychotic sort of way. He took the knife from me very gently and he held it in the palm of his open hand, almost as if he was weighing it up. He started moving the knife up and down in this weighing up motion, then, to my amazement, he started reciting, almost chanting in a trance-like state, the words “Mersina, Mersina, Mersina.” I couldn’t believe my ears. This man had completely lost the plot. I was in the immediate vicinity of a psychopath holding a large knife. More importantly a psychopath who was admitting that he was the one who had killed Mersina Halvagis and had used a knife to do so.

  The only time in jail I was genuinely in fear for my life was this moment. I thought, by the look on Dupas’s face and the manner in which he was behaving, that he was more than capable of killing me there and then. I tried to keep my act together and said to him “Pete, just give me the knife back, we’ll chuck it in the bin.”

  We always used to throw any contraband we found in a waste bin which was emptied most days and so the contraband left the unit. I took the knife from him very quietly and gently and slowly walked to the rubbish bin. I threw the knife in and slammed the lid down, then walked away. By the time I got back to where Dupas had been standing, he was gone. He was back in the vegie patch, weeding away as if nothing had happened. The frightening thing about all of this was that he never once mentioned the knife after this and he seemed to shut the whole thing out of his mind yet again. But it was clear to me that he had made another admission that he killed Mersina Halvagis.

  That night I hardly slept because I was concerned that this extremely dangerous weapon had been put in the rubbish bin. I went back first thing the next morning to make sure the bin had been emptied. It had been, and the knife was gone.

  It was only later, after Dupas was convicted and I was able to speak to the police about this matter, that I learned of one of the things that had impressed them about my discussions with them regarding Dupas: I had noted precisely the same behaviour as they had when questioning him or dealing with him. That is, he would sweat, shake, even on occasions become a little teary, and you’d think he was about to blurt out an admission, hands clasped tightly between his knees pressed together, rocking backwards and forwards. But then it was almost as if a blind or a curtain came down across his entire face. He would suddenly change. He would look at you as if wondering who you were and what you were doing there, and all of a sudden the conversation was over. It was as if the preceding conversation had never taken place and he had never mentioned anything. It was lucky that I was able to take him further down the track in terms of admissions than the police had ever been able to. This was probably because of my background, my closeness to him and the fact that he may – and this is speculation – have thought that I would be subject to some sort of professional privilege, which of course I wasn’t.

  Chapter 9

  A Bolt from the Blue:

  The Odyssey Begins

  Be as great in act as you have been in thought.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, KING JOHN

  “Fraser! Officers’ station, now!” It is five or six o’clock in the evening and I am in my room reading, as per usual. It is now mid-2005 and it’s a few months since I was moved from maximum security to Fulham Correctional Centre, a medium-and minimum-security prison outside Sale in Gippsland, Victoria. I had eighteen months of my sentence left to go when the co
mmand was given.

  I thought What now? No doubt another piece of petty jail politics in which I’ve managed to become embroiled. No matter how hard I tried to keep myself away from such situations, crooks would come and speak to me and then would talk to the officers saying that I had given them advice. This often caused problems for me, starting with my first day at Fulham when I got off the bus from Port Phillip. The operations manager got hold of me, sat me in a small ante room next to the strip-search room and gave me a talking-to about what I would and would not do while at Fulham. What I would not do, according to him, was give anybody advice. I didn’t follow his instructions and constantly helped any blokes who needed assistance. Illiteracy in jail is breathtaking and you have no idea how many times a crook would come and knock on my unit door and ask me to read him a letter. Many of the illiterate prisoners were young and most were Aboriginal, and their lack of education is a sad indictment on our society. On one occasion I remember there was a letter from Legal Aid merely telling this kid that his case had been adjourned. It was a one-line letter and he couldn’t read it.

  The minimum-security section of Fulham, “The Cottages”, is a horseshoe-shaped area with twenty-two cottages contained in a garden, four blokes per cottage, one small bedroom each, with a shared kitchen and lounge area, bathroom, toilet and laundry. A far cry from the stark conditions I had been used to for the first three years of my sentence. At least at Fulham I was able to run each day, and the job I had in the prisoners’ property store was one that provided long hours and some autonomy in what you were given to do. The screw that ran the store was also smart enough to know that I wasn’t going to steal anything and in return for me working in the store I was at least allowed to go for my run each morning.